explain xkcd - Recent changes [en]

User:JuigJoina

JuigJoina — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:13:46 GMT

User account JuigJoina was created

3245: Results Age

DollarStoreBa'al — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:09:31 GMT

The DenverCoder9 lore is expanding!

Talk:3245: Results Age

Gidklio — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:50:44 GMT

sucks when you wrote the old post!

2188: E Scooters

SomebodyElse — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:48:14 GMT

‎Explanation: just linking characters' names

2184: Unpopular Opinions

SomebodyElse — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:44:02 GMT

‎Explanation: just linking characters' names and fixing a different link

2183: Icon Swap

SomebodyElse — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:41:09 GMT

‎Explanation: just linking characters' names

User:Velda57F32585721

Velda57F32585721 — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:33:08 GMT

User account Velda57F32585721 was created

2175: Flag Interpretation

SomebodyElse — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:13:13 GMT

‎Explanation: just linking characters' names

2174: First News Memory

SomebodyElse — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:11:56 GMT

‎Title Text: just linking characters' names

User:BroderickBurbury

BroderickBurbury — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:40 GMT

User account BroderickBurbury was created

User:Marti16H8148643

Marti16H8148643 — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:26:30 GMT

User account Marti16H8148643 was created

Talk:2170: Coordinate Precision

SomebodyElse — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:11:22 GMT

I broke something.

2170: Coordinate Precision

SomebodyElse — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:07:40 GMT

‎Chart: WHOOOPS - placed in wrong area

User:SamualTrout

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User account SamualTrout was created

User:MaisieYbarra803

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User:JoanLipscombe1

JoanLipscombe1 — Fri, 15 May 2026 09:54:00 GMT

User account JoanLipscombe1 was created

3245: Results Age

82.13.184.33 — Fri, 15 May 2026 09:39:22 GMT

‎Explanation

User:Donalddag

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User account Donalddag was created

User:KaiDietz287

KaiDietz287 — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:10:13 GMT

User account KaiDietz287 was created

3245: Results Age

82.13.184.33 — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:09:46 GMT

‎Explanation

Talk:3245: Results Age

82.13.184.33 — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:06:27 GMT

User:EdwinEltham

EdwinEltham — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:12 GMT

User account EdwinEltham was created

what if? articles

2602:306:80CC:ECB0:B525:9977:A2B3:8ADD — Fri, 15 May 2026 07:46:56 GMT

Spelling correction

3245: Results Age

Elektrizikekswerk — Fri, 15 May 2026 07:05:41 GMT

‎Explanation

what if? articles

2602:306:80CC:ECB0:B525:9977:A2B3:8ADD — Fri, 15 May 2026 06:53:14 GMT

Touching the neutron bullet

1397: Luke

2A02:C7C:7344:4C00:403:498:6690:5F87 — Fri, 15 May 2026 06:49:13 GMT

‎Explanation: Replace dead link

User:VPLAnderson

VPLAnderson — Fri, 15 May 2026 06:26:47 GMT

User account VPLAnderson was created

User:WendyImhoff9

WendyImhoff9 — Fri, 15 May 2026 05:46:59 GMT

User account WendyImhoff9 was created

User:FlorenceBbr

FlorenceBbr — Fri, 15 May 2026 05:20:28 GMT

User account FlorenceBbr was created

User:MargheritaSlone

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User account MargheritaSlone was created

User:ShaniV039249

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User account ShaniV039249 was created

User:GraigBegg8061

GraigBegg8061 — Fri, 15 May 2026 04:47:51 GMT

User account GraigBegg8061 was created

User:LornaDarley95

LornaDarley95 — Fri, 15 May 2026 04:34:34 GMT

User account LornaDarley95 was created

what if? articles

2602:306:80CC:ECB0:B525:9977:A2B3:8ADD — Fri, 15 May 2026 04:31:32 GMT

Information about the ISS.

User:StuartG26526

StuartG26526 — Fri, 15 May 2026 03:53:43 GMT

User account StuartG26526 was created

Talk:3237: Husband and Wife

The-Daleks — Fri, 15 May 2026 03:52:22 GMT

Added comment

what if? articles

2602:306:80CC:ECB0:B525:9977:A2B3:8ADD — Fri, 15 May 2026 03:44:43 GMT

Information content of a tweet

3199: Early Arthropods

RG — Fri, 15 May 2026 02:42:21 GMT

@@ Line 27: / Line 27: @@
 |13 years ago || You're the only one with this problem || '''Very Low''' - post is likely not relevant|| A post of this age likely predates the software you're using, or at least the current version of it. It's probably a coincidental match to your search query, and doesn't actually relate to the problem you've encountered. Since no-one else has posted about this issue or anything similar within a recent timeframe, it's likely that you're the first person (or at least, one of very few people) to have ever come across it.
 |-
-|24 years ago || Oh god how is the Internet this old || Maybe whoever posted the message has kids who can help you || This is another comic where Randall [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|makes people feel old]], in this case by pointing out that {{w|the Internet}} is quite old. The children of the people who posted these comments are now likely to be around the same age the original posters were when they posted them (and may now be posting themselves). It is also (presumably) rare enough to be a [[979: Wisdom of the Ancients|DenverCoder9 situation]], and 13 years is longer than the time in that comic, so 13 years might be such a situation too.
+|24 years ago || Oh god how is the Internet this old || Maybe whoever posted the message has kids who can help you || This is another comic where Randall [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|makes people feel old]], in this case by pointing out that {{w|the Internet}} is quite old. The children of the people who posted these comments are now likely to be around the same age the original posters were when they posted them (and may now be posting themselves). It is also (presumably) rare enough to be a [[979: Wisdom of the Ancients|DenverCoder9 situation]], and 13 years is longer than the time in that comic, so 13 years might be such a situation too. It is possible that Randall could be referencing this comic, as the thread that DenverCoder9 posted on was last posted to in 2003, 23 years before this comic's publication. If DenverCoder9 posted to the thread in 2002 and the thread happened to continue into 2003, then it would perfectly match the age.
 The Internet is, in fact, significantly over forty years old, based upon original infrastructure and methods that were set up for perhaps up to two more decades previous to that. The World Wide Web (to many, synonymous with the Internet) hails from the early 1990s, and Google (one of the more commonly used search engines, through which this error search might have been made) was launched in the late 1990s, so are still practically older than this notional post. The biggest surprise might be that some information published on a webpage in 2002 (and still relevant to your search) survives on some still live web server (or as an archive/{{w|Mirror site|mirror}} of that original information on some archival/successor site). For example, any topical write-up of a then extant case of this issue, if documented upon web pages originally hosted by {{w|GeoCities}}, would have otherwise been made permanently inaccessible by the end of 2014.
 |}

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:50, 15 May 2026
Line 35:		Line 35:

	I thought for sure that the title text was gonna be about how AI makes solving some problems trivial, while sometimes it sends you off the deep end even worse than a UseNet thread from 1994. [[User:blagae\|blagae]] ([[User talk:blagae\|talk]]) 15:47, 14 May 2026 (UTC)		I thought for sure that the title text was gonna be about how AI makes solving some problems trivial, while sometimes it sends you off the deep end even worse than a UseNet thread from 1994. [[User:blagae\|blagae]] ([[User talk:blagae\|talk]]) 15:47, 14 May 2026 (UTC)
		+
		+	For me, the particular aspect of "13 years ago" (or more likely "7 years ago") is You're the only person with this problem" - "The only hit you found is from a thread you yourself started." I've had this happen at least twice: look for a specific combination and the only posts are one on reddit and one on stackoverflow, both of which match exactly because seven years later you used exactly the same terms in your search as you wrote in your post. Still no solutions! [[User:Gidklio\|Gidklio]] ([[User talk:Gidklio\|talk]]) 12:50, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 At the time of publishing, {{w|motorized scooter}}s or e-scooters were very popular, especially with the rise of ride-share companies such as {{w|Lime (transportation company)|Lime}} and {{w|Bird (company)|Bird}}  that use apps allowing users to rent the scooters by the minute.
-[[Cueball]] drives up to White Hat on his e-scooter. White Hat asks him for his thoughts on the scooter; he is interested as he has heard so much about them. However, instead of just waiting to hear Cueball's response, White Hat then goes on to list four opinions he has heard other people say about e-scooters:
+[[Cueball]] drives up to [[White Hat]] on his e-scooter. White Hat asks him for his thoughts on the scooter; he is interested as he has heard so much about them. However, instead of just waiting to hear Cueball's response, White Hat then goes on to list four opinions he has heard other people say about e-scooters:
 #Are they impractical and unsafe toys?

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 Everybody has their own preferences as to what movies they like and dislike, and when your like or dislike of a movie seems to be different than the majority of people, you could call your preference the "unpopular opinion" because your opinion is the less prevalent one. This most often takes the form of "I hate this movie and I don't understand why everybody else seems to like it", but this comic is talking about the opposite form, which it categorizes as less common, namely "I like this movie and don't understand why everybody else seems to hate it."  The comic points out that it's relatively common to hate movies that most people like, but the converse, in which you like a movie others seem to hate, is much harder to find. One explanation for this may be that if a movie is already established to be bad, you won't end up watching it anyway.
-To illustrate this point, the comic challenges readers to identify such a movie, with three caveats: it came out during your adult life, you ''genuinely'' like it, and it scored below 50% on the popular review aggregator {w|Rotten Tomatoes}}. The first two conditions are selected to eliminate the most common reasons people might like "bad" movies. Movies we see as children may win our affection despite not being very good, both because children tend to have less discriminating tastes, and because we associate them with happy memories, causing us to enjoy them as adults, despite their flaws. Some movies are enjoyed specifically ''because'' they're so bad, and people find humor or morbid fascination with the terrible filmmaking (referred to as {{tvtropes|SoBadItsGood|"So Bad, It's Good"}}). Both those cases are distinct from a film that an adult would actually enjoy on it's own merits.
+To illustrate this point, the comic challenges readers to identify such a movie, with three caveats: it came out during your adult life, you ''genuinely'' like it, and it scored below 50% on the popular review aggregator {{w|Rotten Tomatoes}}. The first two conditions are selected to eliminate the most common reasons people might like "bad" movies. Movies we see as children may win our affection despite not being very good, both because children tend to have less discriminating tastes, and because we associate them with happy memories, causing us to enjoy them as adults, despite their flaws. Some movies are enjoyed specifically ''because'' they're so bad, and people find humor or morbid fascination with the terrible filmmaking (referred to as {{tvtropes|SoBadItsGood|"So Bad, It's Good"}}). Both those cases are distinct from a film that an adult would actually enjoy on it's own merits.
 The third condition is intended to ensure that the movie is genuinely unpopular (or at least critically maligned). It's possible for people to have a perception of how disliked a movie is (possibly due to your own social circle), which doesn't actually represent large-scale popularity. The condition also eliminates films which weren't actually disliked, but just weren't as popular as you think they should have been. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates professional reviews and categorizes them as positive ("fresh") or negative ("rotten"). Scoring below 50% means that less than half of all reviewers gave the film a positive review, which is a good proxy for a film being generally understood to be "bad".  It's worth noting that audience ratings {{tvtropes|CriticalDissonance|don't always align with professional critics}}, so this isn't a perfect test for popularity, but it's a decent match.
-The image in this comic gives an example of this effect, namely the movie ''{{w|Terminator Genisys}}'', the fifth in the {{w|Terminator (franchise)|''Terminator''}} series, released in 2015. This series, about time-traveling killer robots, included the highly rated ''Terminator 2'' (93% on Rotten Tomatoes), while ''Terminator Genisys'' is only 26%. When [[Cueball]] says he likes the movie, Megan is surprised (possibly appalled) causing him to become defensive. This may indicate another difficulty in expressing such opinions: other people may look down on you for your perceived bad taste.
+The image in this comic gives an example of this effect, namely the movie ''{{w|Terminator Genisys}}'', the fifth in the {{w|Terminator (franchise)|''Terminator''}} series, released in 2015. This series, about time-traveling killer robots, included the highly rated ''Terminator 2'' (93% on Rotten Tomatoes), while ''Terminator Genisys'' is only 26%. When [[Cueball]] says he likes the movie, [[Megan]] is surprised (possibly appalled) causing him to become defensive. This may indicate another difficulty in expressing such opinions: other people may look down on you for your perceived bad taste.
 The title text refers to three movies in the ''{{w|Terminator (franchise)|Terminator}}'' franchise, ''{{w|Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines}}'' (2003), ''{{w|Terminator Salvation}}'' (2009), and ''{{w|Terminator: Dark Fate}}'' (due out later in 2019). The ''Terminator'' movie series has featured both time travel and trucks driving or attempting to drive into people, and Randall apparently finds himself drawn to such movies. He hopes that ''Dark Fate'' will be a good movie, but has low expectations, considering the [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/franchise/terminator less than stellar ratings] of the last 3 movies (69%, 33%, and 26%).

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-Randall denies having a {{w|social media addiction}}. However, he concludes that he must have some problem, as he opens his social media / news apps many times a day. He tries to remedy this addiction by rearranging the icons on his phone’s app launcher. Specifically, he swaps the app icon with that of an eBook reader, so opening the "social media app" would lead to the eBook reader, and vice versa. In this case, when he swaps a social media/news app with his {{w|E-book}} reading app, he ends up reading more books (as shown by the graph) because he is used to having his media app in its place, and is opening it up through {{w|muscle memory}}.
+[[Randall]] denies having a {{w|social media addiction}}. However, he concludes that he must have some problem, as he opens his social media / news apps many times a day. He tries to remedy this addiction by rearranging the icons on his phone’s app launcher. Specifically, he swaps the app icon with that of an eBook reader, so opening the "social media app" would lead to the eBook reader, and vice versa. In this case, when he swaps a social media/news app with his {{w|E-book}} reading app, he ends up reading more books (as shown by the graph) because he is used to having his media app in its place, and is opening it up through {{w|muscle memory}}.
 This results in the punch line, where he says that this causes him to read "a half-dozen" books before his muscle memory adjusts and not he stops opening his reader as often. Presumably, he changes the icons again in order to trick his muscle memory when he makes a conscious decision to read more books or use less social media.

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 The definition of half-staff, or half-mast, differs between countries and does not necessarily imply flying the flag at half the height of the pole or mast. For example, in the USA the flag is usually flown at half the height of the pole, whereas UK practice is to leave space for an 'invisible flag' above the flown flag, which may mean flying the flag near the top of the pole depending on its height. These differing practices contribute to confusion and ambiguity concerning the flag height, which is exploited in the comic.
-Randall, as usual, makes a humorous list of fictional additional traditions.
+[[Randall]], as usual, makes a humorous list of fictional additional traditions.
 The title text is a reference to ''{{w|The Persistence of Memory}}'' and other paintings and sculptures by {{w|Salvador Dalí}} which include watches and other objects that are melting.

@@ Line 23: / Line 23: @@
 ===Title Text===
-The title text gives [http://theconversation.com/flashbulb-memories-of-dramatic-events-arent-as-accurate-as-believed-64838 the claim] that {{w|Flashbulb memory|flashbulb memories}} of big events can be unreliable. Randall (or another character in the comic, possibly Hairbun or Black Hat, who would want to spread misinformation) denies this claim, claiming to remember watching on CNN as the ''Challenger'' spacecraft crashed into the Berlin Wall. This is an inaccurate memory of these two events, as the ''Challenger'' explosion occurred in 1986 over the Atlantic Ocean, just east of Cape Canaveral, Florida, and did not occur near the Berlin Wall (in Berlin, Germany). Also, the Berlin Wall was intentionally demolished starting in 1989; it was not damaged by a space shuttle.{{Citation needed}} It's also possible that this memory conflates those events with those of the {{w|September 11 attacks}}, since the latter ''did'' involve three winged craft crashing into and destroying landmark structures.
+The title text gives [http://theconversation.com/flashbulb-memories-of-dramatic-events-arent-as-accurate-as-believed-64838 the claim] that {{w|Flashbulb memory|flashbulb memories}} of big events can be unreliable. [[Randall]] (or another character in the comic, possibly [[Hairbun]] or [[Black Hat]], who would want to spread misinformation) denies this claim, claiming to remember watching on CNN as the ''Challenger'' spacecraft crashed into the Berlin Wall. This is an inaccurate memory of these two events, as the ''Challenger'' explosion occurred in 1986 over the Atlantic Ocean, just east of Cape Canaveral, Florida, and did not occur near the Berlin Wall (in Berlin, Germany). Also, the Berlin Wall was intentionally demolished starting in 1989; it was not damaged by a space shuttle.{{Citation needed}} It's also possible that this memory conflates those events with those of the {{w|September 11 attacks}}, since the latter ''did'' involve three winged craft crashing into and destroying landmark structures.
 ==Transcript==

@@ Line 14: / Line 14: @@
 :It says ''June'' 28th. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.22|162.158.126.22]] 20:52, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 ::No, the date of that comic is June 28, but the title text says: [AT THE JULY 28TH MEETING] --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 21:51, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 :::Ah, that makes sense. For some reason my app only showed the first part of the tirle text --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.94|162.158.126.94]] 23:04, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 ::::The COMIC says "June 28th."  The TITLE TEXT says "July 28th."   Apparently the government computer predictive text was trained from different input. [[User:Mwburden|mwburden]] ([[User talk:Mwburden|talk]]) 15:26, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@@ Line 88: / Line 90: @@
 Anyone else notice the longitude starts giving the digits of pi? 68309(4159265358) just missing the 3.1. {{unsigned ip|162.158.146.180|18:50, 9 January 2024}}

@@ Line 71: / Line 71: @@
 | The [https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/-/media/DNC/KSCVC/Blog-Images/Rocket-Garden/rocket-garden-with-labels.ashx?h=860&w=1173&la=en&hash=7B9ADC7AFF5370E462AC98D9651945B806B77B2C Thor-Delta] rocket in Rocket Garden
 | As the comic notes, the differences between {{w|geodetic datum}}s – different ways to map geodetic coordinates to specific points on the Earth's surface – become large enough that one needs to specify the one in use when supplying coordinates to this degree of precision (or greater, of course). Since the Earth is not a perfect ellipsoid, different parts of the planet conform best to ellipsoids of slightly different proportions, resulting in different coordinates for a specific location; not to mention that locally used datums have local reference points, which means that the local and global standards are slowly drifting away from each other with the tectonical plates.
-Note that the comment in the comic concerns only the {{w|North American Datum|NAD 1983}} datum which is fairly close to the international, “one size fits all” standard {{w|WGS-84}}. Other datums may be shifted by tens or even hundreds of meters (yards), making geodetic datum specification necessary for less precise coordinates as well.
+Note that the comment in the comic concerns only the {{w|North American Datum|NAD 1983}} datum which is fairly close to the international, “one size fits all” standard {{w|WGS-84}}. Other datums may be shifted by tens or even hundreds of meters (yards), making geodetic datum specification necessary for less precise coordinates as well. {{w|Geocaching}} uses seven numbers, five decimal places, for precision, although it can only really be trusted to five or six (three or four decimal places).
 |-
 | 7
@@ Line 79: / Line 82: @@
 | This refers to ''{{w|Where's Wally?|Where's Waldo?}}'', a series of books and magazines containing various scenes (densely packed with people) where one must find Waldo, a character wearing a red and white striped shirt. In the puzzles, he usually stands less than 2 cm (1 in) tall.
 Finding Waldo on a page using satellites was also referenced in [[1358:_NRO|#1358]].
 | A specific grain of sand
 | rowspan=3 | N/A

@@ Line 23: / Line 23: @@
 |3 months ago || A new product isn't working for some users || '''Decent chance''' of a solution in the replies || This problem is clearly not considered a priority for a fix by the creators, judging by how long it's been there. It possibly isn't an issue affecting everyone, or even a large proportion of users. However, people are innovative, and someone may well have found their own fix, patch or kludge to get around the product limitations.
 |-
-|2 years ago || You've run into an edge case || '''Low''', but the replies could help with troubleshooting || An edge case is a rare situation that the developers did not think to account for, usually causing a logic error, where the program works, but outputs something unexpected which might cause an error down the line. Very few people will suffer from this precise problem, which may mean that it's not considered worth the effort to apply a fix. The developers or other users may have encountered similar issues on this or similar software, and noting how they solved ''those'' problems might lead you towards how to solve your own.
+|2 years ago || You've run into an edge case || '''Low''', but the replies could help with troubleshooting || An {{w|edge case}} is an unusual set of circumstances in which a system is asked to operate. These can cause an otherwise well-functioning system to behave in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Because such cases will occur very rarely, they may not have been foreseen or tested by the developers, or they may have considered it not worth the effort to cater for them. Very few people will suffer from this precise problem, which may mean that it's not considered worth the effort to apply a fix. The developers or other users may have encountered similar issues on this or similar software, and noting how they solved or worked around ''those'' problems might lead you towards how to address your own.
 |-
 |13 years ago || You're the only one with this problem || '''Very Low''' - post is likely not relevant|| A post of this age likely predates the software you're using, or at least the current version of it. It's probably a coincidental match to your search query, and doesn't actually relate to the problem you've encountered. Since no-one else has posted about this issue or anything similar within a recent timeframe, it's likely that you're the first person (or at least, one of very few people) to have ever come across it.
 |-
-|24 years ago || Oh god how is the Internet this old || Maybe whoever posted the message has kids who can help you || This is another comic where Randall [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|makes people feel old]], in this case by pointing out that {{w|the Internet}} is quite old, and people posting comments in the early period of the Internet have now had time to have kids who have reached an age where they are themselves posting. It is also (presumably) rare enough to be a [[979: Wisdom of the Ancients|DenverCoder9 situation]], and 13 years is longer than the time in that comic, so 13 years might be such a situation too.
+|24 years ago || Oh god how is the Internet this old || Maybe whoever posted the message has kids who can help you || This is another comic where Randall [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|makes people feel old]], in this case by pointing out that {{w|the Internet}} is quite old. The children of the people who posted these comments are now likely to be around the same age the original posters were when they posted them (and may now be posting themselves). It is also (presumably) rare enough to be a [[979: Wisdom of the Ancients|DenverCoder9 situation]], and 13 years is longer than the time in that comic, so 13 years might be such a situation too.
-The {{w|Internet}} is, in fact, significantly over forty years old, based upon original infrastructure and methods that were set up for perhaps up to two more decades previous to that. The World Wide Web (to many, synonymous with the Internet) hails from the early 1990s, and Google (one of the more commonly used search engines, through which this error search might have been made) was launched in the late 1990s, so are still practically older than this notional post. The biggest surprise might be that some information published on a webpage in 2002 (and still relevant to your search) survives on some still live web server (or as an archive/{{w|Mirror site|mirror}} of that original information on some archival/successor site). For example, any topical write-up of a then extant case of this issue, if documented upon web pages originally hosted by {{w|GeoCities}}, would have otherwise been made permanently inaccessible by the end of 2014.
+The Internet is, in fact, significantly over forty years old, based upon original infrastructure and methods that were set up for perhaps up to two more decades previous to that. The World Wide Web (to many, synonymous with the Internet) hails from the early 1990s, and Google (one of the more commonly used search engines, through which this error search might have been made) was launched in the late 1990s, so are still practically older than this notional post. The biggest surprise might be that some information published on a webpage in 2002 (and still relevant to your search) survives on some still live web server (or as an archive/{{w|Mirror site|mirror}} of that original information on some archival/successor site). For example, any topical write-up of a then extant case of this issue, if documented upon web pages originally hosted by {{w|GeoCities}}, would have otherwise been made permanently inaccessible by the end of 2014.
 |}

@@ Line 33: / Line 33: @@
 :Did you mean 1983, instead of 2023? That makes more somewhat more sense, all these further caveats aside. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.212.205|82.132.212.205]] 17:20, 14 May 2026 (UTC)
 ::Yeah...''must'' mean 1983. Because, well, it happened in 1983! It would be weird to declare a date (and reference 40 years ago) and be that wildly wrong. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 22:35, 14 May 2026 (UTC)
 I thought for sure that the title text was gonna be about how AI makes solving some problems trivial, while sometimes it sends you off the deep end even worse than a UseNet thread from 1994. [[User:blagae|blagae]] ([[User talk:blagae|talk]]) 15:47, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

@@ Line 1,764: / Line 1,764: @@
 |''"Which US state is actually flown over the most?"''
 <div align="right">—Jesse Ruderman</div>
-|Somewhat surprisingly, Virginia, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Carribbean/South America. Despite it having many major airports, including most of those serving DC, there are also many major airports which have routes passing over Virginia, such as KATL and KJFK. At the time of writing, Delaware had the greatest ratio of flights over it to flights to it because it did not have an active commercial airport (Since New Castle Airport resumed commercial service in 2013, this has probably changed.). Hawai'i is the least flown over state, followed by California. Hawai'i is a group of small islands in the middle of a big ocean, and flights that would otherwise fly over California are encouraged to land there instead by post-9/11 rules that discourage carrying excessive fuel. Strangely, Hawai'i is the most flown under state because the part of Botswana on the opposite side of the Earth from Hawai'i has more flights pass over it than any of the various parts of the Indian Ocean opposite the other states.
+|Somewhat surprisingly, Virginia, due to a large amount of flights from Toronto to the Caribbean/South America. Despite it having many major airports, including most of those serving DC, there are also many major airports which have routes passing over Virginia, such as KATL and KJFK. At the time of writing, Delaware had the greatest ratio of flights over it to flights to it because it did not have an active commercial airport (Since New Castle Airport resumed commercial service in 2013, this has probably changed.). Hawai'i is the least flown over state, followed by California. Hawai'i is a group of small islands in the middle of a big ocean, and flights that would otherwise fly over California are encouraged to land there instead by post-9/11 rules that discourage carrying excessive fuel. Strangely, Hawai'i is the most flown under state because the part of Botswana on the opposite side of the Earth from Hawai'i has more flights pass over it than any of the various parts of the Indian Ocean opposite the other states.
+|
 |{{book|1|33}}
@@ Line 1,876: / Line 1,876: @@
 | rowspan="2" |
 | rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #11'''
-| colspan="2" |''"What if everyone in Great Britain went to one of the coasts and started paddling? Could they move the island at all?"''
+|''"What if everyone in Great Britain went to one of the coasts and started paddling? Could they move the island at all?"''
 <div align="right">—Ellen Eubanks</div>
 | rowspan="2" |
 | rowspan="2"{{book|1|64}}
 | rowspan="2" |
 |-
-| colspan="2" |''"Are fire tornadoes possible?"''<div align="right">—Seth Wishman</div>
+|''"Are fire tornadoes possible?"''<div align="right">—Seth Wishman</div>
 |-
+|

@@ Line 1,888: / Line 1,888: @@
 |''"If a bullet with the density of a neutron star were fired from a handgun (ignoring the how) at the Earth's surface, would the Earth be destroyed?"''
 <div align="right">—Charlotte Ainsworth</div>
-|No. The bullet would fall through the ground and stop in the center of the Earth.
+|No. The bullet would fall through the ground and stop in the center of the Earth. If the bullet were actually made of neutron star material, it would violently explode back into normal matter when removed from the neutron star gravity well with more energy than any nuclear weapon, but since the question does not specify this, Randall chose to imagine a stable material of the same density. If the bullet could be kept at the surface of the Earth, it would be relatively safe to stand several meters away from, but if you came too close, the gravity would pull you in and when you touched it drain all your blood. If the bullet were covered in water of just the right density, you could possibly safely touch it and then pull away, but it would still be risky to attempt.
+|
 |{{book|1|67}}

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 This comic takes place in a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDnoczxzQyg scene] from the third theatrically-released ''{{w|Star Wars}}'' movie, ''{{w|Return of the Jedi}}'', wherein {{w|Darth Vader}} confronts his son, {{w|Luke Skywalker}}, who had recently surrendered to {{w|Galactic Empire (Star Wars)|Imperial}} soldiers. In the movie Vader notes that Luke Skywalker has constructed a new {{w|lightsaber}} following the loss of his [[wikia:c:starwars:Luke skywalker#Lightsabers|original]] during their [[wikia:c:starwars:Duel on Cloud City|duel on Cloud City]], Luke Skywalker's original lightsaber actually having been the second lightsaber of {{w|Anakin Skywalker}}, who later turned into Darth Vader.
-In this comic, however, Darth Vader has accidentally discovered his son's {{w|fleshlight}} (a male {{w|sex toy}} designed to imitate one of various orifices, most commonly a vagina), which he apparently brought with him on the [[wikia:c:starwars:Battle of Endor#The ground assault|attack]] on the {{w|Endor (Star Wars)|Forest Moon of Endor}}. [https://youtu.be/Z8uDQuWlnww?t=71 From a certain point of view], a fleshlight could be mistaken for the handle of a lightsaber, without the blade extended. Like many teenagers, Luke Skywalker is attempting to hide evidence of his sexual activity from a parent. References to fleshlights are a [[:Category:Fleshlights|recurring theme]] in xkcd.
+In this comic, however, Darth Vader has accidentally discovered his son's {{w|fleshlight}} (a male {{w|sex toy}} designed to imitate one of various orifices, most commonly a vagina), which he apparently brought with him on the [[wikia:c:starwars:Battle of Endor#The ground assault|attack]] on the {{w|Endor (Star Wars)|Forest Moon of Endor}}. [https://web.archive.org/web/20190304203416/http://vurl.web.archive.org/youtube/v/Z8uDQuWlnww#t=71 From a certain point of view], a fleshlight could be mistaken for the handle of a lightsaber, without the blade extended. Like many teenagers, Luke Skywalker is attempting to hide evidence of his sexual activity from a parent. References to fleshlights are a [[:Category:Fleshlights|recurring theme]] in xkcd.
 The title text refers to the fact that if Darth Vader turned the fleshlight on, instead of creating a blade of pure plasma or energy suspended in a force containment field the device would simply vibrate, revealing it for what it really is. [[Randall]] is also punning on "being turned on" as slang for being sexually aroused.

@@ Line 1,792: / Line 1,792: @@
 | rowspan="2" |
 | rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #8'''
-| colspan="2" |''"A toxin blocks the ability of the nephron tubule reabsorption but does not affect filtration. What are the possible short-term effects of this toxin?"''
+|''"A toxin blocks the ability of the nephron tubule reabsorption but does not affect filtration. What are the possible short-term effects of this toxin?"''
 <div align="right">—Mary</div>
 | rowspan="2" |
 | rowspan="2"{{book|1|40}}
@@ Line 1,811: / Line 1,812: @@
 | rowspan="2" |
 | rowspan="2" |'''Weird (and Worrying) Questions from the What If? Inbox, #9'''
-| colspan="2" |''"Could you survive a tidal wave by submerging yourself in an in-ground pool?"''
+|''"Could you survive a tidal wave by submerging yourself in an in-ground pool?"''
 <div align="right">—Chris Muska</div>
 | rowspan="2" |
 | rowspan="2"{{book|1|46}}
 | rowspan="2" |
 |-
-| colspan="2" |''"If you are in free fall and your parachute fails, but you have a Slinky with extremely convenient mass, tension, etc., would it be''
+|''"If you are in free fall and your parachute fails, but you have a Slinky with extremely convenient mass, tension, etc., would it be''
 possible to save yourself by throwing the Slinky upward while holding on to one end of it?"<div align="right">—Varadarajan Srinivasan</div>
 |-
+|
@@ Line 1,855: / Line 1,858: @@
 |''"Assuming a zero-gravity environment with an atmosphere identical to Earth's, how long would it take the friction of air to stop an arrow fired from a bow? Would it eventually come to a standstill and hover in midair?"''
 <div align="right">—Mark Estano</div>
-|It would stop at about 5 to 10 kilometers.
+|The arrow would stop at about 5 to 10 kilometers and float if the space it was being loosed in were large enough to allow that. Since the only sustained zero-gravity environment with an Earth-like atmosphere in real life is on the International Space Station, where Kibo the longest module is 10 m long, realistically the arrow would hit something and potentially cause serious damage.
+|
 |{{book|1|56}}

← Older revision		Revision as of 03:52, 15 May 2026
Line 84:		Line 84:

	I think he might be using Borat (a character people will recognize) to refer to Sacha Baron Cohen. Prior to the Borat films, Cohen made a movie called 'Ali G Indahouse'. His character (Ali G), had a banner that went across the top of the windshield of his car that had ‘Ali G’ on the driver’s side and ‘Me Bitch’ on the passenger’s side. I never watched the whole movie to confirm whether he verbally refers to his wife as ‘Me Bitch’, though. [[Special:Contributions/2603:6010:6C00:DA:49BF:A509:106C:9458\|2603:6010:6C00:DA:49BF:A509:106C:9458]] 14:36, 2 May 2026 (UTC)		I think he might be using Borat (a character people will recognize) to refer to Sacha Baron Cohen. Prior to the Borat films, Cohen made a movie called 'Ali G Indahouse'. His character (Ali G), had a banner that went across the top of the windshield of his car that had ‘Ali G’ on the driver’s side and ‘Me Bitch’ on the passenger’s side. I never watched the whole movie to confirm whether he verbally refers to his wife as ‘Me Bitch’, though. [[Special:Contributions/2603:6010:6C00:DA:49BF:A509:106C:9458\|2603:6010:6C00:DA:49BF:A509:106C:9458]] 14:36, 2 May 2026 (UTC)
		+
		+	Ironically, IIRC in the actual Victorian era using "my wife" was considered somewhat uncouth, since it was seen as objectifying women. This went doubly so for the second-person equivalent ("your wife"); the standard way of referring to someone's spouse was "Mr(s). [last name]". That said, "Mrs. [husband's full name]" was alright in formal contexts.

@@ Line 401: / Line 401: @@
 |''"How many unique English tweets are possible? How long would it take for the population of the world to read them all out loud?"''
 <div align="right">—Eric H., Hopatcong, NJ</div>
-|Since there are 2 * 10<sup>46</sup> meaningful English tweets, reading them all would take 10,000 "eternal years", with an eternal day being the length of time needed to wear down a 100-mile mountain if a bird scraped 1 grain every thousand years.
+|Since there are 2 * 10<sup>46</sup> meaningful English tweets based on the original character limit of 140 and written English having an average information content of 1.1 bits per character, reading them all would take 10,000 "eternal years", with an eternal day being the length of time needed to wear down a 100-mile mountain if a bird scraped 1 grain every thousand years.
 |{{blog|34|2013|02|26}}
 |{{book|1|50}}
@@ Line 1,804: / Line 1,804: @@
 |''"If two immortal people were placed on opposite sides of an uninhabited Earthlike planet, how long would it take them to find each other? 100,000 years? 1,000,000 years? 100,000,000,000 years?"''
 <div align="right">—Ethan Lake</div>
-|Depending on strategy and terrain, a few years to a few decades.
+|Depending on strategy and terrain, a few years to a few decades. Based on the communication methods of ants, Randall suggests that the immortals leave trails of markers of when they were there and which way they went as they travel and if they find the other immortal's markers follow them as fast as possible.
+|
 |{{book|1|42}}
@@ Line 1,824: / Line 1,824: @@
 |''"In the movie 300 they shoot arrows up into the sky and they seemingly blot out the s<!--DO NOT CAPITALISE THE "s": This is how it's written on the site, it should not be changed.-->un. Is this possible, and how many arrows would it take?"''
 <div align="right">—Anna Newell</div>
-|300 arrows per second with densely packed archers could blot out 99% of the Sun's light. If the Sun were low in the horizon, you could more effectively block sunlight with less arrows. However, this would have little to no effect on the opponent, unless it required solar panels.
+|300 arrows per second with densely packed archers could blot out 99% of the Sun's light. If the Sun were low in the horizon, you could more effectively block sunlight with less arrows if the arrows were aimed to pass between the battlefield and the Sun. However, this would have little to no effect on the opponent, unless it required solar panels.
+|
 |{{book|1|47}}

@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 This strip treats evolution like a conscious process to underscore how strange it would be if a species simply decided to pursue some of these unusual adaptations. Evolution in real life works by {{w|natural selection}}, where small and random adaptations improve the odds of survival and reproduction, and those changes build up into huge changes over the course of long enough time spans. This means that no one decided that a spider's web-weaving ability (for example) was worth pursuing, it happened gradually over millions of years. An intelligent species can accelerate this gradual process of natural selection through {{w|artificial selection}} by choosing characteristics and using selective breeding and culling to favor those. Only humans are known to plan out such breeding (mostly in domesticated species), and even then it is an {{w|Dog breeding#Criticism|imperfect process}} that can be very hit-and-miss. Most biology is the result of evolution without any evident plan.
-[[:Category:Spiders|Spiders]] are a recurring theme on xkcd.
+[[:Category:Spiders|Spiders]] are a recurring theme on xkcd, along with Crabs. [[2314:_Carcinization|Crabs]] are also a recurring theme in biology itself (and [[2418:_Metacarcinization|conversations with Randall]]).
 The {{w|eusocial}} insects mentioned in the title text, most prominently bees, ants and termites, are other types of arthropods with high levels of social organization. As such, they are notable for ''not'' "mind[ing] their own busines{{asic}}", as their ancestor arthropod apparently expects. Eusocial insects operate in groups, and the individuals often don't operate on their own at all, to the point where the whole colony often [https://daily.jstor.org/how-fire-ants-form-rafts acts as a unit, with little regard for the individual]. The comment that their descendants "[won't] do anything weird" may be a joke about eusociality being pretty weird to a solitary organism, or may refer to the [https://scitechdaily.com/why-termites-blow-themselves-up-the-fascinating-chemistry-of-their-defense-mechanisms/ extreme forms of behavior eusocial insects sometimes pursue]. (While there are a number of species of {{w|social spider}}, there aren't any that meet the strict definition of eusociality.)