explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2887: Minnesota

2024-01-30T18:38:31Z

172.70.86.79: /* Explanation */ Must have been a thinko...

{{comic
| number = 2887
| date = January 29, 2024
| title = Minnesota
| image = minnesota_2x.png
| imagesize = 673x260px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In addition to 'squishy', after reviewing my submitted intraplate ground motion data, the National Geodetic Survey has politely asked me to stop using the word 'supple' so often when describing Midwestern states.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A SLOWLY EXPANDING CANADIAN-IOWAN INVASION - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[[Hairy]], [[Ponytail]], and [[Cueball]] are in a business meeting of an unknown nature, but one which (it transpires) is unrelated to either geography, geology or geopolitical boundaries. Hairy asks if anyone has any other concerns, a common enough question to ask when trying to ensure that nobody at the meeting has still something to say that had not already been covered directly by the agenda or the resulting discussions.

Cueball voices an opinion on Minnesota. Due to the {{w|post-glacial rebound}} present in Minnesota, this US state is apparently slowly decreasing in size. The humor comes from the fact that this may be a genuine concern by Cueball, but is completely unrelated to the topic of the meeting nor even a very significant problem even in more relevant circles. And yet Cueball clearly finds it important enough that "all meetings should be about Minnesota" until the 'problem' is solved.

The title text implies that Cueball has also brought this issue up to the {{w|National Geodetic Survey}}; rather than commenting on his data or findings, they have simply requested that he stop using suggestive language in his papers ("supple" and "squishy" are sometimes used, especially in erotic literature, to describe certain body parts).

The Midwestern states, particularly in areas like the {{w|New Madrid Seismic Zone}}, involves the movement of tectonic plates well within a tectonic plate boundary. While these areas are typically less active than boundary zones, they can still experience significant seismic activity. The flexible way the earth's crust in these regions responds to tectonic stresses – gently stretching and flexing over centuries in response to deep Earth stresses – could imaginatively be described as "supple."

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

:[Hairy standing in front of Ponytail and Cueball, who are sitting behind a desk]
:Hairy: Does anyone have any other concerns?
:Cueball: I'm concerned that Minnesota is getting shorter.

:[A map of Minnesota beside Cueball, with arrows pointing from the northern and southern borders towards the middle]
:Cueball: Because of post-glacial crust rebound, the northern border is moving toward the southern border. It's less than an inch a decade, but I still don't like it.
:Cueball: Minnesota shouldn't be squishy.

:[Hairy again standing in front of Ponytail and Cueball at the desk. Ponytail is looking at Cueball, whose finger is now raised in the air, gesturing]
:Hairy: Okay. Does anyone have any concerns related to the topic of this meeting?
:Cueball: All meetings should be about Minnesota until we resolve this.

{{comic discussion}}

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

2885: Spelling

2024-01-24T14:59:25Z

172.70.86.79: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2885
| date = January 24, 2024
| title = Spelling
| image = spelling_2x.png
| imagesize = 281x333px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Any time I misspell a word it's just because I have too much integrity to copy answers from the dictionary.
}}

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

Some words are difficult to remember how to spel, but Google and other search engines have autocorrect when you search misspelled words which will return results with the correct spelling, so some people look up their best guess of the spelling on Google, then copy the corrected version and pasted it into their document.

Cueball is having a moral dilemma about whether it is okay to do that for the word 'plagiarism' (taking other's work without permission or credits) because he thinks that doing so would be plagiarism, and presumably undermine the point he might be intending to make (e.g. "I don't support plagiarism", "I have never committed plagiarism in my life" or even "To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."). This doesn't really make sense as a specific dilemna. If it's wrong to do this for this word, it would be equally wrong to do it for any other word - the meaning of the word in question has no particular relevance to the ethics of the case.

The title text is referring to a similar moral dilemma, in which Cueball says he tends to misspell words because he would rather not "copy from the dictionary," considering that plagiarism. This is against the point of the dictionary, however, which is to serve as a reference precisely for people to look up what words are in the language, how they are spelled, defined, derived, and so on. The individual words being defined in the dictionary, by definition, cannot actually be the copyrighted intellectual property of a specific person, since they represent words already in use, rather than original work. Thus it wouldn't actually be plagiarism to copy the correct spelling from there. Only if you were to copy the accompanying entry without attribution would there be ethical and legal issues. But if one was really paranoid about avoiding plagiarism, one could always quote the source of each word they copied out of the dictionary, listing which dictionary they copied the word or words out of.

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

[Cueball and Megan are looking at a laptop being operated by Cueball]

Megan: When I can't spell a word I usually just google and copy and paste it from the results.

Cueball: Yeah, but I can't do that '''HERE!!'''

[Caption below the panel:]
Why spelling "plagiarism" is especially hard
{{comic discussion}}

Talk:2883: Astronaut Guests

2024-01-22T17:26:15Z

172.70.86.79:

Bot's down so i took the liberty of making the page myself [[User:SomeoneIGuess|someone, i guess]]([[User talk:SomeoneIGuess|talk i guess]]|[[Special:Contributions/SomeoneIGuess|le edit list]]) 03:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
:The bot isn't actually down. I think you just saw the comic before it did! —[[User:Theusaf|theusaf]] ([[User talk:Theusaf|talk]]) 03:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
:: If that's the case i find it really weird that Randall posted at *checks time* 10:40 PM... uncharacteristically late upload from my experience, assumed bot was down [[User:SomeoneIGuess|someone, i guess]]([[User talk:SomeoneIGuess|talk i guess]]|[[Special:Contributions/SomeoneIGuess|le edit list]]) 03:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Dining room is 50 meters long? ----Bob thé Farmer----
:I don't think that's how long they were over the dining room, but how long they were over the property. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.56|172.69.247.56]] 16:35, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

It is quite curious that this comic was published exactly when an italian wannabe astronaut (twice discarded by ESA) finally managed to get into outer space by having the italian armed forces pay for his ticket, so now he's on ISS as a *guest*. Of course it's impossible that Randal was hinting at this, but it's an amazing coincidence. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.114.175|172.71.114.175]] 17:26, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Noting in the Explanation that the length of the ISS solid angle 'area' is going to be a footprint slightly smaller than the stated size of the ISS (not by much, as it isn't really that far up, compared with how far the centre of the Earth is down, but it ''will'' be smaller. Also that (by my own from-first-principle calculations - please ''do'' check my stated working assumptions given in the relevent Edit Summary, or just do it yourself from scratch) slightly over a fifth of the Earth's surface ''never'' gets to experience the ISS being directly overhead. I was going to enumerate the sort of 'general chance that any given point at any given latitude might have the ISS above it', perhaps then to shove overflying speed (assuming zero eccentricity - which it pretty much is), compared with any given proportion of a surface latitude (assuming zero Earth oblateness - even though it is certainly a little bit, even at first approximation). But that seems overkill to actually Explain. Though I think it ''will'' make an interesting graph of +/-latitude vs overlfly 'timeshare' so I'll perhaps do that for my own entertainment momentarily. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.67|172.70.86.67]] 20:34, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Alright, who's going to start trying to narrow down the specific places where this comic could be set, assuming a reasonable definition of "dinnertime" and "mid-August"? Not it. [[User:Reschultzed|Reschultzed]] ([[User talk:Reschultzed|talk]]) 16:49, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

If anyone is interested, his guests that day would have been ISS Expedition 32: Gennady Padalka, Sergei Revin, and Yuri Malenchenko of Russia, Joseph M. Acaba and Sunita Williams of the US, and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.64|172.69.247.64]] 17:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Someone needs to make a calculator for this. I need to use this statement but I also don't want to be flat out wrong. Like, enter in a GPS coordinate and you get sets of dates the ISS was overhead and who was in it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.140.184|172.69.140.184]] 18:14, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I think both the energy measurements should be in either kilojoules '''or''' megajoules, but not both. I had to re-read that back and forth a few times to sort out the decimal shifting.[[User:RandalSchwartz|RandalSchwartz]] ([[User talk:RandalSchwartz|talk]]) 21:03, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
:Interesting how these things evolve. The original comparison was with a baseball at 100 mph (fastball; 0.17 kilojoules), comparing object of somewhat similar size, and for which "kilojoules" seemed the most informative unit. That comparison was replaced with the truck/lorry on the freeway, objects of similar energy, for which megajoules is the most informative unit ... but the edit retained the original kilojoule figure for the bottle. It's all good. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.47|162.158.91.47]] 05:03, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I see I'm not the first person to think a program to calculate this might be cool. [[User:Jsnider3|Jsnider3]] ([[User talk:Jsnider3|talk]]) 15:03, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

"...the station was apparently "over" for a ground distance of between 53.9 m and 55.7 m (177 to 183 feet). That would imply quite a large property..." That doesn't really imply anything about the size of the property, because property size, which implies an area measurement, depends on more than just a linear measurement. A rectangular property with an aspect ratio of 3:1 would be about 10000 sq ft, just under a quarter acre, a little more than 900 sq m. That's a very typical property size (and shape) for a single family home. Hardly "quite large". [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.68|172.70.110.68]] 16:19, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
:Typical response to "how big is a house and garden in the UK", via a search engine, says:
:{{Quote|The latest analysis by Quickmove Properties reveals that the average garden size for an English home is an estimated 255 square metres, although this falls to just 81 square metres in Portsmouth}}
:Although mine is a ''bit'' bigger than that average (3 bedroom, 2-storey, semi-detached, front and back garden, driveway, freestanding brick garage 50ish years old rather than the current "cramming everything into a very thin plot" trend), I'm also significantly above 51°N so it wouldn't happen here at all. (London is 51.5°, the sprawling non-terraced housing of the more affluent areas of the most southern counties might work. Though [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/Sevenoaks.html some of those] are somewhat atypical.)[[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.79|172.70.86.79]] 17:26, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

1537: Types

2024-01-10T16:31:16Z

172.70.86.79: Undo revision 332644 by BrobieBroberson (talk) Not "another" thing, as that's already mentioned.

{{comic
| number = 1537
| date = June 12, 2015
| title = Types
| image = types.png
| titletext = colors.rgb("blue") yields "#0000FF". colors.rgb("yellowish blue") yields NaN. colors.sort() yields "rainbow"
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a series of programming jokes about a ridiculous new programming language, perhaps inspired by {{w|Mathematica}} and {{w|Wolfram Language}} — the latter was used by [[Randall]] many times before. Maybe it's also inspired by [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat Gary Bernhardt's CodeMash 2012 lightning talk] on JavaScript's unpredictable typing. In the talk, the highly technical audience was unable to correctly guess the results of adding various JavaScript types and roared with laughter when they were revealed. The programming language shown in this comic has types even more unpredictable than JavaScript.

Most regular programming languages distinguish types, e.g. integers, strings, lists… all of which have different behaviours. But for instance, the operation "+" is usually conventionally defined over more than one of these types. Applied to two integers, it returns their sum. Applied to two strings (denoted by being enclosed in quotes) it concatenates them:

<pre>> 2 + 3
5

> "123" + "abc"
"123abc"</pre>

While these behaviours are standard, conventional, and intuitive, there is a huge amount of variation among programming languages when you apply an operation like "+" to different types. One logical approach is to always return an error in all cases of type mixing, but it is often practical to allow some case mixing, since it can hugely simplify expressions. Variation and lack of a clearly more intuitive behaviour leads some languages to have weird results when you mix types.

Weird results abound in the new XKCD programming language:
# <code>2 + "2"</code> uses the <code>+</code> operator on a number and a string. In some programming languages, this might result in the number <code>4</code> in math addition, or <code>"22"</code> in string concatenation; however, the new language converts the string to an integer, adds them to produce <code>4</code> and converts back to a string. Alternatively, it may instead be adding 2 to the ASCII value of the character <code>"2"</code> (50), resulting in the character <code>"4"</code> (52). This is (somewhat) consistent with the behavior for item 4.
# <code>"2" + []</code> adds a string to an array or list. This first inexplicably converts the string to a number again, and then it literally adds the number to the list by prepending it. And then the result (the entire array) is converted to a string again. (Possibly, this is meant to be read as 'adding brackets to the string "2" produces the string "[2]"?')
# <code>(2/0)</code> divides <code>2</code> by <code>0</code> and quite reasonably results in <code>NaN</code>, meaning "Not a Number", though in most languages, as prescribed by the IEEE 754 standard for floating point numbers, dividing a nonzero number by zero would instead return an infinity value.
# <code>(2/0)+2</code> adds <code>2</code> to <code>NaN</code>. <code>2</code> Is "added" to the string <code>"NaN"</code> as again, the number is converted to a string for apparently no reason, which produces <code>"NaP"</code>. If the language's convention is to add to the ASCII value of a character or string, then in this case it added 2 to the character <code>"N"</code> (78), resulting in <code>"P"</code> (80). How the string "NaP" is converted into a bare NaP with undefined meaning is not clear. It is possible the "NaP" means "Not a Positive" as opposed to "Not a Negative". It could also mean "Not a Prayer", as you're taking a "NaN" condition and trying to do more with it.
# <code>""+""</code>: In many languages, two consecutive double-quote characters denote an empty string, so this expression would concatenate two empty strings, resulting in an empty string. However, it appears that this language treats only the outermost quotes of the expression as the string boundary, so all of the characters between them become part of the literal string, producing '<code>"+"</code>' (In many programming languages, you can use both <code>"</code> or <code>'</code> to delimit strings and both behave similarly if not identical). Alternately, these two consecutive double quotes may be treated similarly to the way that consecutive single quotes are treated in a SQL string, with the first quote escaping the 2nd. This would result in a string that contains the value <code>"+"</code>. It is also possible to read this expression as <code>'"'+'"'</code>, which would usually be <code>'""'</code>.
# <code>[1,2,3]+2</code> seems to test whether it's sound to append <code>2</code> to the list <code>[1,2,3]</code>, and concludes that it doesn't fit the pattern, returning the boolean value <code>false</code>. It could conceivably also be the result of an attempt to add <code>2</code> to the ''set'' <code>[1,2,3]</code>, which already contains that element (although <code>{1,2,3}</code> would be a more common notation for sets).
# <code>[1,2,3]+4</code> returns <code>true</code> for much the same reason.
# <code>2/(2-(3/2+1/2))</code> is a floating point joke. Floating point numbers are notoriously imprecise. With precise mathematics, <code>(3/2+1/2)</code> would be exactly 2, hence the entire thing would evaluate to <code>2/0</code> or <code>NaN</code> in Randall's new language. However, the result of <code>(3/2+1/2)</code> is "just slightly off," which makes the result "just slightly off" of <code>NaN</code>, which would be ridiculous in a real language. The ironic thing is that fractions with 2 in the denominator are ''not'' the kind of numbers that typically suffer from floating point imprecision. Additionally, if there had indeed been a rounding error, the actual calculation would become something like <code>2/0.000000000000013</code>, which should not return a <code>NaN</code> since it is not division by zero. It is most likely not a coincidence that there are 13 zeros before the "13" at the end of the "decimal".
# <code>RANGE(" ")</code> normally wouldn't make any sense. However, the new language appears to interpret it as ASCII, and in the ASCII table, character #32 is space, #33 is <code>!</code>, and #34 is <code>"</code>. So, instead of interpreting <code>" "</code> as a string, it seems to be interpreted as <code>34, 32, 34</code> (in ASCII), and then <code>range</code> appears to transform this into <code>34, 33, 32, 33, 34</code> (the "ranges" between the numbers), which, interpreted as ASCII, becomes <code>('"','!',' ','!','"')</code>.
# <code>+2</code> adds 2 to the ''line number'', 10, and returns the result, 12.
# <code>2+2</code> would normally be <code>4</code>. However, the interpreter takes this instruction to mean that the user wishes to increase the actual value of the number <code>2</code> (aka the "literal value") by <code>2</code> for the remainder of the program, making it <code>4</code> and then reports that the work is "Done". The result can be seen in the subsequent lines where all <code>2</code>s are replaced by <code>4</code>s. This could be a reference to languages like Fortran where [http://everything2.com/title/Changing+the+value+of+5+in+FORTRAN literals could be assigned new values]. This would normally be <code>2+=2</code>.
#<code>RANGE(1,5)</code> would normally return <code>(1,2,3,4,5)</code>; however, because the value of <code>2</code> has been changed to <code>4</code>, it returns <code>(1,4,3,4,5)</code>. This also affects the line number by changing the "2" in 12 to "4" resulting in the line number 14.
#<code>FLOOR(10.5)</code> should return <code>10</code> (the "floor" of a decimal number is that number rounded down); however, it instead returns {{w|ASCII art}} of the number on a "floor." The floor is also five lines down and ten characters long (if you count the number as part of the floor), making it look like the "10.5" was taken as two separate arguments to the "floor" function. Normally, multiple arguments for a function are separated by commas, not periods. This could be a reference to different decimal notation conventions in different cultures.

The title text contains three further examples relating to color. <code>color.rgb("blue")</code> returns the hexadecimal code for pure blue (as would be used in HTML, for example), which is how a real programming language might work. The lookup for "yellowish blue" returns "NaN" (Not a Number) again, which makes sense at one level because there is no such color as "yellowish blue" (yellow and blue are opposites on the RGB {{w|color triangle}}, making yellowish-blue an {{w|impossible colour}}, which can only be perceived with great difficulty through contrived figures). However a more typical result would have been a failure indicating that the color database does not include the name, in the same way that a typo such as "bluw" would. (Note that HTML does [http://stackoverflow.com/q/8318911/256431 explicitly attempt] to handle all "color names", though unrecognized ones like "yellowish blue" just interprets them as numbers (with zeros replacing invalid hexadecimal digits). For the record, "yellowish blue" is a dark blue with an imperceptible amount of red — <code style='background-color: #0e00b0; color: white'>#0E00B0</code>.) Similarly sorting the colors would normally produce some defined ordering, such as alphabetical, but in this language it generates the string "rainbow". It seems that Randall's new language understands color theory in an unusually deep way.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the black part of the comic:]
:My new language is great, but it
:has a few quirks regarding type:

:[The rest of the comic is written in a black rectangle. All text to the left of ">" is written in gray. Text to the right of the ">" on the lines with numbers are in white, and then gray text on the other lines. There seems to be a missing ">" after line no. 3.]
:  [1]> 2+"2"
:    => "4"
:  [2]> "2"+[]
:    => "[2]"
:  [3] (2/0)
:    = > NaN
:  [4]> (2/0)+2
:    = > NaP
:  [5]> "" + ""
:    = > ' "+" '
:  [6]> [1,2,3]+2
:    = > False
:  [7]> [1,2,3]+4
:    = > True
:  [8]> 2/(2-(3/2+1/2))
:    = > NaN.000000000000013
:  [9]> Range("   ")
:    = > (' " ',"! "," ","!",' " ')
:[10]> + 2
:    = > 12
:[11]> 2+2
:    = > Done
:[14]> Range(1,5)
:    = > (1,4,3,4,5)
:[13]> Floor(10.5)
:    = > |
:    = > |
:    = > |
:    = > |_ _ _10.5_ _ _

==Trivia==
*There is an inconsistency in the comic after [3] where the ">" is missing.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:  Programming]]
[[Category:  Language]]

1082: Geology

2024-01-03T21:52:07Z

172.70.86.79: /* Transcript */ Subtle corrections and a few actual details to add.

{{comic
| number = 1082
| date = July 16, 2012
| title = Geology
| image = geology.png
| titletext = That's a gneiss butte.
}}

==Explanation==
Here we have [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] discussing {{w|geology}} and the words they use are ripe with puns and {{w|double entendre}}s which also have sexual meanings. In the end, they just decide to get it on.

Specifically, the suggestive terms are "{{w|Bed (geology)|bedding}}," "{{w|Extensional tectonics|spreading}}," "{{w|friction}}," "{{w|Cleavage (geology)|cleavage}}," "deeper in the {{w|rift}}," "{{w|orogeny}}," (perhaps a {{w|portmanteau}} of {{w|orgy}} and {{w|erogenous}}), "huge," and "{{w|Thrust fault|thrust}}."

The technical terms are:
;Bedding : The division of usually {{w|sedimentary rock|sedimentary rocks}} into distinct layers.
;Spreading : A process in which two geological regions are moving apart, and potentially allowing for {{w|magma}} to rise between them. Spreading occurs in {{w|mid-ocean ridge|mid-ocean ridges}} and in {{w|rift valley|rift valleys}}.
;Friction breccia : {{w|Breccia}} is a rock made of broken fragments of other rocks. When these fragments can be formed from the rubbing between rocks in a fault, it is a friction breccia.
;Flow cleavage : The {{w|crystal|crystals}} in a rock can be aligned by the {{w|plastic flow}} of a rock when it is hot. This causes the rock to split (cleave) along particular planes.
;Rift : A result of spreading is that rocks break, forming vertical faults, and allowing regions to sink and form valleys.
;Orogeny : The process of mountain forming, or a period in which mountains are formed.
;Thrust fault : A sloping crack in the rocks at which one region of rocks is pushing another up.

So it seems that Megan tells Cueball to ignore the layers in the rock, as there is evidence that the valley they are in is a recent rift valley. It was formed in cracking following the lifting up of the surrounding rocks.

The title text is a wordplay, as it could sound like "nice butt". {{w|Gneiss}} is a type of rock made up of different bands, and a {{w|butte}} is an isolated hill with steep sides and a flat top, but smaller than a {{w|plateau}}. However, "butte" is not pronounced like "butt", but as "beaut".

==Transcript==
:[Two people are doing a geological survey in a rock-strewn landscape. Megan pointing off at the ground, wearing a fedora, Cueball apparently comparing a paper/map with another patch.]
:Megan: Forget the bedding - we were wrong about the whole valley.
:Cueball: The spreading is recent.

:[Close up on the figures, Megan in a thoutful pose, Cueball turned her way.]
:Megan: See the friction breccia?
:Cueball: Oh - flow cleavage!
:Cueball: Deeper in the rift.
:Megan: Deeper.
:[An idea pops into Megan's head.]

:[Megan also turns to Cueball.]
:Megan: This orogeny
:Cueball: is driven by a
:Megan: ''huge''
:Cueball: ''thrust'' fault

:[They both drop to the ground, off-panel, leaving only Megan's tumbling hat and a vocal effect.]
:The couple: MMM
:[Down from comic]: Geology: Surprisingly erotic.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Sex]]
[[Category:Puns]]

Talk:2874: Iceland

2023-12-30T10:15:07Z

172.70.86.79:

As someone with friends in Iceland, I can confirm that Iceland is actually not a real island, and was actually created by a team of 8000 workers that happened to be carrying bags of sand, ice, and grass. [[User:SomeoneIGuess|someone, i guess]]([[User talk:SomeoneIGuess|talk i guess]]|[[Special:Contributions/SomeoneIGuess|le edit list]]) 00:33, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

With all due respect to the first editor contributing to the Explanation ... my take was that the comic has little to do with mission creep within projects but has to do with the fact that Iceland contains such a confluence of strange geographic features that it defies logic that they should all be collectively present in a single location. For example, you don't find islands on top of a mid-ocean ridge, or a glacier on top of a volcano, or a mild climate (because of the Gulf Stream) in the polar regions where the Aurora Borealis could be seen. The only logical explanation for such a bizarre jumble of features was that it must have been created by a committee of diverse scientists who wanted their pet feature to be included in the formation of Iceland. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 02:42, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
:Agreed. Also "More fjords!"-Slartibartfast [[User:L-Space Traveler|L-Space Traveler]] ([[User talk:L-Space Traveler|talk]]) 03:55, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
:That's how I took it, too. Get your editing shoes on and fix it. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 04:09, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
: I just changed the explanation on the first paragraph based on your comment, much thanks! [[User:AT-RexEatingAnAirplane|AT-RexEatingAnAirplane]] ([[User talk:AT-RexEatingAnAirplane|talk]]) 06:22, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

By the way, Iceland and Greenland have names that are contrary to their actual geography. Iceland is actually much more habitable suitable for cultivation because of the geothermal warmth and Gulf Stream effects. While Greenland is suitable for agriculture on only 1% of its territory. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 02:42, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
:I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, but I heard that this happened because the inhabitants of iceland didn't want to encourage immigrants who would gentrify the place. So they gave it a name that didn't sound appealing, and gave Greenland an attractive name. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 04:08, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
::While Greenland was indeed 'upsold', Iceland was at least twice ("snow land", prior to "ice land") described for what its respective new arrivals actually saw and identified as its main features (compared with their Scandinavian expectations, even)...
::Of course, those arriving at any of the actually 'useful' margins of Greenland perhaps weren't to know how much actual icecap there was beyond the fringes which ''were'' somewhat farmable. And one could imagine that arriving at Iceland at the wrong place/time of year could leave one ignorant of the actually surprisingly copious fertile soils, even after first climbing a handy nearby mountain to get a bigger picture. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.79|172.70.86.79]] 10:15, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Talk:Five-Minute Comics: Part 4

2023-12-18T14:15:52Z

172.70.86.79:

How is this unpublished? Although only through an app, this comic has still been issued for distribution to the public, therefore, by definition, published. {{User:17jiangz1/signature|14:41, 29 December 2015}}
:Thanks for the great explanation (also by but not just by Forrest). I found the link to it from the explanation for [[940]], and though we really lacked this page. As I did not know all the info I just called it unpublished. And then I actually hoped that someone would explain this comic, and you all did, and it is a great work. Especially finding out why it is here etc. Thanks :-) And great that it was saved because some of them are really funny --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 21:06, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I just wanted to add that the [http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=74111 forum post about this comic] notes that this comic was accidentally posted by the site admins for xkcd, then later replaced with the current version of the comic, i.e. [[940: Oversight]]. The direct image URL for this comic now points to [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/five_minute_comics_part_4.png this image]. Thus, the comic was not published through the unofficial xkcd app or anything like that; the more likely scenario is that the app downloaded the comic when it became available and cached it, so when the comic was replaced with [[940: Oversight]], the app did not update it. 03:58, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Isn't the joke in the first comic that one of the players is holding a tennis racquet and the other a baseball bat? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.66.227|141.101.66.227]] 08:07, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Concerning the Muezzin calling for "submission" instead of prayer - has anyone noticed yet that the arabic word for "submission" is "Islam"? Seems more deliberate than accidental to me.
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.76.58|141.101.76.58]] 14:03, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
:Of course it's deliberate. It's referring to submission to Allah - most deistic religions call for some form of submission to their God or gods.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.227|172.69.194.227]] 13:59, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
:Oh wait, sorry, I think I get what you mean now! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.79|172.70.86.79]] 14:15, 18 December 2023 (UTC)