explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1293: Job Interview

2023-09-22T08:16:05Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */ tyop

{{comic
| number = 1293
| date = November 20, 2013
| title = Job Interview
| image = job_interview.png
| titletext = When you talk about the job experience you'll give me, why do you pronounce 'job' with a long 'o'?
}}

==Explanation==
Following on from [[1032: Networking|his attempts at networking]], [[Beret Guy]], the oddball of the xkcd cast, conducts an interview for a position at his mysterious company.

Much like most of Beret Guy's interactions with people, Beret Guy is cheerful and upbeat, yet indicates that he has at best a scrambled understanding of how people in this situation normally act. Because of this, the job interview becomes increasingly bizarre, starting with Beret Guy's assertion that the company headquarters is a "real building [he] found", implying that the building's reality might be in question. In addition, "finding" the building may imply that he does not own or rent it, but simply found it empty and moved in. He says his company makes "stuff for phones", but then adds, "like apps and stickers," two wildly different products in terms of both production and profitability. He is strangely vague about both the position ("someone to write on our computers") and the salary ("a bunch of paychecks"). Then he mentions ghosts, which is either a powerful disincentive from joining the company, yet another sign that Beret Guy is mentally unsound, or both.

The strip finishes with Beret Guy plugging a cord into what appears to be an electrical outlet clumsily labeled "Soup," which then, implausibly, actually starts dispensing soup. Most electrical outlets do not function like this.{{Citation needed}} However, this is a typical behaviour of Beret Guy - see a similar example in: [[1395: Power Cord]]. It is possible that the electrical outlet is connected to a pipe which supplies soup from a soup reservoir or kitchen elsewhere in the facility, which would require the fixture to have a specialist valve-connector and the 'cable' to involve a pipe with a self-sealing end that 'keys' the valve open. It may even be more likely, given Beret Guy's 'abilities', that the outlet is taking electricity from a wuitable power supply and the cord ultimately uses mass-energy conversion to turn it into soup; this would be in line with the possible operating mechanism of Beret Guy's water-creating dam in [[2710: Hydropower Breakthrough]].

The title text may be a reference to the biblical story of {{w|Job (biblical figure)|Job}} (pronounced with a long O to rhyme with globe), who was put through many horrendous ordeals to test his faith in God. This suggests that the interviewee will be taking on not a "job experience" but rather a "Job experience" (i.e. the job will be a horrendous ordeal). Alternatively, it's a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4ayBHTES0 Homestarrunner reference].

==Transcript==
:[Beret Guy walks in, followed by a...'prospective hire'.]
:Beret Guy: Welcome to our company! We're headquartered here, in this real building I found!

:[Both people sit down at a table. The 'hire' has a tray with food and a beverage. Beret Guy has a bowl. In the adjacent wall, there is a power outlet with a paper label taped to it marked "Soup". A small roll of wire sits next to Beret Guy's chair.]
:'Hire': What do you.. ''do''?
:Beret Guy: We make stuff for phones! Like apps and stickers.

:[Beret Guy grabs the roll of wire.]
:Beret Guy: We want to hire you to write on our computers. We can offer you a bunch of paychecks! There are ghosts here.

:[Beret Guy unrolls the wire and plugs it into the wall.]
:'Hire': ...Are you sure this is a company?
:Beret Guy: I hope so!

:[Soup streams out of the plugged-in wire into Beret Guy's bowl.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Strange powers of Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Beret Guy's Business]]
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Job interviews]]
[[Category:Food]]

2780: Physical Quantities

2023-05-31T11:02:26Z

172.70.91.151: /* Transcript */ I remember when typesetting markup had such 'arbitrary centering' (also lining up decimal points, in a single column of figures). Now you have to do it by splitting into multiple tabular columns and right/left justifying as required.

{{comic
| number = 2780
| date = May 24, 2023
| title = Physical Quantities
| image = physical_quantities_2x.png
| imagesize = 338x183px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The Hubble length is about 1.9 meters lying down; Edwin Hubble was a tall guy.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a TALL SCIENTIST - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic plays on the name of various established physical definitions by simply taking them overly literally. Each one is treated as being a bodily measure of the scientist after which they are named, rather than describing/estimating the eponymous feature within the scientist's field of study. Interestingly, of the many {{w|List of scientific units named after people|units named for people}}, only one is actually a measurement of its namesake: the {{w|Smoot}}.

;Hubble volume
In cosmology, a {{w|Hubble volume}} (named for the astronomer {{w|Edwin Hubble}}) is a spherical region of the observable universe.
The Hubble volume is approximately equal to 1031 cubic light years (or about 1079 cubic meters).
The value given in the comic is the estimated volume of Edwin Hubble's body. The mean volume of a human body is around 65L[https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?s=n&v=3&id=109718], but Edwin Hubble was a big guy (see title text) and likely had an above-average volume.

;Schwarzschild radius
The {{w|Schwarzschild radius}} of a black hole refers to the event horizon: the radius beyond which light cannot escape. Curling up in a ball tends to reduce people's radii,{{fact}} while making them more spherical and easier to measure, so {{w|Karl Schwarzschild}}'s is given as 0.34 m, corresponding to a black hole of about 40 times the mass of Earth.

;Broca's area
{{w|Broca's area}} is a region of the brain whose functions are linked to speech. It is not a measurement of area in the sense of length times width. The measurement shown here purports to be the area of {{w|Paul Broca}}, which probably refers to the {{w|Body surface area|surface area of his body}} - about 1.7-1.8 m2 for a typical adult. The area is given in cubic meters (a measure of volume) rather than square meters (a measure of area), which is most likely a typo. This area was recently mentioned in the title text of [[2732: Bursa of Fabricius]].

;Fermi temperature
The concept of Fermi Temperature is {{w|Fermi energy#Related quantities|related to the Fermi Energy}}, a quantum value inherent to very cold substances. The {{w|Human body temperature|temperature of an average human}} is about 37 degrees Celsius, so it makes sense that {{w|Enrico Fermi}}’s baseline body temperature was, likewise, 37 degrees Celsius. Since Fermi lived in the 20th century, and it may be possible to reference his medical records, this assertion is potentially testable, perhaps more readily than those made for the 19th-century persons named in this comic.

;Planck length
{{w|Planck units}} are naturally-derived measurements invented by {{w|Max Planck}}; the Planck length (approximately 1.6×10-35 m) is one of the smallest meaningful distances. However, Randall measures the length of Max Planck, not the units. It is specifically when Planck was lying down (as to not decrease his height from a days exposure to gravity which may shorten a human by a centimeter or so, and also because lying down turns a human’s height into a length, as well as being a pun on the plank exercise, which is done in a horizontal position).

;Hubble length (title text)
A {{w|Hubble's_law#Hubble_length|Hubble length}} is 14.4 billion light years. This is a joke similar to the above play on the Planck length. The Hubble distance would be the distance between the Earth and the galaxies which are currently receding from us at the speed of light. The joke is that the Hubble length is 14 cm longer than the Planck length because Hubble was a tall man. Another joke by comparing these two are that these two distances are about as far from each other as possible on scales that make sense. The smallest distance to something on the order of the size of the visible universe.

==Transcript==

:[A centered header appears above a list of constant names and corresponding values, each item horizontally aligned to line up the gaps between the two.]
:Reference Physical Quantities

:Hubble volume: 96L
:Schwarzchild radius: 0.34m (curled up)
:Broca's area: 1.7m3
:Fermi temperature: 37°C
:Planck length: 1.76m (lying down)

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Science]]

902: Darmok and Jalad

2023-05-31T09:10:29Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */ A useful cultural (re-)reference. Of course, some people will never know of the 1999 parody film, or even think Abrams-Trek is the "original thing".

{{comic
| number = 902
| date = May 23, 2011
| title = Darmok and Jalad
| image = darmok_and_jalad.png
| titletext = I wonder how often Patrick Stewart has Darmok flashbacks when talking to Star Trek fans.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a parody of the ''{{w|Star Trek: The Next Generation}}'' episode "{{w|Darmok}}" in which [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Picard Captain Picard] and the Enterprise crew meet with a [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Tama Tamarian] ship. They can translate the individual words of Tamarian with perfect accuracy, but the Tamarians communicate using metaphors based on their own history and culture—without these cultural references, the Enterprise crew are unable to understand what the Tamarians are actually saying. The Tamarian captain deliberately strands himself and Picard on a planet, repeating the phrase "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra". Ultimately, Picard realizes that the line refers to a story of two warriors marooned on an island (Tanagra) who work together to defeat a common foe. The alien's intention is that he and Picard work together to defeat a predator as a way to cement ties between the Tamarians and the [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets Federation].

In the comic, instead of suggesting a dramatic gesture to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough, the alien seems to be suggesting a one-night stand, hence the wink in the final panel. It is not clear if he is chatting up [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Deanna_Troi Deanna Troi] (who has the long curly hair) or Picard. However, given that in the original episode Darmok and Jalad (the two warriors) were metaphorically identified with Dathon and Picard, it seems likely that he is flirting with Picard.

The title text suggests that the actor {{w|Patrick Stewart}}, who played Captain Picard, might find ''Star Trek'' fans indecipherable, in the same way that Captain Picard found the Tamarians indecipherable. This is a joke about how ''Star Trek'' fans stereotypically make constant references to the franchise which are so dense and obscure that even the program's actors might find them impossible to understand. This tendency is parodied in the film {{w|Galaxy Quest}}, a whole-work ''{{tvtropes|expy}}'' of the Star Trek phenomenon, in which the original actors need to consult their more dedicated fans how extremely faithful real-life alien reconstructions of the original fictional sets and equipment actually operate.

==Transcript==
:[Captain Dathon is seen on a communications screen.]
:Alien: Darmok and Jalad at Kalenda's!

:[Jean-Luc Picard and Deanna Troi stand next to each other, looking off to the right.]
:Picard: Their language must be based on folklore and metaphor! Computer! Search cultural archives for Darmok-Jalad-Kalenda!

:[Picard and Troi listen to the response.]
:Computer (off-panel): In Tamarian legend, Darmok and Jalad got totally wasted and hooked up at a party at Kalenda's.

:[Dathon is seen on the communications screen again, winking.]
:''WIIIIIINK''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Star Trek]]
[[Category:Language]]

Talk:2775: Siphon

2023-05-15T13:04:53Z

172.70.91.151:

My understanding was that siphoning can essentially be explained by the Bernoulli equation? There is a difference in potential energy between the upper and lower container so it flows. The weight of water in the downhill part of the tube pulls water up the uphill section of the tube (think like a vacuum), and so on until there's either no difference in head or no more water. Siphoning will work with any diameter tube. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 15:43, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
:That's right. The only mention of capillary action in the siphon wikipedia article is when talking about phenomenon that *isn't* a siphon. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Agree, capillary action does not seem to be referenced or implied in the comic, presenting only the (not "functioning") siphon phenomenon. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.134.142|172.68.134.142]] 16:23, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
:Seconded/thirded. Capillary action isn't even what they were expecting. The small amount of water in the lowe receptical indicates they correctly ''filled'' the tube, but then as the longer length drained it did not then induce further flow up and over through the shorter length. e.g. nature no longer abhored the resulting vacuum (or there was increased negative-pressure vapourisation, beyond that previously expected, or other method of seepage 'airlock'-breaking) and thus the short-end also drained straight back out again instead of becoming a potentially self-sustaining inflow to the whole siphoning setup.
::If the upper end got restricted (say by touching the side of the bucket) the loss of flow would allow air to enter the bottom end and drain out the tube. I've done this. :-( [[User:RIIW - Ponder it|RIIW - Ponder it]] ([[User talk:RIIW - Ponder it|talk]]) 19:07, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
:::Indeed, even having an especially large diameter "tube" (/pipe etc) can allow air from the bottom to flow up to the peak & break the siphon effect. For reliable results, the lower end needs to be kept immersed or the hose needs to be relatively small in diameter. [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 14:11, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
:While the capilliary action element ''could'' induce the start of a rather limited 'empty' siphon setup to start (maybe, I'd have doubts about the 'fluid friction' actually acting against the gravity-feed part, once the surface-tension bit has "climbed the mountain" and started to merely seep out of the other end, almost incidentally, for a sufficiently thin tubing where CA is a significant factor), this suddenly failing for whatever reason (surface-tension effects being nullified) wouldn't then send a token amount of water into the low bucket, nor particularly stop unrelated siphon-flow from continuing properly (in fact, suddenly 'interaction-free' liquid and tubing might siphon ''faster'', with effectively zero fluid boundary effects dragging on the induced flow).
:But perhaps someone with more QFD experience could explain where my assessment is wrong. So not going to personally rewrite the current Explanation intro just now. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.161|172.70.162.161]] 16:21, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
:I'd like to contribute as one more data point. I also don't see capillary action as being relevant. In particular, as another commenter said, the water in the lower bucket quite clearly supports the idea that the siphon effect was the subject of the characters' confusion. How else is Randall supposed to depict the siphon effect anyway? I agree that the drawing alone ''could'' also suggest capillary action is what's being investigated, but I don't think it suggests that the caption has ''incorrectly'' referred to it as the siphon effect. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.254.100|172.71.254.100]] 18:44, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Of course, if some physical law would actually stop working, people wouldn't be confused. They would drop dead. Due to physical laws working on level of elementary particles, every change would have lot of different effects ... and living organism live only thanks to being very carefully balanced in lot of regards. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 20:49, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Bug report 6EQUJ5: Odd signal emitted from Sagittarius constellation. Status: Closed - could not reproduce. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.69|172.71.26.69]] 03:20, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
:(I get that reference... :) However, launching off that to say: ) There's an old (short?) story... H.G. Wells era, possibly, but not him I think... where someone (who happened to be the first decent but amateur astronomer to get a cloudless patch of sky, one night) realises the Moon is in the wrong place, and the news then reaches (and troubles) the professional community who get a chance to observe/notice the change for the first fime and confirm it.. A 'glitch' seems to have passed through space and moved/retimed it, for a limited time, before it later snaps back to where (in the orbit) it now should be.
:The trace of the glitch are seen further afield (implying a 'beam' of 'wrongness'), and ultimately it spawns something like Experimental Theology whereby observations of such clear "hand of the Creator" changes (implying we're essentially in a simulated universe being operated by a 'universal programmer', but in pre-computer terms) merge oruddy the boundaries between scientific rationalism (which clearly falls short) and religious philosophy (where undeniable 'proof' of something godlike is now suddenly an ironically confounding factor).
:Cannot remember much about where I read it, I may be presuming some details about it that aren't actually there (even removing obvious mix-ups with similar brands of tale) and my Google-Fu fails to establish any obvious online reference to it (even just title+synoposis), so instead I'm setting down the 'spoilers' without reservation. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 13:04, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Siphoning is NOT because of capillary action! That should be changed!! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.127.90|172.70.127.90]] 15:35, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

I guess I was wrong that siphons work because of capillary action. [[User:TianHanFei|TianHanFei]] ([[User talk:TianHanFei|talk]]) 1:57, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

== Potential inspiration ==

One potential source of inspiration for this comic is the Twitter [https://twitter.com/earth_updates account @Earth_Updates], which produces a lot of similar content. [[User:PotatoGod|PotatoGod]] ([[User talk:PotatoGod|talk]]) 19:54, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I think if I added it to the article body it would get reverted, but the content seems very similar to how AI media produced delusional worlds for so many factions of people. It is not at all a big stretch to imagine people stepping into a metaverse or matrix where they aren’t sure what is real and physical laws match their intuition more than is actually correct. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.171|162.158.158.171]] 08:23, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

== Title text ==

Isn't the title text about stars like our sun rather than about plutonium? [[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.95|198.41.242.95]] 00:55, 13 May 2023 (UTC)h
:Seems to me unlikely that anyone would refer to stars as 'rocks'.[[User:Catherine|Catherine]] ([[User talk:Catherine|talk]]) 02:54, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
::There is Slate that turn into lava spontaneously after lying around for thousands of years. I think the area they are in is called "Smoking Hills". There was recent research why that slate does this while in much the rest of the world slate is just flat, black rocks. I still believe this title text is about plutonium, though, as that slate produces so much heat, that one still hasn't managed to measure how hot it gets - but it produces that heat not for an near-infinite duration.--[[User:Gunterkoenigsmann|Gunterkoenigsmann]] ([[User talk:Gunterkoenigsmann|talk]]) 01:48, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
:::The only {{w|Smoking Hills}} that came to mind was natural shale-fires (chemical burning, and not hot enough for remelting to magma/lava.
:::Possibly there is a {{w|natural nuclear fission reactor|situation}} where it has done as you say (in some natural mass of rock, spotted somewhere in this planet's lithosphere, or elsewhere out there), but given the fine line between nicely sustaining and runaway chain-reactions, I'm not sure how easy it is for nature to 'engineer' a way to land on the {{w|Corium (nuclear reactor)|middle ground}} and not go supercritical.
:::In order for accumulating ores to not just start a low-level fizzle (as above), over millenia, you might need separate ore-patches either side of a fault to come together in a suddenish techtonic slip, rather than a slow buckling of layers to increase effective ore-densities. And then you've got earthquakes, already, so not sure if the very low-grade nuclear explosion that is awfully close to being possible in this chance contrived example (at one end of the probability curve, unless U238 content is somehow preferentially leached out?) is going to be noticable.
:::But ''just'' hot enough for lava? If not already close to melting, anyway, under local temperatures and pressures? Not sure we've seen anything like it, even if it is technically feasible given enough happenstance setups by geology(/exo-geology), since planets formed. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.152|172.70.91.152]] 09:16, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

== Title Text-Radiation ==

The title text is referring to the heat created by natural radioactive decay, not humans harnessing it in reactors.

The literal rocks of particularly radioactive elements still in the ground are constantly producing small amounts of heat without our assistance

[[Special:Contributions/172.71.151.48|172.71.151.48]] 06:27, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

777: Pore Strips

2023-05-13T12:48:03Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 777
| date = August 9, 2010
| title = Pore Strips
| image = pore_strips.png
| titletext = I'm sure they're a harmful tool of the cosmetics-industrial complex and all, but my goodness do those strips ever work to pull gunk out of your pores. I was shocked, disgusted, and vaguely fascinated by the result.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows a box of "Deep-cleaning pore strips," which are a skin-care product designed to clean your pores. You stick them on your face, wait a while, and then rip them off. When they come off, a whole lot of disgusting gunk, like dirt and body oils, is lifted out of your pores with them. The kind shown in the comic, however, is "deep cleaning", and rips out not only the user's pore gunk, but also his entire skull. However, the skull looks extremely clean, so the cleaning has probably worked.

The title text indicates that while Randall is aware that pore-cleaning strips are useless and possibly harmful products created to make money by "solving" something that isn't actually a problem, they are quite effective at getting things out of the pores on a person's nose.

The title text also refers to the cosmetics industry as the "cosmetics-industrial complex", which is a play on the term "{{w|military-industrial complex}}", coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States.

==Transcript==
:[A box of pore strips, marked "deep cleaning."]

:[Cueball examines the box.]

:[Cueball applies strip to face.]

:[Cueball pulls on strip.]

:[Cueball pulls skull out of head with pore strip.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

Talk:2775: Siphon

2023-05-12T15:43:37Z

172.70.91.151:

2466: In Your Classroom

2023-05-12T08:19:38Z

172.70.91.151:

{{comic
| number = 2466
| date = May 21, 2021
| title = In Your Classroom
| image = in_your_classroom.png
| titletext = Ontology is way off to the left and geography is way off to the right.
}}

==Explanation==

[[Randall]] has created a thought experiment and corresponding chart about school courses. The idea is, "the subject of the class appears in the classroom" and the chart compares how dangerous and how unusual that would be.

In the title text two points that are off the chart to the left and right are also mentioned. See details about all the subjects in the [[#Table of subjects|table]] below.

Note that Randall uses similar diagrams in each of [[388: Fuck Grapefruit]], [[1242: Scary Names]] and [[1501: Mysteries]], which also contain different items. They also have extra points mentioned in the title text. In the first two comics the points are also off the chart, whereas for the last the description of the point is too long to fit on the chart. Extra info outside the chart is also used in the title text of [[1785: Wifi]], but this is a line graph.

==Table of subjects==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Breakdown of Subjects
|-
!Course Topic
!Weirdness
!Badness
!Explanation
|-

!scope=row|Atmospheric Physics
|0%
|0%
|Absent very strange and unprecedented circumstances, every classroom on Earth has an atmosphere (although going by the exact wording of the starting hypothesis, "The thing you study just showed up in your classroom", the implication is that up until that point, the room in which the class is being held contained a vacuum, which in and of itself is interesting to physics students.)
|-

!scope=row|Ethics
|25%
|0%
|Ethical thinking and behavior are widely considered good and should normally be present in education, but are sadly not universal.{{citation needed}}
|-

!scope=row|Education
|0%
|10%
|Learning usually goes on in classrooms{{citation needed}}, so education as a concept is both being learned about and present in the form of learning itself.
|-

!scope=row|Bibliography
|25%
|7%
|Bibliography is the study of books, and books are normally present in classrooms, particularly bibliography classrooms. Although, more commonly speaking academically, a bibliography is a list of all sources used to compose a research paper, considered mandatory in all branches of academics but occasionally falsified or written in an incorrect style.
|-

!scope=row|Human Physiology
|0%
|20%
|This comic assumes that there are humans learning in the classroom, which was true at the time this comic was published, although in many places at the time the comic was published, many classrooms were closed due to COVID-19 restrictions.
|-

!scope=row|Public Speaking
|25%
|15%
|Some classes require students to present things in front of the class, which is likely a requirement in a public speaking class. Thus, public speaking itself would be present in the class.
Some classes also have a teacher talking or presenting to the students from the front of the class, another form of public speaking.
|-

!scope=row|Architecture
|0%
|30%
|All buildings can be considered architecture, and most classes take place in buildings. This comic also refers to a class''room'', which is a room, and therefore considered architecture.
|-

!scope=row|Library Science
|25%
|25%
|Library science is concerned with the organization of knowledge, and is useful for finding information. Many classes require [https://papersowl.com/pay-for-research-paper research papers] that require the use of books and other sources of information to complete them. This would be even more appropriate for a class actually taught in the school library.
|-

!scope=row|Furniture Design
|0%
|40%
|Most rooms have furniture,{{Citation needed}} so this would probably be present in a classroom. May also be implying the classroom furniture has not been assembled yet, making it not as good and a lesson in furniture design.
|-

!scope=row|Culinary Arts
|40%
|30%
|Most studies of culinary arts include the teacher and/or students preparing food using the tools and/or techniques that have been taught, so it would be fairly normal for food to be a result of classroom activities. How ''good'' it is, however, can be a mixed bag, especially for student cooking attempts.
|-

!scope=row|Ergonomics
|5%
|45%
|Ergonomic equipment and workspaces promote comfort and efficiency, while non-ergonomic ones may be unpleasant, unhealthy, or even immediately dangerous.
|-

!scope=row|Botany
|40%
|40%
|The near-neutral position of botany (aka plant biology) suggests that the most likely reason for plants to be present would be something like a potted plant, which is not uncommon, and usually not unpleasant, but not very noteworthy. There are other potential reasons for plants to be present, but those are generally less likely.
|-

!scope=row|20th Century Authors
|65%
|10%
|Literature classes would benefit greatly from an open discussion or interview with the author themself. Sadly such things are rare, but not unheard of, putting it slightly on the "weird" side of the spectrum. Well-known authors of the 20th century have an increased likelihood of being dead by 2021, but there are still some authors of the 20th century who were well-established enough to be studied and still alive at the time this comic was published.
|-

!scope=row|Exobiology
|100%
|0%
|Exobiology is the study of extraterrestrial life. This would mean that an alien lifeform was in the classroom. This is extremely weird but very good for people to investigate and research the alien.
|-

!scope=row|21st Century Authors
|60%
|20%
|21st century authors have the advantage (over 19th and 20th century authors) of typically being alive and active at the time this comic was published. However, most authors who were primarily active in the 21st century are still developing their body of work, and/or still awaiting the judgment of history. The better availability of such authors, as compared to 20th century author probably explains the slightly lower "weirdness" score, while the limited body of truly prominent authors probably explains the lower "goodness" score.
|-

!scope=row|19th Century Authors
|100%
|15%
|No author who was active in the 19th century was alive at the writing of this comic,{{Citation needed}} hence, having one of them show up in class would be extremely weird. The opportunity to interact with such a person would be utterly unique, meaning that it scores pretty high on the "goodness" metric, though interestingly not as high as a 20th century author. Possibly, the potential "badness" of having a zombie or other reanimated being show up in your class is weighed against the advantage of having a historical figure there in person. It may also be that someone from the 19th century has an increased danger of having outdated ethics, which may result in discomfort on the part of the students.
|-

!scope=row|Paleontology
|100%
|25%
|Paleontology is the study of the history of life on Earth as based on fossils. In geology classes, it would be normal to have some fossils in the classroom. However, fossils are not usually found in other classrooms, and especially below the college level. Randall is also probably implying the weirdness of finding a live ''Jurassic Park''-style dinosaur.
|-

!scope=row|Robotics
|55%
|30%
|A course on robotics would often be expected to have some form of working models of the robots being discussed. However, for it to have "showed up" in your classroom could imply an actual functioning robot prototype walked into the classroom. While not cause for concern (as long as nobody in the class is named Sarah Connor), this would be a bit weird.
|-

!scope=row|Martian Soil Chemistry
|100%
|35%
|Martian soil only reaches Earth in small amounts, so it would be unusual to find a meaningful amount anywhere, except Mars.
|-

!scope=row|Tourism
|75%
|40%
|Tourists coming into an active classroom would be quite unusual; while tourists sometimes visit university campuses, it would generally be rude for a tour guide to lead them into a classroom when class is in progress. This could also refer to the students leaving to become tourists in another location.
|-

!scope=row|Child Psychology
|60%
|45%
|Children are rarely students in classrooms advanced enough to teach child psychology. In order for child psychology to be on display, presumably someone would have to have brought a child (either for a demonstration, or for some other reason), which is slightly weird, but not unheard of. This is considered slightly "good", presumably because it would give students some opportunity for firsthand observation, and because most people like, or at least tolerate, children.
|-

!scope=row|Entomology
|15%
|55%
|Entomology is the study of insects. Insects getting into a classroom is a very common event, even putting aside the possibility of someone bringing insects specifically to study. Most insects that might get in are relatively benign, but some (such as mosquitoes) might sting or bite, and many people simply don't like insects, even when they're not harmful, pushing this slightly into "bad" territory.
|-

!scope=row|Occupational Therapy
|10%
|62%
|Injury, illness or mental health problem that hinder your participation in life/school. Many students who have significant physical injuries and conditions that require occupational therapy would generally not engage in those activities during a class, although volunteers may be brought in as a demonstration of a particular health problem or method of treatment.
|-

!scope=row|Hydraulic Engineering
|40%
|62%
|Likely in the form of flooding or plumbing problems.
|-

!scope=row|Pest Control
|25%
|70%
|This is not dissimilar to entomology, but pest control tends to involve larger infestations, as opposed to individual insects, and also includes non-insect animals, such as rats. Such events in classroom are not as common as individual insects getting in (especially in a well-maintained building), but are far from unheard of, and risk many negative effects, from bug bites to structural damage, and may require evacuation and fumigation to deal with.
|-

!scope=row|Foodborne Illness
|15%
|80%
|Sometimes students in a culinary arts class do not properly observe hygiene standards and the food they present would lead to illness in those that consume the food. Thankfully, this is rare if the teacher is paying enough attention to proceedings. Students could also be ill from food eaten outside of class.
|-

!scope=row|Criminal Law
|45%
|85%
|This might happen if a crime occurs in the class. While an armed robbery is unlikely, incidents involving theft or drug use are not particularly uncommon. Regardless, such an incident would be very bad.
|-

!scope=row|Physiology of Stress
|0%
|90%
|Stress in a classroom, even stress that's bad enough to manifest itself in physical symptoms, is all too common. Stress that bad is very harmful, and a student realizing that they were manifesting the symptoms they're studying should take it as a warning sign.
|-

!scope=row|Oncology
|25%
|100%
|Oncology is the medical practice of treating cancer. For someone in a classroom full of students to have cancer is, unfortunately, not an uncommon event, putting it on the "normal" side of the scale. While not abnormal, it's clearly very bad.
|-

!scope=row|Ornithology
|60%
|55%
|Ornithology is the study of birds. A bird getting into a classroom would be somewhat strange, but there are circumstances under which it would happen. In most cases, that's not especially dangerous, but it would be disruptive, and introduce the possibility of the bird making a mess, and possibly getting hurt (or even hurting others), which makes it slightly bad.
|-

!scope=row|Animation
|100%
|56%
|Presumably Randall isn't referring to examples of animated works being displayed to the students in an animation class, as that would be normal. However, it would be very weird for animated characters to appear physically in the classroom instead of being projected on screens. Possibly a reference to movies such as ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' in which cartoon characters actively interact with the live action cast. As many of the characters abide by different physics, and a couple are depicted as insane, this would be very weird and potentially bad.
|-

!scope=row|Petroleum Geology
|65%
|60%
|Crude oil coming up through the floor of the classroom would be ''very'' weird. Any potential for hands-on learning experience would be limited, and quickly outweighed by classes being disrupted entirely (be it damage to the building, or oil companies trying to negotiate for the land).
|-

!scope=row|Highway Engineering
|75%
|65%
|A highway being built through an active classroom would be very unusual and not that safe.
|-

!scope=row|Toxicology
|55%
|75%
|Most likely, a toxic substance is present in the room. This is not very weird if the room is in a building that has {{w|asbestos}}-containing insulation (typically associated with buildings constructed before the 1990s, although it has not been specifically outlawed in the United States due to industrial lobbying) or lead paint (which was fully outlawed in 1978 in the United States, so any paint must have been applied prior to that date). However, toxic substances are unsafe for humans.{{Citation needed}}
|-

!scope=row|Hematology
|75%
|70%
|Hematology is the study of blood. Given that there should be blood in each of the students present,{{Citation needed}} we should probably assume Randall means "large quantities of blood outside of one's body ([[:Category:Comics with blood|click here]])", which would indeed be both bad and weird.
|-

!scope=row|Hostage Negotiation
|70%
|85%
|Reasons as to why there would be hostage negotiations taking place at a school have horrifying implications for the students and teacher. The 'weird'ness rating of this occurence would presumably change depending on location, school shootings and hostage situations being (unfortunately) much more 'normal'ised in the USA than any other country.
|-

!scope=row|History of Siege Warfare
|100%
|80%
|This would be an exceptionally strange event. Given that the topic is "history", having it show up implies that either historical figures have the classroom under siege (possibly through time travel or reanimation) or at least that the besiegers are using traditional weapons and methods in their attack. In either case, it would be a very weird event, and also very bad.
|-

!scope=row|Trauma Surgery
|55%
|95%
|An injury severe enough to require trauma surgery would be rare in a classroom, but there are circumstances under which it could realistically happen. Such an injury would be, by its very nature, a very bad thing.
|-

!scope=row|Volcanology
|75%
|95%
|Having a live volcano in one's classroom is both very dangerous and very weird {{Citation needed}}. Volcanoes mature over very long time frames, but even the earliest stages are highly disruptive and potentially deadly, as seen in the {{w|Parícutin#Formation|1943 eruption of Paricutín}} and the {{w|2018_lower_Puna_eruption#Eruption|2018 flank eruption of Kilauea}}. Note this also applies to [[1611: Baking Soda and Vinegar | baking soda and vinegar volcanoes that are offshoots of much larger vinegar hotspots]].
|-

!scope=row|Quasar Astronomy
|75%
|100%
|{{w|Quasars}} are distant astronomical objects that release large amounts of energy. Not only would the power of a quasar destroy the classroom (as well as the rest of Earth), quasars are too large to fit inside any known classroom. For example, {{w|ULAS J1342+0928}} has a mass of 8*10^8 solar masses. This means the event horizon of the black hole is almost 16 AU in radius, and this size does not include the accretion disk.
|-

!scope=row|Ontology (title text)
|<0%
|?
|Ontology is the philosophical study of existence and being. Since there must be ''something'' learning in the classroom, it is unsurprising that ontology is a normal subject to appear in the classroom. It would, in fact, be more bizarre to have a lack of ontology in the classroom.
|-

!scope=row|Geography (title text)
|>100%
|?
|Geographers study the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of the Earth. While each classroom classroom contains a small portion of the Earth's surface (normally not enough of it to be interesting to geographers), having the ''entire Earth'' appear inside a classroom would likely demand explanation. In particular, if this is an ordinary classroom (i.e. located ''on'' the Earth), the planet's simultaneous appearance within its walls would both defy our current understanding of spacetime, and risk [[1515: Basketball Earth | disastrous consequences at the hands of curious students.]] This could also be implying the classroom is suddenly being located on top of a geographic border, which would be highly unlikely, especially if it happened without warning.

|}

==Transcript==

:[Caption above scatter plot with labeled axes]
:Caption: The thing you study just showed up in your classroom! That's...
:Top: good
:Bottom: bad
:Left: normal
:Right: weird

Items are listed row by row, left to right, top to bottom.

:[First quadrant (good and weird)]
:20th century authors
:Exobiology
:21st century authors
:19th century authors
:Robotics
:Paleontology
:Martian soil chemistry
:Child psychology
:Tourism
:[Second quadrant (good and normal)]
:Atmospheric physics
:Ethics
:Education
:Bibliography
:Human physiology
:Public speaking
:Architecture
:Library science
:Furniture design
:Culinary arts
:Ergonomics
:Botany
:[Third quadrant (bad and normal)]
:Entomology
:Occupational therapy
:Hydraulic engineering
:Pest control
:Foodborne illness
:Criminal law
:Physiology of stress
:Oncology
:[Fourth quadrant (bad and weird)]
:Ornithology
:Animation
:Petroleum geology
:Highway engineering
:Toxicology
:Hematology
:Hostage negotiation
:History of siege warfare
:Trauma surgery
:Volcanology
:Quasar astronomy

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Rankings]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Cancer]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Volcanoes]]
[[Category:Engineering]]
[[Category:Scatter plots]]

917: Hofstadter

2023-05-11T10:28:18Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */ Integrated addition in a way that looks less like needless repeating.

{{comic
| number = 917
| date = June 27, 2011
| title = Hofstadter
| image = hofstadter.png
| titletext = "This is the reference implementation of the self-referential joke."
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Douglas Hofstadter}} is an American author who has written several books about philosophy, mathematics, and science. He is perhaps most famous for his book ''{{w|Gödel, Escher, Bach}}'' which explores "strange loops," or {{w|self-reference|self-referential systems}}. "Meta-" is a Greek prefix meaning "outside" or "beyond." As an adjective, "meta" informally refers to anything self-referential, like the last phrase of this sentence. An example of the use of such a term can be found in [[1313: Regex Golf]].

At first reading, the six word autobiography in the second panel, "I'm So Meta, Even This ''Acronym''", may seem unfinished, however the clue is in the final word. An acronym is an abbreviation formed by the initial letters of a series of words, and reading the first letter of each of the six words in order yields "ISMETA", completing the sentence and setting up the self-reference where it reads "I'm so meta, even this acronym IS META". Hofstadter himself did something similar in ''Gödel, Escher, Bach'' in the chapter "Contracrostipunctus", where the first letter of each line spells out the phrase "'''H'''ofstadter's '''C'''ontracrostipunctus '''A'''crostically '''B'''ackwards '''S'''pells '''J'''.S.Bach" - and taking the first letters of each word in ''that'' sentence backwards does indeed spell "'''J.S. BACH'''".

This comic is probably a reference to ''{{w|Six-Word Memoirs}}'', a project launched in 2006 in which people "tell their life story in just six-words".
This comic may additionally be a reference to the meme "explain <whatever> in six words", which was making the rounds at the time.

In the title text, a ''reference implementation'' is, broadly, an example of how to implement some feature during the software development process. In this case the feature is a self-referential joke, and the sentence itself is, correctly, self-referential.

Hofstadter has been referenced before, in the title text of [[555: Two Mirrors]] and [[608: Form]]. Furthermore, his famous book has been directly spoofed in the title of [[24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey]]. Finally, the self-reference reference ("IS META") is also a typical concept used most famously in [[688: Self-Description]] but also in [[:Category:Self-reference|several other comics]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sits at a desk, working on a laptop. Megan approaches the desk and picks up a tiny book.]
:Megan: What's this?
:Cueball: Douglas Hofstadter's six-word autobiography. After all those 700-page tomes, I guess he wanted to try for brevity.
:Megan: Huh. Let's see...

:[Close up of Megan, reading the tiny book.]
:Book: I'm So Meta, Even This ''Acronym''

:[Full shot of Cueball and Megan again. Megan looks down at the tiny book in her hand.]
:Megan: ...whoa.
:Cueball: I think he nailed it.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Self-reference]]

1092: Michael Phelps

2023-05-09T10:37:39Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1092
| date = August 8, 2012
| title = Michael Phelps
| image = michael phelps.png
| titletext = [shortly] ...he ate ALL of it!?
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Michael Phelps}} is an American {{w|Olympics|Olympic}} swimmer, who could easily be considered the best swimmer worldwide: he is the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, with 28 medals, 23 of them gold (won in the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 summer Olympics, so it would have been 18 Olympic gold medals at the time the comic was published). He was most dominant in the 2008 Beijing Olympics where he won gold in all of the eight events in which he competed, the record for a single games.

[[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] find that the Olympic medalist is in Megan's pool. He refuses to leave, and is too fast to be caught. Cueball brings in boxes of {{w|Jello}} Mix to fill the pool with, thereby gelifying the pool and trapping Phelps or forcing him to leave.

However, according to the title text, after having waited the time necessary for the water to gelify, Cueball realizes that Phelps has eaten all of the resulting Jello. This may be a reference to Phelps being used to eating [https://web.archive.org/web/20101113024452/http://www.michaelphelps.net/michael-phelps-diet/ impressive food quantities (about 12,000 calories daily)], to keep up with his strenuous exercise regimen; or it may be a reference to pictures of Phelps smoking from a bong that arose after the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China, as Marijuana use is often associated with an increased appetite. Otherwise, the text may simply be a reference to Phelps being capable of achieving super-human feats, such as devouring an entire pool full of Jello.

Interestingly enough, just pouring Jello powder into a pool would not solidify the water into Jello. The water would have to be boiled, then quickly chilled, for the Jello to set correctly. As Randall is a scientist, he should have known this; therefore, it's possible that he purposefully ignored this fact in favor of the humor. Michael Phelps' top speed is also only around 2.3 m/s, which can easily be outrun by anyone on land.

This may also be a reference to https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1628:_Magnus {{w|Magnus}}

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball standing outside their en-Phelps-ified swimming pool.]
:Cueball: Why is Michael Phelps in your backyard pool?
:Megan: I don't know. He's been there all day. ''Go home, Michael!''
:Michael Phelps: Woo! 18 gold medals!

:[Megan and Cueball break out a pair of pool nets and unsuccessfully try to snag Phelps.]
:Cueball: Can you get him?
:Megan: He's so '''''fast'''''!
:Phelps: Ha hah! Can't catch me!
:''Splash splash''

:[Cueball heads off to fetch something.]

:[Cueball returns with a hand truck full of Jello mix.]
:Phelps: Oh crap.

{{Comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

2771: College Knowledge

2023-05-08T15:08:52Z

172.70.91.151: /* Notes */ ...because of the core variations possible, and 'accepted'.

{{comic
| number = 2771
| date = May 3, 2023
| title = College Knowledge
| image = college_knowledge_2x.png
| imagesize = 649x266px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 'Your chitin armor is no match for our iron-tipped stingers! Better go hide in your jars!' --common playground taunt
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT GOING TO IO TO GET MORE DIODES - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A common playground rhyme which children will often recite when divided by gender is that "girls go to college to get more knowledge; boys go to {{w|Jupiter}} to get more stupider," with the genders being interchangeable depending on the rhyme's singer.

Starting out with this cadence, three characters (or child versions) {{w|Skipping rope|jump rope}} and explore parts of the solar system and beyond by taking it in turns to provide the rhythm's tempo. First [[Science Girl]] (who is turning the left end of the rope), then a [[Cueball]] (at the right), followed by a [[Ponytail]] (doing the jumping), before returning to Science Girl. As they concentrate on various stellar bodies that are harder and harder to rhyme, their chants become increasingly hesitant and obscure, ruining the rhythm and resulting in ever more contrived "rhymes", to the point where they eventually seem compelled to abandon the whole game.

The title text refers back to some of the rhymes the characters mention, making sure to stay consistent with whichever gender acquires which object. Speaking from the perspective of the college-bound gender, who had acquired {{w|ferrous}} iron from {{w|Eris}} (or perhaps {{wiktionary|ferrous|become more composed of it}}, by {{w|Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed|bodily transformation}}), the girls playfully threaten the boys with iron-tipped {{w|stinger}}s, for which the boys' acquired armour of {{w|chitin}} (a material commonly found on the exoskeletons of various insects, including in any stings these might normally have) is purportedly no match. The girls then also refer to the jars which the boys had acquired from {{w|Mars}}, telling the boys that they'd better hide in them if they wanted any sort of protection from the iron-tipped stingers. To top it all off, the title text finally claims that this is supposedly a "common playground taunt" among children, which implies the unlikely outcome that the bizarre and unwieldy rhymes which the characters in the comic created have somehow persisted and passed into common usage enough to be generally recognizable.

In [[1202: Girls and Boys]], boys and girls both go to college ''and'' to Jupiter, both to get more knowledge.

==Notes==
*Going to Mars to get more jars may be a reference to a 1955 {{w|Burma-Shave}} campaign promising a free trip to Mars for whoever sent in 900 empty jars. The joking offer was accepted by a Wisconsin shopkeeper named Arliss French. The company enjoyed the publicity, and sent him and his wife to {{w|Moers}}.
*{{w|Ceres (dwarf planet)|Ceres}} is a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
*{{w|Chitin}} is a polysaccharide found in the exoskeletons of insects and cell walls of fungi.
*{{w|Tim Berners-Lee}} is the inventor of the World Wide Web.
*{{w|Pamplemousse}} is the French word for grapefruit or pomelo, depending on dialect. Note that it does not actually rhyme with Betelgeuse for {{w|Betelgeuse#Spelling and pronunciation|most pronunciations}}, only when pronounced as ''Beetlejuice'' does this line really rhyme.
*It could be debated whether these are three children, and thus not Cueball and Ponytail, who are adult, but there is nothing to compare them to, and Science Girl has also been drawn as an adult. So for ease of naming them, it is easier to keep the names even if these are children.

==Transcript==
:[Science Girl, Ponytail and Cueball are jumping rope while singing a common playground song. Science Girl and Cueball are swinging the ends of the rope, Ponytail is jumping in the middle facing Cueball on the right. The rope is going so fast around her that it is drawn with four thin gray lines, one over and one below her and two in between, so they form a kind of 3D ellipsoid shape around her. Small lines indicate the movement of the rope and the hands that hold it.]
:Science Girl: Girls go to college to get more knowledge
:Science Girl: Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider

:[Same scene but Ponytail is at a different moment in her jumping.]
:Cueball: Girls go to Ceres to get more theories
:Cueball: Boys go to Mars to get more jars

:[Same scene but Ponytail is at a different moment in her jumping.]
:Ponytail: Girls go to Eris to get more ferrous
:Ponytail: Boys go to Triton to get more chitin

:[The three have stopped playing so the rope is hanging from the hands of Science Girl and Cueball, running along the ground beneath Ponytail's feet. She is now just standing but has turned towards Science Girl.]
:Science Girl: Girls go to...Mercury...to...meet Tim Berners-Lee
:Science Girl: Boys go to... ...Betelgeuse...to get more... ...pamplemousse
:Cueball: I think we're done.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Science Girl]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Games]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Food]]

721: Flatland

2023-05-07T09:43:41Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */ If you must (and someone's been overdoing the CNs, IMO), punctuate correctly.

{{comic
| number = 721
| date = March 31, 2010
| title = Flatland
| image = flatland.png
| titletext = Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a reference to the satirical novel ''{{w|Flatland|Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions}}'', in which a society of flat shapes live in a {{w|Two-dimensional space|2D}} world. Half the book is a direct satire of {{w|Victorian era|Victorian}} society, and the other half explores the experience of discovering a new dimension, where a sphere introduces a square (named A. Square) to {{w|Three-dimensional space|3D}}. [[Cueball]] appears to have taken the place of this sphere, and the comic takes place after the square knows the third dimension exists.

Humans will never fully be able to fully grasp the concept of a fourth spatial dimension (at least not in the foreseeable future), but there are ways of squashing or slicing four dimensions to create partial visualizations of 4D space. ''{{w|Miegakure}}'' is a yet-to-be-released 4D game that uses cross-sections of 4D space. Cueball attempted to play a pre-release version of it, but after having his "mind blown", he gained more sympathy for A. Square, who'd had similar trouble understanding 3D. A. Square accepts his apology.

The joke here is that Cueball was being silly and drew lines on A. Square to make him look like {{w|SpongeBob SquarePants (character)|SpongeBob}}, which did not make the square happy. Cueball apologizes again.

The title text is a third apology for when Cueball crawled down into the second dimension. Being a stick figure, he is composed of a circle and straight lines.{{Citation needed}} In Flatland, circles are priests (Flatland's highest social level), and all women are lines; thus, to a watcher in Flatland, Cueball would look very much like a priest above many connected women, which may look like a lesbian orgy.

Also worth mentioning is the pun in the greetings: A. Square - being on ground level - asks Cueball above him how he's doing by asking what's up.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball talks to a square on the ground.]
:Cueball: Hey, A. Square. How's Flatland?
:A. Square: Still flat. What's up?
:Cueball: I just spent an hour playing a demo of this 4D game called Miegakure.

:[In a frameless panel, a character in Miegakure jumps around the 4D landscape.]
:Caption above the panel: Trying to jump from block to block in four dimensions hurt my brain.

:[Cueball continues talking to A. Square on the ground.]
:Cueball: So I apologize for giving you a hard time when you were slow to understand 3D space. I sympathize now.
:A. Square: It's okay.

:[Zoom in on Cueball's head]
:Cueball: Also, I apologize for drawing arms, legs, and eyes on you to make you look like SpongeBob. That was out of line.
:A. Square: Yes, it was.

==Trivia==
*There is actually a SpongeBob episode featuring a flat creature that resembles a crude drawing of SpongeBob.

===UniXKCD===
*This comic was released on March 31, 2010 and was still up on April 1st, 2010.
**On {{w|April_Fools%27_Day|April Fools' Day}} in 2010 [[Randall]] altered the website to mimic a {{w|Unix}} command line interface.
**This interface is still available on [https://uni.xkcd.com uni.xkcd.com] and the source code is available on [https://github.com/chromakode/xkcdfools GitHub].
**See more on the [[UniXKCD]] April Fools' Day joke.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Geometry]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Homosexuality]]
[[Category:Sex]]

2769: Overlapping Circles

2023-05-02T13:37:46Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */ Brought non-Transcript info into the Explanation.

{{comic
| number = 2769
| date = April 28, 2023
| title = Overlapping Circles
| image = overlapping_circles_2x.png
| imagesize = 369x260px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = "The Venn diagram of the sun and the moon is a circle." --someone being snarky at totality
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE SET OF ALL STARS WHICH DO NOT CONTAIN THEMSELVES. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The comic shows two overlapping circles. This is a simple example of a {{w|Venn Diagram}}, which is a way that set theorists often illustrate the relationships between sets. Venn diagrams can consist of a number of overlapping shapes to describe the similarities and differences between any number of objects. Up to three overlapping circles can be used to represent every combination of membership of those separate sets. Beyond this, circles cannot suffice and other shapes (ovals or even concave shapes) are needed, but just two such areas is as trivial as shown, with the portion of the diagram where the two circles overlap represents the intersection of the sets (items that are in both sets). There are [[:Category:Venn diagrams|several other comics about Venn diagrams]].

The two sets in this diagram are set theorists and astronomers. Set theorists would find the shape here interesting because such diagrams would appear regularly in their work. Astronomers also find overlapping circles interesting, because this is what they see during {{w|eclipses}}, when one astronomical body is directly or partially in front of another. In the overlapping section in the middle would be people who are both set theorists and astronomers. The joke here is that these people would be particularly excited by the shape, because it represents the overlapping of both their fields of study.

A common snarky comment on the Internet is "The Venn diagram of [x] and [y] is a circle" (for example, "fanfic writers" and "virgins"), implying that the two sets are identical. {{w|Totality}} describes a total (full) eclipse, when one astronomical body completely blocks the light from another. During totality, the shape of the eclipse is a circle. The title text references the totality that occurs during a total solar eclipse and its corresponding shape (or "Venn diagram," as the title text phrases it).

This comic was released 8 days after the {{w|Solar eclipse of April 20, 2023}}, which was visible across parts of South East Asia and Australia, and of which an excited astronomer would certainly be aware.

==Transcript==
:[The comic is an image of Venn diagram, which is used to compare groups of objects.]
:[The Venn diagram in the comic has two overlapping circles. The leftmost circle is labeled "set theorists," the rightmost circle is labeled "astronomers," and the intersection between the circles is labeled "people who get excited about this shape."]

[[Category:Venn diagrams]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

{{comic discussion}}

2452: Aviation Firsts

2023-04-28T10:19:00Z

172.70.91.151:

{{comic
| number = 2452
| date = April 19, 2021
| title = Aviation Firsts
| image = aviation_firsts.png
| titletext = Mile High Club membership [✓] [ ] Discovery of parts of Amelia Earhart's skeleton [ ] [ ] Mid-flight incident that results in safe landing on the Hudson River [✓] [ ]
}}

==Explanation==
This comic reflects the [https://twitter.com/NASAPersevere/status/1384209173924089863 ''Ingenuity'' probe's first flight on Mars]. Now that ''Ingenuity'' has completed its first flight, Mars can be counted among planets with controlled powered flight. The preceding milestones in this list were completed by the first space probes to reach and then land on Mars. Flight, landing and controlled landing were variously achieved by some or all of the prior landers, depending upon your definition of flight, but certainly by the {{w|Mars_Science_Laboratory#Sky_crane_landing|Skycrane}} element used in landing both ''Curiosity'' and ''Perseverance'' rovers. These may not have qualified as controlled powered flight as they only used their power to control the landing, before flying off again under power without any more precise control than that needed to intentionally crash elsewhere.

The remaining milestones have only been completed on Earth, if at all, and also grow more bizarre and more specific further down the comic and extending into the title text.

{| class="wikitable"
! Milestone summary
! Achieved on Earth?
! Achieved on Mars?
! Explanation
|-
| Flight
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| rowspan=3 | All of these milestones were generally necessary for the success of previous exploratory missions on the surface of Mars.
|-
| Landing
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
|-
| Controlled landing
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
|-
| Controlled powered flight
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| This comic was released within hours of ''Ingenuity'' becoming the first aircraft in human history to take off, fly under its own power, and land, all on a planet other than Earth.
|-
| Loop
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #FF8888; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | No
| Although {{w|Aerobatic_maneuver|loops}} are often performed in Earth's atmosphere by planes designed for high-speed aerobatics (such as stunt planes and fighter jets), such aircraft have yet to be deployed on any spacecraft leaving Earth. A loop does not yet seem to be practical or necessary to attempt over Mars.
|-
| In-flight meal
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #FF8888; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | No
| Naturally, it would only make sense to serve food on a ''manned'' mission to Mars, which has not yet happened.
|-
| Planetary circumnavigation
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #FF8888; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | No
| While planetary circumnavigation has been achieved outside of Mars's atmosphere by {{w|List_of_Mars_orbiters|many Mars orbiters}}, this is a list of ''aviation'' firsts, which would require controlled flight within an atmosphere.
|-
| Enormous wooden aircraft built by a reclusive billionaire that flies exactly once
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #FF8888; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | No
| The {{w|Hughes H-4 Hercules}} (the "Spruce Goose") was a prototype wooden airplane, known for being the largest flying boat ever constructed. The Hercules was designed by aviation pioneer (and, latterly, famed recluse) Howard Hughes. The design was intended as a lightweight transoceanic transport for the military, but the prototype, built out of wood because of aluminum shortages during World War II, was not completed until well after the end of the war and flew only a single time in 1947. Since 1991, it has been on permanent display at the {{w|Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum}} in McMinnville, Oregon, USA.
|-
| Hijacking by someone dubbed "D.B. Cooper" who demands money and then jumps out mid-flight to an unknown fate
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #FF8888; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | No
| In 1971, {{w|Northwest Orient Airlines}} Flight 305 was famously hijacked by an enigmatic man who is best known by the pseudonym "{{w|D. B. Cooper}}" (although "Dan Cooper" was the name he actually used to buy his ticket). After being given a $200,000 ransom by the plane's crew, Cooper proceeded to parachute jump out of the plane using the rear {{w|airstair}} and was never confirmed to have been heard from again; many experts agree that the parachute jump was very risky and it's unlikely that Cooper survived. (Cooper was previously mentioned in [[1400: D.B. Cooper]] and [[1501: Mysteries]].)
|-
| Mile High Club membership
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #FF8888; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | No
| The "{{w|mile high club}}" is a slang term for people who have had sexual intercourse while onboard an airplane in flight. Although the notion of {{w|sex in space}} is understood to be severely hampered by the limited life support and the complete lack of natural gravity,{{Citation needed}} it's not certain whether Mars's low gravity (compared to Earth) would make it similarly challenging to have intercourse within the planet's atmosphere.
|-
| Discovery of parts of Amelia Earhart's skeleton
| style="background-color: #FF8888; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | No
| style="background-color: #FF8888; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | No
| {{w|Amelia Earhart}} was a famous aviator who, along with her navigator {{w|Fred Noonan}}, went missing over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 while attempting a global circumnavigation flight and has never been found. It was previously believed the skeleton of one of them had been found on Nikumaroro island (then called Gardner Island), but this theory is contentious and most scholars reject it today. While there's still a remote possibility that the remains of Earhart and Noonan will eventually be discovered somewhere in the Pacific, the notion of them somehow ending up on the surface of Mars is practically impossible outside the remit of certain conspiracy theories. (Earhart was previously mentioned in [[1501: Mysteries]], [[950: Mystery Solved]], and [[2197: Game Show]].)
|-
| Mid-flight incident that results in safe landing on the Hudson River
| style="background-color: #88FF88; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | Yes
| style="background-color: #FF8888; color: #000000; text-align: center;" | No
| The {{w|US Airways Flight 1549|Miracle on the Hudson}} was a 2009 aviation incident in which a US Airways airliner struck a flock of geese shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Despite the plane losing all its engine power as a result of the bird strike, Captain Chesley Sullenberger successfully crash-landed in the nearby Hudson River with minimal injuries to the passengers onboard. Of course, it would be highly impractical for a powered flight that encounters a problem in the sky above Mars to then fly all the way to Earth just for an emergency landing in the New York area. It is much more likely{{Citation needed}} that a location on mars would, at some point in the future, be named "The Hudson River" and an aircraft land there safely.
|-
! Milestone summary
! Achieved on Earth?
! Achieved on Mars?
! Explanation
|}

==Transcript==
:[A chart is shown with nine items. To the right of each item there are two check boxes. Above the top row of check boxes are two underlined labels for the two columns. The first four rows have both boxes checked, and the last five have only the first box checked. The last two items are so long that they take up three and four rows of text. The first seven items are written on one line each.]

Earth Mars
Flight <big>[✓]</big> <big>[✓]</big>

Landing <big>[✓]</big> <big>[✓]</big>

Controlled landing <big>[✓]</big> <big>[✓]</big>

Controlled powered flight <big>[✓]</big> <big>[✓]</big>

Loop <big>[✓]</big> <big>[ ]</big>

In-flight meal <big>[✓]</big> <big>[ ]</big>

Planetary circumnavigation <big>[✓]</big> <big>[ ]</big>

Enormous wooden aircraft
built by a reclusive billionaire <big>[✓]</big> <big>[ ]</big>
that flies exactly once

Hijacking by someone dubbed
"D.B. Cooper" who demands <big>[✓]</big> <big>[ ]</big>
money and then jumps out
mid-flight to an unknown fate

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Aviation]]
[[Category:Mars rovers]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Amelia Earhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring D. B. Cooper]]
[[Category:Sex]]

1694: Phishing License

2023-04-27T21:27:06Z

172.70.91.151:

{{comic
| number = 1694
| date = June 15, 2016
| title = Phishing License
| image = phishing_license.png
| titletext = Later, walking out of jail after posting $10,000 bail: "Wait, this isn't the street the county jail is on."
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Phishing}} is a scam where a criminal sends emails or other messages (often large numbers of them) pretending to be from a trusted institution in order to obtain passwords, credit card numbers, or other personal details of victims. The term is a neologism, playing on the term "fishing", because the process is likened to dangling bait and waiting for someone to bite. Phishing is illegal under both traditional fraud laws and modern {{w|cybercrime}} laws.

A {{w|fishing license}} is a government-issued permit allowing the catching of fish in controlled waters.

[[Cueball]] saw the sign offering phishing licenses, and was immediately arrested by the receptionist [[Ponytail]] upon applying for one. There is no need for a license for a crime like fraud{{citation needed}}, so it is dubious an authority would issue them, hence why Cueball should have been more suspicious of the offer. The joke is that the process of offering "phishing licenses" is analogous to the process of phishing itself: they pretend to be a legitimate business and display a sign with a false offer, hoping someone will be fooled into interacting with them. While the ideal phishing attempt is indistinguishable from the real thing, that's generally impossible to attain and there are always some ways to identify it as a scam. But still some people fall into the trap, partly because they don't know what to be on the alert for, and partly because the attempt is often directed at so many people at once that statistically there will be some that will fall for it. Still as Cueball himself states, he should have known it was a scam.

The title text reveals that Cueball's arrest was itself a scam, not an actual police {{W|Sting operation|sting}}, adding even more "phishing" to the phishing for potential phishers. He has been put in jail, but is allowed to walk out after paying a {{w|bail}} of $10,000, only to find that when he gets back out on the street, it is not the street on which the county jail has its address. So Ponytail is actually not trying to capture people who would be interested in scamming people, she is trying to scam those people instead; although this is illegal, it may be rather clever as such people might not be likely to go to the police. Another joke in the title text is that a way to recognize phishing attempts is to look at the address of the website (or in his false prison sentence, the street address instead of the web address).

==Transcript==
:[A sign has an arrow below the text that points toward a sales window in a wall (with glass in front and small semicircular opening at the bottom for transferring money and goods). On each side of the window there are two pieces of paper with illegible text, and there is also one below the window that seems to have some kind of stamp or seal, still illegible). In front of the window [[Cueball]] is addressing [[Ponytail]] who sits behind the window.]
:Sign: <big>Phishing license</big> apply here
:Cueball: Hi, I’d like to apply for a—
:Ponytail: You’re under arrest.
:Cueball: …OK, I should’ve seen that coming.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]

Talk:2763: Linguistics Gossip

2023-04-17T19:29:43Z

172.70.91.151: This is what I'm talking about (reverting two related de-edits).

Added initial explanation [[User:Bamboo|Bamboo]] ([[User talk:Bamboo|talk]]) 14:08, 14 April 2023 (UTC)Bamboo

Added possible explanation of title text [[User:Bamboo|Bamboo]] ([[User talk:Bamboo|talk]]) 14:14, 14 April 2023 (UTC)Bamboo

Has anyone asked O what they think of all this?[[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.152|172.70.91.152]] 14:32, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

NOTE: I'm assuming the IE/VE ligature is IE, where the I is tilted
Could this also be a reference to the historical Latin pronunciation of Æ, and its separation into "AA" (which could be represented by "ar" in English ("r" is silent), hence the ligature "AR") and "IE" (which would be pronounced "ee" as in "relieve") [[User:1844161|1844161]] ([[User talk:1844161|talk]]) 15:21, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
: I disagree. The title text strongly points towards VE as the logical interpretation [[User:Boatster|Boatster]] ([[User talk:Boatster|talk]]) 15:52, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
: Me too. Also, funnily I thought of Andy Warhol...but in his "LOVE" pop art, the O is tilted, not the V.[[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.133|198.41.242.133]] 09:20, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
::That wasn't Warhol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_(image) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.151|162.158.63.151]] 13:33, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it might be helpful to readers to provide a parenthetical describing the pronunciation of the 'ash' glyph, so that people who aren't old language aficionados aren't left in the lurch if they're the sort who read aloud in their head. I'm going to add it, but if someone removes it I won't be miffed. Also, there's no way the new E ligature is meant to be IE. The title text only makes sense if it's VE.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.67.136|172.69.67.136]] 15:56, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
: Thank you. That was super helpful as I'm language-curious, but not an æficænado. Any chance we could get similar explanations of the AR (seems legit) & AV(seems not)? [[User:Iggynelix|Iggynelix]] ([[User talk:Iggynelix|talk]]) 13:49, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I hope AR wedding hat a pirate theme. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 16:05, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

The AR ligature is used in aeronautical engineering for the aspect ratio of a wing. This mainly applies to handwritten work, since there isn't an easy way to insert that glyph when typing. [[User:D5xtgr|D5xtgr]] ([[User talk:D5xtgr|talk]]) 17:18, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
: Example of 🜇 in aeronautics: http://tug.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/aspectratio/ar.pdf . It was also used in antiquity: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Exempla_Mensurarum_Sal%C3%B2.JPG [[Special:Contributions/172.71.222.172|172.71.222.172]] 19:28, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

The AR (🜇) ligature also stands for a substance that can mix with gold. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.125|162.158.166.125]] 09:09, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
:If you mean {{w|Aqua regia}}, it's not so much 'mix with' as 'dissolve'. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.34|172.70.90.34]] 18:08, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
::Is this comic inspired by an "aqua regia" incident? [[User:Unreliable Connection|2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[User talk:Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 02:07, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
:::Does it have to be? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.31|172.70.86.31]] 19:24, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

2763 -MathHacked

I suppose the Æsop is that it's not necessary to maintain a chimæric quæstionability just for primævally æsthetic reasons, or have sæcularly dæmonic adhærence to adhæsively mæandering through an anæsthetic tædium of hæritage fæcality. Unless that's all just hæretical hyperbolæ, casting pædagogical umbræ on the matter. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.160|172.70.162.160]] 21:22, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
: Well plæd.
: AUGH!!! Just make it stop!!!!
It's just too bad they all now live in the same ''small recreational vehicle'' because that leads to awkwardness. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.159|172.71.142.159]] 02:07, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
: Seems pretty roomy based on the space between them.;)

A and E got REM🜇RIED?! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.38.96|172.70.38.96]] 05:28, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

It is downright incorrect to refer to the ae-ligature as 'ash', as this is only true when it is used to Latinize the aesc-rune in Old English, which is anything but the most common use of this ligature. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.46.192|172.70.46.192]] 18:01, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I went looking for "AR" and "VE" ligatures in general use (and in Unicode), and found nothing. Are they in general use? If not, a comment to that effect in the explanation would be helpful. -- [[User:Dtgriscom|Dtgriscom]] ([[User talk:Dtgriscom|talk]]) 21:44, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
:(Ignoring that D5xtgr said there was an AR, and an IP even ''wrote'' an 🜇...) Of course they weren't in general use, because A and E were together all that time, but now they're recoupled..! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.87|172.71.242.87]] 21:58, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm no linguist, but this may refer to the fact that many languages with the AE ligature are romance languages, while English is not. [[User:Unreliable Connection|2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[User talk:Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 09:04, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

[[https://battlefordreamisland.fandom.com/wiki/2,763 2763]] is a running gag in BFDI :) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.22.106|172.71.22.106]] 19:02, 16 April 2023 (UTC)Bumpf
:Probably unrelated. By the way, is it OK for me to edit comic explanations? [[User:Missed Connections|935: Missed Connections]] ([[User talk:Missed Connections|talk]]) 22:58, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
:Don't feign ignorance, CG. Do as you know you should do and (whatever accounts you use) make any useful edits to Explanations that you think are necessary, but refrain from rewording Talk stuff from anyone else (without very good reason, such as reverting vandalism of spam). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.169|172.70.85.169]] 08:09, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

AE could refer to Adam and Eve

Then we get EV as Eve.
Not yet sure where AR refers to, Adam and Romeo, Augmented Reality?
Love does contain VE as reverse of EV.
[[User:XKCDnl|XKCDnl]] ([[User talk:XKCDnl|talk]]) 04:16, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

AR stands for:
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%9F%9C%87
synonym for
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%9F%9C%86#Translingual
stands for to "aqua regia" that means:
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/aqua_regia
"royal water"

So we have Eve and the royal water, so is she now baptised and blessed with love?
[[User:XKCDnl|XKCDnl]] ([[User talk:XKCDnl|talk]]) 14:48, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2761: 1-to-1 Scale

2023-04-13T09:50:55Z

172.70.91.151:

Really want an explanation for this one. [[User:JobbieJimmies|Melomaniac]] ([[User talk:JobbieJimmies|talk]]) 03:23, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

My comment got deleted by a bot!!! [[User:Unreliable Connection|2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[User talk:Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 03:23, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:RIP... [[User:JobbieJimmies|Melomaniac]] ([[User talk:JobbieJimmies|talk]]) 03:25, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:No, UC, it just got overwritten by the 'bot, when it did its job and (re)created the whole initial state of the various pages to depict the new comic coming out. (Noting that you'd not set them all up fully/correctly.)
:That you had spotted it already and had ''just'' gotten in ahead of the 'bot clearly isn't something it was prepared to handle. But as someone spotting it can usually wait a short while for the 'bot to catch up, I don't think it's a problem. In fact, you could have just copied your old contributions into the now receptive page(s), with nary any comment. Too late now. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.101|172.70.90.101]] 03:44, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

:: This may have broken the next link on the previous page. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.160.36|172.71.160.36]] 06:41, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

The lines represent the surfaces of the planets I think, so it's basically all the planets overlaid on top of each other. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.35|172.71.142.35]] 03:28, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

:Yup, I think it's what he meant - but I find it unlikely that the gas giants would have this clear cutoff of a "surface". [[Special:Contributions/162.158.189.241|162.158.189.241]] 03:34, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
::If there is a gas - liquid phase transition (and I think at least the gas giants have them): Why not? OK, you could see "rain" as blurring a clear cutoff, but wouldn't that also apply to Earth, then?[[User:Tier666|Tier666]] ([[User talk:Tier666|talk]]) 08:04, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I’d think the same citation as stands for ridiculously large would also cover larger than currently exists on earth, and his that citation is not in fact needed? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.186|162.158.174.186]] 06:53, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

:It seems like the gas-covered worlds are explicitly those with clearly cutoff "surfaces," so maybe in those cases the cutoff is some specific gas density -- which occurs at a consistent radius throughout the planet, thus creating a flat surface. While for rocky worlds (except Venus, which is treated like a gas planet here), a density cutoff can lead to bumpiness due to terrain. [[User:Trimeta|Trimeta]] ([[User talk:Trimeta|talk]]) 03:57, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:: just to be very clear (this being a explanation site!) that Venus is "treated like a gas giant" because of it's thick atmosphere. It would be just as correct to say "All the gas giants are treated like Venus" After all, ordinary telescopes couldn't take a picture that sees through any atmospheres, except Earth, where you'd see clouds but often surface where clouds don't appear. Sorry if that's an overexplanation [[User:Cuvtixo|Cuvtixo]] ([[User talk:Cuvtixo|talk]]) 19:10, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

On Twitter there seems to be concern that all planets are depicted flat. This may make this a contribution/mockery of the ongoing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth Flat Earth] discussions in some corners of the internet. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.132|198.41.242.132]] 06:49, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:You can't see the curvature of the Earth when standing on it; doesn't mean it's flat. Since we're looking at the planets at a 1:1 scale, we're literally only seeing a couple of inches of each of their edges (notwithstanding the whole gas-giants-don't-have-a-sharp-edge issue). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.239.20|162.158.239.20]] 12:06, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:actually you can see it, standing on the shore of any large lake on a calm day looking at a shore that's ~6.5 miles (10.5km) away. You'll lose ~8ft (2.5m) below the horizon - [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.213|162.158.186.213]] 13:55, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

The display for an uncropped version of the image would not only be larger than any display on earth. It would be larger than earth. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.243|162.158.86.243]] 06:59, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:By necessity, at least as large as Jupiter. Maybe slightly above two Jupiters (max dimension squared compared to display height*width of any common aspect ratio) if you wanted to not overlay any of the others at all. And make the lower limit a packing-problem, then add a buffer so there isn't the actual need for any to touch. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.253|172.70.90.253]] 10:02, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
::I'm going to add that. Someone was confused enough to put {{cite needed}} there, which may be a joke onto itself?, I can't tell. I've removed the cite needed, but I guess it needs to be more clear why it's totally nonsensical and doesn't need a citation? [[User:Cuvtixo|Cuvtixo]] ([[User talk:Cuvtixo|talk]]) 19:16, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:::The four inner planets are small enough to fit the upper left corner of any display big enough for Jupiter. As Uranus and Neptune are smaller than the latter one, they cannot extend past its top, bottom or right edge in the constellation shown, so they will not need additonal screen space either. Only Saturn is shifted so far to the left that he will require more width than Jupiter itself, but will still fit within the same height. Knowing Randall, the shown angles are not random, but were calculated to match a commercial available display ratio with Saturn placed touching the left edge and Jupiter touching the top, bottom and right edges. 16:9 or 16:10 at 142 km hight would be a fair guess, so I would not rule out 4:3 resulting in total width significantly smaller than two Jupiters. Of course Randall might also be playing hardcore nerd: The outer diameter of Saturns F ring, which is almost always included in representations, has almost exactly a ratio of 32:9 to Jupiters polar diameter, making a picture showing the former in front of the latter a perfect match for those new fancy double wide monitors. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.77|162.158.111.77]] 00:22, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

1-to-1 scale means 'assume all planets are the same size,' right? I see Earth's grass is shown to be as large as Martian rocks, because Earth is a third again as large. (At the scale where grass is visible, Earth looks flat.) At first I thought the point was that altitude variation in cloud-tops varied so little that a gas giant shrunk down to Earth size would be featureless and have a distinct edge, but that's wrong. Ground isn't cloud-tops. Do gas giants have any solid ground? We've seen Jupiter eat comets, and it makes sense they would've collected at least some minerals and metals. According to [[https://www.teachastronomy.com/textbook/The-Giant-Planets-and-Their-Moons/Internal-Structure-of-the-Gas-Giant-Planets/|Teach Astronomy]], gas giants have Earth-sized solid cores. I'm guessing gas giants' immense gravity compresses their cores into featureless spheres, which, if scaled to Earth-size and viewed at the scale where one could see grass, would look flat. Yes?
[[User:EllenNB|EllenNB]] ([[User talk:EllenNB|talk]]) 10:14, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:Gravity itself won't compress (and 'flatten') the cores. "Shell theory" shows that gravitational force only counts from the proportion of the body that is within the radius of the bit you're concerned with. But there'll also be the external pressure (from being at the bottom of a thick atmosphere that ultimately ''is'' above far more of the planetary mass) and possibly a degree of compression density to make any Earth-sized core slightly heavier than if it was just a bare core of the same size but shorn of outer layers.
:As to flatness, I can take you to very flat stretches of Earth and very lumpy bits (depends which direction I go, from where I am now), all within 30 minutes' drive. We can'teven know how representative a sample of planetary cross-sections we are seeing (once we get over the issues of gas/space boundaries for gas-giants), but I bet there are bits that resemble the diagram... If you ''really'' want it to be so real. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.87|172.71.242.87]] 11:05, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:No, 1-to-1 means that they are actual size, not the same size. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 13:37, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

There are several pieces of information here that are featured but don't make sense to me. What's the function of the dark polygon in the center? Why are the lines showing each surface going in random directions? Why is the surface of each planet so flat at a full scale rendition? When I look out my window at full sized Earth, it's not flat. It's quite bumpy, actually. But perhaps he doesn't mean these are full size, he might be saying that they're all shrunk, but the same amount, so 1:1:1:1:1... but even then, I'm totally lost.

"What's the function of the dark polygon in the center?"
I think it is a view of the dark sky, "above" the surface of the Earth, Mars, etc. [[User:Rps|Rps]] ([[User talk:Rps|talk]]) 11:43, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:I think the "polygon" is a grassy Earth itself, with the white above it sky. Earth is the rearmost planet pictured. Then in front of Earth, on all sides except the top, are the overlays of the various planets, what little of each one as can fit. But then maybe the polygon is night starry sky, and Earth is the white area above it. [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 14:35, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
::No, the polygon is the sky. Zoom in and you see the Milky Way and stars and other space stuff. And the ant on the Earth has its legs pointing upwards (in the reference frame of the image). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.239.26|162.158.239.26]] 03:09, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
:::Agreed. [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 13:43, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Is this an ant on earth, over the letters "EA" ? On my monitor, set for my less-than-perfect vision, it is 15mm long, which (at a 1:1 scale) makes it a cow ant, or a large african ant. I guess people with normal vision get fire and carpenter ants instead? And those on smartphones get pavement ants?[[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.73|172.68.50.73]] 11:00, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:I do believe it is! It's 6 mm on my desktop monitor and 3 mm on my phone. We also don't know what side of the Earth we're looking at, so I suppose it could really be any ant, including the one in your local area. I like to think it's a black garden ant (''Lasius niger''), since I'm most familiar with those :) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.239.25|162.158.239.25]] 12:16, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It took me a good while to figure out this one; I don't normally need to come here, but this one stumped me at first. (The comments as of right now weren't too illuminating either.) I think the lack of color was an issue; I first thought the black polygon in the center was the earth, and then interpreted the various lines as a really weird diagram type I'd never seen before, like a phase diagram or something; I also considered one-dimensional planets. [https://imgur.com/a/yJOYvk1 I colored in the planets to aid me.] The way I now interpret this one is thus: imagine an observer sitting a tremendous distance away from the solar system, and they have a camera with an extremely supremely highly zooming telephoto lens. Then a lining-up of all eight planets happens – I believe this is impossible IRL (because of resonances or something), but just go with it. The observer manages to snap this incredible image of a teeny tiny spot of the sky, which simultaneously manages to include the very very edges of all the planets as well as some of the sky behind them all. The sky is the black polygon: it has nebulae and stars. Neptune is in front of Uranus, and that as well as Mercury are in front of Saturn, which is in front of both Jupiter and Mars; Venus is between Mercury, Mars and the Earth, and the Earth is also behind Jupiter. The reason why these are all so smooth is because it's such a small area: we're literally only seeing a couple of square inches of the surface of each of the rocky planets. (See, you can see an individual ant on the Earth. Go to the most rugged mountain range you can find and observe a couple of square inches; it'll be locally flat.) The lack of atmospheres on the rocky planets as well as the hard edges of the gas giants are artistic license. This one is a member of the genre of "true yet unhelpful diagrams"; I'm surprised that isn't a category on this wiki. – [[Special:Contributions/162.158.238.4|162.158.238.4]] 12:58, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

((Written whilst 162.158.238.4 was editing, above, and I got an edit conflict on that. The editor concerned touches on this ordering business, but I'm pasting my original in unaltered, not rejigged as a more focused reply.)) I was wondering abut the "overlap order" for a while, until I twigged it. May not be worth officially documenting, but my analysis, showing that (perhaps depending upon specific orbital positions, during a given range of times, which can of course be checked) it's ''probably'' based upon distance away from Earth.
*Earth is bottom-most. Could be 1st/2nd, shared with Mars, as their overlap isn't shown.
*Mars is our nearest neighbour. (As above, could be 1st ''or'' 2nd on stack.)
*Venus next. Although it could be 7th (only obscured by Mercury) or anywhere else down to 3rd.
*Jupiter as 4th from bottom. (''Could'' be 3rd..5th, though.)
*Saturn takes 5th-up position. (4th..6th)
*Mercury as 6th. (Or all the way to topmost, but I made an assumption about its relationship to the last two.)
*Uranus as 7th. (6th/7th a possibility, depends on Mercury)
*Neptune as 8th. (7th/8th possible, Mercury again.)
...or at least that's what my mental notes tell me. Not helped by starting off counting from near to far and possibly messing up my numbers when I realised it made sense to flip them. It could also be "delta-V needed to reach the planet concerned" (either without or ''including'' flyby slingshot momentum borrowing/burning), but that's something I'd also need to check. I doubt it really needs tying down/Explaining, and when I edited the Transcript I decided not to record every nuance of the "variously orientated surfaces", as I think it adds nothing so long as the description gives the general idea. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.121|141.101.98.121]] 13:06, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

So no one is going to mention that for the clarity depicted you'd need to literally place the planets inside of each other, or have some sort of focal length from zero to infinity? I'm not sure if that bothers me more or less than the missed trick of making the length of ground shown relate to some comparative parameter (albedo might have been a fun one) - [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.213|162.158.186.213]] 13:55, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:To be fair, you're also going to have to choose a "flat" few inches of surface that stands proud of the local geography (such that anything higher is below the curvature of the Earth for its proximity), and deal with an impossible resolution of an impossibly zoomed telephoto shot from a viewpoint unimaginably distant (''whilst'' a near-enough non-Solar conjunction/asterism is happening, or at least was, when the light passed each body), without significant atmospheric distortion (which is a relatively minor issue, compared with the scarcity of photons that reach the camera ''anyway'').
:Can we perhaps instead assume that these are just individual 1:1-scale cross-sectional diagrams (or even carefully curated local photos) drawn together into a hybrid image to accurately retain the scaling verisimilitude, and individual contexts, but happily faking the relative positions? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.56|172.70.85.56]] 15:00, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It would take some work to check, but I'm wondering if the angle of the horizons of the various planets are perpendicular to the line made between the earth and the planet in question [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.141|162.158.154.141]] 15:36, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

This is how I interpret this image: [https://imgur.com/a/WwdbXkN I didn't want to make the black dot as small as in the picture so dimensions are insanely larger] [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.80|172.69.194.80]] 20:35, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
: that is a very clarifying picture, thank you! Shall we include it on the explanation page? It belongs there IMO [[User:Flekkie|Flekkie]] ([[User talk:Flekkie|talk]]) 22:19, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
:: You may by me. The original picture is from NASA https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/686/solar-system-sizes/ and they have no restrictive copyright either. I view this picture as 2D planets stacked and not real planets viewed in space since this is clearly impossible orientation and you couldn't see half the planets, let alone ant on Earth's surface, from behind Neptunes orbit [[Special:Contributions/162.158.239.26|162.158.239.26]] 10:43, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
: Is this right though? Based off the image Mercury is in front of Saturn. For this to happen, Mercury has to be closer distance wise, so Saturn has to be on the opposite side of the sun. But that can't be true if Saturn is in front of Jupiter and behind Uranus/Neptune?

I don't like the current explanation, since the planets never line up like this. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.203.40|162.158.203.40]] 07:11, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

This is truly one of the comics of all time. AzureArmageddon 08:48, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

We have a 1::1 bird book, where each page has a photo of the bird (or a portion of the bird, in case of flamingos) at 1::1 scale. This comic is a play on those books. -- Bob Jenkins [[Special:Contributions/172.71.150.174|172.71.150.174]] 15:25, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
:Regarding the flamingo, and anything else bigger than the book, what a waste of an opportunity for a fold-out section..! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.152|172.70.91.152]] 18:58, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

This image is only going to be 1:1 scale on a really large display too; The grass on Earth is around a centimeter in length when the image is full-screen on my 27" (68.58 cm) monitor, while it's clear from the way it is depicted that it is supposed to be long grass, at least 50 centimeters in length. That means that the display which would make this truly 1:1 is about 50 times larger than mine, or in other words has a diagonal of about 34 m. This is bigger than a typical cinema screen, but I suppose not that much bigger and there ought to be cinemas in which one can display this image such that it is truly 1:1. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.87.66|162.158.87.66]] 06:27, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
:The ant is 'about right' for a possible ant even on my display (8"/20cm). If that would be 0.5m long grass, the ant would be truly huge, nothing like the typical ones around here. Which I think are actually smaller (certainly more svelte) than the image, if I wandered down the garden path to find an actual ant or three in the 'wild'.
:So I don't think that's long grass of the kind you're assuming. But it does resemble the kind of 'pre-grass' (one step up from mosses) or microscrub (effectively bonzaied grass due to local growing conditions) to be found on a bit of semi-fresh dusty hardcore/well-worn footpath, as also shown by the loose stoney debris also present. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 09:50, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2754: Relative Terms

2023-04-04T00:18:04Z

172.70.91.151:

Does this mean that the steam calliopes which are as loud as an airplane are LARGER than that airplane? I'm not finding any examples of such. [[User:Ikidre|Ikidre]] ([[User talk:Ikidre|talk]]) 01:31, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

:There isn't a meaningful upper limit on the size of a steam calliope (other than the expensive of manufacturing and operating it). Planes have more practical upper limits, given that they're at least ''nominally'' supposed to fly. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.132|172.69.79.132]] 11:31, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Holy shit what a terrible comic [[Special:Contributions/172.68.58.130|172.68.58.130]] 02:24, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
:I've seen many a terrible comic and I personally don't consider this one to be terrible, but relative to other XKCD comics I would consider it one of the least interesting and entertaining, unfortunately. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.38.230|172.70.38.230]] 15:44, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm somewhat terrified that "Statue" isn't considered *maximally* quiet. [[User:Trimeta|Trimeta]] ([[User talk:Trimeta|talk]]) 02:32, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
:I don't think the position in the quadrants is meant to indicate degree of loudness or size. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 04:07, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
::Yes it is, that's how such graphs work. That's why sewing machine is in the middle, Randall is declaring that it's neither small nor big, and neither quiet nor loud, it's medium on both scales. Comics like this are roughly the standard X-Y graph but without numbered scales and having words instead of points. And I too noted that statues aren't maximum quiet, LOL! Maybe he's referring to the Doctor Who Weeping Angels? DO they make any sound? [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:29, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
:::Well, that may be how such graphs sometimes work, but clearly not this one. The quadrants are positioned relative to the sewing machine, but that appears to be the only significance afforded to positioning in this layout - an item's position within its quadrant does not indicate the degree to which it qualifies as belonging there. Otherwise a firecracker and a blender would be quieter than a cricket. Unless Randall is referring to the crowd at a test match. But that seems pretty unlikely.[[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 10:20, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
::::The fact that xkcd charts usually have arrows on the axes when the position within the quadrant does matter would support this claim. [[User:NcPenguin|NcPenguin]] ([[User talk:NcPenguin|talk]]) 16:45, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
:::::Came here to point out that I’ve heard a mouse that somehow got in scritch-scritching n something in my kitchen, and I’ve heard a butterfly that somehow got in battering against a window trying to get out, but I’ve never in my life heard an ant, nor even a hundred ants working together to wreck stuff. But as you pointed out, there are no arrows on the chart, so the positions in the quadrants probably aren’t intended to be meaningful.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.10|172.69.34.10]] 21:56, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
::::::To support that further, while buns (pastry) and buns (lagomorph) are probably both quieter than a sewing machine, the latter is generally significantly louder than the former (as well as most everything else in that quadrant), so co-locating them wouldn't work.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.35|172.70.90.35]] 08:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
::::I am certain that this is how Randall does such graphs, and intended with this one, but he got sloppy this time. I suspect he WAS doing that, but then would think of something quieter (or louder or bigger or smaller) and have left himself no room to indicate this (like he already put "Volcano" at the biggest before he decided to add the even bigger "Moon", so now they're both at the bottom of the graph). So, yes, gradation IS supposed to be indicated, but very loosely, not vigilantly. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:22, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
:::::I'm not sure what your certainty is based on, but I don't think you're correct about Randall's intentions with this chart. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.254.14|172.71.254.14]] 20:55, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
:::::: 2,750+ comics, that's what my certainty is based on. :) He often compares things like this (not long ago was a graph which compared doctors, I think the aspects were how legitimate their degrees were and how much you could trust them to help you with a medical issue). That, and I always get the feeling me and Randall have highly compatible thought patterns, like there are times I know exactly what he was going for, when others express confusion and uncertainty. I just know there's a GENERAL, LOOSE gradation going on here. You can't compare all objects, but for many you can. If you looked at no entries except Volcano, that feels like it would be the biggest thing here. If you look at only the Moon, THAT feels like it'd be the biggest. So they both feel right at the big part of the scale. Compare them to the Northern Lights (slightly higher, therefore smaller) and that's correct. Compare the RIGHT things, and it's graded. That's why the items are scattered instead of just listed, and why sewing machine is dead centre, as the baseline of everything. 04:57, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

:::Gartner Magic Quadrants include arrows on the axes, e.g. "completeness of vision -->" and "ability to execute-->". This is not that. However it is '''mostly''' implied by the contents of each quadrant that the items are arranged smallest to biggest (top-down) and quietest to loudest (left-to-right). I think for those who study the items carefully, this then introduces some situational irony for comedic effect in the way of the unexpected placement of certain items like "statues" (louder than a Giraffe?), "baby" (smaller than a harmonica?), and "cannon" (quieter than a riding mower?). Additionally, having spent time in a quiet room with a cricket, I think the "maximally loud" position of the cricket here feels about right. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.179.61|172.70.179.61]] 16:44, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

:: It seems that the joke is exactly that the ONLY meaningful distinction between big/small and loud/quiet is how something relates to a sewing machine. There are too many obvious deviations otherwise.

I've always considered a microwave oven to be the central item
: I concur that microwave would be excellent in the center, and less ambiguous (I mean, I feel certain that Randall didn't think of industrial sewing machines, but this community loves being uncertain, LOL!) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:22, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
:: ∃ industrial microwaves. Units of at least 1MW are available, compared to domestic units around 1kW.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.34.28|172.70.34.28]] 04:13, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
AFAIK, only Randall/xkcd uses the term "Bun" to mean bunnies... :) I feel like it should be worded that way. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:22, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
:No, it's very common in the furry community, and I swear I've heard it elsewhere as well. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.72|172.70.230.72]] 12:03, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
::Well, there's a reason I said this in a comment instead of editing the Explanation. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:25, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Is the breadbox no longer the standard item for size comparison? Because I still use it that way. [[User:Mathmannix|Mathmannix]] ([[User talk:Mathmannix|talk]]) 12:43, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
:Ah, but this requires a standard for size AND sound at the same time, and I can't imagine a breadbox being the middle of any sound scale. What's quieter than a breadbox? [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:27, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Is the moon really bigger than the northern lights? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.117|172.70.126.117]] 17:39, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
:Hmmmm... I wonder. Well, the Moon is a tad under 3,500km (diameter). Taking just a single pole's Aurora (combined, you could just say they are approx. Earth's diamater, which is bigger than the Moon,{{Citation needed}} going pole-to-pole) the height is the thickness of the (upper) atmosphere, very much of that below the altitude of satellites (e.g. ISS), which is mere hundreds of km at best. Or take its 3-6 degrees of 'band width', that is perhaps a tad over 300-600km thick. But if we go with its extent all the way round off the pole, it seems to get about the size of the Moon (linear distance, not 'over the pole') once it extends by 15-16 degrees of latitude (i.e. to less than 74 degrees N/S). It is generally accepted that it varies between 10 and 20 degrees from each geomagnetic pole (is seen at lower latitudes, but only above the horizon) so... it's a close thing. If I've done my calculations correctly. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.235|162.158.34.235]] 18:58, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Would it be useful to add "size" and "loudness" columns to each of the tables, along with estimates of each for each item? -- [[User:Dtgriscom|Dtgriscom]] ([[User talk:Dtgriscom|talk]]) 01:23, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this comic is fully accurate... I've always assumed volcanoes were smaller than the moon. [[User:Thexkcdnerd|Thexkcdnerd]] ([[User talk:Thexkcdnerd|talk]]) 04:08, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
:The Earth is larger than the Moon. The Earth spews lava from vents, ergo the Earth is a volcano (that is larger than the Moon)...
:I actually subscribe to the idea that relationships within the quadrants mean little, I mean whales bigger than trains? Firecracker bigger than a blender? A book is noisier than a newt? ...but if you want an absurdist reason, I'm gonna say I live on a volcano, just because there's a whole lotta magma [[913: Core|underneath me]], and [[2058: Rock Wall|not as far away]] as [[1375: Astronaut Vandalism|space is above]]. ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.191|172.71.242.191]] 12:46, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
::I've slammed books closed or on to tables, but never seen/heard anyone slamming a newt, ergo books are louder. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 15:49, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
:::Books barely make any sound at all in breeding season. In fact, they hardly do anything in breeding season, not matter how long you sit still and watch them. But it's quite difficult to set up a hide in a bookshop, so many objections from the owners... [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.86|172.71.242.86]] 16:23, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
::::Book printing, however, is quite loud. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 19:37, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
How is a windmill quieter than a sewing machine? Looks like Randall never went up close to one :) Wind turbines make around 100 dB (of course you never stand close enough to experience it at this level), and the old timey windmills or water mills were very loud mechanisms too. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.112|162.158.106.112]] 15:37, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
:I second that comment. Wind turbine farms can be heard as a low humming sound from hundreds of meters away and are indeed quite loud up close (if you go and stand under one, you'll hear the "WHOOOoooM, WHOOOoooM" sound as each arm passes). It is even a major issue with the installation of wind turbines close to homes (at least in France).
Either I haven't been used to his sewing machines and waterfalls, but many waterfalls --very arguably most are about the size of a badly leaky faucet in volume -- much quieter than the sewing machines I'm used to.

I have found that the loudness of a sewing machine is definitely related to how old the machine is. I've got a 70-yr-old electric Singer, and my friend has a very recent model sewing machine, and mine is less than a quarter of the loudness, especially when thoroughly oiled. His sounds like a push-style lawnmower. I had no idea sewing machines were so loud until I met modern sewing machines. [[User:Thisfox|Thisfox]] ([[User talk:Thisfox|talk]]) 19:38, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I've never been more compelled to post this in a satire subreddit. This xkcd looks like it was written by someone with dimentia. {{unsigned ip|172.70.131.12|15:22, 28 March 2023}}
:Well, it is 2-Dimenti(on)al... Well spotted! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.57|172.70.85.57]] 02:18, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

As I've seen pointed out elsewhere, on the weboweb by another presumed xkcdophile, the item (sometimes refered to as a "statue") involved in defining the ultimate culmination of Vladlen Tatarsky's activities, in St. Petersburg, was both smaller and (briefly) very much louder than a sewing machine... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 00:18, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

2754: Relative Terms

2023-04-03T13:19:08Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */ Tweaks and additions.

{{comic
| number = 2754
| date = March 24, 2023
| title = Relative Terms
| image = relative_terms_2x.png
| imagesize = 425x442px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Small sewing machines are sewing machines that are smaller than a sewing machine. A sewing machine is larger than a small sewing machine, but quieter than a loud sewing machine.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT THAT IS LARGER THAN A BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The terms "small" and "big" are used to refer to size; the terms "loud" and "quiet" are used to refer to (audial) volume. While these terms are relative, they are often used even when there is nothing obvious being compared against (e.g. "A windmill is a big thing" or "An ant is a small thing").

This comic humorously suggests that the item defined to be in the middle of all four terms ("neither small nor big; neither quiet nor loud") is a sewing machine, as a sewing machine seems (at least in comparison to the other items on the graph) to be neither particularly big nor particularly small; neither particularly quiet nor particularly loud. A standard sewing machine is roughly 60dB in volume and approximately 42” X 21”, although this is for industrial machines, and those in the home would be both smaller and quieter.

As the reference point, the sewing machine is placed in the center of the chart, while a selection of other example objects are located in the four quadrants around it, based on whether they are considered to be small or big, and loud or quiet. Many of the items might appear to have been placed in the wrong quadrant for their actual attributes; locations may reflect more how Randall generally thinks of these things, as opposed to others' subjective ideas of their real-life relationship to a sewing machine.

Other references that could be placed in the center, from everyday life, could be the average adult human (the perspective from which people might measure other things), a bread-bin/box (a popular comparison {{w|breadbox#As a saying|in certain situations}}) or even something like "the size of a large/small/medium-sized dog" (which highly depends upon a shared reference of which breeds are commonly encountered), all things that are often encountered. A sewing machine may once have been found in many homes, but some of the comic's comedic value may arise from the relative rarity in modern times.

The title text is humorously tautological because it compares the standard against those things that are themselves defined against the standard.

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Small and quiet (upper left)
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Ant || Randall has used ants as a small comparator in [[2733:_Size_Comparisons|a previous comic]] on the topic of comparisons.
|-
| Balloon || A party balloon is quite loud when it pops, or if someone 'squeaks' it by rubbing; a hot-air balloon is big enough to carry a few humans, and the burner can be surprisingly loud.
|-
| Book || Books are typically sized to be handheld, and thus smaller than a sewing machine, though some very large books do exist.[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/longest-book-in-the-world-impossible-to-read-180980814/#:~:text=At%2021%2C450%20Pages%2C%20the%20Longest,World%20Is%20Impossible%20to%20Read&text=Artist%20Ilan%20Manouach%20bound%20together,the%20commodification%20of%20comic%20books.] Similarly, books are associated with quiet activity, making no more sound than a quiet turning of a page in typical use, but could make a very loud bang if slammed shut on thrown forcefully on to a hard surface.
|-
| Bun (rabbit or pastry) || "Bun" is an informal term for a rabbit and a loaf of bread; a comparison between the two was made in [[1871: Bun Alert]]. While {{w|Flemish_Giant_rabbit|some rabbits}} may reach the size of a small dog or a child, and specially baked items for promotional activity or record attempts may exceed the size of a sewing machine, both would typically be smaller. However, while bread, even when being eaten, is usually very quiet, rabbits can make a large amount of noise that is at odds with their common image.
|-
| Butterfly || Butterflies are used as an exemplar of something small, unnoticeable and seemingly insignificant in the metaphor of the Butterfly Effect.
|-
| Hat ||
|-
| Mouse || A mouse is a very small, quiet animal. This might also be a reference to the expression "quiet as a mouse", meaning very quietly.
|-
| Newt ||
|-
| Pin drop || The expression "hear a pin drop" is used to indicate that an area is exceptionally quiet; the idea is that the space is so silent that even something as insubstantial and tiny as a pin can be heard hitting the ground.
|-
| Snow globe || A {{w|snow globe}} is much smaller than a sewing machine. Some snow globes have a small music box that can be wound up to play a melody. Snow globes without a music box are silent.
|}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Small and loud (upper right)
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Baby || Babies are usually considered small, and can be quite loud when they cry.
|-
| Blender || Blenders make a lot of noise when in use. Most household blenders are smaller than a sewing machine.
|-
| Cricket || Given that it is in the small/loud quadrant, this would refer to the insect, which is pretty small and can be quite loud; the sport of cricket or a cricket game would be much larger (though potentially much louder).
|-
| Fire alarm || The primary purpose of a fire alarm is to notify people of fire, so fire alarms are usually very loud, but ideally take up little space.
|-
| Firecracker || A {{w|Firecracker}} is a small explosive firework that makes a very loud bang when lit.
|-
| Flute || An example of a small musical instrument that can nevertheless be audibly quite dominant.
|-
| Harmonica || See Flute.
|-
| Popcorn || A snack that is known for being annoyingly loud in a cinema setting. However, this is largely due to the otherwise low volume environment, and arguably a sewing machine might be equally or more annoying. Also, some helpings of popcorn in some cinemas may actually be larger than a sewing machine.
|-
| Songbird ||
|-
| Whistle || This is of course a device known as a whistle, as these are small. The human act of whistling, or a whistle produced by, for example, a kettle, has no size (other than that of the whistler or whistling object). A whistle is used as an alert or signal, or could be another musical instrument (see Flute). The loudest human whistle ever recorded was 8372 Hz and roughly 110 DB, which is a C9 in the standard musical scale and is roughly as loud as a jackhammer[https://www.vnews.com/West-Lebanon-man-sets-a-world-record-for-whistling-24480844#:~:text=Guinness'%20website%20says%20Stanford%20reached,in%20the%20standard%20musical%20notation.]. Since a whistle should be able to beat this it must be seen as loud.
|}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Big and quiet (lower left)
|-
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Anaconda ||
|-
| Giraffe || Giraffes can be quite loud, but they usually vocalise using frequencies well below the range of human hearing. So, to a human, giraffes are quiet.
|-
| Northern lights || "In 2016, a Finnish study confirmed that the Aurora Borealis does produce a sound that can be heard" [https://www.techexplorist.com/listen-sound-aurora-borealis/47421/]
|-
| Shark || When people think of sharks, they typically envisage something large and dangerous, yet eerily silent as they swim (up until entering a feeding frenzy), like a {{w|Great_white_shark|great white}}. However, sharks come in a large variety of sizes, often {{w|Dwarf_lanternshark|considerably smaller}} than a sewing machine.
|-
| Statue || A stereotypical statue is a large piece of public art, intended to be viewed from afar,cwhich would be larger than a sewing machine even discounting the plinth or {{w|Statue of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln Memorial)|other}} {{w|Nelson's Column|bases}}; however, there is no easily agreed lower size limit for when a statue becomes a statuette, figurine, bust or merely a carved/cast ornament, as any smaller examples of figurative art could be considered statues in a given situation. Yet famous and major examples do tend to be life-sized (or larger-than-life-sized) depictions of people, sometimes even depicted atop horses, making them significantly larger, and even fractional-scale depictions could be easily larger than this comic's reference item.
Most statues are silent, but some may be plumbed in as fountains. Or occasionally equipped with other devices that make sound. There is also "musical statues" being a {{w|party game}}, that can be intermittently loud and quite large.
|-
| The Moon || The Moon is very, very big{{fact}}, but it is also completely silent{{fact}} from the perspective of most humans, since sound cannot travel through the vacuum of space.
|-
| Tree ||
|-
| Windmill || Windmills need to have significant height in order to catch enough air movement to drive them. They are thought of as quiet, relative to other forms of power generation; in reality, though, the passage of the blades through the air can cause considerable noise, as can [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzwqBgWKalI the machinery that they drive].
|}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Big and loud (lower right)
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Airplane ||
|-
| Cannon ||
|-
| Riding mower ||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Calliope_(music)|Steam calliope]] || A large musical device which functions by sending steam (or more recently compressed air) through attached whistles.
|-
| Train ||
|-
| Tuba ||
|-
| Volcano || Lower right corner. Volcanic eruptions can be extremely loud. The {{w|1883 eruption of Krakatoa}} made a pressure wave of 180 dB, the loudest sound ever recorded.
|-
| Waterfall ||
|-
| Whale ||
|}

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

:[A chart, with "Quiet" to "Loud" on the X-axis, and "Small" to "Big" on the Y-axis. It is split into four quarters, with "Sewing machine" in the center.]

:[Upper left quadrant (Small & Quiet items):] Butterfly, Pin drop, Mouse, Ant, Bun (rabbit or pastry), Snow globe, Newt, Balloon, Book, Hat

:[Upper right quadrant (Small & Loud items):] Popcorn, Cricket, Songbird, Whistle, Baby, Harmonica, Flute, Fire alarm, Blender, Firecracker

:[Lower left quadrant (Big & Quiet items):] Shark, Tree, Anaconda, Giraffe, Statue, Windmill, Northern lights, The Moon

:[Lower right quadrant (Big & Loud items):] Tuba, Riding mower, Cannon, Airplane, Train, Waterfall, Steam calliope, Whale, Volcano

:[Caption below the panel:]
:''Big'', ''Small'', ''Loud'', and ''Quiet'' are relative terms. The thing they're relative to is a sewing machine.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Aviation]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Buns]]
[[Category:Sharks]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Volcanoes]]
[[Category:Food]]

2754: Relative Terms

2023-03-31T10:01:50Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2754
| date = March 24, 2023
| title = Relative Terms
| image = relative_terms_2x.png
| imagesize = 425x442px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Small sewing machines are sewing machines that are smaller than a sewing machine. A sewing machine is larger than a small sewing machine, but quieter than a loud sewing machine.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT THAT IS LARGER THAN A BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The terms "small" and "big" are used to refer to size; the terms "loud" and "quiet" are used to refer to (audial) volume.

While these terms are relative, they are often used even when there is nothing obvious being compared against (e.g. "A windmill is a big thing" or "An ant is a small thing"). This comic humorously suggests that the item defined to be in the middle of all four terms ("neither small nor big; neither quiet nor loud") is a sewing machine, as a sewing machine seems (at least in comparison to the other items on the graph) to be neither particularly big nor particularly small, neither particularly quiet nor particularly loud.

An alternative argument may be that the in the center would be the average adult human (as this is the perspective from which most people use language), though this observation would lose some of the comic's comedic value.

The center of the chart is a sewing machine, and the comic is claiming that the scales of "loud and quiet" and "big and small" are measured in comparison to a standard size sewing machine. A standard sewing machine is roughly 60dB in volume and approximately 42” X 21”, although this is for industrial machines, and those in the home would be both smaller and quieter.

Many of the items appear to have been placed in the wrong quadrant for their actual attributes; locations seem to reflect more how people generally think of these things, as opposed to their real-life relationship to a sewing machine.

The title text is humorously tautological because it compares the standard against those things that are themselves defined against the standard.

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Small and quiet (upper left)
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Ant || Randall has used ants as a small comparator in [[2733:_Size_Comparisons|a previous comic]] on the topic of comparisons.
|-
| Balloon || A party balloon is quite loud when it pops, or if someone 'squeaks' it by rubbing; a hot-air balloon is big enough to carry a few humans, and the burner can be surprisingly loud.
|-
| Book || Books are typically sized to be handheld, and thus smaller than a sewing machine, though some very large books do exist.[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/longest-book-in-the-world-impossible-to-read-180980814/#:~:text=At%2021%2C450%20Pages%2C%20the%20Longest,World%20Is%20Impossible%20to%20Read&text=Artist%20Ilan%20Manouach%20bound%20together,the%20commodification%20of%20comic%20books.] Similarly, books are associated with quiet activity, making no more sound than a quiet turning of a page in typical use, but could make a very loud bang if slammed shut on thrown forcefully on to a hard surface.
|-
| Bun (rabbit or pastry) || "Bun" is an informal term for a rabbit and a loaf of bread, this comparison was made in [[1871: Bun Alert]]
|-
| Butterfly || Butterflies are used as an exemplar of something small, unnoticeable and seemingly insignificant in the metaphor of the Butterfly Effect.
|-
| Hat ||
|-
| Mouse || A mouse is a very small, quiet animal. This might also be a reference to the expression "quiet as a mouse", meaning very quietly.
|-
| Newt ||
|-
| Pin drop || The expression "hear a pin drop" is used to indicate that an area is exceptionally quiet; the idea is that the space is so silent that even something as insubstantial and tiny as a pin can be heard hitting the ground.
|-
| Snow globe || A {{w|snow globe}} is much smaller than a sewing machine. Some snow globes have a small music box that can be wound up to play a melody. Snow globes without a music box are silent.
|}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Small and loud (upper right)
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Baby || Babies are usually considered small, and can be quite loud when they cry.
|-
| Blender || Blenders make a lot of noise when in use. Most household blenders are smaller than a sewing machine.
|-
| Cricket || Given that it is in the small/loud quadrant, this would refer to the insect, which is pretty small and can be quite loud; the sport of cricket or a cricket game would be much larger (though potentially much louder).
|-
| Fire alarm || The primary purpose of a fire alarm is to notify people of fire, so fire alarms are usually very loud, but ideally take up little space.
|-
| Firecracker || A {{w|Firecracker}} is a small explosive firework that makes a very loud bang when lit.
|-
| Flute || An example of a small musical instrument that can nevertheless be audibly quite dominant.
|-
| Harmonica || See Flute.
|-
| Popcorn || A snack that is known for being annoyingly loud in a cinema setting. However, this is largely due to the otherwise low volume environment, and arguably a sewing machine might be equally or more annoying. Also, some helpings of popcorn in some cinemas may actually be larger than a sewing machine.
|-
| Songbird ||
|-
| Whistle || This is of course a device known as a whistle, as these are small. The human act of whistling, or a whistle produced by, for example, a kettle, has no size (other than that of the whistler or whistling object). A whistle is used as an alert or signal, or could be another musical instrument. The loudest human whistle ever recorded was 8372 Hz and roughly 110 DB, which is a C9 in the standard musical scale and is roughly as loud as a jackhammer[https://www.vnews.com/West-Lebanon-man-sets-a-world-record-for-whistling-24480844#:~:text=Guinness'%20website%20says%20Stanford%20reached,in%20the%20standard%20musical%20notation.]. Since a whistle should be able to beat this it must be seen as loud.
|}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Big and quiet (lower left)
|-
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Anaconda ||
|-
| Giraffe || Giraffes can be quite loud, but they usually vocalise using frequencies well below the range of human hearing. So, to a human, giraffes are quiet.
|-
| Northern lights || "In 2016, a Finnish study confirmed that the Aurora Borealis does produce a sound that can be heard" [https://www.techexplorist.com/listen-sound-aurora-borealis/47421/]
|-
| Shark ||
|-
| Statue || Most statues are larger than a sewing machine. Most statues are silent, but some have fountains or other devices that make sound.
|-
| The Moon || Lower left corner; the Moon is very, very big{{fact}}, but it is also completely silent{{fact}} as sound cannot travel through the vacuum of space.
|-
| Tree ||
|-
| Windmill ||
|}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Big and loud (lower right)
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Airplane ||
|-
| Cannon ||
|-
| Riding mower ||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Calliope_(music)|Steam calliope]] || A large musical device which functions by sending steam (or more recently compressed air) through attached whistles.
|-
| Train ||
|-
| Tuba ||
|-
| Volcano || Lower right corner. Volcanic eruptions can be extremely loud. The {{w|1883 eruption of Krakatoa}} made a pressure wave of 180 dB, the loudest sound ever recorded.
|-
| Waterfall ||
|-
| Whale ||
|}

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

:[A chart, with "Quiet" to "Loud" on the X-axis, and "Small" to "Big" on the Y-axis. It is split into four quarters, with "Sewing machine" in the center.]

:[Upper left quadrant (Small & Quiet items):] Butterfly, Pin drop, Mouse, Ant, Bun (rabbit or pastry), Snow globe, Newt, Balloon, Book, Hat

:[Upper right quadrant (Small & Loud items):] Popcorn, Cricket, Songbird, Whistle, Baby, Harmonica, Flute, Fire alarm, Blender, Firecracker

:[Lower left quadrant (Big & Quiet items):] Shark, Tree, Anaconda, Giraffe, Statue, Windmill, Northern lights, The Moon

:[Lower right quadrant (Big & Loud items):] Tuba, Riding mower, Cannon, Airplane, Train, Waterfall, Steam calliope, Whale, Volcano

:[Caption below the panel:]
:''Big'', ''Small'', ''Loud'', and ''Quiet'' are relative terms. The thing they're relative to is a sewing machine.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Aviation]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Buns]]
[[Category:Sharks]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Volcanoes]]
[[Category:Food]]

2754: Relative Terms

2023-03-31T10:01:04Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2754
| date = March 24, 2023
| title = Relative Terms
| image = relative_terms_2x.png
| imagesize = 425x442px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Small sewing machines are sewing machines that are smaller than a sewing machine. A sewing machine is larger than a small sewing machine, but quieter than a loud sewing machine.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT THAT IS LARGER THAN A BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The terms "small" and "big" are used to refer to size; the terms "loud" and "quiet" are used to refer to (audial) volume.

While these terms are relative, they are often used even when there is nothing obvious being compared against (e.g. "A windmill is a big thing" or "An ant is a small thing"). This comic humorously suggests that the item defined to be in the middle of all four terms ("neither small nor big; neither quiet nor loud") is a sewing machine, as a sewing machine seems (at least in comparison to the other items on the graph) to be neither particularly big nor particularly small, neither particularly quiet nor particularly loud.

An alternative argument may be that the in the center would be the average adult human (as this is the perspective from which most people use language), though this observation would lose some of the comic's comedic value.

The center of the chart is a sewing machine, and the comic is claiming that the scales of "loud and quiet" and "big and small" are measured in comparison to a standard size sewing machine. A standard sewing machine is roughly 60dB in volume and approximately 42” X 21”, although this is for industrial machines, and those in the home would be both smaller and quieter.

Many of the items appear to have been placed in the wrong quadrant for their actual attributes; locations seem to reflect more how people generally think of these things, as opposed to their real-life relationship to a sewing machine.

The title text is humorously tautological because it compares the standard against those things that are themselves defined against the standard.

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Small and quiet (upper left)
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Ant || Randall has used ants as a small comparator in [[2733:_Size_Comparisons|a previous comic]] on the topic of comparisons.
|-
| Balloon || A party balloon is quite loud when it pops, or if someone 'squeaks' it by rubbing; a hot-air balloon is big enough to carry a few humans, and the burner can be surprisingly loud.
|-
| Book || Books are typically sized to be handheld, and thus smaller than a sewing machine, though some very large books do exist.[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/longest-book-in-the-world-impossible-to-read-180980814/#:~:text=At%2021%2C450%20Pages%2C%20the%20Longest,World%20Is%20Impossible%20to%20Read&text=Artist%20Ilan%20Manouach%20bound%20together,the%20commodification%20of%20comic%20books.] Similarly, books are associated with quiet activity, making no more sound than a quiet turning of a page in typical use, but could make a very loud bang if slammed shut on thrown forcefully on to a hard surface.
|-
| Bun (rabbit or pastry) || "Bun" is an informal term for a rabbit and a loaf of bread, this comparison was made in [[1871: Bun Alert]]
|-
| Butterfly || Butterflies are used as an exemplar of something small, unnoticeable and seemingly insignificant in the metaphor of the Butterfly Effect.
|-
| Hat ||
|-
| Mouse || A mouse is a very small, quiet animal. This might also be a reference to the expression "quiet as a mouse", meaning very quietly.
|-
| Newt ||
|-
| Pin drop || The expression "hear a pin drop" is used to indicate that an area is exceptionally quiet; the idea is that the space is so silent that even something as insubstantial and tiny as a pin can be heard hitting the ground.
|-
| Snow globe || A {{w|snow globe}} is much smaller than a sewing machine. Some snow globes have a small music box that can be wound up to play a melody. Snow globes without a music box are silent.
|}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Small and loud (upper right)
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Baby || Babies are usually considered small, and can be quite loud when they cry.
|-
| Blender || Blenders make a lot of noise when in use. Most household blenders are smaller than a sewing machine.
|-
| Cricket || Given that it is in the small/loud quadrant, this would refer to the insect, which is pretty small and can be quite loud; the sport of cricket or a cricket game would be much larger (though potentially much louder).
|-
| Fire alarm || The primary purpose of a fire alarm is to notify people of fire, so fire alarms are usually very loud, but ideally take up little space.
|-
| Firecracker || A {{w|Firecracker}} is a small explosive firework that makes a very loud bang when lit.
|-
| Flute || An example of a small musical instrument that can nevertheless be audibly quite dominant.
|-
| Harmonica || See Flute.
|-
| Popcorn || A snack that is known for being annoyingly loud in a cinema setting. However, this is largely due to the otherwise low volume environment, and arguably a sewing machine might be equally or more annoying. Also, some helpings of popcorn in some cinemas may actually be larger than a sewing machine.
|-
| Songbird ||
|-
| Whistle || This is of course the device known as a whistle, as it is small. The human act of whistling, or a whistle produced by, for example, a kettle, has no size (other than that of the whistler or whistling object). A whistle is used as an alert or signal, or could be another musical instrument. The loudest human whistle ever recorded was 8372 Hz and roughly 110 DB, which is a C9 in the standard musical scale and is roughly as loud as a jackhammer[https://www.vnews.com/West-Lebanon-man-sets-a-world-record-for-whistling-24480844#:~:text=Guinness'%20website%20says%20Stanford%20reached,in%20the%20standard%20musical%20notation.]. Since a whistle should be able to beat this it must be seen as loud.
|}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Big and quiet (lower left)
|-
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Anaconda ||
|-
| Giraffe || Giraffes can be quite loud, but they usually vocalise using frequencies well below the range of human hearing. So, to a human, giraffes are quiet.
|-
| Northern lights || "In 2016, a Finnish study confirmed that the Aurora Borealis does produce a sound that can be heard" [https://www.techexplorist.com/listen-sound-aurora-borealis/47421/]
|-
| Shark ||
|-
| Statue || Most statues are larger than a sewing machine. Most statues are silent, but some have fountains or other devices that make sound.
|-
| The Moon || Lower left corner; the Moon is very, very big{{fact}}, but it is also completely silent{{fact}} as sound cannot travel through the vacuum of space.
|-
| Tree ||
|-
| Windmill ||
|}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Big and loud (lower right)
|-
! Item !! Description
|-
| Airplane ||
|-
| Cannon ||
|-
| Riding mower ||
|-
| [[wikipedia:Calliope_(music)|Steam calliope]] || A large musical device which functions by sending steam (or more recently compressed air) through attached whistles.
|-
| Train ||
|-
| Tuba ||
|-
| Volcano || Lower right corner. Volcanic eruptions can be extremely loud. The {{w|1883 eruption of Krakatoa}} made a pressure wave of 180 dB, the loudest sound ever recorded.
|-
| Waterfall ||
|-
| Whale ||
|}

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

:[A chart, with "Quiet" to "Loud" on the X-axis, and "Small" to "Big" on the Y-axis. It is split into four quarters, with "Sewing machine" in the center.]

:[Upper left quadrant (Small & Quiet items):] Butterfly, Pin drop, Mouse, Ant, Bun (rabbit or pastry), Snow globe, Newt, Balloon, Book, Hat

:[Upper right quadrant (Small & Loud items):] Popcorn, Cricket, Songbird, Whistle, Baby, Harmonica, Flute, Fire alarm, Blender, Firecracker

:[Lower left quadrant (Big & Quiet items):] Shark, Tree, Anaconda, Giraffe, Statue, Windmill, Northern lights, The Moon

:[Lower right quadrant (Big & Loud items):] Tuba, Riding mower, Cannon, Airplane, Train, Waterfall, Steam calliope, Whale, Volcano

:[Caption below the panel:]
:''Big'', ''Small'', ''Loud'', and ''Quiet'' are relative terms. The thing they're relative to is a sewing machine.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Aviation]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Buns]]
[[Category:Sharks]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Volcanoes]]
[[Category:Food]]

2756: Qualifications

2023-03-29T20:33:47Z

172.70.91.151: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2756
| date = March 29, 2023
| title = Qualifications
| image = qualifications_2x.png
| imagesize = 265x316px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 'So how DID you go from working at the employment records office to becoming president of MIT and CEO of IBM?' 'I guess I just have an eye for opportunities.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a 600-YEAR-OLD BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[[Black Hat]] is being interviewed for some unidentified position. From the conversation, it seems clear that he has used some access to the employment records at some employment record office to fraudulantly manufacture a history of having worked there for 600 years. He also claims an additional pair of prestigious jobs, but it is unclear whether these 'facts' were entirely due to false records or, knowing Black Hat's [[498: Secretary: Part 5|other]] [[1094: Interview|interviews]], briefly true but only as a result of false representation/underhanded actions.

His interviewers are not entirely unaware of the implausibility, but seem content to have just verified the validity of the claim. The 'validation' arises from the clearly tainted information source, given the whole chain of supporting evidence that may have been falsified.

Employers often encounter resumés that have implausibly padded experience claims. Most applicants try not to be this implausible, and few employers are so credulous as to take self-supporting lies at face value.

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

:[Black Hat sits in an office chair, Cueball facing him sits at his desk and Hairbun stands behind him. Cueball is holding documents in his hands.]
:Cueball: Impressive résumé.
:Cueball: It says that you have over '''''six hundred''''' years of experience at the employment records office? That can't be right.
:Hairbun: I thought so too, but it checks out.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Job interviews]]

Talk:2755: Effect Size

2023-03-28T13:06:19Z

172.70.91.151: Barber paradox FTW!

Wow, it looks like I'm first![[Special:Contributions/162.158.146.40|162.158.146.40]] 16:40, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

;Wasn't something like this actually done?
Robert Sapolsky mentions an obscure paper that actually did something like this. They did a meta-analysis of the average reported error throughout various disciplines in order of the physical size of the objects being studied (e.g., from cells to organs to etc.), and found no correlation between them. The conclusion was that this was evidence that philosophical reductionism was flawed. [[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 22:45, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
: Did you manage to find it? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.57.203|172.70.57.203]] 08:49, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

But does the meta-analysis include itself? Technically, it too is part of Science...
Artinum [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 13:06, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

User:Beanie

2023-03-27T11:47:38Z

172.70.91.151: i'm not logged in, but it is still me

{{Notice|Official transcript page for my own reference --> https://xkcd.com/1/info.0.json}}

{{crickets}}
(I'm going to keep this I like it)

A beanie is the British version of a knit cap, so I also have a [[User:Knit cap|second account]] ;)

From getting into top 10 for edits in a single year to total inactivity...wow.
I will admit, the edits I did were during school, as I didn't particularly like the place.
After I changed schools I could focus again on schoolwork, which also meant I preferred to do something different to making edits on this site.

==Edits==
:Edits done: {{#cscore:Beanie|changes}}
:Pages edited: {{#cscore:Beanie|pages}}
:[[Special:Contributions/Beanie|My edits]]

==Miscellaneous==
*I'm not usually a grammar nazi, but an exception is made for wikis.

Talk:1639: To Taste

2023-03-21T10:50:02Z

172.70.91.151:

Seasoning is not an intermediate process which can't be repaired/re-done. you're left with an edible dish before and after. You add seasoning in small incremental steps, and the quality of the dish, or appropriateness of the taste improves monotonically, and additively. On the other hand, baking something for 5 minutes, and then another 5 minutes isn't the same as baking it for 10 minutes. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.49.78|162.158.49.78]] 09:54, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
: Yeah, but a beginner should be given an idea of what a basic incremental step is supposed to be, based on the number of servings in the recipe. One pinch? One (tea/table)spoon? One cup? One jug? One crate? - [[Special:Contributions/141.101.70.23|141.101.70.23]] 11:38, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
: Usually when it's said ''to taste'', which I guess corresponds to the Italian ''quanto basta'', it's referring to small amounts, so a beginner could just add a pinch per time until he finds the flavor is good. Whenever it's unnecessary, recipes shouldn't be specific; you don't have to grill a steak for exactly 5 or 10 minutes, just until it has the color and looks of a steak you think you may like; if you boil pasta, you taste a bit once a minute until the texture is good. --[[Special:Contributions/188.114.102.249|188.114.102.249]] 12:25, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
::: The joke is that this kind of knowledge is implied in recipes, it isn't spelled out. Which can be a problem for beginners. And good luck trying that approach when baking spiced bread. Or manufacturing soufflé. ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.138|162.158.114.138]] 13:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
::: Luckily, there are pastas which specify how long you are supposed to cook them on the package. Especially useful in case of those "fast" ones. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 13:57, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
: "Appropriateness" increases "monotonically" ... until it decreases again. :D [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.138|162.158.114.138]] 13:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
: Try preparing two slow cook dishes but in one add all the seasoning at the end before serving. You will now know that seasoning can be very integral to the process and if added in wrong quantities at the wrong time can ruin a dish.--[[User:R0hrshach|R0hrshach]] ([[User talk:R0hrshach|talk]]) 17:11, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
: '''''De gustibus non disputandum est.''''' [[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 16:46, 6 February 2016 (UTC) — [[RAGBRAIvet]] {{unsigned|RAGBRAIvet}}
:: '''''De gustibus non disputandum est''''' This is Joda-Latin, isn't it? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.225|162.158.91.225]] 13:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
: I prefer to binary search instead of linearly searching. O(log n) versus O(n)! --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.37|162.158.255.37]] 21:31, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
:: Also, I noticed that an unusual number of IP's are on the 162.158.x.x sub-block. Weird. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.37|162.158.255.37]] 17:10, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
::: ExplainXKCD uses Cloudflare, which means all connections end up proxied through one of their servers. Those servers have a small range of IP's.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.74|108.162.245.74]] 23:03, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I can't tell if Randall is reading too many cookbooks or if he just has... Too many cooks[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.54|108.162.221.54]] 13:46, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
: It does take a lot to make a stew, after all. A lot of sugar, in this case. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.29|173.245.54.29]] 07:19, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
: That's only 3 cubes. Totally reasonable. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]]) 20:24, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Maybe he obtained enough sugar so his sample size would be sufficient for scientific experimentation on what to taste means.[[User:Thaledison|Thaledison]] ([[User talk:Thaledison|talk]]) 14:02, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

In my experience, the instructions "add _____ to taste" usually are referring to salt, not sugar. And from comic #1637, we all know Cueball has access to virtually an unlimited quantity of salt! [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.252|173.245.54.252]] 14:55, 5 February 2016 (UTC)Sam
:As a non-USAian, it's interesting that Randall has chosen to show excessive amounts of sugar. I've used many great recipes of US origin and the first thing I do is ignore everything that the recipe says about sugar, in pretty much every case (not baking though) our (British taste) is satisfied by removing all added sugar. Perhaps he's highlighting the US "sweet tooth"?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.147|162.158.34.147]] 08:39, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Why is he bringing in the sugar backwards? Perhaps he doesn't know how to properly use a dolly?
[[User:Bsellnow|Bsellnow]] ([[User talk:Bsellnow|talk]]) 19:37, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
:Maybe he just came up the stairs? There's loads of houses that have stairs (or, frequently, a single stair) between the kitchen and the back porch/food storage area/front porch/garage/attic/wherever else you'll get sugar from. Plus, since the sugar was stacked so high it was leaning against his face, there's no way he'd be able to see if he was walking forwards. I think, really, his biggest sin is that he stacked the boxes to an unsafe level. [[User:Jeudi Violist|Jeudi Violist]] ([[User talk:Jeudi Violist|talk]]) 00:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
::No kidding that's an unsafe level. He's holding them up with his face! [[User:Jkshapiro|Jkshapiro]] ([[User talk:Jkshapiro|talk]]) 03:37, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
:::The framing of the comic was such that if he had pushed the dolly in, we would not have seen cueball in the last panel, and might have been confused as to where the crates of sugar were coming from, and if they were just falling in, or dollying in, or what. Randall knows how to draw in a manner that conveys the meaning, and we really don't need to look into it so deeply. {{unsigned ip|173.245.54.55}}
::::But looking into comics far too deeply is what we ''do''! :) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 12:40, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
::::: That isn't how to use a dolly, so it's a good thing he isn't using one. A dolly is a platform with wheels, used for furniture moving, mobile cameras for filming, and the like. He's using a Hand Truck, which would usually be backed through doorways so you can actually open the door. It is also easier to steer precisely in tight spaces backwards. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.74|108.162.245.74]] 23:11, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

This is strongly reminiscent of episode 5 of Astrid Lindgren's Seacrow Island (original title Vi På Saltkråkan) where Melker adds salt to taste. {{unsigned ip|141.101.79.55}}

Am I the only one who thinks that updating "...as of..." dates [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1639:_To_Taste&curid=17330&diff=308970&oldid=266907 like this] is wrong. The notable time of some "as of"s is when it is discovered to be true, not the most recent continuation of its truth. "As of publication, it was wrong (and continues to be so)" ...or similar. And if something like a broken link gets discovered, noted, then later corrected, e.g., "The link stopped working some time prior to <date1>, but was fixed as of <date2>" is easier to write when you hadn't previously updated date1 all the way up to date2, then there's no profit in continually moving date2 onwards from that point. (It makes the information less precise.) In other words, I'm not sure why people are so anal at revising lower limits. Upper-limits, yes ("...it is still not resolved by <newdate>"), but

User talk:ColorfulGalaxy

2023-03-14T13:02:27Z

172.70.91.151:

==12==
Hi, what happens in [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:ColorfulGalaxy&curid=25508&diff=301086&oldid=292141 12 edits]? Have a life-changing day in a good way! —[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User:While False/explain xkcd museum|'''museum''']] | [[User talk:While False|talk]] | [[special:Contributions/While_False|contributions]] | [[special:Log/While_False|logs]] | [[Special:UserRights/While_False|rights]] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:While_False&printable=yes printable version] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:While_False&action=info page information] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:While_False what links there] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChangesLinked&days=30&from=&target=User%3AWhile_False related changes] | [https://www.google.com Google search] | current time: {{CURRENTTIME}}) 21:56, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

: I meant that I need 12 more edits to get [[explain_xkcd:Autoconfirmed_users|autoconfirmed]] so I can create more pages in my user page. The computer that I'm using runs awfully slow. My other computer blocks CAPTCHA automatically. [[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 07:51, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

::Cool —[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User:While False/explain xkcd museum|'''museum''']] | [[User talk:While False|talk]] | [[special:Contributions/While_False|contributions]] | [[special:Log/While_False|logs]] | [[Special:UserRights/While_False|rights]] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:While_False&printable=yes printable version] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:While_False&action=info page information] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:While_False what links there] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChangesLinked&days=30&from=&target=User%3AWhile_False related changes] | [https://www.google.com Google search] | current time: {{CURRENTTIME}}) 07:58, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

::: I just made it! Thanks for confirming my account! Now I can stop using that slow computer. --[[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 09:08, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

== Google search link ==

A couple of times, recently, you provided a Google search link to something. I don't like following those (with their "q=..." stuff and hangover metadata in other POST data) when you could perhaps give the direct link you intend instead?

i.e. right-clicking on the Google page's item and copying that link is wasteful (and not ''always'' correct), you should instead follow the link you intend and then copy the true address (if proven to be what you wish) from the address-bar. And, even then, best to cut away any "&referer=..." type stuff (and retest the cut down link!) so that everyone who follows you has a bare-bones link that works without having to mess with reconstructing the metadata that means "<nowiki>http://whatever.com/foo/bar/baz.html#indexpoint</nowiki>", or howsoever it should resolve.

Just a tip. To streamline and not unneccessarily obfuscate the use of your contributions... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.77|172.70.91.77]] 15:15, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

== This is probably the first numbered comic whose title... ==

''Probably'' you could just confirm these claims, ''before'' making them? It seems easy enough to do, and you seem to have the time to do it. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.141|172.71.242.141]] 23:25, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

==Help==
I need your help creating these pages and uploading the pictures I needed. Please, please, you know that we are close friends IRL. --[[User:ChristmasGospel|ChristmasGospel]] ([[User talk:ChristmasGospel|talk]]) 20:34, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
:Look, [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User_talk:ColorfulGalaxy&curid=25878&diff=305104&oldid=305057 this is clearly a stupid move] to try to look legitimate. If you're truly IRL friends then it could have waited for an IRL meeting (or whatever other social media blinks you have), at which point your 'friend' could have provided a lot more practical help without waiting for such silly messages. Laughable, really. But do as you're going to do, I'm sure I can't stop you from going through with this clear pretence to whatever end you're leading up to. And no apologies if I'm wrong, just pity. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.230|162.158.34.230]] 19:19, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

== So many broken links on your User page. ==

I presume you are fully aware that pretty much everything you're linking to on your User page is a dead link. Both internal and external ones (even inter-wiki). I presume you are also aware that your quite obvious use of multiple alts and logins is very visible. Either that, or you are remarkably unaware of third parties (with bad MOs) making so many terrible edits in some quite definitely targetted way.

Either way, you might want to just get things working how you want to get things working, and bring it all to fruition, and not leave us all hanging... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.57|172.70.85.57]] 13:39, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

== Who are the other CGs? ==

Do you know [[User:ConscriptGuide]], [[User:CarcassonneGuide]], [[User:ConceptisGallery]], [[User:ConscriptGallery]] and [[User:ChristmasGospel]]? [[User:AndroidTheLucario|AndroidTheLucario]] ([[User talk:AndroidTheLucario|talk]]) 05:54, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
:So it would seem that [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2293:_RIP_John_Conway&diff=308507&oldid=308506 this is you], as well, CG. The question we must all be wondering is why? Quite an army of alt-logins you seem to be building up, and the actions of the less nicely behaving ones (you know which I mean) don't exactly make me feel unconcerned about it.
:It wouldn't be so bad if you were doing useful edits or actually made your Conlang links into a working (and ideally relevant) reference system that we could all enjoy. But you seem to have no intent to do that. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.224|172.70.85.224]] 06:38, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
::The neography reproducing project involves uploading a lot of images, mostly vector images. If you would mind my uploading (Sorry I can't upload currently), then please consider opening a neography wiki on the fandom.com website. My account is used for introducing the [[:Category:Rhythm_games|rhythm games]]. [[User:ChronoGames|ChronoGames]] ([[User talk:ChronoGames|talk]]) 06:58, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
:::Your explanation makes no sense... Your neography clearly has no real connection to xkcd. The images required here should be xkcd ones (or derived material). You haven't shown absign of contributing any of those. One account (sufficiently validated) is enough to upload, as you'll already know. There's no connection to fandom.com, at all. That's not even a local category (like almost every other link around here, you leave it redlinked). You don't need to create many special logins for anything you have done (for the most part, I can do everything worthwhile for the site with no account at all, and you have a clear history of doing unworthwhile things with many accounts, a number of them now banned.
:::So I call bullshit. I've seen others try to help your 'new users' out, with things you've messed up (done it myself, see above) just to be ignored, and then it becomes clear that you continue with whatever game you think you're playing, under an expanding host of aliases. Not cool. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 13:02, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

2746: Launch Window

2023-03-07T16:45:23Z

172.70.91.151: /* Transcript */ Transcript 'improvements'

{{comic
| number = 2746
| date = March 6, 2023
| title = Launch Window
| image = launch_window_2x.png
| imagesize = 501x256px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = "Confirmed, we have to scrub." "Ugh, okay. I'll get the bucket and sponge."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a WINDEX-SCRUBBED LAUNCH WINDOW - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A {{w|launch window}} is a brief period of time in which a spacecraft can be launched from Earth's surface such that the spacecraft can reach its destination with the minimal amount (or an amount lower than a threshold of acceptance) of energy expenditure.

This comic takes the concept of a "launch window" in a more literal direction, implying that they have an actual physical window that is only open at certain times, and through which the rocket presumably has to be launched. One character suggests moving the rocket outside in order to avoid issues that arise from dealing with the window. Ironically, this gets pushback because 'it's so sunny', which would normally indicate good conditions that would permit a launch. It also meets resistance because it would cause them to have to deal with bugs, presumably not of the technical type which might commonly prevent a launch, but more of the biological kind.

The title text continues the comic’s theme of taking aerospace terms literally, with a play on the two meanings of ''scrub''. Normally, in the context of a rocket launch, this would mean to cancel the launch, but here it apparently means that some cleaning job is required, possibly of the window in question (though how that would help them to launch the rocket through it is unclear), or possibly to deal with the aftermath of launching through the closed window.

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

[First panel: Ponytail and Hairy can be seen sitting either side of a technical-looking double-sided console, with Hairy wearing a mike-and-headphones headset]

Ponytail: The launch window will only be open for another 90 minutes. We may have to scrub.

[Second panel: Slightly expanded view, left from Ponytail and Hairy, Cueball can also be seen, operating a similar neighbouring console]

Cueball: You know, given all our issues with the launch window,

[Third panel: Cueball turns around, facing the others]

Cueball: Have we thought about moving the rocket outside?

Ponytail: Ugh, no. It's so sunny out.

Hairy: And there are bugs.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Hairy]]

Talk:2741: Wish Interpretation

2023-02-23T16:48:08Z

172.70.91.151:

To all you people reading the discussion, why can't I add my own person page? I mean, is a year too new? I think I know, [[User:No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO|(but I'm not completely sure.)]] ([[User talk:No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO|talk]]) 23:29, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

:Oh, you have to have an old enough account to make one? I had been wondering how to. [[User:Thexkcdnerd|Thexkcdnerd]] ([[User talk:Thexkcdnerd|talk]]) 00:02, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Ironically, a banknote created by a genie would be counterfeit, although the odds of legal trouble over $20 are nonetheless low. 23:43, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
:It doesn't have to be. The genie could take one away from someone, or just get one that's been lost. Also, the sentence for counterfeiting is the same regardless of the denomination. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 00:31, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
:The sentence for counterfeiting may be the same but the probability someone would actually go through the trouble of prosecuting you for $20 is much less than say $10,000 [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.151|172.70.214.151]] 03:04, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
::The US Treasury Dept. prosecutes every case it can prove. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 04:06, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
:::So 2 things: First of all they need to prove it. For that someone has to notice. Not every 20-Dollar-note will be scanned, and I guess the genie could make a pretty good copy (if he needs to copy it). Also noone said US-Dollar. The Genie could make a twist and use one of over 20 other currencies called dollar. Not sure if US Treasury Dept. would be interested in that :D by the way, the eastern caribean dollar has the short "XCD" - does anyone think that a thousand of those would be labeled XkCD? --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 13:13, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
::::Or he could use Monopoly money. Or Geniedollars. He never said it would be legal tender, after all.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.148|172.70.86.148]] 14:42, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
:::::For me, Monopoly Money has always been in £s (the board I always used going from Old Kent Road to Mayfair, naturally), though I've noticed that online (hyperinternational) representations, that I see in game-ads, now seem to use a special "barred-M" currency symbol (to copy how £, €, ¥ and $ are variously barred versions of L, E, Y and S).
:::::What Cueball-genie would use is an interesting phosophical question. I suspect he just gets whatever he needs (for personal use) out of petty cash and settles it up later. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.152|172.70.91.152]] 15:47, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

That's cool. Try https://what-if.xkcd.com/23/. Part 1. I need a new signature. [[User:No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO|(but I'm not completely sure.)]] ([[User talk:No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO|talk]]) 23:46, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I would (as the genie) just teleport Black Hat to the desert. No other trickery or devastation needed. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 00:34, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The oldest "Wish that I wish I didn't wish" I am personally aware of is Midas turning everything he touched into gold, including the food he tried to eat and his beloved daughter. Personally, I'd wish that the genie teach me a lesson. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 03:16, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

It's kinda funny how a citation is needed for claiming that wishing rain doesn't exist is bad because Randall will just cover it in "What If 3" 20:59, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
:He already replaced the rain with candy in What If 2. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.129.151|162.158.129.151]] 07:28, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The proper way of teaching Black Hat a lesson would be twisting his wish to make it beneficial to humanity. [[User:Tkopec|Tkopec]] ([[User talk:Tkopec|talk]]) 08:20, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

"And I want you to put it in my house." / [POOF!] - "Here, I turned your house into a Klein bottle."
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.160.39|172.71.160.39]] 08:25, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
:That would better satisfy "And I want my house to contain it", from one single-step literalist perspective... Wishes-gone-strange ''usually'' work on the basis of the 'laziest' misinterpretation (with or without the intention of mallice) that doesn't require too much reinterpretation.
:But how to misinterpret "put it in my house"? Hmmm... Nothing to suggest that it must stay there. Perhaps everything is going to be squeezed in through the front door and (Niagra Straw-like) eventually pushes most out of the back door. The house structure (but not fixtures and fittings) magically strengthened to continue being houselike, even as whatever the back yard is like (before it gets its own turn of being sequentially transported through) fills up with mountains (literally!) of the resulting wreckage/mishmash.
:But not sure if the house itself is not already "in the house", i.e. its structure, to be exempt by prior "in"ness (if not ownership)... I'm not a genie, and have not gone through the rather extensive training/job-orientation that they clearly go through. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.34|172.70.90.34]] 14:56, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
::Wouldn't the simplest thing be to just turn the house inside-out?[[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.151|172.70.91.151]] 16:48, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I had a good laugh when I saw [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2741:_Wish_Interpretation&diff=prev&oldid=306692 one of these 'corrections']. US English mandates "fulfill", where the UK/etc English version is "fulfil", yet it also goes the other way and uses words like "reveler" where most (all?) other versions of English would prefer "reveller".
 And would hope that, whenever words get USified, the editor involved realises (or "realizes", yet surprisingly not ever "realizez"!) that they aren't actually correcting typos (like they sometimes comment), merely relocalising the wordz.. sorry.. ''words''! :P [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.65|172.71.178.65]] 15:21, 23 February 2023 (UTC)