explain xkcd - New pages [en]

3259: Tethys

2026-06-15T15:53:05Z

81.179.199.253: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3259
| date = June 15, 2026
| title = Tethys
| image = tethys_2x.png
| imagesize = 304x317px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In order to carry the necessary crafting supplies, they built the ships at 12:1 scale.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently AND NEEDS TO BE RECREATED AT A 1:12 SCALE. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

{{w|Tethys (moon)|Tethys}}, the fifth moon of Saturn, has a diameter of 1,060 kilometers, almost exactly 1/12th that of Earth's, which is 12,742 km. This scaling is a {{w|1:12 scale|common one}} used for modelling, perhaps because of the relative simplicity of converting all real-life measurements directly from any given number of {{w|Foot (unit)|feet}} in the real life subject to exactly the same number of {{w|inch}}es in the model version.

This comic alludes to a fantastical scenario in which artists who produce miniature scale models of existing structures decide to use Tethys to produce a 1:12 scale model of the Earth. This is a patently absurd undertaking: all the difficulties of {{w|terraforming}}, already a monstrously hard task, would be exacerbated by the need to precisely recreate Earth's features, as well as by some particularly unfavorable traits of the Saturnian system. Tethys's distance from the Sun is too great for Earth's surface conditions to be recreated without artificially increasing insolation, likely through the use of orbital solar mirrors. These would be especially difficult to erect around Saturn, with its {{w|Moons of Saturn|many moons}} (292 at last count) and {{w|Rings of Saturn|ring system}} causing severe gravitational interference. In addition, it would be difficult to get the necessary rockets, as it would be unlikely that any space agency would be willing to aid this thoroughly ridiculous project.{{Citation needed}}

However, there is some good news: Tethys' large native water stores eliminate the need to ship in more, and the nearby moon {{w|Titan (moon)|Titan}}'s atmosphere could be harvested for nitrogen, which is necessary to recreate {{w|Atmosphere of Earth#Composition|Earth's atmospheric composition}}. Being very far away from Earth also means that there is no risk of [[878: Model Rail|nesting]] - having the model include a miniature version of itself, which includes an even more miniature version of itself, which includes....

The description refers to it as model builders' final project. This implies that once the Earth is recreated, it will be such a grand project that it will be the final miniature model ever made, implying that, if it was successfully completed, any further model projects would seem worthless by comparison. Perhaps because in order to accurately model the Earth, that model would itself contain 1:12 models of all modellable things on Earth.

The title text says that the ships used in the construction effort are built "at a 12:1 scale" (i.e. 12x larger than normal, however "normal" is defined). If this is with reference to the model they are building, this would mean that they would end up back at 'normal spaceship size'.

==Transcript==
[An image of a planet, presumably Saturn, showing prominent rings as well as three distant moons (one to the apparent right of it, the other two at the left) and one close, large moon. In front of the large moon is a line of spaceships dwindling into the distance toward the moon, or perhaps toward an orbit around it. Each spaceship has prominent rocket nozzles aimed toward the viewer and away from the large moon, as well as what appears to be a pile of material on "top" of the spaceship, with tie-down ropes holding it in place.]

[Caption below the panel:] 
After learning that Tethys is exactly 1/12th the size of Earth, the miniature art model builders launched a fleet of ships to begin their final, greatest project.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Space]]

3258: Plate Flip

2026-06-13T15:31:26Z

81.179.199.253: /* Explanation */ Probably a simpler way of saying all this...

{{comic
| number = 3258
| date = June 12, 2026
| title = Plate Flip
| image = plate_flip_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x272px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's great for exfoliating your skin, bones, houses, cities, landscape, etc.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was FOUND ON THE UNDERSIDE OF THE CONTINENT. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

In this comic, [[Ponytail]] resumes her role as a [[:Category:Home Inspections|cosmic home inspector]], in which she appears to compare {{w|tectonic plates}} to {{w|mattress}}es, and recommends flipping them over to address what she considers problematic features. Flipping mattresses every few months was common until the 20th century, to even out the wear and tear, and prevent permanent body impressions. When modern box springs became common, the practice became unnecessary.

{{w|Weathering}} is the deterioration of materials, including rocks and soils, caused by the action of chemical and biological agents, light, temperature changes, etc, which can cause breakdown and/or discolouration. Geologically, this can include the disintegration of rocks into fine particles, or changes in soil structure. In the case of a mattress, it would be staining and thinning of the fabric.

A {{w|debris flow|debris basin}} is an area where loose materials, such as washed out soil or free rocks, tend to collect. On a mattress, a 'debris basin' would likely be mostly filled with a mix of shed human skin and lint loosely bound by excreted oils, with other constituents depending largely on the habits of the occupants.

An {{w|isostatic depression}} is an area of the Earth's crust that has sunk due to some heavy weight, such as an ice sheet, acting on it. If that weight is removed (for example, by the ice melting), the crust will tend to rebound to a higher position. Mattresses can develop areas of 'depression' over time due to people's tendency to always sleep in the same position, repeatedly crushing and straining the materials in the same way. Many modern mattress materials promise to resist this tendency, allowing the mattress to recover ('rebound') between uses.

Flipping mattresses only made sense because on a traditional mattress both sides were similar to each other. The "underside" of a tectonic plate is nothing like the surface. The current side that Cueball and Ponytail are standing on is the outermost layer of the {{w|Earth's crust|crust}}. However, the "underside" of the plate reaches until the solid layer of the {{w|mantle (geology)|mantle}}, whose temperature can reach over 1000 °C. As Cueball points out, if you could flip a continent over, the new surface would be molten rock — not a surface suitable for life. Ponytail thinks the warmth would be soothing, and that walking on it would {{w|exfoliation (cosmetology)|exfoliate}} your feet, but at hundreds of degrees, it would do far more damage than just removing dead skin.{{citation needed}}

Of course, such an idea would be impossible to put into practice. The Earth's crust is far bigger than us, and any plate-moving technologies would need an insane amount of power — much more than we currently know how to harness. As well as that, a location would have to be found for the plate-moving technology where it could apply sufficient leverage without destabilising its own footings. Even by doing one plate at a time, the temperature increase from moving just one plate would be deadly. Furthermore, since our current plates are not regular in shape, a flipped plate does not fit back into the hole it leaves without all the other plates being flipped to form a fully reflected spherical topology (and all but this plate and any antipode also moved, and all but the smallest of them forcibly '{{w|Eye popper|popped}}' from concave to correctly convex). The title text also reveals that somehow the crust is to be moved without moving the numerous things on it, which would further complicate matters.

Even if the immediate calamities from turning the tectonic plates upside down were ignored, the turned plate would be inhospitable to life. There would be no soil, only igneous rock, meaning no ground water could form, resulting in an immense desert. Given enough time, erosion and pioneer species would restore the geosphere. However, this would also cause the "problems" Ponytail is hoping to address to reappear.

The title text expands on this joke, saying that it would "exfoliate" just about everything on the surface (which would somehow have to stay in place while the plate below it is flipped; alternatively, everything is flipped along with the surface and ends up under the crust). If this flip was to somehow happen it would indeed do that, but it would also melt just about everything on the surface, which is less than ideal.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail is looking at the ground in front of her, a hand on her hip. Cueball stands behind her, to the right.]
:Ponytail: These tectonic plates look pretty eroded. When did you last flip them?
:Cueball: Flip them?

:[Zoom out to see the ground. Ponytail walks forward, motioning at the ground. Cueball spreads his arms behind her.]
:Ponytail: Yeah, to use the underside of the continent.
:Cueball: ...Never?
:Ponytail: Wow. Explains the eons of weathering, debris basins, and ... is this isostatic depression?
:Cueball: It's rebounding!

:[Ponytail stops walking and turns to Cueball.]
:Ponytail: You should really flip it. You'll get a whole new landscape!
:Cueball: But I like '''''this''''' landscape!

:[Ponytail spreads her arms slightly.]
:Ponytail: Just think how warm and fresh the other side will feel.
:Cueball: A sea of molten rock?
:Ponytail: Good for the feet. Helps exfoliate.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Home Inspections]]

3257: Beam Pipe

2026-06-11T12:31:17Z

Ello: Citation needed

{{comic
| number = 3257
| date = June 10, 2026
| title = Beam Pipe
| image = beam_pipe_2x.png
| imagesize = 309x397px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 'If you keep trying to spray your collaborators with the beam when they're not looking, I'm turning off the ion source and NO one will get to play with the beam!' --Physics's mom
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was found with a Physics Nobel Prize. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
When a liquid is flowing within a tube, the pressure at any point is determined by an equilibrium between the supply pressure and the forces that restrict flow, such as friction with the walls and hydrodynamic effects in the liquid. If the tube is short and the outflow opening is large, the pressure within the tube is close to the exterior pressure (air pressure, in the case of a liquid flowing into air). If the outflow opening is negligible, the pressure within the tube is essentially equal to the pressure of the liquid's supply. If the tube is constructed of an elastic material, it will expand until an equilibrium is reached between the internal pressure and the elastic stretch of the tube... unless the pressure is enough to rupture the tube.

In the case of a hose carrying water, if the exit is fully open, the water pressure near the exit will be moderate: greater than atmospheric pressure, but less than the full pressure of the water supply. The more the exit is restricted, such as by part covering it with a thumb, decreasing the water flow, the closer the pressure near the exit will come to the full pressure of the water supply. (In the limiting case where the exit is fully blocked, the hose will essentially be an extension of the plumbing, and its internal pressure will be that of the water supply, as modified by the gravitational effects of raising or lowering the hose, and the weight of the water). If the hose is elastic (e.g. the usual garden-hose reinforced rubber), it's possible to see it stretch as the nozzle is restricted. Covering it with a thumb, while reducing the water flow, allows the water that does come out to do so at relatively high pressure.

As the {{w|Large Hadron Collider|LHC}} can be considered a sort of "pipe" (a beam pipe, as pointed out in the comic title), this comic makes the ridiculous assumption that the same logic applies there — that its beam can be concentrated and redirected by partially covering the end of the beam with a thumb. This wouldn't work in real life: water molecules are moving at low speed and thus do not have sufficient energy to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between their electrons and those of the thumb, forcing them to change path. In contrast the kinetic energy of the particles in the LHC (14 TeV) is far far larger than the repulsion of the thumb. Most particles will pass through unaffected, while those hitting thumb nuclei directly will produce a cascade of new particles similar to those the LHC is intended to produce.

While there is no recorded case of a human getting struck by the particle beam at LHC, {{w|Anatoli Bugorski|Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski}} did accidentally hold his head into the proton beam of a 76 GeV (about 180 times less than the energies at the LHC) particle accelerator while trying to repair a faulty part. This had severe but not lethal consequences: the resulting acute radiation sickness caused the affected parts of his face to swell and the skin to flake off, The affected nerves never recovered, leaving the left side of his face paralysed and his left ear deaf. The damage to his brain resulted in several epileptic seizures, but did not affect him otherwise, allowing him to continue his work as a physicist, and at time of publication he was still alive at the age of 82.

Thus while pointless, holding the thumb into the LHC beam is unlikely to significantly harm anyone trying it. At any rate, this wouldn't work in real life: the relativistic particles would not behave as a liquid. Also, because the LHC's beam operates in an extremely high vacuum, and the LHC doesn't have any structure to let the beam exit the main accelerator ring, it would be impossible even to test the concept.

The title text expands the joke, once more treating the LHC as if it were a hosepipe. Applying the effect above to a hosepipe is a common thing for children to do — often to spray family and friends with the pressurized water. This applies the same logic to the LHC, imagining the mother of "physics" (the science, as opposed to a person) telling off their presumably adult child for "spraying their colleagues with the beam" — something very incomprehensible in real life.{cn}

A variety of devices are marketed to increase the pressure of water supplied to them. The {{w|pressure washing|pressure washer}} is a common example; it uses electrical power to add force to the output water. There are also scams based on devices that supposedly increase the output water pressure ''without'' using any externally-provided power, but this is a physical impossibility. The force of the water coming out can't be greater than the force of the water coming in, or a perpetual-motion device could be constructed with the water running in a loop and the added force being tapped to power a generator. At most, the output pressure will be the same as that of the water supply, in the limiting case of zero flow, less any frictional losses within the device.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:[A picture shows a (partly obscured by the panel) particle accelerator (namely this one being the Large Hadron Collider at CERN). Megan is shown on a stepladder, covering the beam pipe with her thumb. Cueball is shown standing behind the ladder, watching.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:This year's physics Nobel will go to the scientists who figured out that you could make the Large Hadron Collider more powerful by covering part of the beam pipe with your thumb.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Physics]]

3256: Nostalgia Content

2026-06-09T12:33:02Z

Kvarts314: /* Explanation */ Added missing word

{{comic
| number = 3256
| date = June 8, 2026
| title = Nostalgia Content
| image = nostalgia_content_2x.png
| imagesize = 276x404px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Gen-Z got a chunk of the Carboniferous, and now all their memes are about how pathetic and small today's dragonflies are.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a Prototaxites. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
Nostalgia memes are a common form of internet content referring back time-specific cultural references such as toy fads or media releases. Because people of different ages have different cultural touchpoints, different nostalgia content will resonate with them. In the example in the comic, {{w|Pogs}} (a collectable game that became a fad in the early 1990s) and {{w|Tamagotchi}}s (an electronic pet that came into production in 1996, and previously the subject of [[1546|another comic]]) had their heydays at around the same time, so content including these would both appeal to people who were children around that time.

This comic suggests that this content is controlled by some kind of central database, rather than the memories of random internet posters. Due to an error, this particular grouping now also erroneously contains the {{w|Prototaxites}} and armoured fish ({{w|Placodermi}}) of the {{w|Devonian}} period. The Devonian ended 359 million years ago, long before humans existed, so there is no obvious reason to include them in a nostalgia meme database, since no-one would ever have had the opportunity to be nostalgic about them, and even if anyone had, they would, be long dead by now.

Prototaxites (in the original comic, "Parataxites"; see "Trivia", below) were huge fungus-like organisms. Placoderms, which appeared during the {{w|Silurian}} and Devonian periods, were among the first jawed fish, and the first fish clade to have pectoral fins. Devonian placoderms include Dunkleosteus, Titanichthys, Bothriolepis, and Rhamphodopsis. Silurian placoderms include Xiushanosteus, Entelognathus and Qilinyu. There was also Sacabambaspis from the {{w|Ordovician}}, although that was an earlier jawless fish which also had armour.

The title text essentially repeats the joke, with Gen Z getting a chunk of the {{w|Carboniferous}} mixed up in their nostalgia memes. During the Late Carboniferous, {{w|griffinflies}}, such as those placed in the genus {{w|Meganeura}}, were prolific. Meganeura species resembled today's dragonflies, with the notable difference of having wingspans of up to 65 cm long, which would obviously dwarf modern dragonflies. However, this change happened over millions of years (with the even larger {{w|Meganeuropsis}} living about 290 million years ago, which was solidly in the Permian), and in Gen Z's time the dragonflies are as small as ever, hence the ridicule. This may be referencing a particular class of nostalgia meme complaining about how {{w|Wagon_Wheels#Production_and_size|product ''x''}} was bigger back when a particular generation were children. In some cases this reflects a geniune phenomenon due to {{w|shrinkflation}}; in others it is a form of {{w|rosy retrospection}}.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[Cueball is standing, with his arms out, in front of a Prototaxite structure towering over a mossy landscape. To his right, a Tamagotchi (bottom-left) and bottle-cap-like Pogs (top-left) appear. The three pogs that can be seen show a skull with a snake through its eyeball, a figure 8 and a star (three more pogs are also shown, but have obscured pictures).]
:Cueball: Who else remembers pogs? Tamagotchis? Vast forests of Prototaxites towering over the mossy landscape as armored fish stir in the deep?
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Due to a database error, millennial nostalgia now includes a portion of the early Devonian.

==Trivia==
Cueball had originally incorrectly refered to the huge fungus-like organisms as "Parataxites", but the text in the comic was later corrected to read Prototaxites. "Parataxites" might be an accidental pun/thinko on {{w|parataxis}}, of which Cueball's speech is an example.

As revealed in the {{w|Prototaxites|Wikipedia article}}, the taxonomy and ecology of Prototaxites remain in dispute. Prototaxites might have been related to fungi, to algae, or to a lineage of eukaryotic organisms that is no longer extant, and its 8-meter length might have been erect ("tree-like") or prostrate on the ground (or in the water).

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Time]]
[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]
[[Category:Comics edited after their publication]]

3255: Planetary Science

2026-06-05T13:08:24Z

82.132.238.93: /* Explanation */ Originally wanted to use "terrestriality", or maybe "terrestrialness", to say it 'simpler' and with fewer padding words, but chickened out regarding whether it would be understood as intended.

{{comic
| number = 3255
| date = June 5, 2026
| title = Planetary Science
| image = planetary_science_2x.png
| imagesize = 277x388px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The research was overseen by the Institutional Review Board, which is what I named my surfboard.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is presented as a scientific article in which astronomers claim to have discovered "evidence for liquid water on the surface of a {{w|terrestrial planet}} in the {{w|habitable zone}}". Finding other planets that have liquid water is a notable result, as water is considered necessary to support life, or at least Earth-like life on sufficiently Earth-like (i.e. terrestrial) planets that allow sufficient liquid water to exist. So a terrestrial planet with liquid water would be far more likely to have some form of recognisable life on it, compared to one that does not, and especially compared to a location that is increasingly unlike even being terrestrial. (Alternative forms of life may exist, with other environmental cues replacing the need for liquid water or even a more general terrestrial nature. But we are somewhat limited to expectations that match more the directly observable nature of life.)

However, the accompanying photos (four people on a beach, two sitting under an umbrella and one making sand castles) suggest that the planet in question is {{w|Earth}}. This would not be considered a noteworthy discovery, since we already know about the existence of life on Earth, and the 'evidence' for the liquid water also evidences (at least in the apparent form of highly conspicuous vacationing visitors) the presence of life, so this article is hardly useful or practical.

There is value in using Earth as an example of a planet in a habitable zone, such as [https://www.nasa.gov/universe/atacama-rover-astrobiology-drilling-studies-arads/ testing life-detection experiments in remote inhospitable environments] or [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-would-we-know-theres-life-on-earth-this-bold-experiment-found-out/ as a proxy for future astronomical observations], but not in-situ photographic investigation. Maybe the astronomers should have brought their {{w|spectrometer}} on vacation.

An {{w|institutional review board}} is a committee of researchers which ensures that research carried out at their institution is ethical. In the title text, this is claimed to be the literal name of a {{w|surfboard}}, which is a board used for the recreational activity of {{w|surfing}}, and not serious academic activities ([https://www.cornwall.ac.uk/courses/fdsc-surf-science-degree/ mostly]). Presumably, one of the researchers has been using their research time to take a surfing holiday, and is trying to justify it by misleadingly claiming that the Institutional Review Board was involved. 'The Institutional Review Board' is a very strange name for a surfboard, and the only purpose for calling it this would seem to be for this (somewhat bad) excuse.

The comic may also be a reference to the Movie/Book "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir (The former releasing a few months before the comics release). In it, the protaginist (a microbiologist by the name of Ryland Grace), releases a paper refuting the idea that water is nessecary for life, and in it, calls people names and gives the section titles (by standards of scientific papers) some vulgar words. Which is of course not taken to kindly by his peers as it's not standard practice to call someone an idiot in a scientific paper.{{Citation needed}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[An article from a journal is shown.]
:[Title of journal article:] Evidence for Liquid Water on the Surface of a Terrestrial Planet in the Habitable Zone
:[Below the title are four lines of blurred text presumably representing the name of the author or authors and their affiliations. Below that, the text of the article is blurred, displayed in two columns. There are three sections of blurred text each with a blurred boldface heading. Two pictures are included amid the blurred text. The picture in the left column shows the sea running alongside a beach. The picture in the right column shows Jill and Kidball playing at the beach, with Jill running and Kidball building a sandcastle, while Cueball and Megan are sitting under a beach umbrella watching them.]
:[Caption below the article:]
:Planetary science journals have asked astronomers to please stop submitting their vacation photos.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring children]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Kidball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]]
[[Category:Scientific research]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

3254: Detector

2026-06-03T21:10:52Z

82.13.184.33: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3254
| date = June 3, 2026
| title = Detector
| image = detector_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x272px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = No other experiment has a lower false negative rate.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Ponytail]] and [[Hairy]] are showing [[Cueball]] various (out-of-frame) detectors in this room, which include an {{w|electron microscope}} (which showers a target with electrons and images their reflections), an XRF scanner (i.e. "{{w|X-ray fluorescence}}", which hits a target with high-energy X-rays and measures the spectrum of the fluorescence they emit) and a {{w|mass spectrometer}} (which measures the mass-to-charge ratio of ions to determine the proportions of particular isotopes present in a sample).

The sensitivity of a detector can vary. [[3249: Neutrino Project|Neutrino detectors]] try to detect neutrinos, but neutrinos are very hard to measure so can only give data for a very low number of the actual neutrinos that could possibly have been measured. Devices being more sensitive means that they can detect (and perhaps quantify) far lower quantities/magnitudes of the targeted phenomena, and/or more of those that might otherwise have been missed.

For the device seen in the comic, however, "more sensitive" seems to mean that it is sensitive to more ''different'' things. To quote Ponytail, it detects "gas, dust, particles, light, radio waves, gamma rays, protons, neutrons, electrons, fields, forces, events, potentials, or states", which runs almost the entire gamut of things that ''might'' be detectable, and leaves little room for there being any situation in which none of the aforementioned items are there to be detected. Some or all of the wide range of the detectable things are also going to be present in detectable quantities in practically ''any'' location that they might feasibly be monitoring. If it is monitoring the immediate area, the constituent particles of the machine itself would be present for detection, and exist in "states" and have "potentials" relative to each other, assuming that the machine is sensitive enough (in the traditional sense) to detect them.

Normally, detectors have a designated detecting job, such as the aforementioned off-panel devices which can provide complex imagery or a profile of a sample's composition. For example, smoke detectors merely detect the presence or absence of smoke (usually as a safety device, rather than a piece of scientific equipment), and only need to alert the user if there is smoke identified. Detecting multiple things is likely to be problematic, as it will become difficult to know ''which'' of the things has been detected. In this case, where it is essentially detecting everything, it renders the detector pretty much useless.

It might have some use if it was capable of discerning nuances (such as relative quantities, differing proportions or even which detectable thing is the most significant presence in any given set of measurements), but its output boils down to merely whether it has (or has not) detected ''something'' from its extensive list of detectables. By any reasonable assumption, this would mean that it is only ever going to need to indicate that it has "Detected" things, leaving the possibility of displaying that it has "Not Detected" things as a redundant function.

Cueball points this out, and Hairy admits that it ''has'' been continuously lit this way ever since they turned it on. Ponytail's shock at the idea of the light labeled "Not Detected" shining, and Hairy's assessment that that would be 'pretty bad' reflect the fact that if there would no matter, light, forces, etc. within the detector's established range of detection the universe would probably have changed in some radically fundamental way that could have serious consequences for humanity. (They seem not to consider the possibility of the detector not working properly — the contextual reactions of those most familiar with it seem to show a faith that the detector is still likely to be faithfully summarising the true status.)

One possible scenario that might cause a "Not Detected" result could be a {{w|false vacuum}} decay event which, depending on the particular details of the true vacuum, could alter or overwrite the fundamental laws of physics as we know them. This would indeed be "bad" for, among other things, the persistence of life on Earth. However, in such a scenario the detector itself would presumably also be rendered at least inoperable, and possibly non-existent, with a similar fate befalling any observer who might have been around to witness the changing output.

There might still be an unavoidably built-in uncertainty. [[1132: Frequentists vs. Bayesians]] was a previous comic featuring a more specific detector that tells whether the Sun has gone nova (also a very bad scenario, even if less cosmically extreme), but incorporates some risk of conveying an inaccurate output (again, the people familiar with this device do not seem to feel the need to consider it as potentially inaccurate). If the characters are lying (or were themselves lied to) it may not even be a real detector, but just a machine with continuous power, on the basis that atoms would normally be found in and around the detector as well as light (e.g. from the indicator light itself), {{w|Fundamental interaction|force potentials}}, etc.

While the detector presented here is obviously facetious, the comic does allude to a real problem: detectors looking for very rare events (e.g. {{w|neutrinoless double beta decay}}) have to be extremely sensitive to detect their target events. Consequently, they may also be triggered by many other things, requiring extensive shielding (e.g. built underground in abandoned mine shafts) to provide any useful data.

The title text states that the machine has a lower {{w|false negative}} rate than any other detector device. If it never has stated a negative (i.e. explicit non-detection, being a different scenario from a power-outage or indicator failure that just causes the "Detected" light to stop being lit), then it can never have been ''wrong'' about it being negative. It's also possible that the "Not Detected" light is just set up ''never'' to be lit, [[2236: Is it Christmas?|playing the odds]].

It is not made clear to us what circumstances would legitimately result in a negative state being indicated. Nor, apart from the concerned expectations of Hairy and Ponytail, whether the detector will then necessarily correctly state that. It might still fail to properly respond to the new situation, just continuing to provide an incorrect indication that all is 'normal' (on the assumption that the device both still exists ''and'' functions, under such extraordinary circumstances), and result in a {{w|false positive}} instead. For many possible reasons, the chances and consequences of any displayed false positive may bear no relation to that of a false negative (i.e. the "Not Detected" light could always be 100% accurate (leading to Hairy's "bad" scenario), yet any given cessation of detections often fails to stop "Detected" from being indicated (being just as "bad" but, as the icing on an already possibly unpalatable cake, also with the detector being functionally wrong)).

==Transcript==
:[Hairy is standing to the right of a large machine labeled "Detector". The front of the machine has two lights, labeled "Detected" and "Not detected". The "detected" light is lit up in green. Ponytail and Cueball walk towards the machine from the left.]
:Ponytail: Over there are our electron microscope, XRF scanner, and mass spectrometer.
:Ponytail: And this is our most sensitive detector.
:Cueball: What does it detect?

:[The next panel zooms in on the detector. Ponytail's voice comes from the left of the panel.]
:Ponytail (off-panel): Lots of stuff.
:Ponytail (off-panel): Gas, dust, particles, light, radio waves, gamma rays, protons, neutrons, electrons, fields, forces, events, potentials, or states.

:[The next panel zooms out. Cueball and Ponytail are standing to the left of the machine, and Hairy on the right.]
:Cueball: I don't understand. Aren't most of those ''always'' present?
:Hairy: Yeah, it's been saying "detected" continuously since we turned it on.

:[Cueball and Ponytail still standing to the left of the machine, and Hairy on the right. Ponytail has her hand on her chin.]
:Cueball: What happens if it says "not detected"?
:Ponytail: Oh gosh.
:Hairy: That would be pretty bad, I think.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Statistics]]

3253: Sunbeam

2026-06-01T15:23:41Z

82.132.236.149: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3253
| date = June 1, 2026
| title = Sunbeam
| image = sunbeam_2x.png
| imagesize = 398x347px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = While weather control is typically thought of as a superpower, the unconscious ability of astronomers and astrophotographers to summon clouds is more properly classified as a curse.
}}

==Explanation==

{{w|Astrophotography}} is the act of taking pictures of very distant objects. Common subjects of astrophotography include celestial bodies like planets and moons of the solar system, faraway galaxies, nebulae, spacecraft, or even {{w|Hubble Deep Field|empty patches of the sky}}.

In order to take such photos, one needs to know where these objects are in the sky. One major problem faced by Earth-based astrophotographers (most of them) is the fact that the Earth rotates.{{Citation needed}} As the Earth rotates, it creates the illusion that the celestial objects being photographed are rotating through the night sky. In order to get clear pictures of their subjects, astrophotographers must develop a strong understanding of how objects like a galaxy or the Sun move through the sky, so that their cameras can compensate for this rotation and produce clear pictures.

This understanding of how objects move through the sky due to the Earth's rotation is the minor superpower referred to in the comic. As the Sun is an example of an object in the sky, the intuition of astrophotographers allows them to predict where the Sun will be in the future, and by extension, where the light flooding in through the window will be in the future. With this knowledge, [[Cueball]], who presumably has this minor superpower, can advise his friends to sit at the far table to avoid the light from the window hitting them. Though extra light may sometimes be considered desirable, in this case such direct sunlight would probably be considered problematic as there may be excessive heat and/or light. By contrast, the table currently beyond the beams of sunlight would be a perfectly acceptable place to sit and would remain so. There is a chance however that it doesn't actually matter in this scenario which table to sit at, and Cueball is just saying it to show off his ability.

This comic probably takes place in the Northern Hemisphere, more specifically being north of the Sun's current ground-track (i.e. the line through the tropics which experience the Sun being directly overhead on any given day of the year, which changes over the course of the year, due to the axial tilt of the Earth). In both hemispheres, the Sun can be found rising in the east in the morning, at its highest at around midday (exactly at true local midday, but must be adjusted for timezone issues such as the [[1799: Bad Map Projection: Time Zones|offset from the nominal local datum]] and [[:Category:Daylight saving time|DST]] effects), then setting in the west in the evening (at least until you get close enough to the poles to experience no, or barely any, day or night according to the time of year). Therefore, in the subtropical and temperate latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, a shadow (and, by being framed by shadows, the light flooding in through windows) typically moves in a clockwise direction, from westerly, then north, then easterly. Similarly, shadows in the Southern Hemisphere move counter-clockwise, from a western direction, via south, eventually towards east. The light from the window in the comic is predicted to move from the center to the left, a clockwise rotation, consistent with the comic being set in the Northern Hemisphere, especially as this comic has been released almost in the middle of the time of the year where this scenario happens only to places north of the equator.

(The declinated angle of the Sun through the window is hard to measure, and without even knowing the time of day we cannot hope to further narrow down the true latitude of the location and which direction the window faces. It is typical that, in temperate northern latitudes, major windows like the one shown are set to face as close to south as the orientation of buildings/rooms allow, to make the best use of daylight, particularly in the winter months. It is also not an unreasonable assumption that this meeting (or perhaps meal) is occurring not long before/after noon, or even during it, with the Sun then approaching its zenith. Overall, it would be possible to see something very like this scene play out for [[Randall]] in his current home location, of around 42°N, at this time of year.)

The title text talks about another minor "superpower" that astrophotographers have, which makes clouds always seem to show up in front of the night sky. This "ability" is really just an example of {{w|Murphy's Law}}: astrophotographers may feel that clouds always appear when they do because they interfere with their work by ruining their photos, making their presence more noticeable than their absence. This unhelpful effect is why it is claimed that this is more accurately considered {{tvtropes|BlessedWithSuck|a curse}}. If it was a conscious ability it could sometimes helpful, by giving them the power to move clouds in front of the Sun to provide shade.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball, Megan, and White Hat are in a large, relatively dim room, presumably a restaurant, with two tables and a large window with 4 panels and an integrated semi-circular 'fanlight' top-section. The window is casting a large window-shaped sunbeam between the two tables.]
:Cueball: Let's take the far table.
:Cueball: The closer one will be in the sun soon.
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Astrophotography gives you exactly one extremely minor superpower.
{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Photography]]

3252: Ancestral Genomes

2026-05-29T17:44:41Z

RG: It is I, the vanquisher of Incomplete notices for after their 1-2 weeks of being funny. Unless it's you know, incomplete.

{{comic
| number = 3252
| date = May 29, 2026
| title = Ancestral Genomes
| image = ancestral_genomes_2x.png
| imagesize = 299x416px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH: No further research is needed as it is frankly none of our business.
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|genotype}} is the complete genetic makeup of an individual(i.e. all of its genes). In humans, genotypes are almost always inherited from an individual’s parents; the two parents’ genotypes combine during sexual reproduction to form the genotype of the child. {{w|mutation|Mutations}} do occur, where parts of the DNA change randomly in a way that gives rise to a new genotype, and [https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/october-21-2017-1.4363723/how-many-mutant-genes-does-a-person-have-1.4363741 each human has about 60 such mutations, on average,] out of about 20,000 genes. However, most mutations are "silent", not causing any visible changes. Depending on the behavior of the mutation and if it occurs to any gamete cells or those that produce them, it may spread throughout a population, or disappear again, or end up only being present in a certain fraction of the population. Either way, when studying a genotype, it is ''exceedingly rare'' to not arise through sexual intercourse, and impossible to spread throughout the population without it. As modern-day genetics researchers, [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] should definitely know this.

Currently in the United States, topics around sex are at least partially considered taboo. This taboo most strictly covers depictions of sex and nudity in media, which are usually the domain of pornography and less mainstream art forms (e.g. nude photography). Megan defending them as not being “weirdos” suggests that she does not want to break the taboo. In academia, such topics are generally part of regular scientific discussion, including depictions and descriptions that would be considered offensive in other circumstances (for example, Wikimedia Commons contains many depictions of sexual intercourse for scientific and educational purposes). While some researchers, like the ones depicted in the comic, might be offended by such “lewd” content, most would have no problem with it as long as it furthers the research on the topic at hand. Real-world biologists or geneticists would most likely not be offended by these issues, as sexual reproduction is a common, or even predominant, topic in both fields. Furthermore, the obscenity of the topic (genetic distributions affected by sexual reproduction) is very low in comparison to fields that deal with intercourse directly. This view seems to be shared by the off-screen commenter in the comic.

What is more problematic, and also addressed by the researcher’s comments, is the privacy of the individuals in the population under examination. Using such data, it might be possible to figure out who had intercourse with whom, possibly reducing the timeframe to within less than a year, based on the offspring’s age. However, since the analysis depicted likely takes place over many generations within a population, and is done on historical data, it is likely that the vast majority of the people whose genomes were analyzed are no longer alive. This is supported by the description of the population as “ancestral”. Beyond a certain point, even private data pertaining to deceased people is no longer considered sensitive, as it becomes the subject of history. The only problematic part is the ancestral information for living individuals, which is indeed worthy of protection—but not for the reasons given.

The title text is a reference to [[2268: Further Research is Needed]]. This one is based on the fact that most scientific papers contain a section suggesting future research avenues. This is done in the hope that other researchers will pick up where the authors have left off, or to announce the author’s own intentions for follow-up work (though a cynical mind might interpret it as a play for additional funding for the authors). By contrast, here Megan and Cueball are both averse to the idea of future research, because of the qualms they have expressed about decency, which is ironic given the reason for the section.

Genetics and sex have also appeared in [[830: Genetic Analysis]]. Presenting outlandish or plain bad/incorrect research has been a common topic, such as in [[3129: Archaeology Research]] and [[3000: Experimental Astrophysics]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are shown, with Megan using a pointer stick to point at a diagram on a poster. The diagram features tree/root structure with a single node at the top end, branching solid lines leading to more nodes across several levels in most cases, but with at least one node that does not propogate this way and some dotted lines linking down from some branches into other ones. The increasingly branching lower tracks becoming so dense that it almost looks like dark triangles at the bottom of the diagram's last obvious bifurcations. Small and unreadable labels/symbols feature next to most linking lines, and more extensive (but still totally unreadable) information is placed below each of the lowermost 'triangular' terminating clumps.]
:Megan: Our admixture analysis showed that these genotypes arose in the ancestral population almost entirely through sexual intercourse.
:Megan: Upon realizing this, we of course promptly deleted all our data.
:Off-screen voice: What? Why??
:Megan: We're not '''''weirdos!'''''
:Megan: Jeez, give these people some privacy!

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Sex]]

3251: Time Machine Conversation

2026-05-27T21:06:49Z

82.13.184.33: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3251
| date = May 27, 2026
| title = Time Machine Conversation
| image = time_machine_conversation_2x.png
| imagesize = 691x344px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's possible to do sea navigation without a compass, but you'll have to get some spoilers from the Polynesians.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] has used a time machine to travel to the {{w|Iron Age}} and has a conversation with an ancient-times version of [[Hairbun]] (who seems to be a farmer, since she's holding a pretty modern-looking {{w|Hoe (tool)|hoe}} and seems to be particularly knowledgable of the 'latest' {{w|plow}} developments). However, he is very surprised to find that she does not know about the {{w|compass}} (a very common tool in the present day). The magnetic compass was first invented in China around 200 BCE, well after the end of the Iron Age, and it wasn't used for navigation until the 11th century AD. For an Iron Age farmer the concept of a 'weird rock that always points north', as Cueball puts it, would seem quite ridiculous, and the inherent dangers of sea travel might well seem to be insurmountable ones. The subject of how many things that today are seen as perfectly normal and standard could seem very strange to those who lived before they were created has been [[3199|covered]] [[2809|before]] in xkcd.

Cueball inadvertently starts explaining compasses and then worries about the impact his words might have. According to common {{tvtropes|TimeTravel|time travel tropes}}, this interaction might cause a chain of events that will lead to {{w|grandfather paradox|Cueball not existing}}, or {{tvtropes|butterflyofdoom|worse}}, which would create a paradox (if it isn't already already a different kind of paradox through being {{w|Novikov self-consistency principle|a pre-existing component of Cueball's original timeline}}). However, rather than the potential radical impact he might have on history by introducing this concept earlier than should have happened, he appears to be concerned that he may have given her a {{w|Spoiler (media)|spoiler}} for upcoming history[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg4mcdhIsvU]. Presumably he feels he has deprived her (or humankind more generally) of the joy that would have come with its eventual discovery.

He is then also concerned that he has managed to 'spoilerise' the concept of 'the spoiler'. The modern meaning of "spoiler" didn't arise until the 1970s, which post-date the Iron Age.{{Citation needed}} Spoiler warnings became common on {{w|Usenet newsgroup}}s in the late 1980s. Cueball may have created a temporal paradox by introducing the concept thousands of years earlier, although any such 'change' made to that time might easily have been forgotten again in the two or three thousand years since this encounter. In any event, while telling people thousands of years ago that there was a way to make a compass might have changed history significantly, telling them that there are stories that they would enjoy less if they knew the ending before hearing the story seems less likely to have made a significant impact. It's also likely that, even if the term 'spoiler' was adopted by these Iron Age people, it would long have fallen out of use by the time it came to be invented in the late twentieth century.

The title text has Cueball about to unleash another 'spoiler' regarding how to navigate without a compass, but he stops himself before saying it. However, he does still end up accidentally revealing that {{w|Polynesians}} know about it, though whether this was another unintentional slip or a deliberate clue left for Hairbun is unclear. It is thought that so-called '{{w|Polynesian navigation}}' used other methods of marine navigation ({{w|celestial navigation}}, observation of birds, ocean swells, and wind patterns). As the Polynesians lived in the Pacific, which would probably be unknown to Hairbun and difficult to reach from her location, the clue is likely to be of little use. It is unclear where Hairbun is, but it is likely that she is in {{w|Europe}} or the area around the {{w|Arabian Peninsula}}, where the term 'Iron Age' is most relevant, and which are quite far from the Pacific. Revealing the existence of the Pacific and its inhabitants to her may cause its own disruptions to history, though. Cueball also seems to have forgotten the possibility of chatting to the Vikings, who may have used polarized crystals to be able to navigate during overcast days when the Sun wasn't visible, although there is little evidence for this being done during the Iron Age.

Whether or not this was an intentional connection, the stars known by some as "{{w|the Plough}}" (''Ursa Major'', perhaps more popularly known as "the Big Dipper" in the US) are also useful in finding the northern {{w|pole star}} (not the same star then as now but still in the same constellation), hence potentially linking both of the farmer's initial remarks.

The comic is based on shaky ground, as it's not clear how they're able to communicate so easily, unless it's {{tvtropes|TranslatorMicrobes|part of the function}} of the time-travel technology. While humans did have language for thousands of years by this time, it would be very far removed from modern English, yet somehow they understand each other's speech. It also appears that the ''very existence of time travel'' is not considered a spoiler for an Iron Age person, or even in any way remarkable to them — this might imply that the farmer is already very well aware of such phenomena (or even that Cueball {{tvtropes|TimeTravelTenseTrouble|will later have already}} visited the same society/farmer at an earlier date), which may be one way to explain apparently fluent conversational American English being spoken.

Time travel is a [[:Category:Time travel|recurring theme]] on xkcd.

==Transcript==

:[Cueball is on the left with a ghostly halo around him. Hairbun is on the right, holding a hoe vertically.]
:Cueball: Oh hi! Guess my time machine works. How's life in the Iron Age?
:Hairbun: Not bad. Developing new kinds of plows.
:Cueball: Cool.
:Hairbun: And my brother was just lost at sea.

:[Only Cueball is shown, with Hairbun out of the panel.]
:Cueball: I'm sorry.
:Hairbun [from outside the right side]: It's OK. I think sea navigation is probably impossible.

:[Cueball and Hairbun are both shown again.]
:Cueball: Oh yeah, you don't have the compass, right?
:Hairbun: The what?
:Cueball: The weird rock that always points north?
:Hairbun: What are you '''talking''' about?

:[Cueball and Hairbun are both shown. Cueball holds his hand to his chin.]
:Cueball: It '''does''' sound ridiculous when I say it out loud. Anyway, spoilers for the magnetic compass. Sorry.
:Hairbun: What's a spoiler?
:Cueball: ...Spoilers for the concept of a spoiler, too.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Time travel]]

3250: Flag Design

2026-05-25T21:57:43Z

Abcasada: /* Flag features */ Adjust link text

{{comic
| number = 3250
| date = May 25, 2026
| title = Flag Design
| image = flag_design_2x.png
| imagesize = 678x428px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Every place has a local cryptid; more places need a local Pictish Beast, a creature in historical art that's drawn so weirdly that no one can tell what animal it's supposed to be.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a recursive flag. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

This comic is a parody of normal flag designs, but with comically exaggerated features to the point of ridicule. For example, animals and stars are common features on flags. However normal flags are mostly flat rectangles (except for the {{w|flag of Nepal}}), and lack interactive elements like buttons.{{Citation needed}} It is designed similarly to the [[xkcd Phone]] series, with a number of improbable, labeled features making the flag resemble a combination of a graphic arts doodle, financial instrument, paper flyer, and webpage. The caption of "I think our flag design committee really knocked it out of the park" references the common problem of {{w|design by committee}}, where a design made without a unifying vision, but rather many compromises between competing visions, results in overcomplexity, banality and internal contradictions, all of which are present on this flag.

The title text references the animal on the flag, with [[Randall]] expressing his opinion that more places should use hard-to-distinguish representations of animals, like on this flag. A {{w|cryptid}} is an animal, such as the {{w|Loch Ness Monster}}, whose existence is disputed or unproven by science. As Randall notes, {{w|List_of_cryptids#List|many places have a local cryptid}}, and he appears to think this renders them less interesting than ''real'' animals that cannot be unambiguously identified from their cultural representations. One such example is the {{w|Pictish Beast}}, an unidentified animal depicted in many stone carvings across Scotland.

A number of real flags feature simplified versions of themselves in their design, such as the flags of the {{w|Flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan|Islamic Republic of Afghanistan}}, {{w|Flag of Bolivia|Bolivia}}, {{w|Flag of Costa Rica|Costa Rica}}, the {{w|Flag of the Dominican Republic|Dominican Republic}}, {{w|Flag of Ecuador|Ecuador}}, {{w|Flag of El Salvador|El Salvador}}, {{w|Flag of Haiti|Haiti}} and {{w|Flag of Venezuela|Venezuela}}.

Daft and improbable flags have also been the subject of [[1815: Flag]] and [[2528: Flag Map Sabotage]].

=== Flag features ===

{| class="wikitable"
|+ From the top, going clockwise
|-
! Feature !! Description !! What this has to do with flags
|-
| A rough drawing of an unusual, and possible chimeric, creature in grey. || In the title text, Randall relates it to the {{w|Pictish Beast}}, an animal that appears frequently in the {{w|early medieval}} culture of the {{w|Picts}} of Scotland, and which has provoked much debate about what animal it is meant to represent. Randall has flipped this around, taking an animal whose identity is disputed and incorporating it into a cultural artefact in an attempt to get assistance with identifying it.
Another possible candidate for the creature is the {{w|Questing Beast}}, which has some versions of its legendary description that could relate to the drawn form of the flag's representation.
| Several flags, and even more so many coats of arms, have animals on them, often one native to, or heraldically representative of, the polity the flag belongs to. Some are quite abstract, making it difficult for the uninformed to identify the original animal (though not so much so as in this flag).
|-
| National flag || Incorporating a flag into another flag is not uncommon, such as with the {{w|Union Jack#Use in other flags|Union Jack}} found in the flags of many current and former British colonies and territories, or with national flags being included in naval ensigns, but a flag that includes a smaller version of itself as a detail is a novelty. Typically, such inclusions are to indicate a link to the entity whose flag is included, but in this case it would be self-referential and meaningless. This could also cause an issue by leading to a {{w|Droste effect|recursive loop}} of nested flags, similar to in [[878: Model Rail]], but thankfully this feature is omitted in the smaller, included flag.|| Occasionally flags do include miniaturized representations of themselves, often through including a coat of arms that itself includes the flag, such as the {{w|flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan}} in use from 2013 to 2021. That flag, like this one, simplifies the nested design enough to avoid further recursion.
|-
| Island (not a specific island, just a tribute to islands in general) || A map showing an island and two small islets. || Elements on flags often have hidden meanings that aren't obvious at first glance, such as a hidden map of the country on it. This is an example of an element with a near-complete lack of meaning whatsoever: an outline of an island that doesn't refer to a specific island. It is also one of the many random and strange tributes on this flag. The {{w|flag of Cyprus}} contains an outline of the island of Cyprus, and the {{w|flag of Tuvalu}} contains stars symbolizing the islands of that country.
|-
| Tap here to pay taxes || This is the icon often used on payment cards to indicate the availability of contactless payment. Besides the inherent ridiculousness of adding such a feature to a flag, flags are generally flown very high so that they can easily be seen, making RFID-activated features, which typically require relatively close proximity, difficult to use. || This may be riffing on the {{w|flag of South Korea}}, which includes four trigrams which could (if you squint) be considered to look somewhat like this logo.
|-
| Tribute to topology || {{w|Topology}} is the study of the underlying geometric form of things. Most flags have a very simple topology, being a single sheet of material. A strip along the edge of this flag appears to have been separated and twisted by one half-turn to turn the flag into a {{w|Möbius strip}}. This would be difficult to do in real life without disconnecting and gluing, sewing or otherwise affixing parts of the flag together. || A few flags are known among {{w|vexillologists}} for having {{w|List of flags with reverses that differ from the obverse|different front and back sides}}. Talking about the "front and back sides" of a Möbius strip flag is conceptually difficult. Also many flags include notable {{w|topography|topo''graphic''}} features, such as mountains, rivers, etc., and Randall may have deliberately confused the two terms.
|-
| GDPR consent || GDPR refers to the European Union's {{w|General Data Protection Regulation}}, a law about privacy of personal information that seems mostly to result in websites displaying complicated (and iffy) methods of disabling unwanted data-gathering if you do not just 'accept everything'. The flag apparently includes similar buttons for the 'user' to interact with, which implies the flag somehow collects data about people who view (or touch) it. This may be related to the "Tap here to pay taxes" feature. Of note is the "customize" option, implying that the flag can somehow present a range of data processing options for the 'user' to select from, albeit that this particular 'button' appears to be shown as disabled and thus unavailable. (Some real-world versions of such accept/customise dialogues do at first present inactive configuration/rejection choices, to try to nudge visitors into accepting the default "Accept All", but will activate all the options either after a short time or after scrolling the nagging popover, to at least ''technically'' comply with the rules that forced them to offer this choice, without making it easier to reject them all than they have to.) The technology or design features it uses to do this are unknown.
Alternatively, this flag could be designed to be embedded as a display on some form of console, where this and the "Tap here to pay taxes" features would make some sense, and the version on the physical flag could end up being purely cosmetic, like the power level and other status bar information includeed on a prior [[Flag]] design.
| The possibility that merely looking at a flag would commit you to some sharing of personal data is a troublesome concept (even more so than with webpages, where it is already a known, but seemingly inevitable, issue). The apparent provision of the ability to customize this would ''seem'' to be better than given no option, but it may well be impossible or impractical to do so.
Raw text is also rare, [https://www.countryflags.com/tags/text/ but not unknown], in national flags, and in those cases is still intended to represent the respective nation's identity and not serve as a non-flaglike function, like this element or the citizenship one.
|-
| Interested in citizenship? Take one! || This is a rather unorthodox method of gaining new citizens, which mimics a form of advertising that typically provides contact details on each strip and allows people to take them away and contact the advertiser at their own convenience with an expression of interest. This has the same accessibility problems as the previous two interactive features, in that it would be difficult to reach the strips to tear them off when the flag is flown high. Additionally flags are generally designed to be hard to tear. The design of the flag within the flag implies that the strips that have been torn off are part of the flag design rather than due to use. This may be an intentional attempt to create {{w|artificial demand}} by falsifying {{w|social proof}}: making it look like citizenship is in demand and thereby making it more desirable. Alternatively, the central flag may automatically update to reflect the removed strips, using the same unknown fabric-screen technology as the GDPR interface. || There are some flags (such as {{w|flag of the Republic of Venice|that of the Republic of Venice}}) which have a fringed design similar to this. However, none have pull-off strips!

The {{w|United States Flag Code}} forbids flying a tattered US flag. This is in stark contrast with the design here, where the flag might get more and more 'tattered' with time by design.
|-
| Rounded corners || Rounded corners are a way to display {{w|graphical widget}}s in computer interfaces for purely aesthetic reasons (as progressively happened to the [https://cdn.geekzone.co.nz/images/blog/startevolution.JPG Start Button] from Windows XP to 7). It isn't unlikely that this flag-feature is being used to parody the trend of making virtual objects (often inherently rectangular) look more like smooth-edged physical objects. Could be a reference to how many everyday objects have rounded corners to reduce risk of injury or make them more pleasant to use, although this is a moot point with flags since they are generally constructed using cloth that are based upon perpendicular warp and weft and are edge cut (then edge-seamed) in line with the respective thread-directions. Molded, cast or otherwise machined physical objects with rounded corners may be more durable, as stresses no longer concentrate at sharp corners, nor are those corners the natural first points of any impact, although whether this logic applies to a flag highly depends upon whether the halyard is attached to the flag via a heading or by sewn-in grommets (which is usually accounted for by further stitching used at and around the hoist-side's attachment points), as well as how well the fabric used tolerates non-square cutting.
|| Unusual, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary, as some flags do have {{w|List of non-rectangular flags|unorthodox shapes}}.
|-
| EURion anti-counterfeit mark || The "{{w|EURion constellation}}" is a pattern of symbols used as an anti-counterfeiting measure often incorporated in design of a number of secure documents, such as banknotes, checks, and ownership title certificates. Flags are not secure documents and therefore do not require anti-counterfeiting measures. || The purpose of flags is to be seen, and it is usually desirable for them to be easy to replicate - quite unlike this flag! Artistically enough, the anti-counterfeit marks increase the difficulty of copying it.
|-
| Jaunty angle || Implies that the flag is NOT being viewed at an angle, but rather that it is, in fact, a slanted parallelogram in shape (or would be, if not for the rounded corners, moebius band feature and removed strips). This could have some unintended consequences when flown on a pole, although, as a flag is rarely seen perfectly straight (under the varying effects of wind and/or gravity, when raised on a flagpole), this might not be particularly noticeable. || {{w|Flag of Nepal|Nepal's flag}} is notable for being the only non-rectangular national flag. A slightly off-rectangular flag makes things awkward for people drawing or otherwise trying to represent it and, as with the rounded corners, may present construction challenges with some fabrics, without having any particular meaning beyond its 'jauntiness'.
|-
| Tan and white stars on a beige field || Creates obfuscation through very dull colors with bad color contrast, which would be hard to distinguish from far off, defying the point of a flag as an easy-to-recognize symbol of something. This may be a deliberate attempt to avoid offending anyone by inadvertently including colors that have some political or otherwise contested connotation. || Most flags have bold, contrasting colors for easy visibility and replicability.
In traditional heraldic use, there were two categories of "{{w|Tincture (heraldry)|tinctures}}" — namely "metals" (yellow/gold and white/silver) and "colors" (red, blue, green and black, plus "stains", which are treated as colors). Any of these could be used to colour any feature at all, but with the {{w|Rule of tincture|supposed convention}} that metal could not be 'next to' (or overlaid upon) a different metal, nor would there be color-color contrasts. This restriction would usually be officially averted by inlaying a border of the opposite type between two similar ones (or handwaving through it being a {{w|division of the field}}).

This already not-so-strict convention is not necessarily so conspicuously applied to flags themselves, although white (as 'silver') and yellow (as 'gold') is often seen to separate two 'non-metal' colors (see the flags of {{w|Flag of Great Britain|Great Britain}}, {{w|Flag of Belgium|Belgium}} and {{w|Flag of South Africa|South Africa}}; and even only ''slightly'' averted in the {{w|Flag of Brazil}}). {{w|Flag of Vatican City|Even}} {{w|Flag of Bhutan|when}} {{w|Flag of Papua New Guinea|seemingly}} {{w|Flag of Mozambique|outright}} {{w|Flag of Portugal|broken}}, distinctively different hues (or at least intensities) between adjacent regions are usually desirable.

Here, the transitions between the white stars onto the beige ('very light brown') field, from which also arise tan ('almost as light brown') stars, represents such slightness of contrast (especially compared to the (black-bordered) gray motifs, pure black feature-lines/writing and the fully saturated edges of the chromaticity hue-gradient diagram) that it is barely noticeable and does not serve the usual purposes of identifiability and easy recognition which a flag should normally strive towards.
|-
| CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram, to ensure flag color fidelity || A {{w|CIE 1931 color space}} diagram defines the relationship between the visible light spectrum and human color vision. This is probably included as a reference to help address color issues arising from reproducing the flag in a given medium. However, given that all the other items on the flag are tan, white, beige, black or grey, it's unclear how much of a difference this could possibly make.

It may also be referencing the {{w|rainbow flag}} or its many variants known as {{w|pride flag}}s. The original concept was to convey diversity by featuring many stripes of different colors, the most common variant having six of them. However, this version attracted some criticism as suggesting there are only six identities. This sparked creation of many multi-colored pride flags to more thoroughly convey diversity. Including every possible visible color takes this concept to the extreme.
|| Most flags have only a few colors (though less so now that printing is common). Gradients are rare, as they are difficult to replicate, and are often not considered to look good on a flag, especially when flying, rather than represented digitally.

Many flags were traditionally described in written and spoken form, and only acquired exact legal or conventional decisions on the exact colors used for print and screen display in the last 30 years, so would not need to ensure colour fidelity. Including this feature would make such a written description more difficult for this flag.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:[A flag with many things on it.]
:[From left to right, top to bottom, in order labels:]
:[Label:] CIE 1931 Chromaticity Diagram, to ensure flag color fidelity [Icon]
:
:[Label:] We can't agree what animal this is, so we put it on our flag to spark national debate [Icon:] A stylised and basically-drawn outline of a quarupedal creature of some sort; appearing to have a reptilian-like head, a possible hairy back, a tail that that may be feathered and its four otherwise featureless 'legs' being akin to a plesiosaur's flippers.
:
:[Label:] National flag [Icon:] A miniature version of the flag, however it is missing a miniature version of itself.
:
:[Label:] Island (not a specific island, just a tribute to islands in general) [Icon:] A nondescript island shaped blob.
:
:[Label:] Tap here to pay taxes [Icon:] 4 sequential curves, a shape commonly used on NFC scanners to read a credit or debit card to encat payment.
:
:[Label:] Tan and white stars on beige field [Icon:] 32 stars in a rectangle surrounding all the previously mentioned icons, save for the tax payment NFC scanner.
:
:[Label:] Jaunty angle [Icon] Instead of an icon on the flag, the label notes the fact that the flag's left edge is not at a 90 degree angle with the top and bottom edges.
:
:[Label:] Tribute to topology [Icon:] Instead of an icon on the flag, the label notes the fact that the right edge of the flag is separated from the rest of the flag in the middle and twisted one half turn to make the flag into a Möbius strip.
:
:[Label:] Eurion anti-counterfeit mark [Icon:] A set of EURion dots, in the shape of the constellation Orion, commonly used on currency to prevent the use of printers to copy and mass produce counterfeit money.
:
:[Label:] Rounded corners [Icon:] Instead of an icon on the flag, the label notes the fact that the flags corners are rounded.
:
:[Label:] Interested in citizenship? Take one! [Icon:] Instead of a icon on the flag, the label notes the fact that one who wishes to sign up for citizenship of this fictional nation, can tear off a strip and contact the person on it, referencing posters one can find around a residential areas in a similar format. There were originally 14 strips with illegible printing on them, that looks like it might include a phone number with an area code in parentheses; the fourth, ninth, tenth and thirteenth strips, however, have been torn away; while still completely present, the eighth stops short and omits some of the otherwise presumed identical text/telephone number.
:
:[Label:] GDPR consent [Icon:] A menu saying "you have a choice in how we manage your data" with hypothetically intractable buttons saying "ACCEPT" and "CUSTOMIZE" reminiscent of similar menus that appear when you visit a website for the first time, or after you clear your cache.
:
:[Caption below flag:]
:I think our flag design committee really knocked it out of the park.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Graphic designers]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Flags]]

3249: Neutrino Project

2026-05-22T18:56:15Z

BunsenH: Undo revision 414261 by 2601:644:8184:F2F0:B83B:55B7:7D4A:8D3E (talk) rv vandalism

{{comic
| number = 3249
| date = May 22, 2026
| title = Neutrino Project
| image = neutrino_project_2x.png
| imagesize = 324x471px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = We definitely put the pool in a mine for shielding. It was absolutely not to hide it from the funding people.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently by a solar neutrino. Don't remove this notice too soon. In particular, the statement comparing the cost of a pool with the cost of a detector needs to be substantiated or removed.}}

A {{w|neutrino}} is a type of subatomic particle that interacts extremely rarely with matter. In nearly all cases, neutrinos pass through objects, regardless of density or composition, with no effects whatsoever unless there are {{What If|73|a lot of them}}. For instance, about [https://icecube.wisc.edu/news/press-releases/2017/11/first-look-at-how-earth-stops-high-energy-neutrinos-in-their-tracks/ 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second] to no noticeable effect.

However, there is a very small chance that a neutrino will collide with any material, including water, which has the advantage of being transparent to the light that occurs due to {{w|photon}}s being produced by that interaction. Neutrinos can thus be detected by constructing a large pool of water, shielded from as many other particles and radiations as possible, and carefully monitoring it for the small flashes of light that occur when a neutrino does interact with one of the many water molecules within the pool. {{w|Photomultiplier tubes}} are used to assist in detecting these very faint and infrequent flashes and reveal the possible nature (and direction) of the interactions that caused them.

The comic jokes that these detectors were not constructed with this purpose in mind. Instead, [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]], the organizers of this project, obtained funding for a "neutrino project" and then embezzled these funds for a {{w|Party#Pool_party|pool party}}, likely primarily to buy the large swimming pool seen in the panel. Supposedly, they only then realize that the pool could be repurposed as an actual neutrino detector. It is unclear what they had claimed to be building with the funding they somehow obtained. Given that they didn't know how a neutrino detector worked, it may be that the money was to find out how to build the detector, though such preliminary research would probably be far less expensive than the actual construction, and the budget wouldn't make sense. Through their own curiosity, they have then inadvertently ended up still somehow achieving their job!

It is unclear how large the pool in the comic really is. The {{w|Super-Kamiokande}} detector in Japan, one of the world’s largest and most well-known neutrino detectors, holds over 50,000 tons of water. This is approximately 20 times the water capacity of {{w|Olympic-size swimming pool}}s. The only statement made about the water capacity in the swimming pool is "huge", which is not a precise measurement of volume or mass{{Citation needed}}. The pool appears to be between 10 and 20 meters in diameter. While the surface of the pool seems to be at most half as large as that of an Olympic-sized pool, its depth could be approximately the same, since it seems to safely allow jumps from an approximately 1 m high platform. A regular pool of this appearance would be expected to hold less water than an Olympic-sized one, and certainly much less than would be required for an effective neutrino detector. Since the bottom of the pool is not visible, the physicists ''might'' just have built a pool with an appropriate volume by making it extremely deep. Assuming a diameter of 20 m and therefore a surface area of approximately 314 m2, the pool would need to be approximately 159 m deep. Constructing such a pool would be even more expensive than building a neutrino detector{{acn}}, thanks to the large depth. It's more likely that the pool simply isn't circular with such a small diameter. The small size of the pool may not necessarily be a problem in the context of the cartoon: the final report to the funding agency would simply conclude "Would work, but we need a larger pool for the next one."

The title text elaborates on why the pool was suitable for a neutrino detector. In real life, these detectors must be heavily shielded from all other particle interactions that might drown out neutrino interactions. This generally requires them to be deep underground (like {{w|Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment|this}} and {{w|Sudbury Neutrino Observatory|this}} and {{w|Super-Kamiokande|this}}), so a surface-level pool would obviously be unsuitable for that purpose. Randall implies that the pool was built in a deep mine in order to prevent it from being noticed by the people responsible for funding the project, due to them having misused the funding money. This could fulfill the shielding requirement, but is a humorously excessive strategy for hiding a swimming pool from a small group of people.

==Transcript==
:[There is a large pool with a curved edge at the bottom of the panel, with a diving board and several stickfigures in and around it. Ponytail and Cueball are talking in the pool; two characters with relatively indistinct hair are in the water either side of them, passing a beachball between themselves; a Cueball has somersaulted off the diving board in a 'cannonball'-like jump; a Danish and a Ponytail with a drink are walking along the outside of the pool.]

: Ponytail in pool: How much trouble do you think we'll be in when they find out we used the grant money to throw a huge pool party instead?
: Cueball: We could argue that we '''''did''''' build a neutrino detector.
: Cueball: There's a lot of water here. A solar neutrino will probably interact with it at '''''some''''' point.
: Ponytail: ...Wait. Actually, if we got some photomultiplier tubes...

:[Caption below comic:]
:How the neutrino detector was invented

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]

3248: 182.8 Meters

2026-05-21T04:00:09Z

GSLikesCats307:

{{comic
| number = 3248
| date = May 20, 2026
| title = 182.8 Meters
| image = 182_8_meters_2x.png
| imagesize = 265x345px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = They rounded down to 182.8 instead of rounding up to 182.9 because 182.9 might make the statement incorrect.
}}

==Explanation==
This is a comic in the [[:Category:My Hobby|My Hobby]] series — the hobby here being reverse-engineering original units from oddly specific measurements in another unit. Unlike many of the My Hobby comics, where [[Cueball]]'s hobby is something eccentric, prankish, or [[53|dangerous]], in this situation he uses his hobby simply to understand the origin of someone else's unusual phrasing. Also unlike most other My Hobby comics, this is one that people actually do in real life, being the first "My Hobby" comic since [[Hyphen]] to feature a hobby that real people have.{{cn}}

When presenting measurements where perfect accuracy is not required, such as in casual conversation or when giving simple presentations to the public, speakers will often use approximations, such as {{w|rounding}} to the nearest whole number, or the nearest ten, or using only the most {{w|significant figures|significant digit}}. When translating these approximations into other measurement systems, however, people will often treat them as precise, and use the standard conversion formulae to get an exact value. This leads to examples of {{w|false precision}}, where the presentation of a measurement implies more information than is actually contained in it. In this case, a {{w|fathom}} is a unit of measurement used to measure how deep water is. One fathom is equal to six feet, or 1.8288 metres. The depth of the bay has been measured as being greater than 100 fathoms, and someone has converted that (via the value 182.88) to 182.8 meters.

In most cases, 182.88 would round to 182.9. As the title text explains, in this case they rounded down in order to prevent a possibly incorrect statement. This is a comical attempt at mitigating the false precision; it retains the overly-precise 2.8 from the conversion, that the initial statement (of unknown {{w|Accuracy and precision|precision ''or'' accuracy}}, having just one obviously significant figure) was probably too approximate to imply. It suggests that they were worried that the maximum depth may be between 182.88 meters and 182.9 meters — a margin of just 2 centimeters, which is beyond the accuracy or precision with which anyone is likely to be measuring such things. Moreover, in most areas of seawater it would be within the daily variance due to {{w|tide|tidal activity}} (requiring reference to a specific choice of {{w|chart datum|tidal datum}}), and the {{w|seabed}} is typically a dynamic environment in which the depth profile could be changing by this much over very short periods through the redistribution of sediment from both tides and weather-induced events. A more reasonable attempt to translate 'the bay is more than 100 fathoms deep' might be "the bay is more than 180 meters deep"; this stays close to the initial measurement while rounding to the nearest ten, to convey that the measure is approximate.

Assuming that the original "100 fathoms" was itself a rounding of the measurement (or even just a vague 'best estimate') to ''the nearest ten'' (i.e. above 95 fathoms but no higher than 105 fathoms), the precisely converted limits would have been 18.288 meters apart, which might have been better converted to a ±10 meter 'tolerance'; slightly more 'flexible' than the original assumption, but at no risk of being incorrectly exact about an inherently inexact fact. Although even that may be wrong, if the rounding to 100 was instead to the nearest twenty or even ''one hundred'' fathoms. The value could have been rounded to just a single figure of accuracy, and without further information it is impossible to rule that out; it was in order to avoid this very misunderstanding that {{w|Mount Everest#19th century|one of the first accurate measurements of Mount Everest}} was subtly adjusted to ''not'' appear to be an approximate value. It is also possible that this was not a rounding at all, but that 100 fathoms was simply the limit of the available measuring equipment, and that it exceeded that by some unknown amount.

False precision may also sometimes be used in product labelling to present things as "more than a" precise number, to make the product sound more enticing, cheap or worthwhile (for example, saying "now with more than 28.4% more water", when the product only has 28.5% more water). That also relates to the confusion between "five times more than" and "five times as much as", which some people use synonymously, creating a potential off-by-one error.

Randall has previously used conversion between measurement systems as main subject of his comics, including using the [[2585: Rounding|overly exact conversion]] [[3065: Square Units|and re-rounding]] of values, which also involved fathoms to achieve an unfathomable result.

==Transcript==
:[Hairbun stands at a podium to the left, gesturing toward a sign, with an oval (likely representing the bay) and some illegible text on it. Four visitors stand nearby observing: Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, and White Hat (in that order). Cueball has a thought bubble.]

:Hairbun: In some places, the bay is more than 182.8 meters deep.
:Cueball: (thinking) '''"''More than''"?''' Why would they use that for such a precise...
:Cueball: (thinking) ...Aha! 100 fathoms!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:My Hobby: Reverse-engineering original units

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:My Hobby]]

3247: Particle Census

2026-05-18T18:54:40Z

2001:700:300:4022:CC41:E6EA:F3AD:C07E: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3247
| date = May 18, 2026
| title = Particle Census
| image = particle_census_2x.png
| imagesize = 651x272px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Remember, your answers to the physics census are confidential; we will not be issuing Pauli exclusion principle citations.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created at an INDETERMINITE TIME. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

This comic references the {{w|Heisenberg uncertainty principle}} of quantum mechanics. Put simply, this states that there's a limit to how precisely we can know both the position and momentum of a particle — the more precisely we know one, the less we know the other. [[Megan]] says that 'physicists' are taking a {{w|census}} of the positions of all particles in the universe, so they'll be known precisely; therefore, all their momenta will be unknowable. By the time we use the census results, we won't know where any of the particles are — we'll just know where they were at the instant their positions were recorded by the census.

In the United States, the constitution mandates that a population census of people living in all the states be taken every ten years. This is primarily for the purpose of apportioning representatives to Congress, but it has come to be used for many other demographic purposes. There's no law (human or physical) requiring a decennial physics census; if physicists want to do this, it's their own decision.

[https://www.quora.com/How-many-particles-are-there-in-the-universe There are estimated] to be approximately 1080 protons, neutrons, neutrinos and electrons in the observable universe, which would make even the task of simply enumerating them difficult. Proton and neutron 'particles' are in turn composed of three quarks (numbers of which which also form other so-called-particles/hadrons), which may easily multiply the number of separately surveyable particles. If photons are to be included in the census, that increases the number of particles to about 1089... with a further problem that detecting them would involve processes that generate more photons than are being surveyed. If dark matter is to be included, we don't even know what it ''is'', let alone have a method of detecting and recording its particles (if any). We don't know the size of the universe as a whole, and many physicists theorise it is infinite, in which case, covering all the particles in that would be an infinite task. If any meaningful and usable information about each particle is to be recorded, storing that information would require many particles for each particle in the universe, which would be a logical contradiction unless all of the extra particles were coming from some other space (such as an alternate universe).

Many particles, even within the observable universe, are at vast distances from Earth, where they will be difficult to detect. Some particles, particularly neutrinos, are extremely difficult to detect at all, because of their limited interaction with other forms of matter. Simultaneity is impossible, because of relativity, so it would be meaningless to try to catalog them at a specific time. Furthermore, some of those particles will be in the equipment used to measure, and the people doing the measuring, which will further complicate matters.

In the third panel, someone speaks up and is worried about what will happen to particles during the potential “disruption”. Randomly taking someone’s particles and relocating them would be considered unpleasant,{{Citation needed}} even if you ''could'' tell them where the particles are going, which you can't in this instance.

If all particles' locations were determined (as exactly as possible) it would have to be done using very high energy particles (which would, themselves, have to have their locations determined), leaving all the measured particles moving very fast (less than the speed of light, of course, but close to it), destroying everything and everyone. Given that, the concern voiced is very fair, but unnecessary, as it would not be possible to perform the task that Megan claims will happen.

The apparent need to conduct a thorough particle census, and the (perhaps legitimate) worry about the disruption that is caused bears some resemblence to the impact of an audit (either regularly scheduled or possibly imposed to answer some questions about the target of the audit). While there may be legitimate business/regulatory need to uncover the exact nature of the audit's focus, those people who are still trying to work within the auditable environment may (even if they have nothing personal to hide from it) find the involvement of the auditing team to be disruptive and interfering with their expected workflow (such as key documents being unavailable, as they are being scrutinised by the auditors and unavailable to be suitably updated with work currently in progress, without sparking off further auditing actions in response). In some cases, an 'audit' can even be threatened as a response to some nominal non-compliance with (perhaps unreasonable) demands, the implication being that all normally filed documents are heavy-handedly gone through leaving the target of the audit with an actual mess, the object not necessarily to discover desired information but to cause trouble and inconvenience to those that don't provide satisfactory complience to prior 'requests'. In the comic's instance, it is seemingly more a regular chore than an ''ad hoc'' pressure technique, but at least some of those who are more subject to the audit than they are net beneficiaries of its outcome seem to know that they will be significantly inconvenienced by it.

The title text refers to the {{w|Pauli exclusion principle}}, which states that no two {{w|fermions}} — types of particles that include all ordinary matter — can occupy the same quantum state. As the data recorded by the census is confidential, physics officials will not use it to determine whether to issue citations for particles that violate the exclusion principle. This confuses physical laws, which describe how the universe works and by their nature cannot be violated, with societal laws, which declare what is allowed or required by the government.

==Transcript==
:[Megan is standing behind a lectern, addressing an unseen audience.]
:Megan: Remember, Tuesday is the decennial particle census.
:Megan: Physicists will be recording the location of all particles in the universe.

:[Zoom out to show Megan is on a podium behind the lectern. She holds one hand, palm up, out towards the still unseen audience]
:Megan: Of course, this will cause their momenta to become indeterminite, so please plan for some disruption.

:[The same scene with Megan's hands held down. A voice comes from off-panel at the left through a star burst at the edge of the panel.]
:Audience member [off-panel]: Wait, disruption? Where will my particles go?
:Megan: No one can say, but you'll know ''exactly'' where they were.

==Trivia==
*When this comic was uploaded the normal sized image [https://web.archive.org/web/20260518185623/https://xkcd.com/3247/ was incorrectly 2x size]. It kept showing up at 2x size on [[unixkcd]] for awhile.
*"Indeterminate" is spelled "indeterminite" in the second panel text.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Public speaking]]

3246: Speedrun

2026-05-16T01:00:20Z

BunsenH: Undo revision 414122 by YZ100 (talk) The problematic statement is still there.

{{comic
| number = 3246
| date = May 15, 2026
| title = Speedrun
| image = speedrun_2x.png
| imagesize = 288x343px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Usain Bolt holds the world record in the 100 meter speedrun.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a BOSTON DYNAMICS SPEEDRUNNING BOT. Don't remove this notice too soon. In particular, the statement which appears to claim that listening to music would be banned because of devices transmitting data needs to be rewritten or supported. Music could be played on a device that doesn't transmit data.}}
{{w|Speedrunning}} is the sport of completing a {{w|video game}} or a goal within a game (for example, completing the main story) as fast as possible. [https://www.speedrun.com/ Speedrun.com], is a popular leaderboard aggregator for speedrunners.

Apparently, [[Cueball]]'s world-record setting attempt at some achievement was deleted from Speedrun.com because of the music he was listening to at the time. [[Megan]] makes the natural assumption that this was because the submission violated copyright on the music in question. It is common for video streamers to include a music 'bed', which can cause copyright issues if they have not taken care that their selections are cleared for use in this way. However, it turns out that his attempt was removed for being 'tool-assisted'. This is a pun on the word 'tool'.

A {{w|tool-assisted speedrun}} (or TAS for short) is a type of speedrun where supplementary tools are used to manipulate inputs frame-by-frame to perfect a run. Such tools are mostly used for experimenting with new strategies or finding areas where a time can be optimized, but it is possible to cheat a run by passing off a tool-assisted run as a normal speedrun.

''{{w|Lateralus}}'' and ''{{w|Ænima}}'' are albums by the band {{w|Tool (band)|Tool}} (who would be considered 'third-party' if they had no direct relationship to the game). Cueball is apparently considered to have got "assistance" from listening to Tool. In real life, a speedrun would be unlikely to be removed based on the music one is listening to while completing it. It could, though, be thought of as a concentration aid, or similar to using a {{w|metronome}}, which could be a [https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/s/ODqJcAWcKg controversial topic] if the game one is playing requires some sort of rhythm or precision where it would be useful.

The comic may be referencing {{w|Alex Honnold}}’s ascent of the {{w|Taipei 101}} tower, during which he listened to Tool. The comic was posted exactly 25 years after the ''Lateralus'' album was released.

The title text is another pun, this time on the word "speedrun". {{w|Usain Bolt}}'s world record-setting 100-meter dash record is a "speedrun" in the sense that it is literally a speedy run, and also an attempt by someone to complete a task as fast as possible. It is very common for internet personalities to say they are 'speedrunning' when they are doing a task quickly, even when completely unrelated to gaming (e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sqjRfF2cYoE speedrunning petting a cat]). The notion of such a record being classified as a legitimate speedrun isn't farfetched as Speedrun.com has some leaderboards for [https://www.speedrun.com/series/IRL In Real Life] records. The use of "speedrun" to refer to an actual fast run may be considered to be a case of [[3123: Canon]].

In road races like {{w|marathon}}s, wearing technical devices is severely limited. For example, according to Book C2.1 rule 6.3.2 of [https://worldathletics.org/about-iaaf/documents/book-of-rules Book of Rules of World Athletics] they are not allowed to transmit any data. Under rule 6.3.2 CD, radio and similar devices are not allowed, so it would be very hard to find device which is allowed for speedrunning a marathon while listening to Lateralus and/or Ænima as most devices that are able to play audio would probably have functions similar to CD and/or radio{{acn}} (at least in serious competitions, where athletes are checked for wearing earphones — amateurs get some leeway and can even carry their mobile phones). Also even if it was allowed athletes wouldn't want to carry any additional weight to be able to listen to music, as even [https://www.aol.com/sports/super-shoes-sebastian-sawe-redefined-145653498.html reducing weight of shoes] can significantly improve your time, so any audio play back device would add weight which pro athletes would want to avoid.

It is possible that speedrunning was on [[Randall]]'s mind due to the recent social media trend of {{w|Scientology speedrunning}}, in which someone attempts to get as deep as they can into a building belonging to the {{w|Church of Scientology}} before being kicked out. In addition, a marathon race was recently {{w|Marathon#World records and_world's best|completed in under two hours}} for the first time (in competition conditions), and {{w|Beijing_E-Town_Half-Marathon#2026_results|robotic competitors}} also beat an established human half-marathon world record (ironically, the best fully autonomous robots being slower than the one being partially human-assisted).

Randall has referred to bizarre speedruns before in [[744: Walkthrough]] and [[3148: 100% All Achievements]]

==Transcript==

:[Cueball is sitting at a desk with a laptop, typing on it. Megan is standing behind him.]
:Cueball: Aw man, Speedrun.com removed my world record just because I listened to Lateralus and Ænima to get in the flow.
:Megan: Oh, a copyright thing?
:Cueball: No, they don't allow Tool-assisted speedruns.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Puns]]

3245: Results Age

2026-05-13T18:36:04Z

RG: removed incomplete notice

{{comic
| number = 3245
| date = May 13, 2026
| title = Results Age
| image = results_age_2x.png
| imagesize = 478x669px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Please, we need your help. Our research suggests you're the last living descendant of the person who knew how to format this config file.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows how likely it is that a bug reported will be fixed, based on the age of some past post that matches your search for details of the problem.

A table is shown below of the explanations of each table row:
{| class="wikitable"
!Age of post !! What it means !! Probability of a fix !! Full Explanation
|-
|2 hours ago || There's an infrastructure outage || '''Very High''' - Just wait ||The recentness of the information implies that it has just happened, and other people have noticed it and started to post about the issue. Large-scale problems like a service outage are obvious priorities, and will (hopefully!) be fixed quickly.
|-
|5 days ago || A recent update just broke something big || '''High''', but you might have to wait for a patch || Similar to before, a large breakage would be very high priority to be fixed. However, as it's been five days since reporting it, the bug is likely taking a while to be found, so - as pointed out in the comic - you could have to wait a bit longer for this one to be resolved, and wait a bit for the patch when it comes.
|-
|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 {{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. 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.
|}

The title text appears to be a conversation taking place in a distant future with the descendant of an ancient internet post. The 'last living descendant' is a common trope in fiction where arcane knowledge is passed down through a family line (often on the previous generation's deathbed). The suggestion is that the solution to the user's issue is a closely guarded secret that has had to be kept safe in this way. However, it is unclear why it is that a bug fix would be guarded, given you usually want to fix bugs quickly, rather than hide them. Possibly though this bug was discovered in some kind of [[:Category:Singularity|Robot Apocalypse]] situation, and this bug was the only thing stopping them gaining total control. Strange robot apocalypses are [[:Category:Singularity|recurring theme on xkcd]].

==Transcript==

:[Large heading, centered.]
:Implications of the age of the posts you see when you Google an error message

:[A search engine prompt field is shown, containing part of an error code message (beginning with E-21, and what looks like a 9 and 3 next to it). Below this are search results shown as obscured text, except for a the phrase '3 years ago' in the first heading. This is expanded into an ellipse that obscures the rest of the search field.]
:[A table, with 3 columns, labelled "Age of post", "What it means", and "Probability of a fix"]

:[Row 1: Age of post:] 2 hours ago
:[What it means:] There's an infrastructure outage
:[Probability of a fix:] Very high -- just wait

:[Row 2: Age of post:] 5 days ago
:[What it means:] A recent update broke something big
:[Probability of a fix:] High, but you might have to wait for a patch

:[Row 3: Age of post:] 3 months ago
:[What it means:] A new product isn't working for some users
:[Probability of a fix:] Decent chance of a solution in the replies

:[Row 4: Age of post:] 2 years ago
:[What it means:] You've run into an edge case
:[Probability of a fix:] Low, but maybe the replies can help with troubleshooting

:[Row 5: Age of post:] 13 years ago
:[What it means:] You're the only person with this problem
:[Probability of a fix:] Very low -- post is likely not relevant

:[Row 6: Age of post:] 24 years ago
:[What it means:] Oh God how is the Internet this old
:[Probability of a fix:] Maybe whoever posted this message has kids who can help you

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]
</noinclude>

3244: Pullback Drive

2026-05-12T09:00:28Z

174.53.211.85: /* Explanation */ "ally" -> "allay"

{{comic
| number = 3244
| date = May 11, 2026
| title = Pullback Drive
| image = pullback_drive_2x.png
| imagesize = 303x292px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = "How does the spring not run out almost immediately?" "We pull it back REALLY far."
}}

==Explanation==
[[File:Darda Buggy Teile.jpg|thumb|right|A pullback mechanism (bottom-right) is a very simple engine for a vehicle to have.]]
This comic is a reference to toy cars with {{w|pullback motor}}s. Normally used for small toy cars, a spring motor stores potential energy when the car is pulled (or pushed) backwards, and the potential energy is suddenly released as kinetic energy when the car is released.

The most simple version of pull-back car, with its wheels linked directly to its spring by nothing more than a simple gear train, will only go as far forward as it is drawn backwards in the first place, even assuming no slippage or frictional losses. It's functionally similar to the classic home-made [https://teachbesideme.com/spool-racers-homemade-wind-up-toy/ "spool racer"] toy. More complicated versions can use a change in effective gearing (through the use of a 'flappy' gear that meshes differently depending upon the relative direction of movement of the cogs it is meshed with) between 'charging' the spring by back-pulling, and then letting it 'expend' in the forward direction. This can allow it to store a lot of torque from a little pre-pulled distance and then expend it to give far more effective speed/distance to the very light toy. Through a free-wheel gearing at the end of its 'powered' phase, the car may run on 'unpowered' for a significant further distance. However, since there is a finite amount of energy that can be stored in the spring, they may hit a hard limit where the spring cannot be wound any further, or commonly a slip-gear will simply click as the mechanism no longer tries to convert pull-back movement into sprung potential (letting the child know that their toy is at maximum readiness).

In this comic, [[Hairy]] suggests a full-scale version of a pullback car. Making this type of energy store work on the scale of a full-size car would be extremely impractical, due to the {{w|Energy density#In material deformation|low power}} and the requirement to pull it back far enough to then go anywhere meaningful, even assuming a multiplying effect on forward travel compared to the initial backwards travel, as well as difficulty making sharp turns until enough energy has been expended to cause the car to slow down sufficiently. Such a car would also have the significant disadvantage of not being able to provide a reverse gear.

Hairy tries to sell the car by saying that [[Cueball]] won't need to worry about gas or electricity prices. This is [[technically]] true, but cars that run on petroleum or electricity have the advantage of their energy supply being refillable, while this pullback car seemingly does not (without another factory-style 'pull back' facility). The worries about electricity and gas prices may be a reference to the closure of the {{w|Strait of Hormuz}} due to the {{w|2026 Iran war}}. The strait was a very common waterway used for the international trade of natural gas and petroleum from the Middle East, but the Iranian government is currently not allowing any foreign ships to pass through it. If this type of propulsion works, this would negate the need to fuel the car, making it a good energy-efficient alternative if it could be practically implemented. But hopefully they don’t give the car too {{What If|61|much energy.}}

It would be possible to "recharge" such a car by repeating the process of pulling (or pushing) it backwards, or perhaps by placing it on a treadmill-style arrangement and running this forward relative to the car while holding the vehicle stationary. However, the energy being stored in the spring motor would have to come from somewhere. No clue is given to what form of mechanical device is used to pull the car back at the factory and if/when it needs to be retensioned again, but the means used to power ''that'' might entirely defeat the main purpose of the pullback car (that that it doesn't rely on various fuels to keep it going) if it relies on such fuels itself. Pushing also creates a dangerous situation in that the motive force is necessarily in the car's path, and if the brake is broken or hasn't been applied, the car will run over/collide with anything immediately in front of it once the pushing force ceases.

A flywheel connected to the motor could occasionally be lowered onto the road when the car is under braking and then automatically raised, which might work as a form of charging if the released kinetic energy could be diverted to the main wheels. However, the automatic lowering and raising of the flywheel would require an external energy source, and it would be much simpler to just use an electric car at that point. Plus, this would produce diminishing returns and the car would still need to be "recharged" every so often.

In the title text, Hairy tries to allay Cueball's range anxiety about the low capacity for energy storage meaning that it would run out almost immediately compared to a traditional combustion or electric engine, by stating that they "pull it back '''''REALLY''''' far". Due to the inbuilt 'clicking-limit' that already is implied to have been reached, this wouldn't really help, since any further 'pulling back' would simply be wasted energy. If the mechanism is large and powerful enough to store the energy needed to make the car go any appreciable distance, the acceleration that results when it is released is likely to be a deeply unpleasant and dangerous experience. Furthermore, more pulling back would not address any of the other problems noted above.

To some extent, the spring-powered car is a direct analogue to electric cars (whether pre-charged at the factory or not), where forms of externally-generated power are transfered to a 'potential' held within the vehicle to be re-expended (with acceptable losses in conversion efficiencies) as movement. By contrast, fuel-powered cars provide the energy in the form of potential-holding material (LPG, fuel-oils, or even solid fuel like coal or wood, depending upon the vehicle), which is expelled after use and refilled with new supplies. The advantages of electrical power are that it can be relatively easily generated by means ''other'' than burning fossil fuels, and (while not currently at energy densities comparable to common engine fuels), the weight of batteries required to power a car over a given distance isn't anything like as problematic as the equivalent spring-based system would be.

Fun Fact: Paolo Bacigalupi's 2009 dystopic SF novel "The Windup Girl" is set in a post-petroleum world where this kind of propulsion is normal. Spring technology is incredibly advanced compared to our present. Cars are powered by springs that are wound-up in factories on treadmills with genetically engineered mastodons. These springs can then be placed into cars and other machines. They are exchangeable, so if one spring runs out, you replace it with another. Fuel-powered cars still exist, but are only used by the military, and the motor sounds they produce have a terrifying effect on the general population, because they are not used to those sounds any more.

==Transcript==

:[Hairy and Cueball are standing to the right of a medium-size car. Hairy has raised one hand slightly to point to the car.]
:Hairy: You won't have to worry about gas prices '''''or''''' electricity prices with our new pullback drive model.
:Hairy: At the factory, we put the car on the ground and tow it all the way backward until it starts clicking.
:Hairy: To drive forward, you just release the brake and it goes.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Physics]]

3243: Crystal Gazing

2026-05-08T17:46:33Z

108.44.153.86: the graph is deceptive in having only two clearly visible line ends, but there are apparently three lines intersecting on the graph, not two

{{comic
| number = 3243
| date = May 8, 2026
| title = Crystal Gazing
| image = crystal_gazing_2x.png
| imagesize = 281x397px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 'Beyond that lies a vale of fire through which my vision cannot penetrate' is the kind of fun thing geologists, heliophysicists, and early universe cosmologists have a lot of opportunities to say.
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|geochronology|geochronologist}} (someone who estimates the ages of rocks, fossils, etc.) dressed up as a wizard (assuming that isn't how they normally dress) announces — in archaic language befitting his costume — that he has determined the {{w|age of the Earth}} by analyzing {{w|zircon}}. Zircon is a crystal with the formula ZrSiO4. During its formation it can incorporate uranium instead of zirconium in its crystal lattice, but cannot incorporate lead. The uranium then decays (via several intermediates) into lead. Thus a sufficiently old zircon crystal will contain some lead, allowing geologists to {{w|Detrital_zircon_geochronology|calculate its age}}. This method is especially reliable, since uranium-238 decays into lead-206 with a half-life of 4.5 billion years, while uranium-235 decays into lead-207 with a half-life of 0.7 billion years, allowing geologists to determine the age even where some lead was lost from the crystal. The geochronologist says he predicted the age of the Earth by gazing into the [[2776|crystal]], similar to the traditional fortune tellers' method of making predictions by gazing into crystal balls.

A prophet of doom is someone who predicts impending disasters, particularly the end of the world (and there are lots of ridiculous ways that [https://what-if.xkcd.com/archive/ could happen]). These prophets and predictions are especially common in fantasy media. The joke in the caption is that someone who can determine when the world began is just doing this in reverse, and that's what geochronologists are doing when they calculate the age of the Earth. His last line, "the beginning was nigh", is a reversal of the phrase stereotypically used by prophets of doom: "the end is nigh". This is in keeping with the idea represented in the comic.

The title text points out, in similar flowery language (in keeping with the character being a wizard from a {{w|J. R. R. Tolkien|Tolkienesque}} or {{w|Dungeons & Dragons}}-type world, where [https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Vales_of_Anduin vales] are often part of the geographical language), that many areas of physical sciences have a limiting horizon to their ability to study their subject. {{w|Geologists}} are limited by the early molten history of the Earth, in that most of the crust has been recycled back into the molten mantle at some point, and the mantle acts as a physical 'vale of fire' for the core — each limiting what can be studied. Similarly, {{w|heliophysicists}} have difficulty knowing what happens within the Sun due to the physical 'vale of fire' that is the Sun's {{w|photosphere}}. Finally, {{w|cosmologists}} have difficulty studying the universe beyond the {{w|recombination (cosmology)|recombination epoch}}, beyond which the universe is shielded by a 'vale of fire' (the {{w|surface of last scattering }} from which photons of the {{w|cosmic microwave background}} escape) from electromagnetic observation — both in time (investigating the early universe) or in space (investigating beyond the event horizon of the visible universe).

[[:Category:Dungeons & Dragons|D&D]] is a recurring topic on xkcd.

==Transcript==

:[A character in wizard garb with long beard and hair talks to Cueball. To the left of the wizard is a poster with illegible text over a graph with three lines intersecting.]

:Wizard: By gazing into my crystals of zircon, I have divined the date of the hour of fire marking the limit of this world's existence.
:Wizard: 4.54 billion years ago, the beginning was nigh!

:[Caption below comic:]
:Geochronologists are just reverse prophets of doom.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

3242: Aperiodic Table

2026-05-06T18:15:38Z

68.101.170.57: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 3242
| date = May 6, 2026
| title = Aperiodic Table
| image = aperiodic_table_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x464px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Scientists occasionally invent alternative periodic table layouts, which is usually a sign that they don't have enough enrichment in their enclosures.
}}

==Explanation==
The {{w|periodic table of the elements}} is a diagram often used to show the properties of the {{w|chemical elements}} that make up the world. Its structure represents several properties of the elements. Atoms increase in {{w|atomic number}} from left to right and continue on each new row, going top to bottom. Elements in a single column will have similar chemical properties, with allowance for any crossing of the {{w|dividing line between metals and nonmetals}}, and each row exhibits a similar trend to adjacent rows for the gaining or losing of electrons and other physical properties.

[[Randall]] spoofs this concept by creating a similar view that is much less useful. The original table is "periodic" because it has consistent, repeating patterns that are represented by the horizontal position of the elements. Randall's 'table' is "aperiodic", meaning it has no consistent, repeating patterns. Instead, it is just a meandering line ordered by atomic number. To fit into a compact space, the sequence snakes back and forth and (roughly) down the page. This presentation is not actually helpful,{{cn}} since it contains little information other than the atomic number of each element. Faint colouring on each box does show its category, but due to the dull colours that is also quite inconvenient to use, and depicts this information in an unnecessarily unhelpful and hard-to-read format.

The title text suggests that the creation of {{w|Types of periodic tables|alternative periodic table layouts}} is due to scientists not having enough work to do. However, it frames this by comparing them to animals kept in enclosures, with a lack of {{w|Behavioral enrichment|enrichment activities}} to keep them occupied and satisfied in their lab, implying that this is a form of aberrant dysfunctional behaviour. Researcher enclosure enrichment was previously mentioned in [[3052: Archive Request]]. The reference to 'enrichment' could also be a pun on the process of chemical enrichment (particularly of [https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/uranium-enrichment-explained uranium]), or on the {{wiktionary|enrichment}} of scientists by gaining funding.

This comic may be a critique about how an excessive variety of ways to display the periodic table have been created over the years, many of which make Randall's periodic table look fairly normal by comparison. Alternatively, it may be intended to highlight how useful the original idea of the periodic table was, since the version in the comic is essentially what scientists were faced with before it was invented.

==Trivia==
* Element 81, Thallium, should be labeled "Tl" (with a lowercase "L"), but is incorrectly labeled "Ti", which is the abbreviation for Titanium (element 22).

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon. All 118 elements and their number should be included in a full transcript.}}

:The Aperiodic Table of the Elements
:[Rectangles showing the atomic symbols and atomic numbers from H (1) through Og (118) are arranged in order in a serpentine chain. Each rectangle has the atomic number in small numerals at the upper left and the atomic symbol in large letters. The color of each rectangle matches the pattern of a similarly keyed standard periodic table. For example, the noble gases all have a red background.]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:Periodic table]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]

3241: Horizontal Stabilizers

2026-05-05T19:46:52Z

Black Hat's Hat: Transcript seemed finished. Im gonna go thru and start removing incomplete transcript warnings from complete seeming transcripts

{{comic
| number = 3241
| date = May 5, 2026
| title = Horizontal Stabilizers
| image = horizontal_stabilizers_2x.png
| imagesize = 436x341px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It started as a mistake that everyone was afraid to admit to, and then it stuck because removing it 'looks silly.'.
| wikidata = Q139738162
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|Stabilizer (aircraft)#Horizontal stabilizers|horizontal stabilizer}} (also often described as a {{w|tailplane}}) is part of an aircraft which typically provides extra longitudinal balance, with the tailplane maintaining balance and control of the aircraft. Although some alternate types of airframe work without them (e.g. by making use of more complex main wing control surfaces), most (and the most common) aircraft use {{w|Tailplane#Tailplane types|some version or other}} of a tailplane. The structure of aircraft varies based on what they {{What If|30|have to do}}.

This comic claims that horizontal stabilizers are a mistake in the construction process, and not at all necessary. The original construction of some particular plane only had small wings and the mere stub of fuselage to which they were attached, but neither wings nor body were big enough to be useful. Rather than spending time and resources rebuilding from scratch, they just added more fuselage, with much bigger wings, and continued to use the original insufficient fuselage and 'wings' in the manner of a tailplane.

The title text takes this even further, stating that people deliberately ignored the superfluousness of this new part, and later, when they decided to remove the feature (perhaps to save weight, or just 'complexity') people were already so used to them being there that it "looked silly", so they put them back on to satisfy expectations. This may be referencing the use of 'spoilers' on everyday passenger cars, which are often included purely for cosmetic reasons, because it makes the vehicle look 'fast' or 'sporty' while having little or no effect in producing the desired downforce (for extreme cornering or acceleration), and may instead just add drag to the car to make it ultimately ''slower'' in a straight line speed-test.

There are some {{w|tailless aircraft}}, often designed as such to minimize the latent drag from the tailplane surfaces (another possible reason being to create a {{w|Radar cross section|more 'stealthy' aircraft}}), and many people do consider them unusual-looking. Some aircraft, including the original {{w|Wright Flyer}}, have the horizontal stabilizers in the front rather than the tail section due to design assumptions made at the time (later superseded by the 'normal' and typically more stable configuration). Some more modern planes use {{w|Canard (aeronautics)|canard}} 'forward control surfaces' instead of (or {{w|three-surface aircraft|in addition to}}) the rear-mounted ones, in response to a more modern understanding of the active aerodynamic needs of a plane in flight.

The comic does not address the need for any {{w|vertical stabilizer}} and rudder, which are often integrated in some way with the (horizontal) tailplane, or at least rooted in the same section of fuselage. (Some may describe the {{w|empennage|whole assembly}} of horizontal and vertical rear surfaces (both static and actuated) as the "tailplane", due to it being all together in the same place.) The comic's original 'stabilizer only' plane ''also'' lacked any such vertical control surfaces. By the same logic, of course, a true 'tailless' aircraft, like a Flying Wing, ''can'' also fly without a tailfin-like structure, usually controlling its yaw through differential power and/or drag across its two remaining wings. There are 'half-tail' airframes that still use only horizontal ''or'' vertical control surfaces, while the main wing controls the other, and there are also tail designs that integrate both control and stabilization functions into {{w|V-tail|the same hybrid tail-structure}}.

At some point before the scene in the factory and the conversation about the airplane in flight, the evolving design seems to have gained the vertical stabiliser as well, for unstated in-comic reasons perhaps just as superfluous as that for which it has retained the horizontal version. Then again, as well as gaining more fuselage (which may necessarily have completed the stated design expectation of it being 'bigger', by increasing its potential cargo capacity) it has also managed to gain such useful features as a cockpit/nosecone ''and also engines'', the ultimate superfluity of which is far less likely (even reluctantly) to be justified.

==Trivia==
*This is a rare [[:Category:Tuesday comics|Tuesday comic]]. There was no [[:Category:Monday comics|Monday comic]] this week. However, the archive states the publication date as 2026-5-4 (the previous day), so the comic was likely intended to be a Monday comic.

==Transcript==

:[Cueball and Ponytail are standing, looking up at an airplane in the sky. Cueball is pointing at the airplane.]
:Cueball: What's with the little wings on the tails of the airplanes? Do they really need them?
:Ponytail: They're horizontal stabilizers. They serve a crucial aerodynamic role.

:[Hairy, another Cueball, and Megan are standing in a room, with Hairy on the left of a small fuselage segment with small wings attached to the sides of it, while Cueball and Megan are standing on the right of it. Hairy has his arms raised. There is a caption in a box at the top of the panel.]
:Caption: Previously, at the airplane factory...
:Hairy: These wings you made are way too small! The plane is supposed to be much bigger!
:Other Cueball: Sorry! We'll start over.
:Hairy: No, there's no time. Just make it longer and put the bigger wings on the new section.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Aviation]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

3240: Bottle

2026-05-01T18:34:33Z

YZ100: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 3240
| date = May 1, 2026
| title = Bottle
| image = bottle_2x.png
| imagesize = 581x235px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = "I know it seems impossible, but the trick is that I sailed in here when I was very young."
| wikidata = Q139738160
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, [[Beret Guy]] is inside a life-sized {{w|Impossible bottle#Ship in a bottle|ship in a bottle}}. [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] are in a sail boat to his left, while [[Ponytail]] is alone in what appears to be a [[3193: Sailing Rigs|gaff rig]] to his right. A common question regarding a ship-in-a-bottle is how the model ship was put inside the bottle, given the small size of the opening in the bottle compared to the ship. The answer is often that the ship (or its components) was inserted in a more compact form, and then assembled (or at least partially unfolded) within the bottle. The components are small enough to pass through the neck of the bottle, and the final assembly is done through the neck, which is usually the most awkward task. Of course, toy boat assembly is not comparable to construction of a real or life-sized ship, and bottles are almost never big enough to stand up in, with necks large enough to climb in and out through if required.

The title text alludes to this, by saying that Beret Guy, when he was smaller, sailed the boat inside the bottle while he was still able to fit through the entrance. This is similar to the way some brands of pear brandy are sold in {{w|Impossible bottle#Small objects that expand naturally|bottles containing entire pears}}. These are produced by attaching the bottle to a young fruit and letting it grow to full size inside. This explanation fails to address the fact that Beret Guy would fit through the neck of such a bottle relatively easy, on his own; but the boat, being made from non-living materials, would '''not''' have grown inside the bottle, and it is unlikely to have ever been a smaller boat carrying a smaller Beret Guy, in a manner that both together could have sailed into the bottle. On the other hand, it would probably be easier for someone inside the bottle to have assembled components of a ship there than for that assembly to be done from outside. This would especially be true of a seaworthy vessel of a size to carry a passenger, rather than a mere model. Given the definition of a boat explained in the earlier comic [[2043: Boathouses and Houseboats]] (“a ship, by most definitions, carries boats”), Beret Guy's vessel is merely a boat.

The water level in the free-floating bottle is lower than the water outside. This is because the bottle will sink until the weight of the bottle and its contents (the water, the boat, and Beret Guy) equals the weight of the water displaced by the bottle. The weight of the 'missing' water in the bottle (the layer of air (or {{What If|6|hopefully air}}) between the two surface levels, including the corresponding volume of air displaced by the boat) is consequently equal to the weight of the whole glass bottle. If you added water to the bottle in an attempt to make the inside and outside water levels the same, the bottle would contain less buoyant air and just sink deeper to misalign the surfaces again. Keep repeating this, and the buoyancy becomes less than zero (unless the inherent buoyancy of Beret Guy and his boat, now forced into the bottle's 'ceiling', still possess enough intrinsic support) at which point the bottle would sink.

As well as the question as to how Beret Guy and the boat got into the bottle, there is another oddity: the bottle appears to be keeping pace with the boats on either side, implying it is somehow being propelled, despite lacking an engine, a sail, or any other method of propulsion. This could mean that the bottle shares one of Beret Guy's [[:Category:Strange powers of Beret Guy|strange powers]], or it could be a combination of tides and the bottle catching some wind. Ordinarily, the bottle would lack airflow for the boat to sail within it, since the cork would prevent any air currents from entering. However, since Beret Guy would quickly die without his own source of airflow, he could be somehow be creating some air ingress. He has [[1486|powered up random objects in strange ways]] before, after all.

In practice, the bottle is horizontally unstable. The weight of the bottle is not equal along its length (it appears heavier at the neck), and the buoyancy at each point will not equal the weight at that point. This is also true of the boats in the cartoon; the difference is that in the bottle much of the weight is the water, which is free to move. If the neck of the bottle goes down (into the water, to increase the displacement to balance the weight), or the base of the bottle does similarly (since it is often the thickest and widest part of the glass), the water will naturally flow to that end of the bottle. This increases the weight found at the respective end, which will force that even deeper. This will continue until the bottle is floating vertically (in the comic's version, without intervention this is likely to result in the bottle stabilising in an inverted position, with the neck facing directly down, although this would depend upon the effect of the cork’s relative density). Beret Guy's boat would appear to fit in the width of the bottle, and there is enough water to keep him afloat in this attitude, so everything will probably be fine (for certain values of 'fine'). This effect, known as the {{w|free surface effect}}, has real implications for ships with open decks, such as car ferries, and has been implicated in several disasters such as the sinkings of the {{w|MS Herald of Free Enterprise|''Herald of Free Enterprise''}}, the {{w|MV Princess Victoria|''Princess Victoria''}}, and the {{w|MS Estonia|''Estonia''}}.

So the bottle is ridiculously impractical and the only thing it would do would be to {{What If|103|protect}} the people riding the ship — though it wouldn't be much use for that, as the bottle is likely made of glass, as giant boat-carrying bottles normally are.{{Citation needed}} In fact, if it was to break then the resulting hole would create a bottleneck for the way out ([[559|pun not intended]]), so any attackers would have the advantage there as well — in addition to the dangers of broken glass (though, for Beret Guy, {{What If|6|that wouldn't be a problem}}).

==Transcript==

:[Three small single-masted sailboats are shown (the right one in a gaff rig), all sailing towards the right. The ones on the left and right are on the ocean, while the one in the middle is contained completely by a large bottle. On the left, Cueball and Megan are in one boat; Cueball is sitting near the stern, possibly holding the tiller, while Megan is before the mast. In the middle, Beret Guy is before the mast in the boat that's inside the giant bottle, with a cork plugging the screw top bottleneck. On the right, Ponytail is directly aft of the mast of the third boat. All the boats are sitting on the water with ripples on the surface, but the water level in the bottle is lower than the rest.]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Strange powers of Beret Guy]]

3239: Simple Machines

2026-04-29T16:25:39Z

YZ100: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 3239
| date = April 29, 2026
| title = Simple Machines
| image = simple_machines_2x.png
| imagesize = 250x255px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's hard to decide which simple machine system to invest in. DeWalt makes a great lever and inclined plane, but I hear Milwaukee's wheel-and-axles are really good.
| wikidata = Q139738161
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was recently purchased from DeWalt, and we're still reading the manual. Don't remove this notice too soon.
*Explanation of how each aspect of the multitool could work/counts as a specific simple machine
}}
There are various ways to use a {{w|mechanical advantage}} when applying a force to an object with a tool. Classically, there were considered to be six {{w|simple machines}} which, in combination, formed the basis of all tools: The {{w|lever}}, the {{w|wheel and axle}}, the {{w|pulley}}, the {{w|inclined plane}}, the {{w|wedge}} and the {{w|Screw (simple machine)|screw}}. These are often considered as idealised, abstract concepts in the study of {{w|mechanics}}.

{{w|Multitool}}s combine various tools into a single package, usually for reasons of portability. For example, the classic {{w|Swiss Army Knife}} combines various different forms of blade (which, in part, can act as levers and/or wedges, depending upon use) along with some non-bladed tools (such as the corkscrew, which naturally embodies the same forces as the 'simple screw').

Instead of combining simple machines to make a single tool, this comic suggests the existence of a multitool featuring all six simple tools individually, some of them with multiple purposes depending upon application. For example, the lever, the wedge, and the inclined plane are both present via the same core rod.

The implication is that by having all the simple machines 'combined' in this way, this can serve as a universal tool, which could do the job of any other tool. In practice, though, it's hard to see many useful purposes this could be put to, since ''how'' you combine the various components and how they interact (or don't get in each others' way) is important for the function of a particular device.

As is often the case with multitools, there are obvious drawbacks to having this 'all-in-one' tool. The tools all have varying uses, some very different from one other, and you would be unlikely to find many devices in need of all the tools together all at once, so such a tool would be largely useless compared to its singular variants. Also, the tools come in many different sizes, meaning unless it has special adjustable sizes (which could well be impossible, to account for all the different sizes){{Citation needed}} the tool would be unlikely to be the right size to fit many features. As well as that, though [[Randall]] claims he can stop buying simple tools thanks to his all-in-one, in reality you often need more than one of the various tools for projects (particularly screws, of which there can be hundreds in a single project).

The title text is a joke about battery-powered tool ecosystems. {{w|Milwaukee Tool}} and {{w|DeWalt}} are two common American tool companies. The text notes that each company has advantages in certain specific simple machines, which makes deciding which brand to invest in for a whole system of simple machines difficult - presumably because each brand's machines are designed to work together, but would not work across brands. With battery powered tools, the batteries and the base motor units are often interchangeable between tools from a single brand (and are often purchased separately from the tools). Once you buy, say, a drill and batteries from one brand, it is more economical to buy a saw from the same brand, rather than the saw and batteries from a different brand.

==Transcript==
:[A rod with a square cross-section is shown sloping from top-left to bottom-right. At the bottom-right, it has a wedge tip. At the top-left, it is threaded left-handed and has a long nut on it. The nut has an eyelet where a rope is connected. The rope travels taut around a wheel on an axle connected near the wedge-end and then lies loose with a hook on the free end.]

:[Caption below comic:]
:I can finally stop buying simple machines now that I got an all-in-one tool with all six of them.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

3238: Soniferous Aether

2026-04-28T04:16:49Z

23.93.122.53: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3238
| date = April 27, 2026
| title = Soniferous Aether
| image = soniferous_aether_2x.png
| imagesize = 290x466px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Imagine you could ride alongside a sound wave. It would probably be pretty cool, right? We're putting in a departmental budget request to buy a really fast plane so we can check it out.
| wikidata = Q139738159
}}

==Explanation==

Beginning in the late 1690s, scientists posited a {{w|luminiferous aether}} to explain properties of light (especially its ability to travel in a vacuum) which should not be possible for a wave. This theory was disproven by the 1887 {{w|Michelson–Morley experiment}}, which demonstrated that the {{w|speed of light}} was constant, regardless of relative movement through the supposed aether. (If the luminiferous aether ''did'' exist, light would move at a set speed ''relative to that aether'', and therefore would appear, from a human perspective, to move slower in the direction the Earth was currently traveling, and faster in the opposite direction, but this did not occur.)

In this comic, [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] have noticed that the {{w|speed of sound}} is ''not'' constant, and therefore have concluded, following a similar line of reasoning, that sound ''does'' travel through a medium. They then coin the term 'soniferous aether', following the same naming scheme, as the name for this 'newly-discovered' medium. ("Luminiferous" is Latin for "light-carrying", and "soniferous" would be the corresponding "sound-carrying" — by analogy with the theory of luminiferous aether, soniferous aether would logically be an otherwise unobtrusive medium which is primarily observable through its interactions with sound waves.) Although their conclusion is, strictly speaking, entirely correct, it overlooks the fact that this medium has already been discovered and named. Sound is widely known to travel through physical media, such as air or water, and cannot exist in a vacuum. Since these substances are already known to modern science{{citation needed}}, it is clearly unnecessary for new scientists to discover or name them.

The comic's caption specifically states that the physicists are reinventing air from first principles. Although sound ''can'' be carried by any form of matter, humans most commonly experience sounds traveling through air, so would likely identify air as the primary form of soniferous aether. As air has very little viscosity and density, is almost entirely invisible to light and is very familiar to humans, its presence is often overlooked in many situations, and this comic takes that to the humorous extreme of physicists forgetting it exists, even while creating a new theory to explain its effects. It is not without reason that the classic physics problems are careful to specify that one must assume that the {{w|Spherical cow|spherically symmetrical cow}} is in a vacuum.

The title text references {{w|Albert Einstein|Albert Einstein's}} thought experiment where he imagined riding alongside a light particle/wave (which was referenced in [[2959: Beam of Light]]), but with a sound wave instead. Travelling at the speed of sound can be accomplished with a fast airplane. Usually these would be military aircraft, though {{w|Concorde}}, the {{w|Tu-144}}, [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/i-was-there-when-the-dc-8-went-supersonic-27846699/ a DC-8] (briefly), and [https://simpleflying.com/supersonic-boeing-747-throwback/ a Boeing 747] (maybe) were commercial aircraft that did achieve supersonic flight, and the {{w|Boom Overture}} is in the process of being tested as of the comic's publication.

Reinventing things from first principles has previously [[2834|been discussed]] [[2724|multiple times]] on [[xkcd]].

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail is addressing an unseen audience in front of her while she holds her hand out towards them. She is standing on a podium with Cueball behind her. Cueball holds an arm out behind him indicating a screen behind him showing a graph with three sine waves with different wavelengths. The top has two cycles, the middle four cycles and the bottom one cycle.]
:Ponytail: We all know the speed of light is constant for all observers.
:Ponytail: But our experiments show that the speed of sound '''''changes''''' based on the observer's motion.
:Ponytail: Thus, we posit the existence of the '''''soniferous aether''''', a medium that fills the space between us and carries sound waves.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Sometimes physicists forget that air exists and rediscover it from first principles.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Physics]]

3237: Husband and Wife

2026-04-24T15:18:01Z

118.143.33.34: Added explanation and moved them around based on likelihood based on the follow up Megan gave

{{comic
| number = 3237
| date = April 24, 2026
| title = Husband and Wife
| image = husband_and_wife_2x.png
| imagesize = 586x292px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Borat came out twenty years ago this year--closer to the breakup of the Soviet Union than to today--but it honestly feels like it's been even longer, somehow.
| wikidata = Q139738158
}}

==Explanation==
[[Megan]] and [[Cueball]], who are married in this strip, are discussing the phrases that married couples use to refer to each other. Traditionally, in English, married couples refer to their partners as "my husband" and "my wife", though many euphemistic or 'cutesy' alternatives have gained currency. Megan finds the phrase "my husband" odd and perhaps a little archaic, comparing it to a "Victorian gossip" (a subject that was previously referenced in [[2660: Gen Z]]).

The specifics of Megan's objection aren't clear, and there are a number of possible angles. From Megan highlighting that it makes her feel 'Victorian', it could be that the old and gendered roots of the word itself feel odd to her, as the 17th-century roots meant of "master of the house" or "husbandman" (farmer). Alternatively, the terms might impart an image of an old married couple in her mind and she dislikes that it makes her feel old. American norms around relationships, gender and marriage have changed significantly over the last several decades, and phrases associated with traditional and rigid concepts of relationships and gender roles might naturally feel outdated to the younger generations. A more modern reason could simply be due to the seemingly possessive phrasing, due to the English word 'my' being used for both possession and relation.

Cueball, on the other hand, isn't bothered as much by this implication as by the association with 2006 film ''{{w|Borat}}''. Borat, a fictional character from {{w|Kazakhstan}}, had a distinct, cringy way of saying [https://youtu.be/Zw16aew4Pt0 "my wife"], which has been frequently referenced, quoted, replayed and incorporated into memes ever since the film came out. Even though the film was released 20 years prior to this strip, Cueball can't get the reference out of his head when he uses the phrase. (Depending on their cultural touchpoints, there are a number of other associations readers may make. For example, “My wife; I think I’ll keep her” was used as a commercial for a tonic to keep women looking young and/or feeling energetic. This was certainly not the author’s intent, but it certainly fits with the comic, if not the title text.)

The title text points out that the 20 years from the movie's release to the publication of this comic is longer than the 15 years from the {{w|dissolution of the Soviet Union}} to the movie (Kazakhstan was briefly the last-remaining member of the USSR). In contrast to [[Randall]]'s usual [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|attempts to make people feel old]], the title text claims that ''Borat'' actually seems '''older''' than it really is. The implication is that the memes have become so ubiquitous that they feel like they've been part of American culture for a very long time.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball are talking, standing next to each other.]
:Megan: I still feel a little weird saying the phrase "my husband".
:Megan: It makes me feel so traditional, like a Victorian gossip.

:[Megan and Cueball still standing next to each other.]
:Cueball: Yeah, well, '''''my''''' plight isn’t much better.
:Megan: What do you mean?
:Cueball: What’s the most salient cultural reference for the phrase "my wife"?

:[In the 3rd panel, Cueball has his hands raised.]
:Megan: Ughhhh, true.
:Cueball: Even now, after two decades, when I speak of you I hear his voice, echoing through the halls of memory like a cringey ghost.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Movies]]
[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]

3236: Border Message

2026-04-22T20:41:56Z

68.101.170.57: /* Transcript */ There are way too many "incomplete" transcripts that are mostly fine.

{{comic
| number = 3236
| date = April 22, 2026
| title = Border Message
| image = border_message_2x.png
| imagesize = 736x316px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Thanks to differences in logging regulations, the messages actually turned out to be visible from the air.
| wikidata = Q139738157
}}

==Explanation==
Many US states, counties, and smaller local administrative regions have long, straight borders. Regions whose borders evolved over time often reflect natural geographic features (such as bodies of water or mountain ranges), customary (pre-survey) tradition, or piecemeal growth (a city annexing selected nearby areas based on landowner requests or economic factors). Straight lines tend to be the result of a survey or administrative process that is more concerned with defining a boundary than optimizing for local conditions. However, this may be boring for legislators or surveyors who have the power to set the boundary. In this comic, the legislators in charge of the boundary between two geographic areas ("Southlake" to the southwest and "East Valley" to the northeast) livened up the process by arranging for the boundary to spell out a message when viewed on a map. It's unknown what kind of local areas (municipal regions, counties, etc.) are involved here. The boundary definition includes multiple discontinuities — such as the bottoms of the W and other letters with gaps at the bottom, the interior of the "O"s and other letters with "holes", the apostrophe, and so on — that are {{w|Enclave and exclave|either exclaves}} (probably of the northern territory, that are surrounded by the southern one, in most cases) or (unlabeled) {{w|Enclave and exclave#True_enclaves|enclaved territories}} in their own right that are associated with no other disconnected area (possibly regarded as ''{{w|terra nullius}}''). This would be very inconvenient for both tourists and locals, since they would have to constantly consult the map if they want to know whether they are in East Valley or Southlake. This would mean that, artistically (or [[2008|ironically]]) enough, the message with a nice positive saying would almost certainly annoy people, defeating the purpose. [[2519: Sloped Border]] is about negotiations regarding another bizarre border.

The title text implies that the area around the border is forested. Due to the different logging regulations in the two areas, the densities or types of trees on each side of the border are so different that one can see the border, and hence the messages, when looking down on the land. What logging would happen in the land within the exclaves is unclear (possibly none?), but evidently is sufficiently different to make these visible. Presumably, the effect is similar to actual {{w|deforestation in Haiti}}, as seen in viral posts that depict satellite images of its border with the Dominican Republic.

This comic may have been inspired by {{w|gerrymandering}}: defining voting districts to favor a particular group. This often results in districts with very unusual shapes. The comic was published on the day after Virginia voters passed {{w|2026 Virginia redistricting amendment|a referendum approving redistricting}} that favored the Democratic Party. See also the {{w|Belgium-Netherlands border}} and the Google Maps outlines of many western land divisions, which can both be chaotic in places. This comic also happens to have been published on {{w|Earth Day}}.

==Transcript==
:[A section of a map showing a small portion of the border between two geographic areas, East Valley and Southlake (marked on the map). The border is shown as a dotted line, and it is shaped so that it spells out a message:]
:WE HOPE YOU'RE ENJOYING THIS MAP

:[Caption below comic:]
:When local legislators get bored

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Maps]]

3235: Types of Board Game

2026-04-21T04:01:56Z

Tromag:

{{comic
| number = 3235
| date = April 20, 2026
| title = Types of Board Game
| image = types_of_board_game_2x.png
| imagesize = 501x1161px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I can't believe Candles of Vienna caved to commercial pressure and added the Goku expansion.
| wikidata = Q139738156
}}

==Explanation==
There are a lot of different types of board games in the world. Some are very simple, some are very complicated. This comic illustrates various types, with rather extreme examples.

; Boring
This is a very simplistic and boring board game style, often known as roll-and-move, where the players simply move around the board at the dictates of chance. The simplest examples (such as {{w|Snakes and Ladders}}, {{w|Mouse Trap (board game)|Mouse Trap}}, and {{w|Candy Land}}) involve no player choices at all, can get frustrating when dice rolls don't want to line up late in the game, and are thus viewed as boring, at least for adults. {{w|Pachisi}} variants (like {{w|Ludo}}) also fall into this structure while still needing some amount of skill and strategy, but it may feel frustratingly difficult to influence the outcome. It is unclear whether the described game has no end condition at all or whether it is so dull that the group involved are unable to complete it without getting bored and giving up.
; Abstract
This board game has more abstract tones, involving the arrangement of geometric shapes for reasons that may not be immediately clear, perhaps similar to something like {{w|Hive (game)|Hive}} or {{w|Tantrix}}. Some people may find that this kind of game, without a relatable framing they can use as a starting point for understanding it, is quite hard to get to grips with.
; Hyperspecific Theme
This board game has a weirdly specific backstory, being centred around a very specific historical event, and a specific task within that. Lengthy backstories that have to be explained before you get to the actual gameplay can feel contrived and be off-putting to some players, but can be an attempt to contextualize gameplay that might otherwise fall into the Abstract category. The {{w|Congress of Vienna}} was a gathering of diplomats from many different countries at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. There exist [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/256170/schonbrunn multiple] [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/296578/congress-of-vienna actual board games] about the Congress of Vienna, but none that have to do with lighting candles (yet). The candles might be a reference to {{w|Cluedo}} (known in North America as Clue), in which one of the possible weapons is a candlestick.
; Overcomplicated
{{w|Twilight Imperium}} is widely regarded as being an extremely complex board game (especially the later 3rd and 4th editions). Cones of Dunshire is a joke board game (first shown on the TV show ''{{w|Parks and Recreation}}''), which was eventually turned into a real game where the aim is to accumulate cone tokens. Its extreme complexity is key to the joke. Combining them would likely result in a game that is far more complex than either. {{w|Category theory}} is a branch of mathematics famous for its layers of abstractions, and is notoriously difficult to understand. {{w|Cone (category theory)|Cones}} are a concept from category theory (unrelated to those in the Cones of Dunshire game), as are {{w|Monad (category theory)|monads}}, which have the famous [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3870088/a-monad-is-just-a-monoid-in-the-category-of-endofunctors-whats-the-problem definition] of "a monad is simply a monoid in the category of endofunctors", which to many people may seem like exactly the kind of baffling thing they might encounter in the instructions to an overcomplicated board game.
; Cooperative
Cooperative board games center around players attempting to reach a common goal, winning or losing together. Many feature impediments to communication that make this more challenging; for instance, players may be restricted from saying certain words, or have secret cards they are unable to reveal before playing. The game in this panel appears to forbid all communication between players except for hand gestures. The punchline likens it to a very mundane activity, sorting a junk drawer, made artificially more difficult due to silence, and suggests the game is just as boring. It also raises suspicions that [[Megan]] has organised or hijacked this games night to trick her friends into doing chores she can't be bothered with, similarly to the way that Cueball [[1566: Board Game|once did for his taxes]]. The game described in the comic makes it seem like a (rather pointless) extension of {{w|Charades}}, and is also reminiscent of cooperative game {{w|The Mind (card game)|The Mind}}.
; Branded
Some board games are published and marketed as tie-ins to other forms of media, using settings, characters, or events from the source to appeal to its fans and get them to buy a game they might otherwise not have done. The theming often has little to nothing to do with the gameplay, as the many branded variants on Monopoly can attest. The game in this panel is themed after the sitcom {{w|Friends}}, with the unlikely addition of {{w|Goku|Son Goku}} from {{w|Dragon Ball}}. Dragon Ball's producers seem to be trying to expand into various board games (see the title text below). Interestingly enough, while the characters of the game are mentioned, the gameplay itself is unmentioned. Indeed, the gameplay itself could be Simple, Overcomplicated, Cooperative, or any of the others.
; Party
Party games tend to be more fast-paced and less complex than other types of games, usually designed around promoting active engagement and creating fun and often mildly embarrassing situations (like {{w|Pictionary}} or {{w|30 Seconds (game)|30 Seconds}}). Such games can be designed for children or adults, but when they're designed specifically for adults, they tend to deliberately include things like swearing or references to sex (such as the well known {{w|Cards Against Humanity}}). This is a relatively simple way to encourage lack of social inhibition and potentially generate crude humor, which may be particularly appealing to people who generally need to avoid such things (such as parents of young children). In this strip, that notion is exaggerated to its extreme: the game apparently consists solely of receiving a card with a random "bad word", and everyone yelling them at once. No goal or win condition is described, making it less a game and more an excuse to curse in unison.
; Social Deduction
{{w|Social deduction game|Social deduction games}}, such as variations upon {{w|Mafia (party game)|Mafia/Werewolf}} (like the derived computer game ''{{w|Among Us}}''), revolve around the players attempting to deduce the roles or allegiances of other players, based on both special abilities provided by the game and the players' native abilities to tell which of their fellow players are being dishonest. Commonly, they involve an 'uninformed majority,' who do not know the allegiances of other players, attempting to discover the 'informed minority,' who know the members of their team. The minority is often framed as 'evil,' with the ability to 'kill' other players and remove them from the game; their victory condition often revolves around killing most or all of the 'good' players. The game in this panel revolves around finding a 'secret murderer', as per these kinds of game, but evidently has required clarification that discovering a ''real'' murderer does not count, implying that one or more of the previous week's participants, possibly [[Black Hat]], had actually killed someone in real life. Although Black Hat is not shown in this comic's game night, it stands to reason that after admitting to murder he would not be invited back the following week. This situation might be a reference to the [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-59258857 case of Tiernan Darnton] who admitted, during a game of Truth or Dare, to killing his step-grandmother.
; Title text
"Candles of Vienna" is presumably the game described under "Hyperspecific Theme". An expansion pack is an additional set of playing equipment that can be combined with an existing game to add new gameplay possibilities. It appears that the rights holders for Goku have decided on a strategy of getting the character included in multiple board games. The character would arguably be even more out of place in Napoleonic Vienna than lounging on the sofas at [[https://friends.fandom.com/wiki/Central_Perk Central Perk]].

The setting, with the characters round a table playing games, is rather similar to that in the [[:Category:Dungeons & Dragons|D&D comics]].

==Transcript==
:Types of Board Game
:[Under this header text, the comic contains 8 panels. Each of them is labeled at the top with a short description of the board game being played and features (from left to right) Cueball, Ponytail, Megan, and White Hat sitting on chairs around a table trying to play it.]

:Boring
:Megan: Each turn, roll a die and move your token. Turns proceed clockwise around the table until we get bored and go home.

:Abstract
:Cueball: Each turn, you can place any number of red triangles or blue squares on a hexagon, or move any hexagon to a...

:Hyperspecific Theme
:Ponytail: It's October 2, 1814. The Congress of Vienna convenes. You are each in charge of distributing and lighting candles for the opening ball, which was held at these three locations...

:Overcomplicated
:White Hat: It's a cross between ''Twilight Imperium'' and ''Cones of Dunshire'', but implemented entirely in category theory. Every cone is a monad, and...

:Cooperative
:Megan: We're working together to sort these decks of cards using only hand gestures. After that, we'll silently organize my junk drawer.

:Branded
:Cueball: You can play as Phoebe, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Joey, or, due to an ill-advised tie-in, Goku.

:Party
:Ponytail: Each of the cards in your hand has a bad word on it. On the count of three, yell the...

:Social Deduction
:Megan: Remember, per our ''Find the Secret Murderer'' house rules from last week, discovering that a player had committed a real-life murder does ''not'' count.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Board games]]
[[Category:Games]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]

3234: Europa Missions

2026-04-18T00:31:21Z

81.179.199.253: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3234
| date = April 17, 2026
| title = Europa Missions
| image = europa_missions_2x.png
| imagesize = 515x274px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Before resurfacing, they promise to inspect the ice for any evidence of hockey-playing life.
| wikidata = Q139738154
}}

==Explanation==
In recent years, multiple space agencies have sent spacecraft to observe Jupiter’s moon {{w|Europa (moon)|Europa}}. In part, this is because, according to {{w|NASA}}, the moon could be a candidate for life due to the presence of a subsurface ocean and (possibly) {{w|hydrothermal vents}}. The first two craft — the {{w|Europa Clipper}} and {{w|Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer}} (Juice), respectively — will investigate the ocean, topography and chemistry of the moon, to help in searching for signs of life. Europa's ocean is frozen on top — the whole surface being solid ice with no exposed liquid, except perhaps at the bottom of any transient deep crevasses — which is why it described as a "subsurface ocean". (Randall has talked about the [[3011|Europa Clipper]] before.)

A {{w|Zamboni}} is a vehicle that is meant to quickly resurface ice rinks that have been worn down — not a scientific mission or a transport for other scientific missions. The comic describes a non-existent spacecraft known as the ''Zamboni Voyager'', operated by the {{w|National Hockey League}} (NHL). The spacecraft is carrying a Zamboni because the NHL is trying to 'expand the league'. Normally, expanding a sports league would involve, at the very least, forming a new team in a city which did not have one. In this scenario, they appear to be more literally trying to expand the available space for play, by resurfacing Europa to make it viable for hockey-playing. (Although Europa is the {{w|Europa (moon)#Surface environment|smoothest known body}} in the solar system, it's probably not smooth enough for playing hockey.) Hockey in reduced gravity — Europa's gravity is less than 1/7 that of Earth — would be {{What If|124|an interesting idea}}. However, it would be ridiculous to, even if the plan succeeded, ferry spaceships to and from Europa simply to get hockey players and fans over just to see a game of Hockey.{{Citation needed}}

The title text talks about finding hockey-playing life on Europa, which would be unlikely, as any life on Europa would exist underwater, where it's difficult to play hockey.{{cn}} In addition, any conceivable culture(s) there would almost certainly be extremely different from Earth's, so even if the lifeforms on Europa do have entertainment similar to sports, it's unlikely that they have even {{w|Convergent evolution|remotely similar}} rules or equipment. If, though, there were intelligent non-hockey-playing life on Europa, the NHL may consider them fair game as a virgin market for their product.

On top of that, making a spacecraft to send a Zamboni to Europa would be very difficult, as 14,000 m/s of delta-v (a measure of the total change in velocity required to transfer between orbital or 'ground' locations) is needed. With a typical Zamboni weighing five tons, a very heavy rocket would be needed. Europa clipper weighs about six tons, which is comparable to a heavy Zamboni. That particular spacecraft will not perform an orbital insertion or a landing, but only a fly-by to save fuel. Even then, it needs a fully expendable Falcon Heavy, the largest commercially available rocket (as of the comic being published), to achieve the fly-by. A landing would need much more available delta-v for the final approach.

If whoever was talking (e.g. NASA) tried to stop them, something like an SLS launch (which is ludicrously expensive on top of not being commercially available) with more payload capacity may not even be possible. SpaceX’s Starship might be viable in the future, but again, if an agency tried to stop them they would likely not get a contract. On top of that, many of the critical technologies for Starship are ''not yet'' (good luck, SpaceX) available. Even with an SLS/Starship, successfully achieving a propulsive landing would be very difficult, as demonstrated by {{w|IM-1}} and {{w|IM-2}}, which both failed to land on our own Moon (and more landers from other agencies). A normal Zamboni is probably not hardened against Jupiter’s intense radiation environment and, unless adapted for robotic remote control, the life support system for the operator would greatly increase the total weight of the mission. Also, the water in a Zamboni would freeze long before it was applied.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball's upper body is shown; he is in front of an image of a spacecraft.]
:Cueball: There are now three spacecraft headed to Europa:
:Cueball: NASA's ''Europa Clipper'', which investigate Europa's subsurface ocean,

:[In a longer shot, Cueball, Ponytail, and Hairy are all shown standing in front of another spacecraft image, with Cueball gesturing at it.]
:Cueball: ESA's ''Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer'', which will study the topography and chemistry of Europa and the other moons,

:[Another closeup on Cueball, who is in front of an image of a Zamboni with a firing rocket nozzle on its bottom.]
:Cueball: And the NHL's ''Zamboni Voyager'', which plans to resurface Europa.
:Voice out of frame: Oh no.
:Cueball: We tried to stop them, but the league is set on an expansion.

==Trivia==
* The [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/f/fd/20260418170145%21europa_missions_2x.png original version of the comic] incorrectly referred to the "Jupiter Icy Moons ''Orbiter''" rather than "Jupiter Icy Moons ''Explorer''."

* This comic was created at around the time of the start of the season's NHL playoffs.

* This comic was posted 10 days after April 7, 2026, a pivotal date in ''{{w|17776}}'' — a space-probe related and sports-related webcomic which features Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer ("Juice"), the space probe mentioned in this comic, as a main character. (While the webcomic began in 2017, it received another wave of popularity in the lead-up to April 7, 2026, the date on which humans stopped being born (and essentially stopped dying and aging) within the story's fiction.)

* Kerbal Space Program is a great way to learn the basics of orbital mechanics.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics edited after their publication]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Space probes]]
[[Category:Sport]]

3233: Make It Myself

2026-04-15T21:21:46Z

RG: removed incomplete notice. can anyone stop me? or am I destined to vaporize all incomplete notices?

{{comic
| number = 3233
| date = April 15, 2026
| title = Make It Myself
| image = make_it_myself_2x.png
| imagesize = 284x438px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's not as big a loss as it looks, because now I have leftover supplies, which will help me talk myself into doing this all over again with a new project!
| wikidata = Q139738153
}}

==Explanation==
This strip lampoons people (commonly {{w|do it yourself}} enthusiasts) who scoff at the price of manufactured goods, insisting that they could build them more cheaply, only to end up spending more time and money than the product would cost in the first place.

In this case, [[Cueball]] starts by appearing to play the cliché straight, insisting that he could make an $80 product himself, using $10 worth of parts and an hour of work (which, for most people, would be financially advantageous). However, he subverts this by immediately adding on additional costs and time commitments, before ultimately admitting that he'd ''also'' have to actually buy the product when his homemade one breaks. Rather than the typical pattern of finishing the project and realizing he'd overextended himself, he is predicting ways the project will go wrong from the start, but seems determined to do it anyway.

When building something yourself, a relatively small amount of raw materials may go in to the final product, and some people fail to recognise other costs involved and assume they can assemble them into a finished project in short order. However, once the project begins, additional expenses often pile up. More supplies might be needed, sometimes in small quantities, but you still have to purchase larger packages. Specific tools and equipment that you don't already have may be needed, and this may not be obvious at first, explaining the multiple trips to the hardware store. If errors are made during the assembly process, material may be ruined, requiring additional purchases. Projects often become more involved and take more time than originally expected. All together, Cueball calculates that he'll spend $60 on parts, multiple hours (which are, themselves, likely to have a value greater than the price of the item), and multiple trips to the hardware store (with associated costs of fuel, etc.) trying to avoid paying $80 for the item, and that his homemade version will then break, requiring him to spend another $80 in addition to all that.

The title text attempts to justify the money he spent, by pointing out that he has leftover supplies. If only part of the purchased supplies were needed, or if the supplies included tools, then he might not assign all the cost to one project, because they can be reused. However, his prediction about "doing this all over again with a new project" sounds ominous in light of the comic. If his DIY projects don't ultimately save money, then being encouraged to start another may not be beneficial. He also has no guarantee that the supplies he has will be suitable for a future project. This may encourage him to use them in suboptimal ways instead, potentially compounding his problems. And even if he did have all the correct parts for a second project, [[Cueball]] would likely end up with an endless loop of the first problem (at least until all the leftover parts fall apart from all the continued use).

This is a common source of tension in DIY projects. While the costs of manufactured projects are generally significantly higher than the costs of materials and labor to make them (due to costs of storage, overhead, transport, and profits for all the businesses involved), they also have the advantage of economies of scale, amortized research and development, mass-manufacturing techniques and low-cost labor. For an individual to attempt to replicate that manufacturing process for a single item often involves additional costs, may not be worth the time that was spent, and may not be up to the quality standards of manufactured goods.

Of course, there are various non-cost reasons why people might choose to do home projects, such as self-satisfaction, learning, ability to make a bespoke solution, and so on, so a negative cost analysis doesn't necessarily mean that the DIY approach is always inadvisable. However, since Cueball's primary motivation appears to be financial, it doesn't seem to have much to recommend it in this case.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and White Hat stand together looking at two boxes on the right side of the frame. Each box has labels saying "Sale" and "$80" on one of the visible sides of the box, and 3 boxes of illegible text on the other visible side of the box. Cueball is holding his arms out toward the boxes.]

:Cueball: They want $80 for this?
:Cueball: I could make one myself for $10 in parts, an hour of work, a trip to the hardware store, another $30 in parts, another few hours of work, two more trips to the store for $20 more in parts, another hour to redo the first hour of work because I messed up, and $80 to buy this when the one I made breaks.
{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category: Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category: Comics edited after their publication]]

3232: Countdown Standard

2026-04-13T22:16:24Z

68.101.170.57: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 3232
| date = April 13, 2026
| title = Countdown Standard
| image = countdown_standard_2x.png
| imagesize = 474x222px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Anyone who is caught counting 'three ... two ... one ... zero ... GO!' will be punished with a lifetime of eating only ISO standard food samples.
| wikidata = Q139738152
}}

==Explanation==
This comic reflects the common {{tvtropes|OnThree|trope}} of people preparing for a synchronized action as a group (such as lifting something heavy, or [[:Category:The Race|having an electric skateboard race]]) counting to get everybody to start the action at the same time, without first having agreed at what point in the count they will act. Two of the ways that people often count up can be confusing: the action can be either performed just as the speaker says 'three', or a second later ('four' if the speaker was still counting). If the people involved do not all have the same understanding, and so end up acting out of sync, this could result in undesirable outcomes, such as damage, injury, or just a dispute over the interpretation of the instruction (not the least those who might jump the gun or perhaps intentionally start on '{{tvtropes|ILied|two}}').

This comic alleges that, if [[Randall]] gained control of the {{w|International Organization for Standardization}} (ISO), he would standardize counting to go ''down'' from three and have the 'go'-point be at zero. However, this proposal would be no better than counting up, as some people may expect to act on the 'one' or, as the title text suggests, to have a 'zero' before the 'go!', leading to exactly the same problems. Moreover, most people are unlikely to refer to the ISO before starting a countdown, and this is likely to simply lead to the problem outlined in [[927: Standards]].

"Deprecated" is a term applied to something that is no longer recommended for use, so you should fix things so as not to use it anymore. It is commonly used when a standard is replaced by a newer version or an alternative approach, but may still be in use in legacy applications. In this case, it is hard to imagine where there would be a situation where a need to maintain a deprecated standard would arise, since such countdowns tend to be short-lived affairs, so any starting before the publication of the new standard would be unlikely to continue running for appreciable periods after it.

The fact that these are called "countdowns", yet the ones being complained about are counts that go ''up'', is probably intentional, and cause for additional irritation among those who are bothered by the inherent inconsistencies.

The ISO is an international organization that is responsible for standardizing many things (such as technology and safety standards) to allow for smooth interoperability between countries, manufacturers, and so on. However, it doesn't standardize everyday actions like countdowns. Other standards organizations that have somewhat similar functions include the [https://www.nist.gov/ National Institute of Standards and Technology] (NIST) and the [https://www.ansi.org/ American National Standards Institute] (ANSI), which are technically American but have considerable international influence.{{acn}}

The title text refers to "ISO standard food samples". The ISO doesn't offer such samples, but does have documents which describe how food samples should be prepared for standardized analysis. For example, [https://www.iso.org/standard/29628.html ISO 16050:2003] documents how "cereals, nuts and derived products" are to be analyzed for aflatoxins. If your punishment were to repeatedly test cereals and nuts for toxins, that would probably be quite unpleasant, especially if one of your bowls happened to contain said toxins. {{w|ISO 3103}} describes a standardized method for {{What If|71|brewing tea}}. It's unclear why such samples would be considered particularly unpleasant or inappropriate for consumption. Perhaps they would be assumed to be unimaginably bland because they would be 'lowest common denominator' illustrations of the base definition of each food. There ''are'' NIST Standard Reference Materials for food, such as [https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=2387 peanut butter] and "[https://shop.nist.gov/ccrz__ProductDetails?sku=1548b typical diet]". These samples are incredibly expensive to purchase, so eating only NIST Standard Reference Materials would be a significant financial drain if you were forced to eat them. Hacker lore describes a supposed [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/A/ANSI-standard-pizza.html "ANSI-standard pizza"].

Apparently eating these food samples is, in Randall's opinion, suitable punishment for doing “3, 2, 1, 0, Go!” for a countdown. In this he is likely to be disappointed, as he will discover that punishment for non-compliance with standards is not within the remit of the ISO. The possibility of including 0 in such a countdown would be an example of an off-by-one error, as described in [[3062: Off By One]].

==Transcript==
:[The comic shows three different ways of counting down]

:One ... Two ... '''''Three!''''' [red X, followed by red text] Deprecated
:One ... Two ... Three ... '''''Go!''''' [red X, followed by red text] Deprecated
:[These first two both connected by a red curly bracket on the right followed by red text:] Too easy to mix up

:Three ... Two ... One ... '''''Go!''''' [green tickmark, followed by green text] ISO Standard

:[Caption below the comic:]
:If I were in charge of ISO, the first thing I'd do would be to standardize the way people count out loud before doing something in sync.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics with color]]

3231: Lightning

2026-04-10T20:44:51Z

68.101.170.57: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 3231
| date = April 10, 2026
| title = Lightning
| image = lightning_2x.png
| imagesize = 328x364px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Maybe you should wear one too? I guess I'm taller than you, so as long as I have one we're fine.
}}

==Explanation==
An {{w|anti-static wrist strap}} is a device worn by people working with sensitive electronic devices. The strap is connected to a {{w|Ground (electricity)|"ground"}}, so any static charge will be neutralized rather than accumulating and discharging to the device, potentially causing damage. Many electrical devices are grounded by conductors in their power cords, protecting the devices (and their users) from electrical faults.

{{w|Lightning}} is a release of static electricity that occurs when there's a large charge difference between a cloud and the Earth or between two clouds. In the comic, [[Cueball]] has [[649|once again]] confused how anti-static devices work — rather than protecting a device from static in the person, he thinks it will protect the person from static in the lightning. In fact, wearing a strap that conducts electricity will make it fractionally ''more'' likely that he will be struck by lightning (by bringing the typical 'ground' anode marginally closer to the cloud's cathode, bypassing the usually greater electrical impedance of his body), and then the strap is far too small to protect him from the electricity in the lightning strike once this happens.

He may think that the anti-static device works like a {{w|lightning rod}}, attracting the lightning that would have struck his body, and diverting it away from it. The reason they work is because lightning takes the easiest path. If a tall structure is going to be hit by a lightning strike, it's better to have that strike not go via more resistive materials that can be easily damaged or destroyed. A proper lightning conductor is designed to conduct the large amount of energy of lightning safely to the bottom, unlike a wrist-strap cable that is only made to leak away much smaller static buildups and could not contain a sudden cloud-to-ground surge of electricity.

This is further echoed by the title text, in which he thinks that [[Ponytail]] should be safe because he's taller than she is (plus also higher up in the hill in the comic — although she could at some time easily move further up the hill than him, so relative tallness is only part of the issue), and lightning tends to be attracted to the most prominent conductor in its vicinity (e.g., lightning rods that extend above the roof of the building they're protecting). While it is true that Ponytail is less likely to be struck by lighting directly she is by no means safe: If lighting hits the ground a very large current is discharged into the earth, and will spread outwards from the impact point. Since Ponytail (like all humans) has a lower resistance than the ground, this current will travel through her feet and legs upon reaching her. Since Cueball has (by an extension of his own logic) made himself more likely to be struck he has increased the risk for Ponytail even if the grounding would protect him. (Obviously, there are better ways to be protected during a thunderstorm; see the What If on {{What If|16|lightning}}.)

[[Randall]] also shows [[Cueball]]'s incorrect views on lightning in [[795: Conditional Risk]], in that case confusing statistics.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail (who is holding a walking stick) and Cueball are on the side of a hill, looking at a bolt of lightning very close by. The sky is shown as black, with the rest of the panel being a white silhouette.]

:[The lightning is accompanied by this word:]
:<big>BOOOOM</big>

:Cueball: Don't worry, I'm wearing an anti-static wrist strap

==Trivia==
There was indeed a {{w|Lightning rod fashion|brief period}}, starting in France in 1778, when lightning rods were incorporated into clothing. Its effectiveness is debatable. One would need data about how many people wearing such clothing were struck by lightning but unhurt because of the rods, and there's no way to know how many people wearing such clothing weren't struck at all, but ''would'' have been struck if they hadn't been wearing it.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Lightning]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]

3230: Overton

2026-04-08T18:23:38Z

82.132.212.205: /* Explanation */ Correctly punctuated, again. (Too many CNs for one article, IMO, but that's another issue.)

{{comic
| number = 3230
| date = April 8, 2026
| title = Overton
| image = overton_2x.png
| imagesize = 242x268px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I think I accidentally installed an Overton window in my bedroom. A few months ago, the sun wasn't in my face in the morning, but now it is.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Joseph Paul Overton}} was a political scientist who created the concept of the {{w|Overton window}}, which is the range of subjects that are politically appropriate to raise during a period of time. The first set of dates, 1960 and 2003, are the years that Overton was born and died.

It is common for political commentators to state that the Overton window has "moved," meaning that the standard for which political positions are "moderate" or "extreme" has changed. In the comic, the "Overton window" refers to the time span in which Joseph Paul Overton was alive. The dates on Overton's grave have been repeatedly crossed out and replaced as this 'window' has moved. This creates the ridiculous implication that Overton was living at least four overlapping lives, or that history has repeatedly changed so that the dates of his life shifted, either of which is impossible.{{cn}} Alternatively, it could reflect changes in the frame of reference the keepers of the grave are using to date events.

Notably, the gravestone doesn't have an updated death year, implying that Overton actually came back from the dead the last time the window updated, and is still alive to this day, which is untrue.{{cn}}

In the title text, the speaker notices that the sunlight is now being let in earlier in the morning, and attributes this to it coming through an "Overton window" that can physically move. This is unlikely, since the Overton window is an abstract concept, not an architectural feature, and sunlight is not generally influenced by social attitudes.{{cn}} It is more likely that the phenomenon is due to the seasonal movement of the Sun in the sky, where its apparent path across the sky moves further north or south between the {{w|summer solstice}} (highest arc) and {{w|winter solstice}} (lowest arc), changing the place it falls at a given time of day, and therefore its angle of entry through any given window. This shift is caused by the Earth's tilt relative to its orbit. The Sun's position at a certain clock time may also be perceived to change suddenly due to the beginning or end of {{w|daylight saving time}}, as occurred in most US states and many other countries shortly before this comic was published. (This is an issue that Randall has covered [[:Category:Daylight saving time|multiple times]], although apparently ''not'' (unless this is a subtle reference) this year.)

==Transcript==
:[A gravestone is shown on some grass. On the inscription, all of the years except the last one are crossed out in red, and all except the first pair of years have the years themselves in red. The inscription is as follows:]
:Joseph Paul Overton
:<s>1960</s> - <s>2003</s>
:<s>1965</s> - <s>2011</s>
:<s>1973</s> - <s>2018</s>
:1982 -

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics with red annotations]]

3229: Grammar

2026-04-06T21:53:46Z

68.187.4.2:

{{comic
| number = 3229
| date = April 6, 2026
| title = Grammar
| image = grammar_2x.png
| imagesize = 227x312px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Communication is one of the most popular ways to transmit information, ahead of rivals such as
}}

==Explanation==

[[Miss Lenhart]] is shown teaching a classroom about {{w|grammar}}, which is a system of rules describing how a certain language is structured. This is useful to make communication and meaning standardized and clear, with little to no difficulty in parsing. However, due to having many rules and structures to learn, the grammar of some languages can be viewed with annoyance by some people who wish it were 'simpler'. Miss Lenhart claims that grammar is "''one'' of the most popular ways to structure a language" and presents two alternative methods, but this is odd, as grammar ''is'' how we structure a language. Also, if the names of these 'rivals' illustrate their use, they reflect their own rules, and thus imply their own grammar. She also presents two alternative methods (though it could be interpreted as a list of four items without commas to split it up) that competed to substitute grammar, yet evidently never took off to be implemented for practical use. Despite seeming nonsensical, they've gained their own linguistic terminology:

;Words order words random words words random good
:This alternate to grammar likely has very loose rules around structure, as it consists of simply stating words that relate directly to the idea being conveyed (as opposed to normal grammar, which focuses on linking together many words to form a single coherent idea). This is superficially similar to some languages, like Ukrainian, where word order does not matter. However, in these languages, its role in the sentence is simply replaced with more in-depth conjugation, which is also a form of grammar. The provided sentence, conversely, appears to have neither conjugation nor any meaningful ordering, which would make it difficult to convey more complex concepts.

;EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
:This proposes a very narrow method of structuring language consisting of only the capital letter "E". It could be argued that this method of structuring language is able to form a coherent idea, but the number of distinct ideas that may be formed using this method is only one, being a string of "E"s, which may represent an attempt to draw another's attention, unless the precise number of "E"s represents a raw {{w|Unary numeral system|value}} which can be indexed to distinct messages. Messages could also be encoded by fluctuation of the volume or pitch of the scream. A different scream-based method of communication was mentioned in [[3054: Scream Cipher]]. It has also been postulated that more complex ideas may be transferred through the use of encoding patterns such as Morse code or with other vowels. One of the questions recorded in [[Randall]]'s ''[[What If? 2]]'', in the {{what if|2-58.5|Short Answers #5 chapter}}. The "question", posted by Nate Yu, was a string of 960 letter "E"s, to which Randall replied: "I feel you, Nate".

;Communication is one of the most popular ways to transmit information, ahead of rivals such as
:The title text continues Lenhart's lecture, as she moves on to {{w|communication}} and its rival alternatives, similar to the subject of grammar, but seems to cut off before naming the first one. Lenhart is self-demonstrating non-communication, as the sudden stop in the middle of the sentence could be a joke for how there are no other ways to convey information without communication, since communication is literally the act of conveying information. Still, this doesn't rule out at least one other 'rival' to communication, as Lenhart implies that at least one more method exists. If communication is defined as successful transmission of information, it is possible she is referring to some sort of method(s) that attempts, but fails to transmit information. Nonetheless, demonstrating lack of communication would not be useful in this setting without further explanation, as abruptly ceasing to provide more information could cause confusion in her students.

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart is teaching in a classroom. Two students can be seen sitting at desks in front of her, Cueball in the first row and Megan in the second row.]
:Miss Lenhart: '''Grammar''' is one of the most popular ways to structure a language, ahead of rival methods such as '''''words order words random words words random good''''' and '''''EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE'''''.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Language]]

3228: Day Counter

2026-04-03T11:41:08Z

YZ100:

{{comic
| number = 3228
| date = April 3, 2026
| title = Day Counter
| image = day_counter_2x.png
| imagesize = 319x287px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It has been −2,147,483,648 days since our last integer overflow.
}}

==Explanation==
A common feature of an industrial setting is a prominent sign announcing how many days have elapsed since the last workplace accident. The sign is typically updated each day to a number one higher — or back to zero, if there ''has'' been an accident. Such signs are intended to foster a culture of safety among the workers in the facility, since presumably no one wants to suffer the embarrassment of being the one to have caused an accident that resets the number to 0. (However, it may also lead workers to cover up or conceal accidents, for the same reason, which would tend to increase future accidents, because they do not report the need to correct hazardous conditions that are causing accidents.)

Evidently, in the programming facility shown in the comic, a floating-point error has occurred today, and an attempt has been made to update the sign to say "It has been 0 days since...". But the number 0 is displayed incorrectly, as the very small negative value −0.00000000000000044. Perhaps the error that was made today was the very error that occurred in updating the sign! (This would of course violate {{w|causality}}, but in comedy, self-referential humor beats causality every time, and is at least self-consistent, like with [[363: Reset]])

Floating-point errors occur because computers can devote only a finite amount of storage for each {{w|Floating-point arithmetic|floating point number}} or other fraction. However, many {{w|real numbers}} and {{w|rational numbers}} theoretically require an infinite number of digits to represent them. For example, the ordinary fraction ⅓ is represented in decimal as 0.3333333333…, where the 3s repeat forever. When a number is truncated to fit in the finite amount of space, precision is inevitably lost, resulting in a slight rounding error. Unless carefully controlled, these rounding errors can accumulate, significantly degrading the accuracy of floating-point computations. For example, although ⅓ + ⅓ + ⅓ should obviously equal 1, a finite-precision calculation like 0.333 + 0.333 + 0.333 might show a misleading result of 0.999, which might not trigger the code to do what it should do when three thirds have been accumulated (it can be mitigated by allowing a match for a value which is within a suitably very small difference to the test value, but this must be considered carefully to not be over-/under-sensitive). The amount of required space for rational numbers is not universal, it depends on the base used (⅓ in base 3 requires just two digits: 0 as the units and 1 after the {{w|Decimal separator#Radix point|radix (ternary) point}}). Floating point arithmetic standards, like the popular IEEE 754, define how and when an approximation should take place, leading to predictable results, but they don't respect some basic properties of common arithmetic operations, which someone may take for granted, e.g. in floating point arithmetic addition and multiplication are commutative (a+b=b+a; a*b=b*a), but aren't guaranteed to be associative ((a+b)+c≈a+(b+c)); (a*b)*c≈a*(b*c)).

This issue is exacerbated on computers which use binary arithmetic (i.e., virtually all computers today), since in binary, the ordinary fraction 1/10 is represented as the infinitely-repeating base-2 fraction <tt>0.000110011001100110011</tt>…. A classic example is that, depending on circumstances, the calculation 0.1 + 0.2 might [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/588004/is-floating-point-math-broken seem to give an answer of 0.30000000000000004].

Floating point errors are particularly common in programming, especially in languages that implicitly convert decimal numbers to binary floating point, so an approximation is already made at conversion leading to unexpected results. The title text cites another common programming problem, integer overflow. When a value gets bigger than the biggest integer that can be represented in a certain format, it may "wrap around" to the smallest/most negative value (if the system is not instead set to catch this as an overflow error). In case of 32-bit signed integers it may wrap from 231−1 (2,147,483,647) to −231 (−2,147,483,648).

Integer overflow was the topic of [[571: Can't Sleep]], with yet another example of a 'days since' sign being [[3140: Biology Department]] (two examples, in both the comic and its title text).

It should be noted that computers displaying things like "-1 seconds until the next [blank]" is a glitch that actually happens.

==Transcript==
[White Hat, Ponytail, Cueball, and Megan are all below a large sign, which appears to be attached to the wall at its four corners. White Hat and Ponytail appear to be discussing something, while Cueball is sitting at his desk working on a laptop and Megan is walking away. The sign has text on it, as well as a large display presumably meant to show a number.]

:[Sign:] It has been
:[Display:] -0.00000000000000044
:[Sign:] days since our last floating point error

==Trivia==
As an example of how the number −0.00000000000000044 could have arisen when 0 was intended, consider this simple {{w|C (programming language)|C}} program:

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
double d = 19;
for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++) d -= 1.9;
printf("%.17f\n", d);
}

The program starts with the number 19, and subtracts 1.9 from it, ten times. Mathematically, we would expect the result to be 0. However, the number 1.9 cannot be represented exactly in binary, nor can the intermediate results 17.1, 15.2, 13.3, etc. The cascading roundoff errors conspire to produce a result of −0.00000000000000044 instead of the expected 0.

Another possibility is that the timestamps were rounded to an intermediate lower precision that ended up rounding above the actual time value:

#include <stdio.h>
float last_fp_error=0;
int main(){
double time = 0.00000000745058193;
int a=3; int b=-2; double f=10;
if(a/f+b/f!=(a+b)/f) last_fp_error=time;
printf("It has been %.17f days since our last floating point error",time-last_fp_error);
}

In the comic, such an error creates the ridiculous illusion that −0.00000000000000044 days have passed, which implies a 'negative' number of days, which is impossible{{cn}}. It also, even if it were a positive number, would mean that much less than a nanosecond had passed since the last error, which would be an unfeasably short amount of time. Of course, the joke is that in making the sign showing the amount of time since a floating point error was last made, they are creating a floating point error, meaning the sign maintains its own "error state" in a self-referential way. Also, if they tried to reset the sign, they might make the same error again, repeating the cycle over and over, which would not be ideal.

Coincidentally enough, [[Cueball]] is also floating — off his seat in this case, but this is an art style choice that ended up being apparent, [[3100|as]] [[919|many]] [[1682|past]] [[1411|chair]] [[2362|sitters]] [[2382|are]] [[3178|also]] [[1088|shown]] [[1121|to]] [[3198|levitate]].


{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

3227: Creation

2026-04-01T20:09:59Z

FaviFake: Undo revision 414467 by YZ100 (talk) I see neither of these. If the sky is black and the comic is black is because the sky is black

{{comic
| number = 3227
| date = April 1, 2026
| title = Creation
| image = creation_2x.png
| imagesize = 567x198px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = This xkcd.com update introduces a variety of new reading modes which can be activated through the menu.
}}
{{series
| series = April
| number = 18
| date = April 1, 2026
| days_late =
| day_category = Wednesday
| prev_title = 3074: Push Notifications
| prev_date = April 9, 2025
| next_title =
| next_date =
}}
To experience the interactivity of the web page, visit the {{xkcd|3227|original comic}}!

==Explanation==
In this {{w|April Fool's Day}} comic, several new viewing modes have been added to the xkcd website, accessible through a {{w|drop-down list}} beneath the comic (not visible on Explain xkcd). This was the first time in 15 years that the xkcd site itself had been redesigned, with the previous site redesign coming in 2011 with [[880: Headache]]. This allows various different viewing experiences for the entire website (this included other comics until 15 April 2026; since then it only works on this comic). Some are "normal" viewing modes, like the typical "light" and "dark" modes, but others take such things further and/or in more esoteric ways. This includes an "airplane mode" (see below) that parodies and subverts the {{w|Airplane mode|normal implementation}}.

The accompanying comic references one of the first lines of the {{w|Bible}} (Genesis 1:3), wherein God creates light. Here, though, before God has a chance to fully appreciate their work, a person on Earth immediately requests an implementation of {{w|dark mode}}. Dark mode is a feature on many websites and devices which displays text in white against a black background instead of the default black text on a white background. In low ambient light this makes for a less intense viewing experience that is easier on the eyes, so many people who spend a lot of time looking at screens prefer dark mode (whereas casual users often find light mode easier to read). On OLED screens, another benefit is that less battery life is consumed because of the primarily low brightness of the screen, which makes it useful for those who want to be energy-efficient or extend their battery life.

This demand represents a common experience for web and app designers, who spend a lot of time creating something that looks beautiful to them, and in their particular use case, only to find when it is put out into the wild that it doesn't suit the needs of many of their actual users, who don't particularly care about the effort they've put in.

Dark mode is not usually implemented on planets,{{cn}} although one could argue that night-time is effectively Earth's "dark mode", which could have been created by God as a response to the person. (That seems likely, in fact, given that the very next words in Genesis 1:4 are "and he separated the light from the darkness".) The comic deviates somewhat from traditional Judeo-Christian theology, as in Genesis the day/night cycle was created on the first day, but humans were created on the sixth day - thus, the "dark mode" (night-time) would already have been implemented by the time humans existed. Possibly the person is actually requesting a dark mode that can be toggled at will, rather than one which occurs automatically each day.

Unlike most comics, the title text contains no jokes, but rather explains the update and gives basic instructions.

The comic credits the "Excellent Design Team", consisting of Amber, Benjamin Staffin, and Kevin who helped create the modes.

This credit was also implemented as the new [[Header text]], so that the explanation for the new mode would be visible when viewing all other comics on xkcd, as well as the credit to the design team, see more details [[Header_text#2026-04-07_-_Reading_Modes|here]].

When the comic first released the veiwing modes were available on every comic, but currently the settings are only available on the original comic.

===List of Modes===
If you want to check out other xckd pages with the feature, dump the following into the console:
await import("https://xkcd.com/3227/5710add.js");
// fake an event
const event = new CustomEvent("DOMContentLoaded", {});
document.dispatchEvent(event);
Or, you could grab the [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/574120-xkcd-mode-switcher-from-3233 xkcd Mode Switcher] Greasy Fork script

; Light Mode
: The usual site experience. Typically, where sites have light and dark modes, light is the default option, so as to mimic ink on paper (such as printed {{w|newspaper comic strip}}s).

; Lighter Mode
: The entire web page is filtered to look {{w|Exposure (photography)#Overexposure and underexposure|overexposed}}, making colors wash out and reducing the contrast.

; Dark Mode
: A standard "white content on black background" dark mode. Specifically, Dark Mode inverts the colors of the page (which makes a {{w|Negative (photography)|colour-negative}} and then hue-rotates it by 180 degrees (to make hue return to normal, only brightness-reversed. (For example, see comic [[556: Alternative Energy Revolution|556]], with dark mode enabled, to see how the hue is maintained.) The background of the page, normally light blue, becomes a dark blue; (near-)whites become (near-)blacks, and vice-versa, only mid-tones staying the same. This inversion makes the content of this particular comic, with the original transition from a dark pane to "let there be light" panes and the subsequent request for this very feature, particularly nonsensical, as it seems to start fully bright, then darken as God creates light.

; Darkest Mode
: Everything on the webpage turns completely black (severely 'underexposed', in effect, the opposite to "Lighter mode" but also even more extreme). The exception is the drop-down menu widget, which may appear as merely a dark gray — and depending upon the browser itself, the dropped-down menu may be its 'natural' appearance when it becomes fully active — which is of course extremely helpful for navigating back out of this mode or onward onto others.

; Blurry Mode
: {{w|Blur (photographic effect)|Blurs}} the entire webpage. This is not conventionally desirable as it makes it harder to read text and interpret visuals. Whereas light and dark mode support can improve {{w|Web accessibility|accessibility}} for certain vision conditions, this mode makes already poor vision even worse.

; Grayscale Mode
: Applies a standard {{w|grayscale}}/{{w|Colorfulness#Saturation|desaturation}} conversion filter to the entire webpage. Many devices provide a grayscale mode as one of their color filter settings, which can simulate different {{w|color vision deficiencies}}. Grayscale specifically can also help improve focus by preventing colors from catching the eye and making distractions less visually appealing.

; Greyscale Mode
: Operates identically to Grayscale Mode, but also changes the spelling of "math" in the slogan at the top of the page to "maths" (to go along with the respective {{w|American and British English spelling differences|British English}} use of ''{{wiktionary|gray}}/{{wiktionary|grey}}'').

; Dorian Greyscale Mode
: Makes the webpage slowly turn grey, including darkening/fading-to-grey 'white' areas. This refers to ''{{w|The Picture of Dorian Gray}}'', in which the titular character has a portrait that slowly ages and fades out while the character stays young and handsome. The transformation finishes after 5 minutes.

: Of note is that the surname of the titular character is "{{w|Grey (disambiguation)#People|Gray}}" (as is still common, if not dominant, in Britain), but the mode itself is named for the primary British/non-American standard English version of the word for such a hueless shade.

: No relation to the {{w|Dorian mode}}, a musical scale.

; Space Opera Mode
: Turns the entire page into a ''{{w|Star Wars}}''-style opening scroll, which loops round until you change the mode. Scrolling the mouse scrolls up or down through the page content. {{w|Space opera}} is a genre of sci-fi that ''Star Wars'' falls under. Opera is the name of a web browser, though it does not usually display content in this way.

; 3D Mode
: Makes the comic render in {{w|Anaglyph 3D|anaglyphic stereoscopy}}. [[Randall]] has used 3D space before for [[848|another joke comic]]. He has also utilized a similar joke for the 2011 xkcd redesign, which was released along with [[880: Headache]].

; Origami Mode
: Rotates and folds various pieces of the webpage, as if it were {{w|origami}}-folded.

; Ink Mode
: Recolors the webpage as if drawn in blue ink, which is often used for the initial roughing-out of a drawing.

; Spring Mode
: Gives the comic a simple physics simulation, making it slightly rotate around an axis when the page is scrolled, and giving it a {{w|springboard}} look, hence the name. The axis around which the page precesses is perpendicular to the axis the user scrolls on. This means that when the page is scrolled vertically (the usual direction), the comic wobbles around a horizontal axis, but when scrolled horizontally (if your screen size or zoom allows it), the comic precesses about the vertical axis.

; Antipodes Mode
: Turns the entire webpage upside down. An {{w|antipodes|antipode}} is the point on the Earth's surface directly opposite of another, but "The Antipodes" is also a term used to refer to {{w|Australia}} and {{w|New Zealand}} by inhabitants of the northern hemisphere. Note: When the comic was first published this was labeled "Southern Hemisphere Mode".

; Hacker Mode
: Recolors the entire webpage in the stereotypical green-on-black coding environment color scheme often used by {{w|hacker}}s in film and TV. This visual shorthand is a holdover from early {{w|monochrome monitor}}s that used P1 phosphor. (Modern terminal software has no such limitations, and many programmers today use {{w|syntax highlighting}} to color-code operators and keywords.)

; Screensaver Mode
: Makes the comic float around on the webpage, bouncing as it hits the edges. A common type of {{w|screensaver}} has some text or other element drifting around the screen in this way. Many people ended up watching such screensavers, waiting for the bouncing graphic to hit the corner of the screen. Like with Hacker Mode, there is an element of nostalgia to this; screensavers are less necessary on modern LCD screens, so fewer setups use them.

; Modem Mode
: Slowly reveals the comic from top to bottom, as if slowly loading (but [[598: Porn|only in approximation]]) the way images often used to have to be progressively rendered from a low-rate stream of image data in the days of more limited dial-up connections and also a lower-performance {{w|internet backbone}} in general. This is accompanied by audio of the sound of a {{w|modem}} communicating over such a connection. NB - this mode does not appear to function correctly/reliably for some viewers.

; Stained Glass Mode
: Fills each closed area of the comic with a separate color to mimic the look of {{w|stained glass}} imagery. The colors vary each time this mode is selected or the page is reloaded in this mode, which works by flooding a single pseudorandom hue over all areas of near-white, each flood bounded only by any sufficiently dark or saturated drawn line/border. Strangely enough, on this mode you can't see the title text. This is because the canvas used to apply the hues is functionally covering the image: the javascript used to do this should have been made to copy the comic image's title attribute and make it apply to the overlaid canvas for the benefit of the browser.

; Airplane Mode
: Makes the comic fly around on the page, with the {{w|onomatopoeia}} "NYOOM!" written next to it, as if it were an {{w|airplane}}. This is unlike the usual use of {{w|airplane mode}} to refer to disabling the cellphone (or all {{w|radio frequency}}) features of a mobile device, as required on most flights. Of course, the website's "Airplane Mode" does no such thing, and would be pointless to enable on an airplane.{{cn}}

; Boat Mode
: Makes the entire webpage tilt back and forth, emulating the way a boat rolls on the water. While [[165: Turn Signals|extremely unlikely]], this could theoretically counteract the rocking motion of a boat, stabilizing the page content. In practice, it is unlikely to help with {{w|seasickness}}. (As of 2024, some smart devices started offering a "vehicle motion cues" feature that is meant to reduce motion sickness, although it is designed for road vehicles rather than watercraft.)

: This mode is a reference to the longstanding mention of a Boat Mode in the [[footnote]], which says "Remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode".

==Transcript==
:[Black background with white caption boxes.]
:Caption: And God said,
:Caption:"Let there be light,"

:[A bright explosion of light from a star in the center, with a white caption box.]
:Caption: And there was light.

:[The star with bright rays of light is shown against the horizon of a planet.]
:[The same planet horizon is shown with a clear sky above.]
:Caption: God saw that the light was-
:Voice from the planet: Can you add support for dark mode?

<noinclude>{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Interactive comics]]
[[Category:Dynamic comics]]
[[Category:April Fools' Day comics]]
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Comics with custom header texts]]
</noinclude>

3226: Home Solar

2026-03-30T21:39:24Z

Tromag:

{{comic
| number = 3226
| date = March 30, 2026
| title = Home Solar
| image = home_solar_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x258px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = "While I try to do my part to destroy the environment, I try not to focus too much on individual responsibility. By pushing for broad policy changes, we can collectively do far more damage to the biosphere than any of us could on our own."
}}

==Explanation==
This strip portrays [[Black Hat]] and [[Cueball]] discussing {{w|solar panel}}s that Black Hat has recently installed.

Photovoltaic solar panels generate electricity without the use of any fuel, and therefore produce no carbon dioxide or other emissions, and consume no resources, other than what's involved in the initial manufacture and installation. Individuals can install panels on their own roofs for their own use, and often are able to sell any excess back to the grid. This reduces the load on power plants, and therefore reduces emissions of CO2 and other pollutants. Importantly, this is a move that individuals can make to reduce their carbon footprint, rather than relying on governments or corporations to make changes (which can face a great deal of resistance).

Ever since photovoltaic panels became commercially available, people who are concerned about pollution have been encouraged to install them as a move toward environmental protection. The cost of such panels, however, was initially prohibitive, leading to many people ''wanting'' to install solar panels, but arguing that it didn't make financial sense to do so. Over the last few decades, however, [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices the price of solar cells has fallen dramatically]. Depending on specific conditions (including weather factors, installation costs, local price of electricity, regulation, and government subsidies), home solar panels can often save money over their lifetime, when compared to the costs of grid power.

This strip plays on that, with Black Hat inverting the role of the traditional environmentalist. Being a [[72: Classhole|classhole]], Black Hat, isn't merely indifferent to environmental damage, he professes to "hate the environment" and tries to maximize his negative impact. Yet he installed solar panels because it "makes more financial sense". He expresses his desire to have an oil-burning furnace (a notoriously dirty source of home heat), but "the technology just isn't there and the costs are too high".

The joke is that, where environmentalists once felt they had to accept polluting power sources because alternative technologies like photovoltaics cost too much, the situation has flipped and the financials now often favor alternative power. This means that someone who was actively malicious toward the environment might find themselves reluctantly using cleaner technology, solely to save money.

In the last panel, he argues that he burns industrial waste in his yard "to make up for it." This is a play on the idea of {{w|Carbon offsets and credits|carbon ''offsets''}} and other programs that are intended to allow both people and companies to pay for programs that reduce carbon emissions and/or increase carbon capture. People sometimes argue that such credits allow them to reduce carbon emissions more cheaply than changing their own lifestyle, and so make more sense (though the effectiveness of such programs is subject to debate). Black Hat is sufficiently malicious that he feels the need to burn industrial waste, increasing air pollution with no benefits to anyone (even himself) to offset any accusations of environmental responsibility.

The title text continues this theme by reversing a standard argument about personal responsibility in tackling environmental issues. Many people argue that the effects of individual action are of limited effectiveness in protecting the environment, and we should focus more on broad changes to government and corporate policies that can make changes on a more fundamental level. Black Hat argues that the same is true for efforts to ''harm'' the biosphere.

This strip may also be a reference to recent high oil/gasoline prices, going up over 30% in the past two weeks prior to this comic's publication, overwhelmingly due to {{w|2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis|military activity}} disrupting fuel (and other) trading, and its knock-on effects globally. As with falling prices for solar cells, rising prices for fossil fuels shifts the calculation around energy prices, making it more likely that installing solar panels would be in someone's best financial interests.

==Transcript==
:[Black Hat and Cueball stand next to a house with solar panels on the roof.]
:Cueball: Wait, you got solar panels?
:Cueball: I thought you were against renewables.

:[Zoom to show only Cueball and Black Hat.]
:Black Hat: Oh, definitely. I hate the environment and want to harm it as much as possible.
:Black Hat: I'd '''''love''''' to have an oil furnace.

:[Zoom in on Black Hat; only his head and shoulders are visible.]
:Black Hat: But the technology just isn't there and the cost is too high.
:Black Hat: I despise solar, but it makes more financial sense in my situation.

:[Zoom out to show Cueball and Black Hat again.]
:Black Hat: But with the money I'm saving, I can buy and burn industrial waste in my yard to try to make up for it.
:Cueball: Ah, yeah, carbon onsets.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

3225: Satellite Pollution

2026-03-27T21:10:54Z

2A04:7F80:51:6695:8114:7B6:8E76:AEC: /* Explanation */ further grammar fixes

{{comic
| number = 3225
| date = March 27, 2026
| title = Satellite Pollution
| image = satellite_pollution_2x.png
| imagesize = 400x334px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = We're working to make sure the images are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, with a minimum number of sponsored galaxies.
}}

==Explanation==
A common concern with new satellite constellations like {{w|Starlink}} is that, because that they rely on large numbers, they make ground-based astronomy more difficult by adding more noise, such as disruptive {{w|satellite flare}} producing something like {{w|star trail}}s during normal observations. They may also possibly obscure targets, but the background stars (or even most other astronomical objects) have less apparent motion than most artificial satellites (especially those in {{w|low Earth orbit}}), this would be a momentary {{w|occultation}} at best, and longer term observations should at least give some opportunities to salvage some decent data.

This comic satirizes this, by talking about a hypothetical satellite company that knowingly launches large inaccurate star maps to be overlaid across the night sky. This would not only obscure a fair amount of astronomical bodies from view, but also potentially show some that don't actually exist or are in the wrong position, thus causing confusion for an astronomer who fails to identify the interference, and annoyance for any that can.

Of course, implementing such a plan would face many problems, such as the pure size and strength needed for the banner to survive in space while being large enough to be noticed by casual observers. Ensuring it maintained its intended shape and orientation would be challenging. Also, the banner would need to have its own light source, powerful enough to be seen from Earth (although, depending on the distance the banner is from the Earth, it would be easy to make lights capable of being visible from our planet: see the {{What If|13|laser pointer "What-If"}}) or rely upon reflected sunlight. Furthermore, the banner would only provide a convincing star map for observers located on a small area of the Earth's surface; observers outside this small area would see {{w|foreshortening}} of the star map, and experience strong {{w|motion parallax}} effects when travelling across the Earth's surface, making for an unconvincing "sky". These being satellites, they would also be orbiting the Earth. Unless stationed in {{w|geostationary orbit}} (which would place them significantly further away than most satellites and thus need to be made far larger for the same visual effect), even for a single unmoving observer they would move across the sky, and so would have to have dynamic appearance to even ''try'' to match the background starfield semi-consistently.

The title text provides one potential reason for the inaccuracies in the banners (and possibly for the banner project as a whole). It seems that certain parties have been sponsoring the project, paying money in exchange for having galaxies added to the star maps on these banners, or to change their appearance to promote the sponsors' interests. Possibly these sponsors were disappointed by the relative lack of galaxies visible to the naked eye in the night sky; aside from the {{w|Milky Way}} itself, portions of which can be seen from the Earth as a band stretching all the way across the night sky. Only the {{w|Large Magellanic Cloud|Large}} and {{w|Small Magellanic Cloud}} (two of the Milky Way's {{w|Satellite galaxies of the Milky Way|many satellite galaxies}}) and the {{w|Andromeda Galaxy}} are visible without at least using binoculars. All are easily obscured by {{w|light pollution}}, with even the Milky Way itself being invisible in the washed-out night skies of populated urban and suburban areas where most humans live. Even in dark rural skies, although the Milky Way itself can provide a breathtaking view, the Magellanic Clouds appear as irregular blotches and are primarily visible from the less-populated Southern Hemisphere, while the Andromeda Galaxy is visible as a tiny, easy-to-miss oval. The sponsors may have agreed to sponsor the project in order to add additional visible "galaxies" to the night sky and thus make the sky "more beautiful". Fortunately, it seems that the people in charge of the project have realized the problem, and have resolved to cut down on the number of sponsored galaxies in order to present a more accurate star map not as cluttered by fake space objects (although they do not ''completely'' remove them, implying that some level of sponsored embellishment to the star map is still required to keep the project running).

The title (satellite pollution) might be a pun on light pollution, which is a phenomenon in urban areas where the light generated by the light sources, such as lampposts, obscures the stars in the sky, the situation presented in this comic also shows stars being hidden from view, but with banners in the sky rather than light.

The situation here could perhaps be considered a rough inversion of the scenario as portrayed in [[3173: Satellite Imagery]], though with apparently vastly different motivations.

This comic may have a connection to the "collapse" of Google Image Search, where trying to find a real picture of a historical event or scientific phenomenon will now produce an overwhelmingly intrusive quantity of results produced by generative AI and easily mistaken as fact.

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Ponytail are standing on the left, Cueball is on the right, in front of a poster on the wall. The poster has a portion of the Earth at the bottom, with outer space above it. The space scene has lots of stars, along with a few nebulae and galaxies. Part of the space scene is enclosed in a quadrilateral (apparently a rectangle skewed by perspective) which is attached at the middle of its left side to a much smaller object. Its upper edge shows that it has a little thickness, or at least a parallel stiffening frame, rather than being two-dimensional.]
:Ponytail: Aren't you worried these will be disruptive for ground-based astronomy?
:Cueball: No, why?
:[Caption below comic:]
:My new company is being criticized for our satellites that deploy 100-mile-wide banners painted with inaccurate pictures of the night sky.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

3224: Centimeter Wavelengths

2026-03-26T03:30:54Z

82.13.184.33: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3224
| date = March 25, 2026
| title = Centimeter Wavelengths
| image = centimeter_wavelengths_2x.png
| imagesize = 381x335px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Yes, the cosmic microwave background is great, but what about the earthly microwave foreground?
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Cosmic microwave background radiation}} is {{w|Microwave|microwave radiation}} which permeates throughout the entire observable universe. It originated from light released during proton-electron recombination shortly after the {{w|Big Bang}}, which has since grown less energetic due to {{w|cosmological redshift}}, becoming background microwave radiation which we see today. This radiation is not visible to the naked eye, but can be detected using specific radio instruments, including {{w|Super high frequency|centimeter wavelength}} antennas, which are antennas designed to detect signals in the 1~10 cm wavelength range (from 30GHz down to 3GHz); the core range of the wider {{w|microwave}} band of radio waves.

In 1978, American astronomers and physicists {{w|Arno Allan Penzias}} and {{w|Robert Woodrow Wilson}} were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation". During routine experiments with the {{w|Holmdel Horn Antenna}}, a centimeter wavelength antenna, Penzias and Wilson discovered that they were detecting a static background noise that they could not explain. After "debugging" the antenna and removing all potential sources of noise, including the 'removal' of nesting pigeons and their droppings, they found that this background noise was still present. This led to their accidental discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and thus provided a key confirmation of the Big Bang hypothesis itself. (In the world of xkcd, this could explain [[2199: Cryptic Wifi Networks|this phenomenon]].)

{{w|Wi-Fi}} networks also transmit their signals using electromagnetic waves at similar wavelengths. [https://study-ccnp.com/wifi-frequency-phase-wavelength The common frequency bands currently used] are 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and 6 GHz is seeing more use recently. The three ranges would roughly correspond to wavelengths of 12.5cm (4.92in), 6cm (2.36in), and 5cm (1.97in) respectively. Many other sources (notably [[654: Nachos|microwave ovens]]) can also produce emissions in the same wavelengths, which can interfere with those signals, they can interfere with each other, and intervening structures, etc., can obstruct signals (or [[2886: Fast Radio Bursts|create spurious ones]]), all of which can cause annoying loss of function necessitating investigation and intervention to stabilise the signals. Less technically capable workers may need extra support to properly set up their networks, while [[:Category:Cueball's computer problems|too capable ones]] could also risk breaking things in [[:2949: Network Configuration|more profound ways]]...

[[Randall]] is bemoaning the fact that none of the efforts of people working in the IT sector, who may be spending even more time troubleshooting issues related to Wi-Fi connectivity on their site, have been recognised in the way that Penzias and Wilson have been.

This comic is something of an inverse of the sentiment expressed in [[3154: Physics Insight]].

The title text may be a reference to {{w|Peryton (astronomy)|Perytons}}, a signal first seen by astronomers in the early 2000s. Perytons looked similar to {{w|Fast Radio Burst|fast radio bursts}}, which are very energetic astronomical signals, the origin of which is still not understood. Perytons, on the other hand, were found to be the result of opening the door of a microwave oven in the radio observatory, which let out a short burst of microwave radiation as the magnetron in the oven turned off.

==Transcript==
:[A scatter plot graph with the Y axis of "time spent debugging centimeter-wavelength antennas" and X axis of "Nobel prizes awarded as a result". The X axis has the numbers 0 and 1 marked, while the Y axis has no numbers marked. Many dots arranged vertically appear at 0 on the X axis (zero Nobel prizes), collectively labeled as "I.T. people troubleshooting WiFi issues". A single dot appears at 1 on the X axis, vertically about 1/3 of the height of the graph up, labeled "Penzias & Wilson".]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:I just think the other people working in the field deserve at least a ''little'' recognition.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Scatter plots]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Nobel Prize]]

3223: Inflation Timeline

2026-03-23T18:30:34Z

RG: removed incomplete notice

{{comic
| number = 3223
| date = March 23, 2026
| title = Inflation Timeline
| image = inflation_timeline_2x.png
| imagesize = 423x213px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Depending what corners of the internet you hang out on, 'regular' may at times awkwardly coexist with 'sexy.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Cosmic inflation}} is the theory that the very early universe briefly expanded at an enormous rate. This explains the "clumpiness" of the early universe, which is necessary to explain the formation of large-scale structures (e.g., {{w|galaxies}}, {{w|galaxy clusters}}, {{w|galaxy filaments}}, etc.) as the universe evolved. "Regular" {{w|price inflation}} refers to the economic process in which the average price of goods and services increases over time. This is usually gradual, but can be very rapid during times of economic distress.

The comic puts both of these on the same {{w|Chronology of the universe|timeline of the universe}}. Cosmic inflation occurred very shortly (~10-34 s) after the {{w|Big Bang}}. Regular inflation has only occurred during the time after money started being used, perhaps {{w|History of money|7,000 years ago}}. Because of the logarithmic scale of the graph, the cosmic inflation period, which is only a tiny fraction of a second, looks much larger than regular inflation, which has existed for at least a few thousand years. This misinterpretation is likely [[Randall]]'s intention in the comic, along with conflating two wildly different kinds of "inflation".

The title text refers to a third meaning, that of {{w|body inflation}} as a sexual fetish or kink, which has no direct relationship to cosmology or economics.{{Citation needed}} [[Randall]] points out that body inflation happens at the same time as economic inflation, presumably because both arise from human activities. The suggestion that this coexistence may be "awkward" perhaps implies that people are paying to indulge in the fetish, and that those prices are subject to economic inflation. The "inflation" might also refer to something akin to a {{w|Sex doll|blow-up doll}}.

Another comic illustrating cosmic inflation is [[2240: Timeline of the Universe]].

==Transcript==
:[Label of timeline]: Timeline of Inflation
:[A log-scale timeline labeled "Age of the Universe (seconds)" ranging from 10-44 to about 1025, with labeled tick marks at 10-40, 10-30, and so on until 1020 s. An arrow points from the text "Cosmic" to a bar that begins off-panel to the left and continues up to roughly 10-33 seconds. Another arrow points from the text "Regular" to a second, much thinner bar that covers another period between roughly 1016.9 and 1017.3 seconds.]

==Trivia==
Assuming regular inflation started with the {{w|History of money|first use of money 7,000 years ago}}, the "regular" inflation bar, if accurately displayed, would go from 1017.63856460 to 1017.63856482 seconds, with a difference in the exponents of 0.00000022. Depending on your display resolution, this would make the graph's "regular" bar on the order of a millionth of a pixel wide.

Given that there are only seven secondary tick marks between the primary (labeled) tick marks, these denote not increments of 1 order of magnitude but 1.125 orders of magnitude.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Timelines]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:Sex]]

3222: Star Formation

2026-03-20T20:06:10Z

82.132.237.127: Undo revision 408889 by GSLikesCats307 (talk) Not true. No awareness shown of 'anyone' else, or indication of third-parties involved.

{{comic
| number = 3222
| date = March 20, 2026
| title = Star Formation
| image = star_formation_2x.png
| imagesize = 676x272px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's ok, I still have some nice, cool gas clouds that aren't collapsing. As long as nothing ionizes them, I can continue to enjoy their ... HEY! NO!!!
}}

==Explanation==
This comic depicts a simplified model of how structure forms in the universe, then pushes it to an absurd extreme. In cosmology, small density variations in the early universe grow over time: regions with slightly higher density attract more matter via {{w|gravity}}, eventually forming {{w|gas cloud}}s, stars, and galaxies. Pressure, driven by temperature, resists collapse, so the evolution of a cloud depends on the balance between gravitational attraction and internal pressure; this is often described by the {{w|Jeans instability}} criterion.

In the first panel, the on-screen narrator (with a passing resemblance to the [[:Category:Time-Traveling Sphere|time-travelling sphere]] and other speaking dots used in xkcd), an apparent creator of the universe, describes pressure waves moving through gas and causing it to clump. In the second, the clouds begin to collapse under gravity as more gas falls in. The third panel sees the outcome: as collapse proceeds, the gas heats up (via compression and radiation processes), increasing pressure and eventually sparking fusion. The comic depicts the formation of stars, something that we know this universe has done,{{cn}} with the implication that this was a totally unforeseen outcome for the {{w|Demiurge|manipulator}} or {{w|Creator deity|creator}} of this universe.

The final panel frames this as the narrator lamenting the destruction of their "beautiful clouds", as the process has gone out of their control and produced a star instead of the desired (and perhaps, to their mind, more aesthetically pleasing) gently pulsating clouds. This might be at odds with most human experience, as stars are often thought of as being beautiful, but that's only from our own perspective, without the same opportunity to directly appreciate the same early-universe phenomena they disrupted. Likewise, we don't know if the entity ever learnt to admire the stars, once {{w|star formation}} has became more the norm than a single anomalous 'spoiling' of the cloudy universe.

The title text continues this joke by referencing the importance of ionization. "Cool" gas clouds (low temperature, neutral gas) can remain stable or collapse slowly. If they are ionized (for example, by nearby stars emitting {{w|ultraviolet}} radiation), the gas heats up, increasing pressure and preventing or disrupting collapse. The narrator hopes to preserve some of their own calm, neutral clouds but then reacts in horror as the radiation from the newly formed star ionizes them, ruining the delicate balance and ending their ability to "enjoy" stable gas clouds. But this is a natural result of star formation within and around a {{w|nebula}}, again unforeseen by the being who apparently set up the circumstances that led to all the cosmic evolution we see.

==Transcript==
:[A black dot with star burst all around it is speaking, as indicated with a line from one of the burst lines to the text above it. Around the dot there are four larger and three small clouds. The one to the top right is somewhat larger than the other bigger ones.]
:Dot: I think I did a good job with this universe.
:Dot: Pressure waves dance through gas clouds.
:Dot: They clump together and then pressure pushes them apart.

:[In a frame-less panel the dot comments on the development as the largest cloud from seems to be gathering several other smaller clouds together. The other three larger clouds are still there, but there now seems to be some larger clouds stuck together in the upper right part, with more than ten smaller cloud either on top of these or moving in from all angles.]
:Dot: Oh weird, that big clump of clouds is staying together.
:Dot: Their gravity is overcoming the pressure and more gas is falling in.

:[The dot keeps commenting as the increasingly fragmentary clouds start to fall in streaks towards the original large cloud, which has now been compressed so it is smaller than before, but obviously are many more clouds stuck together. The larger clouds from before have begun to be drawn out and moving towards the larger.]
:Dot: It's not stopping!
:Dot: The heat is rising but the collapse is only accelerating!
:Dot: I messed up. I messed up '''''bad.'''''

:[The dot comments on the final result. There is now a shining star in place of the dense field of clouds, radiating strongly in all directions, blowing the few remaining smaller clouds around it, eight in total, away from it.]
:Dot: <big>'''''Noooooooo!!!'''''</big>
:Dot: My beautiful clouds!
:Dot: Ruined! It's all ruined!

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

3221: Landscape Features

2026-03-18T17:20:57Z

2607:F598:B76B:840:E8AE:FCE5:6E3F:3E18: /* Table of regions */

{{comic
| number = 3221
| date = March 18, 2026
| title = Landscape Features
| image = landscape_features_2x.png
| imagesize = 537x454px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 'Well, there's speculation that it's due to a mantle hotspot.' --a geologist who's trying to cover up the fact that they didn't hear your question
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a map of the United States, purporting to explain some of the most significant elements of the landscape in each region. For each area it names one major geological or human mechanism (plate tectonics, erosion, farming, etc.) which it claims is responsible for the majority of interesting formations and features.

Many of these causes are summarized in a single word answer, which is overly-simplistic when trying to explain a complex landscape. A few phrases are longer, but still don't actually explain much, and some areas are just labeled "geology", which while lacking in explanatory power, is often solely responsible for some of the most striking landscape features. "Geology" is in fact poor label here, since almost all of the other causes (volcanos, glacial erosion, plate tectonics, etc.) are all elements of geology. Randall appears to default to "geology" as the cause in areas where the landscape is largely made of metamorphic or igneous rocks (mountainous areas) instead of some alteration of base rock features via volcanos, earthquakes, etc. However, the actual landscapes in these areas do have specific causes, as shown by the fact that the Appalachians are labeled as "continents colliding" not "geology". Similar more detailed explanations could have been given for other areas, for instance {{w|Laramide_orogeny|"one continent sliding under another"}} for the Rocky Mountains compared to "continents colliding" for the Appalachians.

The title text plays off the fact that a large part of geology is concerned with activity in the mantle, so explaining some geologic feature by saying "there's speculation that it's due to a mantle hotspot" does not give much information. The suggestion is that this would let a distracted geologist buy time while responding to a missed question. Many of Earth's seemingly out-of-place features (e.g., {{w|Hawaii hotspot}}, {{w|Iceland}}, the {{w|Snake River Plain}} in Idaho, etc.) form from such mantle hotspots, so it's an easy go-to explanation for many of the geological features people are often most curious about. This idea was explored recently in [[3141: Mantle Model]].

This map with subdivisions follows up on a number of prior maps representing supposed geographical splits of some conversational outcome or other, such as [[1407: Worst Hurricane]] and [[2108: Carbonated Beverage Language Map]].

===Table of regions===
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Location
! Description
! Explanation
|-
| {{w|Adirondack Mountains}}
| ???
| The Adirondack Mountains are made of billion-year-old rock but were uplifted relatively recently, within the last 5–10 million years. They are still rising today despite being far from any plate boundary, forming a dome with no clear tectonic cause.
|-
| Most of northern conterminous U.S.
| glaciers
| During the {{w|Last Glacial Period}}, this area was covered by {{w|Laurentide Ice Sheet|an ice sheet}} that left its marks on the landscape, in the form of {{w|moraines}}, {{w|eskers}}, {{w|glacial erratics}}, etc. This is most notable in Wisconsin where bluffs were formed due to the glacier movement.
|-
| {{w|Appalachian Mountains}}
| continents colliding
| {{w|Geology of the Appalachians|The Appalachian Mountains formed roughly 480 to 300 million years ago}} through a series of continent-continent collisions, culminating in the assembly of the supercontinent Pangaea. The primary collision involved ancestral North America (Laurentia) crashing into Gondwana (Africa/South America), resulting in a Himalayan-scale mountain range.
|-
| Mississippi and Ohio River Basins
| rivers
| The {{w|Mississippi River}}'s geology has a complex, 70 million year history involving massive sediment deposition, glacial activity, and tectonic shifting. Formed mostly by melting glaciers ~12,000 years ago, it drains a vast, shifting basin, depositing millions of tons of sediment in a massive delta and creating a vast, shifting alluvial plain. The {{w|Ohio_River#Geology|Ohio River's geology}} is similar.
|-
| Southeastern U.S.
| farming
| Landscape changes from {{w|cotton production in the United States}}, due to the presence of the {{w|Black Belt (geological formation)|Black Belt}}. From the perspective of landscape features, it would be more accurate to say that they were caused by "erosion" not "farming". The Atlantic Coastal Plain is made up of sediments and sedimentary rock eroded from the Appalachian Mountains over millions of years. The relatively flat landscape and loose fertile soils make farming both easy and productive respectively. Thus farming is a result of the landscape features, not a cause of them.
|-
| Southern Florida
| ongoing disputes between limestone and water
| Florida is a vast {{w|karst}} landscape formed by the dissolution of underground limestone and dolostone bedrock by acidic rainwater, resulting in a terrain characterized by sinkholes, springs, caverns, and disappearing streams. This soluble bedrock, formed from ancient marine deposits, covers much of the state, directly connecting surface water to the Floridian aquifer system.
|-
| Southern Missouri / Northern Arkansas
| geology
| The {{w|Ozark Mountains}}, which are composed primarily of ancient limestone and {{w|dolomite}}, form a rugged landscape characterized by hills, caves, and springs. Prolonged erosion of these soluble rocks has produced extensive karst features, including sinkholes and underground rivers.
|-
| {{w|Great Plains}}
| farming
| The lack of other major events left the terrain relatively level; as with the Southeastern U.S./Atlantic Seaboard (see above), the cause of the landscape here is erosion of the Rocky Mountains, with the sediments carried by rivers towards the Mississippi basin and creating a flat, even landscape. Areas were historically shaped by either herds of bison or indigenous agriculture, both limiting the growth of forests. "Farming" is likely a reference to the more recent mix of large-scale crop farming (especially staples like wheat and corn) and herding (bison replaced by cattle). European plowing techniques unsuited for the dry plains ultimately resulted in the {{w|Dust Bowl}}, a period of intense erosion and dust storms which reshaped the landscape, and as a response led to the {{w|Great Plains Shelterbelt}}.
|-
| Central Idaho / Yellowstone
| a supervolcano
| The {{w|Snake River Plain}} is an area of high-elevation flat plain in the otherwise contiguous Rocky Mountains. It was formed by the movement of the continental plate over the {{w|Yellowstone Hotspot}}.
|-
| American West surrounding Idaho / Yellowstone
| geology
| [[3162: Heart Mountain]]
|-
| Immediately off of West coast up to the Four Corners
| volcanoes
| A combination of various {{w|volcanic field}}s of different origins, including {{w|Cascade Volcanoes}} in the Pacific Northwest, {{w|Albuquerque volcanic field}} in New Mexico, {{w|San Francisco volcanic field}} in Arizona, and {{w|San Juan volcanic field}} in Colorado.
|-
| Eastern Washington
| megafloods
| Most likely a reference to the {{w|Missoula floods}} and the {{w|Bonneville flood}}, a series of floods caused by glacial ice dam failures causing massive lakes to flood large regions of present-day eastern Washington. These floods actually continued all the way to the Pacific Ocean, altering the shape of the {{w|Columbia River Gorge}} and flooding much of the {{w|Willamette River}} in western Oregon. The comic may have simplified these to avoid bisecting the adjacent zones along the coast.
|-
| West Coast
| a plate tectonic speedrun
| Most likely a reference to the significant tectonic activity on the western coast of the US, caused by the collisions of the {{w|Juan de Fuca plate}}, {{w|Pacific plate}}, and the {{w|North American plate}}, as part of the {{w|Ring of Fire}}. Could also be a reference to [[2061: Tectonics Game]].
|-
| Southwest Desert
| water and time
| The sedimentary rock layers exposed in the {{w|geology of the Grand Canyon area}} range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old. Uplift of the region started about 75 million years ago during the mountain-building event creating the Rocky Mountains. The opening of the Gulf of California around 6 million years ago enabled a large river to cut its way northeast from the gulf. The new river captured the older drainage to form the ancestral Colorado River, which started to form the Grand Canyon. Wetter climates from ice ages starting 2 million years ago greatly increased excavation of the Grand Canyon, which was nearly as deep 1.2 million years ago as it is now.
|-
| Northern Alaska
| geology
| Northern {{w|Geology of Alaska|Alaska geology}} is dominated by the Brooks Range (a major Paleozoic mountain belt) and the Arctic Slope sedimentary basin, containing rich Paleozoic-Mesozoic rock sequences. The region is part of the Arctic Alaska–Chukotka Microplate, shaped by Mesozoic tectonic shifts, including the Arctic Ocean opening and the Brooks Range uplift.
|-
| Aleutian Islands
| volcanoes
| The Aleutian Islands are a continuation of the Alaskan {{w|Aleutian Range}}, and form part of the {{w|Ring of Fire}}. Most of the islands in the chain bear signs of being formed by volcanoes, and many volcanic cones still exist on the islands today.
|-
| Southeast Alaska
| glaciers
| This part of Alaska (including {{w|Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve|Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve}}) and western Canada has many glaciers that are still carving the landscape.
|-
| Hawaiian island chain
| volcanoes
| Hawaii, including the {{w|Northwest Hawaiian Islands}}, and seamounts northwest of it were formed by a tectonic plate moving over a hotspot, with volcanoes erupting and forming land as it went. The entire chain can be seen [https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0555574,-176.5939317,4904085m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDMxNS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D here]. Volcanic fog from the {{w|List of volcanoes in the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain|three active volcanoes on the Big Island}} can often be seen on neighboring islands.
|}

===Features of each state, alphabetically===
* Alabama: continents colliding, farming, rivers
* Alaska: geology, glaciers, volcanoes
* Arizona: water and time, volcanoes
* Arkansas: geology, farming, rivers
* California: a plate tectonics speedrun, volcanoes, water and time
* Colorado: volcanoes, geology, farming
* Connecticut: glaciers
* Delaware: farming
* District of Columbia: either farming or plates colliding
* Florida: farming, ongoing disputes between limestone and water
* Georgia: continents colliding, farming
* Hawaii: volcanoes
* Idaho: a super volcano, geology
* Illinois: glaciers, rivers
* Indiana: glaciers, rivers
* Iowa: glaciers, farming, rivers
* Kansas: farming
* Kentucky: rivers, continents colliding
* Louisiana: farming, rivers
* Maine: glaciers
* Maryland: plates colliding, farming
* Massachusetts: glaciers
* Michigan: glaciers
* Minnesota: glaciers, farming, rivers
* Mississippi: farming, rivers
* Missouri: farming, geology, rivers
* Montana: geology, glaciers
* Nebraska: farming
* Nevada: volcanoes, geology, water and time
* New Hampshire: glaciers
* New Jersey: glaciers, farming
* New Mexico: volcanoes, geology, water and time, farming
* New York: glaciers, ???, continents colliding
* North Carolina: continents colliding, farming
* North Dakota: glaciers, farming
* Ohio: glaciers, rivers
* Oklahoma: farming, geology
* Oregon: a plate tectonics speedrun, volcanoes, megafloods, a supervolcano, geology
* Pennsylvania: glaciers, rivers, continents colliding, farming
* Rhode Island: glaciers
* South Carolina: continents colliding, farming
* South Dakota: glaciers, farming
* Tennessee: continents colliding, rivers
* Texas: farming, geology, water and time
* Utah: geology, volcanoes
* Vermont: glaciers
* Virginia: continents colliding, farming
* Washington: megafloods, a plate tectonics speedrun
* West Virginia: rivers, continents colliding
* Wisconsin: glaciers, rivers
* Wyoming: a supervolcano, geology, farming

==Transcript==
:[A small panel showing Cueball pointing toward the left and Ponytail standing to his right overlaps the top of a much larger panel containing a map.]
:Cueball: What's up with this weird landscape?
:Ponytail: Oh, it was caused by ...

:[The larger panel shows a map of the United States, with southern Canada, northern Mexico, and most of Cuba and the Bahamas visible as well. An inset at lower left shows Alaska along with part of northwest Canada, with a smaller inset showing Hawaii. International borders and coastlines are indicated in black, and state borders are indicated in gray. Red lines divide the United States into irregularly shaped zones (the red lines indicating zones do not cross into the neighboring countries, except in the Alaska inset), with each zone being labeled with red text. Each text label begins with "..." to indicate that it is the conclusion of Ponytail's sentence. The following are the labels used:]
:[Main map:]
:... a plate tectonics speedrun
:... volcanoes
:... megafloods
:... a supervolcano
:... geology
:... water and time
:... glaciers
:... rivers
:... continents colliding
:... ???
:... ongoing disputes between limestone and water
:[On the main map, the label "... glaciers" appears three times in various places in the same contiguous zone that runs from Washington state to Maine. The label "... farming" appears twice, representing two separate zones, one that runs from Montana to Louisiana and the other that runs from New Jersey to Mississippi. The label "... geology" appears twice on the main map, representing two separate zones, one that runs from Washington state to Texas and the other being a roughly circular region mostly in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.]
:[Alaska inset:]
:... geology
:... volcanoes
:... glaciers
:[Hawaii inset:]
:... volcanoes

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:US maps]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Volcanoes]]