2897: Light Leap Years

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Light Leap Years
When Pope Gregory XIII briefly shortened the light-year in 1582, it led to navigational chaos and the loss of several Papal starships.
Title text: When Pope Gregory XIII briefly shortened the light-year in 1582, it led to navigational chaos and the loss of several Papal starships.

Explanation

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Transcript

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Discussion

Not that it effects the joke, but the Gregorian calendar has 97 leap years per 400 year cycle. I was surprised that I was surprised by that. 162.158.63.115 16:23, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Another interesting number: the difference between the standard Julian year and the (AFAICT, not officially named as such) 'standard Gregorian year' (of 365.2425 days) is 648 seconds, or 10.8 minutes (10m48s) if you prefer. 172.69.194.115 00:38, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

"...never been a papal starship..." - If this upsets you, read Hyperion! 172.71.142.67 17:12, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Even the most cursory research (i.e. googling) reveals that there have been Papal starships.172.70.90.190 09:38, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
I appreciate the {cite needed}!!! and added more adjectives (known earthly). Just because we are not aware of any, doesn't mean they don't exist! For example, how did Michelangelo get to this planet? I have my suspicions!!!;P Cuvtixo (talk) 01:57, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Could also be a Doctor Who reference, the Papal Mainframe being a space station featuring in "The Time of the Doctor". 172.69.43.220 10:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

"Note: Lightsecond was chosen instead of the more familiar lightyear to make sure that layouts computed during leap years would be unambiguously identical to those computed during non-leap years." (from https://drafts.csswg.org/css-egg-1/#astro-units) --172.68.253.143 18:23, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

The last paragraph says Randall. It should say Cueball. Randall knows better otherwise he would not have made this joke. 172.71.22.98 04:02, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I find it funny (assuming we're seeing the last edit to have been done, and Cueball's not just scrolled us up to see the very first 'diff' again) that the whole month-and-a-lot-long job has apparently finished with the changed measurement for the likely closest object in the database of thousands (or maybe even "millions and billions!") of cosmological objects. Whether or not it has extragalactic (or significantly transgalactic) record items in it, it would seem rather topsy-turvy to leave the physically nearest item's entry until last, if it was indeed consciously sorted by any distance-related parameter. (Like I could understand if it were perhaps something like Zeta Reticuli, where we ended up, more than Alpha Cassiopeiae, or maybe Z Vul at the opposite end to 'Alpha And'.) ...ok, so maybe now I'm just dissecting the frog toad, but I still think it's yet another 'layer of funny'. Whether intended (I really wouldn't put it past Randall being so deep...) or otherwise! 172.71.178.185 03:04, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Question 1: What is incomplete about this article? Question 2: When it's complete, can we somehow preserve the papal starships from Anno Domini MDLXXXII? GreatWyrmGold (talk) 15:23, 5 March 2024 (UTC)