explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3132: Coastline Similarity

2025-08-25T22:59:53Z

Jgharston: Tom Lehrer.

Lol what [[User:SectorCorruptor|SectorCorruptor]] ([[User talk:SectorCorruptor|talk]]) 16:20, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
:Lol what --'''''[[User:DollarStoreBa'al |DollarStoreBa'al]][[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al |'''''Converse''''']][[Special:Contributions/DollarStoreBa'al|'''''My life choices''''']] 17:30, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
::Lol what [[User:Broseph|Broseph]] ([[User talk:Broseph|talk]]) 18:13, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
:::Lol what [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 18:52, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
::::Lol what [[Special:Contributions/24.54.131.250|24.54.131.250]] 19:24, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
:::::Lol what [[Special:Contributions/2001:67C:2564:A301:C26:D05F:D5AA:CA02|2001:67C:2564:A301:C26:D05F:D5AA:CA02]] 21:46, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
::::::Lol what [[User:Aprilfoolsupdate!| Aprilfoolsupdate!]]([[User talk:Aprilfoolsupdate!|talk]]) 08:16, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

^^^Plagerism at work^^^ [[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]]) 02:18, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

npcs [[user:lett‪herebedarklight|raeb]] 14:29, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

Plagiarism might refer to the designer of one of the coastlinescopying the design of the other one (a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy).
[[Special:Contributions/147.234.73.125|147.234.73.125]] 22:56, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
:Given that Randall has made references to the guide and that a main part of the first book is talking to Slatibartfast who designed the Norvegian fjords, and later had to just do Africa, could actually mean that this is what Randall/Cueball is thinking of... Should this be mentioned in the explanation? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:14, 25 August 2025 (UTC)
::Can one (even a Planetary Designer) ever ''self-''plagiarise? The same guy got given a different(/additional) part of the replacement Earth and tried his old award-winning design again... I don't think that counts as plagiarism. There are better ways to describe it, so I say it's an inspiration too far.
::At least how it turned out... might have progressed through different stages, say Zlarti got to do Africa, ''then'' to do South America, and he still had some of the large-scale patterns and molds so just re-used them on the other side of the adjacent continent, etc... but that's a stretch of reverse-engineering the joke to the supposed cause, long since diluted if it was ever part of the original concept. Mention it, if you must, but I don't think it's anything to do with that. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.236.41|82.132.236.41]] 17:54, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm the comic "Coastline similarity" is likely a roof on "Cosine Similarity" which is used in software industry to measure how close two images are. This method is also used to detect plagiarism. {{unsigned ip|108.76.190.132|23:00, 22 August 2025}}

F***ing vandals. Best of luck, I'm gonna bunker down until this blows over. [[Special:Contributions/207.195.86.18|207.195.86.18]] 01:47, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

EDIT: To the dumbs*** who apparently doesn't know how curse words are used: referring to "f***ing X" is a way of expressing HATRED towards X, not love.

:I mean to play devils advocate you did pick the single most versatile word in the English lexicon. Capable of not only being a noun, a verb and an adjective, but also an adverb and probably more too. How are we to know without cultural context clues? (Signed a coitus looter)

My dad once had the opposite conversation with his teacher, where he asked if the two continents had ever been connected and his teacher scoffed at him because continental drift wasn't widely-known yet. --[[Special:Contributions/2603:800C:500:18B3:38A0:233D:17B2:D289|2603:800C:500:18B3:38A0:233D:17B2:D289]] 16:05, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

Ooh, spotted an error in the strip: the fossils that match up are Triassic, not Cretaceous. (This is actually an underappreciated geological/paleontological thing: the Atlantic Ocean is what ended the Triassic. The Atlantic crust started as a mantle plume that split apart Pangaea, causing the largest volcano in Earth's history... which is what drove the extinction of the rivals of the early dinosaurs.) (Signed, tr0gd0r)

<s>Plagerism</s> Research!
[[User:Jgharston|Jgharston]] ([[User talk:Jgharston|talk]]) 22:59, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

Talk:3109: Dehumidifier

2025-07-06T01:38:29Z

Jgharston: .

Having network access can have some use for a dehumidifier, e.g. to remotely set the target humidity level, or get notifications when the water tank needs to get emptied. But having devices that depend on a specific app or a vendor-provided remote service risks having a useless device after a while ... --[[Special:Contributions/134.102.219.31|134.102.219.31]] 13:19, 30 June 2025 (UTC)
:Humidifiers typically have a physical control to set a target humidity level, and even the most basic models turn off when the water tank gets full. Since humans can't really tell the difference between 40-60%, which is the range of most humidifiers, there is no need for a remote control to change the humidity levels on a machine. As for the water tank, regular use of the humidifier will teach the user about how long it can run before turning off and needing to be emptied. {{unsigned ip|136.62.110.93|13:58, 30 June 2025 (UTC)}}
::Though there might be a device that attempts to do [[2753: Air Handler|both jobs]], note that this is a {{w|dehumidifier}} (as you functionally refer to) and not ''necessarily'' also a capable {{w|humidifier}} (as you namechecked it). [[Special:Contributions/92.23.2.228|92.23.2.228]] 17:53, 30 June 2025 (UTC)
:::uh, I forgot the leading 'de' . we're currently dealing with a semi-functional a/c unit in our business warehouse/office space. having to keep running the DEhumidifier to keep the temp reasonable during work hours. not enough condensate capacity to run over night, so it shuts off after about 10-12 hours. at least it runs on simple mechanical controls with no reliance on wi-fi 13:40, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
::: i had a good laugh at this comic, as i am designing dehumidifiers and they include wireless connectivity.....but there are reasons for this. But is more for monitoring, like e.g. in a water damage case the resoration company can see if the room is dry without having a technician drive to the location.

::: Awe Mai Gawd! I have one word for you: Horizon Post Office Scandal.[[User:Jgharston|Jgharston]] ([[User talk:Jgharston|talk]]) 01:38, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

:::this comic will end up on our wall, together with [https://xkcd.com/242/ xkcd:242 The Difference]--
[[Special:Contributions/84.46.99.18|84.46.99.18]] 06:41, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

"if they discover a new kind of water" - There are several varieties of heavy water (common Hydrogen deuterium, tritium; common oxygen, various other isotopes), not to mention several [wiki:Phases of ice|phases of ice]. [[Special:Contributions/64.201.132.210|64.201.132.210]] 20:31, 30 June 2025 (UTC)
:I restored the part about phases of ice, because dehumidifiers do deal with ice (when icing up, and if the ambient temperature gets low). Mostly put it back because I thought a mention of {{w|ice-nine}} would be fun. [[Special:Contributions/2600:387:4:803:0:0:0:B2|2600:387:4:803:0:0:0:B2]] 20:42, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Is the salesman Hairy? Seems similar but not quite enough hair, I'm not sure who he's supposed to be --[[User:Darth Vader|Darth Vader]] ([[User talk:Darth Vader|talk]]) 21:17, 30 June 2025 (UTC)
: I'd say it's him.--[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:19, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

hydrogen peroxide.--[[User:Bb777|me, hi]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 01:12, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
:It's made of the same elements, but it isn't water. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 02:29, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
:still liquid. --[[User:Bb777|me, hi]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 21:44, 2 July 2025 (UTC)
::better patch that hole i made with hydrogen peroxide.--[[User:Bb777|me, hi]] ([[User talk:Bb777|talk]]) 21:49, 2 July 2025 (UTC)
:Hydrogen peroxide is not to be confused with {{w|DHMO|Dihydrogen Monoxide}} --[[Special:Contributions/134.102.219.31|134.102.219.31]] 11:30, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
:"Two guys walk into a bar. One says, 'I'll have H₂O.' The other says, 'I'll have H₂O too.' The second guy dies.", Anonymous --[[User:Ptdecker66|Ptdecker66]] ([[User talk:Ptdecker66|talk]]) 14:10, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Ice-nine is mentioned once in the trivia section. Did the user that added that mean to say ice-IX, were they unaware that ice-nine is fictional, or was it meant to be a joke? I thought that any "jokes" in the explanation were supposed to be technically factual, such as adding [citation needed] to a plainly obvious statement. Please forgive me for asking this stupid question. [[Special:Contributions/47.14.13.170|47.14.13.170]] 01:22, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
:Yes, it's supposed to all be factual. I've updated that. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 02:29, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

I just mentioned acoustic-based/light-based attack vectors and that patches might circumvent them. I've heard of them used against other devices, but never against a dehumidifier. Citation needed? [[Special:Contributions/181.214.218.75|181.214.218.75]] 17:36, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

NOTE: water molecules do NOT exchange hydrogen ATOMS. atoms contain both protons and electrons. even your reference states that water molecules exchange PROTONS, not atoms. {{unsigned ip|2607:fb90:8a91:4e30:3c86:6f12:78c6:fe52|00:30, 2 July 2025}}

Does it at least support water conservation? [[User:StapleFreeBatteries|StapleFreeBatteries]] ([[User talk:StapleFreeBatteries|talk]]) 06:06, 2 July 2025 (UTC)
:It probably supports water conversation, at the very least. [[Special:Contributions/92.23.2.228|92.23.2.228]] 18:18, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Improving the functioning of a dehumidifier does not require a new type of water. It could for example have a variable speed motor and prop-expansion valve. It is impossible to explore the full range of possible operations, so continuing engineering may be able to find better ways to operate the hardware without alterations. I worked on industrial equipment; we would routinely rollout software upgrades that would tweak a few percent improvement in installed equipment. [[Special:Contributions/76.180.44.2|76.180.44.2]] 16:35, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

Talk:2891: Log Cabin

2024-02-13T12:45:48Z

Jgharston: .

:: "''The odd part about it is the bottom right corner, which appears to be infinitely recursive copies..''"
The whole right side is the left side, shrunk and recursed. Each iteration rotated 90 degrees. The 'shrink' is about 1.616 by my squint, a lot like a "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio Golden Ratio]" LOGarithmic spiral, as NickM says. [[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 19:49, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

::This is a LOGarithmic spiral [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.103|172.70.210.103]] 19:52, 7 February 2024 (UTC)NickM

:: It is precisely the golden ratio, assuming the left side is a square [[User:Terdragontra|Terdragontra]] ([[User talk:Terdragontra|talk]]) 22:09, 7 February 2024 (UTC)`

:: Note how the spiral cuts the smaller bedrooms wardrobe in half, intersects the two doorframes of the rooms leading off the master bedroom, the toilet and the sink. [https://xkcd.com/1488/ The majesty of the spiral! 🌀] [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.189|172.69.79.189]] 11:20, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Assuming a standard 36" wide front door, then the next "front" door would be 22.27 inches, then 13.78 inches, then 8.53 inches, at which point I doubt the inspector could squeeze through it, though I guess they could still take a peek inside the next recursion. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.58|172.68.34.58]] 20:57, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

:: That's enough for the inspector to verify that the plans are *not* up to code; you can't get a wheelchair into the right-hand side of the house. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.189|172.69.79.189]] 11:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Infinite bedrooms, infinite baths, close to schools and shopping. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.48|172.69.247.48]] 21:00, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
::Government: Your property tax comes up to infinite dollars. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.160|172.71.26.160]] 21:45, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
:: In some jurisdictions bedrooms need to have at least one externally facing window. Under this rule there are infinite rooms with beds, but only 8 bedrooms. [[User:Thaledison|Erin Anne]] ([[User talk:Thaledison|talk]]) 17:07, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Interesting comparison with the archetypal "labyrinth". It's actually a fractal version that only avoids being unicursal-with-no-dead-ends due to the off-living-room private spaces being quite trivial offshoots. Which arguably makes it ''fairly'' classical in nature. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.114|172.70.90.114]] 21:18, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Should there be a mention that due to the limitations of the image format, it only actually achieves eight iterations? Which makes sense given that construction materials also have limits, and is still enough that the inspectors might be a bit confused if they don't pay close enough attention. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.60.216|172.69.60.216]] 23:21, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Write it [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2891:_Log_Cabin&diff=prev&oldid=334498 how you want], I just wanted to avoid calling a room with no bath (but a shower) as a "bathroom", especially when I was mentioning a 'bathroom' with an actual bath in it so soon after. Not that there's a completely unambiguous term for the room with the toilet/lavatory/whatever in it. (For reference, for me it's "the toilet", despite that also being the porceline item itself, and even that is derived from a hairdressing cloth, through a string of euphemisms. But knew that wouldn't be accepted by the wider readership.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.26|172.70.85.26]] 01:49, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
:In the USA, any room with a toilet and sink is typically called a "bathroom" whether or not there is a literal bath within. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.131.3|172.70.131.3]] 09:33, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
::Don't think it's particularly a US/UK thing - it's pretty commonly called a 'bathroom' in the UK too. I think the point of the editor above was the potential for confusion between the ''two'' 'bathrooms', and how to avoid it.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.243|172.69.43.243]] 09:44, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
::It's my experience in the US that real-estate parlance counts a full bathroom as toilet, sink, and tub / shower. It counts a half-bathroom as a toilet and sink only. A house with 1 full bath and two half-baths would generically be considered 3 bathrooms but not listed that way. I don't know what they would call a standalone tub or shower, if any such thing is ever constructed unless it is adjacent to an outdoor swimming pool. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 01:37, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
::Could you not just call it lavatory? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.58.81|172.69.58.81]] 00:07, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
:Using a language that allows to say "S***house" in a nice way (praised be the diminutive!) helps in such cases...[[User:Tier666|Tier666]] ([[User talk:Tier666|talk]]) 10:15, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
::There is a {{wiktionary|Thesaurus:bathroom|truly astounding range of terms}}, in English alone, (and I can think of several not included there, even discounting the rather localised overly-vulgar ''or'' overly-polite ones). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.221|172.70.90.221]] 11:38, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Are there any non-Euclidean geometries in which you could fit this house without having to shrink the rooms or the people? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.3.44|172.68.3.44]] 16:42, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
:The logarithmic scaling should be compatible with [[wikipedia:Hyperbolic_geometry|hyperbolic geometry]]. However, the distance metric changes continuously in such a geometry. Here you'd probably need something like a discrete mapping that maps the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. iteration of the outer cabin layout to its proper scaling and rotation. (I vaguely know the concepts but can't do it properly) [[User:Transgalactic|Transgalactic]] ([[User talk:Transgalactic|talk]]) 09:21, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
::If we're committed to discontinuities (at least in undifferentiatable senses), we can just treat the floorplans as separately just traditional Euclidean but the main doors between 'levels' as a wormhole/portal. Moreover, one which could satisfy the rescaling requirement, (the 'door frame' outward is at the same metric of width/height as the inward one; ''as well as'' the inward one of one layer out, which is not experienced as a funnel). In a connected-voxel manner (as one might render it in virtual terms), every level of square-property has the exact same internal consistency.
::Save for the windows, which are additional portals limited only to the primary property (present on three walls, all but the 'inward exit' direction), secondary/tertiary ones (two walls, having both lost the 'entry wall' externality that faces their predecessor property) and quaternary (one windowed wall, now enclosed by the prime-property). All these windows similarly portal to the zeroth-level exterior (irregularly spaced, but 'proper-sized'), and of course whilst the 'obscured walls' (including all from quinary-level and beyond) could be not denied windows by being portaled to some surrogate external wall (infinite, necessarily!), in this example they are not.
::This renders the plans shown as 'wrong' (door widths are scaled differently at both inward and outward locations, with a single square sub-property, and such windows as exist from sub-levels (all nine window-outers on the external south-wall should be the same size as the nine inner windows from the primary square's outward-walls, not just the two and the door which are the direct identical ones).
::Thus rescaling issues as one traverses doors (or windows) go away. It does leave dissimilar distances inside and out (speed-of-light communications out of a Level 4 window and into a Level 1 one could be faster than any 'direct' through-wall one, if allowed, and of course diffracted propogation only via door-portals would be slower), but we're already talking of [https://wiki.lspace.org/Empirical_Crescent wormholing between/across domains], so our only real issue is how/if ''arbitrary'' knocking-through of holes through walls can be allowed (once the building is somehow BS Johnsoned into existence, perhaps at some point necessitating at least a countable infinity of builders/decorators). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.105|141.101.98.105]] 10:45, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

One way to build this would be with robotics that alter the structure as the visitor moves, like a holodeck. This could give the perception of the visitor shrinking forever, and the robotics wouldn’t let them leave until they rewalked their entry path. Another way would be to just make the rooms get too tiny to enter and hide the missing ones around a corner. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.6|162.158.166.6]] 16:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
:I'm sure it could be done with the Gallifreyan technology that produced the TARDIS. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 17:39, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
:: Indeed: [https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/d/d2/The_Monk_cannot_get_into_his_TARDIS.JPG]
:maybe somebody will 3d print a tiny one some day. i websearched but didn’t even get any hits for “robotic maze moving walls” ! this is surprising to me in this decade. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.15|172.71.142.15]]

Has anyone else thought of a cabin log? The horror story kind, with a spiraling captain? [[User:Transgalactic|Transgalactic]] ([[User talk:Transgalactic|talk]]) 09:21, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

2661: Age Milestone Privileges

2022-08-22T11:25:41Z

Jgharston:

{{comic
| number = 2661
| date = August 19, 2022
| title = Age Milestone Privileges
| image = age_milestone_privileges.png
| titletext = If you reach 122, you get complete unrevertible editorial control over Jeanne Calment's Wikipedia article.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BABY GOD-EMPRESS MAKING THE PRESIDENT'S LETTER R-RATED - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This is a list of "age milestones" in the United States. As usual for Randall, he has added many fictional entries to supplement some real life ones.

{| class="wikitable"
! Age || Privilege || Description
|-
| 16 || Drive || Legal driving age varies by state in the US. In Randall's state of Massachusetts, {{w|Driver%27s_licenses_in_the_United_States|and in 8 other states}}, 16 is the minimum age to apply for a learner's permit.
|-
| 17 || Attend R-Rated movies alone ||In the US, the Motion Picture Association assigns {{w|Motion_Picture_Association_film_rating_system|ratings}} to movies based on whether content in said movie is generally acceptable to present to minors. A rating of "R" is supposed to prohibit viewing by minors under 17 years of age unless a parent or guardian accompanies them.
|-
| 18 || Vote || The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents a minimum age of voting from being set above eighteen but does not preclude a minimum age below eighteen. Some states allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries if they must be allowed to vote in the general election, but Randall's state of Massachusetts is not one of them.
|-
| 21 || Buy Alcohol || In the US, the legal drinking age is 21 years, although other countries have a lower drinking age. For example, in Japan the legal age to drink is 20; whilst in the UK a person as young as 16 may have alcohol with a meal, although they are not allowed to buy it themselves.
|-
| 25 || Rent a car || Car rental companies charge higher rates for underage drivers; typically the minimum age is 25.
|-`e
| 30 || Run for Senate || This entry is slightly incorrect: According to {{w|Article_One_of_the_United_States_Constitution|Article 1, clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution}}, one must be at least 30 years old in order to ''become'' Senator, not ''run'' for Senate. Joe Biden was 29 years old when he was first elected to Senate but turned 30 before being sworn in.
|-
| 32 || Rent a Senator's Car || This is the first joke entry in the table. For one thing, most Senators do not rent out their cars, which they probably need to use regularly themselves because they have jobs{{Citation needed}} to commute to, and it would be a security hazard to allow random strangers access to their vehicle.

This could also be a reference to the Ambassador, a now defunct car brand.
|-
| 35 || Run for president || In the United States, according to {{w|Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution|Article 2, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution}}, a person must be at least 35 years old to be eligible to hold the Office of President.
|-
| 40 || Rent a flying car || A 25-year-old might be able to rent a non-flying car today, but not a flying car, because the technology is not mature enough to the point where they're available to rent. The joke is that by the time a 25-year-old reader becomes 40, the technology will exist and they'll be able to rent a flying car. Unlike the earlier lines, the limitation has nothing to do with their age, just technological development.
Alternatively, even once flying cars are developed, their usage will be more restricted. For example, young people are perceived to be more reckless and/or otherwise dangerous.

This whole issue may be virtually negated if the newly developed flying cars are introduced only as ''self-''flying cars (an off-shoot of self-driving technology but devoid of many of the dangers of navigating roads, i.e. person-controlled vehicles, pedestrians and other ground-based hazards), in which case the age (or even presence) of the renter may be very much more irrelevant than the nature of any route/destination the guidance computer is tasked to fulfill. The question would then be how much a potential passenger would trust pure electronics to avoid all the actual dangers for what is essentially a flying taxi, compared to a human controller who may be fallible but presumably at least has their own fully developed common sense and a degree of self-preservation as well as any requisite training.
|-
| 45 || Learn about the God-Empress || Obviously, the God-Empress does not actually exist because this comic is visible to people under 45 years old.{{Citation needed}} According to [[1413]], she will be public knowledge by 2040 anyway.
|-
| 50 || Join AARP || Full AARP (formerly called the American Association of Retired Persons) membership is available to anyone age 50 and over. {{w|AARP}}
|-
| 50 || Get a shingles vaccine || At the time of the comic, the [https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html CDC recommended] that adults 50 years and older get the shingles vaccine called Shingrix (this line was not in the original version of the comic, corrected later)
|-
| 52 || Click to skip captchas || Older people might have more difficulty understanding captchas. Also, they could be more inconvenienced because some older people move more slowly, so it would take them longer to move the mouse, and people would care more about older people anyway. However, this would be impractical to implement because if the computer knew the person's age, it would know that the user is a person, not a bot, so there would be no point in a captcha anyway.
|-
| 55 || Vote for God-Empress || It appears that a person must have knowledge of the existence of the God-Empress for ten years before they are sufficiently qualified to elect a new one. Since the God-Empress is (presumably) in power for life, it is likely that most people would have to wait much longer than ten years.
|-
| 62 || $80 national parks lifetime pass || https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/passes.htm
|-
| 65 || Eligible for Medicare || Medicare is a US government-run health insurance for older people.
|-
| 67 || Collect Social Security || U.S. individuals may collect reduced Social Security benefits starting at age 62, and they can collect increased Social Security benefits if they wait until age 70.
|-
| 68 || See "Skip ads" button on live tv || Some DVRs and streaming applications have a feature to skip over commercial breaks in recorded programs, but this could not be available in live TV, since it would require jumping forward in time. Time travel is currently impossible.{{citation needed}} ||
|-
| 70 || Run for God-Empress || The name suggests that this would also only be available to women.
|-
| 75 || Ride any animal in a national park || The National Parks Service probably could institute this relatively safely because most people over 75 would not be able to run fast enough to outrun/catch up to an animal and mount it{{Citation needed}} and would not have the rebellious/risk-taking/adventurous streak that would incline them to try.{{Citation needed}}
|-
| 80 || Eligible for Megacare || This is based on becoming eligible for Medicare at age 65.
|-
| 85 || Click to toggle whether an ad is positive or negative about the product ||
|-
| 90 || Click to make any movie R-rated || It is unclear whether this would actually make the movie less appropriate or change the Motion Picture Association's rating to be erroneous. Also, what if the rating was previously NC-17?
|-
| 100 || Get a letter from the president || In the US (which other milestones, such as running for president starting at age 35, indicate is the country being referred to), you instead get congratulated by the weatherman on the {{w|Today (American TV program)|Today Show}}. However, the United Kingdom is much closer. People there receive a card (formerly a telegram, later a TeleMessage) from the Queen on their 100th birthday. (This is not automatic, but must be applied for.)
|-
| 102 || (35+67) Collect a presidential pension || The idea behind this joke is that it is the minimum age of presidency plus the minimal age to collect Social Security. There are several reasons why this must be a joke. Two are that Social Security begins 67 years after the person was born, not 67 years after the person's job started, and that the United States government would not bother to set up such a system because the vast majority of people, including former presidents, do not live to 102 years old. In fact, as of 2022, no former United States president has ever lived to 102 years old. The current oldest former U.S. President is Jimmy Carter at 97. Good luck Jimmy, only 5 more years!
|-
| 105 || Get a birthday card from the God-Empress || Being a God-Empress would be more important than being the leader of a single country. This would make the God-Empress's time more valuable, so she only has to send a birthday card to the few people who reach the age of 105. Contrariwise, the God-Empress is presumptively all-powerful and furthermore capable of delegation of ministerial tasks such as card transmission, so the utilitarian fact that the scarcity of 105-year-old people reduces workload is not a plausible justification.
|-
| 111 || Leave your own birthday party early by putting on a magic ring || This is a reference to the Lord of the Rings where Bilbo leaves his eleventy-first birthday party (the Bilbo Baggins Farewell Birthday Party) invisibly by using The One Ring.
|-
| 118 || Vote 100 times || Presumably a joke meaning the person can vote 100 times in each election. If there were one election at the same time each year, this would actually be the 101st vote the person is eligible to cast in their lifetime. If the sole election of each year were held at a different time of each year, someone who voted in every election might vote for the 100th time at either age 116, 117, or 118. However this milestone would happen earlier because there are often multiple elections per year, e.g., primaries, general elections, and possibly runoffs.
|-
| 120 || Collect the pensions of all elected officials ||
|-
| 125 || Drink alcohol in an R-rated movie while getting a shingles vaccine from the president || This entry references four earlier milestones (attending an R-rated movie, drinking alcohol, becoming President, and getting the shingles vaccine) whose corresponding ages (17, 21, 35, and 50) sum to 123. While not exactly 125, this may have contributed to the inspiration or age selection of this milestone.
|-
| 128 || Age rolls over, become a baby again || {{w|Integer overflow}} happens in computers when there are not enough bits (binary digits) to store the result of a calculation, and typically happens in computers at a given power of two, such as 128. An unsigned 7-bit number can hold the values 0 to 127 (127 being 27 - 1) and an attempt to go beyond 127 will overflow, also called rollover, back to zero. 7-bit numbers are not common native values in today's computers. For the more usual unsigned integers of one byte (8 bits), the correct rollover number would be 256.

A signed 8-bit number uses the first bit to allow the value from the remaining seven to be negative, the value 128 would become either -128 or -0, depending upon implementation. In its most practical form, a signed 8-bit number can hold values from -128 to 127 and when calculating 127+1 (the binary value 01111111 changing to 10000000) the value is -128 due to the {{w|Two's Complement}} method of having the sign-bit represent the most negative value possible, wgich is generally a more utilitarian method than the 'simpler' method of using it to indicate the positivity/negativity of the value. Either way, though, this means you could have a weird experience of your next phase of life, as your age now is interpretted as successive negative values if the incrementing algorithm and the interpreting algorithm are not thinking about the raw bits in the same way, or at least flagging up the overflow as having happened.

However, maybe the system uses just 7 bits (the 8th bit often used to be reserved for parity, or other flagging purposes, and otherwise stripped/ignored) if it has never before needed an eighth bit and this had once seemed like a sufficient form of data-packing with no expectation that this limit would be reached. Computers using such systems would have a Y2K-analogous bug once someone actually reached 128 years old, where anomalous processing might indicate the person to be a baby (or fail in other ways). But that would not have happened yet.

|}

The title text mentions {{w|Jeanne Calment}}, who holds the record for the oldest person ever (there are biblical references to older people, such as {{w|Methuselah}}, who supposedly lived to 969, but their ages haven't been verified). She reportedly was age 122 when she died in 1997. There's some controversy whether Calment actually claimed her mother's records, including birth certificate, as her own. "Editing wars" have been fought over her Wikipedia page. Randall claims that if you match her age you get sole editorial control over that article. However, if anyone managed to exceed her achieved age, presumably they would get their own page (albeit that they should not be encouraged to {{w|Wikipedia:Editing Your Own Page|edit it}} themselves) and hers would cease to be as interesting - although that might depend on what use is made of the unparalleled editorial control now granted.

==Transcript==

<big>Age Milestones</big> 
and associated privileges

16  Drive 
17  Attend R-rated movies alone 
18  Vote 
21  Buy alcohol 
25  Rent a car 
32  Run for senate 
35  Run for president 
40  Rent a flying car 
45  Learn about the God-Empress 
50  Join AARP 
50  Get a shingles vaccine 
52  Click to skip captchas 
55  Vote for God-Empress 
62  $80 National parks lifetime pass 
65  Eligible for Medicare 
67  Collect Social Security 
68  See "Skip Ads" button on live TV 
70  Run for God-Empress 
75  Ride any animal in a national park 
80  Eligible for MegaCare 
85  Click to toggle whether any ad is positive or negative about the product 
90  Click to make any movie R-rated 
100  Get a letter from the president 
102  (35+67) Collect a presidential pension 
105  Get a birthday card from the God-Empress 
111  Leave your own birthday party early by putting on a magic ring 
118  Vote 100 times 
120  Collect the pensions of all elected officials 
125  Drink alcohol in an R-rated movie while getting a shingles vaccine from the president 
128  Age rolls over, become a baby again

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Wikipedia]]

Talk:2661: Age Milestone Privileges

2022-08-22T11:24:54Z

Jgharston: Alcohol

Who is God empress?{{unsigned ip|172.68.50.207|23:05, 19 August 2022}}
:I reminds me of the God-empress of Missouri from an earlier comic about nested WWII speculation.{{unsigned ip|172.69.69.207|23:17, 19 August 2022}}
::That's comic [[2149]], yeah. There's also "I Swear Allegiance To The God-Empress In Life And In Death" in comic [[1413]], a phrase that will suddenly be very familiar in the year 2038.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.111.46|172.70.111.46]] 03:28, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
: The age to learn about Her Majesty, the God-empress is accurate, you kids will just think he's joking before you turn 45 and hear Her voice in your head.{{unsigned ip|162.158.62.167|23:56, 19 August 2022}}

The age must be stored in a 7 bit number because it wraps back to zero when 128 is reached. - Brian K {{unsigned ip|172.70.174.159|23:52, 19 August 2022}}
:''(Hey, you eager lot, you've all forgotten to (''properly'', if at all) sign your discussion contributions...)''
:...if it were 8-bit signed, unchecked bitwise rollover could be awkward. Especially in 1's Compliment. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.5|172.70.85.5]] 00:23, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Make sure the explanations you’re putting in the table are explanations, not reviews of the comic! I agree with the fact that the comic is “America-centric,” but things like that should be stripped of opinion before being put into the article. A better way to put that might be (before the table) “Since Randall lives in America, many of the entries in this comic are specific to the U.S.” [[User:Szeth Pancakes|Szeth Pancakes]] ([[User talk:Szeth Pancakes|talk]]) 01:39, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Image has been updated, a new line item at age 50 for shingles vaccine. Whosoever knows how to fix the image on this site, please do so. [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 05:24, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
:I think perhaps the 125 item was meant to be (17+21+35+50) but Randall got it wrong. [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 05:51, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

I think 118 means thereafter you get to vote 100 times in each election, not that you have voted 100 times ever. Not correcting the table yet, as I may be the only one who thinks this. [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 06:34, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
:I thought that, for what it's worth (there wasn't even a table when I first was here, though, and left everyone else to get on with it). If nobody else mentions it ('officially'), I may do so later. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.225|141.101.98.225]] 08:47, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
:I assumed a joke about getting to cast 100 votes in each subsequent election, but the explanation could be what he meant. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.146.73|172.71.146.73]] 09:05, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
:I agree it's much funnier, but I believe Randall would have thought to write "Vote 100 times per election". [[User:Mrob27|Mrob27]] ([[User talk:Mrob27|talk]]) 07:10, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it was deliberate, but I think a certain editor ended up globally deleting some words (without going back to check the Diffs: car, election, Senator, years) from the text when adding something new. Be careful. Easy to restore, and hopefully I did that even whilst retaining the legitimate-looking edit that coincided with that error, but seems like something I need to mention as having happened. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.173|172.69.79.173]] 20:31, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

I suspect that the "age rolls over" idea came from the Wikipedia search excerpt using Duck Duck Go in Firefox (haven't checked anywhere else) -
[https://ibb.co/grL7032 Screenshot] --[[User:Steve|Steve]] ([[User talk:Steve|talk]]) 02:10, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

128 is also where the accumulated lives of Super Mario roll back over to zero. [[User:L-Space Traveler|L-Space Traveler]] ([[User talk:L-Space Traveler|talk]]) 00:59, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

The Age 18 title is "buy alcohol" but the discussion is all about drinking alcohol. They are different things. [[User:Jgharston|Jgharston]] ([[User talk:Jgharston|talk]]) 11:24, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2091: Million, Billion, Trillion

2018-12-28T10:45:04Z

Jgharston: Japanese

I actually think we have ''too many names'' for large numbers. It's really only necessary to introduce a new name when you reach the ''square'' of the previous name. So, we'd still have tens and hundreds, but there's no need for "one thousand, one hundred" when you can just have "eleven hundred". We'd be better off just naming 10^4, 10^8, 10^16, 10^32, and that's already well beyond anything needed for normal usage, with only a handful of names. None of this "quattuordecillion" stuff that no-one can remember without sitting down and working it out. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.86.64|172.68.86.64]] 05:32, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
: And what you get is a super-weird "double-log" scale! The British (and other nations') usage is correct. Anything above thousand is completely abstract for a human being and intuitively nonlinear (some nations - ancient Greeks and others - go as far as ten thousands, a myriad, but this is it). A thousand squared is already far beyond intuition so it is a good candidate for a new unit representing A BIG NUMBER, plus log scale is a good abstraction allowing for rapid expansion in magnitude. So taking Latin numerals and adding an -illion suffix (except the irregular million) for subsequent powers of 10^6 is a really convenient system. Of course, it goes only as far as ordinary Latin numbers go, then you need to invent something else, but at this point it's only for entertainment. For anything physical you probably would never need a number much larger than a googol. -- [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.90|162.158.90.90]] 09:26, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

: I think we should refrain from saying one usage is correct over the other - that's just arrogant and mean. That said, the current explanation states that usage is different between American and British English, but my reading on Wikipedia (which is already hyperlinked in the explanation) states that in recent decades Britain has declared their use of short units and therefore British English is now the same as American English. The only regions where it appears there is still usage of the long system is in French and Spanish speaking regions, as well as some special cases around the world. Don't shoot the messenger - I'm just repeating what it states on the Wikipedia page. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 10:15, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

:: Rereading the Wikipedia page, it was in 1974 that Britain declared their use of the short scale for large numbers. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 10:19, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

::: East Asian languages such as Japanese actually do use the power-4 scale, with the naming being ten, ten x ten = hundred, hundred x hundred = big'ousand, big'ousand x big'ousand = morebiggienoughty, morebiggienoughty x morebiggienoughty = superbiggienoughty, etc.

2091: Million, Billion, Trillion

2018-12-28T10:39:46Z

Jgharston: million x million = billion, etc.

{{comic
| number = 2091
| date = December 28, 2018
| title = Million, Billion, Trillion
| image = million_billion_trillion.png
| titletext = You can tell most people don’t really assign an absolute meaning to these numbers because in some places and time periods, “billion” has meant 1,000x what it's meant in others, and a lot of us never even noticed.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This needs about a thousand years of rewriting, and I assume we'll want to do a chart of X and Y positions as with most chart comics. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Much like [[558: 1000 Times|comic 558]], this comic addresses the difficulty ordinary people have with large numbers. Though most if not all people intuitively understand the difference between one object and two objects, or one object and ten objects, or even one object and a hundred objects, as numbers increase most people's ability to innately conceive of the numbers being discussed decreases remarkably quickly. When numbers reach the millions and the billions, and especially the trillions, most people don't truly process the numbers at all, and instead conceive of them as some version of a drastically-oversimplified concept such as "very big." Where comparing one to ten is simple, comparing "very big" to a different "very big" can prove extremely challenging, and will certainly require non-intuitive, conscious thinking.

The comic represents this challenge by providing a graph which represents [[Randall]]'s ''intuitive'' conception of the values of various very large numbers, and said conception's misalignment with reality. Though some trends reflect the real value of the numbers on the graph, i.e. 100 million larger than 10 million larger than 1 million and 1 billion larger than 1 million, the curve is far from the linear (exponential on the log-scaled axes) path it should take, with 1 billion being intuitively understood as less than 100 million, based, presumably, on the fact, easily comprehended on an intuitive level, that '''100 is larger than 1''', and therefore the presence of 100 in 100 million places it at a higher value than the 1 in 1 billion would place the latter. In reality, of course, 1 billion is ten times larger than 100 million, but the comic deals not with actual reality, but with the perception of reality of these numbers '''before conscious thought is applied'''.

The most interesting parts of the graph, and the parts where the disconnect between intuition and reality becomes clearest, are the dashed sections labeled with question marks, the one between 100 million and 1 billion, the other between 100 billion and 1 trillion. Here two competing intuitive understandings compete for dominance. On the one hand, the intuitive understanding described above, with 100 trumping 1, would see the curve taking a sharp downturn. On the other hand, the path from 100 million to 1 billion is paved with such numbers as 500 million, 700 million, and 900 million, all of which would theoretically be seen intuitively as larger than 100 million, thanks to the fact that 9 is greater than 7, and 7 greater than 5, and so on, bending the curve up rather than down. These two conflicting intuitions leave Randall with no single intuitive path for the two dashed sections, leading to their dashed and questioned state.

The comic's caption and title highlight another problem surrounding the intuitive grasping of large numbers: the flaws in the English words used for them. For instance, nothing about the world "million" suggests smallness relative to the world "billion" on an intuitive scale. This unintuitive language contributes greatly to the "100 trumps 1" intuitive fallacy described above.

The title text references a classic, and highly relevant, example of a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales disconnect between British and American English]. For all English speakers, 1 million constitutes 1,000 thousands, or, said less ambiguously, 10^6. However, the definition of billion varies depending which side of the Atlantic Ocean you happen to land on. In America, 1 billion equals 1,000 millions, or 1000*10^6=10^9. [https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/how-many-is-a-billion/ In Britain], 1 billion equals ''1 million'' millions, or 10^6*10^6=10^'''12''', with the base unit changing when you have a unit's worth multiple of the unit (for those immediately asking "what did they call a thousand million, then?", the answer is "well, naturally, a thousand million", though there is also the archiac ''"milliard"''). In other words, 1 billion objects in England would register as 1,000 billion objects to an American, despite the fact that the number of objects has remained the same. Though people in Britain often use the American definition as of the past few decades, the fact that such a staggering difference of terminology was able to remain, and be almost completely unknown, perfectly highlights Randall's point about the failure of human intuition, and English terminology, in the discussion of extremely large numbers.

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

{{comic discussion}}