explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1489: Fundamental Forces

2015-02-20T07:01:57Z

199.27.128.67: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1489
| date = February 20, 2015
| title = Fundamental Forces
| image = fundamental_forces.png
| titletext = "Of these four forces, there's one we don't really understand." "Is it the weak force or the strong--" "It's gravity."
}}

==Explanation==
Cueball is acting here as someone teaching physics at a basic level, perhaps a high school science teacher. As is typical for someone in that position, he understands the general idea of the four fundamental forces, but his understanding gets progressively more sketchy about the details. The off-panel audience, probably a student or class, is interested, but quickly begins to realize Cueball's lack of understanding. Instead of acknowledging the problem directly, Cueball simply blusters onwards.

The comic also outlines how difficult to describe the forces progressively get. Its possible that Cueball does understand the strong and weak interactions, but is completely at a loss when he tries to describe them.

The title text refers to the fact that it is gravity, which appears to be the simplest and easiest to understand of the four forces when first introduced, which turns out to be the hardest to reconcile with a coherent (quantum) understanding of all four forces together.

==Transcript==
Cueball: There are four fundamental forces between particles. (1) Gravity, which obeys the inverse square law, F_gravity=G(m_1 m_2/d^2)

Off panel audience: OK...

Cueball: (2) Electromagnetism, which obeys this inverse-square law: F_static = K_e (q_1 q_2 / d^2)
...and also Maxwell's Equations

Off panel audience: Also what?

Cueball: (3) The Strong Nuclear Force which obeys, uh ...
...well, umm...
...it holds protons and neutrons together.

Off panel audience: I see.

Cueball: It's strong.

Cueball: And (4) the Weak Force It [mumble mumble] radioactive decay [mumble mumble]

Off panel audience: That's not a sentence. You just said "Radio-

Cueball: –and those are the four fundamental forces!

{{comic discussion}}

256: Online Communities

2014-08-25T08:27:48Z

199.27.128.67: /* Social Media (West) */ The analogy is actually valid and accurate. It's just *really badly phrased*

{{comic
| number = 256
| date = May 2, 2007
| title = Online Communities
| image = online_communities_small.png
| titletext = I'm waiting for the day when, if you tell someone 'I'm from the internet', instead of laughing they just ask 'oh, what part?'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|May still need some polishing in places.}}
'''''Note:''' This comic dates from Spring 2007. The internet changed a lot since that time. A larger version of the image is available [http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/online_communities.png here].''

This is Randall's first map of online communities, with a successor (showing some zoomed-in highlights of the map) at [[802: Online Communities 2]]. As Randall says on the map, the area of each "country" is roughly proportional to its membership, at least in 2007. Geographic location means a bit more, however, as the '''Compass-Rose-Shaped Island''' points out. North-south corresponds to a spectrum from practical to intellectual, and east-west corresponds to one from web-focused to real-life-focused. The map also bears a slight resemblance to {{w|South East Asia}}.

Randall likes to draw maps in a manner like this. Each "Country" is represented by size and related points of interest. We also have a "Sea of memes" and a small "Straits of WEB 2.0".

===Compass Rose-shaped Island===
A joke located near the middle of the map, that nonetheless serves to organize the illustration. A Compass Rose —the name for the multi-pointed star that shows where North is on the map— appears on most maps; however, here, it's actually land that just coincidentally looks like a compass rose.

The "points" of the island do, however, roughly organize the map. Left is "Focus on Real Life", labelled "IRL", an abbreviation for "In Real Life". Right is "Focus on Web", labelled ".com". Up is Practicals, labelled "N", as in "North", but with small letters making it spell "Noob", slang for a "Newbie" or "New user" — a person less experienced with the internet, as many of the sites to the top of the map are ones infamous for having large numbers of largely computer-illiterate people. Down is "Intellectuals", labelled ''"π"'', an important constant in mathematics approximately equal to 3.14.

===The Icy North===
Communities which were once major players, but now in a much reduced role. While some are still fairly large, they're somewhat relics of older times, hence the "Mountains of Web 1.0" that run through them — Web 1.0 is the first major generation of websites.
* '''[http://yahoo.com Yahoo!]''' was the most popular search engine around 1998, but lost out to Google. It remains in business due to diversification (it now owns Tumblr, for instance).
* '''Windows Live''', particularly ''Windows Live Messenger'', used to be a particularly major way for friends to communicate, now taken over by Skype and the like. Once a more-or-less ubiquitous branding, now used much less. https://home.live.com/ ‎is one remnant.
* '''[http://aol.com AOL]''' was once a huge player in the internet service provider market, noted for sending out millions of floppy disks and CD-ROMs in the 1980s and '90s offering a month or so free internet service (followed by high fees and difficult cancellation). Notably, AOL was the first company to sign up large numbers of people to internet access throughout the year, whereas before then internet was mainly provided by colleges and universities, fundamentally changing internet culture (see {{w|Eternal September}}). This influx of new users or "Noobs" (short for "newbies") names the ''Noob Sea'' south of AOL. The ''Chat Rooms'' nearby were a selling feature of early ISPs — ways to communicate with other people from that ISP. They are largely dying now, but were a major selling point in the early days.
* '''[http://classmates.com Classmates.com]''' and '''[http://reunion.com Reunion.com]''' are early sites that offered to help you find your former classmates from school, a role largely taken over by the big, more generalised social media sites. Classmates.com is probably best known by its memetic advertisement that said "She married him??!! And they've got 7 kids??"
* '''[http://friendster.com Friendster]''' was the first big social media site. It was later outpaced by ''Myspace'' and ''Facebook'' (see Social Media below). It has survived by rebranding itself as social gaming site, now used primarily is Southeast Asia.
* '''Qwghlm''': A reference to ''{{w|The Baroque Cycle}}'', a series of science fiction books by Neal Stephenson. In them, Qwghlm is a group of islands in the icy north. See [http://baroquecycle.wikia.com/wiki/Qwghlm http://baroquecycle.wikia.com/wiki/Qwghlm].
* '''Chasm''': A barely-readable note just below the "O" of "NORTH". This may simply be a reference to a lot of fantasy series containing a chasm. (For example, the One Ring is destroyed by flinging it into a fiery chasm in The Lord of the Rings.)

===Dating sites (Northwest coastal regions)===
* '''[http://eharmony.com E-Harmony]''' and '''[http://okcupid.com OkCupid]''' are dating sites; the other, larger sites near them are mostly social media sites.
* '''The Lonely Island''' label appears to be a joke: Surrounded by, but separate from dating sites and social media sites, it would be a rather lonely place. Possibly named after "[http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Tol_Eress%C3%ABa Tol Eressëa]" (Translation: The Lonely Island) a somewhat obscure location in J. R. R. Tolkien's books, but there are {{w|The Lonely Island|other possibilities}}.

===Social Media (West)===
Sites mainly used to communicate with friends, such as Facebook and Myspace. The first large one was ''Friendster'', but this has largely become a social gaming site primarily used in Southeast Asia, as discussed in The Icy North, above. Other social media sites listed are:

* '''[http://faceparty.com Faceparty]''': A UK social media site started in 1999.
* '''[http://myspace.com Myspace]''': A social media site partially owned by, of all people, Justin Timberlake. Started in 2003, and peaking around the time this comic was made, it nonetheless still remains popular for bands (hence "Myspace Bands" in the southwest). It was never known for having a particularly attractive web design (partly because users could extensively customize the look and feel of their profile pages), hence only a very small part of it labelled "Attractive Myspace Pages".
** The '''Series of Tubes''': A reference to an internet meme. In 2006, U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, while arguing for the end of "Network neutrality", a concept that keeps ISPs from favouring or charging more for high-speed access to sites, claimed that such regulation was needed because the Internet was "not a truck" you could just load up with as much as you want, but a "series of tubes". This was fairly accurate, but his arguments were poor and badly phrases, and his speech subsequently received widespread derision (originally from Jon Stewart's The Daily Show), and became a running gag on the internet.
* '''[http://facebook.com Facebook]''': Generally considered (at least in the West) the "modern" social media network, and the most popular. However, this comic is from 2007, and Facebook did not catch up to Myspace until 2008-2009. [Source: {{w|Myspace}}]
* '''[http://orkut.com Orkut]''': A social media network launched in 2004 by Google, it became hugely popular in Brazil, India, and, to a lesser extent, Japan.
* '''[http://xanga.com Xanga]''': A blogging and social media site launched in 1998.
* '''[http://livejournal.com LJ]''': LiveJournal, a blogging site, more or less, but one that allows an internet forum-like structure where anyone, or selected people, can all start new posts on a community. Noted for a large number of teenagers, fanfic authors, and the like in its heyday, hence the "Bay of Angst" to its south.
* '''[http://www.blurty.com/ Blurty]''': LiveJournal's software is Open Access, meaning anyone can use it to set up a site. {{w|Blurty}} is, according to Wikipedia, an 18+ general community using this software.
* '''[http://cyworld.com Cyworld]''': A South Korean social media site featuring avatars and "mini-rooms".

===The Blogipelago (Southwest)===
Portmanteau of blog and archipelago. Sulawesi is a real island in the Indonesian archipelago, implying that this region's similarity to Indonesia is probably intentional.

* '''[http://www.huffingtonpost.com Huffington Post]''': ''The Huffington Post'' is a web-only news site, named after its founder, Arianna Huffington. It's noted for attracting notable people to do very good write-ups of politics and news, generally with a liberal slant, but also for having a medicine section that supports every sort of quackery and nonsense, including a regular column by {{w|Dana Ullman}} promoting {{w|homeopathy}} (see [[765: Dilution]]).
* '''Shipwreck of the SS Howard Dean''': In the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, Howard Dean raised funds mainly over the internet, and was doing very well, until a gaffe caused him to crash and burn just before the primaries began. See {{w|Howard Dean presidential campaign, 2004}}.
* '''Cory Doctrow's Balloon''': Reference to [[239: Blagofaire]].
* '''[http://boingboing.net Boing Boing]''': An occasional trend is for a smallish magazine to get a website, have the website become vastly more popular than its print edition, and become a successful website. Examples include [http://cracked.com Cracked.com], [http://theonion.com The Onion] (which only stopped being a print publication in ''December 2013''), and, the subject of this label, [http://boingboing.net Boing Boing]. Boing Boing is not easy to define — it's a group blog, with focuses including futurism, intellectual property, science fiction, technology, and cyberpunk — the latter of which it was rather influential in developing.
* '''[http://technorati.com Technorati]''': A site for searching blogs.
* '''Sulawesi''': As mentioned above, a real island that is part of the Indonesian archipelago.
* '''{{w|Xu Jinglei}}''': Chinese actress. According to Wikipedia: "In mid-2006, her Chinese-language blog had the most incoming links of any blog in any language on the Internet, according to Technorati."
* '''[http://postsecret.com/ PostSecret]''': A website which people send postcards to, describing their secrets. Some are little secrets (like swigging milk directly from the jug or carton); some are old, deep-seated traumas; and some are just things that they could never admit to anyone publicly. Worth a look.
* '''The Wet Sea''': Perhaps a reference to a West Sea, but not sure what that would be. Maybe just a simple joke, as what else would a sea be but wet?
* ''TWB'' or ''TMZ'': A very-hard-to-read label, south of Technorati.
** '''TWB''' is short for "{{w|Translators Without Borders}}", a charitable project that tries to translate necessary texts into the languages of the people who need them for free. This ''might'' be it, if it's meant to relate to Wikipedia, to the east of it. On the other hand...
** '''[http://TMZ.com TMZ]''' is a major celebrity gossip blog, rated #15 in the "[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs World's 50 most powerful blogs]" by ''The Guardian'', and, at time of writing, rating #11 in the [http://technorati.com/blogs/top100/ Technorati top 100].

===Sea of Culture (Central region) ===
Sites for sharing and showing off music and images, most focusing on self-created content

* '''Gulf of YouTube''': [http://youtube.com YouTube] is the definitive video website where people can upload videos with the purpose of public viewing, ranging from home movies through official music videos through Let's Plays of people playing video games to questionably-legal uploads of cartoons and films. Google has since purchased YouTube.
* '''Piczo''': Teen-oriented website that allowed one to make a profile and put up pictures. The site has been dead since late 2012, due to the rise of Facebook. See {{w|Piczo}}.
* '''Broadcaster''': Another dead site, almost lost to the web. Only a few scraps of information remain on the web. [http://www.seomastering.com/wiki/Broadcaster.com One of the rare scraps of remaining information] indicates it was a webcam broadcasting service that also allowed YouTube-like sharing of videos.
* '''The Bit Torrent''' and the '''P2P Shoals''': Reference to file sharing (passing around often copyright-infringing files, such as movies, CDs, and the like), often done with the {{w|BitTorrent}} protocol. A "Torrent" can also be a flood of water, hence it being used to name a river. "P2P" stands for "{{w|Peer-to-peer}}", the basis for the BitTorrent protocol.
* '''[http://flickr.com Flickr]''': a website where people can upload and share photographs they took.
* '''[http://lastfm.com LastFM]''': a music website that is notable of its "scrobbling" feature.
* '''[http://deviantart.com DeviantArt]''': the largest art website, where people can upload, sell, and buy not only art itself, but also video, audio, Flash-work, and even skins (the original purpose of deviantArt). While many big-name/professional people and organizations have their works in deviantArt, the site is more infamous for the large amount of people who upload low-quality fan-art and fan-characters, most notably of media from Japan. Another point of infamy is the large amount of drama that can happen in the website.

'''Straits of Web 2.0''': A ''strait'' is a narrow passage between two outcroppings. Web 2.0 is a term used to describe new internet architectures, which these programs and Wikipedia (the other side of the strait) are examples of. '''Gays of Web 2.0''' is a pun: The opposite of a gay person (homosexual) is a straight person (heterosexual).

===User-created content and discussions (Southeast)===
Sites such as {{w|Wikipedia}} and chat programs such as IRC.
* '''[http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia]''': The world's largest encyclopedia, collaboratively edited by its users. It's labelled as "The Wikipedia Project" (actually called ''{{w|Wikimedia}}''), since Wikipedia has generalised to cover a number of separate web sites, though, at the time of this comic, none near the size of Wikipedia (excepting, possibly, Wikimedia Commons, which is partly an image repository for Wikipedia), perhaps explaining the small size of all the other vertexes of the "web".
* '''Usenet''': The predecessor of most modern forums. A set of discussion groups that dominated the early internet. It also predates the standard web architecture to some extent — there's no standard weblink for it, for instance. See {{w|Usenet}}.
* '''IRC isles''': IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, a simple, low-bandwidth program for chatting. Common uses include Dungeons and Dragons games and other geeky pursuits.
* '''[http://sourceforge.net SourceForge]''': A code repository. Basically, a place for programmers to meet up and work together on a variety of free and open source projects. See {{w|sourceforge}}. Has become less respectable since this comic was created in 2007, due to [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/gimp_dumps_sourceforge_over_dodgy_ads_and_installer/ allowing misleading advertisements intended to trick people into installing questionable software.]
* '''[http://mit.edu MIT]''': The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most respected universities for Engineering, Robotics, and other such fields.
* '''[http://www.engadget.com/‎ Engadget]''': A blog/online magazine, in multiple languages, reviewing tech products and commenting on technology news.
* '''[http://gizmodo.com/‎ Gizmodo]''': A blog about technology and design.
* '''[http://makezine.com/blog/ MakeBlog]''': A blog highlighting bizarre and interesting do-it-yourself projects, often with a geeky theme.
* '''Google's Volcano Fortress''': A volcano fortress is one traditional dwelling place of evil geniuses in fiction, and Google has quietly taken over huge chunks of people's interaction with the web. Perhaps this provides some background for [[254: Comic Fragment]]?
* '''Stallman's Airship''': A joke, perhaps in line with Cory Doctorow's Balloon ([[239: Blagofaire]], also referenced in this strip)

===Ocean of Subculture and Sea of Memes (East)===
:'''Need descriptions'''
Sites related to smaller internet communities, a.k.a. "Subcultures". Also, a whole lot of internet memes, unsurprisingly. The "Viral Straits" references the idea of something "going viral", e.g. spreading quickly to huge numbers of people on the internet. These sites are often responsible for things going viral, and the memes listed are ones that went viral in the past.

;Sites
* '''[http://www.2ch.net/‎ 2Channel]''': a Japanese imageboard that was actually the original inspiration for...
* '''[http://4chan.org 4Chan]''': an imageboard in which people can upload pictures while others comment on them. The website is infamous for its loose/often non-existent rules, incredibly vulgar userbase, source of new memes, and spawning of trolls. 4chan's random board, known internally as /b/, is almost constantly flooded with porn and image macros.
* '''[http://reddit.com Reddit]''': the self-described "front page of the Internet" in which users submit stories, photos and videos and the best are "up-voted" to the top of the page.
* '''[http://digg.com Digg]''': a former competitor to Reddit in the social-news sphere, but has been sold since this map was drawn and restarted as an aggregator of news stories.
* '''[http://fark.com Fark]''': A website that writes humorous commentary on various news reports, especially the strange, bizarre, or things from the political far-left and far-right.
* '''[http://somethingawful.com Something Awful]''': a website that is meant to showcase all things "awful". SomethingAwful also has a large trollbase, but they tend to be more honorable than the ones from ''Encyclopedia Dramatica'' and 4chan. One example is there being a spotty holding of the no-furries rule in the forums. The forums themselves are famous because of the holding of the "Let's Plays" of ''Dangan Ronpa'' and ''Super Dangan Ronpa 2'', which had cooked up public interest to the point of there being an English-language release of the games.
* '''[http://slashdot.org /.]''': ''Slashdot'', a news site for technology-related news stories, which are submitted by its users. The "{{w|Slashdot effect}}" is named after this site.
* '''[http://ytmnd.com YTMND]''': a community in which users can create meme-type nonsense by playing music over an image (either static or animated). Its name is an acronym for "You're The Man Now, Dog!"
* '''[http://StumbleUpon.com Stumble Upon]''': A website that attempts to develop a profile for users in order to recommend which websites they might enjoy.
* '''[http://delicious.com/ Del.icio.us]''': Another image and website aggregator, linking to various things of interest. It uses tags to let people find specific types of content. ('''Note''': Since this comic, this website was renamed as "Delicious".)

;Memes and related
* '''Isle of Slash''': "{{w|Slash fiction}}" is a type of {{w|fanfiction}} that takes two male characters from another work of fiction and puts them in a plot where they have lots of sex with each other. Named because of a common way of writing pairings in fanfiction, "X/Y", with the / being pronounced "slash". Adding to this, "Isle of" sounds like "I love".
* '''Numa''': A reference to the viral video "Numa Numa", consisting to a fat guy dancing and lip-syncing to the song "Dragostea din tei" (Romanian for "Love from the lindens").
* '''Your Base''': A reference to the "{{w|All your base are belong to us}}" meme, a line from the game ''{{w|Zero Wing}}'', a game with a huge amount of hilariously badly translated {{w|Engrish}} dialogue. See [[286: All Your Base]] for more discussion of the meme.
* '''Bay of Trolls''': {{w|Troll (Internet)|Trolls}} are people who attempt to stir up controversy by intentionally saying statements meant to annoy others into responding. "Bay" can refer to both a sheltered port, and to an animal's cry, so "Bay of Trolls" can be read as "Shelter for Trolls" or "Angry Shouting of Trolls". Given the communities surrounding it, both would make sense.
* '''Soviet Russia''': {{w|Russian reversal|"In Soviet Russia" jokes}} are a style of joke commonly associated with -comedian {{w|Yakov Smirnoff}}, which has since become an internet meme. Example: "In America, you always find a party. In Russia, Party will always find ''you''." — playing off of the idea that "Party" can also refer to the Communist Party. The meme version usually isn't as clever as that, though. See "[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-soviet-russia in soviet russia]".
* '''SPAAARTA''': As in, "THIS! IS! SPAAARTA!!!", A famously over-the-top line from the movie ''{{w|300 (film)|300}}''.

===MMORPGs and related games (Northeast by East)===
An area dedicated to MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games), large-scale games with huge numbers of players put into the same world. The label "Here there be anthromorphic dragons" references a common marking on old maps ("Here there be dragons") but updates it to joke about the more humanoid dragons seen in many games, or again, how dragons, especilally anthropomorphic dragons, are very-very popular in the furry community.

* '''[http://games.yahoo.com Yahoo Games]''': A branch of Yahoo (see "The Icy North") dedicated to games (mainly boardgames).
* '''[http://uo.com UO]''': ''Ultima Online'', one of the first MMORPGs, and the first to grow to any size. Based on the long-running ''Ultima'' RPG computer games. Started 1997.
* '''[http://www.everquest.com/‎ EQ]''': ''EverQuest'', another important early MMORPG, started 1999. UO and EQ have declined significantly since then; for a while, they were each the iconic MMORPG, but that role has been taken over by...
* '''[http://www.warcraft.com/‎ WoW]''': ''World of Warcraft'', an MMORPG launched in 2004, again based on a previously-existing RPG series, and by far the largest and most iconic at the time of this comic's creation. A few others have attempted to challenge it since.
* '''[http://www.runescape.com/‎ Runescape]''': Free-to-play fantasy MMORPG; the largest in existence.
* '''[http://www.finalfantasyxi.com/ FFXI]''': ''Final Fantasy XI'', the eleventh installment in the ''Final Fantasy'' series of video games, and the first to be a MMORPG. It didn't really take off until after this comic was made.
* '''[http://www.lineage.com/‎ Lineage]''': 1998 MMORPG. Particularly popular in South Korea, a country with somewhat of a cultural obsession with video games.
* '''[http://secondlife.com Second Life]''': A virtual world, noted for largely working from user-generated content, which can be sold by users for real money. See {{w|Second Life}}. ''Third Life'' is a joke based on Second Life — if it existed it would presumably be a game people play to escape Second Life, which they play to escape their first, real life.

==Transcript==
:[Hand-drawn fantasy style map with land and sea areas representing populations of online communities. Each area or item is labeled.]
:Map of Online Communities and related points of interest
:Geographic area represents estimated size of membership

:[Land Area Labels:]
:The Icy North (Yahoo, Windows Live),
:AOL,
::Chat Rooms
:Reunion dot com,
:Classmates dot com,
:E-harmony,
:Friendster,
:Faceparty,
:Chasm,
:Qwghlm,
:Yahoo Games,
:Mountains of Web 1.0,
:The Lonely Island,
:MySpace,
:Attractive MySpace Pages,
:The Series of Tubes,
:Myspace Bands,
:WOW,
:Lineage,
:Second Life,
:Third Life,
:UO,
:EQ,
:FFXI,
:2channel,
:4chan,
:LJ,
:Xanga,
:Orkut,
:Cyworld,
:Blurty,
:OK Cupid,
:Facebook,
:Piczo,
:The Compass-Rose-Shaped Island,
::Practicals (Noob)
::Focus on Real Life (IRL)
::Focus on Web (.com)
::Intellectuals (π)
:Broadcaster,
:The Bit Torrent,
:Flickr,
:Last.fm,
:DeviantArt,
:Isle of Slash,
:Numa,
:Digg,
:Fark,
:Reddit,
:Something Awful,
:Your Base,
:Soviet Russia,
:/. [Slashdot],
:Spaaarta (YTMND),
:StumbleUpon,
:Del.icio.us,
:The Blogipelago,
:Sulawesi,
:Xu Jinglei,
:Post Secret,
:Technocrati,
:[Hard to read label: Probably JWB, TWB, or TMZ]
:BoingBoing,
:Huffington Post,
:Gays of Web 2.0,
:The Wikipedia project,
:MIT,
:Engadget,
:Gizmodo,
:Usenet,
:MAKE Blog,
:IRC Isles,
:Sourceforge.

:[Sea Area Labels:]
:NOOB Sea,
:Gulf of YouTube,
:Bay of Angst,
:Sea of Culture,
:Ocean of Subculture,
:P2P Shoals,
:Straits of Web 2.0,
:Here Be Anthropomorphic Dragons,
:Bay of Trolls,
:Viral Straits,
:Sea of Memes,
:The Wet Sea
:Item Labels: Shipwreck of the SS Howard Dean, Cory Doctrow's Balloon, Stallman's airship, Google's volcano fortress

:(Not a complete survey. Sizes based on the best figures I could find but involved some guesswork. Do not use for navigation.)
:Spring 2007

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Richard Stallman]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Maps]]

Talk:327: Exploits of a Mom

2014-07-06T18:15:38Z

199.27.128.67:

What about the daughter's name?[[User:Guru-45|Guru-45]] ([[User talk:Guru-45|talk]]) 14:57, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

:I think that's embellished upon later in a series called l33t. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 15:42, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
:It's for novelty license plates with people's names on them (like "Bort" for example). [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.67|199.27.128.67]] 18:15, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

After fixing my stupid undo I think this comic is still incomplete: What is the "driver's license factory" at the title text? --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 16:17, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

:The common tale is that someone purchases some item or other with writing on it (or somewhere where writing can appear, on closer examination) and finds that this writing reads "Help, I'm trapped in a <item> factory", or similar, as appropriate to the object concerned. This suggests that someone is trapped (or perhaps even enslaved to work) within such a place and their only hope of escape is to make 'messages in a bottle' out of the product that leaves the facility. This is often extended to various fantastical situations, like the (British only?) joke about the stick of {{w|Rock_(confectionery)|sea-side rock}}.
:(Of course, the writing in sticks of rock generally starts to become unreadable (for normal-sized sticks) for any name larger than "Bridlington", although with care I suppose they've made them with a semi-legible "Western-super-Mare" set through them. But one aspect of this version of the joke could definitely well be that the theoretical SOS message wouldn't legibly fit.)
:So, anyway, Mrs Roberts (who waited for a number of years for Little Bobby Tables to grow up to school-age, for the illustrated exploit) is patiently waiting for her daughter to get to somewhere in her mid-teens, or later, all the while intending that she will get to spoof such a message from the local DMV's license-printing facility at some point. (Turns out that could be as 'soon' as her reaching 14-16 years of age for her first Learner license, depending on state.) Momma Roberts likes playing the long-game, it appears. [[Special:Contributions/178.98.31.27|178.98.31.27]] 16:02, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

:The mouseover text might also be a reference to an easter egg in classic Mac OS, in which the text "Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!" was embedded in the {{w|system suitcase}}. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.90|173.245.50.90]] 20:02, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

1345: Answers

2014-03-21T14:39:42Z

199.27.128.67: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1345
| date = March 21, 2014
| title = Answers
| image = answers.png
| titletext = Stanford sleep researcher William Dement said that after 50 years of studying sleep, the only really solid explanation he knows for why we do it is 'because we get sleepy'.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] claims that humans are driven by their curiosity, which is never-ending. This appears to be a riff on the recurring philosophical question of what separates humanity from the rest of the animals. [[Megan]] answers this blanket statement by observing an apparent paradox: Everyone spends approximately eight hours per day in an unconscious state of sleep, but no one has yet discovered the biological purpose of sleep. This implies that every member of the human species is confronted daily with a mystery, yet no one "loses sleep over it"—that is, almost no one is distracted by this mystery. This implies that Cueball's observed curiosity has a perceptible and proximate limit.

It should be noted that many scientists are in fact busily investigating the reasons that humans sleep, although that inquiry has not resulted in satisfying answers. Some offered explanations are: to avoid nocturnal predators, to give the body a chance to repair itself, and to allow the brain a period to sort out long-term from short-term memories.

The title text makes a semi-tautological statement that people sleep only "because we get sleepy." This is an example of question-begging, because getting sleepy only means that someone is feeling the urge to sleep. This may be an oblique reference to the French playwright Moliere [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dormitive_principle], who created a satirical character who claimed to have discovered the answer to a popular question: The reason opium makes someone sleepy, said the character (a doctor), was that it contained a "dormitive principle" (i.e., something that makes someone sleepy).

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are talking.]
:Cueball: Humans are defined by our curiosity, our hunger for answers.
:Megan: We all spend a third of our lives lying down with our eyes closed and '''''NOBODY KNOWS WHY.'''''
:Cueball: Touché.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1332: Slippery Slope

2014-02-19T22:43:25Z

199.27.128.67: added comment

Wow, and I used to think White Hat was well-meaning but stupid; the inverse of Black Hat. I never knew he was such an asshole...
[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.65|199.27.128.65]] 09:11, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
::My own first thought was "That's a Black Hat Voice...". Then I started wondering what White Beret would have said, in his stead, and that sufficiently distracted me... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.7|141.101.99.7]] 13:49, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

::I read that as more of an introverted perspective (though to an extreme) than him being an asshole.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.57|173.245.54.57]] 16:20, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

"Where does it end"? - Marriage, obviously. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

;Reminds me of a scene in 3:10 to Yuma (2007) with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale

Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) speaking to Dan Evans (Christian Bale):
"Yeah, that's why I don't mess around with doing anything good, Dan. You do one good deed for somebody... I imagine it's habit-forming. Something decent. See that grateful look in their eyes, imagine it makes you feel like Christ Hisself."

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.30|108.162.216.30]] 20:24, 19 February 2014 (UTC)CAM

In the U.S., the satellite company DirectTV has a series of humorous commercials using the Slippery Slope argument as part of their "Get Rid of Cable" campaign. They all start with a person using cable tv, having problems of some sort, and then ending up in a dire situation such as waking up in a roadside ditch, selling your hair to a wig shop, etc. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.67|199.27.128.67]] 22:43, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1301: File Extensions

2014-02-19T17:18:23Z

199.27.128.67:

The title text reference of "hand-aligned data" may refer to ASCII art. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.28|108.162.215.28]] 05:36, 9 December 2013 (UTC) Alan K.
:I'd think not, given that art isn't exactly data. My guess would be tables in the .txt - a .txt file is just raw text with no formatting, so putting a table in requires manually formatting it with a bunch of spaces/tabs. It's not hard, but can be time-consuming and obnoxious. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.47|108.162.219.47]] 23:57, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
::Any programmer would tell you to _never_ try and hand-align things with tabs. Different text editors will use anything from 3 to 8 spaces for a tab, meaning that what's aligned in your editor isn't in others.{{unsigned ip|108.162.236.13}}
:::Indent with tabs; align with spaces. More formally, tabs should only be at the beginning of a line, and should have a strong contextual relationship with the surrounding text. This is a reasonably thought out explanation: http://lea.verou.me/2012/01/why-tabs-are-clearly-superior/ [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.67|199.27.128.67]] 17:18, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I think it's also a notable point, that the better rated document formats are more data centric while the low rated formats mix text informations with design elements and finally become pure graphic formats, which often is an indication, that the author didn't use the accurate file type for (mostly) pure text informations.
Something I don't understand is the gap between jpg and jpeg. The first suffix is AFAIK only an abbreviation used by older DOS/MS Systems to fullfill the 8.3 limitation for filenames. The note about hand alignment might concern the fact, that hand alignment is more time expensive which might increase the amount of the the author spend in overthink the content before layouting. Also often automated layouting as supported by many modern writing application might lead to unexpected and sometimes wrong results, because the automatism has no semantical knowledge about the authors intention, which might lead to post processed errors
Sorry for my bad english, I'm not a natural writer
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.239|108.162.231.239]] 05:45, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
:"hand-aligned data" seems to me like (manually) space-indented paragraphs, perhaps even manual padding to achieve the desired justification (centering and right-and-left-margin-hugging). And of course neatly lining up an 'embedded table', perhaps originally extracted from a .csv output. Although a number of plain-text editors (in the days of CGA and pure terminal/fixedspace fonts) or text formatters and wrappers (e.g. Lynx, man-page creaters, etc) ''would'' do things like this for you. And still do. At least insofar as the justification and margining is concerned. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.229|141.101.99.229]] 08:35, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
If anyone has taken the time to hand align a text file (as in a README, or other info file), they want it to look attractive for people to read. Odd are you're not going to take the time to "hand pretty" the document just to be malicious. Back in the BBS days there were a large number of "online" groups who had "signature" text files which were (very probably) hand aligned, and made extensive use of extended ASCII codes to generate basic graphics. (Granted there were programs to help auto-generate "ascii art".) If you've ever seen these files you'd know. [[http://www.thuglife.org/tlv5/aabout.shtml Example 1]] - [[http://textfiles.com/piracy/NFO/ Example 2]] [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 14:14, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I find it interesting that .jpg and .jpeg are at different levels. Aren't those the same thing? --[[User:Mralext20|Mralext20]] ([[User talk:Mralext20|talk]]) 05:48, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps the .gif could contain suddenly unexpected scary/surprising frames? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.208.172|108.162.208.172]] 14:54, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

:That JPG/JPEG thing indeed seems strange. The more important distinction is between JPEGs that are photographs (fine) and those that are not (stupid). Also, pre-PNG, non-photograph GIFs could be just fine. And with all the accounting scandals we've seen, why would those spreadsheet formats get any credibility? -- [[User:Dfeuer|Dfeuer]] ([[User talk:Dfeuer|talk]]) 06:06, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
::Alongside .jpeg ('full' extension format) and .jpg (MS '8.3'-compatible extension format), I'd have expected .jpe (often full extension historically truncated on an 8.3 system), I must be honest. (And interesting that .docx doesn't co-inhabit the .doc line... or be somewhere else.) And the disparity betwixt the two versions of JPEG extension ''may'' relate to the tendency for a higher artefact-intensity of images back in the early days (when a better option than GIFs for... certain pictures... e.g. on Usenet between *nix workstations with vastly restricted bandwidths and storage capacities) compared to today's users (cameras that regularly store 10+MP pictures in low-loss JFIF files, and/or in Raw format!). But that may be a spurious or off-track reasoning on my part. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.229|141.101.99.229]] 08:27, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I measured the bars in photoshop to +/- 2pixels. If we scale .tex to a value of 100 like the transcript says, these are the values I get for the bar lengths (rounded to one decimal place)
.tex 100
.pdf 89.4
.csv 84.9
.txt 66.5
.svg 64.8
.xls 48.6
.doc 21.2
.png 15.1
.ppt 14.5
.jpg 3.4
.jpeg -8.4
.gif -35.8

Dunno if it is helpful - or even trusted given I'm a first time commenter - but there it is. Closer values than just estimating, though the eyeballed estimates aren't bad. Not going to adjust the actual transcript because I feel that's overstepping my bounds. {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.56}}
:Not at all, wikis are free to edit for a reason. If we didn't want new users to be editing pages, we could have turned that off long ago. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 07:55, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

'''As the information that is provided by the graph comes as png, we should probably not trust her. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.92.120|141.101.92.120]] 09:03, 9 December 2013 (UTC)'''
: Ha, +1 Like :-) [[User:Spongebog|Spongebog]] ([[User talk:Spongebog|talk]])

I never saw image of cute cats lying to me ... I mean, the gif is STILL the preferred format for animation, mostly because it's the only one supported. Animation formats based on PNG didn't catched up, hard to say why ... on the other hand, gif animation apparently have huge number of weird extensions, judging by the number of animated images I found which don't render properly in anything EXCEPT the browser. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:27, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
:The cute cat may not be lying, but since the format is used in other context -- like banner ads, then the average GIF may well be lying, also I believe there have been many security issues with GIFs and JPGs as they have been used as an attack vector for internet-bad-guys to take over your computer -- so while security issues is not specifically the topic for todays strip, then that may be worth noticing as well [[User:Spongebog|Spongebog]] ([[User talk:Spongebog|talk]])
:It is also possible to create animations with svg which is (for good reason, I like that format) ranked higher. Especially for scientific purposes it can be handy. Unfortunately is the MediaWiki software unable to show them. For example in the previous comic is an animation of the Galilean moons shown. That is an gif but someone also uploaded an [[Wikipedia:commons:File:Galilean_moon_Laplace_resonance_animation_(en_-_monochrome_-_350x217).svg|svg animation]] and I would say it does look smoother than the gif. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.215|108.162.231.215]] 14:40, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
:The Grumpy Cat is not grumpy in real life - so cat pictures DO lie! [[User:Schmammel|Schmammel]] ([[User talk:Schmammel|talk]]) 15:40, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
'''What is the scale of the chart? Does 'top' = most trusted'? Never assume anything with xkcd.''' [[User:David.windsor|David.windsor]] ([[User talk:David.windsor|talk]]) 18:29, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
: Brilliant. I didn't think of that at all. But now that you mention it... a .gif would be like a small part of a video. And people tend to trust those more than a static picture. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.209|108.162.222.209]] 08:58, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Of course Randall does not really think that the file extension determines trustworthiness; the graph is tongue-in-cheek. Information can be trustworthy or untrustworthy no matter the format it's given in. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.221|108.162.216.221]] 18:50, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
:Yes, I believe the explanation somewhat misinterprets Randall's intentions, especially when it comes to the image formats. I interpret it not as a question of loss of information due to compression but instead a more general impression of when and by whom these formats are used and, as a consequence, the trustworthiness of the information conveyed through these formats. That would explain the jpg/jpeg distinction as (in my experience though I can't provide data that support it) .jpg is nowadays the preferred compressed format in professional contexts and .jpeg looks slightly childish. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.117|141.101.80.117]] 23:59, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Reading more into the linked info about viruses embedded in JPEGs, it appears that the only way to receive a virus from a JPEG file would be to have ''already'' received another virus from a standard executable file, where such a virus causes the computer to execute code in a JPEG file rather than simply display it as it normally would. Since such a possibility is independent of the file type (the first virus might just as well have enabled code execution in DOC files, for instance), I've removed that bit of info. [[User:Zowayix|Zowayix]] ([[User talk:Zowayix|talk]]) 03:44, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Can anyone explain the banner near the top of xkcd.com today, 10 Dec 2013? It reads,
"Dear Wikipedia readers: if everyone reading this _showed up at my house,_ (yellow highlight)I would be like "what {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.220}}
: I believe that is a reference to the similar banner that is on top of wikipedia right now asking for donations. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 18:02, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
::I don't see that banner, but it appears to be a play on Wikipedia's donation "pleas" that are often posted (including now) as banners at the top of Wikipedia which suggest that (to use the lates one:) "If everyone reading this donated, our fundraiser would be done within an hour". [[User:TheHYPO|TheHYPO]] ([[User talk:TheHYPO|talk]]) 18:05, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I think it's a bit ambiguous whether Randall's references (for example) to jpg and gif means he doesn't trust that the images are accurate because of artifacting and stuff, or whether he's referring to jpgs and gifs that occasionally circulate with text on them as if to present information (e.g., lifehack images, or cat memes...) [[User:TheHYPO|TheHYPO]] ([[User talk:TheHYPO|talk]]) 18:05, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

;missing suffices

Obviously .html & .htm are so far to the left, they're off the chart. :-)
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.117|108.162.249.117]] 17:43, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Any idea what file type was used to spread this hoax?
http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/apple-secret-bitcoin-mining-feature/
Various websites reporting on it use .JPG and .PNG, but I don't know what format the original graphic was.
[[User:InspectorClouseau|InspectorClouseau]] ([[User talk:InspectorClouseau|talk]]) 16:16, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd be pretty wary of .flv...
[[User:Nick Douglas|Nick Douglas]] ([[User talk:Nick Douglas|talk]]) 15:16, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

1331: Frequency

2014-02-17T23:51:58Z

199.27.128.67: more info on Facebook and 13-year-olds

{{comic
| number = 1331
| date = February 17, 2014
| title = Frequency
| image = frequency.png
| titletext = This comic shows estimated average frequency. I wanted to include the pitch drop experiment, but it turns out the gif format has some issues with decade-long loops.
}}

Today's comic is animated. While we prepare a gif for the wiki, click on the date above the comic to see the animated version.
==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Incomplete.}}
This comic shows a number of common events, ordered in a grid. Each of the events flashes with their average frequency.

For example, statistically a child is born somewhere on the world approximately every 0.24 seconds, or four times per second. Therefore the tile "One birth" blinks about 4 times per second.

The table below lists all the events and their duration / frequency. Some events make reference to other comics.

The title text refers to the {{w|Pitch drop experiment}} which measures the flow of a piece of pitch over many years. At room temperature, tar pitch flows at a very slow rate, taking several years to form a single drop. The title text jokes that Randall tried to include a tile that flashes about once every {{w|decade|ten years}}, but the tiles are all {{w|Animated GIF|animated GIFs}} and the file format does not support animations that long.

{| class="wikitable sortable"
!Picture
!Text
!Period (seconds)
!Frequency (per minute)
!Frequency (per year, N/I = not interesting)
!Explanation
|-
|[[File:heartbeat.gif]]
|Heartbeat||0.86||70||32,785,200||
|-
|[[File:birth.gif]]
|One birth||0.24||250||131,490,000||
|-
|[[File:death.gif]]
|One death||0.56||107||56,360,000||
|-
|[[File:wikipedia.gif]]
|Someone edits Wikipedia||0.67||90||47,100,000||
|-
|[[File:vibrator.gif]]
|Someone buys a vibrator||2.99||20||10,550,000 ||
|-
|[[ File:car china.gif ]]
|China builds a car||1.89||32||16,700,000||
|-
|[[ File:car japan.gif ]]
|Japan builds a car||4.01||15||7,870,000||
|-
|[[ File:car germany.gif ]]
|Germany builds a car||5.8||10||5,440,000||
|-
|[[ File:car us.gif ]]
|The US builds a car||6.95||8.6||4,540,000||
|-
|[[ File:car elsewhere.gif ]]
|Someone else builds a car||1.03||58||30,640,000||
|-
|[[ File:kiss.gif ]]
|A European Union resident has their first kiss||5.53||11||5,700,000||
|-
|[[ File:fire dept.gif ]]
|A US fire department puts out a fire||23||2.6||1,370,000||
|-
|[[ File:holeinone.gif ]]
|Someone hits a hole-in-one||180||20 times per hour||175,320||A {{w|hole in one}} is a feat in {{w|golf}} in which the player hits the ball directly from the tee into the cup with one shot.
|-
|[[ File:turnsignal1.gif ]]
|My turn signal blinks||0.94||64||N/I||See below
|-
|[[ File:turnsignal2.gif ]]
|The turn signal of the car in front of me blinks||0.9||67||N/I||This, together with the previous item, forms a reference to [[165: Turn Signals]].
|-
|[[ File:earthquake1.gif ]]
|Earthquake (magnitude 1)||2.43||25||13,000,000||
|-
|[[ File:earthquake2.gif ]]
|Earthquake (magnitude 2)||24.26||2.5||1,300,000||
|-
|[[ File:earthquake3.gif ]]
|Earthquake (magnitude 3)||242.6||15 times per hour||130,000||
|-
|[[ File:earthquake4.gif ]]
|Earthquake (magnitude 4)||2426||1.5 times per hour||13,000||
|-
|[[ File:parliament toilet.gif ]]
|A member of the UK parliament flushes a toilet||10.06||6||3,140,000||Note that probably during the daytime in Britain such a toilet is flushed 8.5 times per minute, while at night it is flushed only 1 time per minute.
|-
|[[ File:flight.gif ]]
|An airline flight takes off||0.93||65||34,000,000||
|-
|[[ File:book mockingbird.gif ]]
|Someone buys ''To Kill a Mockingbird''||42.05||1.4||750,000||“{{w|To Kill a Mockingbird}}” is a famous novel by {{w|Harper Lee}}.
|-
|[[ File:cat mockingbird.gif ]]
|Someone's pet cat kills a mockingbird||1.82||33||17,340,000||Whereas the previous item references the well-known book “To Kill a Mockingbird”, this one talks about {{w|Mockingbird|mockingbirds}} being literally killed (in this case, by cats). There are 45 million mockingbirds it the world;[http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Mimus_polyglottos/] this means that according to Randall, cats kill 39% of mockingbirds in one year, i.e. in 2.5 years they are able to kill all mockingbirds (excluding the ones that are born in the meantime).
|-
|[[ File:phoenixshoes.gif ]]
|Someone in Phoenix buys new shoes||1.08||56||29,200,000||Since {{w|Phoenix metropolitan area|metro Phoenix}} has 4,200,000 inhabitants, according to Randall people in Phoenix buy 7 pairs of shoes per capita per year.
|-
|[[ File:phoenix.gif ]]
|Someone in Phoenix puts on a condom||2.05||29||15,390,000||
|-
|[[ File:keys.gif ]]
|Someone locks their keys in their car||2.43||25||13,000,000||
|-
|
|A Sagittarius named Amelia drinks a soda||7.79||7.7||4,000,000||This frequency is taken from the number of persons called {{w|Amelia_(given_name)|Amelia}} ([http://howmanyofme.com/ est. 82,572 people in the U.S.]), the number of persons born under the astrological sign of {{w|Sagittarius (astrology)|Sagittarius}} (~1/12th of the population, i.e. approximately 6881 Amelias in the U.S.) and the frequency of soda (soft drinks) being drunk (216 liters per person per year in the U.S.[http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_sof_dri_con-food-soft-drink-consumption]). According to our figures, 6881 Amelias drink 1,44 million liters of soft drinks per year in the United States alone, which means that Randall's figures only account for American Amelias (drinking 356 cc or 12 fl. oz. of soda in each drink).
|-
|
|A dog bites someone in the US||7.01||8.6||4,500,000||
|-
|
|Someone steals a bicycle||24.93||2.4||1,265,000||
|-
|
|A bald eagle catches a fish||2.69||22||11,700,000||
|-
|
|50,000 plastic bottles are produced||1.27||2.36 million bottles||1.24 trillion||
|-
|
|50,000 plastic bottles are recycled||4.64||646,552 bottles||340 billion||27% of the plastic bottles manufactured get recycled
|-
|
|A bright meteor is visible somewhere||1.15||52||N/I||
|-
|
|Old Faithful erupts||5640 (94 minutes)||15 times per day||5,595||{{w|Old Faithful}} is a geyser in {{w|Yellowstone National Park}} in the US, that tends to erupt every 65 or 91 minutes. XKCD's period of 1h 34m falls between the [http://geysertimes.org/getGeyserInfo.php?geyserID=2 mean and median of recent Old Faithful eruptions] and corresponds to a [http://geysertimes.org/getSingleEruption.php?id=645135 February 16, 2014 eruption].
|-
|
|A fishing boat catches a shark||0.83||72||38,000,000||
|-
|
|Someone in the US is diagnosed with cancer||18.99||3.2||1,660,000|| [[881: Probability]]
|-
|
|Someone in the US dies from cancer||54.34||1.1||580,000|| [[881: Probability]]
|-
|
|Someone adopts a dog from a shelter||15.6||3.8||2,000,000||
|-
|
|Someone adopts a cat from a shelter||21.3||2.8||1,5000,000||
|-
|
|Someone gets married||0.75||80||42,000,000||
|-
|
|Someone registers a domain||0.64||94||49,300,000 ||
|-
|
|Someone in the US buys a house||6.22||9.6||5,000,000||
|-
|
|Someone in the US gets a tattoo||2.06||29||15,300,000||
|-
|
|The star PSR J1748-2446AD rotates 1,000 times||1.4||43,000 rotations||N/I||{{w|PSR J1748-2446ad}} is the fastest spinning {{w|pulsar}} known.
|-
|
|Someone lies about their age to sign up for Facebook||4.32||14||600,000 per month||To sign up for Facebook, [https://www.facebook.com/help/210644045634222 the user must claim to be at least 13 years old]. This is a reflection of the U.S. {{w|Children's Online Privacy Protection Act}}.
|-
|
|Someone breaks an iPhone screen||0.93||65||34,000,000||
|-
|
|A Little League player strikes out||1.23||49||N/I||{{w|Little League Baseball|Little League}} is a system of local youth baseball and softball competitions. A {{w|strikeout}} is a situation in baseball and softball.
|-
|
|Someone has sex in North Dakota||1.38||43||22,900,000||Since {{w|North Dakota}} has 723,000 inhabitants (ranked the 48th state), and if we estimate the sexually active population as 80% (and if ''someone'' means ''a couple)'' this means that people in North Dakota have sex 79.1 times a year. It is estimated that 3.93% of the world population has sex on a given day;[http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/geographyofsex.htm] Randall's rate for North Dakota is 17.3% which is not low.
|-
|
|Justin Bieber gains a follower on Twitter||4.73||13||556,000 per month||{{w|Justin Bieber}} is a Canadian pop music singer whose [https://twitter.com/justinbieber Twitter account] is extremely popular
|-
|
|Someone in Denver orders pizza||1.27||47||2,000,000||
|}

==Transcript==
:[Repetitive events are written in grey and arranged in a grid. Each statement pulses to black and then returns to grey at an interval characteristic of the named event.]

{| style="text-align:center;"
|- style="vertical-align: top; background-color:#eeeeee;"
|Heartbeat (0.86 sec)
|One birth (0.24 sec)
|One death (0.56 sec)
|Someone edits Wikipedia (0.67 sec)
|Someone buys a vibrator (2.99 sec)
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|China builds a car (1.89 sec)
|Japan builds a car (4.01 sec)
|Germany builds a car (5.8 sec)
|The US builds a car (6.95 sec)
|Someone else builds a car (1.03 sec)
|- style="vertical-align: top; background-color:#eeeeee;"
|A European Union resident has their first kiss (5.53 sec)
|A US fire department puts out a fire (23 sec)
|Someone hits a hole-in-one (180 sec)
|My turn signal blinks (0.94 sec)
|The turn signal of the car in front of me blinks (0.9 sec)
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|Earthquake (magnitude 1) (2.43 sec)
|Earthquake (magnitude 2) (24.26 sec)
|Earthquake (magnitude 3) (242.6 sec)
|Earthquake (magnitude 4) (2426 sec, 42 min)
|Member of the UK Parliament flushes a toilet (10.06 sec)
|- style="vertical-align: top; background-color:#eeeeee;"
|An airline flight takes off (0.93 sec)
|Someone buys ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' (42.05 sec)
|Someone's pet cat kills a mockingbird (1.82 sec)
|Someone in Phoenix buys new shoes (1.08 sec)
|Someone in Phoenix puts on a condom (2.05 sec)
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|Someone locks their keys in their car (2.43 sec)
|A Sagittarius named Amelia drinks a soda (7.79 sec)
|A dog bites someone in the US (7.01 sec)
|Someone steals a bicycle (24.93 sec)
|A bald eagle catches a fish (2.69 sec)
|- style="vertical-align: top; background-color:#eeeeee;"
|50,000 plastic bottles are produced (1.27 sec)
|50,000 plastic bottles are recycled (4.64 sec)
|A bright meteor is visible somewhere (1.15 sec)
|Old Faithful erupts (5640 sec, 94 min)
|A fishing boat catches a shark (0.83 sec)
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|Someone in the US is diagnosed with cancer (18.99 sec)
|Someone in the US dies from cancer (54.34 sec)
|Someone adopts a dog from a shelter (15.6 sec)
|Someone adopts a cat from a shelter (21.3 sec)
|Someone gets married (0.75 sec)
|- style="vertical-align: top; background-color:#eeeeee;"
|Someone registers a domain (0.64 sec)
|Someone in the US buys a house (6.22 sec)
|Someone in the US gets a tattoo (2.06 sec)
|The star ''PSR J1748-2446ad'' rotates 1,000 times (1.4 sec)
|Someone lies about their age to sign up for Facebook (4.32 sec)
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|Someone breaks an iPhone screen (0.93 sec)
|A little league player strikes out (1.23 sec)
|Someone has sex in North Dakota (1.38 sec)
|Justin Bieber gains a follower on Twitter (4.73 sec)
|Someone in Denver orders a pizza (1.27 sec)
|}

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Dynamic comics]]
[[Category:Charts]]