Doesn't look like Cueball to me, he has hair. Caagr98 (talk) 17:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It's interesting that he appears to shave his head/cut his hair before going to the party, becoming a "Cueball" for the last two panels. -Pennpenn 108.162.250.162 03:55, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

The title text seems wrong. It reads 'Sometimes, I sit on top of parking decks and watch the sun rise. I feel like I should have a guitar or something.' in my Android xkcd reader. --92.249.196.108 07:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. According to the Wayback Machine this was the title text at the start: [1] --Mark Hurd (talk) 13:01, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm, should we note that the last panel is probably a pencil drawing with colors inverted? 103.22.201.168 13:00, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Explanation said that the character realised that 4am is a bad time to meet people "other than troublemakers and the police". Removed as this is pure speculation as there is no mention of troublemakers or the police. --Pudder (talk) 15:21, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Possible title text explanation: Sitting on a tall structure and watching the sun rise while playing the guitar sounds like a romanticized/idealized scene; the likes of which might be seen in a movie. Smperron (talk) 08:07, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

The second panel, second image may be a reference to that music video about "brushing your teeth with a bottle of jack" before going to a party. Kirdneh (talk) 01:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

The 4am Project has shut down, and the site directs only to a single text line that says "This site doesn't exist here". Maybe an explanation is needed as to what the 4am Project was, or that section needs to be rewritten. Zazathebot (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Thanks for your information. Since that dead link didn't explain much I've just removed it because we don't want to explain historical websites not mentioned in the comic. --Dgbrt (talk) 18:24, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

{{comic | number = 1598 | date = November 2, 2015 | title = Salvage | image = salvage.png | titletext = My hobby: Taking advantage of the rice myth by posting articles on "how to save your wet phone" which are actually just elaborate recip

Salvage

My hobby: Taking advantage of the rice myth by posting articles on "how to save your wet phone" which are actually just elaborate recipes for rice pilaf.

Title text: My hobby: Taking advantage of the rice myth by posting articles on "how to save your wet phone" which are actually just elaborate recipes for rice pilaf.

Explanation

The RMS Titanic was a large ocean liner which, when it was completed in 1912, was the largest ship afloat. The ship famously hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank, killing two-thirds of its complement (approximately 1,500 people) in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters ever.

As it sank, the Titanic broke into two pieces. The ship was lost for decades until the wreck site was discovered in 1985. A number of proposals have been made to salvage the wreck of the Titanic both before and since the wreck's discovery, famously fictionalized in the thriller novel and film Raise the Titanic! There could be a joke on this title as in Rice the Titanic, even though it would not be possible to mistake the two words when spoken in the majority of dialects of English.

The general consensus at this time is that the wreck is too fragile to be salvaged intact. Numerous expeditions have been made to the wreck site since its discovery, with several parties (without any outside authorization) taking various artifacts from the site. A popular view is that the wreck is effectively a mass grave and that plundering the site for profitable artifacts is akin to grave-robbing. Most believe the wreck should be left where it is, intact. That said, explorers have already done notable damage to the wreck.

This comic shows a fictional attempt to salvage the two main pieces of the Titanic wreck, which, as it likely would in real life, garners media coverage as a 'historic salvage'. The salvage seems to consist of several ships raising the hull via cables attached to some sort of buoyant sled placed under the hull (as might actually happen, except that the relative sizes of the ships and the hull are wrong; this method would require the salvage ships be much larger in proportion to what is being salvaged). This is followed by helicopters carrying the hull in unison, again via cables to the cradle (a much less practical operation). The hull halves are then dropped into a giant tub of rice. The entire salvage attempt is increasingly cartoonish and unrealistic, but the tub of rice takes this to another level. Also, the two parts of the Titanic collapsed when hitting the sea floor, and thus could not be moved as shown in the comic. See this video of How Titanic Sank.

The punchline to the comic references the "rice myth," (as Randall calls it) a popularly disseminated method of salvaging consumer electronics (usually cell phones) which have been submerged in water. (See Research Shows Rice is the Answer for a Wet Mobile). The method entails burying the wet device in a bowl of rice. This process is commonly claimed to dry the device, but investigation reveals that the process is only mildly effective (though not entirely a myth either, see below). This comic likely plays on the dual meaning of the word "salvage" in respect of electronics and maritime wrecks.

The comic suggests that the wreck of the Titanic would benefit from being dried as quickly as possible, in a humorous contrast to actual reality. Surviving non-metallic material on board the ship may not benefit at all from drying. Far more ancient shipwrecks are best preserved by keeping the recovered timbers wet (but progressively desalinated, where applicable), cool and anoxic, at least while conserving chemicals such as Polyethylene glycol are infused into the wood to allow safe and gradual drying without causing further damage. Leather, cloth and other organic remains may have variations on this regime. Thus the rice might benefit an electronic device briefly exposed to water, but is not likely to benefit a ship that has been immersed for over a century, where the interest is in more than merely stabilizing the remaining metal hull and infrastructure.

There are numerous on-line discussions of the technique with mixed levels of success. Critically, where rice is tested against other methods, rice appears to perform worse than other methods. Controlled experiments on this topic tend to show that silica gel (aka the "Do Not Eat" packets often found in boxes with electronics or pharmaceuticals) is the most effective drying agent, with mixed results for rice. (see Myth Debunked: Uncooked Rice Isn't the Best Way to Save Your Water-Damaged Phone, where it turns out that leaving the phone to air-dry may actually be the best solution).

The title text tells of another hobby of Randall's. He likes to take advantage of the "rice myth" to post fake articles on how to save your wet cell phone. But the instructions turn out to be elaborate recipes for rice pilaf. It is unclear whether Randall's instructions would explain how to prepare the rice prior to inserting a phone (thus resulting a usable dish), or if the instructions would require the phone to be inserted into the dish before it became clear that the dish was a recipe for food and not a phone-saving measure, thus worsening the condition of the phone. This may also be a "punishment" by Randall to anyone who would follow instructions blindly before reading them through, as a recipe for rice Pilaf would likely be distinguishable from phone-saving instructions by someone who read the instructions through before attempting them. Or it may just be that Randall considers those who would follow instructions for saving a phone with rice that they find on the internet gullible enough to believe the seasonings and other ingredients would have a curative effect on electronics.

The rice myth is revisited in one of the tips in 1820: Security Advice.

Transcript

[Megan is shown standing at the rail of a ship with a microphone reporting the event shown in the background. A small helicopter and a larger two rotor model, lowering a rope with hook, are hovering over a crane ship with its hook down line going down in the water. It is depicted like a news screen as seen on TV. Below Megan are two headings. The first in a white insert with double frame, and the other written in white over the gray ocean water.]

Historic Salvage

Live

[Four crane ships are shown lifting the bow part of the RMS Titanic. There are pontoons beneath the ship to help it float up. The name of the ship can be seen.]

RMS Titanic

[Both parts of the Titanic are now flown by helicopters, four for the stern and five for the bow. One helicopter for each part is a two rotor model. Ropes go from the helicopters down on each side of the ship parts to pontoons below them. Below in the ocean there are two crane ships.]

[The two parts of the ship is now lowered in to a huge bowl of rice (labeled) standing at the coast just out of the ocean, which can be seen to the left. One of the five helicopters for the bow is missing. For scale there are drawn two trees to the left, and something is parked to the right, maybe a truck.]

Rice

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Discussion

Doesn't look like Cueball to me, he has hair. Caagr98 (talk) 17:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It's interesting that he appears to shave his head/cut his hair before going to the party, becoming a "Cueball" for the last two panels. -Pennpenn 108.162.250.162 03:55, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

The title text seems wrong. It reads 'Sometimes, I sit on top of parking decks and watch the sun rise. I feel like I should have a guitar or something.' in my Android xkcd reader. --92.249.196.108 07:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. According to the Wayback Machine this was the title text at the start: [2] --Mark Hurd (talk) 13:01, 27 April 2013 (UTC)