explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2947: Pascal's Wager Triangle

2024-06-18T15:45:27Z

172.71.242.55: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2947
| date = June 17, 2024
| title = Pascal's Wager Triangle
| image = pascals_wager_triangle_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x802px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In contrast to Pascal's Wager Triangle, Pascal's Triangle Wager argues that maybe God wants you to draw a triangle of numbers where each one is the sum of the two numbers above it, so you probably should, just in case.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT WHO BELIEVED THE N BOTS ABOVE HIM - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The comic is structured in a layout that emulates {{w|Pascal's triangle}}. Pascal's triangle is a numerical triangle where the top number is 1 and each value below is the sum of the adjacent number(s) above it. The second row would have two 1s (each the sum of the single 1 above), and the third row would have a 1 (the sum of a single 1 in the second row), a 2 (the sum of both 1s above it), and another 1, and so on. It plays important roles in binomial expansion, probability theory, and other areas of math. While {{w|Blaise Pascal}} did not invent the triangle, it is named after him.

{{w|Pascal's Wager}} is a philosophical argument proposed by Blaise Pascal. Essentially, if the Bible is true, both the rewards for believing in God and the punishment for nonbelief are infinite; if it is not, the cost of belief and benefit for nonbelief are negligible. Therefore, if there is a finite possibility that the Bible is true, however small, one should believe in God.

The comic merges the two — each Cueball is wagering his proof of a god or gods to the Cueballs below him, thereby creating Cueballs that believe in a number of gods equal to the sum of the 2 Cueballs above him. In the second row, the two Cueballs believe in a god, as intended by the original Cueball. However, in the third row, the Cueball in the middle interprets the two proofs offered to him as proving the existence of two gods. Theoretically, this expansion would continue for all integers as the triangle grows, giving rise to a belief in escalating numbers of gods towards the middle bottom of the triangle. This is clearly not the intent of the first Cueball, who simply wagered the proof of his one god, but he has no control over the situation.

It is unclear why the Cueballs behave in this fashion, instead of treating all the proofs as proving the existence of the same god. Perhaps each one rewords their arguments for god(s) sufficiently to make them sound different than other gods. This is not without precedent; for instance, scholars of comparative mythology believe{{acn}} that the religion of Proto-Indo-European peoples splintered into many disparate religions of Europe and West Asia.

This comic may be referencing a common counterargument to Pascal's Wager — that it works equally well for any hypothetical god which offers paradise for one action and damnation otherwise. This can even include hypothetical gods with contradictory criteria for entrance into paradise. In this case, the Cueballs apparently chose to believe in ''n'' deities to cover their bases.

The title text suggests that everyone should draw a proper Pascal's Triangle, since there is a possibility that God wants you to do so, and if they do then the benefits of pleasing them or the costs of displeasing them could be high, whereas if they have no such desire then there is minimal cost to drawing one anyway. The failing of this logic is that God may have a positive preference for you ''not'' to draw a Pascal's Triangle.

Pascal's Wager was previously mentioned in the title text of [[525]].

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

:[Cueballs, each holding some document, are shown in a triangular arrangement, with arrows pointing from upper to lower Cueballs:]
C1
C2 C3
C4 C5 C6
C7 C8 C9 C10
C11 C12 C13 C14 C15
:C1: Hey, you two below me! Here's a proof that you should believe in my god!
:C2 & C3: I'm convinced! Hey, you two below me! Here's a proof that you should believe in my god!
:C4 & C6: I'm convinced! Hey, you two below me! Here's a proof that you should believe in my god!
:C5: Ok, I believe you both! Hey, you two below me! Here's a proof that you should believe in my '''two''' gods!
:C7: I'm convinced! Hey, you two below me! Here's a proof that you should believe in my god!
:C8 & C9: Ok, I believe you both! Hey, you two below me! Here's a proof that you should believe in my '''three''' gods!
:C12 & C14: Ok, I believe you both! Hey, you two below me! Here's a proof that you should believe in my '''four''' gods!
:C13: Ok, I believe you both! Hey, you two below me! Here's a proof that you should believe in my '''six''' gods!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Pascal's Wager Triangle

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Religion]]

2945: Broken Model

2024-06-14T10:28:25Z

172.71.242.55: /* Explanation */ Possessive "its".

{{comic
| number = 2945
| date = June 12, 2024
| title = Broken Model
| image = broken_model_2x.png
| imagesize = 278x448px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In addition to eating foxes, rabbits can eat grass. The grass also eats foxes. Our equations chart the contours of Fox Hell.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a KILLER RABBIT. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. Otherwise, the KILLER RABBIT may come for you.}}
This comic shows [[Miss Lenhart]] explaining a mathematical model of a predator-prey relationship. The model has the terms swapped, showing that 400 rabbits are preying on 20 foxes. The teacher realizes this mistake and says "If this were an ecology class, I would have to fix that." Instead of fixing the model, though, she instead begins to calculate using this flawed model, and notes that this model implies that rabbits are carnivores.

The equations start with Nrabbits(0)=400 and Nfoxes(0)=20, the number of rabbits and foxes at time 0, followed by what looks like the {{w|Lotka–Volterra equations}}, a pair of first-order nonlinear differential equations, frequently used to describe the dynamics of biological systems in which two species interact. One of the pair of equations describes the number of prey over time, the other the number of predators over time, differing only by a negative sign (and coefficients). It is easy to mix up which equation describes which species, leading to the inverted predator-prey relation described.

If this was indeed the case the rabbits would soon render the foxes extinct. The reason this doesn't happen in reality for rabbits is that they outnumber the foxes (20 foxes vs 400 rabbits) and thus can survive being preyed upon. Often the predator takes the old and sick animals first, thus keeping the rest of the animals more healthy. But following the math of the wrong formula would soon lead to zero foxes. As per the title text, the rabbits could survive without the foxes to prey on, since they still eat grass. However, this reality is terrifying for the foxes, because they are rendered as prey.

The title text extends the joke by looking at a even more flawed model. This model has grass as well, but instead of grass and foxes not interacting, grass eats foxes, creating a "Fox Hell."
In the real world, grass doesn't hunt foxes{{citation needed}}, but instead, grass synthesizes its energy through [https://soandmo.com/blogs/blog/where-does-the-grass-plant-get-its-energy-from photosynthesis], and may use foxes that have already died from other causes as fertilizer. Foxes do occasionally [https://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/animals/article/red-fox-diet-what-foxes-eat eat grass], although not as food, but for other health reasons.

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart is holding a pointer to a whiteboard, indicating the last part of the last line of text.]
:Miss Lenhart: Hmm, looks like I accidentally swapped the predation terms.
:Miss Lenhart: If this were an ecology class, I would have to fix that.
:Miss Lenhart: Unfortunately for those 20 poor foxes, this is calculus, and the math says these 400 rabbits are hungry for meat.

:[There are three lines on the white board, where the '...' parts in the bottom line are illegible:]
:Nrabbits(0) = 400
:Nfoxes(0) = 20
:dN0/dt = ... dN.../... = ...

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Every broken mathematical model is just a glimpse into a terrifying alternate universe.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Animals]]

2941: Cell Organelles

2024-06-04T12:56:43Z

172.71.242.55: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2941
| date = June 3, 2024
| title = Cell Organelles
| image = cell_organelles_2x.png
| imagesize = 563x451px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's believed that Golgi was originally an independent organism who was eventually absorbed into our cells, where he began work on his Apparatus.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GOLGI ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic depicts a {{w|Cell (biology)|biological cell}} diagram with a mix of real and fictional {{w|organelle}}s, blending accurate {{w|Cell biology|cell biology}} terms with misplaced or absurd labels. While it includes actual cell components like the nucleus, mitochondria, and Golgi apparatus, it also includes unrelated concepts from various fields such as geology, engineering, software, and pop culture. Labels like "evil endoplasmic reticulum" and "sticky endoplasmic reticulum" make fun of scientific terms. The comic plays on the complexity and diversity of cell structures by mixing in unrelated and humorous terms, highlighting the often confusing and intricate nature of scientific diagrams with clever wordplay and cross-disciplinary jokes.

The title text adds a humorous fictional backstory to the {{w|Golgi apparatus}}, an essential cell organelle involved in processing and packaging proteins. It playfully suggests that {{w|Camillo Golgi}}, the scientist who discovered the Golgi apparatus, was originally an independent organism. This organism was supposedly absorbed into our cells, where it then started working on what is now known as the Golgi apparatus. The joke is a satirical take on {{w|Symbiogenesis|endosymbiotic theory}}, which posits that certain organelles within {{w|Eukaryote|eukaryotic}} cells, like {{w|mitochondria}} and {{w|chloroplasts}}, originated from independent symbiotic {{w|Prokaryote|prokaryotic organisms}} that were absorbed by a host {{w|germ cell}}. Golgi appears to be depicted in the comic as a tiny alien being.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Label
! Meaning
! Real?
! Cell organelle?
! Explanation
|-
| {{w|Carbonation}}
| {{w|Carbon dioxide}} dissolved in a liquid.
| Yes
| No
| Carbonation causes soda pop and similar liquids to bubble, fizz, foam, and {{w|effervesce}}.
|-
| {{w|Cellophane}}
| A thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated {{w|cellulose}}.
| Yes
| No
| A type of packaging material. A {{w|cell wall}} is indeed made of cellulose, though not in the form cellophane. Also, this drawing looks more like an animal cell, which (unlike plants and fungi) should not have a cell wall.
|-
| {{w|Chloroplast}}s if you're lucky
| Organelles in plant cells responsible for photosynthesis.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelles, only found in plant cells. The phrase "if you're lucky" could simply be a comment on chloroplasts not being found in all cells, or it could suggest that of all foreign objects that Randall could have added to an animal cell, chloroplasts are one of the least dangerous.
|-
| Drain plug
| A stopper for a drain.
| Yes
| Conceivably
| A plumbing term, which could refer to a {{w|porosome}}. Even small, temporary damage to the integrity of the {{w|cell membrane}} puts the cell at immediate and great risk of death.
|-
| Evil endoplasmic reticulum
| Not a real term.
| No
| No
| A humorous twist on the different types of actual {{w|endoplasmic reticulum|endoplasmic reticula}}, implying a malevolent version.
|-
| Golgi
| {{w|Camillo Golgi}} (1843–1926) was an Italian biologist and {{w|pathologist}} who discovered the Golgi apparatus; known also for his works on the central nervous system.
| Yes
| No
| The real Golgi was not and is not a tiny alien being who merged with our cells, as the comic and title text imply.
|-
| {{w|Golgi apparatus}}
| A complex of {{w|vesicles}} and folded membranes involved in secretion and intracellular transport.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelle, which takes {{w|polypeptide}} chains from the rough endoplasmic reticulum (carried via transport vesicle) and processes them into their ultimate protein structure before sending them (via vesicles) to their destination (such as an organelle or outside of the cell).
|-
| Human skin
| The outer covering of the human body.
| Yes
| No
| Skin cells aren't normally inside other cells, but dead skin cell fragments can be inside {{w|phagocyte}}s. The label, however, is drawn connected to the outer {{w|cell membrane}} or the {{w|extracellular matrix}}. This may be a reference to the idea that almost everything in the human environment is coated with invisible skin cells.
|-
| {{w|Hypoallergenic}} filling
| Materials that cause relatively fewer allergic reactions.
| Yes
| No
| Consumer product term.
|-
| {{w|Lithosphere}}
| The rigid outer part of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle.
| Yes
| No
| Term from geology; part of the Earth's crust.
|-
| {{w|Mantle}} 
| The layer of the earth between the crust and the core.
| Yes
| No
| Misplaced geological term with many other meanings.
|-
| {{w|Midichlorians}}
| Fictional microorganisms in the {{w|Star Wars}} universe, which confer Force sensitivity and thereby {{w|Jedi}} associated powers.
| No
| Fictional
| It's unclear whether {{w|George Lucas}} intended for "midi-chlorians" to be {{w|Symbiogenesis|endosymbiotic organelles}} or internal {{w|Symbiosis|symbionts}}. Might also be referring to {{w|chromoplasts}} or {{w|nitroplasts}}
|-
| {{w|Mitochondria}}
| Organelles that generate energy for the cell.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelles, widely known as the "powerhouse of the cell."
|-
| Natural flavor
| Flavoring derived from natural sources.
| Yes
| Conceivably
| A common ingredient on labels, usually meaning any substance to add flavor, aroma, or both, other than synthetic chemicals which are referred to as artificial flavors.
|-
| {{w|Norton AntiVirus}}
| A software product designed to protect computers from malware.
| Yes
| No
| Computer viruses and biological viruses are completely different, and systems designed to counter one generally don't work for the other. Many cell types do have antiviral mechanisms, notably the {{w|CRISPR}} (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) DNA sequences in prokaryotes, which resist viral (bacteriophage) infection. However, the cell shown is not prokaryotic, since it contains a nucleus.
|-
| {{w|Nucleolus}}
| A small dense spherical structure in the nucleus of a cell during {{w|interphase}}.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelle, involved in {{w|ribosome}} production.
|-
| Nucleoloulous
| Not a real term.
| No
| No
| A humorous continuation of the terms "nucleus" and "nucleolus."
|-
| {{w|Cell nucleus|Nucleus}}
| The central and most important part of an object, forming the basis for its activity and growth.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelle which houses genetic material.
|-
| {{w|Nucleon}}s
| Protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom.
| Yes
| No
| The depicted circles are far too big to be actual nucleons.
|-
| {{w|O-ring}}
| A mechanical gasket in the shape of a torus; used to seal connections.
| Yes
| No
| Engineering term. Both the o-ring and pith are drawn connected to the inner cell membrane.
|-
| {{w|Pith}}
| The central tissue in plants, used for nutrient transport.
| Yes
| No
| Botanical term. See immediately above.
|-
| {{w|Pleiades}}
| A cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus.
| Yes
| No
| Even a single star is far too big to fit in a cell.
|-
| {{w|Rough endoplasmic reticulum}}
| Endoplasmic reticulum with {{w|ribosomes}} attached, involved in protein synthesis.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelle. "Rough" refers to the presence of ribosomes covering its membrane, which translate {{w|messenger RNA}} into polypeptide chains. Normally the endoplasmic reticulum would wrap around the cell nucleus.
|-
| {{w|Seed}}s
| Plant embryos used for reproduction.
| Yes
| No
| Seeds are multicellular, and sometimes contain small proportions of non-cellular tissue.
|-
| {{w|Slime}}
| A moist, soft, and slippery substance.
| Yes
| Conceivably
| Could refer to the texture and appearance of {{w|cytoplasm}}, but not specific to cells.
|-
| {{w|Smooth endoplasmic reticulum}}
| A network of tubular membranes within the cytoplasm of the cell, involved in the transport of materials.
| Yes
| Yes
| A standard term for the smooth (i.e., not ribosome-covered) portion of the endoplasmic reticulum.
|-
| Sticky endoplasmic reticulum
| Not a real term, although parts of the reticula have sticky pockets.[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2023.1156152/full]
| No
| No
| Another humorous twist on the actual types of endoplasmic reticula.
|-
| {{w|Ventricle}}
| A chamber of the heart that pumps blood out.
| Yes
| No
| Ventricles are actually part of the body, and they are composed of many cells. Possibly a pun on {{w|vesicle}} (or {{w|vacuole}}), a small membrane-enclosed vessel, such as the transport vesicles that carry polypeptides from the rough endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi apparatus for processing.
|-
| {{w|Vitreous humour}}
| The clear gel that fills the space between the lens and the retina in the eyeball.
| Yes
| No
| The vitreous humor is in eyes, not cells.
|-
| Weak spot
| A vulnerable point.
| Yes
| Conceivably
| {{w|Cell membrane}} surfaces do indeed vary in strength, often due to the presence of organelles such as {{w|ion channel pore}}s or {{w|porosome}}s, both of which can be leveraged by viruses to enter cells.
|}

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

Cell Organelles

[A cell is shown with the following structures and areas labeled, counter-clockwise from upper left:]

* Smooth endoplasmic reticulum
* Lithosphere
* O-Ring
* Pith
* Nucleus
* Nucleolus
* Nucleoloulous
* Nucleons
* Drain plug
* Evil endoplasmic reticulum
* Hypoallergenic filling
* Weak spot
* Mitochondria
* Midichlorians
* Chloroplasts if you're lucky
* Human skin
* Carbonation
* Golgi
* Golgi apparatus
* Norton AntiVirus
* Sticky endoplasmic reticulum
* Pleiades
* Natural flavor
* Cellophane
* Rough endoplasmic reticulum

[These labels are inside the cell:]

* Ventricle
* Mantle
* Slime
* Vitreous humour
* Seeds

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Biology]]

2927: Alphabetical Cartogram

2024-05-01T19:46:27Z

172.71.242.55: /* Table of states */ Better overall formatting (pity "col1left" class isn't operational), and regraded the hue distribution

{{comic
| number = 2927
| date = May 1, 2024
| title = Alphabetical Cartogram
| image = alphabetical_cartogram_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x548px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Poor Weeoming.
}}

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

This comic shows a map of the {{w|United States}}, with every state resized based on where it appears in an alphabetical list of states. Hence {{w|Alabama}} is the largest state, {{w|Wyoming}} is the smallest.

Wyoming shrank the most, while {{w|Delaware}} grew the largest proportionally in geographical size. In the ranking of US states {{w|List of U.S. states and territories by area|by area}}, {{w|Texas}}'s position dropped the most, while Delaware and {{w|Connecticut}}'s positions rose the most.

This coincides with a recent [https://record.umich.edu/articles/study-alphabetical-order-of-surnames-may-affect-grading/ study] from the University of Michigan showing that the alphabetical order of surnames leads to differences in grading.

The title text creates a portmanteau of the words “wee,” which means “little,” and “Wyoming,” making fun of how small it is on this map, since "W" appears at the end of the alphabet.

Bias resulting from alphabetical order was also the topic of [[2789: Making Plans]].

===Table of states===

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: right;"
! !! colspan="3" | Real Life !! colspan="2" | Alphabetical
|-
!State!!Area (total mi²)!!%age US!!Area #!!Alpha #!!Rank dif.
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Alaska ||665,384||17.53% || 1|| 2||data-sort-value= "+1" style="background-color:#FDD"| 1 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Texas ||268,596|| 7.07% || 2||43||data-sort-value="+41" style="background-color:#F00"|41 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|California ||163,695|| 4.31% || 3|| 5||data-sort-value= "+2" style="background-color:#FDD"| 2 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Montana ||147,040|| 3.87% || 4||26||data-sort-value="+22" style="background-color:#F66"|22 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|New Mexico ||121,590|| 3.20% || 5||31||data-sort-value="+26" style="background-color:#F55"|26 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Arizona ||113,990|| 3.00% || 6|| 3||data-sort-value= "-3" style="background-color:#DFD"| 3 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Nevada ||110,572|| 2.91% || 7||28||data-sort-value="+21" style="background-color:#F77"|21 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Colorado ||104,094|| 2.74% || 8|| 6||data-sort-value= "-2" style="background-color:#DFD"| 2 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Oregon || 98,379|| 2.59% || 9||37||data-sort-value="+28" style="background-color:#F44"|28 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Wyoming || 97,813|| 2.58% ||10||50||data-sort-value="+40" style="background-color:#F00"|40 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Michigan || 96,714|| 2.55% ||11||22||data-sort-value="+11" style="background-color:#FAA"|11 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Minnesota || 86,936|| 2.29% ||12||23||data-sort-value="+11" style="background-color:#FAA"|11 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Utah || 84,897|| 2.24% ||13||44||data-sort-value="+31" style="background-color:#F33"|31 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Idaho || 83,569|| 2.20% ||14||12||data-sort-value= "-2" style="background-color:#DFD"| 2 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Kansas || 82,278|| 2.17% ||15||16||data-sort-value= "+1" style="background-color:#FDD"| 1 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Nebraska || 77,348|| 2.04% ||16||27||data-sort-value="+11" style="background-color:#FAA"|11 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|South Dakota || 77,116|| 2.03% ||17||41||data-sort-value="+24" style="background-color:#F66"|24 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Washington || 71,298|| 1.88% ||18||47||data-sort-value="+29" style="background-color:#F44"|29 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|North Dakota || 70,698|| 1.86% ||19||34||data-sort-value="+15" style="background-color:#F99"|15 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Oklahoma || 69,899|| 1.841%||20||36||data-sort-value="+16" style="background-color:#F88"|16 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Missouri || 69,707|| 1.836%||21||25||data-sort-value= "+4" style="background-color:#FCC"| 4 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Florida || 65,758|| 1.732%||22|| 9||data-sort-value="-13" style="background-color:#9F9"|13 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Wisconsin || 65,496|| 1.725%||23||49||data-sort-value="+26" style="background-color:#F55"|26 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Georgia || 59,425|| 1.565%||24||10||data-sort-value="-14" style="background-color:#9F9"|14 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Illinois || 57,914|| 1.525%||25||13||data-sort-value="-12" style="background-color:#AFA"|12 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Iowa || 56,273|| 1.482%||26||15||data-sort-value="-11" style="background-color:#AFA"|11 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|New York || 54,555|| 1.437%||27||32||data-sort-value= "+5" style="background-color:#FCC"| 5 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|North Carolina|| 53,819|| 1.418%||28||33||data-sort-value= "+5" style="background-color:#FCC"| 5 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Arkansas || 53,179|| 1.401%||29|| 4||data-sort-value="-25" style="background-color:#5F5"|25 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Alabama || 52,420|| 1.381%||30|| 1||data-sort-value="-29" style="background-color:#4F4"|29 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Louisiana || 52,378|| 1.380%||31||18||data-sort-value="-13" style="background-color:#9F9"|13 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Mississippi || 48,432|| 1.276%||32||24||data-sort-value= "-8" style="background-color:#BFB"| 8 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Pennsylvania || 46,054|| 1.213%||33||38||data-sort-value= "+5" style="background-color:#FCC"| 5 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Ohio || 44,826|| 1.181%||34||35||data-sort-value= "+1" style="background-color:#FDD"| 1 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Virginia || 42,775|| 1.127%||35||46||data-sort-value="+11" style="background-color:#FAA"|11 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Tennessee || 42,144|| 1.110%||36||42||data-sort-value= "+6" style="background-color:#FCC"| 6 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Kentucky || 40,408|| 1.064%||37||17||data-sort-value="-20" style="background-color:#7F7"|20 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Indiana || 36,420|| 0.959%||38||14||data-sort-value="-24" style="background-color:#6F6"|24 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Maine || 35,380|| 0.932%||39||19||data-sort-value="-20" style="background-color:#7F7"|20 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|South Carolina|| 32,020|| 0.843%||40||40||data-sort-value= "0" style="background-color:#FFD"| 0 ◀
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|West Virginia || 24,230|| 0.638%||41||48||data-sort-value= "+7" style="background-color:#FBB"| 7 ▼
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Maryland || 12,406|| 0.327%||42||20||data-sort-value="-22" style="background-color:#6F6"|22 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Hawaii || 10,932|| 0.288%||43||11||data-sort-value="-32" style="background-color:#3F3"|32 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Massachusetts || 10,554|| 0.278%||44||21||data-sort-value="-23" style="background-color:#6F6"|23 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Vermont || 9,616|| 0.253%||45||45||data-sort-value=" 0" style="background-color:#FFD"| 0 ◀
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|New Hampshire || 9,349|| 0.246%||46||29||data-sort-value="-17" style="background-color:#8F8"|17 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|New Jersey || 8,723|| 0.230%||47||30||data-sort-value="-17" style="background-color:#8F8"|17 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Connecticut || 5,543|| 0.146%||48|| 7||data-sort-value="-41" style="background-color:#0F0"|41 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Delaware || 2,489|| 0.066%||49|| 8||data-sort-value="-41" style="background-color:#0F0"|41 ▲
|-
|style="text-align:left;"|Rhode Island || 1,545|| 0.041%||50||39||data-sort-value="-11" style="background-color:#AFA"|11 ▲
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:A More Fair Map
:Instead of giving more area to larger states, this map improves fairness by sizing the states alphabetically.
:[A labeled map of the United States where states are resized based on their alphabetical order]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:US maps]]
[[Category:Geography]]

Talk:2922: Pub Trivia

2024-04-22T09:07:11Z

172.71.242.55:

I expect that the BTS question is a reference to the traditional Korean system of counting a person's age in units of Sal which started at 1 and incremented on the first day of the year. Since this system was abandoned on official documents in 2023, but is still in use in some contexts, the question of whether every member of BTS had a "birthday" on the first day of the year is ambiguous. [[User:Philhower|Philhower]] ([[User talk:Philhower|talk]]) 14:13, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

question 5, planets exist outside the solar system, adding to the ambiguity. [[User:Philhower|Philhower]] ([[User talk:Philhower|talk]]) 14:15, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
:One of the requirements in the definition of a planet is that it orbits the Sun, so no there are no planets outside the Solar system. [[User:Tharkon|Tharkon]] ([[User talk:Tharkon|talk]]) 17:50, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

::{{w|NASA}} disagrees. [https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/ Exoplanet Archive] shows 5612 confirmed planets. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 20:55, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
::: The IAU is the body that defines such things - and they do say that planets have to orbit the Sun...things that orbit other stars are properly called "exo-planets". But still - do we include dwarf planets? Rogue planets? It's definitely a crazy-vague question. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.219|172.70.211.219]] 21:05, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
:::: the IAU is one body that claims the authority to define such things, but their authority is not recognized by any of the things they are claiming the right to name. (Except for a very small part of earth, mostly made of humans) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.58.203|172.69.58.203]] 00:10, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
::::That seems ridiculous, "If it isn't one of ours it don't count"? That'd be like saying "They're only 'cars' if they use North American roads, in other countries using THEIR roads you have to call them exo-cars!". LOL! And every future/space-based fiction calls them planets, just makes more sense not to be so arbitrarily exclusionary. Ours isn't the only sun, we shouldn't pretend it has some aspect that makes it count more than others - outside of that it's the one with us. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:09, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
::::: Correction, the IAU definition explicitly states that it is only about planets within the solar system and has no comment about exoplanets one way or the other. Presumably, to leave some flexibility on all the weird edge cases that are bound to come up with exoplanets. https://www.iau.org/static/resolutions/Resolution_GA26-5-6.pdf [[Special:Contributions/172.68.195.213|172.68.195.213]] 07:55, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
::::Gas giants should be excluded too - they're not planets - just wannabe stars.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.31|172.70.163.31]] 08:34, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

: I think the correct answer is 0: before the solar system formed there were no planets. So, originally, there would have been none. If exo-planets count, going back to the beginning of time gives the same answer: when the universe came into existence during the big bang there were no stars, let alone planets orbiting them. Even religion agrees: in the beginning God created the earth and the heavens, but the sun came later, so technically earth was not a planet since it didn't orbit anything.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.49|162.158.62.49]] 22:23, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

As for question 9, please see the note about the history of Austrailia's capitals at: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_national_capitals#Oceania]]. and the page regarding countries with multiple capitals [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_multiple_capitals]] [[User:Philhower|Philhower]] ([[User talk:Philhower|talk]]) 14:24, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
: See Also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_capital_cities List of Australian capital cities] - As an Australian, I believe many would also consider the major city in their state/territory to be a capital city, although not the capital of Australia.

About the alt text, London is certainly in Europe. The question itself is malformed because "Europe (or 'the EU')" is not self-consistent: there is a lot of European countries that are not part of the EU. [[User:RedGolpe|RedGolpe]] ([[User talk:RedGolpe|talk]]) 14:32, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
:The "Greater London" answer is also tricksy, as the "ceremonial county" of GL {{w|London boroughs|may not include}} the additional area of the City Of London (though it does include the City Of Westminster, which is sometimes the trick answer to certain trick questions that a quizmaster might attempt to pull). The ''administrative'' Greater London is the ceremonial one ''plus'' CoL, however... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.19|172.70.162.19]] 15:04, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
::I would argue London is not in Europe because there is no clear definition for Europe as a geographic area, it really doesn't have an eastern border that is not arbitrary, so the only clearly defined thing Europe can refer to is the EU. [[User:Tharkon|Tharkon]] ([[User talk:Tharkon|talk]]) 17:50, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
:::London, France is both in Europe and the EU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_France [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.49|172.70.163.49]] 18:00, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
:::While the eastern border of Europe is not clearly defined I am not aware that there is any definition of (geographic) Europe that excludes the islands (and subsequently London) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.135|162.158.202.135]] 21:24, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
::::There's "mainland Europe", excluding islands. Or at least any of several possibly island archipeligos and/or island nationstates. e.g. Mont-Saint-Michel might not be (exluded, that is, due to being French and having a (tide-dependant) ground access), Jersey would be (British Crown Territory island), Malta probably (island state), Sicily would depend on your thinking (it being Italian, and much larger than the strait that makes it an island offshoot). Most of Scandinavia might be interestingly included (with Denmark) or excluded (with Iceland), according to context. Even Gibraltar might or might not be, depending upon upon the thinking (or lack of it) behind the use of the term. (But, fiddling around the edges aside, (the English) London is not in "mainland Europe" and hasn't been for maybe a full 10kY before it became "London" in any useful sense.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.49|172.70.163.49]] 23:44, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
::::: The phrase "continental Europe" is also used, and might be implied by a British person saying "I travelled around Europe last year". [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.54|172.69.195.54]] 15:01, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
::::: The (semi-)apocryphal headline "Fog In Channel, Continent Cut Off" is perhaps indicative of the {{w|Continental Europe#Great Britain and Ireland}} British collective mindset (of which I must therefore be a component, albeit not at that end of the spectrum). [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.71|172.71.242.71]] 15:39, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
:::I'd say The European Council has at least as good (or bad, depending which way you look at it) a claim to be 'Europe' as the EU does, and London (through the UK) is in that (for now, anyway).[[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.55|172.71.242.55]] 09:07, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benxi Benxi Lake] is actually considered to be the smallest lake in the world. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.135.205|172.70.135.205]]
:{{cn}}[[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.176|172.70.86.176]] 14:40, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I never realized how challenging it is to edit pages when they've just been posted. Makes me long for something like Google docs.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.3.43|172.68.3.43]] 14:39, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

People, who are born on 29th February don't have a birthday in years which are not leap years. However, 2024, when this comic was published is a leap year. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.95.9|162.158.95.9]] 14:40, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

"5. How many planets were there originally?" This could also refer even back to the start of the universe, when there were (likely) just 0 planets. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.101|162.158.86.101]] 14:43, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I anticiated a lot of Edit Conflicts, but not actually quite so many as to not to be able to resolve my edits with everyone else's. This is the bare-bones that I was putting in (until finding multiple attempts tried to be added consecutively...
{{cot}}
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Question !! Problem !! Possible answer(s)
|-
| Which member of BTS has a birthday this year?
| Every living person has a birthday this year (being a leap-year, this includes those born on 29/Feb).
|
|-
| How many sides does a platonic solid have?
| There are five (or [[2781: The Six Platonic Solids|six]]) platonic solids, each with a different number of sides.
| 4, 6, 8, 12 or 20
|-
| What is the smallest lake in the world?
| The distinction between a small lake and a pond, pool or puddle (for example) is difficult to define.
|
|-
| Which Steven Spielberg movie features more shark attacks? Jaws (1875) or Lincoln (2012)
| Not a problem, as Lincoln has very few shark attacks.{{Citation needed}} The problem is that barely anyone will ''not'' be able to correctly answer this.
|
|-
| How many planets were there originally?
| Contextually vague. At what time and within what volume of space, and what is the scope of 'planet' defined here?
|
|-
| What NFL player has scored the most points outside of a game?
| Outside of (NFL) games, individuals may accumulate points in any number of ways (e.g. Scrabble)
|
|-
| The Wright brothers built the first airplane. Who built the last one?
| Until no further planes are built, individuals/teams/companies continue to build (to completion) ever more examples, changing the answer possibly moment to moment.
|
|-
| Is every even number greater than 2 the sum of two primes?
| This is a {{w|Goldbach's conjecture|currently unanswered question}}.
|
|-
| Not counting Canberra, what city is the capital of Australia?
| Canberra is ''the'' capital of Australia, a fairly well known 'obscure' fact. Each Australian territory also has their own state capital, so there is not one other ''single'' example.
|
|-
| Who played the drums?
| Lack of context. With which group? For which song? For which (re-)recording? At which event?
|
|-
| Where is London located? (a) The British Isles (b) Great Britain and Northern Ireland (c) The UK (d) Europe (or 'the EU') (e) Greater London
| Almost all of these are correct (though London is geographically in Europe but no longer in the EU).
|}

This is apparently deliberate (at least on behalf of the organisers), perhaps to upset or otherwise impede groups of overconfident quizzers who would otherwise dominate any genuinely good quiz.
{{cob}}
...make use of it however you wish, anybody who has the time not to keep chasing all the simultaneous edits. (The above is a bit behind 'perfection', and lacks many of the integrations, wikilinks and adjustments I had made. I backspaced out of the edit I had finally reached, before remembering to take a full copy into my paste-buffer!) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.115|172.70.90.115]] 14:53, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I thought the answer to #2 could be 1, because as 3D solids they only have one surface. I would guess the player with the most points outside of a game is the one who's played idlers (like Cookie Clicker) the longest — though I suppose those could be considered "inside of a game" as well. Also, I played the drums. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.254.143|172.70.254.143]] 15:33, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
:The answer to #2 is '2 - the in-side and the out-side'.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.242|172.69.43.242]] 15:46, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Considering the platonic solids explanation lists all the correct answers, could someone include a list of all the members of BTS and their respective birthdays? Bing copilot suggests the following:

1. **Jin (Kim Seok-jin)**:
- Birthday: **December 4, 1992**

2. **Suga (Min Yoon-gi)**:
- Birthday: **March 9, 1993**

3. **J-Hope (Jung Hoseok)**:
- Birthday: **February 18, 1994**

4. **RM (Kim Nam-joon)**:
- Birthday: **September 12, 1994**

5. **Jimin (Park Ji-min)**:
- Birthday: **October 13, 1995**

6. **V (Kim Tae-Hyung)**:
- V's birthday is **December 30**, but the year is not mentioned in the provided information.

7. **Jungkook (Jeon Jungkook)**:
- Jungkook's birthday is **September 1**, but the year is not mentioned in the provided information.
[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.19|172.70.162.19]] 15:48, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

: I'm not opposed to adding BTS birthdays, but I think it should be done by someone more knowledgeable about the band than me. Birthdays can be a surprisingly nuanced subject.[[User:Comatoran|Comatoran]] ([[User talk:Comatoran|talk]]) 15:59, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
:Wikipedia says {{w|V_(singer)|'95}} and {{w|Jungkook|'97}} respectively[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.37|172.70.162.37]] 16:04, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

London is both a City (London) and a City within a City (The City of London) and an Area (Greater London)
There are also many more places named London than the one that is the Capital of the UK .. Serbia, France, Canada (Which is larger and the one in the UK), 10 in the USA, and one on Kiribati 17:56, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
:Are you saying London, Ontario, Canada is BIGGER than the more famous London, England??? That's a country capital! Is that seriously true? I'm Canadian, I don't know London, ON as being THAT big... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[7User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:52, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
::It's very unlikely to be larger in population terms than the (common!) wider definition of the main UK London, as that would make it larger than any other city in Canada by a large margin. In terms of area, London ON is very likely to be larger than the City of London (which is surprisingly small). More widely, the definition of what actually is a "city" is more complex than it appears to be at first glance; administrative areas (what official statistics are collected for) are often quite different from where the bulk of people are. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.25|162.158.74.25]] 07:20, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
:::Some wikipedia figures, for reference:
:::*{{w|London, Ontario}} = 168.76 sq mi, Population 422,324
:::*{{w|City of London}}, subset of Capital of UK = 1.12 sq mi, Population 8,618
:::*{{w|London}}, administrative/etc capital of UK = 606.96 sq mi, Population 8,799,800
:::*{{w|London, Belgrade}} = a 'neighbourhood' (<1 sq mi?), Population unknown
:::*{{w|London, France}} = 'a small agricultural village'
:::*...
:::*{{w|List of minor planets: 8001–9000#837|8837 London}} = 1.5 mi diameter (~28s q mi, ~14 cu mi?), Population... some of the {{w|Clangers}}?
:::I skipped a few of the others (e.g. the various US ones: cities, townships, communities)... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.230.46|162.158.230.46]] 18:10, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm surprised there were no phishing-type questions (i.e. "what are the last four digits of your social security number", "what are the three numbers on the back of your debit card", etc).22:33, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

The only correct answer(s) to "who played the drums" would be "the drummer", or "twelve drummers", but I would accept Phil Collins, Alex Van Halen, or Ringo Starr for half a point each [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.100|108.162.241.100]] 02:40, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
: "Who played the drums" is Keith Moon; in this cryptic clue, "Who" is the name of the band, and "played the drums" indicates the drummer; hence the answer is Keith Moon, the drummer of The Who. [[User:Sabik|Sabik]] ([[User talk:Sabik|talk]]) 04:29, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
:Clearly the correct answer is 'Animal'.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.176|172.71.178.176]] 08:45, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I asked my Mom these questions & she said the answer to #7 so flatly: ''Boeing ''
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 02:44, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

On the Capital of Australia: Melbourne hosted parliament before Canberra was built, and Jervis Bay was part of the ACT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jervis_Bay_Territory

Are there people outside of the USA that are surprised to learn that Washington D.C. is the capital of the USA, rather than New York, Los Angeles, Chicago etc. due to its relatively small population? ("only" ~670000 in 2024) [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 06:50, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

I came here all prepared to say that the Title Text should have Ontario, Canada as a (likewise correct) answer, but I see somebody already put that into the table, LOL! I feel like the "More Reasonable" version of the planet question should NOT mention Pluto, it should be the question IMPLIED in the comic whose answer is 9 (such as "How many planets were originally in our Solar System", but without the ambiguity of "originally". Basically a question whose answer is 9, pushing people to include Pluto, while allowing people the mistake of saying the current answer of 8, but mentioning Pluto would ruin that/the question). [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:52, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

There could also be a person Named "London" who is located somewhere, perhaps in the same bar (or not) -- [[Special:Contributions/172.70.46.71|172.70.46.71]] 12:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_%28name%29 [[Special:Contributions/172.70.42.31|172.70.42.31]] 16:27, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I thought I knew the minimum size of a lake by definition, at least in the US, but I just found different authorities asserting 1, 10, and 20 acres as the distinction between a lake and a pond. Two non-metric distinctions are that a lake has an aphotic (dark) zone, or a lake is fed and drained by a river, but they don't help here. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.43.53|172.70.43.53]] 16:22, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

For the love of god can we stop saying that Pluto was "demoted" to a dwarf planet? It didn't have its category changed, it had its category defined (for the first time!). It was a founding member of a newly named category. And it's not like planets are better than dwarf planets, they're just different. (I'm going to die on this hill, ain't I?)
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.16|172.68.34.16]] 01:35, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
:Yes, you probably are. When it happened, many people, including astronomers, considered it a downgrade. There's some prestige in being a planet -- the Sun and the planets are considered the most significant objects in the Solar System. The qualifier suggests that it's less important than the "real" planets, and was kicked out of the planet club for being deficient in some way. Maybe we need a campaign from dwarf humans to remind everyone that they're just smaller, but they have no less dignity. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 23:41, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

For the planet question there's also Theia, which is theorized to have been a planet prior to smashing into proto Earth and forming the moon and modern larger Earth. So there used to be at least nine planets by the current definition in our solar system.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.20|162.158.155.20]] 03:50, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

For question #8, it's not that mathematicians were idling around. A lot of partial results were made, see Wiki. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.160.33|172.71.160.33]] 08:22, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

I was confused by this question at first. The answer is "no." It is disproved by example. 21+3=24 21 is not a prime. 24 is even. {{unsigned ip|162.158.154.65|19:38, 21 April 2024
:24 is the sum of many pairs of numbers. Amongst those pairs (as with any even number >2) may be one ore more pairs of primes (even 2, if you count 1 as a prime - though generally one doesn't). 24 is (just looking at the odd numbers >1) 21+3, 19+5 (both primes!), 17+7 (both primes), 15+9 (no), 13+11 (both primes) and then of course the reverses of these (if you count those). So 24 is the sum of two primes (three, or six, times). 4 is just the sum of 2+2, 6 is only 3+3, 8 is only 5+3... And every even number checked from there on up ''can'' be expressed as the sum of two primes (at least once). But is there ever a point at which there is an even number that is not?
:With 3, 5 and 7 being primes, then you can definitely say that if N is an even number that has (or even relies upon) a solution with 3, then N+2 and N+4 are, which would be answerable by the same sum but with 5 or 7 instead. Plus N+8 (3->11), N+10 (3>13). And maybe you can fill in the N+6 and N+8 by the ''other'' prime used being also a suitable twin prime that you can swap out for the P±2 partner. But only if it's the right prime of any given pair, and not all primes are twins, so there's a lot more to consider about whether any given advancement up the even-numnber ladder can be answered by a suitable pair of primes.
: e.g. 15440=7717+7723 (one possible solution). 15442 therefore needs +2 to that. But 7717 and 7723 ar adjacent primes that areen't two apart (so you can't just add two to 7717 and have 7723 + 7723) and the next adjacent primes are 7703 and 7727 (not two apart, and not obviously useful to go 7717->7703, either). So there must be another solution (theoretically, but also proven by having been checked). By doing ''quite a bit'' of to-and-fro (if that's how we're doing it), we can finally announce that 15442=7649+7793 (but I also found 7523+7919, 7541+7901, 7559+7883 and 7589+7853, before I stopped the search). So It works up to 15442.
:15444? Well, neither 7649 or 7793 have a +2 prime-partner. But 7589 is followed by 7591 (as a new partner to 7853). And 7559 is followed by 7561, so 7561+7883 would also be an answer. There will (probably) be many others.
:But will there ''always'' be many others? Or even just the one? I'm sure someone has been counting how many unique (bidirectional) solutions each number has, and probably there are some that ''only just'' get the requisite single pair of primes that sum to it. Could it ever not even manage that? Those actually familiar with the efforts to prove the conjecture would know, rather than a fool like me coming fresh to the problem. (Relatively, that is... I already knew about it, but I've never tried to wade into the actual theory until right now, and this random example I set up to 'explain' this, just now.) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.175|172.71.242.175]] 21:01, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

April Fools' Day comics

2024-04-02T12:58:10Z

172.71.242.55:

*Comics (or other happenings related to xkcd) that were put up on {{w|April Fools' Day}} as an April Fools' Day joke. They have been annual, having been featured every year since 2011, except for 2017 and 2023.

*'''Click''' to expand for a more detailed explanation:
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed leftAlign" style="width:100%">
 

==Explanation==
In 2006, the first year that xkcd released in March and April, there was no comic released on April 1st and no April Fools' comic was released. The two comics before and after were [[83: Katamari]] from March 31st and [[84: National Language]] from April 3rd.

[[Randall]] first posted an April Fools' comic on Sunday, April 1, 2007. This comic ("[[Syndication]]") was not numbered; sequentially, it came between [[242: The Difference]] and [[243: Appropriate Term]]. It has not been preserved in the official xkcd archives.

For April Fools' Day 2008 [[Randall]] created [[404: Not Found]], which is a meta-comic, since it in fact doesn't exist. But that he considers it a comic is both made clear in the explanation for said "comic" and also since he links to it in his 2018 April fools' comic [[1975: Right Click]], from a fools' menu that links to all his comic alphabetically by title.

The comic for April 1st 2009 had no obvious ties to April Fools' Day, but on that day Randall made an April Fool in another way. See the [[563: Fermirotica#Trivia|Trivia section]] for [[563: Fermirotica]], released that day.

April 1st, 2010 didn't coincide with a comic release. However, on that day the site was altered to mimic a Unix command line interface, the so called [[UniXKCD]]. (This happened wile [[721: Flatland]] was the newest comic, but it was released March 31st and had nothing to do with April Fools' Day, see this [[721: Flatland#UniXKCD|trivia]]).

Starting on Friday, April 1st, 2011 with [[880: Headache]], [[Randall]] has released a real April Fools' Day joke annually, except 2017 and 2023.

Beginning with the second year in that row, with [[1037: Umwelt]], he moved the release day to Sunday April 1st 2012, and thus began the practice of releasing an April Fools Day comic on April 1st, notwithstanding [[#Release Weekday|what day of the week]] it fell on by shifting the comic's release to that day. Typically it would thus replace the next release day, so there would not be a comic on Monday the 2nd or 3rd of April, if April 1st fell in the weekend.

This worked for the next three years with [[1193: Externalities]] in 2013, [[1350: Lorenz]] in 2014 (first Tuesday release) and [[1506: xkcloud]] in 2015. But then the project became so complicated that in 2016, the release was delayed until [[1663: Garden#Monday 4th of April release|Monday April 4th]] with [[1663: Garden]].

The yearly trend thus continued until 2017, where no comics were released on April 1st. And the two comics around the date had nothing to do with such a joke. See more on this, and why this may have been the case, in the [[1818: Rayleigh Scattering#No April Fools' Day comic in 2017|trivia section]] of the first of these two, [[1818: Rayleigh Scattering]].

Then from 2018 Randall once again began releasing April Fools' Day comic. In 2018 he again moved the release day from Monday April 2nd to Sunday April 1st with [[1975: Right Click]]. In this comic he both links to [[404: Not Found]] and [[UniXKCD]] two of his previous "not a real comic" April Fools' Day jokes. In 2019 April 1st was a Monday so a normal release day, and he released [[2131: Emojidome]], another user generated comic.

In 2020 he again had trouble and the release of [[2288: Collector's Edition]] was delayed two days for a [[2288: Collector's Edition#Trivia|Friday April 3rd release]]. Instead the planned Friday comic [[2289: Scenario 4]] was released on Saturday.

In 2021 [[2445: Checkbox]] was released on Thursday April 1st, making it the first April Fools' Day comic to be released on a Thursday. Only Saturday has yet to see a special release. It could have happened either in 2017 or 2023, but those have been the so far only two years without such a comic since 2011.

In 2022 [[2601: Instructions]] was released on Friday April 1st, a normal release day. There was though an interesting fact related to this release. First of all it visually was similar to the previous Fools' comic, which had only a {{w|checkbox}} to begin with. Instructions only had a {{w|radio button}}. But more interesting, like last year, this comic had an audio part. Thus making it a recurring Fools' theme, and also making these two comics the, at that time, only [[:Category:Comics with audio|comics with audio]]. Although in Instructions the sounds was a vital part of the joke, which was not the case the year before. (Also both comics had a mute button, that could toggle the sound on and off. But the two comics similar buttons worked in reverse, so the mute button had muted sound in the first, but the audio on in the second of the two comics...)

In 2023 [[2757: Towed Message]] was released on Friday March 31st. The next comic, [[2758: My Favorite Things]], was released on the normal schedule on Monday April 3rd. Although the first of these has a potential joke, it would only be as per the normal nature of the comic, and not clearly an April Fools' kind of joke of the extent, complexity or meta-nature from other years, on top of being released a day too soon (in Randall's usual timezone). It therefore seems like this will be the second year Randall refrained from releasing an April Fools' joke, since 2011. The only other year that he missed, across this range of thirteen April 1sts, was 2017.

In 2024, [[2914: Eclipse Coolness]] appeared, appearing to have no April Fool content. Instead, it probably solely references the upcoming {{w|Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024}}. 

[[Randall]] discusses several April Fools' comics in his talk at [https://vimeo.com/78912850 Øredev 2013].

===Release Weekday===
*Here is a list of the day of the week the "real" April 1st comic was released.
**Those not on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, have been moved to hit April 1st.
***Example with the first to do so [[1037: Umwelt]].
***It was planned for release on Monday April 2nd but came out Sunday April 1st 2012.
***The next comic [[1038: Fountain]] skipped Monday and came out as normal Wednesday April 4th.

#2008 '''Tuesday''' April 1st:
#*[[404: Not Found]]
#*This was technically not a comic, but it did specifically "not come out" on April 1st.
#*But it DID not come out, between the normal Monday and Wednesday release making it "not" an extra comic that week.
#2011 Friday April 1st:
#*[[880: Headache]]
#2012 '''Sunday''' April 1st:
#*[[1037: Umwelt]]
#*The next release was not Monday but Wednesday, so it replaced the Monday release.
#2013 Monday April 1st:
#*[[1193: Externalities]]
#2014 '''Tuesday''' April 1st:
#*[[1350: Lorenz]]
#*This was the first Tuesday release, but the other two releases that week fell normally on Monday and Friday, thus it replaced Wednesdays release.
#2015 Wednesday April 1st:
#*[[1506: xkcloud]]
#2016 [[1663: Garden#Monday 4th of April release|Monday April 4th]]:
#*[[1663: Garden]]
#*This comic was supposed to be released Friday April 1st but had technical problems and ended up being released on Monday April 4th.
#*There where thus only two comics in the week before. See the link above.
#*There was [[1663: Garden#April Fool's comic|no doubt]] that this was supposed to be the April Fools' day comic.
#There was [[1818: Rayleigh Scattering#No April Fools' Day comic in 2017|No April Fools' Day comic]] in 2017!
#2018 '''Sunday''' April 1st:
#*[[1975: Right Click]]
#*The next release was not Monday but Wednesday, so it replaced the Monday release.
#2019 Monday April 1st:
#*[[2131: Emojidome]]
#2020 [[2288:_Collector's_Edition#Trivia|Friday April 3rd]]:
#*[[2288: Collector's Edition]]
#*This comic was supposed to be released Wednesday April 1st but had technical problems and ended up being released on Friday April 3rd.
#*The original planned Friday comic, [[2289: Scenario 4]], was then released on Saturday April 4th
#2021 '''Thursday''' April 1st:
#*[[2445: Checkbox]]
#*The next release was not Friday but Monday, so it replaced the Friday release.
#2022 '''Friday''' April 1st:
#*[[2601: Instructions]]
#There was no April fools' Day comic in 2023! [[2757: Towed Message]] was released on Friday March 31st, and the next comic was relased on normal schedule as well on Monday April 3rd, [[2758: My Favorite Things]].
</div>
 

[[Category:Comics by date]]
[[Category:Comics from April]]
[[Category:Distinctive comics]]

xkcd

2024-03-18T14:27:39Z

172.71.242.55: /* Other wikis */

[[File:Terrible small logo.png|200px|right]]{{TOC}}{{Quote|A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.|[https://xkcd.com xkcd.com]}}

'''xkcd''' is a webcomic drawn by [[Randall Munroe]] and hosted at [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com]. It focuses on {{w|science}}, {{w|mathematics}}, {{w|technology}}, and general {{w|geek|geekiness}}, told with a light, quirky sense of humor, and at times profound philosophizing. Its art style is minimalist, told through simple [[stick figure]]s. New comics are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and are accompanied by a [[Title text|title text]], serving as Randall's commentary.

==Style==
xkcd comics are usually plain, predominantly black-and-white line drawings, but [[:Category:Comics with color|sometimes]] they make use of hues beyond the usual monochrome colors, even if it is just [[:Category:Comics with red annotations|red annotations]]. Although quite complex objects can be drawn, or conventionally cartoon-like representations of things and [[:Category:Squirrels|animals]], a majority of the people featured are [[stick figure]]s who have become a cast of recurring [[characters]]. The xkcd art style has undergone many changes over time. Initially, the comics were made by scanning hand-drawn sketches. However, they eventually transitioned to being entirely digitally inked and lettered. Another notable change was in the style of text used. While [[:Category:Comics_with_lowercase_text|early comics featured sentence-case text]], Randall began writing in all-caps non-cursive handwriting with [[90: Jacket]]. It took several comics for this to become the standard practice. In the early days of xkcd, Randall used [[:Category:Checkered paper|checkered paper]] with a grid for most of his initial drawings. This grid became a distinctive part of the style of the early xkcd comics, as it was used for most of his LiveJournal comics, and the last comic by date to use it was [[39: Bowl]]. The faint remains of gridlines in some comics suggest that Randall may have erased gridlines in these comics. In 2012, Randall revived the blue grid as a background image for ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]''.

Occasionally, Randall releases comics that go beyond the norm. These unique comics might involve user interactivity, utilize specific HTTP behaviors, or explore innovative graphic techniques, setting them apart from the ordinary static comics. He will use {{w|GIF#Animated GIF|animated GIFs}}, rather than standard formats, for some of the simpler [[:Category:Comics with animation|dynamic comic]] images and will engage with complex page and server-side scripting to present the reader with the more immersive or interactive content.

==Meaning of "xkcd"==
{{Quote|It's not actually an acronym. It's just a word with no phonetic pronunciation — a treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings.|[[Randall Munroe]]|[https://xkcd.com/about Source]}}

{{Quote|Actually, I've been using [xkcd] as just a unique point in the space of four-character strings to point to me. I've been using it as my name on every service box since at least the nineties, because I got tired of changing my name every time my interest changed. I started out when I was 10 years old when AOL first popped up and I was on there as, I think I had, first, "Skywalker4", then "Animorph7", and then [...] other names [...] like "Redtailedhawk6" or something. Eventually, I was like, I'm tired of names that point to other things, that identify me with those things. I want to get a string that will just point uniquely to me that's not my name, because that's kind of boring. And so, I [decided] to generate random strings and find one that had a certain set of qualities, which included:
*''none of the letters could be mistaken for other letters [or] numbers, so no "L", because "L", lower-cased, can look like "i" or "1";''
*''it couldn't have any obvious acronym decoding [...] or be an existing acronym;''
*''it couldn't be pronounceable because then it would sound like [...] a word, and people would think of other words like it.''
''So, I searched though a bunch of names that weren't taken, until I found one that wasn't taken on all the services I wanted.|[[Randall Munroe]]|In a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24#t=44m31s Google speech]}}

According to the [https://xkcd.com/about xkcd FAQ] and [[Randall Munroe]] himself, the name "xkcd" doesn't stand for anything. In a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24#t=44m31s Google speech], he said that it originated as a previously unused random four-letter string which he used as his username on various internet services. See also [[207: What xkcd Means]].

There are other theories about what xkcd stands for:
* If each letter of the alphabet is [https://web.archive.org/web/20090908204959im_/http://explainxkcd.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/XKCD1.jpg mapped to 1 through 26], the sum of the values for "x", "k", "c", and "d" is equal to 42, which is the answer given to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything by the supercomputer in ''{{w|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}}''. However, according to Randall himself, this is a coincidence.
* A [https://web.archive.org/web/20200728001540/https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/c2049n/the_names_mystery_unveiled/ now-deleted] Reddit account noted that typing "xkcd" on a Persian QWERTY keyboard returns "طنزی", which means satirical, sarcastic, and comic.
* "X", "k", "c", and "d" are consecutive letters when typed on a left-handed [[:Category:Dvorak|Dvorak]] keyboard.

==History==
:''For more information, visit the [[Links|LiveJournal]].''

{{Quote|I was going through old math/sketching graph paper notebooks and didn't want to lose some of the work in them, so I started scanning pages. I took the more comic-y ones and put them up on a server I was testing out, and got a bunch of readers when BoingBoing linked to me. I started drawing more seriously, gained a lot more readers, started selling t-shirts on the site, and am currently shipping t-shirts and drawing this comic full-time. It's immensely fun and I really appreciate y'all's support.|[[Randall Munroe]]}}

Before [[Randall Munroe|Randall]] started using the [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] website for his comics, he posted them on {{w|LiveJournal}} using the "[https://xkcd-drawings.livejournal.com/ xkcd_drawings]" account. The images on the page are now broken, but there are archived versions for the [https://web.archive.org/web/20070927001941/http://xkcd-drawings.livejournal.com/?skip=40 first 16 comics], comics [https://web.archive.org/web/20060529063505/http://xkcd-drawings.livejournal.com/?skip=20 from 17 to 27], and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20060529063441/http://xkcd-drawings.livejournal.com/ last 20 comics]. Randall didn't add a [[Title text|title text]] to his comics before [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com], but most of the comics posted on LiveJournal had an original caption beneath the image, and many had comments by LiveJournal users. All the comics transferred to the new site had a title text, which was often along the same lines, but was almost never the same as the caption on LiveJournal. The original title, caption, and release number of these early comics can be viewed on their explanation page, so if you want to browse them in the original order, you can [[7: Girl sleeping (Sketch -- 11th grade Spanish class)|start here]] and follow the links at the top of each explanation to go to the next one. To view a list of all the comics in the original order, see [[:Category:Posted on LiveJournal|Posted on LiveJournal]].

The first thirteen comics were posted on LiveJournal within 12 minutes on September 30, 2005, on the first day of the xkcd LiveJournal account. The first comic posted on that day was [[7: Girl sleeping (Sketch -- 11th grade Spanish class)]] and the last one was [[11: Barrel - Part 2]]. Starting from the next post, he began following the normal Monday, Wednesday, Friday release date routine, although he often forgot to post the comic in time, making them come out a day earlier or a day later.

The last comic to be released before [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] was in use was [[39: Bowl]]. It was the forty-first comic posted on LiveJournal on December 5, 2005, but the following day Randall made another post, titled "[https://web.archive.org/web/20060529063441/http://xkcd-drawings.livejournal.com/#:~:text=12%3A59%20am-,Announcement,-What%20with%20winter Announcement]": where he said he would post fewer comics during winter. This might be owing to his exams coming up, or the preparation for the release of [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] the following year. The next LiveJournal comic, [[45: Schrodinger]], was released almost a month later, on January 4, 2006, after Randall had already posted all the previous comics to his new site.

The new xkcd website opened up on January 1, 2006, and the backlog of forty-one comics from LiveJournal from [[1: Barrel - Part 1]] to [[44: Love]] was transferred on the same day, but in a completely different order. The only comic that has the same number on both sites is [[3: Island (sketch)]], while all the other comics were uploaded seemingly at random. Also, only eleven of the original comic titles were reused of the new site, and even among the last eleven comics posted on both sites, only six used the same title. There were also two new comics released on the first day of [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] (and one added a few months later) that have never been posted on LiveJournal. [[12: Poisson]] and [[5: Blown apart]] were exclusively published on the first day of [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] and were never shared on LiveJournal. [[36: Scientists]] was instead initially published as a duplicate of comic [[10: Pi Equals]]. Over three months after the original posting, Randall noticed the error and corrected it sometime between [https://web.archive.org/web/20060423175703/http://www.xkcd.com/c36.html April 23, 2006] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20060705231511/http://xkcd.com/c36.html July 5, 2006], when the updated version appeared in the Web Archive. He likely found an old drawing that was never meant for publication and used it instead, so it wouldn't appear out of place among the other comics from that period. This is why [[36: Scientists]] [[:Category:No date|doesn't have a date]] like every other comic.

Most of the eleven comics posted on LiveJournal after the new website opened, from [[45: Schrodinger]] to [[55: Useless]], were posted on the same days on both sites. For unknown reasons, on January 18, 2006, [[54: Science]] was posted on LiveJournal on the same day that [[51: Malaria]] was released on [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com]. Three days later, on January 21, 2006, [[51: Malaria]] was posted on LiveJournal, thus forcing the next two comics ([[52: Secret Worlds]] and [[53: Hobby]]) to be released on [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] two days before LiveJournal. Four days later, on January 25, 2006, [[54: Science]] was finally posted on [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com], which fixed the date discrepancies and allowed the next comic, [[55: Useless]], to be published on the same day across both sites. When the next comic, [[56: The Cure]], came out only on [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] on January 30, 2006, Randall made a post on LiveJournal, titled "[https://web.archive.org/web/20060529063441/http://xkcd-drawings.livejournal.com/#:~:text=xkcd%20drawings%20moving%20to%20RSS%20feed xkcd drawings moving to RSS feed]", to let people know he would only post new comics to [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] and abandon LiveJournal.

==Other wikis==
*{{w|xkcd|Wikipedia}}
*{{rw|xkcd|RationalWiki}} – They often use its comics [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Xkcd#Gallery on their articles].
*{{tvtropes|Xkcd|TV Tropes}}
*[https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Xkcd Geek Feminism Wiki]
*[https://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/xkcd Fortran Wiki]
*[https://hpluspedia.org/wiki/Xkcd H+Pedia]

==See also==
*[[Design of xkcd.com]]
*[[Header text]]
*[[Tagline]]
*[[Title text]]
*[[Transcript]]

[[Category:xkcd]]
{{xkcdmeta}}

2907: Schwa

2024-03-15T22:40:35Z

172.71.242.55: /* Explanation */ Wikitemplate version of link

{{comic
| number = 2907
| date = March 15, 2024
| title = Schwa
| image = schwa_2x.png
| imagesize = 301x389px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Doug's cousin, the one from London, runs a Bumble love cult.
}}

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

All the spoken text (and title text) in this comic can be spoken, at least in some dialects and enunciations, using ''only'' a {{w|schwa}} as all its voiced vowel-sounds. It works in any dialect featuring the {{w|Phonological history of English close back vowels#STRUT–COMMA merger|STRUT-COMMA merger}}, including most of the US dialects that Randall himself would be most familiar with.

As an experiment to see you have an accent of your own which supports this effect, you could try to say "Wh'ts 'p? W's D'g g'nn' c'm? D'g l'vs br'nch" and "N' ', D'gs st'ck c's 'f ' t'nn'l 'bstr'ct'n. ' tr'ck d'mpd ' t'n 'f 'n'ns", using the same inflection at each apostrophe.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Megan, Cueball, and Ponytail stand in front of a restaurant table.]
:Megan: What's up? Was doug gonna come? Doug loves brunch.
:Ponytail: Nuh Uh, Doug's stuck 'cause of a tunnel obstruction. A tunnel dropped a bunch of onions.
:Megan: Ugh.
:Caption: The schwa is the most common vowel sound in English. In fact, if you stick to the right conversation topics, you can avoid learning any other ones.
{{comic discussion}}

Talk:2898: Orbital Argument

2024-02-28T18:51:37Z

172.71.242.55:

May not be (probably isn't!) the inspiration for this comic, but just yesterday there was news of the latest successes in cooling down {{w|Positronium}} (an 'atom' in which nothing is at the nucleus, the charges 'orbit each other' (or the quantum equivalent)). A co-inky-dink, surely, but just thought I'd mention it in passing... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.78|141.101.98.78]] 03:13, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

In editing, I'm accutely aware that even the "relatively small" force by the Earth on the Sun is a bad way of putting it. Looked at properly, ''exactly the same'' force is exerted against the Sun by the Earth (heavy item drawn pulled down to light item) as is exerted against the Earth by the Sun (lighter item being pulled down by heavier item). ((Fairly easily proven, these days: e.g. If it were not so, something like a bowling-ball and ping-pong ball could be kept separate by a stick, but released in space where they'd then work as a 'gravity drive' that propelled them one way (or perhaps the other!) without any need for power/propellant.)) Of course, the force should be considered equal (bidirectionally singular) with the inertial framing being the factor that makes the freefalling apple the more obvious thing to fall than the Earth upon which any budding Newton is stood/sat in rapt observation. But the Earth's contribution to the (currently) indivisible joint attraction that drives both sides of any 2-body problem is far more than any given apple and far less than any given star. As and when we can perhaps split this (either directionally 'diode' the flow of gravitational effects, or even independently manipulate inertial and gravitational masses) then perhaps we will need to be more discriminating in calculating/describing about such things. Assuming we don't just go with "gravity is a lie, it's all just mass-curved spacetime", instead. ;) But just thought I'd expound a few different relevent worldviews, of greater or lesser usefulness... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.33|141.101.99.33]] 04:35, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Atomic & subatomic "particles" as discrete units, are a test condition artifact. Everything is waves.
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 13:56, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
:Or (admitedly 'wavy') strings. Or resonant fields. Or some other esoterically theorised GUT-fodder... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.156|172.71.178.156]] 15:49, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
::Submolecular strings are just (helical) waves viewed through a threshold-conditional gate.
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 21:34, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

I think comic 690: Semicontrolled Demolition is relevant to this one and should appear somewhere in the explanation of this one, as it touches on the same base idea. {{unsigned ip|15:45, 24 February 2024|172.71.175.75}}

Isn't there something about knowledge being true information arrived at by logically sound reasoning? This meets the first criteria but not the second. [[User:RegularSizedGuy|RegularSizedGuy]] ([[User talk:RegularSizedGuy|talk]]) 17:31, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I feel there is an additional explanation that White Hat did not intend. The Sun and Earth, the entire Solar system for that matter, orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Which may also orbit the center of the known Universe? I am not an astrophysicist or knowledgeable enough to attempt a proper explanation. [[User:Vampire|Vampire]] ([[User talk:Vampire|talk]]) 15:31, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

"The Earth-Moon barycenter is located approximately ¾ of the way from Earth's center of mass to its surface, towards the Moon's center of mass. Our tidal bulges (oceanic and otherwise) occur along that line. One bulge is towards the Moon because of the gravitational attraction, and the other is in the opposite direction, by centrifugal force from the Earth's rotation around the barycenter." This is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, both bulges are the result of the same effect, and they would be there even if the Moon and Earth weren't producing centrifugal force by rotating about each other. In the usual explanation of the opposite bulges, you look at the acceleration of a particle on the near side of the Earth towards the Moon by more, the acceleration of the center of the Earth by a medium amount, and the acceleration of a particle on the far side of the Earth by less. Then, to look at things in the frame of reference of the center of the Earth, you subtract the center's acceleration, and find that the near side accelerates toward the Moon by a little, and the far side accelerates away from the Moon by a little. But even that explanation is wrong, or at least, very incomplete - the main driver of the tides is due to the vastly larger volume of water *away* from the line through the Earth's and Moon's centers; when you do that same vector subtraction of the local acceleration from the Moon minus the acceleration of the center of the Earth, you find that you get a tangential component of acceleration, and since water can flow, it does, until it reaches a surface of constant potential (it's not a lot of distance, but it's a lot of volume moving, so the tidal bulge is a significant volume of water). See https://web.archive.org/web/20220115060446/https://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/scenario/tides.htm [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.30|172.70.110.30]] 15:46, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, so regarding [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2898:_Orbital_Argument&diff=336067&oldid=336066 this argument], the problem is removing the clarification that this is not subject to concensus 'averaging'. Two totally different opinions which are canot be averaged, merged, subsampled or intermingled. It is maybe useful to mention taking multiple weather predictions and generating the most supported trend, much as natural language processing algorithms, but here the two statements cannot be combined in simple numerical or tokenwise ways (that is the point). Yes, state that mid-point estimations are useful (I'm happy with such a statement, and preserved/enhanced it), but do not remove the salient issue that ''in this case'' it is not a useful process. It's beyond even [[2893: Sphere Tastiness]] illogic. '''Which is the joke'''.... [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.55|172.71.242.55]] 18:51, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

1963: Namespace Land Rush

2024-02-16T06:42:39Z

172.71.242.55: I don't get what was being tried there, but clearly wrong.

{{comic
| number = 1963
| date = March 5, 2018
| title = Namespace Land Rush
| image = namespace_land_rush.png
| titletext = You can also just mash the keyboard at random, but you might end up with a gibberish name no one can pronounce.
}}

==Explanation==

When a new web service starts, such as a forum, a social media server or an email portal, the people who sign up get to choose their username on the service, which, in most cases, blocks future users from using those usernames. Common names such as "john" are likely to be taken quickly. This is analogous to the way that {{w|Land run|some land}} was distributed to settlers (and/or {{w|Land claim#Mining claim (United States)|prospectors}}), in America, with the first to claim able to speculatively choose the 'best' land.

This comic is a list of usernames [[Randall]] suggests should be used if they are available.

The title text is a self-reference to "xkcd"; the name of the comic is a purposefully unpronounceable phrase created by Randall. The fact that an unpronounceable name is portrayed as a disadvantageous outcome is also humorous because the comic has a section dedicated to unpronounceable usernames.

(Note: for a more serious list of problematic user names to block from a service provider’s point of view, see [https://ldpreload.com/blog/names-to-reserve Hostnames and usernames to reserve] as well as [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2142 RFC 2142].)

==Table==
{| class="wikitable"
!style="width:30%"|Entry
!style="width:70%"|Explanation
|-
!colspan=2|Straightforward (Usernames that a person would use under typical circumstances)
|-
|<Your usual username, if any>
|Most internet users will have settled on some unique handle that they try to use across all platforms. Even if this wasn't a new service, most people would try this first.
|-
|<Your given name>
|More rare is using one's nickname or first name as their username, since the amount of common names will mean many users share a name. Thus, if you can get your given name, you will have a simple username that many others wanted, and without resorting to prefixes or numbers (i.e. Xx_MyName00_xX)
|-
|<Your full name>
|Similar to your given name, but slightly more unique since a last name and/or middle name is added.
|-
|<Initial><Surname>
|A common second choice if a given or full name is already in use.
|-
|<Surname>
|Possibly available if your last name is more uncommon; names like "Smith" or "Kim" will probably be taken faster than even given names.
|-
!colspan=2|Recognizable (Usernames that would make it look like the email came from an official source within the organization named)
|-
|Google
|Registering the name "Google" would allow for communicating on the site (or even outside of it) with a name that appears to be an official Google account. For any of the examples in this section, you would select the names for the same reason. This has been done in the past with both [https://twitter.com/BiIIMurray humorous] and [http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-russian-twitter-account-tennessee-gop-20171018-story.html nefarious] results.
|-
|iPhone
|Many services would mark messages sent from an iOS client on iPhone as "sent from iPhone".
This could make people believe that your messages are sent from an iPhone even if you don't own one.
|-
|Facebook
|Similar to Google above.
|-
|Bitcoin
|One could pose as the Bitcoin Core development group by using this handle and/or scam uninformed users interested in cryptocurrencies.
|-
|Obama
|Impersonating the former president, supposedly to send messages as them to make them seem bad (or not).
|-
|Canada
|Impersonating a whole country might get you in trouble.{{Citation needed}}
|-
|NFL
|The American "National Football League".
|-
|Garfield
|In the original "GMail" service on the Internet, the G stood for "Garfield".
|-
|<Your city>
|Impersonating the official account for your place of residence.
|-
|NASA
|The American "National Aeronautics and Space Administration". Randall worked there as a contract programmer and roboticist.
|-
|<Name of person who runs the service>
|Impersonating the site owner can allow you to gain the trust of users.
|-
!colspan=3|Causing Trouble (Usernames that might cause errors when mixed with the service's back-end code)
|-
|User
|This is usually the default username for a non-administrative account. This may trick a user that this is owned by the operator of the service.
|-
|Username
|See above.
|-
|Name
|See above.
|-
|You
|Many services display "You" as the signed-on user, so naming oneself "You" makes users think that they are you/they are signed on when they aren't.
|-
|Guest
|Attempts to fool users into thinking that they have a guest account.
|-
|Account
|The opposite of "Guest" (someone without an account). However, for someone with an account, their username will usually be displayed. There is an active user named "Account" on Explain XKCD.
|-
!colspan=2|Causing More Trouble
|-
|Admin
|Impersonating to be a system administrator will let someone fool people and cause a lot of trouble. In particular, it could be used to obtain SSL certificates by demonstrating ownership of a supposedly internal address.
|-
|Administrator
|See above.
|-
|System
|Pretending to be a system-controlled account - might give permissions if the server checks by name.
|-
|<Name of service>
|Pretending to be the official account of the service. There are a lot of spammers who did this on Explain XKCD.
|-
|Help
|Pretending to be the help account. This could lead to many questions from new users.
|-
|Error
|This may trick users to do what the user says as they could claim that it was a legitimate error.
|-
!colspan=2|Impossible to Say
|-
|Hyphen-Emdash
|Could be read "Hyphen hyphen Em dash" or "Hyphen dash em dash". In addition, in many markup languages (such as the one used by this very wiki) one can create a larger hyphen with some variation of an "&mdash" command, which could theoretically be pronounced "emdash."
|-
|Dash-8hyphen-8
|Could be read "Dash dash eight hyphen dash eight" or "Dash hyphen eight hyphen hyphen eight". "Hyphen eight" sounds like "hyphenate".
|-
|Zero0ne2numeral2
|Could be read "Zero zero one two numeral two" or "Zero zero ne two numeral two" or "Zero oh ne two numeral two".
|-
|KrisasinHemsworth
|This would be confusing to say out loud, as it would sound like the user was saying that their username was "Chris," spelled the same way that famous actor {{w|Chris Hemsworth}} spells his name. However, the actual username uses the name "Kris," spelled a completely different way than Chris Hemsworth's name, and the phrase "as in Hemsworth" being also part of the username, rather than a clarification of the spelling of "Kris" as would be assumed.
|-
|TheWord&Ampersand
|This would also be confusing and difficult to communicate, as anyone trying to read the username to someone else would say "The word ampersand ampersand" which could be interpreted as "ampersand&" or "ampersand ampersand". Having the phrase "the word" in front of a symbol makes it quite difficult to communicate which variation of ampersand (word or symbol) is actually being referred to.
|-
|ZettaWith3Teees 
|Read aloud, this would lead the listener to expect a username of 'Zettta'. Clarifying that "with three tees" is text and not description would in turn make it difficult to explain the spelling of 'Zetta' with two 't's, and 'Teees' with three 'e's.
|-
!colspan=2|Misc
|-
|<Single Letters> and <Single Numbers>
|These are highly valuable. The Twitter handle "@n" for example is constantly bombarded with offers and hacking attempts.
|-
|<Common Words>
|Also highly valuable; overlaps with "Recognizable" and "Causing (more) Trouble".
|-
|<SQL/JS Injection>
|Codes such as "Drop Table" intended to cause errors or even damage the service's back-end code. (See [[327|Comic 327]])
|-
|ASDF and QWERTY
|Since those keys are right next to each other (on English language layouts), they are often typed as placeholders.
|-
|Yes
|This might be a [[Beret Guy]]-esque misunderstanding when filling out the sign up form. When encountering the form field "Username:" someone may type "Yes" (as in "yes, I want a username") instead of specifying it.
|-
|Bot and Computer
|Pretending to be a bot.
|-
|Blocked
|When users get banned or blocked, their name is often replaced by a string like this.
|-
|Deleted
|Some services like Reddit keep up user posts and data after account deletion, marking the content as submitted by the user "[Deleted]" or "Deleted".
|-
|Jeeves
|Might refer to {{w|Ask Jeeves}} (now Ask.com), a Internet Search Engine.
|-
|Narrator
|In books, radio plays and movies it is quite common to have a narrator explain parts of the story. In an online forum however, it is not.{{Citation needed}}
|-
|Internet
|"The Internet" sometimes refers to a large group of users, the collective hive-mind if you will. However, there cannot be a single user account speaking on behalf of them, as they aren't a single entity.
|-
|NPC
|Stands for Non-player character.
|-
|Password
|If the user accidentally typed their password into the username field, this would be the result.
|-
!colspan=2|Permissive Character Sets
|-
|<Space>
|Usernames containing only whitespace can not only be confusing for other people, but often systems 'trim' (remove whitespace at the beginning and end) user input. If the username was only made of spaces, after trimming it would be completely empty, which can cause a whole slew of other problems.
|-
|<nowiki>@ é |</nowiki>
|The @ separates the local part from the domain part of email addresses. If a service decides to create email addresses for their users, they will have a hard time if they allowed the "at" character as part of a username.
é is encoded in many character sets, like Latin-1 and Unicode. In Unicode, it can even be described either "U+00E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE" or as the sequence "U+0065 LATIN SMALL LETTER E" and "U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT". If a system uses {{w|Unicode normalization}} after the check if the username is available, this might allow someone to take over someone else's account.
|-
|<nowiki>“ ” " ‘ ’ ' `</nowiki>
|Various quotation marks.
“, ”,‘ and ’ (Unicode quotes): can expose a system's inability to handle multi-byte-encodings. If they are converted to their ASCII counterparts, they might cause code injections.
' and " (ASCII single and double quotes): often used as string delimeter (causing the rest of the name to be interpreted as HTML, or worse, code.
` (ASCII grave / backtick): Sometimes used as string delimeter; Perl (which some websites are still programmed in) executes commands ("shell code") when between backticks.
|-
|<NBSP>
|Unicode character "U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE". Similar attack vector as <Space>, but some programming languages will not strip non-ASCII whitespace (therefore the validation will pass).
|-
|<nowiki>\ . #</nowiki>
|The backslash is very often used for "escape sequences", that get expanded to other characters. (\n -> newline, \t -> tab character, \b -> backspace character (deletes the character to its left), etc.)
The period can be problematic in emails. RFC 2822 forbids periods at the beginning or end of the local part or more than one period in a row.
In URLs, the Octothorpe (#) is used as the 'anchor'. Anything following a # will not be transmitted to the server. If a user is named 'logout#blahblah' (which might be a valid username) and the user profile is located at http://example.com/<the_username>, the server might generate the URL http://example.com/logout#blahblah. Since the URL will be truncated at the '#', any user attempting to view this profile will be logged out of the service.
|-
|<RTL override>
|The right to left override is an Unicode character which forces text after it to be laid out right to left. Thus, in left-to-right locales, it flips everything after it. This can be rather amusing if permitted. (See [[1137|Comic 1137]])
|-
|<nowiki>– - _ /</nowiki>
|Includes both the em-dash and the hyphen, which are easily confused and are highly unusual for user names. The forward slash is also the path delimeter for URLs; if user profiles are located at e.g. <nowiki>http://example.com/user/the_username</nowiki>, this can cause obvious issues. Explain XKCD does not allow <code>/</code> in usernames.
|-
|<Any emoji>
|Current databases are not set up to store emojis as characters. Explain XKCD does allow emoji in usernames. {{actual citation needed}}
|-
|","
|In CSV files this separates one column or data item from another. This could cause bugs if the usernames are used as part of a CSV file since the next column on the row could be left blank filled with other data.
|-
|<nowiki>&NBSP</nowiki>;
|The special entity in HTML (web page language) for a non-breaking space, or a space that prevents an automatic line-break at its position. When rendered as part of an HTML page without sanitization, this would only display a space. However, if the username in question is really long, this would increase the page's width (details needed).
|-
|<nowiki></HTML></nowiki>
|This is trying to inject code for the web page using the user name. If the user name is not sanitized and does not have special characters encoded, this HTML end tag could end the HTML document, leading to page errors.
|-
|&LT;/HTML&GT;
|&lt; and &gt; are special character entities in HTML that represent < and >, repectively. So all together, when rendered as part of an HTML document, this would print "<nowiki></HTML></nowiki>" Although this would look similar to the previous <nowiki></HTML></nowiki> entry, it would be unlikely to cause problems as the symbols are not interpreted if encoded as special entities.
|-
|OkThisIsKindOfConfusingButIt's <LessThan\ForwardSlashHTML GreaterThanActualGreaterThan Symbol>Yes,ThatWasAllPartOfThe Name,ButSoIs...Ok,LetMeStartOver”
|The abundance of symbols and symbol related worlds and phrases such as ActualGreaterThanSymbol would make this extremely difficult to vocally communicate to another person. This difficulty is further compounded by the parts at the beginning and end, which sound like they are part of the explanation despite being part of the name itself.
|-
|}

==Transcript==
'''Namespace Land Rush Cheat Sheet'''
(Note: if an item is "quoted", it is meant literally, otherwise the reader is supposed to substitute their own information for words in <angle brackets>)

When a new service appears that lets you register a name, here are some you may want to try and get first:

* Straightforward
** <Your usual username, if any>
** <Your given name>
** <Your full name>
** <Initial><Surname>
** <Surname> (Bold & Slightly Unconventional)

* Recognizable
** "Google"
** "iPhone"
** "Facebook"
** "BitCoin"
** "Obama"
** "Canada"
** "NFL"
** "Garfield"
** <Your city>
** "NASA"
** <Name of person who runs the service>

* Causing Trouble
** "User"
** "Username"
** "Name"
** "You"
** "Guest"
** "Account"

* Causing More Trouble
** "Admin"
** "Administrator"
** "System"
** <Name of service>
** "Help"
** "Error"

* Impossible to Say
** "Hyphen-Emdash"
** "Dash-8hyphen-8"
** "Zero0ne2numeral2"
** "KrisasinHemsworth"
** "TheWord&Ampersand"
** "ZettaWith3Teees" 

* Misc
** <Single Letters>
** <Single Numbers>
** <Common Words>
** <SQL/JS Injection>
** "ASDF"
** "QWERTY"
** "Yes"
** "Bot"
** "Computer"
** "Blocked"
** "Deleted"
** "Jeeves"
** "Narrator"
** "Internet"
** "NPC"
** "Password"

* Permissive Character Sets
** <Space>
** <NBSP>
** <RTL override>
** <Any emoji>
** "<nowiki>&NBSP</nowiki>;"
** "<nowiki></HTML></nowiki>"
** "&LT;/HTML&GT;"
** one or more of the following symbols: <nowiki>@ é | “ ” \ . # " ‘ – - _ / ’ ' `</nowiki>
** "," (including quote marks)
** "OkThisIsKindOfConfusingButIt's<LessThan\ForwardSlashHTMLGreaterThanActualGreaterThanSymbol>Yes,ThatWasAllPartOfTheName,ButSoIs...Ok,LetMeStartOver”"

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics_with_lowercase_text]] 
[[Category:iOS]]
[[Category:Internet]]