541: TED Talk - Revision history

Lettherebedarklight: /* Conferences where Randall is banned from */ more lowercase

2026-01-18T05:25:43Z

‎Conferences where Randall is banned from: more lowercase

Lettherebedarklight: /* Conferences where Randall is banned from */ lowercase

2026-01-18T05:23:29Z

‎Conferences where Randall is banned from: lowercase

Lettherebedarklight: /* PyCon response */ add Category:Comics with a Spanish translation

2025-12-15T08:58:43Z

‎PyCon response: add Category:Comics with a Spanish translation

FaviFake: /* PyCon response */

2025-07-30T12:42:50Z

‎PyCon response

FaviFake: /* PyCon response */

2025-07-30T12:42:42Z

‎PyCon response

FaviFake at 12:42, 30 July 2025

2025-07-30T12:42:29Z

FaviFake: /* Explanation */

2025-07-30T12:39:26Z

‎Explanation

FaviFake: /* Conferences where Randall is banned from */

2025-07-30T12:38:54Z

‎Conferences where Randall is banned from

FaviFake: /* Trivia */

2025-04-27T13:05:10Z

‎Trivia

172.68.186.140: /* Trivia */ Original sentence fragment needed work/further explanation.

2025-04-21T11:00:27Z

‎Trivia: Original sentence fragment needed work/further explanation.

@@ Line 29: / Line 29: @@
 ; [http://www.gacpaleodivision.com/pd-meetings.html Canadian Paleontology Conference]: The main goal of the CPC and its predecessors has been to provide a relatively small, informal forum for presentation and discussion of current paleontological research.
-; [http://fclr.info/ Every American furry convention]: There are many Furry Conventions in America (see the {{w|List of furry conventions|Wikipedia page}} for more details), but to be banned from all of them would probably require action by the Furry Convention Leadership Roundtable, the coordinating body for furry conventions.
+; [http://fclr.info/ Every American furry convention]: There are many furry conventions in America (see the {{w|List of furry conventions|Wikipedia page}} for more details), but to be banned from all of them would probably require action by the Furry Convention Leadership Roundtable, the coordinating body for furry conventions.
 ; [http://www.americanbakers.org/meetings/ American Baking Society (American Bakers Association)]: ABA represents the interests of bakers before the U.S. Congress, federal agencies, and international regulatory authorities.

@@ Line 29: / Line 29: @@
 ; [http://www.gacpaleodivision.com/pd-meetings.html Canadian Paleontology Conference]: The main goal of the CPC and its predecessors has been to provide a relatively small, informal forum for presentation and discussion of current paleontological research.
-; [http://fclr.info/ Every American Furry Convention]: There are many Furry Conventions in America (see the {{w|List of furry conventions|Wikipedia page}} for more details), but to be banned from all of them would probably require action by the Furry Convention Leadership Roundtable, the coordinating body for furry conventions.
+; [http://fclr.info/ Every American furry convention]: There are many Furry Conventions in America (see the {{w|List of furry conventions|Wikipedia page}} for more details), but to be banned from all of them would probably require action by the Furry Convention Leadership Roundtable, the coordinating body for furry conventions.
 ; [http://www.americanbakers.org/meetings/ American Baking Society (American Bakers Association)]: ABA represents the interests of bakers before the U.S. Congress, federal agencies, and international regulatory authorities.

← Older revision		Revision as of 08:58, 15 December 2025
Line 96:		Line 96:
	[[Category:Your Mom]]		[[Category:Your Mom]]
	[[Category:Comics with red annotations]]		[[Category:Comics with red annotations]]
		+	[[Category:Comics with a Spanish translation]]

@@ Line 87: / Line 87: @@
 ::::::::Now let him know that since he's banned, he HAS to come. [http://mail.python.org/mailman/private/pycon-organizers/2009-February/011251.html]
 :::::::@32:49 “What I need is a movie that’s an hour and a half of River Tam beating up dinosaurs.” — Randall
 {{comic discussion}}

@@ Line 64: / Line 64: @@
 *This was the [[:Category:Comics with red annotations|first comic with red annotations]], albeit this time being in-universe, rather than the later typical use for comic-level commentary.
-==PyCon response==
+===PyCon response===
 In response to this comic, PyCon organizers jokingly [http://pycon.blogspot.com/2009/02/randall-munroe.html announced] that Randall Munroe was banned from PyCon 2009 due to "last year's disgraceful keynote, '{{w|Web crawler|Web Spiders}} vs. [[Red Spiders]]'." They also said they instructed their volunteers to refuse admission to him and "any stick figures who may attempt to register, particularly if they are [[:Category:Characters with hats|wearing hats]]."

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 The comics shows Randall as a presenter at the highly prestigious {{w|TED conference}}, a symposium about technology, entertainment and design. The illustrious {{w|list of TED speakers|list of former presenters}} includes amongst others Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Larry Page, Richard Dawkins and Gordon Brown. The conference is regarded as a forum for {{w|digerati}}. Every talk has a length of at most 20 minutes and is supposed to be as captivating as possible. Randall's presentation, however, reduces the purpose of the conference to absurdity: The topic he wishes to point out to his listeners, is that of how to put an emoticon at the end of a parenthetical statement. One possibility that is shown is "Linux (or BSD :)", which looks mismatched because the emoji does not close the opening parenthesis. The other one, "Linux (or BSD :))" has a closing parenthesis, but makes the emoticon look double-chinned.
-This question is of little practical consequence, although it received a lot of attention after publication of the comic. In the last panel, the TED conference is another item to add to his list of conferences from which he has been banned. On the list are other conferences from all sorts of fields, including every American {{w|furry convention}}. The title text about Randall's ban from the {{w|IAU}} conference is a reference to the popular maternal insults called {{w|"Yo mama" joke}}s. A common representative of the genre runs "Yo mama so fat, scientists have declared her the 10th planet." Those kind of jokes are a [[:Category:Your Mom|recurring theme]] on xkcd.
+This question is of little practical consequence, although it received a lot of attention after publication of the comic. In the last panel, the TED conference is another item to add to his list of conferences from which he has been banned. On the list are other conferences from all sorts of fields, including every American {{w|furry convention}}. The title text about Randall's ban from the {{w|IAU}} conference is a reference to the popular maternal insults called {{w|"Yo mama" joke}}s. A common representative of the genre runs "Yo mama so fat, scientists have declared her the 10th planet." Those kinds of jokes are a [[:Category:Your Mom|recurring theme]] on xkcd. Unpaired parentheses would later be mentioned again in [[859: (]].
 It can be inferred from [[629: Skins]], that Randall was banned from North American furry conventions due to being a "Skin", which is a furry whose fursona prefers going around disguised as a human.  Depending on Randall's behavior, such an action could generate a lot of drama and, presumably, lead to convention bans. Getting banned from attending a conference is a [[:Category:Banned from conferences|recurring theme]] on xkcd, and even in real life, Randall sometimes has bad ideas for conference topics, [https://blog.xkcd.com/2009/02/11/ireland/ such as presumably not speaking for the entire conference]. This was so far the sixth of eight comics to directly mention conference bans. The first to do so was [[153: Cryptography]].
 ===Conferences where Randall is banned from===
@@ Line 60: / Line 58: @@
 :Asian Dolphin-Training Conference
 :<u>TED</u>
 ==PyCon response==
@@ Line 85: / Line 88: @@
 :::::::@32:49 “What I need is a movie that’s an hour and a half of River Tam beating up dinosaurs.” — Randall
 {{comic discussion}}

@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 ===Conferences where Randall is banned from===
 Here is a  list of the conferences from which Randall has been banned according to this comic.
-{| class="wikitable"
-|-
+; [http://www.siggraph.org Siggraph]: Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques.
-! Conference
-! Description
+; [http://www.iacr.org/meetings/eurocrypt/ Eurocrypt]: Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques.
-! Website
-|-
+; [https://www.defcon.org/ Defcon]: DEF CON® Hacking Conference.
-| Siggraph
-| Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques
+; [http://www.pycon.org/ Pycon]: Python Conference.
-| http://www.siggraph.org
-|-
+; [https://www.iau.org/science/meetings/ International Astronomical Union]: The IAU's mission is to promote and safeguard the science of astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation.
-| Eurocrypt
-| Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques
+; [http://www.gacpaleodivision.com/pd-meetings.html Canadian Paleontology Conference]: The main goal of the CPC and its predecessors has been to provide a relatively small, informal forum for presentation and discussion of current paleontological research.
-| http://www.iacr.org/meetings/eurocrypt/
-|-
+; [http://fclr.info/ Every American Furry Convention]: There are many Furry Conventions in America (see the {{w|List of furry conventions|Wikipedia page}} for more details), but to be banned from all of them would probably require action by the Furry Convention Leadership Roundtable, the coordinating body for furry conventions.
-| Defcon
-| DEF CON® Hacking Conference
+; [http://www.americanbakers.org/meetings/ American Baking Society (American Bakers Association)]: ABA represents the interests of bakers before the U.S. Congress, federal agencies, and international regulatory authorities.
-| https://www.defcon.org/
-|-
+; [https://www.imata.org/ Asian Dolphin-Training Conference]: International Marine Animal Trainers' Association.
-| Pycon
-| Python Conference
+; [https://ted.com TED]: Technology, Entertainment, Design.
 ==Transcript==

@@ Line 121: / Line 121: @@
 *Randall has since this comic given a TED talk in March 2014. [https://www.ted.com/talks/randall_munroe_comics_that_ask_what_if Randall Munroe Comics that ask "what if?"].
-*For more comics that mentioned unpaired parentheses, see [[859]].
+*For more comics that mentioned unpaired parentheses, see [[859: (]].
-*This was the first comic featuring [[:Category:Comics with red annotations]], albeit this time being in-universe, rather than the later typical use for comic-level commentary.
+*This was the [[:Category:Comics with red annotations|first comic with red annotations]], albeit this time being in-universe, rather than the later typical use for comic-level commentary.
 {{comic discussion}}