explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

836: Sickness

2025-12-04T18:46:37Z

Starnote: /* Explanation */ i have no idea if this is good but I think it provides more information and explanation. ya. less nervous this time

{{comic
| number = 836
| date = December 20, 2010
| title = Sickness
| image = sickness.png
| titletext = At least, with p<0.05 confidence.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic was published 2 months after [[Randall]]'s then fiancée, now wife, was diagnosed with breast cancer (see [[:Category:Cancer]]), which is likely what inspired this comic - even though [[Cueball]] sounds like he is the one afflicted by the sickness. The comic is thus about the existential questions that might arise from such a crisis. The moral could be interpreted as that you shouldn't begrudge your fellow human being, regardless of where they find comfort.

Also, any sentence is instantly funny if, at the end of it, you address your audience as "bitches". It may also be a reference to [[54: Science]].

"Slings and arrows of fortune" is an allusion to the "{{w|To be, or not to be}}" soliloquy in William Shakespeare's ''{{w|Hamlet, Prince of Denmark}}''. Hamlet asks himself whether it is "Nobler in the mind to suffer / The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune" (to resign oneself to one's fate and endure what may come), or to "take Arms against a Sea of troubles, / and by opposing end them" (to commit suicide and end suffering); he ultimately concludes that we would rather face the dangers and pains we know on Earth than whatever unknown new ones may come in the afterlife. Cueball appears to agree with Hamlet, thanking "the people who refused to gracefully accept the ineffability of reality": Religion and spirituality can give him the moral courage to face his death, but he'd much prefer to not die in the first place, and won't have to, thanks to medical and scientific innovation. (Actually he will have to eventually.{{Citation needed}} Medical and scientific innovation simply delay the inevitable events of death and entropy.)

Someone can make a hypothesis about something (such as a vaccine reducing the chance of getting infected by a certain disease), and that can be tested. In the title text, a “probability value” is mentioned, which is basically the likelihood of certain results appearing assuming the hypothesis is not true. A p-value of less than 0.05 is commonly used in areas of science as a good indicator of significant results, basically meaning a <5% chance that the results were created by random chance and a >95% confidence that a hypothesis is true. This could be a pun on cueball’s newfound confidence with science, or simply a correction to the last line that some tools may not be guaranteed to work.

==Transcript==
:[The three panels are arranged diagonally, upper left to bottom right.]
:[Two people, Cueball and White Hat, are walking past a tree.]
:White Hat: So, has this sickness opened you up to looking for answers beyond science?
:Cueball: ...no, not really.

:[Cueball turns to face White Hat.]
:Cueball: We've groped for comfort before the slings and arrows of fortune for millennia, and I begrudge nobody their sources of solace.
:Cueball: But Science provides ''tools''.
:Cueball: $100 billion a year in scientific studies and medical R&D has bought us some pretty damn powerful slings and arrows of our own.
:Cueball: This world is amazing, and I'm going to live to experience more of it thanks to people who refused to gracefully accept the ineffability of reality.
:Cueball: I find my courage where I can, but I take my weapons from science.

:Cueball: Because they ''work'', bitches.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Cancer]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Religion]]

User talk:Starnote

2025-12-03T21:59:08Z

Starnote: /* First edit?! */

== First edit?! ==

You did just fine. *pat pat* [[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]])

:Thank you so much, you have no idea how much a message like this means to me!! rlly hope im doing indenting correctly and just. this in general. im just rlly shy and such a welcoming message is unexpected and really awesome /gen --[[User:Starnote|Starnote]] [[User talk:Starnote|(talk)]] 21:59, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

3175: Website Task Flowchart

2025-12-01T21:50:01Z

Starnote: title text. first edit I'm nervous

{{comic
| number = 3175
| date = December 1, 2025
| title = Website Task Flowchart
| image = website_task_flowchart_2x.png
| imagesize = 333x683px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Tired of waiting on hold? Use our website to chat with one of our live agents, who are available to produce words at you 24/7!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a live agent producing words at you. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This is a flowchart comic. It shows how to do a task on a website.

First, you log in. This is generally a simple task, yet can lead to a bad ending. You can spend a long time trying to fix it, and if you fail, you end up in the bad ending track.

If you succeed in logging in, or troubleshoot well, you try to do your task. Doing the task well is usually the purpouse of a flowchart like this, but Randall has condensed it into a single box.

If you fail your task, you spend hours troubleshooting the website. If you succeed with the task or your troubleshooting, you end in the good ending, where you get a good job message.

Bad ending:

If you fail either troubleshoot, you stop your work and call the website's customer service. They say, "Did you know you could do this all more quickly and easily on our website? just go to WWW. ..." however, you were on the website, and this angers you.

This causes you to throw both the laptop on which you were trying your task and the phone with which you called customer service into the sea, where they either short circuit or die.

The title text is yet another automated message while on hold telling users that they are able to skip the wait and talk to a 24/7 live agent, likely an AI agent. These are known for containing a ton of filler within each message, hence the "producing words" bit. They are also likely to only know common solutions, which you have likely tried by now.
==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
Doing a task using a company or organization's website:
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Flowcharts]]