explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3193: Sailing Rigs

2026-02-23T03:00:39Z

92.239.132.210:

Here before all the "here im first" comments [[User:TheTrainsKid|TheTrainsKid]] ([[User talk:TheTrainsKid|talk]]) 05:06, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

I can't help but notice that he forgot about cutters. [[User:PDesbeginner|PDesbeginner]] ([[User talk:PDesbeginner|talk]]) 05:07, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
: :D [[User:Qwertyuiopfromdefly|Qwertyuiopfromdefly]] ([[User talk:Qwertyuiopfromdefly|talk]]) 05:15, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Flettner Rig may refer to https://xkcd.com/3119/ [[Special:Contributions/73.225.91.80|73.225.91.80]] 06:19, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
:Yes, but also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_rotor [[Special:Contributions/130.76.187.47|130.76.187.47]] 12:57, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Flettner rotors require some power from the ship's main propulsion to turn them. This wouldn't be possible in a sailing scenario [[Special:Contributions/167.103.126.166|167.103.126.166]] 20:57, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
:What if you drove them from a ship-mounted wind turbine? [[User:Whoop whoop pull up|Whoop whoop pull up]] ([[User talk:Whoop whoop pull up|talk]]) 15:36, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

I see Randall has taken up a new hobby :D [[Special:Contributions/152.115.135.109|152.115.135.109]] 08:21, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
:Perhaps. I presume that the entire comic is in service to the pun in the title text. [[User:Philhower|Philhower]] ([[User talk:Philhower|talk]]) 13:44, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
::Originaly the title text was made after the comic, as an extra joke that is not originally part of the plan. This I have seen Randall say at some point. So I would not expect he came up with the pun and then the made the comic. Of course he could have changed his mind. But there are several other jokes and references in the 18 labels of the boats, so it is not only the catch22 joke anyway. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 16:19, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
::Maybe he thought up the pun when the comic was in it's draft stage... a sketch22? --[[Special:Contributions/92.239.132.210|92.239.132.210]] 03:00, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia does have a kite rig web page. That's a real thing, but usually not as pretty as here. And I suppose you could do helium balloons. Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@gmail.com [[Special:Contributions/85.115.54.203|85.115.54.203]] 11:46, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Why is this page (alone of all the comics, as far as I've seen) mirrored? The comic image, text, angle of the italics, etc. are all reversed on both the comic page and the front page. Stock Safari on iOS 16.7.12. [[User:D5xtgr|D5xtgr]] ([[User talk:D5xtgr|talk]]) 14:03, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
:"Troll revision". Got it, mystery solved. Though I'm a bit surprised that raw styling like that's allowed, not just wiki markup. [[User:D5xtgr|D5xtgr]] ([[User talk:D5xtgr|talk]]) 14:09, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

I remember looking through all kinds of rig-types when trying to describe (and/or explain) a ''prior'' comic with a particular sailing ship design on it (some time ago, not sure which one). Might well be that Randall's been looking at the same page as I did. ;) [[Special:Contributions/92.23.2.208|92.23.2.208]] 14:44, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

The offset rig one could be a reference to speed record sailboats. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestas_Sailrocket) For torque reasons, they have the mast mounted on a horizontal boom and offset far off the side of the boat. Though on the other hand, speed record boats have this boom above the water, and only have single sails. [[Special:Contributions/2600:4040:2C96:4700:953D:B3CC:B3DB:2C2E|2600:4040:2C96:4700:953D:B3CC:B3DB:2C2E]] 15:19, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
:That looks to me more like a form of catamaran (or partly-inline trimarang). {{unsigned ip|92.23.2.208|20:04, 13 January 2026 (UTC)}}
:: Are you sure it isn't a boomarang? [[Special:Contributions/82.13.184.33|82.13.184.33]] 09:54, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:::You're probably thinking of a boo!meringue, a surprising way to use egg-whites. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.61|82.132.238.61]] 14:12, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

The definition of yawl is wrong. What matters is not position of mizzen relative to rudder post, but to water line. Ketches often have the mizzen mast behind the rudder. {{unsigned ip|46.114.57.23|15:23, 13 January 2026 (UTC)}}
:There is no hard-and-fast definition of ketch vs yawl, really it goes by how the boat handles. Having said that, the usual definition, and most commonly quoted, is whether the mizzen mast is fore or aft of the rudder post... and in most cases this definition works. [[User:Martin|Martin]] ([[User talk:Martin|talk]]) 22:15, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Bunkbed rig could also be reference to a Hydrofoil, the idea that the boat moves so fast it climbs out of the water. [[Special:Contributions/198.180.154.20|198.180.154.20]] 15:48, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

The "OOPS, ALL SPINNAKERS" could be made to work (although only sailing downwind, and only up to the speed of the airflow) by using spinnakers increasingly tightly woven so that the upwind ones would let pass most of the airflow with the subsequent ones being increasingly tightly woven, thus minimalizing the loss of efficiency due to the escape of airflow around the edges of each spinnaker. Such a setup could potentially allow to maximize the use of the airflow force when sailing directly downwind, although the increase in complexity and wheight would likely lead to an overall loss of efficiency compared to a single, well-designed spinnaker. In any case the spinnaker (basically a parachute on a mast) is only designed to add a little extra boost when sailing downwind in a strong wind for a relatively long time (when the main sails can't catch much wind; in this configuration the main sail(s) are typically angled at a very wide angle against the airflow which is very suboptimal for a "foil" sail), in all other cases the foil-like sails are much more efficient and do allow to sail faster than the wind, which the spinnaker can't achieve, by design. [[Special:Contributions/2001:861:3F07:A020:D17C:74A0:94EF:9DAD|2001:861:3F07:A020:D17C:74A0:94EF:9DAD]] 21:30, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

"Real: No" should probably be "Real: Not as of January 13, 2026." Because at least for a few of those, someone out there will see the comic and say "Hmm, that's an interesting idea" and make it happen. [[Special:Contributions/64.201.132.210|64.201.132.210]] 22:05, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

The explanation for Yawl contains an incorrect definition of fore-and-aft rigging. It says a mast has two sails "One in front of the mast and one behind, known as fore-and-aft rigging" but that is not what fore-and-aft rigging means. Even a single sail can be fore-and-aft rigged, which means it is rigged to a boom and/or the centreline of the boat. This is different from square-rigged, which means rigged to a spar which goes across the boat from one side to the other (at right angles to the centreline). [[User:Martin|Martin]] ([[User talk:Martin|talk]]) 22:26, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

The Offset Rig would work downwind. But it would *only* work downwind because the center of effort is so far forward of the center of lateral resistance. [[User:Martin|Martin]] ([[User talk:Martin|talk]]) 23:33, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

=== Cropped images ===

I brought over the [[:Template:CSS image crop]] from enwiki and added cropped images to the table and…it doesn't look quite as good as I had hoped.
Perhaps they need to be scaled down. Still, my patience for finding all the boundaries and entering them is at an end, so … perhaps someone else can make it look better without doing a lot of work. Not sure. good luck. (I forget how this was done in prior explanations, ugh. Maybe in a better way. I forgot to look before doing this work.) [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 15:29, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
:I went through the very-redlinking documentation part and stripped out (or commented out) various things that did not 'translate well' on this site due to not having the requisite support templates. (And trivially list-formatted the parameter explanations.) (I didn't stop it from giving itself the redlinked category used to track invalid uses of the template, checking the documented examples could reveal which does that... assuming we don't want to just remove that check-and-categorisation from the 'working' template codeanyway.) If anyone cares to look at the form of the code that has so much more transcluded template-formatting, it's the second edit-version of the page that you need to go through and consider what can be (and needs to be) re-added in.
:As to how we've done it before, it's generally done by salami-slicing the image (from the big image on this or the original site) and then manually uploading those mini fragments as images in their own right to use in support (see, e.g. how [[730: Circuit Diagram]] has done it). [[Special:Contributions/92.23.2.208|92.23.2.208]] 20:04, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
::Thanks, yes, I thought about fixing up the template documentation and decided it just was not worth the effort, but happy to have you have done it. I do think using "sprites" from the main image works better than uploading the cross product of rows and columns as separate files. Thanks for the 730 reference, all I could remember was [[1928: Seven Years]] where I solved a different but related problem in a different way (overlay numbering sub-panels while applying an alpha channel and referencing those numbers as callouts), though curiously we did not continue it for [[2386: Ten Years]] or [[3172: Fifteen Years]]. Maybe there should be a [[:Category:Image-based explanation markup solutions]] to put these all in. I am a little bit joking, but more serious than not.
::Also, we could definitely rewrite this template so it could be used in a less verbose way with numbered parameter fields and maybe a scaling factor. Or, for that matter, to take a list of intersection points and to return the nth sub-image given those corner points. But, of course, I went with what seemed the easiest lift at the time. [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 20:42, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
:::Apparnetly [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|@DollarStoreBa'al]] disagrees first. I wish they had said something. [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 21:49, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
::::My bad. Just noticed that somebody wanted to resize easier, and so I did that. By the way, I don't believe this site can do pings (I certainly didn't get one). Also thought it would be easier to modify the images by just going the traditional way instead of using CSS.--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]] 00:50, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
{{outdent|4}} Where/with whom was the resizing discussion, please? As for pings, yes, I guess I expect you to read the talk page. Also, please use an edit summary, especially if you are going to undo someone else's hard and innovative work! [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 08:06, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
: Could be refering to your above "Perhaps they need to be scaled down." comment?
: And the wiki principle in use here is that if someone sees merit in completely overhauling any page, for whatever reason, then they can do. As you added a completely new-to-this-site template for your idea of how to do it. Which was interesting, and may be useful in the future as well, but might have used a bit more review along the way. This doesn't stop someone else reversing or rechanging what another person did for similarly imagined good reasons, and it only becomes a problem if it's done with bad intent and/or becomes a battle between two mutually exclusive ideologies. Summaries are useful, of course, but some changes may also be fairly self-evident. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.61|82.132.238.61]] 14:12, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:: [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.61|82.132.238.61]], your speculative response here is unhelpful. I asked [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|@DollarStoreBa'al]] why they did what they did, I am not interested in guesses from others about it, which I think also make it harder to get the answer I was seeking (hence the strength of this response now). I was careful not to allege some of the things you are responding to. And as for whether the changes were self-evident, that is not responsive to the issue of summaries — the point of summaries is to make it manageable to review changes by looking at the history or the notification emails without having to individually review each and every change — unless you are going to review the diffs, either en masse or individually, then the self-evidentiary nature of them is irrelevant. Thank you. I apologize that I sound annoyed. [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 14:24, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:"…it doesn't look quite as good as I had hoped. Perhaps they need to be scaled down" 
:-JohnHawkinson 
:--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]] 14:28, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
::Also, don't really see the whole point of introducing an entire new system to do something we could already do. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]] 14:30, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
::: [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|@DollarStoreBa'al]] I don't know what method you used to guillotine the image, but I found it substantially faster and more efficient to divide up the images by coordinates than to create 18 individual images based on my experience doing that in the past. The individual image choice also results in different scaling factors for different images, which has its pros and cons — I don't think it's great, though. It means, for instance, the Longsail Rig is squeezed down to the same width of other images and no longer appears as "long." I'd encourage you in the future to think carefully about undoing without discussion another person's work to address what you perceive to be that person's perception that it could be improved. That kind of thing has an effect on people's willingness to contribute and participate. Thanks. [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 14:53, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
::::Well, all I did was take screenshots of them and then resize them when I actually implemented them. I don't know why you're peeved by the Longsail not being long enough (it's still a different ratio than the other images, and is very clearly longer than the other ships within it), but I've resized the image to make it longer. --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBa'al|Converse]] 15:36, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:::::Also, I believe this method actually positively affects people's willingness to participate. It makes the way to do this much clearer (and easier) compared to pixel measurements. Plus, how did you measure the pixels? Those were pretty precise measurements you had.--'''''[[User:DollarStoreBaal44|DollarStoreBa'al]][[User Talk:DollarStoreBaal44|Converse]]''''' 15:43, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
{{outdent|5}} [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|@DollarStoreBa'al]]…yikes? Screenshots and resizing? Those are both methods that can lose fidelity…it's not worth agonizing overmuch, but as a general practice anything that degrades the image quality is something to be avoided (given that these are 1bpp b/w images, such concerns are at their nadir)…I had assumed they were native crops. Re longsail, my point is that Randall's artistic intent is in conflict with automatic scaling and I don't think the images should be scaled independently of each other. I'm not sure how you can assess participation, since I don't know why there would be much more attention to the images now that they are "done" (but the burden of uploading additional images with different crops if someone wanted to change one seems to me a lot higher than changing one number in the wikitext of a template). I can't predict the future, but I can definitely say that it had a substantial negative impact on ''me'' (especially to hear it's because of how you interpreted my own comment on the talk page!). I regret that's being expressed here in the text now. To answer your question, I measured the pixels by drawing ruler guides on the master image and reading them off. I don't think the precision speaks to participation in any way (not sure if that's what was meant by "Plus,"). [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 16:13, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:I really like the table as it is now. I did not see the first version. But the current version looks like what we have done several times before, and that is easy for anyone to understand and edit. I have no idea what the other way is. But I have made tables like this when I was more active. It is not important what the image looks like in the table as you have the full comic above. It is just to make sure you know which boat is being discussed. And people do not read the entire discussion before making changes, I don't. It has become quite long this one. And yes you do not get any notification if someone replies here. If you need to get hold of someone's attention posting on their talk page is the best chance. That is also they way to reach me, the only active admin at the moment. But I'm not very active. But if someone posts om my page I will get an e-mail and then I will read it. I try to make a mention of what I do when I make larger changes, but it can fail. I do hope this doesn't deter you from making contributions another time though! Great you are invested in it. But personally I think this simpler way is the way to go here. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 16:35, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

:You know what I'd do, for the individual images? Take the _2x (which is greyscale, BTW, not 1bpp - possibly even full colour with nothing but greyscales, if you look into it). In something like GIMP, select each ship-shape by your favourite magic colour-selection-tool on the black bit that doesn't select ''every'' bit of black (or unselect the stray bits that the default threshold included), then expand the selection by a given small number of pixels, whatever number looks good to give it an aesthetic boundary. Copy and paste to new layer, that layer being cropped to the selection, then floodfill white around the edge transparent edging. Rinse, repeat, takes just a few clicks (or keyboard combos) per item, slightly more complicated if there weren't such a clear containing rectangle - so not quite so easy for Circuit Diagram, but increases the effort from maybe 10 seconds per 'extract' to maybe 15-20 seconds. It'd take longer to start GIMP up in the first place, waiting for the splash-logo to go away and then for it to briefly fish around for any add-ons that need loading.
:If you feel like creating your own scripted tool for this, even less time per instance, but see [[1205: Is It Worth the Time?]]... ;)
:For each layer-separated item, export as an image in their own right. Though I'd personally also at this point (after all possible messing with the original antialiased 'fuzziness') descale the _2x-scaled subimages (consistently) to be smaller. Perhaps to be like the non-_2x one. Right now, my view of the illustrated table in the Explanation has ''far'' larger images of each ship than they are in the comic image, though that might just be peculiar to this browser on this device. But you don't need more than the basic likeness of each subimage. It could stand to be half the size of the comic's appearence, whether by dynamic scaling or the base image being rescaled.
:But as I'm not an authorised uploader, here, I've spent about the same time explaining what I'd do as I'd probably need to do this whole thing. And it doesn't matter as it's been done, and well enough (overscaling issues aside) for all practical purposes. Spending time with screenshotting (which is so much more complicated these days than it used to be) or hovering a image-editor over pixels to record their relevent coordinates (I did a lot of that for [[3186: Truly Universal Outlet]], for something I did for my own entertainment - and I recon that Randall got the M-type plug wrong ''plus'' ignored the second L-type) is your choice, if you prefer to do it that way. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.61|82.132.238.61]] 17:28, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

:Ok, guys and gals. All images are now specified for display by height alone ("x<number>px"), that being the actual image height ''halved'' (rounded down, where that'd be fractional). On the assumption that they weren't rescaled between screenshotting and uploading, but it doesn't look like they are. This way, they aren't larger than they display on the {{template|comic}}-header picture of the whole comic, and the "longtail" image isn't so wide as to dominate the table. We don't need to waste space with 'top-definition' images.
:Tested on both laptop and Android browsers, they're always still large enough to be easily recognisable and representative. Also, I centred the cell contents, for further aesthetic reasons. [[Special:Contributions/92.23.2.208|92.23.2.208]] 20:22, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Of course I am biased, but one of the things lost in the [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|@DollarStoreBa'al]] [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3193%3A_Sailing_Rigs&type=revision&diff=403475&oldid=403452 changes], which I had not noticed initially, is the titles of the sub-images in Randall's hand-font. I included those initially for a reason, and I think the chart looks better with them. Others may disagree, of course, but again, seems like the kind of change that would merit discussion before doing, especially when it's done in a way that is hard to change (see my overly-repeated points above). [p.s. I didn't mean the image format was 1bpp, I meant the contents were notionally such; although I suppose they do have some antialiasing. ] [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 20:38, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:Never saw that version. But that just makes the images taller (for a given degree of scaling) and adds nothing to the column that has that same text as non-image data. Unless there's some subtle joke in the actual style of writing that I'm missing (like deliberately bad-kerning, that might not have been replicated in the pure text).
:But that's just my opinion. Maybe someone else thinks its more necessaary.
:Also, using the {{template|diff}}-template might be something that you'd want to use. i.e. "one of the things lost in the {{diff|403475|changes}}, which I had not noticed initially"... Just in case you weren't aware of it. [[Special:Contributions/92.23.2.208|92.23.2.208]] 21:43, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Talk:3192: Planetary Alignment

2026-02-23T01:39:52Z

92.239.132.210:

Remember to buckle your seatbelts! [[User:King Pando|King Pando]] ([[User talk:King Pando|talk]]) 05:20, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

I hope they remember to restart the calculations when we get it back. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 23:41, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

I have personally been the victim of a much-inferior mobile phone as a loaner. I owned a Nokia phone (probably a [[:wikipedia:List of Nokia products|Nokia 239]]) that was on the United States AMPS analog network around 1997, and broke the LCD display. I brought it in for service, and while they worked on it, they issued me a [[:wikipedia:MicroTAC|Motorola MicroTAC]] type phone, which was only slightly better than the original "brick phone" design. Due to delays in repair and distance from the shop itself, I probably used the loaner phone for longer than the phone which I had nominally purchased. [[User:Elizium23|Elizium23]] ([[User talk:Elizium23|talk]]) 06:10, 10 January 2026 (UTC)
:Not necessarily "inferior", but the last time I had a car in the shop I got a car very different from what I'm used to. I normally drive a sedan (Camrys and Accords for several decades), but the loaner was an SUV, which took some getting used to (I'm a short person, getting into the driver's seat felt like climbing into a truck). [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:21, 10 January 2026 (UTC)
::Well, a cuboid shaped planet or one made of marshmallow could have been offered[[Special:Contributions/92.239.132.210|92.239.132.210]] 01:39, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Seems related to [[3059]], same clipboard and everything. [[Special:Contributions/64.114.211.116|64.114.211.116]] 08:46, 10 January 2026 (UTC)
: Also related to [[3037]]. These three comics seem to form an arc. {{unsigned ip|2001:861:8ac3:fa50:aeaa:c2ce:fdee:8131|11:37, 10 January 2026 (UTC)}}
:these would fit into a "Planetary Inspector" category --[[User:Youforgotthisthing|Youforgotthisthing]] ([[User talk:Youforgotthisthing|talk]]) 16:06, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

I wonder if “Planetary Alignment” refers to the astrological notion of “the planets are in alignment…”? {{unsigned ip|75.111.176.208|13:37, 10 January 2026 (UTC)}}
:It's not just astrological, astronomers also call a group of planets close together in the sky an alignment, although the more technical term is syzygy. That's what I expected the comic to be a pun on. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:21, 10 January 2026 (UTC)
::It is more a reference to a wheel alignment done on a car.--[[Special:Contributions/2600:100A:B10C:6B2E:EC47:CF99:9B14:1C81|2600:100A:B10C:6B2E:EC47:CF99:9B14:1C81]] 06:55, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

“Which ocean basin do you like the least?” is also reminiscent of Hank Scorpio asking Homer Simpson whether his least favorite country is France or Italy, with the least favorite one being the target of the death ray. {{unsigned ip|96.250.83.179|16:01, 10 January 2026}}
:I believe that the premier nerd canon parallel here would be Princess Leia giving up "[https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dantooine#Galactic_Civil_War Dantooine]" as the location of the Rebel Base in a vain effort to save her home planet, while the Imperial officials paid no real attention to her desperate lie. They probably knew she wouldn't give a real answer, but if she had to think of someplace expendable that she "liked the least", it certainly would be Dantooine. [[User:Elizium23|Elizium23]] ([[User talk:Elizium23|talk]]) 04:17, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

[[3037]] and [[3059]] also have the same characters as this comic - Ponytail as inspector, Cueball as homeowner. I added a sentence to the main explanation linking to these related comics. --[[Special:Contributions/2600:4040:99D4:8B00:F922:E24E:C61E:3AB6|2600:4040:99D4:8B00:F922:E24E:C61E:3AB6]] 19:20, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Pacific Ocean. We like the Pacific the least. While you're there, could you give the Ring of Fire a checkup? Thanks. [[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 15:05, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
:Hmmm, yeah.... <sucks air between teeth while looking thoughtful> ...you're right, it isn't working properly at all. Leave it with us, though, and we can definitely get it constantly spewing magma ''all the way round'', once we get the proper replacements. It will cost you, though, for both parts and labour... [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.61|82.132.238.61]] 13:53, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
:: > <sucks air between teeth while looking thoughtful>
::I felt that infuriating contractor bs nonverbal language in my ''soul''. [[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 14:49, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Talk:3157: Emperor Palpatine

2025-10-21T15:34:52Z

92.239.132.210:

What happens when he is five years old in canon Star Wars [[User:Mathmaster|Mathmaster]] ([[User talk:Mathmaster|talk]])
:As a Youngling, he would obviously get a funny hat and a 'not quite so dangerous' training-lightsaber. At least for Jedi training, can't speak for Sith training, which probably goes with the exact opposite (funny shoes and a lightsaber that has no hilt?)... ;) 22:13, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't think the title text is sarcastic. Making Palpatine look older in Return of the Jedi allowed the actor's age to be very precise for the character in the 3 subsequent movies (while allowing the same actor playing the character). --[[Special:Contributions/181.236.188.58|181.236.188.58]] 22:22, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

My first thought when reading the alt-text was of the reincarnated leader of the History Monks in the Discworld, analogous to the Dalai Lama. The memories and personallity of an old man, in the body of a toddler. The wise old man is normally in control, but sometimes the toddler takes over, leading to him wanting a biccie.