Talk:3135: Sea Level

Holy crud empty page! F1RST P0ST! RadiantRainwing (talk) 01:38, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

2038: Last of the original Star Wars cast dies. —megan talk contribs 02:18, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

What? If you're trying to get back at me because I was being useless and just "first posting", it's a reference to 269: TCMP, and I also, by the way, wrote the whole first paragraph of this explanation. RadiantRainwing (talk) 02:50, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Alright, sorry, just realized what you did is a reference to 493: Actuarial. Sorry about that! RadiantRainwing (talk) 02:53, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

I guess you're one of today's lucky Ten Thousand...

Wait, no, not everyone has read comic 493 by the time they're adults. I'm too lazy right now to calculate how many people learn about comic 493 each day, so I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader. —megan talk contribs 01:01, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

This is where it pays to have read every XKCD comic :P Logalex8369 (talk) 16:45, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

This one is related to the Moon comic. Pgn674 (talk) 01:39, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Clearly. RadiantRainwing (talk) 01:49, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Definitely easy to see, even the references are the same…Randall we trust in you not to copy again…《プロキシ》(XKCD中毒者) 19:07, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

it's almost a repeat. is he running out of ideas? raeb 09:54, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Hope not. RadiantRainwing (talk) 16:56, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Why do people talk about running out of ideas? That is something I can't imagine. The world throws ideas and absurdities at you all the time. Running out of time to execute an idea - sure. Seems much more likely to be filtering error (have to check current idea against 3000 previous strips). 107.77.205.64 19:42, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Larry Niven had a story about alien-made indestructible spaceship hulls, except the makers didn't account for tidal effects when grazing a star. The test pilot was nearly ripped apart, but figured a way to survive. He sued their butts off against the guarantee. He concluded that their home planet did not have a large moon, a Clue. --PRR (talk) 02:41, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

I think I finally figured out the common thread. All the items here are here because they are elements of Life on Earth. The way the explanation was written kind of buried that important part of the comic.

Overall, if you just look at them as unrelated phenomena, then Lightning seems quite common. Islands made by microskeletons, and life-forms which change their form during development seem like they would be pretty common where there is life. Large tides - thought to be uncommon, but don't have much data, and models are hard. 2600:387:4:803:0:0:0:A0 18:04, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

All planets with intelligent life we know have tides. In fact one could argue that tides play an important role in the development in life. Thus any intelligent observe is arguably familiar with tides. Thus the text is wrong in arguing that tides are surprising based on the observation that most known planets likely do not have large tides. --2A01:599:114:9E35:D827:C56:FF88:1858 19:09, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Argument has problems - insufficient sample size, selection bias. Nothing in the comic talked about intelligent life.

The role of tides in development of life certainly makes sense to add.

Tides are strange in that they are very complex and hard to explain in detail. Fluid dynamics in a very complex, non-ridgid vessel, involve gravitational forces from multiple bodies. 107.77.205.64 20:00, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Sample size is definitely a problem. Nothing in the comic talks about tides being strange in a cosmic sense. They are just very weird for one of the two observers from earth. --195.63.76.62 20:39, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

All planets with intelligent life that we know of also have microwave ovens and television cameras and rubber ducks. Perhaps those are also essential for the long-term continued existence of intelligent life? PotatoGod (talk) 19:09, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Well, I can confirm that microwave ovens are essential for the continued existence of this intelligent lifeform. 159.118.184.96 04:47, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm shocked that Randal didn't include some sort of reference to climate change- and how tides effectively, at least in 2025 and for the foreseeable future, dwarf sea rise due to melting ice. Seebert (talk) 20:18, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

On a (twice-)daily basis, yes. But that's like saying an unseasonal/hyperseasonal cold snap belies the possibility of global warming. (If that's the point you're trying to make.)

And I'm not sure if you're saying that Randall "is the sort of person who would go on and on about climate change, but for soe reason he surprisingly didn't do so here" or "he really ought to be mentioning climate change at every opportunity, but he missed the opportunity to convey the concept"..? I'd disagree with both of those assessments of his (non-)inclusion here, though, and perhaps you're even coming from a completely different third direction that I might or might not understand. But really not the place to discuss it, as he obviously hasn't made that part of the joke/message in this comic. 92.17.62.87 23:27, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

Lightning should be common throughout the universe, as the ingredients for it (planetary atmospheres containing things like dust that can build up differential static charges through agitation) appear to be. It's still a very weird phenomenon, with many aspects not understood (how does the triboelectric effect work, can breakdown patterns be predicted, wtf is going on with sprites and ball lightning, etc) but it really isn't likely to be rare. --81.96.108.67 05:48, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Ten feet tidal range on a remote island - isn't this too much? I thought it should be less, with stronger tides only in some gulfs where an amplification exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide figure 15 shows 5 feet tidal range maximum

In the channel tides can get pretty high and some parts of it would be remote islands by European standards. Also the comic doesn't mention remoteness. --195.52.138.253 18:42, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Significant tides can also bother or surprise people who are used to comparatively smaller tides. I should know, I am one of those people. I live by the Mediterranean Sea and any time I go to the beach on the Ocean, I am worried that I will once again lose my towel to the moving shoreline... 2001:861:51C2:B540:1593:36EE:75F9:1F83 18:35, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

^V^ 8th place! Learning English lol…love autocorrect. in South Carolina, tides are HELL on coast《プロキシ》(XKCD中毒者) 19:05, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Rolled over to tuesday and no new comic?? stevethenoob 00:40, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

It's still (as we write) Monday for Randall, even if it's slightly after midnight for some of us Rightpondians. And there are have definitely been more extreme 'delays' to the scheduled comics. Take a deep breath, man... If you have to go to sleep and wake up to the comic, then that's what you have to do... 92.17.62.87 23:48, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

I thought Randall would just publish using +00 timezone for the love of the game. Oh well, I’ll stay awake until he publishes stevethenoob 00:40, 2 September 2025 (UTC)