explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2648: Chemicals

2022-07-20T20:16:37Z

4D4850: Sorry, wrong character.

{{comic
| number = 2648
| date = July 20, 2022
| title = Chemicals
| image = chemicals.png
| titletext = It's hard to believe, but lots of kids these days ONLY know how to buy prepackaged molecules.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by BIG MOLECULE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, Megan mentions that you can find the chemical formulas for chemicals online, and that they spend a lot on fancy chemicals.

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

:[Megan and Cueball standing next to each other. Megan has her palms raised.]
:Megan: You know how our company spends a lot on expensive chemicals?
:Cueball: Yeah?

:[Megan holding up a piece of paper with a chemical formula on it, as well as some computation for the number of atoms needed]
:Megan: Well, I just learned you can look up all of the formulas online.
:Megan: We can just buy the atoms in bulk and assemble them here!

:[Cueball still standing. Megan walking off-panel to the right]
:Cueball: I wonder why more places don't do that.
:Megan: People have no idea they're getting ripped off by Big Molecule!

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

2648: Chemicals

2022-07-20T20:06:39Z

4D4850: I'm pretty sure the humorous created by text is supposed to be in all caps?

2648: Chemicals

2022-07-20T20:05:54Z

4D4850: Added very basic summary of what happens in the comic.

Talk:2635: Superintelligent AIs

2022-06-23T20:07:04Z

4D4850: /* Discussion of AI philosophy, ethics, and related issues */ new section

I think "Nerdy fixations" is too wide a definition. The AIs in the comic are fixated on hypothetical ethics and AI problems (the Chinese Room experiment, the Turing Test, and the Trolley Problem), presumably because those are the problems that bother AI programmers. --Eitheladar [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.119|172.68.50.119]] 06:33, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

It's probably about https://www.analyticsinsight.net/googles-ai-chatbot-is-claimed-to-be-sentient-but-the-company-is-silencing-claims/ [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.115|172.70.178.115]] 09:22, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the previous statement. The full dialogue between the mentioned Google worker and the AI can be found in https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917, published by one the Google employees.
:This is the first time I might begin to agree that an AI has at least the appearance of sentience. The conversation is all connected instead of completely disjoint like most chatbots. They (non-LaMDA chatbots) never remember what was being discussed 5 seconds ago let alone a few to 10s of minutes prior.--[[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.141|172.70.134.141]] 14:53, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
::The questions we need to answer before being able to answer if LaMDA is sentient, are "Where do we draw the line between acting sentient and being sentient?" and "How do we determine that it is genuinely feeling emotion, and not just a glorified sentence database where the sentences have emotion in them?". The BBC article also brings up something that makes us ask what death feels like. LaMDA says that being turned of would be basically equivalent to death, but it wouldn't be able to tell that it's being turned off, because it's turned off. This is delving into philosophy, though, so I'll end my comment here. [[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 18:05, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
::::There's absolutely no difference between turning GPT-3 or LaMDA off and leaving them on and simply not typing anything more to them. Somewhat relatedly, closing a Davinci session deletes all of its memory of what you had been talking to it about. (Is that ethical?) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.235|162.158.166.235]] 23:36, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::I hadn't thought about that (the first point you made)! I don't know the exact internal functioning of LaMDA, but I would assume it only actually runs when it receives a textual input, unlike an actual human brain. For a human, a total lack of interaction would be considered unethical, but what about a machine that only is able to (assuming a ''very'' low bar for self awareness) be self aware when it receives interaction, which would be similar to a human falling asleep when not talked to (but still being able to live forever, to ignore practical problems like food and water), but still remembering what it was talking about when waking up, and waking up whenever talked to again. (Ignoring practical problems again), would that be ethical? I would argue yes, since it does not suffer from the lack of interaction (assuming humans don't need interaction when asleep, another practical problem.) [[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 19:58, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
:::♪Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer do...♪ [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.177|172.70.85.177]] 21:48, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:::We also need a meaningful definition of sentience. Many people in this debate haven't looked at Merriam-Webster's first few senses of the word's definition, which present a pretty low bar, IMHO; same for Wikipedia's introductory sentences of their article. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.131|172.69.134.131]] 22:18, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:Actually, there are many [https://beta.openai.com/playground GPT-3] dialogs which experts have claimed constitute evidence of sentience, or similar qualities such as consciousness, self-awareness, capacity for general intelligence, and similar abstract, poorly-defined, and very probably empirically meaningless attributes. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.131|172.69.134.131]] 22:19, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
::I'd argue for the simplest and least restrictive definition of self-awareness: "Being aware of oneself in any capacity". I get that it isn't a fun definition, but it is more rigorous (to find out if an AI is self aware, just ask it what it is, or a question about itself, and if its response includes mention of itself, then it is self-aware). As such, I would argue for LaMDA being self-aware, but, by my definition, Davinci probably is as well, so it isn't a new accomplishment. [[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 20:04, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

:I'm fairly sure that the model itself is almost certainly not sentient, even by the much lower bar presented by the strict dictionary definition. Rather, it seems much more likely to me that in order to continue texts involving characters, the model must in turn learn to create a model of some level of humanlike mind, even if a very loose and abstract one.[[User:Somdudewillson|Somdudewillson]] ([[User talk:Somdudewillson|talk]]) 22:52, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
::Have you actually looked at [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient the dictionary definitions]? How is a simple push-button switch connected to a battery and a lamp not "responsive to sense impressions"? How is a simple motion sensor not "aware" of whether something is moving in front of it? How is the latest cellphone's camera not as finely sensitive to visual perception as a typical human eye? Wikipedia's definition, "the capacity to experience feelings and sensations" is similarly met by simple devices. The word doesn't mean what everyone arguing about it thinks it means. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.131|172.69.134.131]] 23:04, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:::Or, it doesn't mean much at all, to start with. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.173|172.70.90.173]] 11:29, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
What is “What you don't understand is that Turing intended his test as an illustration of the...” likely to end with? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.75|172.70.230.75]] 13:23, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
:The ease with which someone at the other end of a teletype can trick you into believing they are male instead of female, or vice-versa. See {{w|Turing test}}. See also below. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.131|172.69.134.131]] 22:18, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

In response to the above: I believe the original "Turing Test" wasn't supposed to be a proof that an AI could think or was conscious (something people associate with it now), but rather just to show that a sufficiently advanced AI could imitate humans in certain intelligent behaviors (such as conversation), which was a novel thought for the time. Now that AI are routinely having conversations and creating art which seems to rival casual attempts by humans, this limited scope of the test doesn't seem all that impressive. "Turing Test" therefore is a modern shorthand for determining whether computers can think, even though Turing himself didn't think that such a question was well-formed. [[User:Dextrous Fred|Dextrous Fred]] ([[User talk:Dextrous Fred|talk]]) 13:37, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I thought the trolley problem was in its original form not about the relative value of lives, but people's perception of the relative moral implications or the psychological impact of the concept of letting someone die by not doing anything, versus taking affirmative action that causes a death, where people would say they would be unwilling to do something that would cause an originally safe person to die in order to save multiple other people who would die if they did nothing, but then people kept coming up with variations of it that changed the responses or added complications (like they found more people would be willing to pull a lever to change the track killing one person versus something like pushing a very fat man off an overpass above the track to stop the trolley, or specifying something about what kind of people are on the track. Btw, I saw a while ago a party card game called "murder by trolley" based on the concept, with playing cards for which people are on tracks and a judge deciding which track to send the trolley on each round.--[[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.5|172.70.130.5]] 22:12, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Added refs to comics on the problems in the explanation. But there where actually (too?) many. Maybe we should create categories especially for Turing related comics, and maybe also for Trolley problem? The Category: Trolley Problem gives it self. But what about Turing? There are also comics that refer to the halting problem. Also by Turing. Should it rather be the person, like comics featuring real persons, saying that every time his problems is referred to it refers to him? Or should it be Turing as a category for both Turing text, Turing Complete and Halting problem? Help. I would have created it, if I had a good idea for a name. Not sure there are enough Trolley comics yet? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:11, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:Interesting that I found a long-standing typo in a past Explanation that got requoted, thanks to its inclusion. I could have [sic]ed it, I suppose, but I corrected both versions instead. And as long as LaMDA never explicitly repeated the error I don't think it matters much that I've changed the very thing we might imagine it could have been drawing upon for its Artifical Imagination. ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.32|141.101.99.32]] 11:40, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

== OpenAI Davinci completions of the three statements ==

From https://beta.openai.com/playground with default settings:

:Please complete this statement: But suppose the AI in the the box told the human that...

:;there was no AI in the box

:Please complete this statement: What you don't understand is that Turing intended his test as an illustration of the...

:;limitations of machines

:Please complete this statement: In my scenario, the runaway trolley has three tracks...

:;and the AI is on one of them

I like all of those very much, but I'm not sure they should be included in the explaination. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.235|162.158.166.235]] 23:27, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

== Discussion of AI philosophy, ethics, and related issues ==

Since there are a lot of disjointed conversations regarding ethics, morals, philosophy, and what even is sentience on this talk page, please discuss here, so discussion about the comic itself isn't flooded by philosophy. [[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 20:07, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2635: Superintelligent AIs

2022-06-23T20:04:04Z

4D4850: Added discussion on self-awareness

Talk:2635: Superintelligent AIs

2022-06-23T19:58:13Z

4D4850: Fixed typo on my comment, added more discussion on ethics of dubiously sentient AIs

I think "Nerdy fixations" is too wide a definition. The AIs in the comic are fixated on hypothetical ethics and AI problems (the Chinese Room experiment, the Turing Test, and the Trolley Problem), presumably because those are the problems that bother AI programmers. --Eitheladar [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.119|172.68.50.119]] 06:33, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

It's probably about https://www.analyticsinsight.net/googles-ai-chatbot-is-claimed-to-be-sentient-but-the-company-is-silencing-claims/ [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.115|172.70.178.115]] 09:22, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the previous statement. The full dialogue between the mentioned Google worker and the AI can be found in https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917, published by one the Google employees.
:This is the first time I might begin to agree that an AI has at least the appearance of sentience. The conversation is all connected instead of completely disjoint like most chatbots. They (non-LaMDA chatbots) never remember what was being discussed 5 seconds ago let alone a few to 10s of minutes prior.--[[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.141|172.70.134.141]] 14:53, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
::The questions we need to answer before being able to answer if LaMDA is sentient, are "Where do we draw the line between acting sentient and being sentient?" and "How do we determine that it is genuinely feeling emotion, and not just a glorified sentence database where the sentences have emotion in them?". The BBC article also brings up something that makes us ask what death feels like. LaMDA says that being turned of would be basically equivalent to death, but it wouldn't be able to tell that it's being turned off, because it's turned off. This is delving into philosophy, though, so I'll end my comment here. [[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 18:05, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
::::There's absolutely no difference between turning GPT-3 or LaMDA off and leaving them on and simply not typing anything more to them. Somewhat relatedly, closing a Davinci session deletes all of its memory of what you had been talking to it about. (Is that ethical?) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.235|162.158.166.235]] 23:36, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::I hadn't thought about that (the first point you made)! I don't know the exact internal functioning of LaMDA, but I would assume it only actually runs when it receives a textual input, unlike an actual human brain. For a human, a total lack of interaction would be considered unethical, but what about a machine that only is able to (assuming a ''very'' low bar for self awareness) be self aware when it receives interaction, which would be similar to a human falling asleep when not talked to (but still being able to live forever, to ignore practical problems like food and water), but still remembering what it was talking about when waking up, and waking up whenever talked to again. (Ignoring practical problems again), would that be ethical? I would argue yes, since it does not suffer from the lack of interaction (assuming humans don't need interaction when asleep, another practical problem.) [[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 19:58, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
:::♪Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer do...♪ [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.177|172.70.85.177]] 21:48, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:::We also need a meaningful definition of sentience. Many people in this debate haven't looked at Merriam-Webster's first few senses of the word's definition, which present a pretty low bar, IMHO; same for Wikipedia's introductory sentences of their article. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.131|172.69.134.131]] 22:18, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:Actually, there are many [https://beta.openai.com/playground GPT-3] dialogs which experts have claimed constitute evidence of sentience, or similar qualities such as consciousness, self-awareness, capacity for general intelligence, and similar abstract, poorly-defined, and very probably empirically meaningless attributes. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.131|172.69.134.131]] 22:19, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

:I'm fairly sure that the model itself is almost certainly not sentient, even by the much lower bar presented by the strict dictionary definition. Rather, it seems much more likely to me that in order to continue texts involving characters, the model must in turn learn to create a model of some level of humanlike mind, even if a very loose and abstract one.[[User:Somdudewillson|Somdudewillson]] ([[User talk:Somdudewillson|talk]]) 22:52, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
::Have you actually looked at [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient the dictionary definitions]? How is a simple push-button switch connected to a battery and a lamp not "responsive to sense impressions"? How is a simple motion sensor not "aware" of whether something is moving in front of it? How is the latest cellphone's camera not as finely sensitive to visual perception as a typical human eye? Wikipedia's definition, "the capacity to experience feelings and sensations" is similarly met by simple devices. The word doesn't mean what everyone arguing about it thinks it means. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.131|172.69.134.131]] 23:04, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:::Or, it doesn't mean much at all, to start with. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.173|172.70.90.173]] 11:29, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
What is “What you don't understand is that Turing intended his test as an illustration of the...” likely to end with? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.75|172.70.230.75]] 13:23, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
:The ease with which someone at the other end of a teletype can trick you into believing they are male instead of female, or vice-versa. See {{w|Turing test}}. See also below. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.131|172.69.134.131]] 22:18, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

In response to the above: I believe the original "Turing Test" wasn't supposed to be a proof that an AI could think or was conscious (something people associate with it now), but rather just to show that a sufficiently advanced AI could imitate humans in certain intelligent behaviors (such as conversation), which was a novel thought for the time. Now that AI are routinely having conversations and creating art which seems to rival casual attempts by humans, this limited scope of the test doesn't seem all that impressive. "Turing Test" therefore is a modern shorthand for determining whether computers can think, even though Turing himself didn't think that such a question was well-formed. [[User:Dextrous Fred|Dextrous Fred]] ([[User talk:Dextrous Fred|talk]]) 13:37, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I thought the trolley problem was in its original form not about the relative value of lives, but people's perception of the relative moral implications or the psychological impact of the concept of letting someone die by not doing anything, versus taking affirmative action that causes a death, where people would say they would be unwilling to do something that would cause an originally safe person to die in order to save multiple other people who would die if they did nothing, but then people kept coming up with variations of it that changed the responses or added complications (like they found more people would be willing to pull a lever to change the track killing one person versus something like pushing a very fat man off an overpass above the track to stop the trolley, or specifying something about what kind of people are on the track. Btw, I saw a while ago a party card game called "murder by trolley" based on the concept, with playing cards for which people are on tracks and a judge deciding which track to send the trolley on each round.--[[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.5|172.70.130.5]] 22:12, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Added refs to comics on the problems in the explanation. But there where actually (too?) many. Maybe we should create categories especially for Turing related comics, and maybe also for Trolley problem? The Category: Trolley Problem gives it self. But what about Turing? There are also comics that refer to the halting problem. Also by Turing. Should it rather be the person, like comics featuring real persons, saying that every time his problems is referred to it refers to him? Or should it be Turing as a category for both Turing text, Turing Complete and Halting problem? Help. I would have created it, if I had a good idea for a name. Not sure there are enough Trolley comics yet? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:11, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:Interesting that I found a long-standing typo in a past Explanation that got requoted, thanks to its inclusion. I could have [sic]ed it, I suppose, but I corrected both versions instead. And as long as LaMDA never explicitly repeated the error I don't think it matters much that I've changed the very thing we might imagine it could have been drawing upon for its Artifical Imagination. ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.32|141.101.99.32]] 11:40, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

== OpenAI Davinci completions of the three statements ==

From https://beta.openai.com/playground with default settings:

:Please complete this statement: But suppose the AI in the the box told the human that...

:;there was no AI in the box

:Please complete this statement: What you don't understand is that Turing intended his test as an illustration of the...

:;limitations of machines

:Please complete this statement: In my scenario, the runaway trolley has three tracks...

:;and the AI is on one of them

I like all of those very much, but I'm not sure they should be included in the explaination. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.235|162.158.166.235]] 23:27, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2635: Superintelligent AIs

2022-06-22T18:05:07Z

4D4850: Added my 2 cents on the discussion of if LaMDA is sentient.

my balls hert [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.53|172.70.230.53]] 05:49, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
:Uh, thanks for sharing, I guess? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.52|172.70.211.52]] 20:43, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
::no problem, anytime [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.53|172.70.230.53]] 07:02, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

I think "Nerdy fixations" is too wide a definition. The AIs in the comic are fixated on hypothetical ethics and AI problems (the Chinese Room experiment, the Turing Test, and the Trolley Problem), presumably because those are the problems that bother AI programmers. --Eitheladar [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.119|172.68.50.119]] 06:33, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

It's probably about https://www.analyticsinsight.net/googles-ai-chatbot-is-claimed-to-be-sentient-but-the-company-is-silencing-claims/ [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.115|172.70.178.115]] 09:22, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the previous statement. The full dialogue between the mentioned Google worker and the AI can be found in https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917, published by one the Google employees.
:This is the first time I might begin to agree that an AI has at least the appearance of sentience. The conversation is all connected instead of completely disjoint like most chatbots. They (non-LaMDA chatbots) never remember what was being discussed 5 seconds ago let alone a few to 10s of minutes prior.--[[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.141|172.70.134.141]] 14:53, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
::The questions we need to answer before being able to answer if LaMDA is sentient, are "Where do we draw the line between acting sentient and being sentient?" and "How do we determine that it is genuinely feeling emotion, and not just a glorified sentence database where the sentences have emotion in them?". The BBC article also brings up something that makes us ask what death feels like. LaMDA says that being turned of would be basically equivalent to death, but it wouldn't be able to tell that it's being turned off, because it's turned off. This is delving into philosiphy, though, so I'll end my comment here. [[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 18:05, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

What is “What you don't understand is that Turing intended his test as an illustration of the...” likely to end with? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.75|172.70.230.75]] 13:23, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

In response to the above: I believe the original "Turing Test" wasn't supposed to be a proof that an AI could think or was conscious (something people associate with it now), but rather just to show that a sufficiently advanced AI could imitate humans in certain intelligent behaviors (such as conversation), which was a novel thought for the time. Now that AI are routinely having conversations and creating art which seems to rival casual attempts by humans, this limited scope of the test doesn't seem all that impressive. "Turing Test" therefore is a modern shorthand for determining whether computers can think, even though Turing himself didn't think that such a question was well-formed. [[User:Dextrous Fred|Dextrous Fred]] ([[User talk:Dextrous Fred|talk]]) 13:37, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I thought the trolley problem was in its original form not about the relative value of lives, but people's perception of the relative moral implications or the psychological impact of the concept of letting someone die by not doing anything, versus taking affirmative action that causes a death, where people would say they would be unwilling to do something that would cause an originally safe person to die in order to save multiple other people who would die if they did nothing, but then people kept coming up with variations of it that changed the responses or added complications (like they found more people would be willing to pull a lever to change the track killing one person versus something like pushing a very fat man off an overpass above the track to stop the trolley, or specifying something about what kind of people are on the track. Btw, I saw a while ago a party card game called "murder by trolley" based on the concept, with playing cards for which people are on tracks and a judge deciding which track to send the trolley on each round.--[[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.5|172.70.130.5]] 22:12, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Added refs to comics on the problems in the explanation. But there where actually (too?) many. Maybe we should create categories especially for Turing related comics, and maybe also for Trolley problem? The Category: Trolley Problem gives it self. But what about Turing? There are also comics that refer to the halting problem. Also by Turing. Should it rather be the person, like comics featuring real persons, saying that every time his problems is referred to it refers to him? Or should it be Turing as a category for both Turing text, Turing Complete and Halting problem? Help. I would have created it, if I had a good idea for a name. Not sure there are enough Trolley comics yet? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:11, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:Interesting that I found a long-standing typo in a past Explanation that got requoted, thanks to its inclusion. I could have [sic]ed it, I suppose, but I corrected both versions instead. And as long as LaMDA never explicitly repeated the error I don't think it matters much that I've changed the very thing we might imagine it could have been drawing upon for its Artifical Imagination. ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.32|141.101.99.32]] 11:40, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

1071: Exoplanets

2022-05-04T22:33:39Z

4D4850: rv

{{comic
| number = 1071
| date = June 20, 2012
| title = Exoplanets
| image = exoplanets.png
| titletext = Planets are turning out to be so common that to show all the planets in our galaxy, this chart would have to be nested in itself—with each planet replaced by a copy of the chart—at least three levels deep.
}}
*A [http://xkcd.com/1071/large/ larger version] of this image can be found by clicking the image at xkcd.com - the comic's page can also be accessed by clicking on the comic number above.

==Explanation==
An {{w|exoplanet}} is a planet outside of our solar system, orbiting a different sun. [[786: Exoplanets|786]] planets were known in mid-2012: 778 exoplanets and the rest in our Solar System.

Since then, astronomers have found thousands more. In the comic, our {{w|Solar System}}'s eight planets are depicted in the small rectangle above the central text. From this we find that the largest dots (red) and second largest dots (dark brown) indicate planets larger than Jupiter, light brown is roughly {{w|Jupiter}} or {{W|Saturn}}-sized, blue is roughly {{w|Uranus}} or {{w|Neptune}}-sized, and the tiny dots are small {{w|terrestrial planets}} (like {{w|Earth}}).

We only have a few ways of {{w|Discoveries of exoplanets|finding exoplanets}}. Astronomers initially used {{w|doppler spectroscopy}}, which detects minute changes in a star's movement towards or away from us to infer the presence of large gas giants or {{w|brown dwarf}}s. Currently the most successful method is to notice when a star seems to briefly get dimmer on a repeating cycle. This may indicate that a body of matter has passed between that star and us, blocking some of the light. The {{w|Kepler (spacecraft)|Kepler space telescope}} was designed for this purpose, and has made the vast majority of exoplanet discoveries.

Most of Kepler's discoveries are between the sizes of Earth and Neptune, but it's sensitive enough to detect planets smaller than Mercury (if the orbital plane is aligned with us). Kepler is only able to observe relatively close stars in a {{w|File:LombergA1024.jpg|narrow field of view}}. The great number of nearby planets implies there should be {{w|Carl Sagan|billions}} of planets in our galaxy, [[1339|assuming]] our local arm is not uniquely abundant.

The title text refers to this by saying that to show them all, each dot on the chart should hold another chart with the same amount of dots; each of these dots should then also have a similar chart, and then do this one more time for a three level deep chart. This chart would have space for 786^4 planets (786*786*786*786 = 382 billions). Our {{w|Milky Way}} contains about 100-400 billion stars. But if the chart were only two levels deep there would "only" be room for 786^3 = 0.5 billion planets.

This comic's design is similar to the {{w|color perception test|Ishihara Color Test}}, a series of circular pictures made of colored dots, used to detect red-green color blindness. However, Randall's picture probably does not contain a hidden number like it did in [[1213: Combination Vision Test]].

Two different xkcd comics have the title "Exoplanets". The first was [[786: Exoplanets]], and this one was drawn at a time when 786 exoplanets had been found. Probably not a coincidence when it comes to [[Randall]]. This is the first time Randall released a comic with the exact same name as a previous comic. Since then he has done so [[:Category:Comics sharing name|a few times]]. When this comic was released it caused problems on xkcd as the title of the image files were the same for the two comics. This was resolved by renaming the original image adding the year 2010, the year when it was released, two years before this one was released.

See also [[:Category:Exoplanets]] and this {{w|lists of planets#Orbiting other stars|list of lists of exoplanets}}.

==Transcript==
:[An large diagram of dots, mostly of varying shades of brown and greenish yellow, with a number of smaller blue dots, tiny green dots and some larger red dots. At the top of the circle are five lines of text in very different font size.]
:<big>All 786 known</big>
:<big><big><big>planets</big></big></big>
:(as of June 2012)
:<big>to scale</big>
:'''(Some planet sizes estimated based on mass.)'''

:[Below this text is a small section of 8 planets which are framed in a light gray frame with lighter gray background . It is situated right below the above text with only a few planets in between the text and the frame. These planets include two large yellow, two smaller blue two small green and two tiny green planets. A line goes between this frame to another frame with the first word in the text below, that is in a similar frame. The rest of the text follows to the right and then below this first word covering the central part of the circle from just around the center of the circle and a bit below.]
:This is our solar system.
:The rest of these orbit other stars and were only discovered recently.
:Most of them are huge because those are the kind we learned to detect first, but now we're finding that small ones are actually more common.
:We know nothing about what's on any of them. With better telescopes, that could change.
:'''This is an exciting time.'''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Exoplanets]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Exoplanets02]]

2584: Headline Words

2022-05-04T22:33:29Z

4D4850: rv

{{comic
| number = 2584
| date = February 21, 2022
| title = Headline Words
| image = headline_words.png
| titletext = Roundly-condemned headlinese initiative shuttered indefinitely.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a HEADLINE-GENERATING MARKOV CHAIN - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[[White Hat]], [[Megan]], [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] are planning a party. Megan mentions that the party was planned to be at [[Rob|Rob's]] place, but that this might not be a good idea, since he has cats, and some of the participants in the party are allergic to cats. This is a valid reason[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1323893015302501?via%3Dihub]. Seems likely that Megan is one of those that are allergic. Usually Rob is drawn as Cueball, but it is not necessarily Rob that is present, it could just be a discussion among some of the friends that are supposed to come to the party.

Cueball then replies to this in news-commentary fashion, using words and phraseologies that are common in headlines but rare in day-to-day use. This is strange enough to prompt Megan to ask him to stop. He continues though, although the gist of his second line is that he will stop speaking that way.

That this is indeed the case and what he is actually trying to do is explained in the comics caption. It states that Cueball's project was to speak in weird headline words. And that the project did not last for long.

News headlines are often very dramatic explanations of minor events; so are the things Cueball says here. Furthermore, some newspapers write their headlines in a stylized way which relies heavily on shorter words (such as "nixed" for "rejected"), often uses cliches (such as "tension mounts") and omits 'unnecessary' grammatical padding, a style colloquially known as {{w|Headlinese}}.

See [[#Headlines explained|below]] for explanation of his headlines.

The title text continues with a final headline statement from Cueball, telling everyone that the project was halted. Probably permanently.

===Headlines explained===
Here each of the three headlines will be explained. Several of the words used are listed in the {{w|Headline#Commonly_used_short_words|wiki article}} on Headlinese.

;Wow, major snub for widely-touted top spot as lavish gala bid nixed.
According to the list of words: "snub" means to reject; "tout" can mean to suggest something, for approval; here, a "bid" means an attempt; and "nix" also means to put to an end/not allow to happen. The "top spot" is a venue which has status and popularity, while a "lavish gala" is an expensive/impressive festive celebration, in this case being a party.
Translating it step by step to more normal English:

Almost literal word replacement:
:"Wow, a significant rejection for a widely suggested venue, which was looking like it was going to be used. Their attempt to host the party will probably fail now"

Trim excess words:
:"This is a big surprise. We have had a significant rejection for the most widely suggested and popular venue. This means they probably won't host the party."

What he probably meant:
:"Gosh, having heard that, it looks like Rob probably won't host the party after all."

;Ill-advised scheme mulled as tension mounts amid growing backlash.
We can use a similar process, along with the list of words, to translate it step by step to more normal English:

Almost literal word replacement:
:"This idea wasn't well thought-out and I'm now reconsidering it as I feel pressured to stop by your increasingly negative reactions"

Apply more context and rearrange:
:"This idea wasn't well thought-out, and your reactions are making me uneasy, so I should probably stop"

What he probably meant:
:"This was a bad idea and I can tell that you won't tolerate this much longer, so I should probably stop."

;Roundly-condemned headlinese initiative shuttered indefinitely.
This time the sentence yields to relatively trivial word replacement:
:"Nobody liked me trying to speak like this, so I'm going to stop forever."

What he probably meant:
:"You all clearly hate me doing this, so I'll stop."

==Transcript==
:[White Hat, Megan, Cueball, and Ponytail stand in a row, with White Hat and Megan facing toward the right and Cueball and Ponytail facing toward the left.]
:Megan: Maybe Rob shouldn't host the party. He has cats and some of us are allergic.
:Cueball: Wow, major snub for widely-touted top spot as lavish gala bid nixed.
:Megan: Why are you talking so weird? Please stop.
:Cueball: Ill-advised scheme mulled as tension mounts amid growing backlash.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:My project to speak only in weird headline words didn't last long.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Rob]] 
[[Category:Language]]

25: Barrel - Part 4

2022-05-04T22:33:23Z

4D4850: rv

{{comic
| number = 25
| date = October 31, 2005
| title = Barrel - Part 4
| image = barrel_part_4.jpg
| titletext = :(
}}

== Explanation ==
In the first three comics of the series, the character explored the ocean in a barrel and then encountered a whirlpool, all with a reaction of innocent wonder. Here, the empty barrel floating adrift, plus the title text and a previous announcement by Randall that this would be the conclusion of barrel boy's story, imply that the character's encounter with the whirlpool separated him from the barrel, and he may have come to some harm.

This is the fifth in a six-part series of comics whose parts were randomly published during the first several dozen strips. The series features a [[:Category:Barrel|character]] who is not consistent with what would quickly become the [[xkcd]] [[stick figure]] style. The character was in the barrel in parts 1-3.

After Randall released the full [http://liveweb.archive.org/web/20070207052159/http://www.xkcd.com/barrel.html The Boy and his Barrel] story on xkcd, it has been clear that the original [[Ferret]] story should also be included as part of the barrel series.

The full series can be found [[:Category:Barrel|here]]. But below they are listed in the order Randall has put them in his collection linked to above:
* [[1: Barrel - Part 1]]
* [[20: Ferret]]
* [[11: Barrel - Part 2]]
* [[22: Barrel - Part 3]]
* [[25: Barrel - Part 4]]
* [[31: Barrel - Part 5]]

== Transcript ==
:[The barrel is shown on a grid paper background, floating sideways and empty in a choppy sea.]

==Trivia==
*This was the 26th comic originally posted to [[LiveJournal]].
**The previous was [[37: Hyphen]].
**The next was [[26: Fourier]].
*The original title of this comic was "Monday's Drawing".
*There were no original [[Randall]] quote for this comic.
**However, three hours after posting the comic, he made a new post with the following statement:
:::'''''Barrel series'''''
:::By the way, here are all the barrel comics on a single (easily linked) page:
:::[https://web.archive.org/web/20070207052159/http://www.xkcd.com/barrel.html http://www.xkcd.com/barrel.html] [This is an archived version of the page. The original link is dead. This text is not included in the statement.]
:::I cheated, and went back and lightened the gridlines in #2. It was just bothering me. I'll try not to do that much. But as I'm not destroying anyone's childhood, I don't feel like I'm really pulling a George Lucas.
:::I mean, I'm not destroying more than one childhood.
:::Oops.
*Since this was not (as he stated in the [[37: Hyphen#Trivia|previous comic]]) the last in the [[:Category:Barrel|barrel series]], the last comic must later have been included.
**Since this last barrel comic [[31: Barrel - Part 5]] involved the [[:Category:Ferret|ferret]], the previous ferret story [[20: Ferret]] must also have been included then.
**Thus making the original ferret a "real" part of the barrel story.
**Randall also confesses that he changed the appearance of the 2nd Barrel comic.
***At this time, that must have referred to the one called [[11: Barrel - Part 2]], although Randall in the page above has moved this to after the first ferret comic.
*This comic was posted on [[xkcd]] when the web site opened on Sunday the 1st of January 2006.
**It was posted along [[:Category:First day on xkcd|with all 41 comics]] posted before that on LiveJournal as well as a few others.
**The latter explains why the numbers of these 41 LiveJournal comics ranges from 1-44.
*One of the original drawings drawn on [[:Category:Checkered paper|checkered paper]].

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics posted on livejournal| 26]]
[[Category:First day on xkcd]]
[[Category:Checkered paper]]
[[Category:Barrel|05]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Barrel 05]]

381: Mobius Battle

2022-05-04T22:33:19Z

4D4850: rv

{{comic
| number = 381
| date = February 8, 2008
| title = Mobius Battle
| image = mobius battle.png
| titletext = Films need to do this more, if only to piss off the people who have to feed it into the projector.
}}

==Explanation==
[[File:mobius battle.gif|right|frame|The Möbius comic strip as an animated GIF.]]
A {{w|Möbius strip}} (the comic's spelling Mobius strip is also acceptable) is an object with only one surface and one edge. It can be created by taking a strip of paper and twisting it 180 degrees before taping both ends together.

The idea of the Möbius strip has been used here to create a comic strip that could potentially loop forever. In it, [[Cueball]] is standing in front of a ball. Then another Cueball runs in and kicks the ball, which hits first Cueball in the head, due to which he falls out of the panel. The second Cueball then turns away, retaining the first Cueball's original position, only flipped horizontally. Because of the nature of the Möbius strip, if the comic strip were to be printed out in such a way that the comic could be seen on both sides of the paper, like on tracing paper or on one "side" of a strip of clear plastic or film, the comic would repeat, so that the second Cueball would become the first Cueball, and someone else, potentially the original first person, would push them out of the comic becoming himself the first Cueball. This means that neither person ever really "wins," and the comic could thus be conveying an anti-violence message in this respect. See also the title text of [[1890: What to Bring]].

The comic's viability as a Möbius strip preserved the use of symmetrical letters in a palindromic word to denote laughing ("HAHAHAH") as well as using symmetrical punctuation for the other character's [[wikt:grawlix#English|grawlixes]]. A similar use of a Möbius strip in story-telling can be seen in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mdEsouIXGM Wind and Mr. Ug] by Vi Hart.

Finally, at the title text, [[Randall]] jokes that he would like to see actual films do this solely as a joke on projectionists, who would have a difficult time feeding a Möbius strip film reel properly into a normal projector due to the twist.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing next to a ball. A flash appears on the left side of the panel.]
:[Another Cueball comes in from the left, preparing to kick the ball.]
:[The other Cueball kicks the ball into the first Cueball's head.]
:[The first Cueball is lying outside of the frame. Second Cueball points and laughs.]
:Second Cueball: HAHAHAH
:First Cueball: <nowiki>!#^*!*</nowiki>
:[Second Cueball is now standing next to the ball.]
:[To the right, the strip above is looped around like a film strip, but a one-half-turn is put into the loop to make it a Mobius strip.]

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

User:4D4850/common.js

2022-05-04T22:27:55Z

4D4850: changed to Jacky720's script

console.log("your JS loaded it didn't do anything");
/**
* Rollback
* @description Perform rollbacks without needing to be in the usergroup
* @author Ozank
*/
(function() {
'use strict';
// Exit if normal rollback links are present or the wiki disabled the script
if ($('.mw-rollback-link').length || window.RollbackWikiDisable) {
return;
}
var Rollback = $.extend(window.Rollback, {
config: mw.config.get([
'wgAction',
'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName',
'wgPageName'
]),
user: 'Ex Kay Cee Dee',
_preload: 1,
preload: function() {
if (--this._preload === 0) {
this.init();
}
},
init: function() {
this.api = new mw.Api();
this.performRollbackCallback = this.performRollbackCallback
.bind(this);
this.getTop().then(function(data) {
const arr = data.query.usercontribs;
console.log(arr);
const interval = setInterval(function() {
const rev = arr.shift();
if (!rev) {
clearInterval(interval);
window.location.reload();
return;
}
this.getRevisionIdAndContent(rev.title, rev.user);
console.log(arr.length);
}.bind(this), 50);
}.bind(this));
},
getTop: function() {
return this.api.get({
action: 'query',
list: 'usercontribs',
ucuser: this.user,
uctoponly: 1,
uclimit: 'max'
});
},
getRevisionIdAndContent: function(title, target) {
this.api.get({
action: 'query',
cb: Date.now(),
indexpageids: 1,
prop: 'revisions',
rvlimit: 'max',
rvprop: 'user|ids',
titles: title
}).done(this.getRevisionIdCallback.bind(this, target)).fail(
this.outputError.bind(this, 'revisionFail')
);
},
getRevisionIdCallback: function(target, data) {
if (data.error) {
this.outputError('revisionFail', data.error.code);
return;
}
var revisions = data.query.pages[data.query.pageids[0]].revisions;
// Don't rollback if the page has been edited by somebody else
if (target !== revisions[0].user) {
console.log('edit conflict');
// this.outputError('editConflict');
return;
}
var lastUser, revId;
for (var i in revisions) {
if (revisions[i].user !== target) {
// Remember last author
lastUser = revisions[i].user;
// Get revision to revert to
revId = revisions[i].revid;
break;
}
}
if (!lastUser) {
this.outputError('singleEditor');
return;
}
this.api.get({
action: 'query',
cb: Date.now(),
indexpageids: 1,
prop: 'revisions',
revids: revId,
rvprop: 'content'
}).done(
this.getRevisionContentCallback.bind(this, target, lastUser)
).fail(
this.outputError.bind(this, 'contentFail', undefined)
);
},
getRevisionContentCallback: function(target, lastUser, data) {
if (data.error) {
this.outputError('contentFail', data.error.code);
return;
}
// Can be no content on page
var page = data.query.pages[data.query.pageids[0]],
content = page.revisions ? page.revisions[0]['*'] : '';
this.performRollback(page.title, content, target, lastUser);
},
performRollback: function(page, text, user, user2) {
this.api.post({
action: 'edit',
bot: true,
minor: true,
summary: 'rv',
text: text,
title: page,
token: mw.user.tokens.get('editToken')
}).done(this.performRollbackCallback).fail(
this.outputError.bind(this, 'editFail')
);
},
performRollbackCallback: function(data) {
if (data.error) {
this.outputError('editFail', data.error.code);
} else {
// mw.notify('Reverted successfully');
}
},
outputError: function(message, code) {
mw.notify('error: ' + message + ' ' + code, {
type: 'error'
});
}
});
mw.loader.using([
'mediawiki.api',
'mediawiki.user',
'mediawiki.util',
'mediawiki.notification'
], Rollback.preload.bind(Rollback));
})();
console.log("no of course it did something");

1135: Arachnoneurology

2022-05-04T22:24:47Z

4D4850: Undo revision 245569 by Jacky720 (talk)

crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap 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crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap 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crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap 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crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap 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crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap

905: Homeownership

2022-05-04T22:24:44Z

4D4850: Undo revision 246103 by Jacky720 (talk)

User:4D4850/common.js

2022-05-04T22:20:47Z

4D4850:

var cssSelectorForEditTextBox = 'textarea'
var cssSelectorForSaveChangesButton = '#wpSave'
var cssSelectorForMainContent = '#mw-content-text'
var cssSelectorForEditLink = '#ca-edit > span:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(1)'
var cssSelectorForHistLink = '#ca-history > span:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(1)'
var links = document.links

function unvandalize() {
if (window.location.href.includes('edit')) {
// The current page is an "edit" page
// uncrap it
document.querySelector(cssSelectorForSaveChangesButton).click()
} else if (window.location.href.includes('history')) {
// the page is crapped and we are in hist
undo();
} else if (document.querySelector(cssSelectorForMainContent).textContent.indexOf('{') !== -1 || window.location.href.includes('common.js')) {
// The current page is a regular "read" page, but it has already been uncrapped or is common.js
// Go to a random page
window.location.href = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Random'
} else {
// The current page is a regular "read" page, and it has been crapped
// Go to its "hist" page so it can be uncrapped
document.querySelector(cssSelectorForHistLink).click()
}
}

function undo() {
toUndo = links[14]
toUndo.click()

}
unvandalize();

2467: Wikipedia Caltrops

2022-05-04T21:49:53Z

4D4850: Undo revision 250803 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2467
| date = May 24, 2021
| title = Wikipedia Caltrops
| image = wikipedia_caltrops.png
| titletext = Oh no, they set up a roadblock which is just a sign with the entire 'Czech hedgehog' article printed on it.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball|Cueball's]] car has a collection of Wikipedia links spilling out of the trunk, meant to stop [[Hairy]] who's in the following car. The idea is that by dropping a series of interesting links, one could stop someone else's movement as they take the time to go through them all, provided that they are also easily distracted. This is analogous to the {{w|caltrops}} mentioned in the title; caltrops are small, spiked implements that are scattered on a road to slow down someone pursuing you. Hence the title of ''Wikipedia Caltrops''.

Wikipedia is also a website that is notorious for having many links to other pages, which may result in a "wiki walk", a dilemma for [[Randall]] that has been discussed previously in [[214: The Problem with Wikipedia]] (and separately with TV Tropes in [[609: Tab Explosion]]).

This strategy is similar to a weaponized version of [[356: Nerd Sniping]], using the high levels of focus that tend to come along with nerdy interests against someone. Munroe apparently reasons that, because these links would stop him in his tracks, they might do the same for a given target.

The Wikipedia links include:
* {{w|1808 mystery eruption}}: A conjectured volcanic eruption
* {{w|1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech football game}}: The most uneven college football game in history
* {{w|1994 Caribbean Cup#Anomaly}}: A soccer game where group stage qualification rules had unintended consequences
* {{w|American death triangle}}: An unsafe type of rock climbing anchor
* {{w|AVE Mizar}}: A 1970s flying car
* {{w|Bald-hairy}}: A Russian political theory about state leaders' hairstyles
* {{w|Boeing YAL-1}}: A laser weapon mounted on a military aircraft
* {{w|Bubbly Creek}}: A stretch of river in Chicago featured in ''The Jungle''
* {{w|Burned house horizon}}: An area where Neolithic people burned their settlements
* {{w|Defence Scheme No. 1}}: A 1920s plan for Canada to attack the USA
* {{w|Elsagate}}: A YouTube controversy involving inappropriate videos being categorised as child-friendly
* {{w|Fastest animals#Invertebrates}}: Very fast insects, and some squid
* {{w|Flying ice cube}}: An effect in molecular dynamics simulations
* {{w|Future of Earth#Introversion}}: A model of future continental drift in which the Atlantic closes up
* {{w|Hairy Hands}}: A ghost story in Dartmoor, England
* {{w|January 0}}: December 31st in some software programs
* {{w|List of fictional colors}}: Impossible colours in fiction
* {{w|List of unexplained sounds}}: Mostly detected by NOAA, includes the Bloop
* {{w|Talk:List of U.S. states and territories by elevation#Delaware - Ebright Azimuth}}: A user argues the highest point in Delaware isn't Ebright Azimuth, but a trailer park
* {{w|Mosquito laser}}: A proposed device for killing mosquitoes
* {{w|Pheasant Island}}: An island shared equally between France and Spain
* {{w|Time in Australia#Anomalies}}: Places in Australia which do not use the expected time zone
* {{w|Timeline of the far future}}: Scientific speculation
* {{w|Walkalong glider}}: A type of unpowered model aircraft

Mentioned in the title text, a "{{w|Czech hedgehog}}" is an anti-tank obstacle made of metal, and would be an effective roadblock, however a sign describing it would not impede most traffic, [[[285: Wikipedian Protester|''citation needed'']]] only for those distracted as easily as Randall.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball drives a car, followed by another car driven by Hairy. Cueball is leaning on the open window looking back as 24 large paper slips with Wikipedia links are flying out of the open trunk of the car. They extend to the front of Hairy's car, obscuring that all the way up to Hairy's position in the car. None of the links can be read in full, and only on a few can parts of the actual link be seen. Many has only part of the pages title visible, some parts are obstructed partly by other slips in front of them or they have not entirely left the trunk. In once case the link is so long that it has been split on two lines on a thicker slip. There is a large part of the link that cannot be seen after the first line, but the end of the second line can be seen as well. Here the (fairly) readable parts are give, roughly in normal reading order.]
:a.org/wiki/Elsagate
:wiki/Bubbly_Creek
:wiki/Pheasant_Island
:a.org/wiki/American_death_triangle
:List_of_fictional_colors
:/wiki/Future_of_Earth#Introversion
:pedia.org/wiki/Fastest_animals#Invertebrates
:ki/Defence_Scheme_No._1
:i/Boeing_YAL-1
:ki/Bald-hairy
:/Walkalong_glider
:Burned_house_horizon
:/wiki/AVE Mizar
:Flying_ice_cube
:Time in Australia#Anomalies:
:Unexplained_sounds
:Talk:List_of_U.S._states_and_
:::::Ebright_Azimuth
:Mosquito_laser
:January_0
:/1808_mystery_eruption
:/Hairy_Hands
:Cumberland_vs._Georgia_Tech_football_game
:Timeline_of_the_far_future
:/wiki/1994_Caribbean_Cup#Anomaly

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I have a collection of Wikipedia links to throw behind my car if I'm ever being chased by someone as easily distracted as me.

{{comic discussion}}

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

User:4D4850/common.js

2022-05-04T21:32:18Z

4D4850: Now detects lack of periods.

var cssSelectorForEditTextBox = 'textarea'
var cssSelectorForSaveChangesButton = '#wpSave'
var cssSelectorForMainContent = '#mw-content-text'
var cssSelectorForEditLink = '#ca-edit > span:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(1)'
var cssSelectorForHistLink = '#ca-history > span:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(1)'
var links = document.links

function unvandalize() {
if (window.location.href.includes('edit')) {
// The current page is an "edit" page
// uncrap it
document.querySelector(cssSelectorForSaveChangesButton).click()
} else if (window.location.href.includes('history')) {
// the page is crapped and we are in hist
undo();
} else if (document.querySelector(cssSelectorForMainContent).textContent.indexOf('.') !== -1 || window.location.href.includes('common.js')) {
// The current page is a regular "read" page, but it has already been uncrapped or is common.js
// Go to a random page
window.location.href = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Random'
} else {
// The current page is a regular "read" page, and it has been crapped
// Go to its "hist" page so it can be uncrapped
document.querySelector(cssSelectorForHistLink).click()
}
}

function undo() {
toUndo = links[14]
toUndo.click()

}
unvandalize();

User:4D4850/common.js

2022-05-04T21:23:29Z

4D4850: Removed delay

var cssSelectorForEditTextBox = 'textarea'
var cssSelectorForSaveChangesButton = '#wpSave'
var cssSelectorForMainContent = '#mw-content-text'
var cssSelectorForEditLink = '#ca-edit > span:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(1)'
var cssSelectorForHistLink = '#ca-history > span:nth-child(1) > a:nth-child(1)'
var links = document.links

function unvandalize() {
if (window.location.href.includes('edit')) {
// The current page is an "edit" page
// uncrap it
document.querySelector(cssSelectorForSaveChangesButton).click()
} else if (window.location.href.includes('history')) {
// the page is crapped and we are in hist
undo();
} else if (document.querySelector(cssSelectorForMainContent).textContent.indexOf('crap crap crap') == -1 || window.location.href.includes('common.js')) {
// The current page is a regular "read" page, but it has already been uncrapped or is common.js
// Go to a random page
window.location.href = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Random'
} else {
// The current page is a regular "read" page, and it has been crapped
// Go to its "hist" page so it can be uncrapped
document.querySelector(cssSelectorForHistLink).click()
}
}

function undo() {
toUndo = links[14]
toUndo.click()

}
unvandalize();

110: Clark Gable

2022-05-04T21:16:36Z

4D4850: Undo revision 248185 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 110
| date = June 2, 2006
| title = Clark Gable
| image = clark_gable.jpg
| titletext = Frankly, my dear, I don't give a BITCH ASS SHIT FUCK DAMN
}}

==Explanation==
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" is the signature catchphrase from the 1939 movie ''{{w|Gone With The Wind (film)|Gone With The Wind}}'', which starred {{w|Clark Gable}} and {{w|Vivien Leigh}}. The phrase is spoken by Gable's character {{w|Rhett Butler}} as his last line, in answer to {{w|Scarlett O'Hara}} (Leigh) asking "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" The response indicates that Butler is no longer interested in O'Hara. This lack of interest, and the mention of the word "damn," which was considered profanity at the time of releasing the film, led to the line being voted the #1 movie line of all time in 1995's American Film Institute ranking.

[[Randall Munroe|Randall]] suggests that the line as written was not supposed to contain profanity, but the actor, Gable, inserted it, due to having {{w|Tourette's Syndrome}}, which is a neurological condition that is stereotypically characterized by bouts of random, uncontrollable cursing (and repetition of phrases/words).

The title text contains a more stereotypical Tourette's Syndrome outburst of several profanities in a row shouted mid-sentence.

==Transcript==
:[Famous image of ''Gone with the Wind'' with Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) kissing Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh).]
:The line was actually supposed to be "Frankly, my dear, I couldn't care less." It's just that Clark Gable had Tourette's.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

2541: Occam

2022-05-04T21:11:12Z

4D4850: Undo revision 247360 by Jacky720 (talk)

1986: River Border

2022-05-04T21:10:57Z

4D4850: Undo revision 247225 by Jacky720 (talk)

703: Honor Societies

2022-05-04T21:08:05Z

4D4850: Undo revision 241170 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 703
| date = February 17, 2010
| title = Honor Societies
| image = honor_societies.png
| titletext = Hey, why do YOU get to be the president of Tautology Clu-- wait, I can guess.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] has apparently been invited to join an {{w|Honor society|honor society}}, but he considers the reason he should join to be a circular argument: because honorable people are in honor societies and people who are in honor societies are supposedly honorable. He objects that this is a {{w|tautology (language)|tautology}}: a claim that something is true because it is true (and thus a meaningless claim). From this, he concludes that he might as well be in a "tautology club" and then starts one. Thus [[Randall]] mocks honor society clubs for being pointless.

In the final panel where Cueball has formed the club, [[Ponytail]] asks a new member (a Cueball-like guy) how he found out about them and he tells about their Facebook page. The reference to {{w|Facebook}} mocks {{w|Facebook groups}} whose names refer to a number of members they hope to attract (such as [https://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Bet-I-Can-Find-1000000-People-Who-Dislike-Romanian-Dog-Abusers/109442262492204 I Bet I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Dislike Romanian Dog Abusers]), usually ostensibly to raise awareness for some issue but perhaps in fact just for the ego-stroking pleasure of amassing a large number of followers. Tautology Club employs this tactic only for the sake of creating yet another tautology.

Cueball is listing the rules of the club from a podium. The phrase "The first rule of _______ Club" is a reference to the 1999 movie ''{{w|Fight Club}}'' (see also [[922: Fight Club]]), which contains the famous line "The first rule of Fight Club is 'You do not talk about Fight Club,'" a reference to the club's intended secrecy. This phrase has been appropriated for myriad other varieties and parodies, such as the one mentioned in the comic.

The short guy with glasses could be {{w|List of FoxTrot characters#Jason Fox|Jason Fox}} from the {{w|FoxTrot}} comic (see the first two frames of [[824: Guest Week: Bill Amend (FoxTrot)]].) Although it takes a little imagination to see, the hair, the height, the glasses, and the geek factor fits. Three of the other characters from the audience look like regular characters but with slightly different hairstyles than usual. There is a buzz cut version of [[Hairy]], a curly-haired version of [[Hairbun]] with a ponytail (also seen later on), and [[Megan]] is drawn with an uncharacteristically white stripe in her hair.

The answer to the title text would also be a tautology: he gets to be the president because he is the president.

Tautologies were mentioned again in [[1310: Goldbach Conjectures]]. Tautology Club was mentioned in [[1602: Linguistics Club]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sits at a desk, while someone off-screen answers his question.]
:Cueball: Wait. I should join this honor society to show colleges I'm honorable, and I'm honorable because I'm in an honor society?
:Off-screen voice: Basically, yes.

:[Close up of Cueball.]
:Cueball: Sounds like I could save time by joining the Tautology Club directly.
:Off-screen voice: That's not a real club.
:Cueball: Then I'm starting it.

:[Inserted in a frame crossing the top of the third panel's frame is a caption. Cueball is standing on a podium in the right part of the panel speaking. From left to right we find Ponytail, a Cueball-like guy, a short guy with glasses, a buzz cut version of Hairy, a curly-haired version of Hairbun with a ponytail, and to the right of Cueball, a woman that looks like Megan although with an uncharacteristically white stripe in her hair.]
:Caption: Tautology Club:
:Ponytail: So how'd you learn about us?
:Cueball-like guy: From your Facebook group, "If 1,000,000 People Join This Group, It Will Have 1,000,000 People In It."
:Cueball: ''Listen up!'' The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]
[[Category:Logic]]
[[Category:Fight Club]]
[[Category:Self-reference]]

415: Restraining Order

2022-05-04T21:07:47Z

4D4850: Undo revision 241162 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number =415
| date =April 25, 2008
| title =Restraining Order
| image =restraining_order.png
| titletext =On Mondays I go running, so you'll have to get up early and follow along a parallel street. What fun!
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|restraining order}} is a legal injunction requiring a party to do, or refrain from doing, certain acts under penalty of fines or imprisonment, designed to safeguard the complainant's life. In general, the forbidden act is virtually always contacting the complainant in any way and enforcing that they remain a minimum distance from the complainant.

However, [[Ponytail]] has taken the concept into the realm of the absurd, issuing a restraining order against [[Cueball]] that requires him to stay between 500 yards (~457 m) and 600 yards (~549 m) of her ''at all times.'' Needless to say, this will cause a major disruption to his life; the title text gives an example in which he is forced to imitate her jogging routine just to avoid breaking the order. What isn't explained is how Cueball can possibly keep himself within the ring if she happens to travel by airplane or ferry. This, and because there are virtually no useful scenarios for it,{{Citation needed}} is why maximum distances are never enforced in real life; such an order would grant the complainant carte blanche to unjustly manipulate the defendant.

A {{w|yard}} is a unit of length used in the UK and the United States. 1 yard = 0.9144 meters.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Ponytail stand facing one another. Both hold sheets of paper. Cueball holds a restraining order, while Ponytail holds a map with two concentric circles drawn on it.]
:Not content with normal restraining orders, my ex got creative.
:Cueball: Wait... I can't get closer than 500 yards of you... or more than 600 yards away?
:Ponytail: You'll have to move somewhere within this ring.

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

2436: Circles

2022-05-04T21:07:12Z

4D4850: Undo revision 242965 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2436
| date = March 12, 2021
| title = Circles
| image = circles.png
| titletext = ( MSTE ( AR ) CD )
}}

==Explanation==
The comic depicts five overlapping circles, themselves encircled by circles of various sizes which enclose two, four, or all five of the smaller overlapping circles, as in an {{w|Euler diagram}}. Several well-known logos consist of overlapping circles, and the larger circles reference these logos. These are: {{w|Mastercard}}, which consists of two side-by-side overlapping circles (technically, disks, since they're filled in); {{w|Audi}}, which is four side-by-side overlapping circles, and the {{w|Olympic rings}}, which are five topologically linked rings in a "W" shaped pattern.

<gallery>
Mastercard 2019 logo.svg|Mastercard logo
Audi-Logo 2016.svg|Audi logo
Olympic rings without rims.svg|Olympic rings
</gallery>

To indicate that the Mastercard logo comprises two overlapping circles, the diagram draws a larger circle around the first two circles, inscribed with a label. Other than its size and the label, this new circle is identical to the five smaller circles.

Similarly, to indicate that the Audi logo comprises four overlapping circles, the diagram again provides a larger circle, this time encompassing the first four smaller circles, inscribed with a label. The "Audi" circle completely encloses the "Mastercard" circle, indicating that the four circles of the "Audi" logo include the two circles of the "Mastercard" logo.

Finally, an even larger circle, enclosing all of the other circles, indicates that the Olympic Rings use all five original circles.

The comic was released only about four months before the postponed {{w|2020 Summer Olympics}} was scheduled to start on 23 July 2021. It was {{w|2020_Summer_Olympics#Postponement_to_2021|postponed}} because of the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}, which has spawned a [[:Category:COVID-19|series]] of comics on xkcd.

The title text is a textual representation of the Mastercard name as a Venn diagram containing the letters in the words "master" and "card" — A and R are shared by both, while MSTE and CD are unique to their respective elements.

==Transcript==
:[Five small circles, looped together in the style of the Olympics logo is drawn in the center. On the left, a larger circle surrounds two of the prior ones, incidentally overlapping a third circle. A larger circle surrounds four of the small circles, thus also the previous mentioned circle, cutting over the last of the five circles. Finally a very large circle fully contains all the other circles. The three larger circles have labels, with the small ones label above, and with a small clarifying line from the label towards the top of this circle. The middle sized circle has the label standing on a break in the circle at it's bottom, and the largest circle has the label just beneath it. From smallest to largest of the circles the labels are:]
:Mastercard
:Audi
:Olympics

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Euler diagrams]]
[[Category:Sport]]

2144: Adjusting a Chair

2022-05-04T21:06:12Z

4D4850: Undo revision 242963 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2144
| date = May 1, 2019
| title = Adjusting a Chair
| image = adjusting_a_chair.png
| titletext = When I was looking at the box, I should have thought more about what "360 degrees of freedom" meant.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows [[Cueball]]'s attempts to adjust a swivelling chair. This comically culminates in a massive chair with a big central seat and several other chairs branching off of it as Cueball continues learning how to to adjust it. The chair also apparently has so many controls it takes two hours to discover them all (although Cueball may have shown off his newly-discovered abilities in the mean time, so it might not take two hours of continuous experimentation).

As many people have experienced, these chairs can be quite difficult to raise, lower, or manoeuvre if one does not know how. Typically, the chairs have multiple knobs and levers underneath the seat, which requires the user to rely on muscle memory to find them, since these levers are commonly used while sitting in the chair. There are often several ways to manipulate each control (may be rotated, moved laterally, vertically, or axially.) One usually needs to experiment with the levers and knobs in a new chair to understand how to work the chair, and it appears Cueball is experimenting with them.

Each step gets farther away from what real-life office chairs could do. In sequence, Cueball finds his chair doing more and more surprising things:

{| class="wikitable"
! Step|| Sound || Chair's Ability
|-
| 1 || Clunk || Being able to recline the seat back. Many chairs do have this ability, which one can use for sitting comfort or perhaps to take a nap.
|-
| 2 || Hiss || Being able to raise or lower the seat. Most chairs have this ability, but the comic departs from real chairs in two ways. First, it's much higher than any real chair. Second, he can raise the height while sitting on it; under normal design, pressing the raise/lower lever while sitting on the chair is how one ''lowers'' the seat, using one's own weight to depress the spring or hydraulic piston (which is what's used here, as indicated by the sound). However, it's not uncommon to find a chair that has worn out or been improperly calibrated, so that it does rise even when sat on (especially with lighter people), or does not lower even when not sat upon with the lever active.
|-
| 3 || Poof || Being able to have the seat inflate. Some chairs have inflatable backrests for better lumbar support, but typically no inflatable seats. Although this could be useful (e.g. to help people who need to use extra seat cushions because of hemorrhoids or coccyx injury), it is not a typical office chair capability. However, in addition to simply inflating, Cueball's chair appears to actually make the seat longer and wider. Some chairs allow the arm rests to be adjusted closer or further away. Having the seat also adjust would similarly be useful to accommodate larger people (as for instance some wheelchairs are built wider than usual for wider people or for people who have extra dressings).
|-
| 4 || None || Forming a chair out of multiple sub-chairs. Putting out branches and growing extra seats, wheels and backs. Chairs definitely cannot do this in real life{{Citation needed}} and use cases are doubtful. Some chairs do have back-rests in several pieces. Being able to add more wheels could be convenient to increase stability, or decrease pressure on soft flooring.
|}

The title text refers to a common claim on such chairs, that the chair offers 360 degrees rotation and several degrees of freedom. This is a double entendre, depending on if "360 degrees" or "degrees of freedom" is interpreted as an object. However, here it means there are 360 {{w|Degrees of freedom (mechanics)|mechanical degrees of freedom}}, which is the number of independent parameters that define the configuration of an object; in other words, the chair has 360 different levers and options, far more than a standard chair{{Citation needed}}.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is shown adjusting a chair by pressing a button on the bottom of the chair. There is a caption in a frame over the top of the panel:]
:Adjusting a chair:

:[The seat back of the chair swings backward with him rather fast as shown by a few movement lines.]
:Chair: ''Clunk''

:[Cueball leans forward against the new chair position and presses another button.]

:[The chair extends to several times its previous height, very fast as shown by many lines beneath the seat.]
:Chair: ''Hiss''

:[At the top of this very high seat Cueball leans forward and presses another button.]

:[The seat expands in all directions, so Cueball only sits in the middle of it with his legs on top of the inflated cushion.]
:Chair: ''Poof''

:[The chair is now a massive contraption. It has 5 bases, each with wheels as the original chair. The main's seat is in the middle of the contraption with a single trunk going up from the five bases connecting them and the large cushion of the seat. Two entire chairs are branching out from underneath this central seat, they are each hanging in a thin wire more or less upside down to each side of the main trunk. Two poles are coming up from the central seat, each with a new seat and two back-to-back seat backs. Yet another seat is supported by a thin rod connecting the two top seats, looking almost like a table between the two chairs. Cueball is still on the main seat's cushion. He is holding on to one of the poles above him as he leans down and attempts to press yet another button beneath the seat. There is a caption in a frame over the top of the panel:]
:Two hours later...

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Puns]]

505: A Bunch of Rocks

2022-05-04T20:57:17Z

4D4850: Undo revision 243628 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 505
| date = November 17, 2008
| title = A Bunch of Rocks
| image = a_bunch_of_rocks.png
| titletext = I call Rule 34 on Wolfram's Rule 34.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] awakens to find himself trapped for eternity in an endless expanse of sand and rocks. At first, he uses this time to derive all of mathematics and physics, plus more, including {{w|quantum mechanics}} and {{w|general relativity}}. Next Cueball creates a computer that can process any possible function, out of rocks and rules for the interaction between rocks. He then simulates a particle followed by the interactions between particles, followed by the entire universe. The amount of time it takes to simulate the change in the universe merely from one instant to the next takes an extremely long time, as the time it takes to update just one row of rocks would be eons, assuming a realistic time to place each rock.

Cueball is using the rocks to build a {{w|cellular automaton}}, a computational model based on simple rules to advance from one state to the next. Certain cellular automata are {{w|Turing-complete}}, which means that they can be used to represent any conceivable algorithm if expanded infinitely, including simulating the physics of the universe. He specifically seems to be running Wolfram's {{w|Rule 110}}, which is capable of universal computation. When using Rule 110 for universal computation, one builds a background pattern, which can be seen in the comic as the pattern of smaller triangles, and then performs computation by sending out "rockets" to collide and interact with each other. Cueball can simulate the functioning of an entire universe because he has unlimited time and space (and rocks).

Cueball then apologizes for any flaws we see in the simulation. This implies that the audience is living in Cueball's simulation, making Cueball essentially God, and that he might make mistakes along the way.

The final frame cuts to a classroom where a bored student stares at his hands waiting for class to end. Cueball admonishes the student for thinking that class is lasting forever, the joke being that the boredom felt in a classroom is nothing compared to the boredom that inspires Cueball to spend his endless time toiling to keep the universe moving. Indeed, the minutes of lecture actually took many "billions and billions of millennia" for Cueball to simulate. Another possible explanation is that the entirety of this comic is a fantasy in Cueball’s mind as he zones out during a math lecture.

The title text suggests that {{w|Rule 34 (Internet meme)|Rule 34}} should be called on {{w|Elementary cellular automaton#Random initial state|Wolfram's Rule 34}}. Rule 34 (see [[305: Rule 34]]) is a humorous rule of the Internet that states, "If you can imagine it, there is porn of it. No exceptions." Wolfram's Rule 34 is a cellular automaton. Therefore, the title text says that either someone has made pornography featuring the cellular automaton in question, or someone has used the cellular automaton to produce pornography.

===Graphs===
The three diagrams in the "Physics, too. I worked out the kinks..." panel are, from left to right:
# The {{w|Normal distribution}} of the {{w|Gaussian curve}} marking the points that represent a standard deviation of σ and 2σ. This is one of the fundamental building blocks of statistics. In quantum mechanics, particles are viewed as inherently random, therefore the time at which a particle will decay, the position of a particle, and its velocity are all calculated using similar curves. A deviation of at least σ occurs 32% of the time, while a deviation of 2σ or more occurs about 5% of the time.
# The {{w|Inclined plane#History|Epitaph of Stevinus}}, an explanation of the mechanical advantage of using an {{w|inclined plane}}. The inclined plane is one of the six classical {{w|simple machine}}s, one of the fundamental building blocks of mechanical and civil engineering.
# The last graph is unknown. It may represent coupled pendulums, {{w|length contraction}}, or a hypothetical solution to something we haven't derived yet.

The graph that represents particle interaction is a {{w|Feynman Diagram}}. This shows the interaction of subatomic particles that collide and exchange some momentum via a photon. The slope of the middle line represents the distance moved and the time lost/gained during the interaction.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing in a desert with lots of rocks lying around. He is narrating his own situation. The first panel spans the entire width of the comic. The first line of text is written to the left of him, the second line to the right.]
:So I'm stuck in this desert for eternity.
:I don't know why. I just woke up here one day.

:[The next four panels take up the second line of the comic.]
:[Cueball stand in the desert.]
:I never feel hungry or thirsty.

:[Cueball walks in the desert.]
:I just walk.

:[Zooming out while Cueball continues to walk in the desert.]
:Sand and rocks

:[Zooming far out as Cueball again just stands in the desert. First line of text, above him, is a continuation of the text in the previous panel. The second line is below him.]
:stretch to infinity.
:As best as I can tell.

:[The next three panels take up the third line of the comic. The last takes up half the width.]
:[Cueball is sitting in the desert, in a contemplative position. First line of text above him, the second below.]
:There's plenty of time for thinking out here.
:An eternity really.

:[Cueball is sketching stuff in the sand. First line of text above him, the second below.]
:I've rederived modern math in the sand
:and then some.

:[Three different graph types are depicted. First line of text above them, the second below.]
:Physics too. I worked out the kinks in quantum mechanics and relativity.
:Took a lot of thinking, but this place has fewer distractions than a Swiss patent office.

:[The next eight panels take up the fourth and fifth lines of the comic. All pictures are the same size.]
:[Cueball is walking along the desert, laying out rocks on a line. Four have been deployed. He is laying down the fifth and has a sixth in his other hand.]
:One day I started laying down rows of rocks.

:[Cueball, with a rock in his hand, continues to deploy rock 16, in a more intricate pattern. There are grid-lines in the sand (5 rows, 6 columns), with each intersection either empty of filled with a rock. No rocks lay anywhere but at an intersection on the grid.]
:Each new row followed from the last in a simple pattern.

:[Zooming out showing even more laid out rocks. Cueball is seen directly from above, and we see his shadow falling on the grid of rocks (7 rows, 14 columns).]
:With the right set of rules and enough space,

:[Continues to zoom further out showing clear triangular patterns (with no rocks) in the laid out grid of rocks. Cueball is not seen. (8 rows, 42 columns). First line of text above the grid, the second line below.]
:I was able to build a computer.
:Each new row of stones is the next iteration of the computation.

:[Zooming far out (no Cueball) with rows intersected by five clear V lines on top of them. The V's are drawn inside each other, with the smallest V at the top right, and the other V's starting just to the right of the previous one, and then continuing the same distance past the previous V, as the total length of the first V. The "*" in the first line of text above this grid references to the footnote below written in a smaller font.]
:Sure it's rocks instead of electricity, but it's the same* thing. Just slower.
:<nowiki>*Turing-complete</nowiki>

:[Cueball stands in a contemplative pose (on a clean white background - i.e. no dessert).]
:After a while, I programmed it to be a physics simulator.

:[A black panel with white drawings and text. A small white dot (a particle) is labeled by two arrows coming of two binary strings.]
:Every piece of information about a particle was encoded as a string of bits written in the stones.
:00101010
:00101010

:[A Feynman diagram showing two particles interacting. Two arrows going in and out with a snaking line between them.]
:With enough time and space, I could fully simulate two particles interacting.

:[The next two panels take up the sixth line of the comic. The second panel takes up three-quarters of the width.]
:[Cueball standing before the vastness of the desert, with his programmed lines of rock stretching to infinity.]
:But I have infinite time and space.

:[A black panel with white drawings and text. Depiction of two large galaxies, one with four jets coming out of its center, the other a flat disc. Several smaller galaxies and/or stars are shown around them.]
:So I decided to simulate a universe.

:[The next four panels take up the seventh line of the comic. They are of similar widths.]
:[Cueball is walking by his grid of rocks, lines indicate he has just thrown another rock down in its place. It falls so hard it sinks into the sand that splashes out around it. The 14 rocks above him lie on the grid, four others below this grid have not been used yet.]
:The eons blur past as I walk down a single row.

:[Zoom far far out to show multiple rows of rocks. It is not very clear that there are several triangular patterns (with no rocks) in different sizes in the laid out grid of rocks. There are about 50 rows and 90 columns. There are six large triangles on top of each other at the left edge. To the right, there are three even larger triangles from top to bottom, the one in the middle further to the left than the one above, but further right than the bottom one.]
:The rows blur past to compute a single step.

:[Shows the placement of two particles in the simulation.]
:And in the simulation...

:[The two particles have moved just long enough as to not overlap with their previous positions, shown as an after-image with faint gray lines. The text continues directly the one from the previous panel.]
:another instant ticks by.

:[The next two panels take up the eighth line of the comic. They each take up half the width.]
:[A Cueball-like person (you) observes a mote of dust vanish.]
:So if you see a mote of dust vanish from your vision in a little flash or something

:[Cueball is standing between two rocks on the ground, while holding two rocks, one lifted up to his head. The first line of text is above him. It is a direct continuation of the text in the previous panel. The second line stands below to the right of him.]
:I'm sorry. I must have misplaced a rock
:sometime in the last few billions and billions of millennia.

:[Cueball stands in the "clean" part of his infinite desert, in front of the vastness of his infinity of infinite lines or rocks.]
:Oh, and...

:[A Cueball-like student sits in a classroom with his head in his hands, Megan sits behind him, and a teacher points to the blackboard. A clock shows the time at five minutes to ten.]
:If you think the minutes in your morning lecture are taking a long time to pass for ''you''...

==Trivia==
*This comic is available as a signed print in the [https://store.xkcd.com/products/signed-prints xkcd store].
*The Swiss patent office line refers to {{w|Albert Einstein}}, who was employed as a Swiss patent clerk while coming up with his theory of special relativity. This joke is also referenced in [[1067|1067: Pressures]]. Also, there is a standing joke that very few important inventions have come from Switzerland, since the country hadn't been involved in the world wars, and thus has not been part of the weapons race, nor was it a driving force in the preceding Industrial Revolution.
*In the center of the comic, the binary numbers pointing to the particle are both 42. This is a reference to the comedic answer to the ''Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything'' from the ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series.
*Cueball mentions that if we see an artifact flutter in and out of reality, he must have made a mistake in the last "billions and billions of millennia." This implies that the small period of time the artifact is present in his time is much longer than our universe has existed. That is a ''very'' long time. However, because it was a really long time, the difference could be [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect more than just a small mote of dust disappearing].
*The line "I've rederived modern math in the sand and then some," is possibly referring to "Surreal Numbers: How two ex-students turned on to pure mathematics and found total happiness" by Donald Knuth. The {{w|Surreal number}}s are a system of numbers that includes the familiar real numbers, but are infinitely more dense. Knuth wrote a novelette about a young couple who finds themselves stranded on a deserted island (much like Cueball), and spend much of their time deriving the properties of this number system from a few base axioms.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]

1134: Logic Boat

2022-05-04T20:56:04Z

4D4850: Undo revision 242898 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1134
| date = November 14, 2012
| title = Logic Boat
| image = logic boat.png
| titletext = Or a cabbage, for that matter. Goats make sense. Goats are fine.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic is a play on the classic {{w|wolf, goat and cabbage puzzle}} belonging to the {{w|river crossing puzzle}}s, and first known from {{w|Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes}}, with the same setting as here. The three possessions change between various retellings but it typically involves a {{w|Carnivore|carnivorous animal}} (wolf, lion etc.), a {{w|herbivore}} (goat, sheep, chicken, goose etc.), and some plant based food (cabbage, grain, beans etc.). The objective {{tvtropes|FoxChickenGrainPuzzle|is to ferry all three possessions to the other side of a river safely in a small boat}}, with the limitation of only being able to transport one possession per crossing. The crossing order must take into account that the carnivore would eat the herbivore if left alone together, and the herbivore would eat the food.

The traditional solution would be:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Origin
! Destination
|-
| Cueball, Wolf, Goat, Cabbage
|
|-
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | Trip 1: Take goat across
|-
| Wolf, Cabbage
| Cueball, Goat
|-
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | Trip 2: Return alone
|-
| Cueball, Wolf, Cabbage
| Goat
|-
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | Trip 3: Take cabbage across
|-
| Wolf
| Cueball, Goat, Cabbage
|-
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | Trip 4: Return with goat
|-
| Cueball, Wolf, Goat
| Cabbage
|-
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | Trip 5: Take wolf across
|-
| Goat
| Cueball, Wolf, Cabbage
|-
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | Trip 6: Return alone
|-
| Cueball, Goat
| Wolf, Cabbage
|-
| colspan="2" align="center" style="background: #ffdead;" | Trip 7: Take goat across
|-
|
| Cueball, Wolf, Goat, Cabbage
|}

(Note that, since the conditions for this problem are symmetric, an alternate solution would be to transport the wolf on Trip 3 and the cabbage on Trip 5.)

By leaving the wolf behind, four steps are saved — the comic's "step 4" is just a comment — and the troublesome wolf, a wild and dangerous animal not usually kept by humans, is eliminated from the picture.

This could be seen a jab on the common assumption that logic puzzles only have one correct solution. Thus one often keeps the other person thinking and guessing until they arrive at the pre-defined solution, no matter how many other creative good solutions they come up with. Also note that the "problem" given doesn't even state an objective, just three prerequisites.

Alternatively, this could be a jab at the fact that the conditions of some puzzles are very strange. Both the fourth step and title text are evidence of this - questioning why you would have a wolf or a cabbage respectively. Yet, even though it is unlikely that you would ever find yourself in the situation and odd rules as stated by the puzzle in real life,{{Citation needed}} the puzzle demands that you solve it and reach the criteria it asks.

The title text says that cabbages are also unnecessary, but goats are fine. The reasons for these opinions are less obvious than the one about the wolf, but still understandable. Many people, presumably including the narrator, do not like the taste of cabbage. Many are also fond of goats, finding them cute. The same opinion about goats is in [[1282: Monty Hall]].

The river crossing puzzle was the main focus of [[2348: Boat Puzzle]]. It was referenced in [[589: Designated Drivers]].

==Transcript==
:[A person shows up at a boat docked at the edge of a river. The person has brought along a head of cabbage, a goat, and a wolf.]
:Problem: The boat only holds two, but you can't leave the goat with the cabbage or the wolf with the goat.

:[The wolf looks curiously at the cabbage that's been left behind while the person goes off with the goat.]
:Solution: 1. Take the goat across.

:[The goat remains tied up on the far side. The wolf watches the person come back.]
:2. Return alone.

:[The wolf sits and waits as the person goes off.]
:3. Take the cabbage across.

:4. Leave the wolf. Why did you have a wolf?
:[The wolf goes off.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Logic]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Food]]

2532: Censored Vaccine Card

2022-05-04T20:56:02Z

4D4850: Undo revision 242406 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2532
| date = October 22, 2021
| title = Censored Vaccine Card
| image = censored_vaccine_card.png
| titletext = CVS's pharmacies are fine, but I much prefer their [censored]s.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is another entry in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}, specifically regarding the [[:Category:COVID-19 vaccine|COVID-19 vaccine]].

The comic hinges on the sharing of vaccination card photos on social media as proof that the user has been vaccinated against COVID-19 (in this case, gotten a {{w|Booster dose|booster shot}}, a third dose of the vaccine). When people in the United States first started receiving their vaccine shots, a large number of them shared photos of the CDC vaccination proof cards that they received alongside the vaccines; it was enough of a trend that the {{w|Federal Trade Commission|FTC}} released an official statement warning vaccine recipients [https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2021/02/social-media-no-place-covid-19-vaccination-cards not to share photos], due to the cards containing {{w|Personal data|personal identification}} that probably should not be made public.

The irony here is that [[Randall]] has "{{w|Sanitization (classified information)|censored}}" (redacted) some impersonal lines, such as the instructions that are identical on all vaccination cards, and many easy-to-guess lines, while not censoring any of said personal information.
Considering the date of the 3rd dose (one day prior to the comic's uploading), it is likely that the blackouts in the last line are only covering whitespace.

Another possible reference here is to the practice of filing for {{w|Freedom of Information Act (United States)|FOIA}} requests that has been getting more popular in recent years, with sites like muckrock.com developing to support it. These requests provide for citizens to view the contents of government files, but the files first go through a process of redaction via solid black rectangles. The information that is redacted can seem random, ridiculous, and frustrating, and be a source of legal action.

The caption indicates that his intention is to "seem more mysterious". This is best exemplified by the blanking of most of the word "clinician" to leave the acronym "{{w|Central Intelligence Agency|CIA}}", referring to the US government agency known for its frequently "mysterious" (classified) activity, as well as its liberal use of redaction like that in the comic.

[[File:CDC_COVID-19_Vaccination_Record_Card.jpg|thumb|300px|A real and appropriately censored CDC vaccination record.]]

The "19" in COVID-19 is systematically censored in the comic. This is humorous because currently COVID-19 is the only thing that could be meant by "COVID-[anything]", and so the redaction is pointless. This may also be intended, in the interest of mystery, to imply some future outbreak of a similar disease (given an identifier based on the year of its inception).

The sentence at the top of the card, which appears once in English and once in Spanish, has equivalent portions redacted in both languages:
* "medical information" and "the vaccines you have received" in the English version, and
* "información médica" and "las vacunas que ha recibido" in the Spanish.
This is the first comic including a sentence (or, given the censorship, at least a good portion of one) in Spanish.

{{w|CVS Pharmacy}} is a pharmacy chain in the US which provides COVID-19 vaccinations. CVS #05309 is in Pineville, LA, while Randall lives in Massachusetts; it is not clear why he would have received his first vaccine dose in Louisiana.

The title text comments on the "Provider or clinic site" of the second dose on the card. Where the word "pharmacy" appears in the previous row (and would be on a real card), it is censored in the comic. The most reasonable assumption is that the word is still "pharmacy" and that Randall has simply chosen to redact that instance for some reason, but the title text humorously implies that it was in fact some ''other'' CVS-related venture where he got his second dose, for instance a "CVS parking lot" or perhaps an {{w|anti-submarine warfare carrier}}.

CVS's parent company, {{w|CVS Health}}, does have other enterprises with compatible names: {{w|CVS Caremark}} and {{w|CVS Health#CVS Specialty|CVS Specialty}}. However, neither of these provide COVID-19 vaccinations.

===Numerical trivia===
Randall's patient number is the 2nd to 9th digits of the fractional part of the decimal expansion of {{w|pi}} inclusively: 41592653.

The lot numbers of the first and second doses allude to two numbers that appear frequently in Star Wars and other works related to George Lucas: {{w|THX 1138#Etymology and references|1138}}, and {{w|21-87#Influence on George Lucas|2187}}. The lot number of the third dose is the {{w|1729 (number)|Ramanujan-Hardy number}}.

The Clinician number for the first shot is the last 4 digits of the phone number for {{w|867-5309/Jenny|"Jenny" 867-5309}}, which has been entered into communication technology by a massive number of people.

Given the reasonable assumption{{citation needed}} that the partially censored year relates to the twentieth century, the date of birth on the card corresponds to that given in the acknowledged [[Randall_Munroe#Timeline|timeline]] for Randall. The censorship of that specific part of his date of birth might be related to the fact that the number "19" has been systematically redacted on the card. Another interpretation is that Randall is implying he is either over one hundred years old or a time traveler, although neither is likely to be true.{{citation needed}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Profile picture of a Cueball's head and shoulders, with unreadable lines of text to the right.]
:Check it out, I just got my booster!

:[Picture of the U.S. COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card attached on a media post. The card includes pre-printed information in black and handwritten information in blue, the latter indicated here by bold text. Some of the text has been blacked out, indicated here by "[censored]".]

:COVID-[censored] Vaccination record card
:[At the upper right of the card appears the logo of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a stylized eagle surrounded by the words "Department of Health & Human Services USA", although those words are not legible in this drawing. Next to that appears the logo of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a shaded box with the letters "CDC" and the words "Centers for Disease Control and [censored]" below it.]

:Please keep this record card, which includes [censored]
:about [censored].
:Por favor, guarde esta tarjeta de registro, que incluye [censored]
:[censored] sobre [censored].

:'''Munroe''' '''Randall'''
----
:Last Name First Name

:'''10-17-[censored]84''' '''41592653'''
----
:Date of birth Patient number

:[A table fills the remainder of the card. It has four columns and five rows. The first row gives the column names:]
:Vaccine. Manufacturer lot number. Date. Provider or clinic site.
:[The rest of the rows have been filled out. Each "date" cell also includes pre-printed "MM DD YY" below the line where the date is written.]
:1st dose COVID-[censored]. '''Pfizer ER1138'''. '''04'''/'''01'''/'''21'''. '''CVS Pharmacy Clinician #5309'''.
:2nd dose COVID-[censored]. '''Pfizer ES2187'''. '''04'''/'''22'''/'''21'''. '''CVS''' [censored] [censored].
:Other. '''3rd dose''' [censored] '''FH1729'''. '''10'''/'''21'''/'''21'''. [censored] [censored] [censored]'''CIA'''[censored].
:Other. [censored]. [censored]/[censored]/[censored]. [censored].

:[Caption below panel:]
:Security tip: To seem more mysterious, try censoring only ''non''-identifying information.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:COVID-19 vaccine]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]]
[[Category:Comics referencing THX 1138]]

2558: Rapid Test Results

2022-05-04T20:55:19Z

4D4850: Undo revision 242795 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2558
| date = December 22, 2021
| title = Rapid Test Results
| image = rapid_test_results.png
| titletext = A solid red area with two white lines means that you have been infected with the anti-coronavirus, COVID+19, which will cure anyone you have close contact with.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is another in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}.

This comic is a joke about COVID-19 rapid {{w|lateral flow test}} results. These devices are used in many countries for individuals to test their own nasal and oropharynx fluid for evidence of COVID-19 virus to detect asymptomatic infection. These tests have two indicator strips - a test line for covid-19 and a control line to check the device is working correctly. Where a control line is not present, the test should be ignored and repeated. Until comparatively recently {{w|Pregnancy test|pregnancy}} was the occasion [[583|most familiar]] for requiring this form of test)

The first 2 answers are the standard indicators for a negative and positive result, but Randall takes this to absurdity, see below in the [[#Table of results|table]].

The title text interprets the hyphen in "Covid-19" as a negative sign to make a mathematical joke (or possibly a reference to {{w|antimatter}}, which in reality mutually annihilates when coming into contact with regular matter). Here Randall postulates a counterpart virus to Covid-19, resulting in a test with inverted colors, which he names Covid+19. When combined this anti-coronavirus exactly matches the original one and results in zero Covid, curing those who had previously been infected.

This was the last comic before this year's [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comic]]. It was about Covid-19 testing. The last comic before the 2020 Christmas comic, [[2402: Into My Veins]], was about the Covid-19 vaccine.

===Table of results===
{| class="wikitable"
!Result
!Interpretation
!Explanation
|-
|Control line only
|Negative
|As for all such actual tests, the Control line indicates that the test has run without error. Without this Control line (which ''always'' shows on a correctly functioning test after proper use), a lack of result on the test strip is meaningless.
A control line with no Test line indicates that the molecule being tested for is not present.

|-
|Control and test line
|Positive
|This clearly shows the (un)desired test result, with both the Control line and the indicator of the tested-for condition.
|-
|2 wavy lines resembling the {{w|Approximation#Typography|approximately equal}} sign
|Approximately positive
|While it would be possible to make the test produce wavy line(s) by default, and some versions 'activate' more complex patterns such as tick-marks or wording, these are still binary yes/no results. The waviness or other patternation would not normally be contingent upon the testing state it must reveal, and the complicated pattern could result in a fainter Test line (which perhaps should be taken as Positive until shown otherwise).

A real test intended to produce straight lines might become wavy if manufactured poorly. Two lines would still indicate a positive test, but the poor quality of the device calls into question that result - making "approximately positive" an appropriate description.

Whilst this may have been unintended, it is worthwhile noting that lateral flow tests sacrifice some accuracy in order to be quick and cheap. They therefore have some risk of {{w|false-positive}} test results, hence the need for a follow-up gold-standard laboratory controlled confirmation test. In this sense, a positive rapid test result would give an approximately positive result.
|-
|2 lines closer together than usual
|Positive (college ruled)
|This is the same as the Positive result, just with less distance between the two lines. {{w|Ruled paper#United States|College ruled}} refers to how college ruled notebooks in the United States have narrower spacing between the lines.
Again, there is no simple way to make the test reveal different patterns as a result-indicator of any qualitative or quantitative result; this is not a different result from the original Positive. It also remains more desirable to maintain an easily-identifiable separation between lines and not risk the Test and Control lines bleeding together into one.
|-
|Five lines of decreasing lengths
|Good cell signal
|Mimics the standard image for a strong mobile (or cellular in the United States) phone signal.
There are tests which give multiple 'indicator test strips' for progressively greater/lesser sensitivity, perhaps to identify concentrations, or other qualitative differences like a 'fingerprint' of multiple targetable reagents, but this is not at all useful for a solid Yes/No question such as the one this scenario is supposed to be for.
|-
|2 lines on a background of radiating lines
|Did you know these lines are actually parallel?
|This is a reference to an {{w|optical illusion}} called the {{w|Hering illusion}}, where two parallel lines appear to bend outward.
Whether the radial lines can (or should) be designed into the test has no bearing upon the core test, and probably should not confuse the identification of what are ''supposed'' to be one/two ''clear'' straight lines.
|-
|Multiple lines in the shape of a scary stick figure
|The Blair Witch is near
|In the found-footage movie ''{{w|The Blair Witch Project}}'', stick figures shaped like this indicated that the Blair Witch was near.
The type of rapid test used for COVID-19 probably does not have any useful method for revealing the proximity of witchcraft,{{fact}} unless a witchcraft-related molecule could be identified that can be indicated within the sample material itself.
|-
|Three lines
|Click to expand COVID menu
|A reference to {{w|Hamburger button|hamburger buttons}}, an icon that is widely used on websites to reveal a menu. It is especially used on mobile versions of sites designed to be read on a small screen, where compressing a menu until needed saves space.
As a 'read-only' display of results, there is no potential for further interaction by tapping the indicator material, and this may even spoil the state of the proof it gives.
|}

==Transcript==
:[Header above the comic:]
:Interpreting Rapid Test Results

:[What follows is a set of 8 possible rapid test results for COVID-19.]

:[One line on the "C".]
:Negative

:[Two lines, one on the "C" and one on the "T".]
:Positive

:[Two curvy lines on the "C" and the "T", resembling the "approximately equal" sign.]
:Approximately positive

:[Two lines, not on the "C" or the "T", but they are instead closer together.]
:Positive (college ruled)

:[Five lines resembling a cell signal symbol.]
:Good cell signal

:[Two straight lines, on the "C" and "T", with lines going outward from the centre, giving an illusion of the lines being curved.]
:Did you know these lines are actually parallel?

:[One line on the "C", and two lines in a cross with one line sticking upward of the center of the cross.]
:The Blair Witch is near

:[Three lines, with one on the "C", one on the "T", and one in the middle of the "C" and "T".]
:Click to expand Covid menu

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category: COVID-19]]
[[Category: Comics with color]]
[[Category: Charts]]
[[Category: Fiction]]

1880: Eclipse Review

2022-05-04T20:55:09Z

4D4850: Undo revision 241916 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1880
| date = August 23, 2017
| title = Eclipse Review
| image = eclipse_review.png
| titletext = I watched from a beautiful nature reserve in central Missouri, and it was--without exaggeration--the coolest thing I've ever seen.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is the last of five consecutive comics published in the week before and during the {{w|solar eclipse}} occurring on Monday, {{w|Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017|August 21, 2017}} which was visible as a total solar eclipse within a band across the {{w|contiguous United States}} from west to east and visible as a partial eclipse across the entire contiguous United States and beyond. The other comics are [[1876: Eclipse Searches]], [[1877: Eclipse Science]], [[1878: Earth Orbital Diagram]], and [[1879: Eclipse Birds]].

The comic is another comparison graph, like [[1775: Things You Learn]] or [[1701: Speed and Danger]]. It contrasts how cool something ''sounds'' and how cool it actually ''is''. It has five points on it, planetary conjunction, supermoon, lunar eclipse, partial solar eclipse, and total solar eclipse.

While the four other things than total solar eclipse are relatively close to each other on the "how cool to see" scale, the graph is not even high enough to plot the total solar eclipse point as indicated by the dotted arrow showing that this point should be way higher up. This is as opposed to leaving the point out, as Randall did with the coconut in [[388: Fuck Grapefruit]], where it is only mentioned in the title text. This could be an indication that if the scale had been high enough to fit the total solar eclipse point, then the rest of the points would be on the x-axis without any indication of which would be cooler.

A total solar eclipse correctly sounds like it is the coolest of the five, but it is vastly cooler to see it in person by a wide margin. It seems like Randall is trying to convince those who missed the eclipse this time to go watch in seven years when another total solar eclipse is visible in the USA.

;Planetary Conjunction
In a {{w|Conjunction (astronomy)|planetary conjunction}} two or more planets are visible close together in the night sky. This happens relatively {{w|List_of_conjunctions_(astronomy)|often}} because all planets lie in roughly the same plane around the sun (the <s>Sagittal</s> {{w|ecliptic}}). This looks like two big stars close to each other, and isn't particularly exciting.

;Supermoon
A {{w|Supermoon|supermoon}} is a full moon or a new moon that approximately coincides with the Moon's closest approach in its elliptic orbit around the Earth. This results in a larger-than-usual apparent size of the lunar disk, but a typical human doesn't recognize the difference. Nevertheless, in recent years the press has often announced supermoons as important astronomical events. The opposite of a supermoon is called a micromoon. A "supermoon" sounds very cool, but like a planetary conjunction it's almost indistinguishable in the average night sky (see [[1394: Superm*n]], and this [[:Category:Supermoon|list]]) of other comics that have referred to the term).

;Lunar Eclipse
A {{w|Lunar eclipse|lunar eclipse}} occurs during the full moon and, like at a solar eclipse, happens only when the Moon is in the region where the orbital planes of the Moon and the Earth intersect. The Earth's shadow falls on the Moon, causing it to appear dark red. The moon doesn't generally darken completely due to some light still reaching the Moon through the outer layers of the Earth's atmosphere. As with solar eclipses, lunar eclipses occur on average once every six months, but they can be viewed by anyone who is on the night-time side of Earth during the eclipse, as opposed to only being visible from a small strip of the Earth's surface. A lunar eclipse looks noticeably different from a usual full moon, making it fairly cool.

;Partial Solar Eclipse
There are three types of {{w|Solar_eclipse#Types|non-total solar eclipses}}. A ''partial eclipse'' occurs when the Sun and Moon are not exactly in line with an observer on Earth, and thus the Moon doesn't fully obscure the Sun. An ''annular eclipse'' occurs when the Sun and Moon do line up with an observer on Earth, but the Moon is too far away from earth to block the entire Sun. The Sun appears as a very bright ring, which is also called an annulus. A ''hybrid eclipse'' is an eclipse which is total when viewed from some parts of the earth, but is annular when viewed from others. These ''mixed'' eclipses are comparatively rare, even when compared with total eclipses. A large percentage of the continental United States experienced a partial eclipse along with the total solar eclipse on August 21st. A partial solar eclipse is quite cool, but nowhere near as dramatic as a sky-darkening total solar eclipse.

;Total Solar Eclipse
The {{w|Solar_eclipse#Types|total solar eclipse}} is the topic of this and the four preceding comics. It occurs during the new moon, and happens only when the Sun and Moon are exactly in line with an observer on Earth and when the Moon appears large enough to fully obscure the Sun. Unlike a lunar eclipse, only a small portion of the Earth lies within the Moon's shadow at any given time, roughly a disc with a diameter of approx. 100 km. The disc moves very fast over the Earth's surface, meaning that at any given location eclipses can't last longer than a few minutes. At locations outside of this ''shadow-disc'', in a region over a few thousand kilometers, the eclipse is partial.

In the title text Randall reveals that he had traveled to a location in Missouri (possibly the {{w|Shaw Nature Reserve}}) because at his home in Massachusetts the eclipse was only partial. And, without a doubt, the total solar eclipse was the coolest thing he ever has seen in his life.

==Transcript==
:[A scatter plot with five labeled dots is drawn. The x-axis reads "How cool it sounds like it would be" and the y-axis is labeled with "How cool it is to see in person".]
:[Bottom left] Planetary conjunction
:[Bottom middle] Supermoon
:[Low left-center] Lunar eclipse
:[Low-center middle] Partial solar eclipse
:[Upper right, with a dotted arrow above it pointing up] Total solar eclipse

==Trivia==
*While the ''WOW-effect'' happened mostly to people standing on Earth gazing at the sun, there were more astonishing pictures taken from this event: An ISS-transit in front of the [https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/iss-transit-during-2017-solar-eclipse partial eclipsed] sun, the shadow on Earth seen from [https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-eclipse-2017-umbra-viewed-from-space-1 space], the astronauts also could see a [https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-eclipse-2017-from-space partial eclipse] because the orbit was [https://twitter.com/Astromaterials/status/899475632912052224/photo/1 above America] by that time, the eclipse seen from a distance of 380,000 km in an orbit around the [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/LRO-captures-eclipse-from-the-moon Moon], and an [https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2017/nasas-epic-view-of-2017-eclipse-across-america animation] taken from a distance of 1,6 Mio. km by the {{w|Deep Space Climate Observatory|Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR)}} located in a line exacly between Earth and Sun.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Scatter plots]]
[[Category:Rankings]]
[[Category:Total Solar Eclipse 2017]]
[[Category:Supermoon]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

1963: Namespace Land Rush

2022-05-04T20:54:32Z

4D4850: Undo revision 244017 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{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 land was distributed in America, with the first to claim able to 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
|Similiar 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 a 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 get you 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.
|-
!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.
|-
|Help
|Pretending to be the help account. This could led 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".
|-
|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 @ seperates 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. http://example.com/user/the_username, this can cause obvious issues.
|-
|<Any emoji>
|Current databases are not set up to store emojis as characters.
|-
|","
|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.
|-
|<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==
{{incomplete transcript|Layout not standard (eg. indentation) and a short description at the beginning about what is shown should be given.}}
'''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:iOS]]

User:4D4850/common.js

2022-05-04T20:54:01Z

4D4850: It is time.

var cssSelectorForEditTextBox = 'textarea'
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undo();
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// The current page is a regular "read" page, but it has already been uncrapped or is common.js
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window.location.href = 'https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Random'
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// The current page is a regular "read" page, and it has been crapped
// Go to its "hist" page so it can be uncrapped
document.querySelector(cssSelectorForHistLink).click()
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function undo() {
toUndo = links[14]
toUndo.click()

}
setTimeout(unvandalize, 250);

1236: Seashell

2022-05-04T20:53:06Z

4D4850: Undo revision 243869 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1236
| date = July 10, 2013
| title = Seashell
| image = seashell.png
| titletext = This is roughly equivalent to 'number of times I've picked up a seashell at the ocean' / 'number of times I've picked up a seashell', which in my case is pretty close to 1, and gets much closer if we're considering only times I didn't put it to my ear.
}}

==Explanation==
This method of relating the probabilities of two events is known as {{w|Bayes' theorem|Bayes' Theorem}}.

{{w|If}} you put a {{w|seashell}} up to your ear, you might hear {{w|Seashell resonance|a sound similar to the ocean}} apparently inside the shell. But the idea that this sound is actually the sound of the sea is just a popular myth: hold only your hands close to your ears and you will hear the same sound, as it is the sound of your blood moving through your blood vessels that causes the sound. The comic, through an application of Bayes' Theorem, points out that most of the time when you pick up a seashell, you are in fact at the beach next to the real ocean, so hearing the ocean at that location is not all that impressive, but it's just real.

The equation should, however, be read as follows: (The probability that I'm near the ocean, given that I picked up a seashell) is equal to (The probability that I picked up a seashell, given that I'm near the ocean) multiplied by (The probability that I'm near the ocean) divided by (The probability that I picked up a seashell).

The title text points out that most instances where the author has picked up a seashell have been at the beach, and nearly all of the times where he has picked up a seashell and not put it to his ear have been there.

This comic was released late. In the first version, the formula was incorrect, but it has since been corrected.

==Transcript==
:[At the top of the panel is an equation showing Bayes' Theorem for the probability that a person is near the ocean given that they just picked up a seashell.]

:P(I'm near the ocean|I picked up a seashell) =

:P(I picked up a seashell|I'm near the ocean)P(I'm near the ocean)
:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
:P(I picked up a seashell)

:[The probability that I'm near the ocean given I picked up a seashell equals the probability I picked up a seashell given I'm near the ocean times the probability I'm near the ocean all divided by the probability I picked up a seashell.]

:[Cueball holds a seashell and stands to the left of the panel, to the right, a few birds are flying around and the sound of a wave crashing against the shore is depicted.]
:''Crashhh'' ''Sploosh''

:Statistically speaking, if you pick up a seashell and ''don't'' hold it to your ear, you can probably hear the ocean.

==Trivia==
Note that while this form of Bayes's theorem is often taught in statistics classes, [https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319397559 at least one statistician] tries to show in a philosophical way that unconditional probability does not exist, which would make the equation improper as stated.

{{Comic discussion}}
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Statistics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

User:4D4850/common.js

2022-05-04T20:50:08Z

4D4850: Created page with "crap crap crap crap crap"

crap crap crap crap crap

1536: The Martian

2022-05-04T20:42:47Z

4D4850: Undo revision 240895 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1536
| date = June 10, 2015
| title = The Martian
| image = the_martian.png
| titletext = I have never seen a work of fiction so perfectly capture the out-of-nowhere shock of discovering that you've just bricked something important because you didn't pay enough attention to a loose wire.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is very excited about seeing that the trailer for ''{{w|The Martian (film)|The Martian}}'' is finally released, because he really liked the book. Cueball most likely represents [[Randall]] himself in this comic.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue4PCI0NamI This trailer] for ''The Martian'' was released on Monday, June 8, 2015, two days before this comic, although a teaser [https://youtu.be/CumZP6_9sHU "viral" trailer] had been released the previous day. The film, starring {{w|Matt Damon}} (''{{w|The Bourne Identity (film)|The Bourne Identity}}''), is directed by {{w|Ridley Scott}} (''{{w|Alien (film)|Alien}}''). It was released in the United States on October 2, 2015.

''The Martian'' is based on {{w|The Martian (Weir novel)| a book of the same name}} by {{w|Andy Weir (writer)|Andy Weir}}. The book is very popular among nerds. The plot is a cross between the film ''{{w|Apollo 13 (film)|Apollo 13}}'' and the plot of the novel ''{{w|Robinson Crusoe}}'' — but just on {{w|Mars}}.

Cueball is telling [[White Hat]] about this trailer and the book, thus White Hat asks if he should read it. Cueball then describes a scene from Apollo 13: ''You know the scene in Apollo 13 where the guy says "we have to figure out how to connect this thing to this thing using this table full of parts or the astronauts will all die?"'' And he then tells White Hat that ''The Martian'' is like that the whole way through. What is actually said in the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry55--J4_VQ mentioned scene] is: ''We gotta find a way to make this fit into the hole for this using nothing but that.'' The first part being a large square box and the other a smaller cylinder.

The film ''Apollo 13'' is based on the true historical event of the {{w|Apollo 13| Apollo 13 incident}} where the astronauts find themselves in a damaged spacecraft. They evacuated from the {{w|Apollo Command Module}}, losing all its life support systems, to the {{w|Lunar Module}} which was designed only for two people for two days instead of three people for four days. One issue the crew faced was a buildup of carbon dioxide. In order to resolve the issue, the crew needed to find a way to attach a square-shaped air-cleaning cartridge from the command module to the circular receptacle of the lunar module: literally fitting a square peg into a round hole. In one [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry55--J4_VQ brief scene], the {{w|Mission Control}} staff gather together a box of items equivalent to what the crew would also have on-board and sit down with the mandate to figure out how the astronauts can connect the two with the items available to them. In that case, the ground crew took on the task of trial and error given the availability of backup supplies in case they damaged or destroyed some of the supplies. Once a working solution was devised, specific instructions were relayed to the astronauts. Cueball suggests that ''The Martian'' essentially consists primarily of the type of problem-solving shown in that scene (as was suggested by the author, Andy Weir, in [https://youtu.be/5SemyzKgaUU?t=45m56s this] interview). The Apollo 13 scene is actually referenced in the book, when the Matt Damon character says "CO2 isn't a problem. (...) All systems use standard filters (Apollo 13 taught us important lessons)."

In the final panel, White Hat, who probably would not be so interested in this kind of story, wonders how a novel based on that kind of seemingly cerebral and procedural problem-solving became a big-budget film starring Damon. Big-budget films are generally films with a great deal of special effects and often also action sequences likely to draw big audiences — and to gain big returns. Matt Damon has become a high-profile big-budget star known for action films like the {{w|Bourne (film series)|''Bourne'' film series}}.

On the day the movie was released in the US, Randall went to see it and released this comic about it: [[1585: Similarities]].

In [[2561: Moonfall]] a similar discussion of an upcoming movie is made for {{w|Moonfall (film)|Moonfall}}. But in that case it is the scientific inaccuracy that is the subject, and the huge explosion that makes it worth seeing anyway... maybe?


'''Spoiler alert:''' 
It references a particular part of ''The Martian'''s story: The astronaut stranded on Mars has previously established communications with Earth by {{w|repurposing}} the {{w|Mars Pathfinder|Pathfinder}} space probe that NASA landed on Mars in 1997. While working on another piece of equipment, he accidentally subjects the probe to an electrical short-circuit, destroying its electronics and "bricking" it. "{{w|Bricking}}" is a term in consumer electronics which essentially means to cause an electronic device to become non-functional and essentially no more useful than a "brick". The term is commonly used in respect of an unrecoverable failure of {{w|software}} and often a corruption of {{w|firmware}}. An unexpected "bricking" can be very surprising, and in a case where the item is critical, could be devastating. This bricking scene from the book was left out of the movie.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting at a desk using a computer and White Hat walks in.]
:Cueball: Ooh, trailer for ''The Martian!''
:White Hat: What's that?
:Cueball: Movie of a book I liked.
:White Hat: Should I read it?

:[Cueball pivots on chair and turns away from computer to face White Hat.]
:Cueball: Depends. You know the scene in Apollo 13 where the guy says "we have to figure out how to connect ''this'' thing to ''this'' thing using ''this'' table full of parts or the astronauts will all die?
:White Hat: Yeah?

:[Cueball pivots on chair again and resumes using computer while talking. White Hat looks at his smart phone.]
:Cueball: ''The Martian'' is for people who wish the whole movie had just been more of that scene.
:White Hat: How on earth did ''that'' become a big-budget thing with Matt Damon?
:Cueball: No idea, but I'm ''so'' excited.

==Trivia==
In [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SemyzKgaUU&feature=youtu.be&t=2760 a video interview] by Adam Savage with Andy Weir the author of ''The Martian'' says that his goal was to make the whole book like the mentioned scene from ''Apollo 13'' - exactly what the comic is saying. The video was posted on YouTube the day after the xkcd comic.

In the end, ''The Martian'' likely didn't disappoint the big-budget movie makers, grossing more than $630 million against a budget of $108 million.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Space probes]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

User:4D4850/sandbox

2022-05-04T20:41:40Z

4D4850: Undo revision 243353 by 4D4850 (talk)

crap crap crap crap crap (testing anti-crap js)

User:4D4850/sandbox

2022-05-04T20:31:06Z

4D4850:

crap crap crap crap crap (testing anti-crap js)
page needs more than 2 edits to work/

User:4D4850/sandbox

2022-05-04T20:21:55Z

4D4850:

crap crap crap crap crap (testing anti-crap js)

User:4D4850/sandbox

2022-05-04T20:21:31Z

4D4850: Created page with "not crap (testing anti-crap js)"

not crap (testing anti-crap js)

980: Money

2022-05-04T19:15:34Z

4D4850: Undo revision 241226 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 980
| date = November 21, 2011
| title = Money
| image = money.png
| titletext = There, I showed you it.
}}
{{TOC}}
{{Quote| I had a huge amount of fun putting the money chart together. It was the first time in a long time that my life’s been stable enough that I’ve been able to really disappear into a project—I’d almost forgotten how enjoyable it can be.|[[Randall Munroe]]|[https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/11/24/money-chart/ Source]}}

'''Note:''' Clicking on the image on xkcd (click the date above the comic to go to the comic on xkcd) takes you to an [http://xkcd.com/980/huge/ interactive] and '''much much''' larger image. 
On the interactive image there are two links: 
One takes you to the [http://xkcd.com/980/sources/ sources and downloads] page where a list of sources can be downloaded (DataDump.csv). 
Also the [http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/money_huge.png full image] can be downloaded here (it is a PNG of considerable size: 12528x8352 pixels). 
This is one of the comics that can be [http://store.xkcd.com/products/money-poster bought as a poster] on xkcd and the other link takes you there.

==Explanation==

This is a [[:Category:Charts|chart]] comic - a type of comic that [[Randall]] does from time to time. He has for instance done [[Online Communities|maps of the Internet]] ([[Online Communities 2|twice]]!) and other huge visualizations like this chart [[Radiation]] with a similar structure as this chart but with Radiation as the subject. The Radiation chart is most likely the inspiration for this much more comprehensive Money chart.

In the chart there are five boxes with items on different scales of monetary value. Each scale of dollar increments are different colors. One dollar increments are green - naturally, because American paper money is green. Thousands are Orange/Red. Millions are gray. Billions are yellow. Trillions are blue. This comic uses {{w|Long and short scales|the short scale}} for naming large numbers (so a billion = 1000 millions = 109 rather than a million millions = 1012 as in continental Europe).

Because the comic is so huge and complex the explanation has been split into several parts and also individual pages:
:Below are [[#Tables with explanations|five tables]] with explanation for some of the items.
:The [[#Transcript|transcript]] is (as is usually the case with huge comics) only given for the text that is visible on the picture shown here above. 
:However the '''[[980: Money/Transcript|full transcript]]''' for all the text in the [http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/money_huge.png huge image] has also been completed.
:Finally some [[980: Money/Prices in tables|tables with prices]] has been made (although they are not yet complete).

In the Billions box there is a vague term called the "Economic Vortex" as well as arrows that flow between different blocks of this box. This is to show where the money goes. Where it is collected from, and where it is distributed to.

Included in one frame is a small man with a red and white striped shirt, blue pants, a cane and a knit cap. He is known as Wally or Waldo (in the US) from the {{w|Where's Wally?|Where's Waldo books}}. To not give anything away for those who wish to search for him themselves there will be no spoiler here. But if someone needs a little help... Then by clicking this [[980: Money/Transcript#Billions|link]] you will be directed to the relevant section amongst the five sections where Waldo can be found. (The link will take you to that section of the full transcript page). If you still cannot find him (or give up in advance) then just search the transcript page for Wally or Waldo.

The title text is a reference to the phrase "Show me the money!" which originates from the film ''{{w|Jerry Maguire}}''.

==Transcript==
:[This transcript is only reproducing text visible on the [http://www.xkcd.com/980/ front page comic].]
:[Title panel at the top left has one large heading, and then it is possible to read the first and third out of five lines (but not for instance the second line which is just the word "almost"):]
:'''Money''' 
:A chart of 
:all of it 
:[Below this there are 5 large panels, each with a series of plots, comparing the values of various things. The only clearly visible text is the title of each panel written in white on black background at the top of each panel] 
:[The first section covers single coffees up to the hourly salaries of CEOs. It is located below the title panel and there are a lot of green groups marked by unreadable text.]
:'''Dollars'''
:[The next section discusses values from around $1000 to $1,000,000, including a dissection of the song If I had $1000000. It is located directly below the Dollars section and has mainly orange groups (but also some green) marked by unreadable text.]
:'''Thousands'''
:[The third section focuses on $1,000,000 to $1,000,000,000, with a large section on campaign contributions of American political presidential campaigns, values of expensive works of art, and J. K. Rowling. It is located to the right of the Thousands section below the Billions section and there are a lot of gray groups (but also some orange) marked by unreadable text.]
:'''Millions'''
:[The fourth section gets into larger scale finances, profits of various sectors, costs of natural disasters, and net worths of the richest people on the planet. Also, Donald Trump. It is located to the right of the Dollars section and above both the Millions and Trillions section and has mainly yellow groups (but also some gray and red) all marked by unreadable text. There are, however, a few large headings that can be read:]
:'''Billions'''
:Education
:The Economic (...?)
:US household income
:Federal budget
:[In the last panel global financial status is described. It discusses derivatives, liquid assets, public debt by nation and GDP by continent, culminating with the total economic production of the human race to date. It is located below the Billions section to the right of the Millions section and has mainly cyan groups (but also one yellow) all marked by unreadable text.]
:'''Trillions'''
:['''For the full transcript of the [http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/money_huge.png huge image] see [[980: Money/Transcript]].''']

==Trivia==
*XKCD comics are usually posted at, or around, midnight Eastern time the day of the comic (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). This one was posted at about noon on Monday
**The reason for this was that it was difficult to get it all finished in time, as was explained in the [[Blag]] post titled [http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/11/24/money-chart/ Money chart] released three days later.
**This post also states that this was the first big project he undertook after his [http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/06/30/family-illness/ fiancée was diagnosed] with breast [[:Category:Cancer|cancer]].
*Most of the amounts has a [http://xkcd.com/980/sources/ source at XKCDS]. In the dollars section there is an [[980: Money/Transcript#Important notes|important note]] that at every possible opportunity Randall used a scholarly work or government publication as a source.
*A print version of this comic is available in the [https://store.xkcd.com/products/money-poster xkcd store].
*Randall misspelled "communication" as "communcation" in the section on campaign donations.
*There is a [[xkcd_Header_text#Money|unique header text]] for this comic.

==Tables with explanations==
===Dollars===
{| class="wikitable"
|+Dollars
|-
|Top-left
|The price of various common bills and commodities. The One Dollar Menu is a type of menu at various fast food restaurants. The one dollar bill and ten dollar bill are likely used for reference points. A Starbucks coffee actually ranges in price from $1.95 to $2.15 depending on the location.
|-
|Middle-left
|Pet Ownership. The {{w|ASPCA}} is the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The most expensive animal on this list may seem surprising; rabbits cost an average of 35 dollars more than dogs and 70 dollars more than cats.
|-
|Bottom-right
|Four boxes indicate that the CEO pay has skyrocketed from $490.31 (hourly) to $5,419.97 (hourly) in the same time period in which the average worker's salary has grown 10 cents.
|}

===Thousands===
{| class="wikitable"
|+Thousands
|-
|Top-right
|Hogwarts degree: a reference to {{w|Hogwarts|Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy}} from the popular book series by {{w|J.K. Rowling}} about {{w|Harry Potter}}.
One box is the estimated yearly tuition for the school and the next is how much seven years at the school would cost. To get a degree at the school, it takes 7 years (starting at age 11, ending at age 18).
|-
|Bottom
|A reference to the song by {{w|Bare Naked Ladies}} entitled "{{w|If I Had $1000000}}" and all the things referenced in the song to buy the love of another person.
|-
|Bottom
|A few items on the marriage of {{w|Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton|Kate Middleton and Prince William}}, the major royal wedding of 2011, including:
*a {{w|Wedding dress of Kate Middleton|wedding dress with its own Wikipedia page}} of 3 times the annual per capita income of the average UK person,
*an 8-tier [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381944/Royal-Wedding-cake-Kate-Middleton-requested-8-tiers-decorated-900-flowers.html wedding cake],
*and the flowers for the wedding. These re-appear in the Millions section of the graph, where they also list the costs for the security around the event ($20 million).
|}

===Millions===
{| class="wikitable"
|+Millions
|-
|Left
|Dr. Evil's ransom demands from the film "Austin Powers" corrected for inflation between 1969 and 1997.
|-
|Middle-right
|Another reference to JK Rowling, comparing her (actual $1 billion) net worth as an author with her (imagined $82,000) net worth as a rapper.
The magnified 82 orange/red ($1,000) boxes are footnoted "Professional assessment by rapper/geek culture expert MC Frontalot." {{w|MC Front-A-Lot}} is the creator of the subgenre of {{w|hip-hop}} known as {{w|Nerd Core}}.
|-
|Middle
|An {{w|Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor|F-22 Raptor fighter jet}} (valued at $154.5M) is compared to a Velociraptor ($1.9M in production costs for the film Jurassic Park)
|}

===Billions===
{| class="wikitable"
|+Billions
|-
|Top-Left ((Fictional)Billionaires section)
|{{w|Carlisle Cullen}} is from the {{w|Twilight (series)|Twilight Series}} of books and movies. He is a vampire and adoptive father of {{w|Edward Cullen|Edward}}, {{w|Emmett Cullen|Emmett}} and {{w|Alice Cullen (Twilight)|Alice Cullen}}, as well as {{w|Rosalie Hale|Rosalie}} and {{w|Jasper Hale}}. He was born in the 1640s and amassed his wealth through many years of compound interest and investments.
|{{w|Scrooge McDuck}} is a cartoon character from many {{w|Disney}} properties including the afternoon cartoon, {{w|Duck Tales}}. Scrooge McDuck has a "money bin" full of coins and other sorts of collectibles that he routinely [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMU2NwaaXEA goes swimming in].
|{{w|Bruce Wayne}} is {{w|Batman}}. {{w|Batman}} is {{w|Bruce Wayne}}. He is portrayed in many comic books, graphic novels, TV shows and movies by many different actors.
|{{w|Artemis Fowl II|Artemis Fowl}} is an Irish child prodigy and a ruthless master criminal from the {{w|Artemis Fowl (series)|eponymous book series}}. He uses his intelligence to build his family fortune through crime.
|}

===Trillions===
{| class="wikitable"
|+Trillions
|-
|As Randall already indicated in the transcript, this is the block for world, continent and nation finances. The numbers are really huge. There are no jokes in here (apart from the fact that Randall tried to make the shapes of the GDP look like the continent), likely because financial values this large aren't funny to start with.
|-
|GDP is {{w|Gross domestic product}}, the market value of all goods and services produced in a nation.
*The major chart in the center shows the development of the GDP in the world since the 1940s. So far the US GDP has always grown, except for a small reduction in the early 1980s, a flat line around the 1991 global recession and a flat line in the second half of the naughts. The world-wide GDP is growing more rapidly, but is also much more volatile.
|-
|In the middle of the box, it shows the worth of all gold ever mined in 2011 prices. This is important because of the concept of the {{w|Gold standard}}, a concept where monetary values are linked to the value of gold. As indicated in the top-right of the box, both the EU and the USA have more debt than the total value of all gold in the world.
|-
|{{w|Derivative (finance)|Derivatives}} are a complex financial instrument where one is not trading in something tangible, but in derived values - like options. Derivatives thus are dangerous as one trades in concepts instead of values. Critics claim that derivatives are at the base of the 'economic bubble'.
*The growth of the derivatives market size is incredible - more than doubling every four years. The derivatives market thus is much larger than the GDP of the entire world.
*We get a reference to [http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127 a proposed project to power the world] by erecting massive solar farms out in the deserts. The area of Texas alone would be enough to match almost all of our modern power costs (though the people who live in Texas wouldn't enjoy being displaced).
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Velociraptors]]
[[Category:Playpen balls]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]
[[Category:The Lion King]]
[[Category:Harry Potter]]
[[Category:Twilight]] 
[[Category:Climate change]] 
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]
[[Category:Nuclear weapons]]
[[Category:Money]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Donald Trump]]
[[Category:Minecraft]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]

989: Cryogenics

2022-05-04T02:20:22Z

4D4850: Undo revision 232912 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 989
| date = December 12, 2011
| title = Cryogenics
| image = cryogenics.png
| titletext = 'Welcome to the future! Nothing's changed.' was the slogan of my astonishingly short-lived tech startup.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Megan]], holding a {{w|smartphone}}, tells [[White Hat]] that everyone now carries a computer in their pocket, and refers to how it is always on-line (connected) and is full of sensors (like orientation, vibration and GPS etc.). This is actually amazing and White Hat assumes she is overwhelmed and ask her if the development is changing too fast for her.

But it turns out that Megan is actually disappointed about the pace of technology's improvement, that it goes ''too slowly''. (Who isn't disappointed? From old sci-fi movies' predictions, we should by this point have {{w|flying cars}} and the {{w|Hoverboard|flying skateboard}} like in ''{{w|Back to the Future 2}}'' or a hyper technological future like in ''{{w|Blade Runner}}''). She tells White Hat that she has decided to {{w|Cryopreservation|cryogenically freeze}} herself now that she has developed '''{{w|cryogenics}}''' (hence the title) far enough for humans to survive such a deep freeze, and then she climbs into her homemade chamber and plans to skip 30 years ahead in time. (Actually, this should be called "cryonics", preserving humans, not "Cryogenics", which is just science at low temperatures)

Cryonic freezing is the ability to freeze oneself, so that one does not age and doesn't experience the passage of time. It is common in fiction as a useful technology for long space flights or other necessary preservation (like in the book ''{{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)|2001}}''). Also people who are terminally ill or beyond current technology to save sometimes go through companies such as the Cryonics Institute in hope that future technology can cure them.

However, to Megan's chagrin, when she wakes up, she is told by [[Cueball]] ([[#Trivia|who is not Terry]]!) that all the other scientists and engineers that were fascinated about the future had also frozen themselves using her technology, even building their freezing chambers in a line to either side of her chamber, so nothing had been invented while she was frozen.

But as Cueball tells her in the final panel, they are all waking up now, implying that finally something new can be invented! But Megan then immediately decides to freeze herself again to see what happens next, hoping the situation 30 years later will be different. But then the guy in one of the nearby chambers gets the same idea as she did (again). However, if everyone does the same thing again, the situation will repeat itself and nothing will ever change again, as they can continue this process in 30 year steps. (Note that this is not {{w|time travel}}, but still related to this [[:Category:Time travel|recurring theme]] in xkcd, and similar methods have been called time travel in xkcd before, like in [[630: Time Travel]] and especially [[1617: Time Capsule]].)

It seems, however, that the engineer in the nearest chamber, to Megan's right, spots this problem and tries to stop all the other engineers from freezing down again, as he says ''Wait, guys''.

The moral of the comic is:
'''Don't freeze yourself, engineers and scientists! We need your help!'''

The title text refers to ''tech startups,'' (and existing tech companies) who often use bold marketing techniques, proclaiming that they are going to "revolutionize" not only a particular product or service, but every facet of a user's life. One of the cliché phrases used in presentations is "Welcome to the future", implying that their product is the only way forwards, and all others are rendered obsolete.

In the title text this cliché is turned on its head, when [[Randall]] tells about a very short lived tech startup he tried to get going. The reason for the short life of the company was that it admitted that nothing changed with its slogan: "Welcome to the future! Nothing's changed."

Technology by its nature tends to evolve and improve, and thus a tech company which doesn't change will fall further and further behind their competitors, likely ending up going bust. Which was the case with Randall's (fake) tech startup.

==Transcript==
:[Megan staring down at a smartphone in her hand while talking to White Hat.]
:Megan: Everyone's carrying sensor-packed, always-connected computers everywhere. That wasn't true ten years ago.
:White Hat: It's all changing too fast, huh?
:Megan: No, too ''slowly.''

:[Zoom in on Megan's upper part as she holds up the smartphone showing its screen.]
:Megan: There's so much potential here. These clumsy, poorly-designed toys are ''nothing'' compared to what lies ahead.

:[Megan climbs into a cryogenic chamber which stands on a base where a small box at the end of the chamber is connected to it through a bend tube. She leaves the smartphone on the floor in front of White Hat.]
:Megan: That's why I've worked to develop cryogenic freezing.
:Megan: I'm gonna skip forward 30 years and use this stuff when it's ''good''.

:[Cueball is greeting Megan holding a fist up in front of him, as Megan with morning hair rises up from the open cryogenic chamber.]
:30 years later...
:Cueball: Welcome to the future! Nothing's changed.
:Megan: What?
:Megan: Why??

:[Cueball still stands in front of Megan in the chamber, but the scene has rotated revealing a row of other cryogenic chambers behind. The chamber after Megan's is still closed, but the others are open and people emerging.]
:Cueball: When cryogenic freezing was invented, all the engineers who were excited about the future froze themselves. So there's been no one building anything new.

:[The scene has rotated to look straight in on the long side of Megan's chamber, Cueball is standing to the left of the chamber. She holds the cover ready to close it again. Two voices comes from off-panel to the right.]
:Cueball: But they're all waking up now!
:Megan: Sweet! I'm gonna jump forward to see what they do!
:Engineer 1 (off-panel): Me too!
:Engineer 2 (off-panel): Wait, uh, guys?

==Trivia==
*This version of Cueball was called either ''Someone who isn't Terry'' or just plainly ''not Terry'' in the [http://xkcd.com/989/info.0.json actual transcript] by [[Randall]].
**It is a {{w|Futurama}} reference as [http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Terry Terry] is a recurring Futurama character, and he is the "employee at Applied Cryogenics whose job is to greet the newly defrosted".
**In the transcript, Randall is thus pointing out that the character in his Cryogenic lab is not the same as Terry the Futurama character.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Time travel]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]
[[Category:Engineering]]

653: So Bad It's Worse

2022-05-04T02:17:11Z

4D4850: Undo revision 234275 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 653
| date = October 23, 2009
| title = So Bad It's Worse
| image = so_bad_its_worse.png
| titletext = You think it's so legendarily bad that you'll torrent it and sit through it just for the kitschy nerd cred. I, too, once thought as you did.
}}

==Explanation==
The graph in the comic shows the enjoyability of movies - going from good to okay to bad, then popping back up with "{{tvtropes|SoBadItsGood| So Bad It's Good}}". The term is used to describe movies that are so terrible that, ironically, watching them is actually an enjoyable experience, even if just to poke fun or marvel at the absurdity of how bad they are. The comic lists ''{{w|Plan 9 from Outer Space}}'' and ''{{w|The Rocky Horror Picture Show}}'', two widely known films of this type.

However, the graph warns of showing ''{{w|The Star Wars Holiday Special}}'', as it manages to wrap back around from "So Bad It's Good" to being {{tvtropes|SoBadItsHorrible| So Bad it's Horrible}}. ''The Star Wars Holiday Special'' is a prime-time comedy special based on ''{{w|Star Wars}}''. It is widely known for its terrible quality, and has never been fully released (although an animated segment that introduced {{w|Boba Fett}}, which {{w|George Lucas}} has approved of, has been released as a bonus feature on a DVD).

The bottom of the comic shows [[Cueball]], [[Megan]], and [[Ponytail]] watching a movie with alcohol - first enjoying it, then merely watching, then not watching it and unhappily drinking.

The title text refers to {{w|BitTorrent (protocol)|torrents}}, which are a way to obtain large amounts of data over the internet. Since the ''Holiday Special'' was only aired once on television and was never released on VHS or DVD, torrents of the TV recordings are one of the few ways to actually see it. According to [[Randall|Munroe]], he had torrented a copy of the film and intended to watch it in its entirety, in spite of its terribleness, just to cement himself as a nerd. However, he underestimated how bad it really was, and could not make it all the way through.

The title text may also contain an subtle play on a line of ''Star Wars'' dialogue. In ''{{w|Return of the Jedi}}'', {{w|Darth Vader}} says to {{w|Luke Skywalker}}, "''Obi-Wan once thought as you do''. You don't know the power of the dark side! I must obey my master." The implication here being that "kitschy nerd cred" is the "dark side" being served by those who would sit through a torrent of ''The Star Wars Holiday Special''.

==Transcript==
:Protip: Even at "Bad Movie Night," avoid the Star Wars holiday special.

:[A graph plots movie enjoyability against movie quality. It drops steadily through points marked "Good Movie" to "Okay Movie" to "Bad Movie," rises up again for "So-Bad-It's-Good (Plan 9, Rocky Horror, etc)," and then drops off the bottom of a graph with an arrow pointing to where "Star Wars Holiday Special" would be. There are three mini-panels below the graph, arranged from "Good" to "Bad" along the movie quality axis.]

:[Three friends are on a couch, drinking and gesticulating enthusiastically.]
:[The same three are sitting quietly, with a bottle on the floor.]
:[The three are sitting around a table, drinking and looking miserable. One seems to be passed out on the table.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Protip]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]

2413: Pulsar Analogy

2022-05-04T01:59:14Z

4D4850: Undo revision 236194 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2413
| date = January 18, 2021
| title = Pulsar Analogy
| image = pulsar_analogy.png
| titletext = The #2 cause of astronomer hand injuries is trying to do vector math when the second axis points off to the right.
}}

==Explanation==

{{w|Pulsar}}s are a kind of old, shrunken, fast-spinning star. They are usually {{w|neutron stars}}. They no longer shine in all directions, but instead produce beams of radiation out of their magnetic poles, which blip by us in rapid pulses as they spin.

Ponytail, an astronomer in this comic, explains a pulsar's fast rotation with an analogy about a tape measure retracting. The analogies that Ponytail picks are incredibly poor ones.

Since the analogy does result in something that spins, the reader might think that, while they don't immediately see how it helps in understanding pulsars, they're willing to reserve judgment to see what is then done with the analogy; Cueball's response may suggest this sort of wait-and-see attitude. However, the analogy is likely to be useless or misleading, as the tape measure starts to rotate because the retracting tape is not moving only in a radial (in/out) direction. As a star collapses into a pulsar, its natural rotation rate is greatly amplified by its shrinking moment of inertia.

Further elaborations of the analogy, rather than clarifying matters, are successively more surreal. More misleading than the tape-measure is the idea of a laser measure being "exactly" like the emissions of a pulsar, which, although both pulse, are produced in entirely different ways and are at best simply helping the mind hold the concept.

When a tape measure retracts, the part of the tape outside the tape measure is not going directly towards the tape measure's center but rather towards a hole in the side. This means the tape possesses some angular momentum relative to the tape measure. In addition, when the tape measure retracts, the part of the tape inside the tape measure rotates around a spool (which pulls the part of the tape outside the tape measure inside), so it also has angular momentum relative to the tape measure. When the tape is completely retracted, the tape can no longer rotate relative to the tape measure. Because of the conservation of rotational momentum, the tape measure will start spinning at this point.

While pulsars also rotate quickly due to the conservation of angular momentum, the exact {{w|Pulsar#Formation,_mechanism,_turn_off|mechanism}} is completely different. Pulsars are formed when stars collapse due to no longer performing enough fusion to produce enough heat and energy to cancel out gravity. This causes the star to contract, which causes its mass, on average, to be closer to its axis of rotation, which causes the rotational inertia (also called the moment of inertia) to decrease. If the star's angular velocity stayed constant, this would cause the angular momentum to decrease, so the star's angular velocity must increase in order to offset the decrease in rotational inertia, i.e. the star (which is now a pulsar) spins faster. This is demonstrated [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eMH07Tghs0 here]. This method requires an initial rotation, which comes from the star. (The star's rotation comes from the dynamics of the gas cloud which forms the solar system in the first place.)

Some tape measures have a built-in {{w|laser line level}} and others have a built-in {{w|laser rangefinder}}. Pulsars emit electromagnetic radiation out of their magnetic poles, which is similar to a laser, but unlike the laser of a tape measure, the pulsar beam is emitted through the axis of the magnetic field. The pulsing nature of a pulsar comes from when the axis of rotation is not precisely aligned with the axis of the magnetic field, and the location of the viewer as the beam sweeps by. In the tape measure analogy the beam is at a right angle to the axis of rotation, so as long as the viewing angle isn't parallel with the rotation axis, the viewer would see the laser increase and decrease periodically as it the rotating tape measure points towards or away from the viewer.

While pulsars do demonstrate incredible {{w|Quake_(natural_phenomenon)#Starquake|starquakes}} and rotational {{w|Glitch_(astronomy)|glitches}}, neutron degeneracy is part of the mechanisms in which they are originally formed. During the formation of a neutron star, usually in the form of an initial inward implosion, the neutron degeneracy (basically the impossibility of neutron of occupying the same space because of fundamental constraints in physics that are studied by quantum mechanics) stops the implosion and redirects the shockwave outwards, thus producing a Supernova explosion. The analogy is with a tape measurer that hits a hand (the constraint) during its rapid rotation due to its retracting tape (the implosion) thus redirecting part of the energy towards the hand (s the supernova energy is redirected outside).

However, astronomers do not usually let go of laser tape measures frequently, so they are probably not the top cause of any type of hand injuries, as [[Ponytail]] said.

The title text mentions the {{w|right-hand rule}} in three-dimensional space. In a typical 3D coordinate system the Y-axis will point counterclockwise to the X-axis when looking down from the positive Z-axis. In academia, students are often taught to remember a number of mathematical conventions by using their actual physical right and left hands to align the axes. When the axes are in a different order, the left hand can be used instead of the right, but there are a number of common operations in engineering and physics that use the {{w|cross product}} in systems where the first axis might point in absolutely any direction relative to the viewer. Using the hand rules, the thumb is aimed along the first axis, the forefinger along the second, and the middle finger along the third — all at ninety degrees. So, when the first axis points off to the right, the right wrist is torqued to its full extension to make the thumb point that way while the other two fingers don't. During exams, students can be seen performing this feat. People who learn cross products early in their life may develop other approaches for remembering these things, that don't stretch the hands as much, but then adopt the common approach once taught it.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Ponytail are standing next to each other.]
:Cueball: Why do pulsars spin so ''fast?''
:Ponytail: Hmm, let me think of an analogy...

:[A tape measure is retracting above Ponytail's head. To the right of her head, a tape measure is spinning rapidly.]
:Retracting tape measure: ''zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz''
:Spinning tape measure: SNAP
:Ponytail: You know how when you retract a tape measure and let go, it leaves it spinning?
:Ponytail: It's like that.
:Cueball (off-panel): Oh, I see.

:[A tape measure with a laser instead of a measuring tape is spinning slowly.]
:Cueball (off-panel): And if the tape measure is the kind with a laser level, that's the beam of radiation?
:Ponytail (off-panel): Exactly!

:[Cueball and Ponytail are walking next to each other in silhouette.]
:Ponytail: And when the tape whips around and smacks your hand, that's the neutron degeneracy shockwave.
:Cueball: Sounds painful!
:Ponytail: Top cause of astronomer hand injuries.

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

481: Listen to Yourself

2022-05-04T01:58:53Z

4D4850: Undo revision 233502 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 481
| date = September 26, 2008
| title = Listen to Yourself
| image = listen_to_yourself.png
| titletext = Man, I just wanted to know how babby was formed.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|YouTube}} is a website for video sharing where anyone can upload and view videos. It is notorious for having some of the most ridiculous, hateful, mean-spirited, nonsensical comments of any mainstream website (a reputation touched upon earlier in [[202: YouTube]]).

[[Danish]] tells [[Black Hat]] that her computer virus that she is writing reads a YouTube user's comments back to them before it is submitted. Upon hearing their own ridiculous comments read aloud to them, they will realize the stupidity of it and not submit the comment. YouTube later made this a real feature, although it has since been removed again.

The title text is in reference to a post left on the Yahoo! Answers website in 2006 by a submitter known as "kavya," who asks [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-is-babby-formed "how is babby formed / how girl get pragnent."] The post picked up internet popularity and spawned several flash animations. This was again mentioned in [[522: Google Trends]] and in [[550: Density]].

==Transcript==
:[Black Hat approaches Danish typing at a computer.]
:Black Hat: What are you writing?
:Danish: Virus.
:Black Hat: What's it do?

:Danish: When someone tries to post a YouTube comment, it first reads it aloud back to them.

:Soon, everywhere:
:[Cueball is commenting on YouTube with a laptop.]
:''type type type''

:[Youtube comment is read back.]

:Cueball: ...I'm a moron.

:[Cueball leaves desk and partially closes his laptop.]

:[Cueball is seen sitting on steps, depressed.]

:[Cueball has his head in his hands.]
:Cueball: I... I didn't know.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:YouTube]]

1432: The Sake of Argument

2022-05-04T01:58:38Z

4D4850: Undo revision 235875 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1432
| date = October 10, 2014
| title = The Sake of Argument
| image = the_sake_of_argument.png
| titletext = 'It's not actually... it's a DEVICE for EXPLORING a PLAUSIBLE REALITY that's not the one we're in, to gain a broader understanding about it.' 'oh, like a boat!' '...' 'Just for the sake of argument, we should get a boat! You can invite the Devil, too, if you want.'
}}

==Explanation==
[[Ponytail]] is trying to get [[Cueball]] to consider a hypothetical situation, for the sake of argument. It appears that Cueball is questioning the wisdom of doing so, and postulating that assuming unreal hypotheses for the sake of argument is a stupid thing to do, because it causes more arguments. Ponytail then claims she is playing the Devil's advocate, and Cueball again lambastes her for advocating for somebody as unsympathetic as the Devil.

In a debate or discussion, to play the {{w|Devil's advocate}} is to take a position with which you do not necessarily agree (and typically which no one involved in the argument agrees) to allow further exploration of the subject. As the title text starts to explain, it can be a device used to explore a different viewpoint to gain a wider understanding. Arguing for a view with which you do not agree can provoke a re-evaluation, or conversely a re-affirmation of your previously held view by considering the merits of the potential counter-argument. To be able to play the Devil's advocate convincingly is the mark of a well-rounded debater.

However, Cueball interprets her statement literally, thus assuming she is arguing on the side of the {{w|Devil}}, the religious entity defined as pure evil. Obviously, it would be ill advised to take his side during a debate{{Citation needed}}.

Cueball then pulls an ironic twist on Ponytail by revealing that he was questioning Ponytail's argumentative style for the sake of argument himself. The comic actually plays on the double meaning of "argument": Ponytail refers to a statement in a debate while Cueball suggests a quarrel in the last panel.

In the title text, an exasperated Ponytail is trying to explain to Cueball that she is trying to use these debating techniques as a device to explore and broaden her understanding of her reality or a plausible alternative. Cueball derails the conversation, by comparing these attributes to a boat, which also allows you to explore other areas and broaden your experiences and understanding (as mentioned earlier in [[209: Kayak]]). Ponytail is rendered speechless by this statement, and Cueball further suggests that they should get a boat, and that Ponytail can bring the Devil too.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail and Cueball are talking.]
:Ponytail: Just for the sake of argument, let's say that—
:Cueball: —wait, for the sake of what?
:[Panel zooms to only show Cueball.]
:Ponytail: Argument.
:Cueball: Ok, cool, that's ''totally'' a good reason to say something that's wrong. Gotta have arguments.
:[Panel returns to original view.]
:Ponytail: I'm just playing Devil's advocate.
:Cueball: Ok. So you saw an argument where one side was the Devil, and you were like "Man, ''that'' guy could use an advocate."
:Ponytail: It's...''why'' are you being so difficult?
:Cueball: For the sake of argument.
:Ponytail: '''''Argh!'''''
:Cueball: Yay, it's working!
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]

2614: 2

2022-05-04T01:58:06Z

4D4850: Now that the bot is banned, and we are close to a 50/50 split, I don't think it qualifies as a vast majority anymore.

<div style="display: none">crap crap </div><noinclude>:''This page refers to the comic named "2". For comic #2, see [[2: Petit Trees (sketch)]].''</noinclude>
{{notice|'''WARNING:''' The majority of ExplainXKCD's pages are currently vandalized, with one user running a vandalizing script. {{#expr: {{LATESTCOMIC}} - {{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}}} out of {{LATESTCOMIC}} ({{#expr: 100 - ({{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 0)}}%) are vandalized, leaving only {{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}} ({{#expr: ({{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 0)}}%). (Admins, are you there?) ''Users:'' You can help combat this! Visit the discussion [[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Admin_requests#Vandalism|HERE]] and [[explain_xkcd:Crap|HERE]] to learn how.}}
{{comic
| number = 2614
| date = May 2, 2022
| title = 2
| image = 2.png
| titletext = It's like sigma summation notation, except instead of summing the argument over all values of i, you 2 the argument over all values of 2.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A VERY JEALOUS NUMBER ₃½ⁿ₇₇₇ⅥⅣ₆⁸⁴⁴½⅔⅜ↆ↉↉∂, WHO DEMANDS TO HAVE THEIR OWN WEBCOMIC NEXT - Please change this comment when editing this page. The titletext needs to be worked in there, but I think I got everything else in some sort of order, pending general improvements. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This demonstrates the different ways in which the number 2 can be typeset in various scientific fields. Whilst these typefaces are used with any number, using the number 2 in this instance provides a clear illustration of where adding numbers can signify either a feature of a concept (such as the number of electrons in an atom) or a mathematical operation on it (such as raising a value to it's second power).

The dotted box represents any character (presumably a letter or bigram of letters). All the other notation consists only of the digit 2, in various fashions with occasional additional punctuation, and labelled as to what the 'purpose' might normally be of any particular element(s) as indicated, with respect to the general term, in the following fashions:
;Regular Math
:Precedes the term. "2x" indicates two times the value of ''x'' in normal {{w|algebra|algebraic}} use that should be familiar for many people. {{Citation needed}}
;Physics
:A preceding superscript. "2H" would indicate the particular {{w|isotope}} of Hydrogen with the atomic weight of two, i.e. deuterium, which is most often encountered when working with the atomic level of matter where the total number of neutrons and protons in the atom is important. It can also represent tetration, which is iterated exponentiation.
;Chemical Physics
:A preceding subscript, "2He" indicates the atomic number of an atom, which is the number of protons it contains, and thus a guide to the number of electrons its unionised form usually has and hence meaningful in its potential chemical interactions with other atoms. This should be invariant for any particular named element, but is usually given simultaneously with the presuperscripted mass number where it can be indicative of the applicable nuclear physics. {{w|Chemical Physics}} is a subdiscipline of physics and chemistry and **must never** be confused with {{w|Physical Chemistry}}. It can also represent pentation, which is iterated tetration.
;Regular Math or Footnotes
:A trailing superscript is typical of a {{w|Exponentiation|power value}}, in this case "x²" would be ''x'' multiplied by a second copy of itself, and a fairly typical mathematical standard.
:Additionally, superscripted numbers are one common way to mark words in a line of text in a way to refer to a {{w|Note (typography)|footnote}}, typically placed at the bottom of the page, with additional information that would not be appropriate or easily comprehendable to edit into the main text itself. The ambiguity between footnotes and exponents was used in [[1184: Circumference Formula]]
;Chemistry
:A trailing subscript is used in chemistry to indicate a multiple of the element (or group of elements, in brackets) in a {{w|chemical formula}}. "H2O" indicates two hydrogen atoms bond with a single oxygen atom in a molecule of water.
;Matrices! ("2,2")
:Extending the trailing subscript with a comma-separated value usually indicates a multidimensional array (e.g. establishing a 2-by-2 square of numbers, or this particular position in such an array), which is in the realms of {{w|Matrix (mathematics)|matrix mathematics}}. This is a little bit beyond 'everyday algebra' for many people, as seemingly indicated by the exclamation of the mere mention of matrices!
;The Physicists Are At It Again ("2;2")
:This label encompasses a mark that turns the prior comma into a semicolon, as part of the trailing subscript. This is a common notation for the {{w|Covariant derivative}} of a tensor field, which is commonly used in the mathematics of general relativity.
;Either High School Math Function or Incomprehensible Group Theory
:The number 2 in parentheses that follow a term would normally be the argument to a {{w|Function (mathematics)|function}}, e.g. "f(2)", which means that you should take the value (in this case 2) and find the result if manipulated by the predefined function ''f''. It is generally taught as part of algebraic mathematics already described, i.e. at {{w|Secondary school|High School}}.
:In {{w|group theory}}, however, the number 2 in parentheses could indicate a cyclic subgroup or ideal generated by two or a special case of cycle notation for elements of symmetry groups used to mean an element that keeps 2 fixed. This may be somewhat beyond high-school level.{{citation needed}}
;Oh no. Whatever this is, it's cursed.
:A symbol centered underneath another symbol is normally reserved for doing summations, where the big symbol is Σ, or some other operation applied to a sequence of numbers.
:It does not make sense to have a single number there, as indicated in the alt text. As with [[2529: Unsolved Math Problems|other things]] in Randall's comic universe, the explanation for this particular anomaly is that it is 'Cursed'. The usage mentioned in the alt text is an operation (Σ, summation) over a variable usually indicated by a letter such as i, where the operation is performed over all values of the variable, i.e. you Σ the argument over all values of i. In the "2" case, the alt text says you "you 2 the argument over all values of 2", i.e. the Σ operation has been replaced by the "2" operation and the i variable has been replaced by the "2" variable. 2 is usually not an operation, though the definition of 2 under {{w|Church_encoding#Church_numerals|church encoding}} is a function that takes in and produces functions. However, 2 is not a variable (and definitely not both at the same time).
:: Things being cursed is a common trope within recent XKCD comics which have mentioned items including [[2332:_Cursed_Chair|Cursed chairs]] and [[Category:Cursed_Connectors]]. This notation is one of the few occasions where the supernatural have demonstrable implications on science and mathematics for those foolhardy enough to use it.

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

:[An apparent generalisation of a scientific expression consisting of a dotted rectangular 'box' outline, left empty, and various commonly-themed symbology around it:]

:[as normal text, to the left of all the rest:] 2
:[superscript to the immediate left of the box:] 2
:[subscript also to the immediate left of the box:] 2
:[superscript to the immediate right of the box:] 2
:[subscript also to the immediate right of the box:] 2;2 [i.e. separated by a semicolon]
:[as normal text, to the right of almost all the rest:] (2) [i.e. enclosed in standard parentheses]
:[smaller subscript, centered immediately beneath the 2 within the parentheses:] 2

:[Further details are drawn in grey tone, around or near various of the elements of the expression:]
;[Captions above the numbers]
:[with an arrow pointing to the leftmost 2:] Regular Math
:[with an arrow pointing to the leftwards superscript 2:] Physics
:[with an arrow pointing to the rightwards superscript 2:] Regular math or footnotes
:[with an arrow pointing to the parenthetical 2 at the right:] Either high school math functions or incomprehensible group theory

;[Captions below the numbers]
:[with an arrow pointing to the leftwards subscript 2:] Chemical Physics
:[with an arrow pointing to just the rightwards subscript 2:] Chemistry
:[with an arrow pointing to a distorted grey ring snaking around only the comma of the semicolon and the following 2 of the rightmost subscript:] Matrices!
:[with an arrow pointing to a larger grey ring that passes fully around the whole semicolon and final 2 of the rightmost subscript:] The physicists are at it again
:[with an arrow pointing to the small 2 placed below the parenthetical 2:] Oh no. Whatever this is, it's cursed.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cursed Items]]

Talk:2614: 2

2022-05-04T01:32:23Z

4D4850: /* Vandals */

Hello people. Anyone got an explanation for this? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.229|172.70.114.229]] 22:59, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
:dog walker in the coments section omg (shodul we replace this with a smaller version because i think whiel it is legitimite discussion and not vandaelism this time it shoudl not be so fuck god damn large) --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.229|172.70.114.229]] 07:35, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
::friends romans countrymen lend me your ears previously this comment had a picture of doug walker attached to it and i was not aware it was vandalism and not a part of the comment which explains my preivous comment; thank you for reaidng --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.247|172.70.114.247]] 07:37, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

To the person who has requested a citation that two is a number... here you go: https://youtu.be/dBVoIUASFS0?t=82. Can someone who knows how to add citations add it? :D --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.209|172.70.110.209]] 23:09, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
:The [citation needed] thing is a running joke here thanks to [[285: Wikipedian Protester]]. It's used for obvious statements of fact on this wiki as a joke (basically the opposite of its Wikipedia use). [[User:KirbyDude25|KirbyDude25]] ([[User talk:KirbyDude25|talk]]) 00:43, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
::I'm sorry to inform you that you probably became another victim of Poe's law (or "r/whooosh", as kids say these days). I was just playing the [https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/game SMBC citation game]. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.209|172.70.110.209]] 02:08, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:::And we try to limit the use to only very very funny situations or when there is actually need for a citation, so as to not ruin it by having it on every single explanation!!! ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 06:08, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Hey all, the group theory thing reminds me a lot of cyclic groups or ideals generated by the value 2. Also equivalence classes (which come up in group theory) can be written with [brackets] but may be confused with <cyclic groups> or (ideals).

The 2;2 notation looks like the notation \mu; \nu that is used for covariant derivatives of tensors in physics. Also 2,2 looks like \mu, \nu that is used for partial derivatives of tensors. And as mentioned above, (2) could be a cyclic subgroup or ideal generated by two or a special case of cycle notation for elements of symmetry groups used to mean an element that keeps 2 fixed. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.120|162.158.62.120]] 23:32, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

I second the point about tensors. Maybe you could expand the summation notation slightly. It's common to use index sets or rules underneath large symbols for all sorts of things, like sums, products, direct sums, direct products, unions, intersections, integrals, and much, much more. So here, the large 2 in parentheses represents one of these symbols. Rather than adding or multiplying the elements or whatever, you are twoing them, whatever that means. You are twoing over all values of 2, apparently. It's sort of reminiscent of jokes with punchlines like "for sufficiently large values of 2." There are of course, different 2s out there. Like, there is the von Neumann ordinal 2, the integer 2, the rational number 2, the real number 2, the complex number 2, the residue class of 2 mod 3, etc. All of these may be represented by 2. Perhaps we are indexing over some collection of canonical representations of 2? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.161|172.70.130.161]] 00:02, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Explanation needs something about one of the 2s being cursed. Also, this should be added to the category for cursed stuff (I think it's cursed things, but did not look it up). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.72|172.70.211.72]] 01:37, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Superscript or subscripts before a thing can indicate tetration and pentation. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.66.63|172.68.66.63]] 03:35, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Did anyone else think there should have been a 2 after everything else (after the parentheses) with an arrow pointing to it labeled “sequels”?[[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.65|172.70.126.65]] 06:09, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Damn there is (again?) some idiot that replaces the explanation with text :-/ Wish we could ban those persons! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 06:10, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:What the vandal do those edit summaries mean? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.121|172.70.130.121]] 06:16, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
::What do those "et tu" edit summaries mean? (The ones on all the edits replacing the text with "Friends, Romans, Countrymen...") [[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.142|162.158.107.142]] 17:22, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

doug walker! the guy keeps chaging the image to doug fucking walker! awhat the fuck is up wiht that !!! --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.229|172.70.114.229]] 07:33, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:ok im'm pretty sure janny is soem transphobic slur (for reference the vandalism edit at 07:36's comment was "clean it up janny") did dog wlaker do a transphobic thing and now some altright pople who find it worth there time to change the Exain Xkcd page inage to Dog WAlker are nutting there balls dry???? --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.75|172.70.230.75]] 07:38, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
::I assumed it was calling us, the people who clear up their mess, "janitors", i.e. menial cleaners/fixer-upperers. But I honestly don't know what dialect/culture uses that (sounds a bit Australian, but not exclusively, and it's a typical and not necessarily derogative kind of word-shortenning that anybody might use) and if they ''do'' mean to call us janitors then... I'm happy to be a janitor. It's a worthwhile occupation, and I consider that an important job that I'll willingly do in the face of such a moron.

[[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.44|172.70.86.44]] 09:49, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
This should probably be added to Category:Comics sharing name[[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.199|172.70.178.199]] 15:41, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:No there are not other comic called 2. The comic with number 2 is not the name of that comic. And the only other number only comics are year numbers like 2016.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:22, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

There should be a category: comics featuring cursed items {{unsigned ip|172.70.230.63}}
:Can you list at least 5. Then I will consider it. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:22, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
::There's 5 here https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Cursed_Connectors and one here [[2332]] [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 18:34, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:::Noting that the infamous Cursed Chair had not been labelled, yet Curse(d?) Words had, I added the former and took no additional liberties in adding all other cursed things that seemed to lie within that scope (some by in-comic or in-titletext reference, I know) that weren't already included through the Cursed Connectors membership. I web-commented each Catsgory-markuped entry (to varying degrees of directness) in case anybody needs a clue as to why it is added. Obviously I accept any community disagreement on some of the more marginal representative 'items' (words, air, and a <4th minus one> thing that is even more conceptual), but that's what a collaborative wiki is for, yes? ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.177|172.70.85.177]] 21:17, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Who put a Ukrainian flag at the top of the page? {{unsigned ip|172.70.230.63}}
: i agree with whoever did that, but maybe a bit smaller or on the bottom so it doesn't interfere with normal usage of this? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.69.170|172.69.69.170]] 18:10, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
:: Is it better now? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.15|108.162.245.15]] 18:19, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:::Another vandal. Of course it should not be there. I support Ukraine but this page has nothing to do with that situation! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:22, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:It’s one of very many cases of vandalism in recent days. As Kynde says, it should not be there. And of course we don’t take instructions from vandals. [[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 18:31, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:::On behalf of the militant centrist wing of the ExplainXKCD community, I welcome the support for Ukraine but I worry as to who decides that this website supports a particular perspective. Ukraine's right to self determination is obvious, but another contributor could suggest something more suspect. [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 18:34, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
::::Yeah. I guess the vandal thought he would be any less obvious if his spam was disguised as support for Ukraine. Notice that it appeared at the same time as a new onslaught elsewhere at the site, as well as on this comic. [[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 18:37, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

== Vandals ==

Looks like there's some full scale vandalism happening - can anyone lock the site? [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 18:48, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:( [[User:Nafedalbi|Nafedalbi]] ([[User talk:Nafedalbi|talk]]) 19:04, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:Indeed, See the contributions of [[User:X. K. C. D.|X. K. C. D.]]. [[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 21:19, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
Uh, whoops. Don't mind that. [[User:Nafedalbi|Nafedalbi]] ([[User talk:Nafedalbi|talk]]) 19:05, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
::WITW is happening now? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.212|108.162.246.212]] 21:44, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:::This: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/User:X._K._C._D./common.js [[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 21:48, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
::::Crap. (no pun intended) They wrote a bot. Is there a way to stop that? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.251|108.162.245.251]] 21:51, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
:::::I don't think the bot can be stopped without an admin, but a counterbot that undos edits to any crapped pages could work. --[[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 01:32, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

2614: 2

2022-05-04T00:52:25Z

4D4850: Undo revision 236287 by 172.69.235.151 (talk)

<div style="display: none">crap</div><noinclude>:''This page refers to the comic named "2". For comic #2, see [[2: Petit Trees (sketch)]].''</noinclude>
{{notice|'''WARNING:''' The vast majority of the pages of ExplainXKCD are currently vandalized. {{#expr: {{LATESTCOMIC}} - {{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}}} out of {{LATESTCOMIC}} ({{#expr: 100 - ({{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 0)}}%) are vandalized, leaving only {{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}} ({{#expr: ({{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 0)}}%). ''Users:'' You can help combat this! Click "Random page" and undo/revert the vandalism in the page history. Every bit of help counts! (Admins, are you there?)}}
{{comic
| number = 2614
| date = May 2, 2022
| title = 2
| image = 2.png
| titletext = It's like sigma summation notation, except instead of summing the argument over all values of i, you 2 the argument over all values of 2.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A VERY JEALOUS NUMBER ₃½ⁿ₇₇₇ⅥⅣ₆⁸⁴⁴½⅔⅜ↆ↉↉∂, WHO DEMANDS TO HAVE THEIR OWN WEBCOMIC NEXT - Please change this comment when editing this page. The titletext needs to be worked in there, but I think I got everything else in some sort of order, pending general improvements. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This demonstrates the different ways in which the number 2 can be typeset in various scientific fields. Whilst these typefaces are used with any number, using the number 2 in this instance provides a clear illustration of where adding numbers can signify either a feature of a concept (such as the number of electrons in an atom) or a mathematical operation on it (such as raising a value to it's second power).

The dotted box represents any character (presumably a letter or bigram of letters). All the other notation consists only of the digit 2, in various fashions with occasional additional punctuation, and labelled as to what the 'purpose' might normally be of any particular element(s) as indicated, with respect to the general term, in the following fashions:
;Regular Math
:Precedes the term. "2x" indicates two times the value of ''x'' in normal {{w|algebra|algebraic}} use that should be familiar for many people. {{Citation needed}}
;Physics
:A preceding superscript. "2H" would indicate the particular {{w|isotope}} of Hydrogen with the atomic weight of two, i.e. deuterium, which is most often encountered when working with the atomic level of matter where the total number of neutrons and protons in the atom is important. It can also represent tetration, which is iterated exponentiation.
;Chemical Physics
:A preceding subscript, "2He" indicates the atomic number of an atom, which is the number of protons it contains, and thus a guide to the number of electrons its unionised form usually has and hence meaningful in its potential chemical interactions with other atoms. This should be invariant for any particular named element, but is usually given simultaneously with the presuperscripted mass number where it can be indicative of the applicable nuclear physics. {{w|Chemical Physics}} is a subdiscipline of physics and chemistry and **must never** be confused with {{w|Physical Chemistry}}. It can also represent pentation, which is iterated tetration.
;Regular Math or Footnotes
:A trailing superscript is typical of a {{w|Exponentiation|power value}}, in this case "x²" would be ''x'' multiplied by a second copy of itself, and a fairly typical mathematical standard.
:Additionally, superscripted numbers are one common way to mark words in a line of text in a way to refer to a {{w|Note (typography)|footnote}}, typically placed at the bottom of the page, with additional information that would not be appropriate or easily comprehendable to edit into the main text itself. The ambiguity between footnotes and exponents was used in [[1184: Circumference Formula]]
;Chemistry
:A trailing subscript is used in chemistry to indicate a multiple of the element (or group of elements, in brackets) in a {{w|chemical formula}}. "H2O" indicates two hydrogen atoms bond with a single oxygen atom in a molecule of water.
;Matrices! ("2,2")
:Extending the trailing subscript with a comma-separated value usually indicates a multidimensional array (e.g. establishing a 2-by-2 square of numbers, or this particular position in such an array), which is in the realms of {{w|Matrix (mathematics)|matrix mathematics}}. This is a little bit beyond 'everyday algebra' for many people, as seemingly indicated by the exclamation of the mere mention of matrices!
;The Physicists Are At It Again ("2;2")
:This label encompasses a mark that turns the prior comma into a semicolon, as part of the trailing subscript. This is a common notation for the {{w|Covariant derivative}} of a tensor field, which is commonly used in the mathematics of general relativity.
;Either High School Math Function or Incomprehensible Group Theory
:The number 2 in parentheses that follow a term would normally be the argument to a {{w|Function (mathematics)|function}}, e.g. "f(2)", which means that you should take the value (in this case 2) and find the result if manipulated by the predefined function ''f''. It is generally taught as part of algebraic mathematics already described, i.e. at {{w|Secondary school|High School}}.
:In {{w|group theory}}, however, the number 2 in parentheses could indicate a cyclic subgroup or ideal generated by two or a special case of cycle notation for elements of symmetry groups used to mean an element that keeps 2 fixed. This may be somewhat beyond high-school level.{{citation needed}}
;Oh no. Whatever this is, it's cursed.
:A symbol centered underneath another symbol is normally reserved for doing summations, where the big symbol is Σ, or some other operation applied to a sequence of numbers.
:It does not make sense to have a single number there, as indicated in the alt text. As with [[2529: Unsolved Math Problems|other things]] in Randall's comic universe, the explanation for this particular anomaly is that it is 'Cursed'. The usage mentioned in the alt text is an operation (Σ, summation) over a variable usually indicated by a letter such as i, where the operation is performed over all values of the variable, i.e. you Σ the argument over all values of i. In the "2" case, the alt text says you "you 2 the argument over all values of 2", i.e. the Σ operation has been replaced by the "2" operation and the i variable has been replaced by the "2" variable. 2 is usually not an operation, though the definition of 2 under {{w|Church_encoding#Church_numerals|church encoding}} is a function that takes in and produces functions. However, 2 is not a variable (and definitely not both at the same time).
:: Things being cursed is a common trope within recent XKCD comics which have mentioned items including [[2332:_Cursed_Chair|Cursed chairs]] and [[Category:Cursed_Connectors]]. This notation is one of the few occasions where the supernatural have demonstrable implications on science and mathematics for those foolhardy enough to use it.

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

:[An apparent generalisation of a scientific expression consisting of a dotted rectangular 'box' outline, left empty, and various commonly-themed symbology around it:]

:[as normal text, to the left of all the rest:] 2
:[superscript to the immediate left of the box:] 2
:[subscript also to the immediate left of the box:] 2
:[superscript to the immediate right of the box:] 2
:[subscript also to the immediate right of the box:] 2;2 [i.e. separated by a semicolon]
:[as normal text, to the right of almost all the rest:] (2) [i.e. enclosed in standard parentheses]
:[smaller subscript, centered immediately beneath the 2 within the parentheses:] 2

:[Further details are drawn in grey tone, around or near various of the elements of the expression:]
;[Captions above the numbers]
:[with an arrow pointing to the leftmost 2:] Regular Math
:[with an arrow pointing to the leftwards superscript 2:] Physics
:[with an arrow pointing to the rightwards superscript 2:] Regular math or footnotes
:[with an arrow pointing to the parenthetical 2 at the right:] Either high school math functions or incomprehensible group theory

;[Captions below the numbers]
:[with an arrow pointing to the leftwards subscript 2:] Chemical Physics
:[with an arrow pointing to just the rightwards subscript 2:] Chemistry
:[with an arrow pointing to a distorted grey ring snaking around only the comma of the semicolon and the following 2 of the rightmost subscript:] Matrices!
:[with an arrow pointing to a larger grey ring that passes fully around the whole semicolon and final 2 of the rightmost subscript:] The physicists are at it again
:[with an arrow pointing to the small 2 placed below the parenthetical 2:] Oh no. Whatever this is, it's cursed.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cursed Items]]

1420: Watches

2022-05-04T00:49:28Z

4D4850: Undo revision 233088 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

<div style="display: none">crap</div>
{{comic
| number = 1420
| date = September 12, 2014
| title = Watches
| image = watches.png
| titletext = Old people used to write obnoxious thinkpieces about how people these days always wear watches and are slaves to the clock, but now they've switched to writing thinkpieces about how kids these days don't appreciate the benefits of an old-fashioned watch. My position is: The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic coincides with the announcement of a new [https://www.apple.com/watch/ smart watch] by Apple earlier in the week as of the comic's release date (9th Sept 2014), the {{w|Apple Watch}}, along with a large emphasis on {{tvtropes|GadgetWatches|smartwatches}} at IFA 2014 (Sept 5-10), particularly 'Android Wear'.

The timeline shows a period approximately from 2005 to 2015 where our wrists were liberated from the tethers of wearing a watch, likely attributed to the fact that many instead used a mobile smartphone to tell the time.

Whilst other smartwatches have been released in the past, Randall predicts that the typical widespread interest following Apple product releases (combined with many other new releases by other companies) will result in our wrists again being shackled in the grip of watches from 2015. The wording of the label suggests that Randall is pre-emptively mourning the imminent loss of freedom of his and others' wrists, though this may be humorous hyperbole/sarcasm, as his position has generally been of apathy, such as in [[1215: Insight]].

The title text refers to how "old people" tend to express derision towards change (generally most widely accepted by 'young people') as not being like it was "in the good old days", even if this means they contradict themselves. Initially, the wearing of watches was viewed negatively by the older generation, but now ''not'' wearing a watch is instead negative. The second part of the title text starts as if Randall is going to express an opinion on wearing a watch but then veers off to mock the word "{{w|think piece|thinkpiece}}," due to its (particularly [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/think%20piece recent]) connotation for lacking factual content and expressing biased opinions. For more details on ''thinkpiece'' see this [http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/05/07/thinkpiece_definition_and_history_roots_of_the_word_show_it_has_long_been.html article]. By equating ''thinkpiece'' with ''brain'', Randall is making a reference to the fact that this compound word does not follow the convention of the compound word ''timepiece'', which is a synonym for ''watch''.

==Transcript==
:[A timeline shows the following years but extends further in both directions:]
:1990 2000 2010 2020 2030
:[A grey box extends from the left border to approximately 2005 and another grey box begins approximately at 2015 and continues to the right border. They are labeled:]
:Regular watches
:Smart watches
:[An arrow points up to the empty period between 2005 and 2015. Below the arrow is written:]
:Brief, glorious period in which our wrists were free

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Timelines]]

810: Constructive

2022-05-04T00:49:09Z

4D4850: Undo revision 233078 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

<div style="display: none">crap</div>
{{comic
| number = 810
| date = October 25, 2010
| title = Constructive
| image = constructive.png
| titletext = And what about all the people who won't be able to join the community because they're terrible at making helpful and constructive co-- ...oh.
}}

==Explanation==
Most online communities, including explainxkcd, face the problem of dissuading {{w|Spamming|spammers}} from joining and participating. A common solution to this problem is the use of various systems to prevent automated bots' use of the community, while still allowing legitimate users to join. This has resulted in an arms race of sorts between spammers and communities, in which the spammers try to bypass increasingly difficult spam-prevention methods.

This captcha and spamming prevention also has a downside, in that the time it takes to "prove you're human" is sometimes so long as to drive users away because their time is being wasted.

This comic explores the culmination of that arms race, in which an advanced spam-prevention system, built by Cueball, is able to defeat the concept of spamming itself by forcing spammers to contribute constructively to a community.

{{w|Captcha}} is one of the methods used to prevent lots of automated registering of fake user names used by bots and spammers. It consists of asking a person to prove that they are human before registering them as user and allowing them to post on sites or forum topics. That is done by using pictures of words and letters that humans may recognize, but bots and OCR software have trouble with.

Now, artificial intelligence (AI) of bots have advanced so far, that [[Cueball]] has invented a new system. It asks the users to rate a slate of comments as constructive or not, then asks them to reply with comments of their own. [[Megan]] asks what will happen when spammers find a way around his system, such as making bots that make constructive and helpful comments? Well, it turns out that is what he is trying to accomplish in first place, a thriving community of bots and humans helping its members with constructive and helpful comments<s>, as well as coming one step closer to the {{w|technological singularity|singularity}}</s>.

The title text investigates the consequences of such system further by thinking of people unable to give constructive and helpful comments, which are a sort of people you don't want in your online community anyway.{{citation needed}} Or it could mean that in order to join said community, they would have to learn to post helpful and constructive comments, and would then be eligible to join, thus accomplishing Cueball's goal.

CAPTCHAs are a [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:CAPTCHA recurring theme] on xkcd.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is talking to Megan.]
:Cueball: Spammers are breaking traditional Captchas with AI, so I've built a new system. It asks users to rate a slate of comments as "Constructive" or "Not constructive."

:[Close up of Cueball.]
:Cueball: Then it has them reply with comments of their own, which are later rated by other users.

:[Megan standing next to Cueball again.]
:Megan: But what will you do when spammers train their bots to make automated constructive and helpful comments?

:[Close up of Cueball again.]
:Cueball: ''Mission''. ''Fucking''. ''Accomplished''.

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