541: TED Talk

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TED Talk

Title text: The IAU ban came after the "redefinition of the 'planet' to include the IAU president's mom" incident.

Explanation

The comics shows Randall as a presenter at the highly prestigious TED conference, a symposium about technology, entertainment and design. The illustrious list of former presenters includes amongst others Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Larry Page, Richard Dawkins and Gordon Brown. The conference is regarded as a forum for digerati. Every talk has a length of 18 minutes and is supposed to be as captivating as possible.

Randall's presentation, however, reduces the purpose of the conference to absurdity: The topic he wishes to point out to his listeners, is that of how to put an emoticon at the end of a parenthetical statement. This question is of little practical consequence, although it received a lot of attention after publication of the comic. In the last panel, the TED conference is another item to add to his list of conferences from which he has been banned. On the list are other conferences from all sorts of fields, including every American furry convention.

The title text about Randall's ban from the IAU conference is a reference to the popular maternal insults called "yo mama" jokes. A common representative of the genre runs "Yo mama so fat, scientists have declared her the 10th planet."

Getting banned from attending a conference occurs more than once in xkcd, cf. 153 and 410. Note that PyCon has mockingly confirmed banning Randall Munroe in 2009 with reference to this comic.

Transcript

[Randall Munroe on stage]

Randall: Hi. I'm Randall. Welcome to my TED talk.

Randall: It's an honor to speak to you, some of the brightest innovators from so many fields, about a problem in desperate need of your attention:

Randall: How DO you end parenthetical statements with emoticons? I can't figure out a good way.

[Screen next to him shows two statements, both crossed out in red.]

"Linux (or BSD :)" would... "looks mismatched"

"Linux (or BSD :))" would... "looks mismatched and weird"

[Randall writing on a desk]

Randall's List - Conferences I'm banned from:

Siggraph

Eurocrypt

Defcon

Pycon

International Astronomical Union

Canadian Paleontology Conference

Every American Furry Convention

American Baking Society

Asian Dolphin-Training Conference

TED

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Discussion

It's not the first time Randall gets banned from conventions, see 153: Cryptography. Xylon (talk) 13:10, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

There are enough of these that it should probably be a category. (Anon) 12 August 2013 24.142.134.100 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

How about "Linux(or BSD (: )"? Actually, that looks just as weird. Oh well. Alcatraz ii (talk) 05:10, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

What about "Linux (or BSD :D)"? That looks great! 05:54, 1 December 2013 (UTC) 199.27.128.120 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Or "(Linux (or BSD ( :) )))"...nope! Squirreltape (talk) 18:19, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion: Linux (or BSD (: ) ^{)|(}Quill_{)|(} 14:59, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

"Every talk has a length of 18 minutes and is supposed to be as captivating as possible." this is just wrong(first part of the statement). someone should edit it out. 108.162.219.24 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Use an asian smiley. So you'd write Linux (or BSD ^_^) instead. 108.162.216.101 04:25, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

... LINUX (OR BSD 😀 ) WOULD ... 162.158.255.187 19:16, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

LInux (: or BSD :) would...? 108.162.217.179 22:51, 27 March 2016 (UTC) I got it! Linux [ or bsd :) ]

... Linux (or BSD ͜ ¨ ) would ... KangaroOS 16:15, 10 September 2016 Linux (or BSD ☺) would ....162.158.75.190 22:59, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Smileys in parentheses look wrong, :)) looks mismatched and wrong, and :) ) is just weird. WHAT SHALL WE DO?! --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 12:03, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I have found a solution! As it turns out, There are people who make Unicode emojis that you can use in web browsers. Go figure. 😄 --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 12:11, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Emojis are not emoticons though 162.158.214.58 19:38, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Except they are, and they're better than emoticons --JayRulesXKCD ^{what's up?} 10:20, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

How about using square brackets? Linux [or BSD :)] would... --172.68.245.241 23:20, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Alternatively: Linux (or BSD :]) would... --Lupo (talk) 08:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes. Beanie (talk) 13:41, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Linux (or BSD (:)? ^{)|(}Quill_{)|(} 20:35, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Linux (or BSD :) ) would... Just put a space. -- The Cat Lady (talk) 12:43, 16 August 2021 (UTC) linux [ or bsd : ) ] is awesome[and the best way : ) ]

Would a U with diaresis (ü) work? -- PoolloverNathan^{[stalk the blue seas]}U•T•S•c 15:49, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

uppercase works better in my opinion (Ü) --an user who has no account yet 172.64.236.54 (talk) 14:22, 2 September 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

just realized, you can put a c like this:

linux (or bsd c:)

just don't make the c uppercase near a bunch of windows users xd

also this works better if the font is monospace An user who has no account yet (talk) 16:49, 5 September 2023 (UTC)