Talk:2958: Hatchery

Aren't hatcheries usually about breeding fish, not farming them?RadiantRainwing (talk) 23:26, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Well farming sheep often involves the lambing process (though you can just buy in fresh surplus tups every year, from wherever happens to suit your price/quality thresholds, if that's your thing), so "farming" is a wide application in terms of animal husbandry (as well as agriculture, though perhaps in some arboriculture/horticulture/viniculture situations you needn't do the initial seeding, and just buy in the juvenile plants).

Open-water "Fish-farms" may be more likely to get their fry/big-enough-to-keep-netted-youngsters from an 'on-shore' breeding facility that may be a separate supplier, but I'd probably accept the description of the breeding facility (in 'barrels', quite possibly) as 'farming', even if it's not a full-lifetime aquaponics setup, just had mysteriously internet-accessible firearms trained upon the various tanks of growing fish. 172.70.163.120 10:42, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Comic does not say "farm" anywhere? PRR (talk) 20:53, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Although it's missing a trick by not doing so — would have given the opportunity for a further fish farm/server farm pun.172.69.195.63 08:28, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Reading it, I first thought it was about Call of Duty, an fps game series. Its usual abbreviation is COD, but this might be coincidence.Intara (talk) 01:44, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

As funny as that is, it is almost certainly coincidence. An incredible, hilarious one to be sure, but still most likely a coincidence.OmniDoom (talk) 06:50, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I noticed 792 also features Black Hat, is about hacking and mentions CoD4 tournaments, but I guess it isn't part of this comic's joke. Asdf (talk) 08:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I actually think the 'CoD' connection might be something. A hatchery is (amongst other things) where fish spawn. Someone sitting at a computer remotely executing cod as they spawn definitely feels like it might be some kind of 'spawn camping' joke. Also he mentions shooting and there's a 'blam' sound effect. Both of which I don't think fit that well with the pure cod/code pun, but make more sense if it's partially a reference to killing helpless players in an FPS as they first spawn. It feels intentional to me, but also very awkward, so I suspect I'm missing something. 172.69.43.226 12:40, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I recall a "remote controlled gun" from elsewhere in the xkcd canon. Can't immedaitely find it (was it somewhere in a What-If/off the usual numbered comics?) but eveything in this ones scenario screams at "actual gun (in a fish-farm) being controlled via a monitor". I'll have to use a bit better Google-Fu and discover which precise prior art I'm actually thinking of, out of the nearly (or slightly over, depending upon what I include) 3000 possibilities.

And I rather think that if this was a pun (even partially a pun) on Call Of Duty, there'd be a few more actually direct references to this than merely "something you do on a computer". 172.70.90.144 17:00, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Maybe originally there was meant to be a more obvious CoD connection, but it was dropped to make the cod(fish)/code pun(s) smoother? I'm not sure. Still, the title text seems to not reference CoD. Asdf (talk) 17:26, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I just want to observe that despite Randall's convention for using all-caps in his comics, in the above-referenced CoD 792 comic, he does stylize that specific abbreviation with a lower-case "o". He doesn't do that here. L-Space Traveler (talk) 17:58, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I assumed this comic's cod/code pun wouldn't be as effective if it used a lowercase "o". Even if the comic also references Call of Duty, I think using all-caps "COD" here is still understandable. Asdf (talk) 18:09, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if this is also inspired by the fish doorbell set up so that users watching a webcam of a river lock can see when a fish is waiting and press a button to open the lock so the fish can continue swimming upstream to spawn. The title "hatchery" doesn't quite match but doesn't seem that far off. --Zeborah

I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but I'm glad you put the reference here - I've never heard of it before, and it's awesome! L-Space Traveler (talk) 17:58, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Is the fish shell daemon-spawn? Asking for a friend. 172.69.65.189 19:16, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

That depends. Is init considered a daemon? 172.71.30.101 13:12, 17 July 2024 (UTC)