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2817 | August 18, 2023 | Electron Holes | null | They tried to report me to the authorities, but because I had the device they couldn't charge me. | :[Ponytail, who has her fists clenched and a black smoke cloud above her head, is standing in front of a desk, a beam of electron holes is being fired at a printer on the desk; the beam is shown reacting to the printer, dispersing lightning bolts and 'particles' but causing no obvious damage. There are little '+' signs distributed along the beam and in the circles around the printer, though they're much easier to see in the higher-resolution version of the strip that's displayed if one zooms in on the original comic page.]
:Ponytail: This doesn't even make sense! They're quasiparticles, not real-
:Off-panel voice: ''Pew pew pew''
:Ponytail: ''Stop it!''
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Physicists got ''really'' mad about my device that fires a beam of electron holes. | An electron hole is a quasiparticle denoting a ''lack'' of an electron. These are fundamental in the theory and design of semiconductors and discussed in many educational tracks regarding electronics engineering. Referring to a beam by what it seems to be doing in simplistic terms, is not typical terminology,{{Citation needed}} otherwise we might refer to "shadow beams" instead of "destructively interfering photon beams" and a "nonmagnetic field" instead of a "magnetically shielded" space. It should be noted however, that the equivalent of a hole in the QED vacuum is a real particle, known as the positron. See the Dirac sea.
Wikipedia gives a good basic explanation of the concept of the "electron hole":
<blockquote>[A]n electron hole (often simply called a hole) is a quasiparticle denoting the lack of an electron at a position where one could exist in an atom or atomic lattice. Since in a normal atom or crystal lattice the negative charge of the electrons is balanced by the positive charge of the atomic nuclei, the absence of an electron leaves a net positive charge at the hole's location.
Holes in a metal or semiconductor crystal lattice can move through the lattice as electrons can, and act similarly to positively-charged particles. They play an important role in the operation of semiconductor devices such as transistors, diodes (including light-emitting diodes) and integrated circuits. If an electron is excited into a higher state it leaves a hole in its old state. . . .
In solid-state physics, an electron hole (usually referred to simply as a hole) is the absence of an electron from a full valence band. A hole is essentially a way to conceptualize the interactions of the electrons within a nearly full valence band of a crystal lattice, which is missing a small fraction of its electrons. In some ways, the behavior of a hole within a semiconductor crystal lattice is comparable to that of the bubble in a full bottle of water.</blockquote>
In this cartoon, the physicist is upset that the idea of the electron hole beam doesn't "make sense" – because a beam consisting purely of things that are "missing" doesn't seem possible; electron holes only exist in the context of a background field of electrons in which just a few are missing. Thus, an "actual" ray would have caused a travel of electrons in the opposite direction– yet the beam is still working to destroy her belongings (or at least create dramatic visual effects). Eventually she resorts to simply exclaiming "Stop it!", humorously more due to the beam being made of quasi-particles than because it's destroying her belongings.
The caption below the comic states that physicist''s'', plural, were angry about this device, implying that this is not the first physicist whose lab he has interfered with. Considering his history of having :Category:My Hobby|silly hobbies and that he mentions it is his device in the caption, it must be Randall who managed to create this device. The physicists are also likely more angry that they are being attacked by quasi-particles somehow, instead of just being attacked by comparatively conventional weapons.
The title text plays on a double meaning of "charge". In the comic panels, "charge" refers to an electric charge. When the word is used with "authorities", it's an accusation. However, the title implies that his device can not only negate the ability to apply an electric charge (by Carrier generation and recombination|recombining the applied electrons with his "electron holes"), but can ''also'' prevent the authorities from applying the legal sort of "charge" to him – perhaps by creating even-more-outlandish "prosecution holes". | |
2818 | August 21, 2023 | Circuit Symbols | null | A circle with an A in it means that the circuit has committed a sin and has been marked as punishment. | :[A chart of various circuit symbols and their (mostly) fictitious meanings based off of their drawings, captioned:] Circuit Symbols
:[Symbol for a switch, labelled:] Drawbridge
:[Symbol for a capacitor, labelled:] Overpass
:[Symbol for a connection to ground, labelled:] Pogo Stick
:[Symbol for a resistor, labelled:] Earthquake
:[Symbol for an inductor, labelled:] Sheep
:[Symbol for a transformer, labelled:] Two Sheep in Love, Trapped on Opposite Sides of a Fence
:[Symbol for a battery, labelled:] Battery
:[Symbol for a battery, sorted, labelled:] Baertty
:[Symbol for a battery, with far too many short lines, labelled:] Battttttttttttery
:[Symbol for a photodiode, labelled:] Check Out This Really Cool Diode
:[Symbol for an oscillator, labelled:] Wave Pool
:[Symbol for a transistor, labelled:] Trolley Problem | This comic contains several symbols used in circuit diagrams. Each is labeled with a larger object that the symbol looks like a drawing of, rather than the electrical component it actually represents. Randall has previously depicted distorted uses, depictions, and labeling of the standard US-form electronic symbols in comics such as 730: Circuit Diagram.
{| class | |
2819 | August 23, 2023 | Pronunciation | null | I pronounce the 'u' in 'pronunciation' like in 'putting' but the 'ou' in 'pronounce' like in 'wound'. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[The word "Tuesday", with each letter labeled by a box with an arrow:]
:T: As in buffe'''t'''
:u: As in min'''u'''te
:e: As in r'''e'''cord
:s: As in u'''s'''e
:d: As in mope'''d'''
:a: As in b'''a'''ss
:y: As in g'''y'''ro
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Pet peeve: Ambiguous pronunciation guides | Pronunciation guides are used in many languages to indicate the commonly accepted way to translate a written word into sound. This can be particularly important in the English language, where the pronunciation of individual letters and of combinations of letters can vary broadly, and there are very few rules that can be applied consistently. As a result, the 'correct' pronunciation of any given word is determined by common usage, and therefore can only be learned either by exposure or by memorizing them from guides. Some guides use the International Phonetic Alphabet, but the average person is not familiar with those characters, so most guides written for laypeople instead {{wiktionary|Appendix:English pronunciation|reference familiar words}} that feature the phonemes.
This, of course, presumes that the reader is familiar with the pronunciation of ''those'' words, but the words should be chosen so that a) they're commonly known b) there is only one common pronunciation and c) the pronunciation doesn't vary much between regional accents. The comic seems to be poking fun of this idea by using words which can have vastly different pronunciations even for a single dialect or accent, let alone a geographically spread one, and by extension at how English pronunciation is a mess even at very small scales.
In this strip, though, the selected guide-words are deliberately chosen to be confusing. They are Heteronym (linguistics)|heteronyms – spellings that are used for multiple words with different meaning which are pronounced in very different ways. Moreover for most of them it is the less common homograph which matches the pronunciation in "Tuesday". In other words, how the reader chooses to pronounce each guide-word determines what pronunciation of "Tuesday" they end up with.
To complicate things further, there are multiple 'correct' pronunciations of 'Tuesday', involving different pronunciations of practically every part of the word.
(Note: General American pronunciations are primarily assumed here except when otherwise stated)
{| class | |
2820 | August 25, 2023 | Inspiration | null | An apple fell on Isaac Newton's head and gave him the idea that the moon might be a tasty apple, though this turned out not to be true--the Apollo program eventually determined that it was just a desolate and bland Red Delicious. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball sits under a tree. An apple falls from the tree and hits him on the head.]
:Bonk
:[The view zooms out, showing the moon, which Cueball looks up at.]
:[Closeup on Cueball.]
:Cueball: ...
:Cueball: ''We should grow apples on the moon.'' | The apple falling on Cueball's head is a reference to the folk tale about the inspiration for {{W|Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation}}. [https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/OTHE00001 One of Isaac Newton's biographers] reported that his inquiries into the nature of gravity were "occasion'd by the fall of an apple" as he sat under a tree. Over time, this evolved into the story that a falling apple struck Newton on the head. Some versions of the story imagine him gazing at the moon when the apple hits him, and having the revelation that the force pulling the apple toward the earth was the same force that kept the moon in orbit.
In this strip, Cueball (or {{W|Issac Newton}}) is similarly struck by a falling apple, while gazing at the moon. But rather than an insight about gravity, he makes a different connection, that of starting an apple orchard on the Moon. This would, of course, require some form of massive terraforming project (or at least the construction of a large, pressurized dome), since the airless environment of the moon wouldn't allow any plants to survive. It's not entirely ridiculous that the contrast between the lifeless moon and the lush landscape of an apple orchard would inspire someone to seek to plant life on the moon.
The title text claims that Newton thought that the Moon was in fact a tasty apple, but the Apollo program proved it was a Red Delicious apple. This is a jab at Randall's least favorite type of apple, as has been 388|previously 1766|noted. That apple variety became the most popular variety in the USA after its introduction but, to satisfy market demand, growers began selecting for storage and cosmetic appeal over flavor and palatability. Popularity has declined significantly in recent decades. "Desolate and bland" echoes Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin describing the moonscape as "magnificent desolation".
The tale of Newton and the apple was previously mentioned in 1584: Moments of Inspiration. | |
2821 | August 28, 2023 | Path Minimization | null | Of course you get an ice cream cone for the swimmer too! You're not a monster. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball stands on the beach, with another person in the water. Ponytail stands on the beach in an ice cream stand in the top right corner.]
:Path that minimizes distance [A straight line from beach cueball to ocean cueball, bearing about 135]
:Path that minimizes time [A line from beach cueball to the waterline closer to horizontal, bearing about 120, then angling towards ocean cueball, bearing about 150]
:Path that minimizes swimming [A line from beach cueball to the waterline closest to ocean cueball, bearing about 115, then angling toward ocean cueball, bearing 180]
:Path that minimizes time until you get ice cream [A line from beach cueball to the ice cream stand manned by Ponytail, bearing about 90, then angling toward ocean cueball, bearing about 190]
:Path that maximizes time [A line from beach cueball away from the shore, bearing 0, fading and disappearing at the top of the panel, and reappearing at the bottom of the panel directly below ocean cueball] | In this comic, it appears that Cueball, standing on shore, is observing a swimmer who is possibly (but not obviously) in distress. The comic illustrates five potential paths that can be taken to reach the swimmer, each with a different reason to make them viable, in the manner of demonstrating different optimal strategies that can be chosen.
The first path is a direct line from Cueball, straight to the swimmer, which allows for the minimum possible distance to be traveled, some on land and the remainder in the water.
The second path travels more obliquely from Cueball to the water and then at a sharper angle to the swimmer. This path would take the shortest amount of time, presuming that Cueball would move faster on land (covering more of the distance) and slower through the water (but less distance). The exact angles would depend on how much faster Cueball is on land than in the water. The relationship between speeds and angles is the same as that in Snell's law for light passing between two media.
The third path travels at a far more oblique angle to the water, such that the subsequent swimming path is entirely perpendicular to the shoreline, adding to the amount of time spent on land in order to minimize the time spent swimming. Depending on one's swimming ability versus running ability, this could be the safest path to take. It might also be more sensible to keep the target in clear sight for as long as possible, from the land, then aim exactly away from shore when both your head and theirs are barely at wave-height (though currents may complicate this). But this is a completely different reason from the distance or time preferences.
The fourth path travels nearly parallel to the beach. In fact moving slightly ''away'' from the swimmer but towards an intermediate goal: an ice cream stand. After that, the path turns and aims straight towards the swimmer, as all the others eventually do (although it is not made clear at this point if Cueball will spend time eating his ice cream on the beach, or will attempt to carry and possibly eat an ice cream whilst swimming).
The fifth and final path, barely recognizable as a path, points off the top of the comic and reappears at the bottom. This path presumably travels around the entire world, likely stopping for many, ''many'' rest breaks. It is labeled as the path that ''maximizes'' time. It should be noted that, by the definition given, it is theoretically possible to stretch the maximum time taken out forever by simply walking away and never returning.
You could also fulfill the criteria of reaching the target in finite, but arbitrarily long, time by following a random walk(+swim) or even follow a space-filling curve carefully chosen to be the maximally finite scenario. Or you could simply choose any path, and stop for an arbitrarily long time, or travel at a speed approaching zero. In the comic, however, a requirement for simplicity of path may dictate the use of something close to the opposing great-circle distance, or a variation that has a maximal swim-time even without ''undue'' time-wasting detours, and assume equal speeds of travel on all routes.
Alternatively, the fifth path may be a joke playing on relativity. In special and general relativity, timelike geodesics (locally) maximize the proper time between spacetime events. In a spacetime diagram (in sufficiently nice coordinates), an upwards-directed vertical line would be such a geodesic. Under this interpretation, the fifth path isn't a path around the world or through space at all, but through spacetime.
The comic pokes fun at two famous physical/mathematical problems that are usually stated as happening on a beach. The first is the Lifeguard problem, which Richard Feynman, in his book ''QED'', uses to illustrate Fermat's principle, or principle of least time, which states that the path taken by a light ray between two given points is the path that can be traveled in the least time. This is closely related to Stationary-action principle for mechanical systems. In Feynman's words:
''"Finding the path of least time for light is like finding the path of least time for a lifeguard running and then swimming to rescue a drowning victim: the path of least distance has too much water in it; the path of least water has too much sand in it; the path of least time is a compromise between the two."'' - ''Richard Feynman, QED - The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1988, Princeton University Press), Chapter 2.''
It is also possible that the comic makes fun of Feynman's idea that a photon (Cueball) would take ''every'' path to reach its destination, including the one that goes around the Earth, so that the paths shown are all being taken instead of being options Cueball is considering (therefore he could bring an ice cream to the swimmer).
The second problem referenced in this comic is the [https://gametheory101.com/courses/game-theory-101/hotellings-game-and-the-median-voter-theorem Beach Vendor Problem], which is stated as follows. Suppose that on a long beach there are two ice cream vendors. Customers are uniformly distributed on the beach and each person will go get the ice cream at the closest vendor. Each vendor wants to maximize the number of customers that buy at their place. To minimize the customer's walking time, the optimal configuration would be to have one vendor at 1/4 of the beach length and the other at 3/4, but Hotelling's law predicts that the two shops will converge to the middle of the beach, in an attempt to steal as many customers as possible from the competition. This is a case of Nash equilibrium that is also related to the Median voter theorem. If the number of vendors is larger than 2, the problem may become [https://gametheory101.com/tag/hotellings-game/ considerably more complicated].
The title text adds to the ice-cream path the stipulation that you also carry an ice-cream to the target swimmer to 'justify' that choice of route. But how this squares with the reason to rendezvous with the swimmer, or the manner in which this would further complicate the swimming stage, goes unsaid. But it makes it clear that ''not'' doing this isn't considered socially permissible, whether or not he had stopped to eat an ice-cream of his own beforehand. | |
2822 | August 30, 2023 | *@gmail.com | null | Hi all, just replying to loop in *@outlook.com and *@yahoo.com. | :[A typical gmail UI]
:To: *@gmail.com (+expand)
:Cc: [Empty field]
:Bcc: [Empty field]
:Subj: New Friends
:Hey all! Go ahead and introduce yourself!
:[Caption:] If Google ever decides to shut down Gmail, they should let one user trigger a global reply-all apocalypse. | When performing operations on computer files using a command prompt, the asterisk (*) may be used to represent a collection of items whose names match a particular format. For example, "*.txt" denotes all files whose names end in ".txt". This is called a wildcard character. Similarly, the e-mail address *@gmail.com, as illustrated in the comic, is a proposed feature from Randall that would send an email to ''every'' Gmail user, without having each and every valid Gmail address at hand (of which there are about 1.8 billion). For obvious reasons, this is not actually a feature, but Randall suggests that if Google ever wanted to shut Gmail down, they could either do it this way (possibly causing a service-ending overload of resources) ''or'' allow someone this one last boon (as a farewell gift, knowing that there would be relatively few additional repercussions to deal with). Google does not seem particularly likely to shut down Gmail, as it is a source of information for their advertising and other businesses, but they are known for [https://killedbygoogle.com/ abandoning programs and projects] even after they have been found useful (by at least some people) for years.
Reply-all is a sometimes useful feature of email that nonetheless commonly causes headaches and annoyances for both users and administrators. By allowing users to simply reply to everyone copied on the email, it encourages users to do this rather than think carefully about which people their response should be addressed to. This causes lots of users to receive irrelevant emails, and email servers to have to process and store a lot of unnecessary data. Randall's email is essentially designed to induce every Gmail user to email every other Gmail user, generating an excessively large number of emails.
A recurring phenomenon for email users, especially in the early Internet days of the 1990s and 2000s, was a reply all storm – someone would start a message to a very large group, perhaps hundreds, and even if only 5% of recipients replied to say something like “take me off this list“, a storm of dozens of replies would soon follow. Inevitably, new replies to everyone would start saying things like, “stop Replying All!” If this were done with millions of Gmail users instead of just dozens or hundreds, their result would be apocalyptic. A real-life example was [https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nhs-email-reply-all-down a 2016 incident involving 1.2 million staff at the UK National Health Service].
In reality, the asterisk wildcard is not generally usable via email servers, although email ''clients'' may sometimes implement such a function, internally, perhaps to support mailing-list functions (though more commonly this is done via named address-book 'groups'). That said, the asterisk ''character'' is a valid one that may form part of the name of a mailbox, including group-boxes that might facilitate server-side distribution.
Now, organizations operating their own e-mail domains frequently implement mailing lists such as all@example.com or staff@example.com, and these lists occasionally cause reply-all storms, which usually results in the organization restricting access to the list to trusted administrators. Here, Randall proposes doing the opposite and opening the list of all Gmail users to everybody.
The title text suggests a reply where someone decides that all users of Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail) and Yahoo! Mail, two further well-known mail services with similarly large user bases, should also be included - "loop in" is common business jargon for {{wiktionary|loop_in#English|meaning "include in communication about something"}}, related to "being in the loop" meaning "being informed and up to date". Accepting this would trigger an even bigger reply-all "apocalypse", as the chain will get even bigger and will include accounts for services not presumably about to be shut down like Gmail is in the comic, thus bringing down all significant platforms for e-mail services, fracturing the internet for most users. This also alludes to an occurrence in email chains where a user replies to simply add another user into the chain, which doesn't add much information to the group. | |
2823 | September 1, 2023 | Fossil | null | The two best reasons to get into fossils are booping trilobites and getting to say the word "fossiliferous" a lot. | :[Cueball is holding two halves of a rock in a paleontological site. Megan, Ponytail, and White Hat are working in the background.]
:Cueball: It's weird to pry open a rock and see an animal that no one has laid eyes on for 400 million years.
:[Zoom in on Cueball looking at the fossil he is holding.]
:[Cueball pokes the fossil.]
:Cueball: ''Boop!''
:Off-panel voice: Hey! Don't boop the trilobites! | Trilobites are an extinct group of species of marine animal, one of the earliest known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record is from about 521 million years ago and last from about 252 million years ago. They were very common and have easily fossilized exoskeleton, so their fossils can be found very often.
In the comic, Cueball is digging at a site with Megan, Ponytail, and White Hat visible in the background. He finds and digs up a trilobite fossil and proceeds to {{wiktionary|boop#Verb|boop}} it (possibly because he thinks it’s cute?). "Booping" is when someone lightly taps another person, or sometimes an animal, on the nose while saying "boop", typically to annoy or as a form of endearment. In panel 2, the fossil is shown with the trilobite head pointed away from Cueball. In panel 3 he boops the head section, likely aiming for where the nose would be, if one were to imagine a trilobite having a nose. The anatomical part of the trilobite being "booped" is referred to as the glabella by palaeontologists. The Glabella is located in the center of the cephalon (head), where one would expect a nose to be located.
An off-screen character yells at him for doing this, probably because fossils are often fragile and excessive touching may cause it to break, or because doing so is not showing the due respect for a once-living being that is much older than Cueball, or because Cueball might contaminate the sample, or because overly strict rules are funny.
Fossiliferous (of a rock or stratum) means containing fossils or organic remains, and Randall implies that it is a fun word to say (it really is!). | |
2824 | September 4, 2023 | Abstract Pickup | null | Escape Artist Frees Self From Conversation With Pickup Artist | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[White Hat holding a paintbrush in his left arm standing next to an easel. An abstract painting of differently sized black and white rectangular square shapes rest on top of the easel.]
:White Hat: Hey there, chaotic melange of cubes-
:White Hat: you're actually pretty cute for a '''dizzying swarm!'''
:[The words "dizzying swarm!" are written in wavy bold letters.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Bad news - the pickup artists and abstract artists have merged. | Abstract art|Abstract artists are individuals who create artworks that do not attempt to represent external reality. Instead, they emphasize shapes, colors, forms and gestural or non-representational elements in order to convey emotions, concepts or ideas. Abstract art can take various forms, including paintings, sculptures, and other visual media.
Pickup artist|Pickup artists are individuals who engage in strategies and techniques to attract and form romantic or sexual relationships with others, typically focusing on short-term or casual encounters. These strategies often involve tactics for initiating conversations, building rapport and escalating physical intimacy. Pickup artistry is often associated with misogyny, manipulative behavior and a lack of respect for others.
Stereotypical pickup artists are misogynistic males who feel disproportionately hard done by and are (over)reacting to the perceived antipathy from "all women" and a typical technique that they might use is "negging", or making a comment which is intended to lower their target's self-esteem under the guise of being perfectly normal (and even complimentary) small-talk. Randall has previously indicated his disdain for pickup artists in 1027: Pickup Artist and 1178: Pickup Artists.
The word "artist" has different meanings in these two phrases. In the first one, it means someone who makes paintings as a profession or hobby, and "abstract" narrows down the types of paintings. In the second, it means a practitioner of some activity, and "pickup" is the (reprehensible) specific activity. The joke is in conflating the two senses when saying that the two groups have merged.
White Hat is a representative of this combined group and in his usual fashion seems to have mixed the two in a peculiar manner, calling a bunch of cubes "cute". He's talking to a group of cubes he has just painted, which he describes as a melange (being an artistic term for a disordered mixture), in his role as an abstract artist. But by the end of his comment he has passed through a disarming compliment (that they are "actually very cute", seemingly saying that few other people will ever think the same), revealing his pickup artist tendencies by seemingly dismissing them as a "dizzying swarm" which few would call "cute"(showing White Hat's signature peculiarity as no one will call a melange of cubes cute).
In the title text, it appears that a third type of artist (the Escapology|escape artist, again very different from both of the other types of artist) has fulfilled their own "role" by escaping from conversation with a pickup artist. Assuming that the escape artist is a woman, this might be an additional joke that pickup artists are not good at "picking up" women and instead just act like "a bunch of chains" to escape from. | |
2825 | September 6, 2023 | Autumn and Fall | null | Of course in reality this is just a US/UK thing; in British English, 'fall' is the brief period in between and 'autumn' is the main season. | :[A monthly time track, showing the stretch of August, September, and October. The date of September 6th is marked now, with September 23rd marked as the Fall Equinox. September 1st is marked as the Meteorological End of Summer. Underneath the track there are labels for the seasons - Summer ends at September 1st, which is then labelled as Autumn until the Equinox wherein a separate season labelled as Fall is from the Equinox onwards.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Now that summer is over, the first day of fall is just a few weeks away! | Autumn, also known as "fall" in the United States (short for 'fall of the leaf'), is the season between the end of summer and the beginning of winter. These terms are used interchangeably, but Randall in this comic treats them as separate seasons. His timeline uses "autumn" as the season between the end of summer and the "September equinox|fall equinox", and the season of "fall" as the period after that until winter. While many different parts of the world use different ways of reckoning the seasons (eg, a two-season system in the tropics or a six-season system in South Asia), nowhere uses the type of five-season system shown in the comic, nor the extrapolated eight-season system it may even imply.
The comic depicts two of the commonly used boundaries, for any given hemisphere, for the recognized end of summer. While other cultures have adopted yet other dates, according to their own calendars or local experience, Randall may have encountered several other 'standard' methods of dividing the year.
* Some treatments of the seasons (not shown) treat the summer solstice very much as "midsummer", and all other seasons also more or less equally straddling their own equinoxes/remaining solstice, putting the seasonal boundaries half way between each of these astronomically significant points.
* For others, the equinoctial/solstitial dates are used for the changeover time, so that autumn/fall starts upon the equinox (shown) and ends at the astronomically shortest day which is then the start of winter. This system tends to be traditional where the annual warming and cooling of the climate significantly 'lags' the solar calendar.
* Meteorological seasons are handily aligned to months, for administrative reasons. Spring (short for 'spring of the leaf') is March through May, summer across June to August, the September start (to the close of November) is as illustrated, leaving winter to be covered by December and on until the end of the following February. Or shifted round by two of the triples for the southern hemisphere.
* For practical purposes, many in the U.S. treat Labor Day as the unofficial end of summer: this is the day many local pools close for the winter, people start watching football rather than baseball, have their last picnic of the year, etc.
The joke here is that, because Americans do not use the term "autumn" very often in normal communication, someone might be led to believe that it had a special unusual scientific meaning.
The title text makes fun of the transatlantic difference in terms, as it claims one must ''reverse'' these two distinct season names. The term "autumn" is, in reality, the word overwhelmingly used in the UK for the season commonly (but not exclusively) referred to as "the fall" in the US, regardless of which of the calendar offsets is to be assumed, and the equinox is, accordingly, called the autumn equinox. "Fall" is rarely used 'natively' in the UK (although it will usually be understood), with the main exception being that it handily allows for the mnemonic of "spring forward, fall back", which uses wordplay to refer to how and roughly when British Summer Time (UTC+1) takes over from the default Greenwich Mean Time (UTC±0). | |
2826 | September 8, 2023 | Gold | null | It can be expensive to hire a professional spectroscopist for your wedding, but the quality of the spectra you get is worth it. | :[Cueball holding some small sparkling thing, implied to be a gold wedding ring]
:Cueball: It kinda makes sense that we use gold for wedding rings.
:[Frame shifts to Cueball's head]
:Cueball: Because a lot of the universe's gold was probably produced by R-process nucleosynthesis when pairs of neutron stars spiraled together and merged.
:Cueball: So gold exists because two neutron stars got married.
:[Megan walks in from side towards Cueball]
:Megan: "Binary neutron star merger" would be a fun wedding theme.
:Cueball: Everyone has to try '''''not''''' to catch the relativistically-ejected bouquet. | In this comic, Cueball points out how fitting it is that wedding rings are usually made of gold because gold, as the comic states, is most commonly created by r-process nucleosynthesis in the mergers of neutron stars (the process entailing the rapid capture of free neutrons before either the atom or free neutron decays, therefore requiring a high density of neutrons); something which could be seen as analogous to a marriage. About 94% of the gold on Earth was created this way, with the rest made by supernova nucleosynthesis.[https://www.science.org/content/article/neutron-star-mergers-may-create-much-universe-s-gold][https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05463]
Wedding receptions sometimes have a ''theme'', which is used to style the decorations and activities of the party. If the couple has a shared interest in something in popular culture (especially if this is how they met), they might use that as the theme. Megan suggests that "Binary Neutron Star Merger" would be a fun theme; this would probably only be true for astronomers or cosmologists.{{Citation needed}}
Cueball adds that an activity at such a wedding would be ejecting the bouquet at relativistic speeds; this is a reference to the traditional activity of the bride throwing her bouquet into the crowd, with whoever catches it predicted to be the next to get married. The collision of neutron stars ejects material with enormous amounts of energy and therefore at high speeds. So, for a "Binary Neutron Star Merger" theme wedding, the ejected bouquet would therefore be traveling "Relativistic speed|relativistically" (i.e. at a high fraction of the speed of light). If you caught such a bouquet while at rest relative to the merger point, [https://what-if.xkcd.com/1 you would be destroyed by the energy], so everyone tries not to catch it in that fashion. Of course, as shown in the ''What If?'' link above, everyone in the room and the surroundings would be vaporized if such a feat was possible. This would make the theme appropriate in addition to being "fun" as the wedding would be just as bright and energetic as a binary neutron star merger.
Continuing with the cosmological theme, the title text suggests that the wedding photographer would be a spectroscopist. Spectroscopy, which determines the composition of materials, including those far away such as exoplanets, stars, binary neutron star mergers and other astronomical phenomena, by measuring and analyzing the wavelengths emitted, to see which wavelengths are strong and which are missing/have a weak intensity, and comparing these to the characteristic spectra of different elements. After the relativistically-ejected bouquet is thrown, he would be able to make a nice spectroscopical image/photo of the entire wedding ceremony if he stood far enough away. (He would, of course, not be able to present it to the bride, as she was part of the system which was destroyed in the process of the light and energy being emitted.) | |
2827 | September 11, 2023 | Brassica | null | Sequoia Brussels sprouts are delicious but it's pretty hard to finish one. | :: [Cueball, Megan and another Cueball are standing in front of a large tree. Only the lowest section of the tree trunk is visible.]
:: Cueball: Did you know the mighty redwood is actually the same species as broccoli and kale? It's just a different cultivar.
:: Other Cueball: Wow!
:: [Caption below the panel]
:: Every year or two, botanists add another plant to ''Brassica oleracea'' and see if anyone calls them on it. | ''Brassica oleracea'' is a plant species, that contains 23 different cultivars (plants which evolved primarily due to human selection) of wild cabbage, a relatively nondescript herb, to which many vegetables that we eat belong. These vegetables look quite different from each other, though all share the same basic appearance; compare, for example, cabbage, broccoli, kale and brussels sprouts.
In the comic, Cueball, who is serving as a natural-history tour guide or park ranger, or maybe is just leading a group of friends, declares that the "mighty redwood" (presumably the coast redwood, ''Sequoia sempervirens'') also belongs to this species. Since the coast redwood is a conifer, while ''B. oleracea'' is a flowering plant, the two species are about as different as two land plants can be, both in classification and appearance.
However, when viewed from high above, the canopy of forests can bear a striking resemblance to the top of a head of many of these cultivars. In this case, the pointier tops of conifers would more likely resemble a Romanesco_broccoli|romanesco, while broad-leaved forests would be closer to the more commonly encountered calabrese. Such far-fetched resemblances could be used by a botanist as a joke to see if anyone is paying enough attention to call them out, which according to the caption, seems like something botanists do every year or two.
The title text refers to Sequoia Brussels sprouts. The reference is probably to the Giant Sequoia (''Sequoiadendron giganteum''), a close relative of the coast redwood. "Resinous" is probably a more apt adjective than "delicious", and they're probably woody. Additionally, as stated, they would indeed be quite hard to finish - Sequoia trees can range from Sequoiadendron giganteum|50-85 meters in height, and so consuming them will take weeks or maybe months, a monotonous task despite their "deliciousness". It is probably no more advisable{{citation needed}} to stand under a sequoia bearing sprouts than it is to stand under a [https://www.kuriositas.com/2010/10/dont-stand-under-cannonball-tree.html cannonball tree]. | |
2828 | September 13, 2023 | Exoplanet Observation | null | NASA prefers to say that their rovers are 'looking for signs of past life on Mars' and not 'ghost hunting.' | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:: [Cueball is holding a stick and pointing at a slide with two ghosts and a planet]
:: Cueball: When the planet passed in front of its host star, some of the light was absorbed by ghosts, indicating that the planet is likely haunted.
:: [Caption below the panel]
:: Exoplanet Spectral Analysis | In this comic, Cueball states that observations of light that passed through the atmosphere of a distant planet indicate that there are ghosts on that planet, because some of the light was absorbed in a way that is unique to ghosts. This is analogous to how gases or suspended particles absorb certain wavelengths, allowing scientists to identify properties of distant objects using telescopes. The pun is that in this comic "spectral analysis" refers to both Spectroscopy|the analysis of the light spectrum and the analysis of specters (ghosts).
Spectroscopy|Spectral analysis is the study of the electromagnetic spectrum that results from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation (including visible light) and matter. In the study of exoplanets and other distant objects in space, it refers to using the intensities of different frequencies of light (and other electromagnetic radiation) from stars which they occlude to infer data about their chemical composition. This is used to detect certain gases in the atmosphere, such as Oxygen#Allotropes|free oxygen, which might suggest generation by and for Earth-like life. On the day before this comic was published, NASA announced that spectral analysis of the exoplanet K2-18b showed abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, which are chemical footprints that support the hypothesis that it may have a life-supporting water ocean; and there was possible detection of dimethyl sulfide, which on Earth is only produced by life.[https://www.nasa.gov/goddard/2023/webb-discovers-methane-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-of-k2-18b] If confirmed, these would be very interesting findings, although it may turn out to be less remarkable on closer study (as Life on Venus#Phosphine|with Venus for example).
"Spectral" also has another meaning: relating to specters (ghosts). Hence "exoplanet spectral analysis" could be interpreted as the analysis of ghosts on planets outside the solar system instead of the analysis of the elements that might be present on the planet. "Specter" and "spectrum" have the same etymological root, deriving from Latin "spectrum" meaning "appearance", with a specter specifically referring to a visible shadow or ghost.
The title text refers to the search for past life on Mars. Just like the comic, it also humorously conflates the practice of searching for signs of past life such as specific molecules or fossils (which NASA does actively search for), versus the disreputable practice of searching for ghosts, with this conflation framing both as an equally scientific indication of past life. In a very loose sense, real signs such as gases or fossils could be considered "ghosts" of past life. | |
2829 | September 15, 2023 | Iceberg Efficiency | null | Our experimental aerogel iceberg with helium pockets manages true 100% efficiency, barely touching the water, and it can even lift off of the surface and fly to more efficiently pursue fleeing hubristic liners. | :[Black Hat is holding a stick and standing next to a projection screen, or rolled-down printed poster, featuring an image of an iceberg halfway submerged in water, presenting to an unseen audience to the right.]
:Black Hat: A standard iceberg is only 10% efficient.
:Black Hat: 90% of the ice is hidden underwater, totally wasted.
:[Black Hat is now seen face on, standing next to an updated image of the same iceberg with another "iceberg" with all but a small hemispherical lobe almost entirely above the surface of the water now to the right of it.]
:Black Hat: Our next-generation foam-filled iceberg achieves near-100% efficiency, floating almost entirely above the ocean surface.
:[Black Hat is still holding a stick, facing right, any current image/screen no longer visible to his rear. There are no other people directly shown, but three distinct 'off-frame' voices are indicated from the right.]
:Black Hat: "But wait," you might be thinking. "How will such a lightweight iceberg pose a threat to hubristic ocean liners?"
:Black Hat: That's where the torpedoes come in.
:Off-panel voice 1: I'm sorry, what project are you part of, again?
:Off-panel voice 2: I assumed he was with you.
:Off-panel voice 3: Security? | This comic humorously plays with the idea of efficiency in a typically absurd and satirical "Black Hat" fashion. Black Hat starts by critiquing traditional icebergs, which are mostly hidden underwater, as inefficient. Efficiency is typically measured in relation to a desired outcome or purpose; Black Hat seems to imply that the obvious purpose for icebergs is to be seen above the water. He then presents his solution - a foam-filled iceberg that floats almost entirely above the water, claiming it to be highly efficient.
Black Hat's idea is characteristically absurd. Icebergs are naturally formed structures, with no particular purpose in existing. It is possible to imagine edge cases where a "more efficient" iceberg would be desirable, such as if the goal were to increase the overall albedo of the planet (perhaps to mitigate climate change), but on the whole his proposal to create a "foam-filled iceberg" is not only impractical but also comically exaggerated.
Black Hat then absurdly suggests that his lightweight iceberg can still pose a threat to ocean liners (as if that's the "purpose" of icebergs – in the 20th century, at least List of ships sunk by icebergs|six ships sank as a result of iceberg collisions, most famously the ''RMS Titanic'') through the use of torpedoes. In addition, given that Black Hat is promoting the idea that icebergs ''should'' be able to damage ships, it's not really so inefficient to have much of the iceberg underwater, since ocean liners also have a significant portion of their hulls underwater, where they can be damaged by icebergs. The second panel shows that the foam-filled iceberg has a small attachment underneath it, perhaps a turret for launching torpedoes.
The unnamed individuals in the last panel are clearly baffled and concerned at how Black Hat got to presenting this slideshow, especially after Black Hat brings in the idea of torpedoes, presumably alerting them to the idea that the presentation is not just some incomprehensible novel idea for mitigating climate change or some other advantageous purpose. Realizing that Black Hat is not authorized to be there, presumably having snuck in with someone dealing with iceberg-related ideas, one of them calls for security. This is just another typical example of Black Hat presenting absurd ideas in a calm fashion.
The title text introduces the concept of an "experimental aerogel iceberg with helium pockets." Aerogel|Aerogels are a class of solid, porous materials known for their extremely low density (making them among the lightest solid materials yet synthesized). Their low density should make them float well in liquids, though their low mass and their porous and brittle material properties make them unsuitable as a ramming implement. They are very strong for their mass, but would not be able to support iceberg-sized amounts without collapsing without internal supports which would vastly outweigh the aerogel. Most aerogels cannot float in water without some kind of surrounding coating or container, since the water would soak into the aerogel as it does a sponge. Worse, most aerogels are very hygroscopic, and [http://www.aerogel.org/?p | |
2830 | September 18, 2023 | Haunted House | null | You can leave at any time through the door over there. It's a Louisville door, so you'll need to find a compatible knob. No, don't be silly, that one is a Lexington knob! Of course it won't fit. | :[Ponytail stands gesturing towards an off-panel location, facing Megan and Cueball. Megan has hands covering her face and Cueball has both arms slightly raised. Both have 'sweat marks' above their heads.]
:Ponytail: Welcome! If you need to charge your phones, note that this house has Pennsylvania wiring, but we have New Jersey and Delaware adapters available.
:Megan and Cueball: AAAAAA!
:[Caption below the panel:]
:The haunted house at the ISO/ANSI office Halloween party | The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and ANSI (American National Standards Institute) are organizations that create standards for commonly used objects such as electrical sockets, preferably so that there would exist standardized forms everywhere (or at least across large areas). The comic depicts an office Halloween party, which is a common event on the celebration of Halloween{{Citation needed}}. A "Haunted attraction (simulated)|haunted house" is a house or other building/room designed to induce fright in the participants, typically by including well-known/cultural scary elements such as vampires or zombies. The haunted house in this comic is tailored to scare members of these organizations by suggesting a world where nothing is standardized (e.g. different electrical wiring from state to state). The title text furthers the joke by implying that something which is usually standardized (door/doorknob interfaces) would be different from city to city even within a state. Further, it confounds ''types'' of "knobs", where "[https://www.google.com/search?client | |
2831 | September 20, 2023 | xkcd Phone Flip | null | Theranos partnership: Sorry, we know, but we signed the contract back before all the stuff and the lawyers say we can't back out, so just try to keep your finger away from the bottom of the phone. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A rectangular phone with a touch screen. There is a small dark camera section at the top of the screen and a charging/connecting port may be shown on the lower casing edge. Lines on the left side of the phone lead from the general area of the image to feature descriptions down the leftmost edge of the frame.]
:Exfoliating screen
:Orthotic shape for arch support
:Single big pixel
:Ready to eat
:Hypoimmunogenic
:Up to 50% more
:Full-spectrum backlight optimized for plant growth
:Long-lasting main sequence battery
:Break glass to access apps
:[Two phones folded in the shape of a 'paper fortune teller' are depicted on on the right, set one above the other with other general feature lines leading off from the nearest folded phone illustration towards further listed items down the right-hand side of the frame.]
:Buy one get one
:Bending phone activates chemical flashlight
:SPF 15 coating protects your face from websites
:Iatrogenic construction
:All-vinyl data storage for maximum fidelity
:Locks in moisture
:National Weather Service partnership: phone is afraid of thunder
:One-click ''ruina montium''
:Free refills
:[Text below the phone:]
:Introducing
:'''The xkcd Phone Flip'''
:''We actually didn't mean for it to do this''™ | This is the 9th in the ongoing :Category:xkcd Phones|xkcd Phone series in which Randall explains his new joke phone designs with many strange and useless features. It is a reference to the somewhat recent Galaxy Z series, but instead of folding in half, it folds into the more complex and much less usable shape of a typical paper fortune teller. (A traditional paper fortune teller requires a square-shaped piece of material; to make this phone with a ~2:1 ratio rectangular shape into a fortune teller, it would first need to be folded in half lengthswise.)
The product's slogan suggests that this was not an intended feature, which would be incredibly difficult to create accidentally without causing the phone to become nonfunctional. It's therefore possible that this phone was designed by :Category:Beret Guy's Business|Beret Guy's company, which has in the past 1493: Meeting|trademarked seemingly normal phrases and 1293: Job Interview|done impossible things with electronics.
The name Phone Flip is a play on the term Flip Phone, which has referred to older cellphones with a Clamshell design|basic hinged construction, but Samsung, in particular, has released a line of smartphones under the Galaxy Z range given the name 'Flip' (or 'Fold') which use a flexible display across the hinge, with Motorola Razr|other manufacturers producing similar technology by other names. Randall's version takes this complexity up a notch with a currently impractical varifolded origami design. | |
2832 | September 22, 2023 | Urban Planning Opinion Progression | null | If they're going to make people ride bikes and scooters in traffic, then it should at LEAST be legal to do the Snow Crash thing where you use a hook-shot-style harpoon to catch free rides from cars. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:'''Typical urban planning opinion progression'''
:[Each panel is connected to a point on a timeline. Timeline is recognizable as the tread of a bicycle tire]
:Cueball: I wish there wasn't so much traffic to get into the city. They should put in more lanes.
:Megan: And more parking.
:Megan: Parking is so bad here.
:Knit Cap: I have to go to Amsterdam for work next week. I hear they all ride bikes there.
:Ponytail: Bikes are fine but people shouldn't ride them in the street! I worry I'm going to hit someone!
:Cueball: It would be nice if we had better transit options!
:Cueball: I tried a scooter. It was fun but I wish there were more bike paths.
:Megan: It's funny how widening roads to speed up traffic makes them more dangerous to walk near, making driving more necessary and creating more traffic.
:Megan: Really makes you think.
:Knit Cap: Visiting the Netherlands was cool!
:Knit Cap: Amsterdam is really neat.
:Cueball: We've ceded so much of our land to storing and moving cars, with the rest of us tiptoeing around the edges and making drivers mad for trespassing on "their" space.
:Cueball: Even though '''''we're''''' the ones in danger from '''''them!'''''
:Megan: Those giant trucks with front blind spots that keep hitting kids should be illegal.
:Knit Cap: We should be more like the Netherlands.
:Knit Cap: They design their streets to prioritize...
:[Cueball is frustrated.]
:Cueball: The problem is car culture. It's systemic.
:Cueball: I don't know if we can fix it.
:[Megan’s arms are thrown out, and her hair is bedraggled.]
:Megan: People approach road planning decisions from the point of view of drivers because that's how we're used to interacting with the city, so we make choices that make it more car-friendly.
:Megan: It's a vicious cycle.
:[Knit Cap is walking around with two Dutch flags raised in her hands.]
:Knit Cap: '''''Netherlands! Netherlands! Netherlands! Netherlands!'''''
:Cueball: Anything that makes a city a worse place to drive in makes it a better place to live, short of scattering random tire spikes on the road.
:Megan: Honestly, I think the city council should consider the tire spikes thing. | This comic follows Cueball, Megan, Knit Cap and Ponytail as their beliefs evolve widely from a conventional car-first view of urban planning, then questioning the wisdom of car-centered policies, then favoring pedestrian-centered design, and finally wanting to discourage driving with tactics as extreme as road spikes.
As a clever form of satire, the comic has twin aims:
# Present a progressive argument leading to a logical conclusion that's humorously radical, likely mirroring Randall's own evolution
# Satirize the irony of US policy discussions that elevate theory and feeling over actual best practices used in other countries.
The '''first two panels''' present the conventional view, known as a strawman argument.
* First, Cueball and Megan complain about the common problem many car-centric cities face about not having enough space for all the cars, and they give a conventional suggestion of making more space for cars.
* Next, Knit Cap mentions how she is going to visit Amsterdam, a city known for its walkability and bike friendliness, which gives Ponytail a chance to share the conventional concern that road cycling is bothersome to drivers.
* This is the only moment that anyone pays any attention to Knit Cap; later when she has lived experience of the topic, they ignore her.
In the '''third and fourth panels''', Cueball and Megan begin to evolve their thinking, wishing for better transit and more bike paths – another shortage common in car-centric cities – with Megan noticing that optimizing for drivers discourages pedestrians, which in turn spurs more driving – later calling it "a vicious cycle."
* Megan's comments could relate to Induced demand, an economic theory in which increasing the supply of a scarce good or service causes the demand to rise faster than the increased supply, worsening the shortage. Traffic is a common example: when US cities try to widen roads and highways, they also incentivize even more vehicles and more driving, worsening the traffic problem. Conversely, other cities have tried removing traffic lanes or converting them to dedicated public transit lanes, and have reported a reduction in traffic congestion, due to people choosing other transportation options. Among urban planners, this is known as the Downs–Thomson paradox.
In the '''fifth panel''' – taking place a week or two later – Knit Cap is back from her work trip to report that Amsterdam is really neat.
In the '''sixth panel''' Cueball's questioning turns into anger at car culture, beginning his full 180 from his previous, conventional car-centric view as he adopts a strong pedestrian-centric perspective.
* Cities face a dilemma of how to allocate limited street space. Car-centric cities allocate much more public land to vehicle storage and movement, leaving less space for bikes, pedestrians, dedicated transit corridors, greenspace, and density.
In the '''seventh panel''', Megan takes issue with a particular type of vehicle – "those giant trucks" – and their threat to kids. All cars have blind spots in the front, and large trucks have blind spots sizable enough for the truck driver to be unable to see a standing child right in front.
* "Those giant trucks" likely refers to large pickup trucks, though she might be singling out lifted pickup trucks (raised after purchase), large tractor trailer cabs, or garbage/construction-style trucks.
In the '''eighth panel''', Knit Cap's relevant personal observations gets ignored and interrupted by the armchair theorists – a subtle nod to how US policy debates often ignore successful examples from other developed countries.
* As Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.”
In '''panels nine, ten, and eleven''', everyone's emotions peak with views that reach their zenith. Car culture is systemic! Driver-centric road planning is a vicious cycle! NETHERLANDS!
By the '''final two panels''', Cueball's and Megan's evolution is complete. Desperate for any fix, Cueball concludes that city livability calls for making the driving experience worse, and then he suggests tire spikes as a solution. The final joke is that Megan actually supports the tire spikes idea, and that this extreme idea emerges from logical reasoning.
Additionally, Cueball and Megan are coming up with crazy solutions while ironically ignoring Knit Cap's reasonable and practical lessons from how Amsterdam actually solves the problem. This continues the satire of US policy discussions that ignore real-world best practices because they come from across the Atlantic.
* A reader who has been nodding along the whole time may reflect if they agree with Megan's final idea — and if not, why not? The whole comic is a type of logical argument in which many small steps of reasoning can lead to eventually extreme and satirical conclusions, similar to the famous A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. It seems that Randall is sharing the evolution of his own views, while self-awarely noting that (1) if you take those views as far as they'll go, you can support some radical implications, and that (2) it's common for Americans to ignore success stories like Amsterdam's.
The '''title text''' references a cyberpunk book called "Snow Crash", by Neal Stephenson. An early scene in that book involves the equivalent of a skater using a magnet on a cable to attach onto the back of a pizza delivery vehicle. He swerves in order to dislodge her, she taunts him and attaches stickers to his vehicle. | |
2833 | September 25, 2023 | Lying | null | I was, at least at the start of this disastrous game night, your friend. | :[Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, and White Hat sit around a table.]
:Cueball: It's me. I can't look you in the eyes and tell you it's not. I'm sorry, I know this ruins everything.
:Cueball: I just need you to know that you're my friends and you can trust me.
:Megan: ...This is ridiculous.
:White Hat: Let's just play Taboo instead.
:[Caption below the panel:]
:I'm really bad at those Mafia-style games where you have to lie. | Mafia (party game)|Mafia (and other games such as Werewolf) is a party game centered around two opposing teams who must eliminate each other: the mafiosi (or werewolves, accordingly) whose aim is to secretly gain a majority and the ordinary players (who may be termed 'townies' or 'villagers') who have to resist this. While the mafiosi know who are mafiosi and who are villagers, the villagers do not know any other person's role. The mafiosi also need to keep their affiliation secret from the villagers so long as they are outnumbered. The game alternates between day and night phases. During the day, all players vote on which suspected anti-villager should be 'killed' (removed from the game). During the night, all surviving members of the mafia decide which villager should be 'killed' to further their own purposes.
Play can be undertaken in person or across a suitable online forum/group-chat, whilst similar mechanics have been adopted for networked games such as Town of Salem or Among Us.
Here we have Cueball (possibly Randall), Megan, Ponytail, and White Hat sitting at a table, apparently playing this type of game, in which some sort of secret must be maintained by lying. Cueball seems to have been unable to maintain the lie and came clean, perhaps hoping that they would remain friends, somehow fearing that playing the game as required would lose him the friendship that brought them together to play the game in the first place. The other members are annoyed by his undermining of the basic concept of the game, and White Hat offers to switch to playing another game called Taboo (game)|Taboo. This may not improve things; given Cueball's apparent inability to maintain secrets, he may feel compelled to tell them the word concealed on his card, and thereby immediately lose.
The title text could both be referring to what Cueball says about how the others are his friends, and also that the others could have gotten so annoyed that they stop being his friends. It is clearly very similar to Spock's dying words in Star Trek II: "I have been, and always shall be, your friend".
In reality, Cueball could actually be cleverly playing one of a number of other roles that a mafia/werewolf game can have. There are additional player-types that win by [https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title | |
2834 | September 27, 2023 | Book Podcasts | null | I've been working my way through this 1950s podcast by someone named John Tolkien called 'Lord of the Rings'--it's a deep dive into this fictional world he created. Good stuff, really bingeable! | :[Cueball, wearing headphones, is looking down towards a phone-sized device held in his hand. From Cueball's head small circles go up to a large thought bubble above him.]
:Cueball: I need more podcasts to listen to while doing chores.
:Cueball: Hey, someone should do a podcast where they just read through a book! Each chapter could be an episode...
:[Caption below the comic:]
:Every now and then I reinvent audiobooks from first principles. | Randall (represented as Cueball) discusses his love of podcasts, episodic audio files of a talk show. He uses them to pass the time when doing chores. At one point he imagines what it would be like if someone made a podcast narrating books, as an easy and convenient way to digest literature when reading the book yourself isn't an option. As spelled out in the caption, he quickly realizes he hasn't invented a new concept but simply described the existence of an audiobooks, a product which has existed well before the concept of podcasts. It's also worth noting that although podcasts usually involve talking and discussions, podcasts that are essentially chapter-by-chapter audiobooks already exist, as do podcasts that are effectively anthologies of shorter stories, meaning that there's nothing remotely original about his idea.
He confesses this has happened more than once, which as can also be seen in 1367: Installing and 2724: Washing Machine Settings, is not the first time Randall has accidentally reinvented the proverbial wheel for an idea.
"First principles" are the set of propositions that a method or theory is founded on, and which can not be derived from other theories that exist in the field. Therefore, first principles can't be derived from other propositions. In this case, Randall is describing the first principles of audiobooks by working backwards from a medium that was invented later, and that borrowed elements from the existence of audiobooks. The humor is in this circular reasoning and anachronistic thought process, as true first principles would probably have involved a real life read-aloud session, and as such is an example of reverse-engineering and not first principle deduction.
The title text is an inverse of the joke, with Randall seemingly having been listening to the ''Lord of the Rings'' audiobook without realizing that this "podcast", which somehow seems to have predated widespread audio devices by being released in 1952, was actually originally a book written by J. R. R. Tolkien. This would The Lord of the Rings (1978 film)#Reception|likely irritate longtime fans of the book (which humorously, would also include Randall).
The words "deep dive" might be referencing the fact that Tolkien wrote the book with the frame story that he was actually just translating the story which was written by the characters in the story, which might also be a joke regarding the reversal of the writing from first principles to "writing" by translation. In addition to this, in 1952, Tolkien's friend George Sayer [https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/1952_tape_recording recorded Tolkien narrating excerpts from ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''], later distributed more widely in the 1970s on vinyl records, which this may also be an allusion to. | |
2835 | September 29, 2023 | Factorial Numbers | null | So what do we do when we get to base 10? Do we use A, B, C, etc? No: Numbers larger than about 3.6 million are simply illegal. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon. - Still needs a lot of deconstruction/reconstruction work on the [Poster:] to make it properly Transcripted (no tables, ideally!), but have improved the surrounding markup/descriptions}}
:[Cueball is standing in front of a large poster. There are two uniformed officers (a Ponytail and a further Cueball, wearing badged hats) approaching Cueball.]
:[Poster:]
: Variable-base Factoradic™ numbers
:{|
|Base 7||Base 6||Base 5||Base 4||Base 3||Base 2
|-
|3||5||3||0||1||1
|}
: Left side
:{| class | A factorial is a product of positive integers. For instance, four factorial, written '4!', means 4×3×2×1 | |
2836 | October 2, 2023 | A Halloween Carol | null | [after a minute] "Okay, I think I've got it, thanks. Can I--" "oOOOooOOooo!" | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball is half sitting up in bed, his lower body underneath the blankets. He is looking at three ghosts flying above him.]
:Middle ghost: ooOOOOOooOOOoo
:[The "ooooo" of the ghosts is written in wavy letters of varying sizes]
:Middle ghost: We are the ghosts of halloween past, present and future
:[Just the middle ghost]
:Ghost: Here to teach you the true meaning of halloween!
:[Back to the full scene]
:Left ghost: ooOOOOOOOooo
:Middle ghost: ooOOOOOooo
:[Again, the full scene]
:Left ghost: ooooooOOOooOooo
:Right ghost: ooOoooOOOoooo | In the classic and widely-adapted Charles Dickens story ''A Christmas Carol'', the protagonist of the tale is visited by various ghosts, first that of his old business partner and then (successively) the spirits of Christmases Past, Present and Yet To Come. Their purpose is to rehabilitate him from his anti-Christmas ways of apathy, indifference and general cruelty to the weak and poor. By their intervention they generally improve his humanity and spiritual future by showing him how he came to be this this way (Past), how he is seen right now (Present) and what his future would be if he continues down that road (Yet to Come), and thus rekindling his capability of love, humility, and kindness.
In this case, however, three Halloween-style ghosts arrive as a spoof of that tale. They represent similar phases of the actual festival of Halloween, but have turned up to pester Cueball in his bed all at the same time. And the 'lesson' they convey to him is far less transformative in nature. Since the ghosts say nothing more than minor variations of "oOOOOOOOOo," the lesson may be that Halloween has no "true meaning" other than what is obvious (compare 1108: Cautionary Ghost), or that the true meaning of Halloween consists merely of the kind of silly "scariness" represented by the sound "oOOOOOOOOo". Additionally, since Halloween is typically represented by ghosts, the ghosts only have to exist as themselves to spread the "true meaning of Halloween" (as opposed to the various Ghosts of Christmas, as Christmas is not so directly associated with ghosts).
Caroling, though these days almost exclusively associated with Christmas, had long been a term for festive songs and dances. Arguably, it is largely through Dickens's use as his story title that we associate it so strongly with this particular annual festival, which might be another additional joke on Randall's part.
A similar ghost saying "ooOOOOOOOOooo", along with much scarier things, appears in 1393: Timeghost.
In the title text, it would appear that the very simple message has been received and taken to heart, but the apparitions feel the need to continue their haunting regardless. This is something that might be further associated with Halloween, because annoyingness is a staple of Halloween (as it is of life in general). | |
2837 | October 4, 2023 | Odyssey | null | Ugh, it says they attempted delivery but "Nobody was home." | :[Ponytail, Cueball and Hairy are standing in a room, each wearing a party hat. Ponytail is to the left of Cueball and Hairy. Cueball is in the middle, holding something, presumably a present.]
:Ponytail: Happy birthday!
:Cueball: Oh cool, Emily Wilson's ''Iliad'' translation!
:[Cueball is now alone, sitting at a laptop. He has taken his party hat off and put it onto a book on his desk.]
:Cueball: I never read her ''Odyssey''. I should order that, too.
:[Arising from computer screen:]
::''The Odyssey'' (2017)
::Emily Wilson
::Arrives Friday
:::Order
:[Cueball clicks order]
:[The computer now says the book has left the warehouse and will arrive on Friday by 8pm.]
::<u>Package Tracking</u>
::Order Status:
:::Departed
:::Warehouse
::Expected: Friday by 8pm
:[Cueball clicks refresh]
:[The computer now says the book has been swept by winds to the island of lotus eaters and ''might'' arrive around 2033.]
::<u>Package Tracking</u>
:::Swept by winds
:::to the island of
:::the lotus eaters
::Expected: ?? 2033 ??
:[Cueball clicks refresh] | In this comic Cueball receives a birthday present from Ponytail: a translation of the ''Iliad'', by Emily Wilson (classicist)|Emily Wilson. The ''Iliad'' is an Ancient Greek epic poem Homeric Question|authored by Homer about the 10-year long Trojan War which involved some of the most noteworthy warriors and leaders of that age. Wilson published her translation of the ''Iliad'' in September 2023, several weeks before the release of this comic.
Cueball then orders the ''Odyssey'', Wilson's earlier translation of another well known epic poem of ancient Greece. In the story, a Trojan War hero named Odysseus journeys home. Wilson published this translation in 2017, to great acclaim, for various reasons, one being that Wilson was the first translator into English who used words that showed the original connotations better(such as 'hounded' instead of 'bitch' and slaves instead of servants).
At the start of his journey in the ''Odyssey'' (which takes place in the middle of the poem in a flashback, as the epic starts in media res), Odysseus and his crew are blown off course, and instead arrive at the island of the Lotus-Eaters. This begins a string of misfortunes and adventures which result in it taking another 10 years before Odysseus would make it home. In the comic, the same initial fate befalls the book delivery, and in expectation of a similarly tortuous journey, it is projected to arrive in 2033, 10 years after Cueball ordered the book, instead of the original 2 days(assuming that the day of ordering is the same as the day of the comic's release).
Package delays are not uncommon, and tracking websites can often cause more frustration than comfort and enlightenment, thanks to obscure status updates, and repeatedly deferred 'expected' delivery dates. However, anticipated 10-year delays, and status changes due to weather conditions and blissed out islanders are a bit more rare. The implication is that the package carrier was at sea after departing the warehouse and found themself swept onto the island and ate of the lotus flower, causing them to not want to leave and continue the delivery.
The title text refers to a moment in the ''Odyssey'' when Odysseus escapes from the cyclops Polyphemus. Odysseus, when introducing himself to Polyphemus, gives his name as "Nobody" (or in Wilson's translation, as Noman). After Odysseus has drugged him with drink and blinded him, the Cyclops cries out that "Nobody is attacking me!" Hearing this, Polyphemus's cyclops neighbors (quite reasonably, seeing that he is also drunk) misinterpret his words as meaning that nobody is attacking him (and therefore he is not being attacked), believe there is no reason to help and return to their homes, allowing Odysseus and his remaining crew to escape.
A frustration that is sometimes experienced by those awaiting packages is that a tracker will update to claim that the item couldn't be delivered because there was no-one available to receive it, despite having waited in for it at the appointed time, presumably because the courier falsely recorded an attempt in order to skip having to make the delivery. In this case, though, the suggestion is that someone named "Nobody" was at the delivery address, and when the package carrier (or automated delivery robot) approached the front door, and was told that "Nobody is home", they decided not to deliver the package, much to Cueball's chagrin. The frustrations of e-commerce have previously featured in 281: Online Package Tracking. | |
2838 | October 6, 2023 | Dubious Islands | null | Running for office in Minnesota on the single-issue platform 'dig a permanent channel through the Traverse Gap because it will make this map more satisfying.' | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Title:] Dubious Islands of North America
:[Subtitle:] And the waterways that separate them
:[A map of mainland North America, down to the Panama isthmus. It is internally separated by various waterways, given labels or otherwise.]
:[Separating land approximating Nunavut (with some Northern Territories) from neighbouring Canada:] Mackenzie Athabasca Churchill
:[Comprising the much of the remainder of Canada, much of the northern United States (including Alaska), additionally separated by:] Columbia Snake Madison Missouri Chicago [Unlabelled, some of the Great Lakes and the channel past Quebec]
::[An incursive gap near the central point, from the north:] Nelson Red
::[An internal label, with arrow:] Traverse Gap
::[An incursive gap near the central point, from the south:] Mississippi
::[A separate fragment of land south of the Madison, in the western half of the land-mass, bordered to its south by:] Yellowstone
::[A small fragment off the southen part of the western edge, an arrow and a label:] Chehalis/Black Lake
:[Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and parts of the adjacent US, disconnected by:] Champlain Hudson
::[Label with an arrow on the east coast:] Cape Cod Canal
:[A small triangle of territory, further isolated by:] Erie
:[Most of the Eastern Seaboard of the US, additionally divided off by:] Tombigbee
::[Fragment of land shorn from the northern part of the eastern edge, label with arrow:] Chesapeake and Delaware Canal
::[Fragment of land shorn from the tip of Florida, label with arrow:] Okeechobee Waterway
:[Strip of land west of the Tombigbee, bounded also to its west by:] Mississippi
::[Fragment of land immediately to its south, with a nearby label and arrow:] Atchafalaya
:[The remainder of the continent; comprising much of the US, all of Mexico and various central American territories, with a final tip of the eastwards-bending isthmus:] Panama Canal | The definition of "island" is a piece of subcontinental land completely surrounded by a body (or perhaps bodies) of water. In most cases we don't count rivers and canals as the surrounding bodies,{{Actual citation needed}} although small pieces of land like Manhattan are exceptions, as is any bit of land entirely surrounded by the ''same'' watercourse, that splits around it. Inland islands surrounded by rivers can be called a [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holm "holm"].
In this comic, however, Randall considers various large parts of North America as "dubious" islands because they're separated from other parts of the continent by various major rivers, canals, and large lakes. The repetition between the title "Dubious Islands" and the in-image label "Dubious Islands of North America" emphasizes the "Dubious-ness" of this map.
Randall's map's "Dubious Islands" are indeed not to be trusted — they leave out many less prominent rivers and canals which would break the map into many more additional "islands". For example, southern Nova Scotia, southern New Jersey, and the nearly 60-mile-long "Grand Strand" of South Carolina are also islands by the sense used here in recognizing the Cape Cod Canal as creating an island. These and many other omissions would be errors — except that Randall clearly labelled his islands "Dubious" (not to be trusted) from the start, and he is presumably well-aware of this map's stretching of reality.
The geography around the area known as Parting of the Waters explains the connection between the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers shown. Isa Lake drains into both the Snake River (via the Lewis River) and the Madison River (via the Firehole River), explaining the connection there. It is unclear why Divide Creek, which connects Hudson Bay to the Columbia River, or Committee's Punch Bowl, which connects the Arctic Ocean with the Columbia River, are not shown on this map.
The title text suggests that the map could be improved by digging a canal through the Traverse Gap, thereby splitting the large red "island" into two smaller "islands" with more pleasing shapes. Randall proposes to run for office in Minnesota (where the Traverse Gap is located) on the platform of digging this canal. This is unnecessary and would create little benefit to residents,{{Actual citation needed}} but constituents who like interesting maps might vote for him.
These islands are possibly Randall's humorous interpretation of the possible effects of drastic erosion (perhaps caused by continued climate change) inducing increased water movement. Sea level rise might also provoke some of these disconnections, but as some of the connecting waterways exist at over 7000 feet (over 2km) in elevation, this would require a worldwide rise in sea-level (and/or localised Atlantis|fall of land) that would cause other changes to the map of North America. | |
2839 | October 9, 2023 | Language Acquisition | null | My first words were 'These were my first words; what were yours?' | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A child, drawn as a smaller Hairy. He stands amongst three blocks with letters on them, showing faces with A, B and an upside-down lowercase e. Megan and Cueball stand to the right of him.]
:Child: Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve. | Language acquisition is the process by which humans, generally infants, learn a language. There are many theories as to how this process works, but Randall humorously conflates an infant's language acquisition process to an adult's , saying that infants learn languages one new word at a time. This could be equated to how app-based language learning works, at least at certain stages of vocabulary expansion. This is typically not true{{Citation needed}} for infants learning the native language(s) that they will consider as their mother tongue.
The child's sentence says that he has acquired another word, bringing his total to twelve words, all unique. This is conveyed in the twelve unique words spoken, thus indicating (if true) that these are the very (and only) words the infant has acquired up to this point. These would be a very unusual set of words to be the first ones learned for an infant (and even for an adult, deliberately acquiring a new language). Furthermore, the child appears to have learned some fairly advanced grammatical concepts in order to construct this fairly complex sentence, similar to how adults may start with somewhat advanced grammar rules as they start to assemble the knowledge of a new language. Learning grammar typically takes much longer, and only occurs makes sense once sufficient vocabulary has been learnt to recognise the patterns in how the words are used.
Interestingly if this sentence is true, the child has learned the word "twelve" before learning the words for any other numbers, and so could not have given a quantitative update on previous days. However, this would also imply that their counting is not yet as advanced as their language acquisition, which may mean that they are simply wrong about the number of words they have learned.
In fact, it is possible to create a "learning sequence" based on these twelve words to somewhat make a little sense if the words are acquired in a word-after-word basis. An example is shown below:
* Word!
* Another word!
* Learned another word!
* I learned another word.
* I learned another word today.
* Update: I learned another word today.
* Vocabulary update: I learned another word today.
* My vocabulary update: I learned another word today.
* I learned another word today to update my vocabulary.
* I learned another word today to update my total vocabulary.
* Bringing another word I learned to update my total vocabulary today.
* Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve.
Two letter-blocks on the ground next to the child show capitals 'A' and 'B', and a third has an upside-down lowercase 'e'. The block with the 'e' may indeed be upside-down, but it could also be a block with the phonetic symbol schwa on it. As phonetics are generally used by lay-people when they start to learn how different sounds in their target language is pronounced, this would suggest the parents are teaching their child advanced linguistic concepts before they've fully learned to speak their first language, which might explain why the child's language acquisition is so unusual.
The title text makes a self-referential joke about the concept of "first words", where a supposed child discusses one's own first words in a complete sentence. There are seven unique words in the title text, most of which do not appear in the comic image, suggesting the title text and comic image referred to two different children. It is a common milestone to celebrate a child's "[https://www.parents.com/baby/development/talking/baby-talk-a-month-by-month-timeline1/ first word]", but typically these would be less advanced words, such as "mama" or "dada".
This seems to be another indication that Randall is conflating adult language acquisition and infant language acquisition, because such moderately-complex sentences are usually a beginner's first attempt in a new target language, by the way of learning set phrases by rote (for concepts they can already voice in another language). Examples might include standard greetings, such as "Hello, my name is [...]", and various questions and answers related to their exposure to the foreign language concerned.
2567: Language Development has had a similarly obscure take on language acquisition. | |
2840 | October 11, 2023 | Earth Layers | null | The Earth's magnetic field is primarily generated by currents in the liquid outer core, though some geophysicists argue that an unexplained mismatch with models suggests that the Kinder toy contains a magnet. | :[Header/Title]
:The layers of the Earth
:[Cutaway diagram of the Earth, a sphere with abstract sea/land/elevation surface, except for a slice removed (quarter-arc in three axes) to make visible a number of roughly equally-sized 'strata'/shells, all the way down to the intact smallest sphere. From surface downwards, these are:]
:Lithosphere/crust (50/50 blend)
:Upper mantle
:Deep mantle
:Filler
:Vitreous humor
:Mechanical/HVAC layer
:Guacamole
:Cytoplasm
:Cork
:Insulation
:Seeds
:Pith
:Nougat
:Outer core
:Inner core
:Secret core
:[The central sphere:]
:Kinder toy capsule | This comic reimagines the internal structure of the earth, mixing the real geological layers of the planet with fictional ones. Some of the fictional layers are appropriated from the layers of other objects that have cross-sectional diagrams, such as the layers of a piece of fruit, an eyeball, an item of confectionery or a building.
{| class | |
2841 | October 13, 2023 | Sign Combo | null | Speed Limit: 45 MPH / Minimum: 65 MPH | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A two-lane highway stretching out to the horizon, with the lanes separated by a double solid white line in the foreground which becomes a partially solid, partially dotted double white line as it approaches the horizon. To the right of the highway is a pole with three traffic signs.]
:[Top sign, featuring a white rectangle on a red circle on a white background:]
:DO NOT
:ENTER
:[Middle sign is the No U-Turn symbol, a U-turning arrow with the red prohibition circle symbol on a white background.]
:[Bottom sign with red text on a white background:]
:NO
:STOPPING
:ANY
:TIME
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Oh no. | This comic depicts a trio of road signs that provide legal instructions that are, in combination, impossible to follow: "Do not enter" precludes passing the point of the sign, the No U-Turn sign precludes turning around, and the "No Stopping Any Time" sign precludes both halting before the sign as well as reversing back (even ignoring that this is usually already illegal with or without signs explicitly forbidding it). A driver approaching this sign combo would seemingly be forced to violate at least one of the three, probably leading to the caption's concern expressed as "Oh no".
Of the three, "No U-Turn" is the one with the largest wiggle room, as it can be defined more narrowly/specifically as driving in a U-shape; thus, a driver might be able to get around it by 207|drawing a more elaborate path. However, since the lane dividers on the road are solid until the signs, this potential loophole is preemptively closed.
Depending on the jurisdiction, signs may only apply to the road ''after'' them, so you could validly stop just before it.
This no-escape scenario could be done more easily with just "Stop" and "No Stopping Any Time" signs. But by combining 3 signs, the joke is presumably that it was done accidentally, without noticing the contradictions.
The title text adds even more to the dilemma, posting a 45 miles-per-hour maximum speed limit, but also a ''minimum'' required speed of 65 MPH. Since 45 is lower than 65,{{citation needed}} this is quite the perplexing contradiction.
For another of Randall's adventures in road signage (he does live in the Greater Boston area, after all), see 1116: Traffic Lights. For a similar contradiction, see the title text of 2179: NWS Warnings. | |
2842 | October 16, 2023 | Inspiraling Roundabout | null | Look, I just think we need to stop coddling those hedonistic roundabout hogs who get into the inner lane and circle for hours, wasting valuable capacity. | {{incomplete transcript}}
:[A large roundabout with three entrances of two lanes, three exits, and three spirals (as is CLEARLY evidenced by the three inner termini and three separate starts) of dotted lines starting from the medians between entry lanes and exit lanes of the same road which terminate in the center leaving a lane-sized median of plain asphalt.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Even though it '''''was''''' technically navigable, the highway department vetoed my inspiraling roundabout design. | This is the second consecutive comic that deals with confusing directions given to road users.
A roundabout, a form of traffic circle or rotary, is a traffic control device that serves as an alternative to stop signs, instead allowing for mere yields, as all traffic flows in the same counterclockwise direction around a central point (clockwise in left-hand traffic countries). Roundabouts improve safety and the flow of traffic, since they eliminate turns against traffic and full stops are only needed during high-traffic periods. One downside is that they take up more space than a traditional signaled intersection.
Various roundabout designs have been proposed and used throughout the world. Some use "out-spiraling" designs in which a driver wishing to access one of the furthest exits is initially directed into a lane towards the center, which then spirals outwards, guiding them out until they reach the intended exit. Randall, in contrast, proposes an "Inspiraling Roundabout" which spirals each entrance lane inward, eventually leading all three roads to meet in the center and become the exit lanes.
The caption states that it's "Technically|technically navigable", but that the Highway Department has vetoed it, presumably because of its deliberate complexity, impracticality, and the high risk of head-on collisions.
The system is fairly simple to use. Assuming Left- and right-hand traffic|left-hand driving / right-hand traffic, one could get to the next exit without entering the spiral. Getting to the subsequent exit would simply require making a lane change toward the right.
However, Randall is likely assuming drivers who don't change lanes, in which case his design would force drivers to travel ever deeper into the spiral, reach the center, and choose one of the other two lanes to attempt to exit the roundabout.
If vehicles don't change lanes, head-on collisions would be likely in a few scenarios, such as two vehicles reaching the center at the same time, or two vehicles trying to use the same lane going in different directions, one outspiraling from the center and one inspiraling from the entrance, eventually meeting each other head-on. (In this design, each inspiraling entrance lane can also be used as an outspiraling exit lane.)
The joke is that such a deliberately challenging and dangerous design would be unlikely to be approved.
The '''title text''' justifies this creative design by manufacturing an amusing problem of "coddling hedonistic roundabout hogs who get into the inner lane and circle for hours". Of course, it's unlikely (but [https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/hamilton-county/carmel/2019/09/22/hamilton-county-bicyclist-sets-carmel-indiana-roundabout-record/2411449001/ not unheard of]) that anyone would deliberately spend more time than necessary (let alone hours) circling a roundabout, so this design proposes to solve a non-issue. In reality, if someone finds themselves deeper into or longer in a roundabout that they need to be, it's more likely to be a misunderstanding of how roundabouts work and confusion about how to get out of them rather than a hedonistic "doing it for the thrill" rush.
* In street racing culture, doing "donuts" -- circling a single spot at high speed to leave circular tread marks on the pavement -- is a popular pastime, but these drivers circle for a few rotations, not several hours.
* The complaint of "coddling" some group was popularized by the title of the 2018 book, "The Coddling of the American Mind," a criticism of modern higher education. | |
2843 | October 18, 2023 | Professional Oaths | null | Interpretations of the Hermeneutic Oath differ. | :[There are multiple panels showing different characters, with the name of an oath above them and "First," followed by some principle related to the oath below them. They are all something that is related to the oath.]
:Hippocratic oath
:[Ponytail is wearing a lab coat, giving the Hippocratic oath.]
:First, do no harm
:Hyperbaric oath
:[Cueball is standing with multiple pressure lines around him.]
:First, acclimate to the pressure
:Holographic oath
:[A hologram of Ponytail is standing still.]
:First, shimmer intangibly
:Histrionic oath
:[White Hat is yelling angrily.]
:First, whine and complain
:Hydroelectric oath
:[Megan is standing in front of a very large turbine in a brick wall.]
:First, maintain your turbines
:Hippodromic oath
:[Ponytail is riding in a chariot. The horse pulling the chariot is running, and there is a large dust cloud behind them.]
:First, race your chariot well
:Hypnagogic oath
:[Cueball is in bed, and has sat up quickly in shock.]
:First, jolt awake just as you're drifting off
:Hypergolic oath
:[Cueball is standing while on fire.]
:First, burst into flame | The Hippocratic Oath is an "oath" of ethics taken by medical professionals, which includes the phrase "do no harm". Technically, the exact phrase "first, do no harm" is not in the oath, but this meaning is implied.
The full Hippocratic Oath can be seen at Hippocratic Oath#Modern versions and relevance|the Wikipedia article.
Randall takes other words that sound similar to "Hippocratic" and creates "oaths" for them.
* {{wiktionary|Hyperbaric}} means "of, relating to, or utilizing greater than normal pressure", so thus a "hyperbaric oath" would indeed involve getting used to (acclimating to) a different pressure.
* Holographic refers to "holographic" projections as seen in media such as ''Star Wars'', in which the image typically shimmers. Not to be confused with actual holograms.
* {{wiktionary|Histrionics}} is "exaggerated, overemotional behaviour, especially when calculated to elicit a response".
* Hydroelectricity is producing energy using water power, typically using turbine|turbines.
* A hippodrome is an arena that was historically used for chariot racing and horse racing.
* Hypnagogia is "the state immediately before falling asleep". The phenomenon of jolting awake just as one is about to fall asleep is sometimes referred to as a hypnagogic jerk.
* A hypergolic propellant is a type of rocket propellant which doesn't need a spark to ignite, and spontaneously combusts when mixing the parts together. Normal rocket propellant, such as RP-1 and liquid oxygen, requires some sort of initial spark to start the reaction.
* (title text) Hermeneutics is the study of interpreting texts, thus the "Hermeneutic Oath" could have several interpretations as to its meaning. | |
2845 | October 23, 2023 | Extinction Mechanisms | null | The Late Heavy Bombardment was followed a few billion years later by the Comparatively Light but Oddly Specific Bombardment. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A drawing of the Chicxulub meteor]
:Marking to the right: ≈ 500 km<sup>3</sup> (5 × 10<sup>14</sup> L)
:[Five arrows show individual small rocks coming from the meteor and spreading across the Earth. A sixth arrow provides more elaboration.]
:Marking of the separate rock: 1 liter rocks
:[The rock is shown entering a square marked "1 m<sup>2</sup>", which has another arrow to a larger grid of squares, before an arrow back to the Earth.]
:Marking near example square meter: >1 rock per m<sup>2</sup>
:[Four dinosaurs are drawn, including a theropod, what may be a velociraptor, a sauropod, and a triceratops. Each has a small rock falling directly toward it.]
:[List header, underlined:] Comet Extinction Mechanism Ideas
:[The first three list items are crossed out]
:Dust caused impact winter
:Firestorms and ocean acidification
:Triggered Deccan Traps magma
:[The fourth suggestion is circled rather than struck through:]
:The rocks hit the dinosaurs
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Paleontologists are missing the obvious answer. | Around 66 million years ago there was a Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event|mass extinction event responsible for the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs. This is why there are no more dinosaurs (except for birds! [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1211:_Birds_and_Dinosaurs]) There have been a number of explanations for this, but most currently accepted explanations center on the Chicxulub crater|Chicxulub impact, in which a large asteroid (the comic suggests it was a comet) hit the Earth. The exact mechanism for the extinction caused by this event, however, is not clear. The comic suggests three possibilities: impact winter caused by dust released from the impact, firestorms along with ocean acidification from acids generated by the impact, and the enhanced eruption of volcano(es) in the Deccan Traps region in India. Here all three possibilities have been crossed out and a fourth one, "the rocks hit the dinosaurs," is circled as the correct answer.
The argument is that the comet had a volume of 500 km<sup>3</sup> (10 km diameter), or 5×10<sup>14</sup> L. Earth has a surface area of around 500 million km<sup>2</sup>, or 5×10<sup>14</sup> m<sup>2</sup>. The idea is that the comet broke up into liter-sized rocks, so that there were sufficient of these to fall, on average, one on every square meter of surface. Somehow, these rocks managed to fall in a distribution such that they directly hit each of the dinosaurs, but presumably did not hit the other forms of life that did not go extinct. It is unclear how such a breakup or scattering might have occurred – a body that passes within Earth's Roche limit will eventually break up into a ring, but this limit is generally a single-digit multiple of the planet's radius, so an object on an inbound collision course would only experience high tidal forces for a matter of minutes before impact.
The title text refers to a hypothetical event early in Earth's history, ironically known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, in which a number of asteroids struck the Earth and other terrestrial planets around 4 billion years ago. The mass extinction event of 66 million years ago is then referred to as the "Comparatively Light but Oddly Specific Bombardment", presumably because it isn't as heavy as the LHB, but oddly specific in its targets. | |
2846 | October 25, 2023 | Daylight Saving Choice | null | I average out the spring and fall changes and just set my clocks 39 minutes ahead year-round. | :[Black Hat is speaking at a lectern, flanked by Ponytail and Hairy.]
:Black Hat: From now on, everyone who likes daylight saving time should change their clocks, and everyone who doesn't, shouldn't.
:[Caption below the panel:]
:The government finally decides to put an end to all the arguments. | Daylight saving time (DST) is a practice best known for changing the clock one hour ahead (though two hours offset have also being used, using a combination of a all-year DST and a seasonal DST ) for approximately half the year, typically from spring to autumn. Countries nearer the equator do not see significant changes in daylength between winter and summer and so have rarely had a reason to follow this practice. A Daylight saving time by country#Proposals to abolish seasonal changes|number of countries which used to follow this practice no longer do, and a few now follow year-round DST – however summer-only DST is File:DST Countries Map.png|still used in North America, Europe, and parts of South America, Oceania, Africa and Asia.
Within countries that still follow this practice, there are frequent arguments (mostly during the 2-3 days surrounding the clock change) over the pros and cons of it. Black Hat is suggesting that everyone should observe or ignore daylight saving time based on their personal opinion. While it might put an end to the arguments (although this itself is debatable) it would clearly cause disharmonious time. This would eventually break the population into at least three categories: those who do not follow daylight saving changes and choose to remain on "daylight" time year round; those who do not follow and choose to stay with "non-daylight" time year round; and those who readily switch to daylight saving time during the prescribed period (and might also include those who follow the suggestion provided in the title text). There would probably also be a further 'group' who choose to change their clocks on an arbitrary date and time that suits them. So, some people might think it's 8:00 while others think it's 9:00, or vice-versa, but the relative number of people who believe it is each time would shift throughout the year. This would lead to many scheduling errors, delays, and other mistakes, resulting in widespread inconvenience and harm.
The joke here is that, while most options in life can be left to individual choice, clock time is only fully useful if everyone involved agrees on what it means, which is also the reason countries began standardizing the time by regions, instead of people using the local time of their town. There may also be a humourous reference to the confusion already often caused around this time when countries do not all begin or end DST on the same date, for example in scheduling calls or online meetings between Europe and North America in the week after publication of this comic.
There are known incidents in which an actual application of Black Hat's proposal
[https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sdut-daylight-saving-time-sunday-2015mar07-htmlstory.html rendered a terrorist plot void]. One of them is a [https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-38.html 1999 Darwin Award Winner]
This comic was posted 4 days before the end of 2023’s daylight saving time in most European countries, and 11 days before the end of 2023's daylight saving time in most of North America. If the proposal is actually instituted at this time, those in the Northern Hemisphere who do not like the fuss of changing their clocks would ''remain'' on DST (as Sunshine Protection Act|has been actually proposed), yet those who are happy with it will fall back to non-DST over the winter months. Presumably, unless anyone changes their minds over the 'winter' period, everyone would actually be back in sync for future 'summer's.
However, the rule (as spoken by Black Hat – not known for being imprecise, or ''unintentionally'' misleading) does not restrict people to merely choosing whether the daylight offset is personally used during DST periods. It instead seems to ''impel'' them to undertake (or not) the statutary changes according to personal convictions, perhaps contrary to what their convictions actually desire. It is left open-ended ("From now on...") if people from ''both'' mindsets can arbitrarily change their minds in the future. If they can, and act accordingly, this time next year there could be people on three different 'summertime' offsets: zero (change now, but not change later), +1 (steadfast change/no change) and +2 (don't change now, but shift forward in spring). Beyond next year's "fall back" date, there could be people on -1 (fall back, don't spring on, fall back ''further'') and each full year beyond may add additionally positive/negative extremes of offset by those who periodically change their inclinations to only obey ''one'' of the relative imperatives, and a potential Galton board|standard distribution of everyone else between.<!-- Yes, the people who are always/never changing will disproportionately dominate, but this paragraph is getting too long to mention this, let's just assume complete randomness of which path to follow, as each clock-change happens, Ok? --> All this could just be a badly worded explanation of the policy, or even in the wording of the legislation behind it, but the presence of Black Hat at the lectern probably indicates that he fully expects and ''intends'' such a boding and expanding chaos.
The title text suggests splitting the difference by using a constant offset which is the average of the daylight saving offset across days of the year. This will create additional problems, primarily because offsets of 39 minutes are unusual (most offsets are by hours and even the least common ones are offset by the multiples of a quarter of an hour), as well as being of not much use, as only a fraction of the daylight will be saved in this way. We also do not know if in this system Randall would change his clock for the leap year to account for the additional day. | |
2847 | October 27, 2023 | Dendrochronology | null | These anomalies are known as Miyake events, named for the pioneering scientist who discovered them and was tragically devoured by a carnivorous tree. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A round cross section of a tree in beige, with a brown bark around the outside and 33 narrow rings, along with one very wide ring that contains various white bones, including limb bones, vertebrae, and jaw bones. The wide ring appears after the 26th narrow ring.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Dendrochronologists can date wood samples by identifying growth ring anomalies that correspond to specific events. For example, it's often possible to spot the horrible summer of 1635 when trees turned carnivorous. | Dendrochronology is a scientific method of using tree rings to tell the age of a tree and learn about historical climate from features found in each ring. It's based on the fact that trees add a new ring each year, so counting the rings will tell a tree's age in years. Additionally, climate and ecology affect the size and composition of each year's ring, so scientists can use rings to estimate what conditions were like each year. They can cross-compare tree-ring samples from overlapping date ranges, of comparable trees grown and felled at different times, to build up and confirm a useful ring history well beyond that of a single tree.
In some cases, tree rings contain remnants of specific events, such as forest fires, large volcano eruptions, atomic tests or droughts. Extremely disparate years can often be seen represented by a clear visual change in the usual subtle variation of ring-growth. The comic posits that, in 1635, trees somehow became carnivorous. The ring for that year contains indications of the bones of the creatures that they ate. This was just a temporary condition, since the rings after this have no bones, but clearly was a coordinated event among different trees to have caused this to be a comparable marker. Events such as this may have reoccurred at other times, just not again/before within the lifetime of the particular tree illustrated.
The title text says that anomalous years like this are called 'Miyake events', after a scientist named Miyake who discovered them (and was subsequently eaten by the trees, similar to the origin of Thagomizer). In actual fact, a Miyake event is a period when a larger-than-normal quantity of certain isotopes are created by cosmic rays, possibly due to [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11063 extreme solar flares]. Evidence of these events can often be found in ancient tree rings, as physicist Fusa Miyake discovered when investigating tree rings from years 774-775. However, she wasn't then devoured by the trees – certainly not in 1635, which is centuries prior to her 2012-13 publications.
<!-- Perhaps a | |
2848 | October 30, 2023 | Breaker Box | null | Any electrician will warn you to first locate and flip the house's CAUSALITY circuit breaker before touching the CIRCUIT BREAKERS one. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[An open breaker box is shown. There are 26 labelled breakers, all of which are on, paired back to back in thirteen rows as a label, switch, switch and label.]
:Kitchen lights / A whirring fan you didn't realize was on until now
:Living room lights / Dishwasher
:Porch lights / Dishes
:Bathroom lights and one surprise mystery outlet somewhere / Hallway lights
:North-facing appliances / Hallway outlets
:Bathtub drain light / Hallway floors
:Appliances whose names contain the letter "F" / Social media
:Hot water heater / State law
:Regular water heater / Federal law
:Outlets in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in / Second law of thermodynamics
:High-pitched hum generator / Friction
:The solution to the cryptogram below: [Additional squiggled words that are too small/indistinct to read.] / Gravity
:Bugs / Circuit breakers | A distribution board, referred to as a "breaker box" here and also commonly referred to as a "fuse box", "breaker panel", "DB box", and many other names, is a metal box attached to a wall, usually in some maintenance area, containing multiple circuit breakers that distribute electricity to various parts of the building. A circuit breaker is an electrical switch, usually in the form of a small lever, which disconnects the circuit from the power source when opened. These breakers are designed to automatically open if too much electrical current flows through them. This is a safety measure to reduce the risk of damage, fire or electrocution in the event of a short circuit or an overloaded line. These breakers can also be opened manually, deactivating the circuit to allow electrical work to be done.
In breaker boxes, each individual breaker is typically labeled to let the operator know what that breaker controls. Typically, the circuit controlled by each breaker will feed an intuitive set of connections: a certain room, or set of rooms, or possibly a set of related services (like overhead lights, or all the outlets on one floor). Some large appliances will have a dedicated circuit and breaker.
However, in houses that have been rewired multiple times (or were poorly wired the first time), this can quickly become overcomplicated with seemingly random connections. Randall lives in Boston where much of the housing stock is from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and he is likely to live in a house with non-ideal wiring, which may have inspired this comic.
The comic satirizes these complex wiring setups, with multiple breakers "controlling" arbitrary things, including some that – in the classic style of xkcd – are puns on the word "breaker" or may be impossible to hook a breaker up to, getting progressively more absurd to the point of nullifying laws and "breaking" certain laws of physics.
Typically, switches in a breaker-box have the same orientation of "on" and "off" direction. This particular setup appears to adopt the convention that all switches are on (or, possibly, that all are ''off'') when flipped towards the centre of the panel. Exactly which direction the switches are installed would be more obvious from coloration, markings or even relief details that would be manufactured into the switch subunits but which are not so fully depicted in the comic. | |
2849 | November 1, 2023 | Under the Stars | null | If you live in Los Angeles (around 33°52'N, roughly the latitude of Hermosa Beach) the black hole in V404 Cygni passes over you each day. On Christmas Day it will be directly overhead around 2pm. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Megan and Cueball are sitting in a field under a clear blue sky and bright Sun.]
:Megan: I love sitting out under the stars.
:Cueball: ...It's daytime.
:Megan: Yeah, but the stars are all still up there.
:Megan: Constellations wheel overhead; they're just painted over with blue.
:Megan: Every sky is full of stars.
:Cueball: That's somehow terrifying.
:Megan: It's okay—just look at that sunny sky and tell yourself space isn't real.
:Megan: "Daytime" is us closing our eyes and pretending it makes infinity go away. | The phrase "under the stars" generally refers to being under a visible field of stars (either real stars visible at night, or representations of stars constructed by people, as in a dance hall). Megan points out that we're always under the stars, they're just obscured ("painted over") during the day by the brightness of the Sun and its interaction with the sky. Of course, this makes the 'under the stars' part of the remark redundant in the first place, because by this definition, sitting outside is always under the stars. Also, since the Sun is itself a star, regardless of whether the other stars exist when it's daytime or not, you would always be under at least ''a'' star. In fact, sitting inside is arguably under the stars as well, since the stars are still there, but just obscured by a roof or other construction. Poetically, though, it could be taken to mean that Megan simply loves to sit and ponder the very existence, vastness, etc. of the stars, even when she can't see them.
File:parallel V404 Cygni.png|300px|thumb|If you live on the blue line, the black hole in V404 Cygni is directly over you once a day. Zoomable version [https://rpubs.com/perelopez/Parallel_33_52_02_N here].
This is related to the concept of object permanence, which is the understanding that objects continue to exist even though we can't physically sense them. When you close your eyes, the universe doesn't go away even though you can't see it; similarly, when the Sun is shining, the stars are still all there.
In the early days of xkcd, it was common for Randall to publish a comic that was not intentionally funny -- often also featuring Cueball and Megan -- so this is a bit of a return to form.
The title text mentions V404 Cygni, a binary system composed of a 9 solar masses black hole and a star smaller than the Sun. With a declination of +33° 52′ 02.0″, once every 23 hours and 56 minutes (366.24 times per year, compared to 365.24 solar days within the same timeframe), it 'passes over' any point of the rotating Earth with that latitude North, like Los Angeles, Atlanta or Beirut.
The night sky being "terrifying" is probably related to a quote from Blaise Pascal:
: “I see the terrifying spaces of the universe that enclose me, and I find myself attached to a corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am more in this place than in another, nor why this little time that is given me to live is assigned me at this point more than another out of all the eternity that has preceded me and out of all that will follow me.” [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/339964-i-see-the-terrifying-spaces-of-the-universe-that-enclose]
This may also be a subtle reference to the novel Nightfall (Asimov novelette and novel)|Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg which takes place on a planet that has so many suns they never have darkness and can never see the stars. In that novel there is an eclipse which occurs roughly every 2050 years, which causes a complete psychological breakdown of everyone on the planet, as they all fear the dark and have no concept of the vastness of space. In this comic the reference to every sky being full of stars being "terrifying" is very reminiscent of that novel (which was probably referring to Pascal's quote). | |
2850 | November 3, 2023 | Doctor's Office | null | "The police told me I can't be a doctor, but whenever they show up I just go into the Google Maps settings page I found and change the house to 'Police Headquarters' and then they have to do what I say." | :[Beret Guy is sitting at a desk, wearing a lab coat. Cueball is walking in from the right as Beret Guy stretches an arm out towards him in greeting.]
:Beret Guy: Welcome to the doctor!
:Beret Guy: We're like librarians, but for your bones and blood.
:[In a frame-less panel Beret Guy is standing in front of Cueball while holding a device in his hand, which are attached with a coiling wire to a thermometer in Cueball's mouth. He reads something of the device while holding a pill bottle in the other hand.]
:Beret Guy: Uh-oh! This beeper says you're too hot.
:Beret Guy: You should eat some of these little snacks that make you colder.
:[Zoom in on the two persons where Beret Guy is holding a pen up towards Cueball who is holding a clipboard with a newspaper page stuck to it. Cueball is looking down at the page, which has a black picture in the top left corner and lots of unreadable lines across the rest of the page.]
:Beret Guy: We can make holes in you, but you have to fill out this form first.
:Cueball: This is a New York Times crossword.
:Beret Guy: Don't worry, it's a Monday, so it's not too hard.
:[Cueball is watching as Beret Guy drags in a machine labeled "MRI" on a dolly.]
:Cueball: This '''''is''''' a doctor's office, right?
:Beret Guy: Yeah! It used to be my house, but I found the setting on Google Maps to change it.
:Beret Guy: Hey, wanna help find out what this box does? I bet it's loud! | In this comic, Beret Guy has discovered how to add public labels to locations on Google Maps. He has used the tool to label his house as a physician's office, and then proceeded to put on a white lab coat and impersonate a physician, making this another comic with one of his special :Category:Beret Guy's Business|businesses.
As Cueball arrives for a medical consultation, Beret Guy proceeds to do what he does best -- try to sound like a professional through absurdist, oddball dialogue:
{|class | |
2851 | November 6, 2023 | Messier Objects | null | The debate over the correct Messier number for the Ship of Theseus is ongoing. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Multiple objects are labelled with M followed by a number.]
:[There is a tree, a butterfly, a squirrel, a man with a powdered wig labeled Charles Messier, a squirrel, and ground.]
:M137 (Earth) (pointing to the ground)
:M205 (Charles Messier) (pointing to Charles Messier)
:M21860 (pointing to a tree on the left of the panel)
:M41592 (pointing to a butterfly above Charles)
:M30712050 (pointing to a squirrel)
:[Caption below the panel:]
:People usually focus on the first 110, but the Messier Catalog actually includes '''''all''''' objects. | This comic is a play on the Messier object|Messier Catalog, which is a famous list of astronomical objects "that are not a comet" compiled by the French astronomer Charles Messier in the 18th century. The real Messier Catalog includes 110 objects, which are all deep-space objects like nebulae and galaxies.
In the comic, it's humorously suggested that the catalog includes not just these distant celestial objects, but also very ordinary things found here on Earth. Each ordinary object is labeled with an "M" followed by a number, just as the real Messier objects are numbered (like M1, M31, etc.). However, the numbers are much higher than the 110 included in the actual catalog, and they point to mundane things such as the Earth, Charles Messier himself, a tree, a butterfly and a squirrel.
The numbers increase as the objects go from large and significant to humans (the Earth, Charles Messier) to those that are smaller and less significant (a tree, a butterfly, and a squirrel). However, this pattern isn't strictly numerical (i.e., there's no clear mathematical sequence), but rather a conceptual one where the numbers arbitrarily become larger for things that are commonly considered less monumental or noteworthy than celestial objects.
So, the comic is a playful take on a piece of astronomical history, suggesting that everything in the universe is part of the Messier Catalog, not just the deep sky objects Messier originally listed.
The title text refers to the Ship of Theseus. This is a popular thought experiment: if a ship is repaired and/or modified such that it has ''all'' of its parts replaced over the years, is it the same ship as the original? And then, what if you take all of the parts that were removed and create another ship using those parts? Are they ''both'' the same ship, and if not, which one ''is'' the original ship? The title text suggests that this leads to a debate as to whether the original ship and the new ship (with all of its parts replaced) should be considered the same object and therefore given the same Messier number, or the two ships should be considered different objects with different Messier numbers, and if so, which of them should retain the original number.
"M41592" may be a reference to pi as it contains 5 of the first digits at 3.1'''41592'''. Also noteworthy is that (the real) M6 is called the Butterfly Cluster. However, there are no real galaxies in the Messier Object#Messier objects|original Messier Catalog named after trees or squirrels.
"M137" for Earth seems likely to be a reference to the animated sci-fi/comedy show ''Rick and Morty'', since the version of Rick primarily followed by the show comes from Dimension C-137, even identifying himself as Rick C-137 when around Ricks and Mortys from other dimensions. | |
2852 | November 8, 2023 | Parameterball | null | The ball's density also varies, but players don't learn the value until after choosing their raquets<!--[sic] mispelled in comic-->. The infamous 'bowling ball table tennis' region of the parameter space often leads to equipment damage. | :[Megan and Cueball are playing a game that looks similar to tennis or table tennis in four different settings, one in each quadrant of the comic. Each setting has different parameters for three parts of the game, the size of the court, the size of the ball and the height of the net. In each case Megan is on the left and Cueball is on the right.]
:[Top left: The court is much smaller than a normal tennis court, each half slightly wider and deeper than a person is tall. The net, however, is a fairly normal height, maybe a bit higher than in tennis. But the ball is much larger, even bigger than a beach ball but with curved 'seam' to it similar to certain types of more robust balls. The ball has just bounced on Cueball's side and he is about to hit it.]
:[Top right: The ball and the net closely match that of a regular tennis game, but the court has a size much like a five-a-side football<!-- still looks way smaller than a standard version of either a soccer or gridiron one! --> field. Cueball has just hit the ball, which is currently flying towards Megan's side, but could seem like it will barely make it all the way over<!-- which is a typical opening serve tactic, actually... --> to the net. Both players are thus very small, compared with this huge court.]
:[Bottom left: The ball, and net are basically the same as in table tennis, and the rackets also looks like table tennis bats. But the 'court' is a much smaller tabletop. The ball has just bounced back up on Megan's side, and she is poised to smash it back. This is the only case in which the court has been elevated and the players are not standing on it.]
:[Bottom right: The court is slightly larger than the top left, but the net is much taller than the humans, more than double their height, thus much higher than in for instance volleyball. Also the ball is several times larger than a beach ball (with the same curved seam). The ball is larger than Cueball, like a human hamster ball. Cueball is apparently fighting to push the huge ball high enough to get over the net, indicated by movement lines in which he is barely managing to keep the ball on the racket itself, not to mention he has only gotten the ball halfway up the net. Megan is just standing on the other side waiting to see if Cueball manages to get the ball over to her.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Parameterball is a raquet <!--[sic] mispelled in comic--> game divided into four quarters, with ball size, court size, and net height randomized each quarter. | This comic depicts the game of parameterball, a "raquet" game. This is a misspelling (creative or unintentional) of the Racket_(sports_equipment)|sports equipment that is [https://www.quora.com/When-do-you-use-racket-and-raquet spelled] "raquette" in French (probably from the Dutch for the action of "striking back"), was adopted into English as "racquet" and later acquired the alternative (and extremely common) form "racket" (1010: Etymology-Man|etymologically distinct from the noise/"protection racket" use of that word).
There are a number of distinct List of racket sports|racket sports, which generalise to various forms of opposing players hitting a projectile between their respective zones of control. These are usually two-sided (2-Doubles|or-4 players) point-scoring games using a delineated court/playing-surface, with a net or Squash (sport)|markings defining either side's control of play. The projectile is often a ball of some kind (or equivalent, such as the Badminton|shuttlecock), which must be hit with a racket(/'paddle' bat). Often, the objective of the game is to hit the ball so that it bounces on your opponent's side, in a legitimate manner, that cannot then be legitimately returned. Two notable examples of this kind of game are Tennis and Table Tennis (also known as Ping-Pong), which demonstrate the potentially different scales of playing area, ball and net.
In this comic, a game called "Parameterball" is proposed, where net size, ball size, and court size are randomized every quarter. There are 4 different instances of Megan and Cueball playing this game, each in one corner of the comic, so we can assume all four of these were used within the same game of Parameterball. The different examples provide insight into the absurd games that may be played in Parameterball, depending on how mismatched the racket, court, and ball size are.
Such kind of parameterization is typical in designing video games. Typically, the main premise of the game is written in code with several parameters added to the logic to fine-tune the feel and balance of the game by trying different values. In this case, the main premise of the game is hitting a projectile back to the opponent, as noted above, while the parameters are the size and height of the court, ball, and net. The comic, in its extreme absurdity of parameter range and selection, illustrates the wide range of possible games by tuning a few parameters. Some video games similarly also provide alternate modes that provide a minor tweak in parameters to provide a different feeling game. Video game designers often talk about the arduous process of selecting the ideal parameters to tune the game exactly so the game is fun and challenging to play. Here, the aspect of playing random variations of the parameters itself is part of the game, rather than playing a finely-tuned set of parameters by someone else perfected for enjoyment.
The title text mentions that the ball's density is also randomized, and refers to instances where the net size, ball size, and court size were similar to that of a Ping-pong match, but with a ball as dense as a Bowling ball|bowling ball, which not only led to equipment damage, but does so regularly. Despite this, the participants ''do not'' learn the density until ''after'' their racket is chosen, meaning that they have no way of determining whether the racket they chose is durable enough until it's already too late. (Conversely, choosing an excessively robust item could be a bad decision when trying to play with a light ball, as it would be detrimental in reacting against rapid volleys by a more aptly-equipped opponent.)
The mention of this 'region in parameter space' may reference the 'bowling ball on a sheet' metaphor sometimes used to try to illustrate how the gravitational fields of objects, often more specifically black holes, 'bend' spacetime around them. If the parameters of the game allow for balls with densities such that they create a singularity, this would indeed seem highly likely to damage not just equipment, but players as well. More simply, though, a 'parameter space' is the theoretical n-dimensional mapping of all theoretical combinations of individual variables - the specific variable of ball density will render an entire slice of this 'gamespace' problematic (irrespective of the other slices, or covarible regions where everything else might work or otherwise).
Note that the players can choose their own racket, and can do so after finding out the three parameters given in the main comic. Only the density of the ball is unknown when they choose the racket. Thus this indirectly leads to some randomness in the selection of racket also, as the players try to guess what would be best for a random choice of ball density.
It’s unknown whether the parameters of Parameterball are unlimited or limited to what human players can reasonably work with, although the fourth phase of the game as demonstrated in the comic certainly seems to represent an extreme of both net height and ball size that appears to be causing problems. But if the comic shows the outliers then the #Table of limits in the comic|table below lists the limits for the parameters.
Randall may have been inspired by Pickleball, a type of racket sport rising sharply in popularity in the US at the time this comic came out. Pickleball is a middle-ground of tennis and table tennis, with an intermediate-sized ball, court, and net height. Randall may have noticed the distinct parameters of pickleball’s elements compared to its cousin sports and was inspired to imagine a scenario in which such parameters might be randomized.
This comic is reminiscent of 2663: Tetherball Configurations, also four different settings for the same sport, that makes it more or less playable. Randall also invented more unusual ball games with 1507: Metaball, 1920: Emoji Sports, and 2705: Spacetime Soccer
The parameters of the game being randomized is reminiscent of the "Calvinball" game in the Calvin & Hobbes cartoons, which is never played twice with the same rules. | |
2853 | November 10, 2023 | Redshift | null | So do you have any plans for z=-0.000000000000045? | :[Cueball and Ponytail are sitting at a table, eating from plates in front of them, Cueball using both hands with cutlery, Ponytail only holding cutlery in one hand, the other hand lying on her lap. Each has a wine glass standing on the table between the plates.]
:Cueball: So, when did you first get interested in early universe cosmology?
:Ponytail: Sometime around z | In this comic, Ponytail is using cosmological terms to answer that she first got interested in early universe cosmology 5.4 years ago, to which Cueball asks (in the title text) whether she has plans five and a half hours later. One interpretation is that these are two colleagues out for lunch, and Cueball likes her nerdy answer so much he wants to ask her out for a dinner date after work.
File:time by redshift.png|thumb|Redshift indicates how far in the past distant astronomical objects were as we observe them now.
In observational cosmology, a field of astronomy, redshift refers to the way that light from distant objects in the universe is stretched out, making it appear more red than it would otherwise. This occurs because the universe is expanding, and as a result, light waves are stretched as they travel through space. The Redshift#Redshift formulae|"z" value is a dimensionless measure of the redshift: the observed wavelength minus the expected wavelength, divided by the expected wavelength. A higher "z" value, or redshift, corresponds to earlier times in the history of the universe. This is because as the universe expands, light from distant galaxies is stretched to longer, redder wavelengths as it travels towards us. The further away a galaxy is, the longer its light has been traveling, and thus the more the universe has expanded since that light began its journey. Therefore, a higher redshift indicates a galaxy that is further away and that the light we see from it left when the universe was younger. Conversely, a lower redshift means the light has traveled a shorter distance and time, indicating a more recent epoch in the history of the universe. Negative values of "z" indicate a blueshift, which indicate objects that are approaching the observer, generally used in cosmological work to calculate rotation speeds of closer objects.
The joke here is that Cueball is asking Ponytail when she became interested in cosmology, and instead of giving a conventionally referenced time (such as "in college", "as a kid", "in 2020" or "seventeen years ago", whatever may apply), she responds with a redshift value "z | |
2854 | November 13, 2023 | Date Line | null | They estimate the rocket should be free by approximately ... uh ... well, in about two hours. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[The earth, with the International Date Line as a physical band being pulled off of the surface by a rocket, cutting into the land on the other side.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Timekeeping announcement: A rocket accidentally became snagged on the International Date Line during launch. Please pause all clocks and calendars until NASA is able to free it and safely resume the normal flow of time. | The International Date Line is a nominal line on Earth near the 180th meridian|antimeridian (180°) that represents where adjoining territories observe a full calendar day of difference (give or take the 'normal' time of day adjustment).
It causes one of three situations where the date might change for you, the usual one being when (in your time zone) you pass from the hour of 11 pm across beyond midnight, and a second being if you travel directly between time zones at such a time (usually that being a window of just one specific hour, at night) where they are each either side of midnight. Most people don't travel at or around midnight, and just being awake as the clocks tick over is not often such a remarkable thing, other than to perhaps mark reaching a special date (significant birthdays, perhaps, or New Year's Day). However, travel across or between certain areas of east and west Pacific (or 503: Terminology|vice-versa) is not so uncommon, yet brings with it the special need to effectively adjust your watch by a full day (plus or minus any other time to be adjusted).
The International Date Line is not a physical string,{{Citation needed}} and therefore could not be caught by a rocket. It should also be noted that the International Date Line is not straight, but extends either side of the antimeridian to avoid confusion on internal land journeys (like Russia, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug|a portion of which overlaps the antimeridian), similarly cutting off 'nearby' outlying island territories or adding needless complexity Tokelau#Timezone|when dealing with chosen trading partners. (There may also be the niche tourism-led motivation of being able to claim 'first' in experiencing the new date.) Of course, these very bends would give a physical International Date Line quite a bit of slack that a rocket could pull up (as depicted in the comic).
Based on what is shown in the comic, the rocket could have been launched by the Russians (e.g. from the Vostochny Cosmodrome), but the caption implies that the American space agency is the one expecting to resolve the issue (whoever's original error it was), and all orbital flights are pretty much guaranteed to cross (over) the dateline at some point in the initial track. Of course, the odds of a rocket getting stuck on such a line (if it existed) would be incredibly slim. Additionally, striking such an object wouldn’t trap the rocket. Instead, the rocket (and likely the line) would undergo what many :Category: Kerbal Space Program|KSP users have encountered: Rapid Unplanned Disassembly.
The caption suggests that this event has messed up the normal regulation of time, and is somehow unsafe to 'use' as a result, so people should pause their usage of it by stopping their clocks and calendars. Also, because time is not behaving normally, ‘they’ can’t give a time for when it will be fixed. If, say, it was 8:00 when the rocket got snagged, then it is 8:00 until they fix it. This means that no matter how much time should have passed, until they fix it, it will remain 8:00. In reality, even if a physical dateline did exist, and if disturbing it were to mess up our ability to measure time, synchronize clocks, and so on, time itself would continue to flow regardless, and pausing one's clock would have no effect on this. Indeed, if time stopped operating, it's not entirely clear what an amount of time that 'should have passed' would even mean, or if we would be able to perceive that anything was wrong. Or, we could use more traditional ways of keeping the time that doesn't need the International Date Line, like Water Clocks or Sundials until it's fixed.
More worryingly, yet oddly not mentioned by the announcement, is that the International Date Line and Greenwich Meridian appear to be a single continuous physical line, and consequently, the stretching of the former is pulling in the latter, causing significant geological disruption along that line, which would result in danger to life and property and infrastructure damage affecting many millions of people living close to it, and probably tsunamis that could threaten many more further afield.
The title text states that the estimated time the rocket should be free is "about two hours,” but the speaker/writer hesitates when about to give an estimated time stamp, as the time does not advance on clocks, assuming the instructions are followed. Instead, a more generic time must be given, though there still remains the issue of how to properly judge the relative passing of time. | |
2855 | November 15, 2023 | Empiricism | null | The problems started with my resolution next year to reject temporal causality. | :[Cueball and Megan are standing, talking to each other.]
:Cueball: My New Year's resolution this year was to reject empiricism.
:Megan: And how's that been working out for you?
:Cueball: What does that have to do with anything? | Cueball and Megan are discussing New Year's resolutions. Cueball says that his resolution for this year was to reject empiricism. Megan asks him how that worked out for him, to which Cueball gives a dismissive response.
Empiricism is the practice of testing a hypothesis based on direct observation and testing. The joke is that, since Cueball succeeded in rejecting empiricism this year, he doesn't care or think about how it went, since doing so would be empirical.
Technically speaking, Cueball's response can be more accurately characterized as a rejection of empiricism alternatives such as Constructivism (philosophy of education)|constructivism and pragmatism (the suggestion that knowledge is constructed by the individual through their interactions with the world, and the belief that value is determined by its success in practical application, respectively); if Megan had asked, "Did that work out for you as well as you had expected?" then Cueball's response would have been a more direct rejection of empiricism. As stated, this is just a technicality; Randall is probably using a layman's definition of empiricism-- something like "the theory that any and all knowledge comes from sensory experience."
In the title text, Cueball attributes past problems ("my problems started") to his future ("next year") resolution, which is to reject temporal causality. causality|Temporal causality is the principle in physics that the cause of an event always precedes the event. The joke is that his past/current problems are being caused by a future event, since his sense of causality is no longer time-based. This is Randall's second joke about causality in three weeks; a similar joke was published 2848|7 comics prior to this one, in which a breaker box switch can turn off causality. | |
2856 | November 17, 2023 | Materials Scientists | null | If a materials scientist gives you a present, always ask whether regifting will incur any requirements for Federal paperwork. | :[Ponytail and White Hat are standing on the left side of a small table looking at Cueball. He stands on the other side of the table holding a gift wrapped in paper with thick black stripes. He is trying to open the gift. On the table lies two gift on top of each other. The bottom is thin and the wrapping paper has thin black stripes on it. The top present is a white box with a thick black ribbon around it and a large bow on top.]
:Cueball: Where is this wrapping paper from? It's so thin, but I can't tear it. Is this aramid fabric?!
:Cueball: Maybe I can unpeel the... oooh, the tape flashes as I pull it up! Triboluminescence! Did you add a phosphor? It's so bright!
:Cueball: Wait, are these patterns structural coloration?
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Materials scientists are like cats- the best present you can get them is an empty box with cool wrapping paper. | Materials science is essentially the study of materials, like steel, including some pretty strange ones such as Vantablack and triiodide. Here Ponytail and White Hat have given Cueball (a materials scientist) some sort of present. Cueball is amazed with the wrapping paper and tape itself, trying to make out what they are all made of. The caption reveals that the cardboard box is empty and the wrapping paper ''is'' the present; as a materials scientist, Cueball is more enamored by the (strange and exotic) wrapping paper, far more than he would be by any actual present inside.
The punchline also compares Cueball to a cat. A common stereotype ([https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/8zw63a/thanks_for_box_human_oh_and_the_cat_tree_it_came/ with lots of image proof, to boot]) about domestic housecats is how they enjoy playing with empty boxes and discarded wrapping paper much more than the cat toys contained therein.
Aramid fibers are a class of strong synthetic fibers, built from aromatic rings connected via amide linkages. Kevlar, a material commonly and perhaps most famously used as a [https://youtu.be/gPKbOrxgx-w bullet-resistant fabric for] Bulletproof vest#Soft armor|soft bulletproof vests, is an example of an aramid. Due to their strength, they can be quite durable, even when thin, as depicted in the comic.
Triboluminescence refers to a phenomenon where mechanically working on a material (in this case pulling on the tape) causes it to glow. Triboluminescence is still not well understood by materials scientists, so they may find such materials particularly appealing. One famous example comes from crushing Wint-O-Green Lifesavers mints, which creates [https://youtu.be/tW8q_JfmcbU particularly bright blue sparks] compared to other hard candies. Staying in the realm of wrapping, Scotch tape exhibits this property too, [https://www.technologyreview.com/2008/10/23/217918/x-rays-made-with-scotch-tape/ to a point where it can even be used as an x-ray]. Phosphors, not to be confused with the element Phosphorus, are substances that glow when exposed to some other, typically more energetic, form of radiation, and can be used to produce a desired glowing effect by taking less useful parts of the spectrum (e.g. beyond the visible, or in an unnecessary area of the visible one) and shifting that into more practical hues.
Structural coloration is a phenomenon where the coloration of an animal or plant is not produced via pigments but via structural interactions with visible light at the scale of a wavelength (e.g. diffraction gratings, thin-film interference). More generally, it can also be used to refer to artificial materials that have a similar effect.
The title text states that if a materials scientist gives you a gift, you should ask if regifting it requires any form of federal paperwork. This is because the materials scientist may have access to items which are dangerous and strictly regulated, such as polonium (an extremely radioactive element), fluoroantimonic acid (the strongest acid discovered), nitrogen triiodide (one of the most sensitive explosives in the world), and n-butyllithium (an extremely flammable, pyrophoric, and caustic compound). Other examples include materials regulated for military reasons under ITAR, possibly up to being considered sensitive or top secret, such as high tech fibers, composites or other such materials with applications for armor (covered under e.g. CFR, Title 22, § 121, Category XIII (e)), or basically anything that has use in rockets (e.g. § 121 Catergory XIII (d)) or stealth (e.g. § 121 Catergory XIII (g) and (j)). All of those are at least export restricted, and require federal paperwork to be regifted or sold. | |
2857 | November 20, 2023 | Rebuttals | null | The mainstream dogma sparked a wave of dogmatic revisionism, and this revisionist mainstream dogmatism has now given way to a more rematic mainvisionist dogstream. | :[Cueball, hand raised with a finger held up, stands behind a lectern on a high podium speaking into a microphone on the lectern. Behind him is a banner, with four lines of illegible writing above a (blank) picture at the bottom.]
:Cueball: It's become conventional wisdom that the backlash against the prevailing consensus led researchers to ignore inconvenient new evidence. However...
:[Caption below the panel:]
:In a field that's been around for a while, it can be hard to figure out how many levels of rebuttal deep you are. | This comic provides a satirical take on the intricate layers of scientific critique and consensus. Cueball stands as a representative of the scientific community, addressing the audience with a statement that encapsulates the recursive nature of scientific debate. The comic touches on the propensity within the scientific fields to oscillate between embracing new evidence and adhering to established consensus. It reflects on the inclination to reject new findings not because they lack merit, but because they conflict with the prevailing theories that have weathered previous scrutiny and dissent. Here is what Cueball is saying, simplified:
<blockquote>"Most of us assume the following: That when a lot of people didn't agree with what most experts said, those experts stopped paying attention to new facts that didn't fit their ideas. But actually..."</blockquote>
Overall, the comic offers a funny yet deep look at how scientists think and argue. It shows that in science, people often change their minds between new discoveries and what most people already believe. The character Cueball represents scientists and explains this complicated process. The comic starts by showing how scientists sometimes don't like new ideas if they don't fit with what most people already think. This happens even if the new ideas might be true. It shows a kind of tug-of-war in science: sometimes scientists are more open to new things, and other times they stick to old ideas. Also, the comic says that when people don't agree with the usual thinking, they might also ignore new facts that don't match their own ideas. Everyone in science might miss something important because they're too focused on their own beliefs.
Cueball's words in the comic are like peeling an onion in science, showing different layers of arguments and disagreements. The comic suggests that sometimes, even when scientists are trying to move away from old ideas, they might not notice new facts that actually support these old ideas. Cueball seems to agree with this view but then starts to say "however," like he's going to give a ''rebuttal'' opinion or explain the situation in a new way. Maybe Cueball will offer a new explanation about how scientists argue or say that all sides in science have good points but sometimes misunderstand each other. This could mean that the debates in science are not as simple as they seem and that everyone might have a piece of the truth.
The title text serves as an extension of this theme, offering a linguistic maze that mirrors the complexity and sometimes absurdity of academic discourse. It whimsically encapsulates how a challenge to mainstream thought can solidify into its own dogma, necessitating further revisionist waves, in an endless cycle of intellectual evolution and revolution. This self-referential loop wittily underscores Thomas Kuhn's notion of the 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions,' suggesting that what is considered revolutionary at one time may become the very dogma that future revolutions seek to overturn. The title text delights in linguistic acrobatics, stringing together a series of portmanteau and near-repetitive phrases that dance on the tongue with the finesse of a verbal gymnast. "Mainstream dogma" suggests widely accepted beliefs, but it swiftly mutates into "dogmatic revisionism," a playful jab at the stubborn insistence on reforming the norm. This revisionism doesn't just adjust the current; it becomes "mainstream dogmatism" in its own right, a new orthodoxy birthed from the rebellion. And then, with a flourish, it yields to an even more whimsically coined "rematic mainvisionist dogstream," a hilarious spoonerism that could leave even the most loquacious academic's head spinning. This nonsensical cascade mocks the sometimes pretentious and convoluted language that can plague scholarly communication, turning serious dialogue into a merry-go-round of terms that are as circular in progression as they are in logic. This nonsense sentence may also be mocking the way in which, when you get this many layers deep in waves of consensus and counter-consensus, all these terms start to lose any real meaning, and become mere empty labels to be thrown around as terms of deprecation or abuse between the competing factions.
{| class | |
2858 | November 22, 2023 | Thanksgiving Arguments | null | An occasional source of mild Thanksgiving tension in my family is that my mother is a die-hard fan of The Core (2003), and various family members sometimes have differing levels of enthusiasm for her annual tradition of watching it. | :[Cueball is sitting on an office chair at his desk typing on his stationary computer as Megan walks up behind him. The text he writes is shown above the screen with a zigzag line going from a starburst on the screen.]
:Text: ''How to win political arguments with your awful relatives at Thanksgiving dinner''
:[Closeup of Megan in a frame-less panel. Below Megan there is a footnote relating to the asterisk at the end of her sentence.]
:Megan: You know, despite all the posts about it, surveys show most families don't actually argue about politics at Thanksgiving.<sup>*</sup>
:Footnote: <sup>*</sup><nowiki>https://www.huffpost.com/entry/poll-nobody-fights-thanksgiving_n_5deece02e4b07f6835b7eab6</nowiki>
:[Zoom back on to Cueball and Megan. Cueball has turned around in his chair, hands on his lap, looking up at Megan.]
:Megan: Take ''your'' relatives. Their political opinions are basically fine.
:Megan: Maybe you should write about what ''they'' argue about?
:[Closeup of Cueball typing on his computer. The text he writes is again shown above the screen with a zigzag line going from a starburst on the screen. Megan speaks to him from off-panel, her speech line coming from a starburst at the right edge of the panel.]
:Text: ''How to win arguments about '''The Rise of Skywalker''' at your Thanksgiving dinner''
:Megan (off-panel): Aunt Katie ''does'' bring that up a lot, doesn't she.
:Cueball: This'll be year four. | The comic features a conversation between Cueball and Megan, discussing the dynamics of family gatherings during Thanksgiving (United States)|Thanksgiving, specifically about the topics of political arguments and how to navigate them. This was a topical comic, as Thanksgiving in the United States in 2023 was on November 23, the day after the posting of this comic.
In the first panel, Cueball is depicted sitting at a computer, presumably writing an article or blog post titled "How to Win Political Arguments with Your Awful Relatives at Thanksgiving Dinner" - a common topic for 'filler' articles at this time of year. Such articles are based on the perception that political arguments are common at holiday dinners. This is likely based on the idea that people will tend to avoid relatives with "awful" political views, but holiday dinners carry the expectation that the whole family will be together, making such arguments difficult to avoid.
Megan challenges this perception, citing [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/poll-nobody-fights-thanksgiving_n_5deece02e4b07f6835b7eab6 an article in ''Huffington Post''] which reports on a poll which found that only 16% of families reported discussing politics at Thanksgiving dinner, and only 3% reporting having argued about politics. She also points out that Cueball's family has political views that are "mostly fine". This is probably not especially uncommon, as families tend to share similar experiences and backgrounds, which inform their political opinions. Where disagreements do occur, it's common for those to be minor, and not the subject of particularly emotional arguments. In addition, where politics are a source of friction within a family, most learn not to bring it up at holiday gatherings, precisely to avoid such arguments.
The misperception at the root of this may be a case of selection bias. There certainly are families in which members hold opposing political views{{Citation needed}} with such emotional fervor that gatherings typically devolve into arguments. Since those arguments can be so intense and emotional (and often personally hurtful), the people involved are far more likely to relate their experiences to others, both in person and in media (such as in articles, columns, and portrayal in fiction). By contrast, people who have quiet, undramatic family dinners are less likely to get attention. This can give rise to the perception that heated political arguments are the norm for such gatherings.
The comic concludes by revealing that Cueball's family, rather than arguing about politics, tends to argue about ''The Rise of Skywalker'', a controversial recent entry in the Star Wars franchise, with Megan agreeing that his aunt "brings that up a lot". The joke is that Cueball's family, like him, tend to have nerdy, pop-culture-based passions, and those are areas that are far more likely to result in family debates. The title text extends this theme by referencing the mother's devotion to the 2003 movie ''The Core'' (widely considered a contender for "The Core#Reception|all-time-worst 'science in a movie' winner") and her insistence on watching it annually during Thanksgiving is mentioned as a bone of contention within the family. This underscores the idea that perceptions of a "normal" family gathering (ie, arguing about politics) aren't necessarily applicable to most families. The individual character and eccentricities of each family are far more likely to define what their holidays are like. | |
2859 | November 24, 2023 | Oceanography Gift | null | Shipping times vary. Same-ocean delivery may only take a few years, but delivery from the Weddell Sea in Antarctica may take multiple decades, and molecules meant for inland seas like the Mediterranean may be returned as undeliverable by surface currents. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.|Probably still improvable}}
:[Cueball and Megan are standing thigh deep, at either edge of a stretch of water between two steep but walkable shorelines.]
:[Cueball, at the left, is apparently opening bottles of water and pouring them into the sea while recording himself.]
:Cueball: Happy birthday!
:Cueball: I got you these water molecules.
:[Sound effects:] (click) (pour)
:[The water between has a morass of short swirling arrows indicating movement. In the air above this there is a square-bracketted 'label']
:[Label:] 10 years pass <!-- Written like this in response to the possibility that Randall is trolling us, or causing us inconvenience, by using our "transscript format for a description" actually *in* the literal text... -->
:[Megan, at the right, is dipping bottles into the water to fill them]
:Megan: Aww, thank you!
:[Sound effect:] (scoop)
:[Text below comic:]
: Global surface ocean connectivity times are ≤10 years (Jönsson & Watson, 2016, DOI:10.1038/ncomms11239), so if you're willing to plan ahead, you can pour water into the ocean while wishing someone a happy birthday, and then in 10 years let them know they can pick up their gift at the nearest coastline. | In this comic, Randall seems inspired by the timing of ocean currents, much as he has previously been with 2805: Global Atmospheric Circulation|air currents, although he may even have already considered some of the technicalities 1675: Message in a Bottle|prior to that. As supporting evidence, he provides a DOI reference to a 2016 Jönsson & Watson open-access article in Nature Communications, '[https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms11239 The timescales of global surface-ocean connectivity]'.This would be extremely impractical, since in ten years, it's possible that you and the recipient broke connections, or one of you (or both of you) passed away. If these scenarios are not the case, ten years is an awfully long time to wait for a present.
In this specific (fictional) example, the water dumped into the ocean today will take ten years to circulate round to the depicted neighbouring coastline (wherever that is). Which implies significant planning ahead is necessary before posting water to someone. And a lot of presumption about the lack of any other dispersal/dilution, or that some degree of fungibility is acceptable, so long as it is ''Ship of Theseus|philosophically'' the same group of molecules involved. Of course, some of the water molecules may take a short-cut by being evaporated then precipitated closer to the delivery site.
The title text mentions that "same-ocean delivery" may only take a few years, as the coast lines are in the same general body of circulating water, and doesn't have to pass around large obstacles (like continents) or through small gaps (straits). But if you wish delivery from Weddell Sea it may take decades. The Weddell sea lies near the Antarctic Peninsula, part of the Southern Ocean whose circulation can be considered largely isolated from the neighbouring bodies of water by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. In particular, that area contains the Weddell Gyre one of the two ocean gyres in that area.
The title text also mentions inland seas, which can be generalised as bodies of water that are very large in area but either completely surrounded by dry land or connected to an ocean only by a river or a strait. He mentions the Mediterranean Sea which is only connected to the Atlantic Ocean through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar; the intention of the title text is to suggest that water molecules dumped in an ocean would not get to appear in such a sea (except by evaporation and reprecipitation) into its catchment area) and thus they can only ever circulate back to the dumping point (deemed 'undeliverable').
In reality, the Mediterranean Sea is not completely cut off from the main oceans and surface currents actually do reach into and around the Mediterranean. The natural loss from evaporation is not fully compensated for by the inflow of the incident rivers from southern Europe, North Africa and Asia, directly or via other attached bodies of water (e.g. the Black Sea). The movement of water also involves the deeper Levantine Intermediate Waters layer (a subsurface current) which exits via Gibraltar and helps to further draw current inwards at the surface level. As such, except for a limited amount of water which reverses direction within the extreme western end the Mediterranean, it is more true to say that ''surface'' currents cannot actually transport water from within the sea outwards into the Atlantic (and beyond). (This explanation ignores flow through the Suez Canal.)
The Caspian Sea is a real inland sea that has no outlet to any oceans and only inlets from rivers, one of a number of 2325: Endorheic Basin|endorheic basins that are also Endorheic lake|lakes, and thus trivially isolated from all other maritime currents. | |
2860 | November 27, 2023 | Decay Modes | null | Unlike an Iron Age collapse, a Bronze Age collapse releases energy, since copper and tin are past the iron peak on the curve of binding energy. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Radioactive Decay Modes
[A 6x2 table of illustrations of atoms, depicting types of atomic decay, with a label underneath.]
:[First row]
:[A small group of 2 protons and 2 neutrons are shown leaving a larger nucleus.]
:Alpha decay
:[A small particle is ejected from the nucleus while a neutron is shown converting to a proton as indicated by a shaded circle becoming white.]
:Beta decay
:[A nucleus emits a wavy arrow representing a wave, while a diagram shows the nucleus changing from a ellipsoid shape to a more spherical one.]
:Gamma decay
:[A nucleus absorbs one of its electrons along with a small sound effect.]
:Electron capture
:Nucleus: Slurp
:[A small particle is ejected from the nucleus while a proton is shown converting to a neutron as indicated by a white circle becoming shaded.]
:Positron emission
:[A shaded particle is ejected from the nucleus.]
:Neutron emission
:[Second row]
:[All protons and neutrons are ejected from the nucleus, leaving behind an empty space.]
:Baryonic panic
:[A few protons and neutrons are floating around a black "hole", with branching cracks coming out from it. Inside the hole is a stylized skull.]
:Omega decay
:[The nucleus and all the atoms has fallen to the floor, with one still falling and another bouncing off.]
:Electron wilt
:[A normal nucleus has an arrow pointing from it to a large, light grey sphere with dark grey patches.]
:One big nucleon
:[The nucleus has six white mushrooms of various sizes growing out of it, with some of the protons and neutrons being black and rotted.]
:Fungal decay
:[The nucleus is shown being attacked on both sides by Cueballs in boats, holding spears and firing arrows. They are all floating in water, as well as a few fallen protons and neutrons, one with an arrow sticking out of it.]
:Collapse due to invasion by sea peoples. | radioactive decay|Decay modes refer to the different ways in which unstable atomic nuclei transform into more stable ones, typically by emitting particles or radiation. The process of decay is a natural phenomenon that occurs in radioactive substances. There are several types of decay mode each characterized by the particles emitted or the energy released during the process.
In the comic's diagram, protons are white and neutrons are gray.
The first six modes are real, and most occur relatively frequently:
In '''alpha decay''', an unstable nucleus emits an alpha particle, composed of two protons and two neutrons. Alpha decay is the primary source of helium on Earth, as alpha particles are <sup>4</sup>He nuclei. This decay mode is most commonly seen in proton-rich / neutron-deficient heavy nuclei, which normally have many more neutrons than protons. By reducing the numbers of protons and neutrons by 2 apiece, the product nucleus has a higher ratio of neutrons to protons.
In '''beta decay''' (more properly beta-minus decay), a neutron-rich nucleus emits a W⁻ boson, converting one neutron into a proton, as shown in the supplementary diagram. The boson, in turn, decays into an electron (the titular beta (minus) particle) and an electron antineutrino. The main diagram shows only the release of the beta particle, which was the only thing expelled from the nucleus that could be observed directly when the types of nuclear decay were first described and enumerated.
In '''gamma decay''', an unstable nucleus (represented by the lumpy, prolate nucleus in the diagram – representing a high-energy nuclear isomer) emits a high-energy photon known as a gamma ray and settles into a stabler, lower-energy state.
In '''electron capture''', a proton-rich atom captures an electron from the K or L electron shell. This converts a proton into a neutron and emits an electron neutrino. Randall adds a 'slurp' written sound effect in the comic to make the effect more clear; in real life no sound is actually present in an electron capture event. {{Citation needed}}
In '''positron emission''', or beta plus decay, a proton-rich nucleus emits a W⁺ boson, converting one proton into a neutron. The boson, in turn, decays into a positron (the beta plus particle) and an electron neutrino. Again, the main diagram shows only the beta particle, presumably for simplicity, the nucleon conversion being shown separately. This is much rarer than beta minus decay.
In '''neutron emission''', a neutron-rich/proton-deficient unstable nucleus emits a neutron (which then goes on to decay into further daughter particles).
The other six modes are fictional:
'''Baryon panic''': In this mode, all the subatomic particles flee the atom simultaneously, similar to a crowd fleeing a building during a fire alarm, or other similar states of panic in people. In reality, this mode of decay would require an incredible amount of energy. The like charges of protons do repel each other, but they are held together more tightly by the residual nuclear force in the presence of neutrons.
'''Omega decay''': The atom has decayed and left behind a skull in its wake, leaving cracks in the area surrounding it and sending neutrons and protons flying everywhere. Whereas ''alpha'', ''beta'' and ''gamma'' are the first three letters of the Greek alphabet, ''omega'' is the last, so the name ''omega'' might suggest the ultimate, final decay. The skull presumably represents the finality of such a decay given that the end stage of human decay leaves behind a skeleton, something that does not exist in nucleons.{{Citation needed}} Many works of science fiction propose forms of radiation and/or particles with further letters in the Greek alphabet, such as The Omega Directive in Star Trek. In real life, the omega baryon was predicted to exist by Murray Gell-Mann's early quark theory, and then discovered several years later with the properties he had predicted. This mode may also represent the atom becoming the origin of a false vacuum decay, a theoretical decay of space itself, which would indeed spread outward and be very final and lethal.
'''Electron wilt''': The electrons surrounding the atom fall to the ground. Some plants are subject to diseases that cause this kind of wilting of their leaves. Electrons will attempt to settle into a 'ground state' but this does not involve them literally slumping to the ground, rather they will be as close as possible to the nucleus subject to the limitations of energy levels and the Pauli exclusion principle. In addition, since the ground is made of atoms, there would be no flat surface for the electrons to fall onto.
'''One Big Nucleon''': The protons and neutrons combine to form a single huge baryon. Exotic baryon|Exotic baryons with more than the usual three quarks, such as pentaquarks, have been created in the lab but are not known to exist in nature. String theorists propose that black holes are actually Fuzzball (string theory)|fuzzballs, single "subatomic" particles which are macroscopic in size (namely that of their event horizon) formed by the fusion of the strings of in-falling matter under extreme gravitational conditions. This is a also a joking reference to the concept of One Big Union (concept)|One Big Union, a goal promoted by some trade union|trade unionists since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to which all individual and national trade unions should gradually amalgamate into one single economy-wide trade union — the notional One Big Union — in order to organise and fight for workers across all industries and professions, rather than only within each union's specifically organised job sites. Prominent early proponents of the idea include the Industrial Workers of the World and One Big Union (Canada)|Canada's One Big Union. The joke is that this is a kind of radioactive decay caused by revolutionary class consciousness shared between nucleons in different atoms.
'''Fungal decay''': The nucleus rots, and fungal fruiting bodies (toadstools and mushrooms) grow around it. This plays on the meaning of "decay".
'''Collapse due to invasion by the Sea Peoples''': The atom floats in water, with boats on either side full of Cueballs shooting arrows at it, and the atom is breaking up. The Sea Peoples are a somewhat mysterious group that attacked Egypt and other regions of the eastern Mediterranean in the late Bronze Age (1200-900 BCE). Due to a combination of factors, such as climate change, mass migration and invasions (including from the Sea Peoples), several nations around the central and eastern Mediterranean underwent societal decline or outright collapse, an occurrence known as the Late Bronze Age collapse. Randall has mentioned the Sea Peoples previously in 1732: Earth Temperature Timeline.
'''Bronze/Iron Age Collapse (Title text)''': Continuing from the last panel of the comic, and making a pun on the Iron Age of civilization with the properties of iron atoms. Nuclear fusion – the merging of small light elements – expels energy, powering stars and creating increasingly heavier elements which also fuse until the process reaches iron, predominantly <sup>56</sup>Fe. Fusing iron nuclei does not release energy, so the previous cycle of fusion abruptly stops and the star contracts under gravity (whereupon it can now create the different conditions from which small amounts of heavier nuclei ''do'' form, and disperse to be discovered in later star systems). In contrast, nuclear fission – where atoms spontaneously split into lighter elements, releasing the energy ultimately imbued into them during their synthesis – applies increasingly so to the heavier nuclei with increasing instabilities as they 'collapse' out into their various fission products. The atomic components of bronze, tin and copper, ''could'' potentially release energy, in the right conditions. Tin's main isotopes (<sup>114</sup>Sn across to <sup>124</sup>Sn, with more than two-thirds weight 116, 118 or 120) are considered stable, as are the two for copper (<sup>63</sup>Cu and <sup>65</sup>Cu, being practically all that is naturally present), but trace/synthesized isotopes beyond that range (e.g., actively induced by initiating a neutron bombardment) are known to, eventually, beta(±) decay/'collapse' to forms of antimony (from the tin) or nickel/zinc (from the copper). | |
2861 | November 29, 2023 | X Value | null | The value of n is still unknown, but new results constrain it to fall between 8 and 10^500, ruling out popular 'n=1' and 'n=2' theories. | :[A math formula is circled.]
:<big><big>x | In algebra, a Variable (mathematics)|variable is any symbol used to represent a number that has not been determined or chosen. The most familiar algebraic variable is ''x'' (the unknown input), with ''y'' often being the yet-to-be-determined output (its value being dependent on ''x''). According to the comic, the value of ''x'' has finally been found, being 4.1083. The joke is that a general-purpose variable, which may take different values in different scenarios, turns out to have a specific value, as though it were a constant. Constants in mathematics and other scientific fields are also often represented by a single symbol - some of the most well-known are Pi|''π'' (3.14159...), ''e'' (E (mathematical constant)|Euler's number, 2.71828...), ''i'' (Imaginary number, equal to √-1), and ''c'' (the speed of light in a vacuum, 299,792,458 m/s (670,616,629 mph, 1,079,252,848.8 km/h, 1.8026x10<sup>12</sup> FFF system|fur/ftn)).
The specific number 4.1083 does not have any notable significance or special role in the contexts of physics, chemistry, finance, astronomy or cryptography. This number to 3 decimal places, 4.108, was referenced previously in comic 899: Number Line.
The '''title text''' declares the value of ''n'' is unknown. ''n'' is often used as an unknown/undetermined ''integer'' value. In Sampling (statistics)|statistics, it might be used to specify the size of a sample. For example, a list where ''n | |
2862 | December 1, 2023 | Typical Seating Chart | null | Now that airlines have started adding wheel locks to their drink carts, less than half of flights have one accidentally fall out through the hole. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:Typical Airliner Seating Chart
:[Labeled items of a plane from front to back:]
:[Front of plane:]
:Cowcatcher
:[Cockpit (2 seats):]
:Please only pick these seats if you're a pilot
:[First Class section (22 seats):]
:Main stage
:Mosh pit
:Various fancy classes
:[Wings (2 x 55 seats):]
:Some airplane companies waste this space
:[Ends of wings (2 x 1 seat):]
:Lookout
:[Propellers (2 x 1 seat):]
:Passenger has to pedal
:[Middle of plane, just behind wings:]
:Hole for trash
:[Left side of plane, behind wings (7 seats):]
:Sidecar
:[Back of plane (24 seats):]
:Extra middle seats
:[Just in front of tail (4 seats):]
:Bumper car seating
:[Tail (1 seat):]
:Penthouse
:[Hanging off of left side of tail (3 seats):]
:Extra legroom
:[Tail (4 seats):]
:Tail gunners (Must protect plane from pursuers but earn extra miles)
:[Separate, smaller plane to the right (14 seats):]
:Fighter escort | This comic shows a seating chart for a 182-seat airplane (and its fighter escort) with several unusual features.
{|class | |
2863 | December 4, 2023 | Space Typography | null | And over heeee[...]eeeere (i)s Saturn. | :[A grayed-out sentence in the Times New Roman font reads "<span style | This is another one of Randall|Randall's :Category:Tips|Tips, this time a space tip, the first of two in a row, the second being 2864: Compact Graphs with a design tip.
Randall has created a sentence with the property wherein, when printed in Times New Roman font, the distances of the "i" letters from the first letter are proportional to the radii of the orbits of the innermost five planets in the Solar System. These are the only letters in the sentence that have a dot over the letter (there are no "j"s in the sentence) or elsewhere (there are no periods, colons, semicolons, or other dot-containing symbols). He suggests that if you get lost traveling among these planets, you can use the dots as a map.
This won't actually be a very useful map. When traveling between planets, it's not enough to know where the planet's orbit is, you also need to know where it is along the orbit. Additionally, if you are truly lost then you likely do not know where ''you'' actually are, and which 'way' you are heading, though you can probably at least locate the sun if you are indeed within our inner solar system.
The sentence is self-referential, since it talks about using typography to measure distances in space, and this makes it a useful mnemonic. The "optimistic" in the sentence could indicate that the aliens in question are highly optimistic that this kind of "map" would be useful for navigating a star system where planets orbit in ellipses, rather than being in static positions along a line (as is so often depicted in line-ups of the Solar System's planets).
The title text appends the sentence with a section for identifying Saturn. It contains an ellipsis in brackets, which normally signifies that an indeterminate number of 'e's has been omitted from the sentence, seemingly to represent Saturn's large orbital radius as the next "i" in "is". The trick is that actually appending the sentence literally, brackets and all, after the original sentence (so that we get "<span style | |
2864 | December 6, 2023 | Compact Graphs | null | People may complain about readability, but even with jpeg compression, extracting the data points is usually computationally feasible if there aren't too many of them. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Left: graph of points plotted along two axes, headered by:]
:Variable 1: X Axis
:Variable 2: Y Axis
:[An arrow pointing to the right.]
:[Right: various semi-transparent numbers in different colors stacked on top of each other, headered by:]
:Variable 1: Hue
:Variable 2: Label
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Design tip: You can make your graphs more space-efficient by using hue and label for the first two variables, instead of only turning to them once you’ve used up the X and Y axes. | This is another one of Randall|Randall's :Category:Tips|Tips, this time a design tip, the second of two in a row, the first being 2863: Space Typography with a space tip. The comic is unusual because Randall makes an apparent error (see below).
Randall tells graphic designers they can be more space-efficient by using ''hue'' (an element of color) and the data point's ''label'' in their graphs to represent the first two quantitative dimensions of a dataset rather than what's traditional: using x and y axes and then using hue and label to represent additional dimensions (such as hue for the z-axis, or the label for qualitative info).
In this comic's hue-label graph, the x-axis dimension is (mostly) translated into corresponding hue values, and the y-axis dimension is translated into text labels; that is, the mass of colorful lines in the comic is actually [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/4/4a/compact_graphs_2x.png several numbers written in the same spot]. Each number is one of the y-coordinates of a point in the left graph, and its color (usually) corresponds to its x-coordinate using the Hue, Saturation, Value (HSV) model. In other words, the labels' colors are not arbitrary; each color represents a numerical dimension of the data point as a Hue value from 0 to some maximum. Typically this is up to 360° in the wraparound continuum of the HSV or HSL color models, where Red is zero/360, but other numeric relations and subsets can be chosen to avoid unnecessarily confusing the lowest-value hues from the highest (of a non-cyclic scale) and/or to align more meaningful colours (e.g. blue for cool and red for hot, avoiding the magenta segment as much as practical from either direction).
File:color wheel.png|thumb|Color wheel
In the HSV color model, the hue component represents the color type and is expressed as an angle on the color wheel, where 0 degrees is red. The hue values are given in degrees, ranging from 0 to 360. Each value corresponds to a position on the color wheel, defining a specific color. An obvious limitation of this approach is that when used like this to represent specific quantities, the Hue dimension can only handle values from 0 to 360, and values within a narrow range (e.g., height of a basketball team's players as measured in inches) would all appear to be similar shades of a single color (e.g., yellow-ish green).
This Hue-Label graph contains the five data points as an orangish-red '''<span style | |
2865 | December 8, 2023 | The Wrong Stuff | null | The phantom found Edward Everett Hale a century too early; by the time we invented satellites, the specifics of his 'brick moon' proposal were dismissed as science fiction. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A ghost is approaching Cueball in a workshop. They are surrounded by shop equipment, such as a table with a press on it, and a small pile of what appears to be lumber. Cueball is backing away from the ghost, holding his hands up defensively.]
:Ghost: oooOOOOOOoooo
:[The "ooooo"s of the ghost are written in wavy letters of varying sizes]
:Ghost: ''Build a spaceship out of bricks!''
:Ghost: oooooOOOOOOOOoo
:Cueball: No! Go away!
:[Caption below the panel:]
:The Spruce Goose, the Project Habakkuk Ice Ship, and the Trojan Horse were all work of the Material Phantom, a ghost that wanders the Earth convincing engineers to make giant vehicles out of the wrong stuff. | Multiple times in history, there have been incidents where companies, governments, and engineers have proposed or developed plans for large vehicles composed of unconventional materials. One example is Project Habakkuk (mentioned in the comic), an aircraft carrier which was to be composed of pykrete, a mixture of wood pulp and ice. The comic imagines that all of these proposals are linked together by a single "Material Phantom," a ghost which haunts engineers and convinces them to design giant vehicles made of impractical materials.
The three "wrong material vehicles" mentioned in the comic are:
*The Spruce Goose - The largest flying boat ever made, in spite of its name, almost entirely out of birch wood. Most modern planes of that era were being constructed out of aluminum or some other metal/alloy. Due to wartime restrictions on aluminum usage, the use of birch wood was the next best option. The development of the aircraft was highly troubled due to various factors (including building in wood at an unprecedented scale), and the designers were accused of war-profiteering with an impossible design. The plane did make a single 26-second flight in 1947, well after the end of the war, but all it did was merely prove that the concept was possible. The plane is currently on display at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, United States. Other wooden aircraft of that era, such as the De_Havilland_Mosquito|De Havilland Mosquito, were highly successful. Many early planes made use of wood in their construction, and the skills and knowledge to build an airframe of that kind were still readily available in that era, in a way that they might not be today.
*Project Habakkuk - A proposed aircraft carrier whose hull was to be made out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice). It would have been able to be easily camouflaged as an innocuous iceberg, and it was both stronger than steel (which the Mythbusters proved in a 2008 episode) and did not require voids between the structural elements in order to be buoyant (so could absorb a lot of damage and cannot spring leaks). Although the project excited great enthusiasm from Churchill, it quickly became clear that Pykrete did not scale well as a material, needing to be super-cooled to prevent Creep_(deformation)|creep, requiring a massive cooling system causing expense and engineering challenges to mount until it was concluded that it would cheaper to build traditional steel-alloy hulls, from which ships continue to be built today, given that large quantities of metal were pulled in to prevent the ship from warping under its own mass via extra cooling and structural support. There were also now airfields available to use in various Atlantic islands that could close the air-gap in coverage without having to (effectively) build their own floating island from scratch. The abandoned prototype lasted for several years before it finally melted.
*Trojan Horse - A mythological, giant wooden horse, supposedly used by Ancient Greece|the Greeks to invade the city of Troy. Actual horses are composed, like any other animal, out of meat, bone, and other tissues and bodily fluids.{{citation needed}} In addition, the interior of the Trojan Horse was composed of Greek warriors rather than horse innards.
The title text references 19th-century author Edward Everett Hale and his science fiction novella ''The Brick Moon,'' the earliest known depiction of an artificial satellite and a scientifically-accurate GPS system in fiction. The satellite was made from brick as it is a refractory ceramic material capable of dealing with high heats. The novella is, of course, just a sci-fi story, but the title text states that Hale was actually approached by the Material Phantom, and the novella was a serious proposal for a moon made out of bricks. Ceramics ''are'' widely used in spacecraft today, largely as part of thermal protection systems, as they are lighter than most metals and able to withstand high temperatures.
The title "the Wrong Stuff" may be a play on The Right Stuff, a book/movie/TV series about the pilots engaged in U.S. postwar research with experimental rocket-powered, high-speed aircraft and the astronauts of Project Mercury. In that title, "the right stuff" refers to the figurative material that these men were made of which gave them the bravery to embark on these missions. | |
2866 | December 11, 2023 | Snow | null | For someone who has ostensibly outgrown staying up late waiting for Santa, I do spend an awful lot of time refreshing websites to see if packages are here yet. | :[Above the comic, there is a graph labeled "Time" on the X-axis and "My apparent age" on the Y-axis. The graph is flat until a large instantaneous drop, labeled "The moment it starts to snow". After the drop, the line rises, seemingly logarithmically, but it doesn't reach as high as before.]
:[Under the graph, there are four comic panels. All show Cueball, a desk with a laptop, and a window. The panels line up horizontally like the graph's X-axis.]
:[Window without snow. Cueball at desk, apparently working.]
:[Window with a couple of snowflakes. Cueball at desk, quickly turning around towards the window.]
:[Window with a lot of snow. Cueball jumps excitedly up from his chair, shouting.]
:Cueball: Hey! It's snowing! Outside! There's snow falling! Look! Snow! Hey!
:[Window with a lot of snow. Cueball at desk, apparently working, but possibly looking at the window.] | This comic is about people being excited by snow, which can induce what might be seen as "childish" or less mature behavior. Many people like snow for a variety of reasons; it may be nostalgic for them, in areas where it is infrequent it may be the novelty factor, it may be aesthetically pleasing, they may simply like walking around in snow, etc. The first snow of the 2023-2024 winter occurred in Boston (Randall's hometown) on [https://boston25news.com/news/local/massachusetts-snow-totals-so-far-dec-6-2023/UYUUDAZQGNE3JAOBKPIQVWCOKI/ December 6th], possibly inspiring this comic.
As the graph shows, Randall's "apparent age" drops significantly when snow starts to fall, and while it rises fairly quickly as the initial rush of excitement subsides, it is still lower whenever snow is falling (and possibly beyond this, while it is still lying). Evidently, the mere presence of snow keeps Randall acting somewhat childishly; it may take a lot more time (or reality-inducing 1674: Adult|grown-up events) to catch up to his true age. He can be seen staring out of the window in the fourth panel, obviously still significantly entranced and distracted, even if he is no longer running around in supposedly age-inappropriate excitement.
The title text refers to another common behavior of many adults - 281: Online Package Tracking|constantly refreshing tracking websites to see if a 2837: Odyssey|package has moved - and compares it to the idea of a child who believes in Santa and tries to stay up late enough to see him deliver presents. Constantly refreshing tracking websites is an unproductive behaviour and should be discouraged in favour of other more socially acceptable habits such as constantly refreshing xkcd to check if a new strip is out.
See also 231: Cat Proximity for another event which changes a person's behavior. | |
2867 | December 13, 2023 | DateTime | null | It's not just time zones and leap seconds. SI seconds on Earth are slower because of relativity, so there are time standards for space stuff (TCB, TGC) that use faster SI seconds than UTC/Unix time. T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.] | :[Ponytail is talking to Cueball.]
:Ponytail: Event #1 happened at time T<sub>1</sub>.
:Cueball: Okay.
:Ponytail: Then event #2 happened at time T<sub>2</sub>.
:Cueball: Mhmm.
:Ponytail: How would you calculate how much time elapsed between T<sub>1</sub> and T<sub>2</sub>?
:[The comic splits into two paths, each with a caption at the top.]
:[Path 1, upper right panel]
:Caption: Normal person:
:Cueball: T<sub>2</sub> minus T<sub>1</sub>.
:[Path 2, lower right panel]
:Caption: Anyone who's worked on datetime systems:
:[Cueball has his arms raised.]
:Cueball: '''''It is impossible to know and a sin to ask!''''' | Ponytail asks Cueball how to calculate the time elapsed between two instants. A Cueball not intimately familiar with the complexities of the way humans measure time naively assumes that this is given by the difference of the timestamps. A Cueball who is familiar panics and states that it is impossible to know, and further that it is forbidden to even ask the question.
Randall's use of the term "DateTime systems" covers [https://metacpan.org/pod/DateTime any] [https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html number] [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.datetime?view | |
2868 | December 15, 2023 | Label the States | null | Even with a blank map, a lot of people can only name 45-50 of the 64 states. | :Geography Challenge: Can you label all the states?
:[An unlabeled map of the United States, but instead of 50 states, there are borders for 64.] | File:label the states 2x highlighted.png|thumb|301px|The map with the extra states highlighted.
File:Blank US Map (white on gray and black).svg|thumb|301px|A real map of the United States for comparison.
This is a blank map of the United States. At first glance, it looks correct, because all the large states with distinct shapes are correctly represented, but some states have been added. For example:
* On the west coast, Washington, Oregon, and California all have their normal shapes, but there is a new rectangular state south of Oregon and north of California.
* East of this, two more nearly rectangular states have been added between Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, and Utah.
* A column of five rectangular states has been inserted between Montana/Wyoming/Utah/Arizona and the Dakotas/Nebraska/Colorado/New Mexico.
* Another somewhat rectangular state has been added between South Dakota and Nebraska.
* Ohio and Indiana have been narrowed with a new state being created between them.
* New states shaped like Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina have been added directly south of those states.
* New Hampshire now has a state that looks like its reflection between itself and Maine.
In summary, a (disjointed) row and a whole (slightly staggered) column of states have been added, and two new states have been added between Indiana and Ohio and between New Hampshire and Maine. The external shape of the United States ends up slightly modified to accommodate the new states with generic coastlines or borders contrived to resemble or reflect the actual adjacent ones, at least to the casual glance, as also with the new internal borderlines. As the title text says, there are now 64 states on Randall's map, not 50.
In comic 2394: Contiguous 41 States, the opposite has been done, removing states so that there are 41 states instead of 50 or 64.
The title text comments on the cliché that Americans are bad at civics and geography, parodying comments that Americans cannot name many of the US states. A statistic is mentioned saying that most people can only name 45-50 states, which is almost all of the actual states, but looks poor in comparison to the 64 states in the comic's map. Since the extra fourteen states are made up and do not have names,{{cn}} people will not be able to name them and get a perfect 64/64 score. The cliché is also parodied in 850|850: World According to Americans.
Being mean to people by asking them to name states on bad maps was also mentioned in the title text of 1653: United States Map. | |
2869 | December 18, 2023 | Puzzles | null | Why couldn't the amulet have been hidden by Aunt Alice, who understands modern key exchange algorithms? | :[Possibly teenage versions of Hairy, Jill, Ponytail, and Cueball, listed from left to right, are standing in a line. Hairy is in a thinking pose, Jill faces Hairy, and Ponytail and Cueball are walking to the right; Cueball is pointing off-panel.]
:Hairy: Aunt Gertrude must have left a clue to the amulet's location.
:Jill: Hmm. Wait a minute.
:Jill: '''G'''ertrude. '''G'''.
:Hairy: As in "'''G'''round!"
:Jill: And "di'''G''' a hole!"
:Ponytail: I'll get a shovel!
:Cueball: To the yard!
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Some of the authors of books I read as a kid were '''''terrible''''' at designing puzzles. | Many children's books, especially those read by Randall's generation, feature in-story puzzles. Some of these hold up pretty well decades later, like the ones in Ellen Raskin's award-winning mystery books for kids. Others, however, are…a lot less impressive. Randall doesn't specify which children's books have "terrible" puzzles, but the ''Hardy Boys'' series by Franklin W. Dixon, the ''Boxcar Children'' series by Gertrude Chandler Warner, and the ''Encyclopedia Brown'' series by Donald J. Sobol are all strong possibilities. (The Riddler in the 1960s ''Batman (TV series)|Batman'' TV series famously played the trope for laughs.)
In the panel, characters from one such book (presumably a made-up example) are contemplating a puzzle involving somebody's Aunt Gertrude. The characters guess Gertrude's amulet must be hidden in the Ground, because that starts with a G, like Gertrude, and that they should diG a hole. These guesses are not very practical; it seems unlikely that Aunt Gertrude either (A) chose to be known indefinitely by a G-name purely as a clue about where she hid an amulet, or (B) was inspired by her own name to choose a vaguely relevant hiding place. Even if she ''did'', there are many other words that begin with G, such as Gulf, or Gull, or Go-Get-a-plane-and-fly-to-Greenland, and any of these would be just as plausible "clues."
Moreover, once deciding, even more implausibly, that this "clue" is telling them to dig a hole in the ground, because 'dig' ends with a G, the search is not significantly narrowed as the world is a big place and "underground, somewhere" leaves a huge range of possible locations. You may need {{tvtropes|XMarksTheSpot|at least one more letter}} to narrow the options down. All this leads us to Randall's point — that these connections made by the characters are tenuous at best and are unreasonable to make, especially as part of a riddle.
Aunt Gertrude is probably named after a supporting character in the ''Hardy Boys'' series; the Aunt Gertrude in that series didn't set puzzles, but main characters Frank and Joe Hardy frequently had to decipher clues to find hidden objects. The name may also be a nod to Gertrude Chandler Warner, whose Boxcar Children are an adventurous group of mystery-solving kids like those in the comic.
The title text references Alice and Bob|Alice, a fictional character commonly used in discussions about cryptography. In those discussions, Alice is often sending and receiving encrypted messages, and she would be expected to be able to make a better puzzle than the one shown in the comic. Alice and Bob and other characters from the same set are the reverse of case of Aunt Gertrude, in that they have been given their names to reflect a convenient A, B, C, ... pattern. They have been mentioned previously in xkcd, like in 177: Alice and Bob. Using modern cryptography in lieu of riddles in children's stories was also mentioned in 370: Redwall. | |
2870 | December 20, 2023 | Love Songs | null | The Piña Colada song carves a trajectory across the chart over the course of the song. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Y-axis label:]
:Do you like me?
:[X-axis label:]
:Do I like you?
:[X- and Y-axis values (from bottom left):]
:''NO!!''; No; Unclear or Neutral; Yes; ''YES!!''
:[Top left quarter:]
:No Scrubs
:That Don't Impress Me Much
:Cry Me a River
:We Are Never Ever Ever<!--sic--> Getting Back Together
:[Middle left:]
:You're So Vain
:[Bottom left quarter:]
:I Will Survive
:Somebody That I Used to Know
:You Oughta Know
:[Center:]
:Thank U, Next
:[Top right quarter:]
:Teenage Dream
:Shape of You
:I Will Always Love You
:Call Me Maybe
:[Middle right:]
:Killing Me Softly
:[Bottom right quarter:]
:Girlfriend
:You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'
:You Belong with Me
:Creep | The comic shows an xy-chart of various love songs, graphed according to how the subjects of the song feel. The x-axis represents the narrator/singer's feelings for whomever they are singing to or about, from "No!!" to "Yes!!", while the y-axis represents the other person's feelings for the one singing the song.
The songs can be found in Spotify playlists ([https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1jmHBAybLJIULiBYMctN5R],[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0R1FWH3Hq4Ur08HSNSFtyf?si | |
2871 | December 22, 2023 | Definitely | null | A really mean prank you can play on someone who's picky about words is to add a 'definitely->definitively' autocorrect rule to their keyboard. | :[A list of 12 words with their meanings. The lines between the words and their meaning are aligned, with the words to the left being right-aligned. Above the 12 rows of words there are underlined captions:]
:<u>Word</u> <u>Meaning</u>
:Definitely - Definitely
:Definetly - ''Almost'' definitely
:Definately - Probably
:Definatly - Probably not
:Defenitely - Not telling (it's a surprise)
:Defintely - Per the prophecy
:Definetely - Definitely, maybe
:Definantly - To be decided by coin toss
:Defanitely - In one universe out of 14 million
:Defineatly - Only the gods know
:Definitly - Unless someone cute shows up
:Defiantly - Defiantly
:[Caption below the panel:]
:People think the word "definitely" is often misspelled, but it's actually just several words with different meanings. | The word "''{{wiktionary|definitely}}''" is Commonly misspelled English words#C–D|known to be commonly {{wiktionary|misspelt}}, perhaps because the vowels in the middle syllables are reduced to unstressed centralized vowel|centralized ones that [https://youtu.be/qu4zyRqILYM?t | |
2872 | December 25, 2023 | Hydrothermal Vents | null | Benthic Santas weren't even discovered until the 1970s, but many scientists now believe Christmas may have originally developed around hydrothermal vents and only later migrated to the surface. | :[An undersea landscape is shown. A rock formation goes up from the the middle part op the bottom of the panel. The top of the formation has five "hot-smoker" chimneys of different heights, almost like a hand with the thumb to the right, but the middle finger being the shortest and the "index finger" being somewhat longer than all the others. From all five chimneys thick gray smoke is emitted. The smoke rises almost vertically to start from all five, and the four to the left have their smoke combine rather early and it bulges to the left. The rightmost chimney's smoke bends to the right and only merges with the combined smoke from the others at the top right. Below the chimneys their interior in the rock formation is indicated with dotted lines and the inside of these chimneys are thus displayed. At the bottom all five merge into a large cavity (shown with dotted lines) inside the rock formation. In this cavity there is a liquid in which several items float around, most notably two Santa Claus hats and two large bones surrounded by five smaller blobs of material and several smaller specks. On the outside on the rock formation grow four types of sea-life, a sponge and some sea lilies or the like, one on the left side and three on the right. To the left two fish are swimming near the rock and close to it on the right there is an octopus. There are three labels with lines pointing to the smoke, to the vents, and to the cavity in the rock formation containing the Santa hats and fragments.]
:Top label: Smoke
:Middle label: Chimneys
:Bottom label: Santas being digested
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Ocean fact: Hydrothermal vent black smokers actually evolved as predatory chimney mimics to feed on benthic Santas. | This :Category:Christmas|Christmas comic was released on Christmas Day 2023, in the morning (at least in Randall's timezone in Boston). It is the second Christmas comic using :Category:Facts|Facts, an Ocean Fact in this comic. The first of these was released six years earlier, also on Christmas Day in comic 1933: Santa Facts. In the world above the surface of the sea, Santa Claus had just finished his annual trip around the world when this comic was posted.
The comic claims that there are "{{wiktionary|benthic}} Santas", meaning Santas that deliver gifts Benthic zone|to the seafloor. The joke here is that all Santas may be drawn to 1620: Christmas Settings|go down chimneys by their very existence, and that hydrothermal vents have Aggressive mimicry|evolved to trick undersea Santa into entering them, believing they were real chimneys, and thus getting killed and digested by the vents as seen in the comic. This is not an entirely unknown Pitcher plant|digestive mechanism, although the depicted version goes beyond all known biological processes. This comic is 2559: December 25th Launch|one of the darker-themed Christmas comics, compared to the usual merry xmas comics.
There are many things that are very strange mentioned. There is little to no evidence that actual humans live down deep in the sea, and fish and other undersea creatures are unlikely to know what "Santa" is or understand the concept of Christmas, so it is unclear what the exact ecological niche of "benthic Santas" might be. The comic shows the remains of several "Santas", suggesting that there may be multiple members of this 'Santa' species, in contrast to some assertions in the literature that there is only one (although this proliferation might also help explain the many Santas who appear on street corners, shopping malls, etc.). It is also possible that there is just one extant specimen Santa at any time (perhaps or perhaps not of the specifically subsea variety), whose death invokes the spontaneous appearance of [https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/Slayer a replacement], or causes (clauses?) another transformation into the 'santa' form, Thalassoma_bifasciatum#Sex_change|through socially-mediated dimorphism, from a population of initially non-santaform individuals.
The title text may be referring to abiogenesis, the origin of life. It was thought non-living matter combined into living cells in shallow water through the energy supplied from the sun and lightning. At least, amino acids can be synthesized this way, as proven by the Miller–Urey experiment. A new explanation places the origin of life on hydrothermal vents, as they are rich in chemicals, and rocks there serve as catalysts, with energy coming from earth's heat. Either way, forms of life are known to migrate between environments to fill new (or vacated) niches, after having been established in another. The current residents of hydrothermal vents#Black_smokers|'black smokers' include creatures (like shrimps, worms and crabs) that are known elsewhere, but could theoretically repopulate the surface if there were ever further mass extinctions across the uppermost layers of the real world, as there have been in prior times.
The 1970s timeframe likely refers to the discovery in 1977 of hydrothermal vent ecosystems near the Galapagos Rift, which formed the basis of this new theory of abiogenesis. By suggesting that the "benthic Santas" were part of this discovery, the comic implies that a key aspect of Christmas folklore might also have its roots in these deep-sea ecosystems.
This was the second time in three years that Santa is killed in Randall's Christmas comics, the first being 2559: December 25th Launch. Before this he has only killed Santa back in 2008 in the 2008 Christmas Special. | |
2873 | December 27, 2023 | Supersymmetry | null | High-speed collisions at the Baby Park track may support the hypothesis that Daisy is her own evil twin, a theory first suggested by Nintendo in the game Majorana's Mask. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[List of characters with their heads on the left side and particles with their depictions on the right side.]
:Mario : Proton
:Luigi : Neutron
:Wario : Antiproton
:Waluigi : Antineutron
:Peach : Electron
:Daisy : Electron neutrino
:Free Luigi decay:
:[An illustration of Luigi → Mario + Peach + Daisy (shown with the characters' heads).]
:[Label below Daisy:] (Right-handed)
:[Caption below the panel:]
:The theory of Supersymmetric Mario Bros suggests that each fundamental particle has a Super Nintendo partner. | This comic imagines a "theory of supersymmetric Mario Bros." that merges the theoretical physics concept of supersymmetry (explained #Background on subatomic particles|below) with another "super" thing, Super Mario Bros., originally developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System and later the ''Super'' Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), two home game consoles popular during Randall's childhood. Mario game characters are equated with certain subatomic particles, with the central protagonists Mario and Luigi (his brother) comprising the center of an atom (proton and neutron).
The "Free Luigi Decay" diagram is a Feynman diagram, a particle physics depiction of interactions between particles. This diagram reinterprets the process of free neutron decay, in which a neutron that is left alone — not part of a nucleus with a proton — is unstable, such that one of its constituent quarks will transform, making a more stable proton, by emitting a W<sup>-</sup> boson (not shown, or renamed), after around 10 to 30 minutes. The boson will then almost immediately decay into a suitable electron and neutrino. In Free Luigi Decay, the Luigi particle decay leads into there being a Mario, a Peach, and a notably right-handed Daisy, which would imply that this particular Daisy represents a sterile neutrino. The instability of a Luigi particle could be a reference to the fact that Luigi is almost never seen without Mario; decades of Mario games and spinoffs have produced just a few Luigi-only video games, such as ''Mario Is Missing!'' and the ''Luigi's Mansion (franchise)|Luigi's Mansion'' series.
The Mario characters and their subatomic particle equivalents:
{| class | |
2874 | December 29, 2023 | Iceland | null | The HVAC bill for installing the Gulf Stream was enormous. | :[Cueball is standing in front of a board and pointing to it with a stick. In front of him is a long table with White Hat, Blondie, another Cueball and Megan sitting on the long side of the table (the same side, the one away from the reader) with Hairbun sitting at the end of the table furthest from Cueball. All are sitting on office chairs and looking at Cueball. On the board there are two figures and some unreadable text. The top figure is an skewed ellipse with some dots inside. There is a label text beneath it. The next large figure depicts an island with a rift going down its middle. The rift extends on either side of the island. There is a label above it. Beneath this there is a box with four lines of unreadable text and above it a heading. Cueball's stick points to the island.]
:Cueball: Okay, we'll make it an island on a mid-ocean ridge to satisfy the mantle people and the oceanographers.
:Cueball-like man: But what about my glaciers?
:Cueball: We can just pile them on the volcanoes.
:Hairbun: Don't forget that it has to be near a pole - I was promised aurora!
:[Caption below the comic:]
:Iceland was designed by a committee of planetary scientists that was trying to satisfy everyone. | This comic is a reference to the strange geography of Iceland, owing to the sheer number of notable geographical features in such a small area, leading to the conclusion by Randall that Iceland had to have been created by a committee of various planetary scientists all vying to have their ideas implemented into their 'project', that being Iceland.
The comic depicts a scene of a Cueball giving a presentation to a bunch of members sitting around a table, that being White Hat, Blondie, another Cueball, Megan and Hairbun, in the order left to right. It may have been inspired by Iceland being recently in the news for its 2023 Sundhnúkur eruption|notable volcanic activity, although at least this one isn't one of the ones Eyjafjallajökull|under a glacier, so only (currently) causing fairly localised inconvenience.
Noting that being nearer the magnetic pole might more frequently provide you with an aurora, but the more severe (on the K-index#The Kp-index and estimated Kp-index|Kp index) geomagnetic storms invoke their auroral displays at lower latitudes. Once you get a Kp of 5 (out of a theoretical 9), Iceland may be far ''too'' close to the pole to fully appreciate the sight.
A possible alternative viewpoint that can be taken in this comic is about projects that have unrealistic targets (and often fail as a result). The bottom text has already set itself a very unrealistic target by attempting to satisfy 'everyone', even though such a task would be rendered impossible should a single instance of conflicting desires ever occur. In addition, the various ideas that the characters are each vying for to be implemented into the project (that being Iceland) in this comic would each likely require significant resources to accomplish, causing the project requirements to balloon so drastically that meeting its targets would become impossible. This process is often described as feature creep.
HVAC in the title text is jargon for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. The Gulf Stream is a warm and swift Atlantic ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and flows through the Straits of Florida and up the eastern coastline of the United States, then veers east near 36 degrees latitude and moves toward Northwest Europe as the North Atlantic Current, providing Iceland with a milder and more liveable climate than would be otherwise expected for its latitude. The electrical costs associated with providing airflow at a certain temperature, over such a vast area would prove incredibly expensive, not to mention the fact that the Gulf Stream is not in fact an artificial phenomenon powered by electricity, but rather a natural one.{{cn}} | |
2876 | January 3, 2024 | Range Safety | null | The Range Mischief Officer has modified the trajectory to add a single random spin somewhere in the flight, but won't tell us where. | :[A rocket is on a launchpad with a tower next to it as seen from far away. There are two birds flying to the right of them and one bird flying to the left of them. To the left of the launchpad there is a very small building. Much farther to the right there are two smaller buildings, and a voice is emanating from the largest and right most building which also has two antennas on top. The scene is shown in black silhouette on a white background.]
:Voice: There are reports of thunderstorms in the downrange area.
:[Same scene, except there are now only two visible birds, both flying on the left side of the rocket.]
:Voice: The Range Safety Officer has ordered a launch hold.
:[Almost same scene, but panned to the right so the smallest building to the left is not shown and a third building to the right of the other two buildings can be seen. Birds are now flying with one on either side of the rocket. Two voices are now emanating from the middle building.]
:Voice: But the Range '''''Danger''''' Officer wants to launch the rocket toward the biggest thunderstorm.
:Voice 2: Okay, why do we even '''''have''''' that position? | A Range Safety Officer is responsible for ensuring the safety of the flight of a missile or launch vehicle – such as the rocket in the comic. This involves tasks like creating a launch corridor clear of any aircraft or ships, as well as ensuring that atmospheric conditions are favorable for a launch.
In this comic, the RSO has noticed reports of thunderstorms downrange, and has ordered a hold as conditions are no longer favorable.
Randall continues on by imagining the opposite position, a "Range Danger Officer," responsible for ensuring that the flight of the vehicle is dangerous. Flying into the biggest thunderstorm may qualify as dangerous - in 1987 an ATLAS rocket launched into thunderstorm conditions by NASA was destroyed by lightning strikes that caused electrical malfunction.
Finally, someone on the staff justifiably{{cn}} wonders what reason there is for that position to exist.
The title text imagines a Range Mischief Officer, responsible for mischief – generally defined as minor/playful annoyance. Introducing a random unknown spin may qualify, since the spin shouldn't affect the flight too much, but would make all the flight engineers nervous about the flight as they seek to understand why telemetry is inverted (or why it is not!), as they work out the cause and whether it is symptomatic of bigger underlying issues or just a technical change of reference to an otherwise correct flight trajectory. Whether the spin is purely axial or end-over-end would probably matter greatly!
The Range Danger Officer and Range Mischief Officer both sound like suitable positions for Black Hat, xkcd's resident classhole.
This is the second holiday season comic in 3 years to depict rocket safety officers. A Range Safety Officer was also mentioned in the title text of 2559: December 25th Launch, where the RSO shoots down Santa so he cannot interfere with the rocket launch. | |
2877 | January 5, 2024 | Fever | null | Hypothermia of below 98.6 K should be treated by leaving the giant molecular cloud and moving to the vicinity of a star. | :[A table is shown with two columns with twelve rows. The columns are labeled and there is a heading above table:]
:<big>Treating a Fever</big>
:[Column labels]:
:Fever
:Treatment
:38°C-40°C (100°F-104°F)
:Fluids, rest, normal doctor stuff
:40°C-45°C
:Hospital, advanced doctor stuff
:45°C-100°C
:Exit that steam cloud immediately
:100°C-400°C
:Stop, drop, and roll
:400°C-500°C
:Return to Earth from Venus ASAP
:500°C-1,500°C
:Please climb out of that volcano
:1,500°C-5,000°C
:Turn your tunneling machine around and come back up to the surface
:5,000°C-6,000°C
:No, the surface of the '''''Earth''''', not the Sun
:6,000°C-50,000°C
:Wait, that's not the Sun. What star are you visiting? Come back right now.
:50,000°C-20,000,000°C
:At least stay on the '''''surface''''' of the star instead of diving down to the core
:20,000,000°C-10,000,000,000°C
:You know, you could've picked a normal star instead of one that's exploding
:10,000,000,000°C or higher
:I hope you're enjoying your visit to the Big Bang but you should really come back home immediately | This comic mimics [https://www.bannerhealth.com/healthcareblog/-/media/images/project/healthcareblog/hero-images/2020/05/fevers-at-every-age-infographic.ashx?h | |
2878 | January 8, 2024 | Supernova | null | They're a little cagey about exactly where the crossover point lies relative to the likelihood of devastating effects on the planet. | :[A graph is shown where the axes are labeled and arrows are pointing upward above the Y axis label and to the right above the X axis label. There is a single line on the graph that peaks close to the Y axis, where it reaches close to the top of the drawn part of the Y axis. Then the line approaches the X axis asymptotically towards the far right. But closer to the Y axis, the peak line goes almost vertically down, and continues far below the "bottom of the chart", outside of the boundary of the graph that was only supposed to be above the X axis.]
:Y axis: How happy astronomers are
:X axis: How far away the new supernova is | A supernova occurs when a heavy star can no longer produce enough energy to fight its own gravity, e.g. because its fuel runs out (type II supernova|type II) or because it has accreted too much mass from a binary companion (type Ia supernova|type Ia). The collapsing mass leads to a violent explosion, one of the most interesting events for astronomers to observe and one that can be used to glean information about the universe.
At first glance, the curved line on this graph might match that of the typical light curve of a type Ia supernova, constructed by plotting the brightness of the supernova as a function of time, with negative values indicating a logarithmic luminosity scale (below zero means a linear luminosity of less than the unit amount). In the event of a supernova, a star (which may previously have been unremarkable) becomes notably bright over a short period of time before trailing off again to leave a stellar remnant and expanding cloud of ejecta. Around the time of this comic's release new constraints on the expansion of the universe from the observation of type Ia supernovae were [https://news.fnal.gov/2024/01/final-supernova-results-from-dark-energy-survey-offer-unique-insights-into-the-expansion-of-the-universe/ published], which used the regular shape of their light curves to establish a distance scale.
However, this comic reimagines the shape of a light curve graph to depict the relationship between the distance of supernovae from Earth, and the consequent happiness of astronomers, which happens to take a similar form. The further away the supernova occurs, the less detail can be learned from it, so the graph beyond the maximum happiness distance appears to show an {{wiktionary|asymptotic}} approach to less and less astronomer happiness. On the other hand, a near-earth supernova close enough to flood the Earth with significant amounts of gamma and X-ray radiation might be considered ''too'' close. Its radiation could destroy life on Earth, or at least significantly harm the biosphere, which would be a bad thing.{{cn}} Astronomers (and many others) would be really unhappy if that happened, shown as a sharp drop in happiness towards smaller distances and negative happiness values for a supernova that is very close. In fact, if a supernova were to instantly destroy Earth, or kill off all life on it, astronomers may no longer be able to be happy or unhappy (depending on your theological/spiritual feelings), so distance values close to zero have undefined astronomer happiness values.
Many astronomers watch and study the stars in the night sky, even those that don't change appreciably over human timescales, but observing and recording such a huge event would be interesting for many reasons. Humans can observe some supernovae with the naked eye, especially if they occur within Milky Way|our own galaxy. A potential supernova in the news lately is Betelgeuse, a red giant star that is the left shoulder in the constellation Orion. About 430 light years from the Sun, it has been pulsating, dimming and brightening over exceedingly short time scales compared to the tens of millions of years such a big star is expected to burn. Betelgeuse should be far enough away from Earth that the inevitable explosion would be safe enough for life on Earth (although [https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/earth-danger-betelgeuse-supernova some assessments] are not so sure), but it ''will'' outshine all other stars in the night sky, competing with the Moon, and could even be visible during daytime. This would be a dream come true for many astronomers and something obvious to others interested in the night sky. In the first :Category:Stargazing | Stargazing comic, 1644: Stargazing | 1644, the wish that it goes supernova (in Randall|Randall's lifetime) is clearly expressed.
Since this ''should'' be safe for us, and since it would be a spectacle not seen at least since the start of recorded history, and unlikely to be seen again by human eyes, this would make astronomers very happy, not just from all they could learn, but also from all the increased interest in gazing at the sky with the 'new' star (and then seeing what happens to it next).
There are thought to be about three supernovae occurring per century within our own galaxy (most of which are much further away than Betelgeuse), and many other galaxies within which a supernova explosion can be detected. These remain useful to see, and are often studied as intensively as possible, but have decreasing amounts of thrill to them and are harder to notice/record in the early stages of the explosion (or immediately before, to add even more understanding).
The title text expands upon the point of "too close" supernovae, claiming that astronomers are not quite clear or perhaps unwilling to admit how close they would like a supernova to be. If it were {{what if|73|close enough}} to severely impact the quality of human life, they would presumably not be happy, but the title text suggests that they might actually be willing to accept some trouble on Earth if they get to see a supernova comparatively close by.
This is the second comic in a row that mentions exploding stars, after 2877: Fever, which like this comic is also a :Category:Charts|Charts comic. | |
2879 | January 10, 2024 | Like This One | null | A lot of sentences undergo startling shifts in mood if you add 'like this one' to the end, but high on the list is 'I'm a neurologist studying dreams.' | :[Megan and Cueball are facing Ponytail, who holds her hand out palm up.]
:Megan: So what do you do?
:Ponytail: I'm a researcher studying gas molecules like this one.
:[Below the panel there is an explanation of the comics idea.]
:Fields of research where you can add "...like this one" after you say what you study:
:[Bulleted list of various separate fields of study.]
::Gas molecules
::Gravitational fields
::Planetary magnetospheres
::Sound waves
::Habitable worlds
::Languages
::Social interactions
::Skin microbes | In this comic, Megan is asking Ponytail what she does, presumably in a professional context. Ponytail responds with "I'm a researcher studying gas molecules like this one" and then she indicates the air above her outstretched hand, or possibly pointing with a finger, which, indeed, does contain or point to gas molecules. However, it would not be at all clear which one molecule she was supposed to be identifying, since they are too small for human sight to distinguish. Identifying a specific gas molecule in this way does not provide the listener with any useful information.
The caption under the comic lists further examples of things that researchers study and are, by necessity, around them either all the time, or at any time they are talking to another person, making the researchers truthfully able to respond "...like this one" when asked about their research, despite the fact that such a statement doesn't tangibly identify anything to the other person.
* '''Gas molecules''': Gas molecules generally share a few basic physical characteristics simply because they're in a gaseous state. A researcher would thus be able to make reference to their study of (any particular kinds of) gas molecules as, unless they happen to be researching something incredibly exotic, the gas molecules they were studying would probably share at least something with the gas molecules found in the atmosphere. A more restrictive interpretation would be that the researcher is, in fact, studying particular kinds of Atmosphere of Earth|gas molecules that are in the atmosphere.
* '''Gravitational fields''': Every object with mass has a gravitational field that extends, however weakly, throughout the universe.
* '''Planetary magnetospheres''': The Earth Earth's magnetic field|has a magnetic field, which covers the entire planet and any conversations taking place there.
* '''Sound waves''': Most in-person conversations are mediated with sound waves created by human vocal cords, and those that are not (text or sign languages) are almost certainly in the presence of background noise.
* '''Habitable worlds''': As of 2024, all humans converse on or near the habitable world of Earth.{{cn}} Depending on your definition of 'world', any environment in which a human could survive (and therefore hold a conversation) could be considered a 'habitable world'.
* '''Languages''': Conversations such as this one are possible only if one or more languages are involved.
* '''Social interactions''': Any conversation constitutes a social interaction.
* '''Skin microbes''': For better or worse, a wide variety of microbial organisms Skin flora|live on the skin of any outstretched hand.
The title text moves into inverse cases, where it would be highly unusual or potentially disconcerting for an example of the research subject to be present at the time of the conversation. In the example given, for a neurologist to say "I'm a neurologist studying dreams ''like this one''", would imply that your conversation with them (or your entire consciousness) is itself a dream. | |
2880 | January 12, 2024 | Sheet Bend | null | A left-handed sheet bend creates a much weaker connection, especially under moderate loads. | :[Above the drawing there is a header. Below the header there is a double-core wire going in from the left and stopping just past the middle of the picture. It shows how the inside of the wire looks and how the silver and golden wires inside are connected to two rectangular pieces of silver and golden material respectively. The golden piece is to the left and the silver piece to the right, closest to the end of the wire. Beneath this wire is shown two double-core wires forming a knot of the sheet bend type. Here it becomes clear that the silver and golden pieces are on the outside of the wires (but connected to the wires running inside the wires). In the knotted part of the wires gold touches gold and silver touches silver, without them touching the other color. Beneath this knot there is a label for the connector.]
:Cursed Connectors #46:
:The Sheet Bend | This is the seventh installment in the series of :Category:Cursed Connectors|Cursed Connectors and presents Cursed Connectors #46: The Sheet Bend. At the time of release this was the lowest number used for a cursed connector, replacing 2495: Universal Seat Belt|#65: Universal Seat Belt (with 2507: USV-C|#280: USV-C being the one with the highest number).
This comic shows two double-core cables being joined in a knot to make an electrical connection. The knot used to tie the two halves of the cable is a sheet bend, which is often used to join two ropes of different thicknesses, and explains the name for this type of cursed connector, which seems to be made by ensuring each cable end is terminated with identical electrical connections to the outer sleeving in a manner similar to various 'ring' connections in Phone connector (audio)|'phone' connectors, but as significantly longer and more separated sleeves.
In contrast to more normal methods, Randall has proposed yet another of his 'cursed' connectors. This one requires ''no'' additional plugs, sockets, enclosures or even tools to use. Any two cables with such ends can be brought together and simply knotted together. This particular knot, and the specific spacing of its two external conductors, appears to be chosen in order to rather elegantly create consistent connections between the respective contacts, with a minimum of fuss.
However, there are potentially many unaddressed but conspicuous problems with this connection method, thus rendering it a 'cursed' connector. Among the issues are:
* The need to have suitable ends to any cables, which would involve issues in the manufacture (and the materials used) as cable's cores must be separately tapped and reliably connected to an external length of conductive sleeving.
* The consistent ability of a cabler to tie the correct knot, which is a skill that will need practice. Done wrongly the electrical connections may not be made correctly, or at all (including as discussed in the title text).
* Even if initially tied correctly, knots can slip or distort when subsequently pulled more taut.
* Even if the user is a competent and consistent knot-tier, this is inherently more effort, and therefore less convenient, than the more usual practice of simply pushing two connectors together.
* The external conducting patches of the cable are an uncommon feature of electrical junctions, with issues in both high-power and low-power situations.
** If the cables are supposed to carry high voltages, any bare conductors ought to be safely isolated from easy contact with equipment/people. In particular, plugs and sockets that carry anything approaching mains-voltages have active and passive elements integrated which protect the person connecting or disconnecting the equipment. There is no physical precaution visible to protect the person tying or untying the cable from potential shock. Instead, they must rely upon the ''other'' end of the potentially 'live' cable being disconnected. And, when left unattended, there would continue to be a high risk of injury (including death), fire or more basic damage due to the lack of any proper physical isolation.
** Low-voltage cables that pass signals between equipment (e.g. networking data or audio signals) are susceptible to external contact disrupting the flow. Random static charges, built up and transfered into the connector, instead make other equipment or people the potential threat to the cabled-up equipment, causing disruption to the normal purpose of the cable, where a more standard plug-and-socket/hard-wired connection would not.
* The bending, twisting and rubbing of the cables each time the cables are connected and disconnected will very likely cause wear and damage over time.
* The knot provides a possible snag point by which the cable could be caught; anything which catches or tugs on the knot could cause disconnection.
The title text says that a left-handed sheet bend would provide a weaker connection. The difference between a left-handed and right-handed sheet knot is that the two free ends of the knotted 'cords' are in the same orientation for a right-handed sheet knot (here, both on the lower side of the image), but on opposite sides for a left-handed sheet knot. A left-handed sheet bend provides less strength to the knot, due to the possibility of distorting (e.g. Knot#Capsizing|''capsizing'') and/or allowing one or both cables to pull through the knot.
This makes the title text a pun on the double meaning of "moderate load", which could be a moderate amount of physical tension applied through the cables ''or'' a moderate amount of electrical current passing through them. Together, it would be expected that tension drawing two conductive surfaces together would create less resistance between them, strengthening the electrical connection as well, but only if the knot holds as expected.
A knot was also the subject of the relatively recent 2738: Omniknot.
And yet, Randall just made another cursed connector. | |
2881 | January 15, 2024 | Bug Thread | null | After some account issues, we've added 6 new people from the beach house rental website support forum. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Part of a discussion thread in progress on an online forum is shown. Each comment has the writer's avatar to the left of the text and small illegible text immediately above the text. Part of the first comment's text is cut off at the top.]
:Commenter #1: Same issue here.
:Commenter #2: I'm having this problem too. None of the posted fixes work.
:Commenter #3: Same.
:Commenter #4: +1. So frustrating.
:Commenter #5: I'm still having this. Did you all ever figure out a fix?
:Commenter #6: Same problem as everyone. I tried the steps in the posts <u>here</u>, <u>here</u>, and <u>here</u>. Nothing.
:Commenter #7: Add me to the list.
:Commenter #8: Same. Ugh. Can't believe this thread is 5 years old now.
:Commenter #9: Where does everyone live? Do we want to get a beach house for a weekend or something?
:[Caption below the image:]
:At some point, you just have to give up on fixing the bug and embrace the fact that you have dozens of new friends. | A bug thread is an online discussion about unintended behavior in a program, also known as a bug. Bug threads may be found on bug trackers, such as Github or Bugzilla, on technical forums such as StackOverflow, or on general product user forums.
Most bug threads have a rule to only leave a comment if you have something insightful to add{{Actual citation needed}}, such as being able to reproduce how the bug occurs or possible solutions to resolving it. In practice, this rule is often ignored and many threads end up with multiple people simply commenting that the bug still exists. It could be argued that this, in itself, is additional information, since it gives an indication of how widespread and/or persistent the problem is. Those who are perfectly content with a product have few reasons to participate in a bug thread, so those seeking help will tend to mostly read posts by the others who are, or have been, seeking help, if no one has provided a proper solution.
The exact nature of the bug in the comic is unknown, but there are multiple people reporting the problem (based upon their distinctive profile pictures), indicating that this is not a case of a rare problem where 979: Wisdom of the Ancients|only one or two people have ever been known to be affected. Most of the visible posts just state the poster's inclusion in the list of those affected by the bug, either with a one word reply ("Same"), or a shorthand expression of emotion ("Like button|+1. So frustrating."), although a couple have stated that existing troubleshooting methods haven't worked for them, with one even providing three links to the specific 'solutions' that they have already seen and (unsuccessfully) tried. There appear to be no official representatives of the Developer#Computers|'devs', or any other knowledgeable users, providing actual workarounds or seeking further information about the problem, at least within this small window upon the collected messages.
Although we cannot see the unreadable timestamp information on the posts, one author (the penultimate, using a White Hat image) makes the observation that the problem has now been ongoing for five years. This is followed by a Cueball-identified user proposing that this group of like-minded individuals may enjoy meeting up in the physical world (perhaps even in lieu of fixing the bug). They suggest leasing a beachfront property for a weekend, which is more suggestive of taking a break than for brainstorming possible bug resolutions (although that type of event isn't unknown). Whether this is Randall, or not, his own follow-up comic commentary suggests that bonding over such adversity is as good a reason for friendship as any.
The title text reveals that the meet-up was actually attempted, suggesting that there were at least some still active (and still bug-bound?) participants of the thread. They apparently encountered (potentially unrelated) issues with an online service through which they booked the vacation venue, and have extended the general invitation (venue permitting) to several other new acquaintances who have likewise fallen foul of the holiday-home service's own problematic implementation, likely having started to similarly bond witin the bug-thread/forum where this latter issue must have stubbornly remained similarly unresolved. These new additions presumably have no interest in the original issue, but have been invited purely for social reasons.
979: Wisdom of the Ancients also refers to an online discussion thread about a bug, and 1305: Undocumented Feature also involves a tech support forum which is eventually used only for socializing. | |
2882 | January 17, 2024 | Net Rotations | null | For decades I've been working off the accumulated rotation from one long afternoon on a merry-go-round when I was eight. | :[Cueball is rotating around himself with only one foot on the ground, the other leg raised and bend above the ground and with his arms crossed in front of his chest. There are five circular curves around Cueball from head to legs to indicate this rotary motion. He rotates in front of a whiteboard. On the left of the board there are two vertical helix-like curves going from near the top to the bottom. They are crossing over each other at five points, the first four crossings close to the top, and then one near the bottom. Next to this there are ten rows of illegible scribbles, then a line, then another row of scribbles then a line and at the bottom a row of scribbles which is circled in. There is a large thought bubble above Cueball to indicate that he is thinking to himself while rotating in front of his calculations on the whiteboard.]
:Cueball (thinking): ...and three lefts for going down the stairwell at work, two rights from cloverleaf interchanges, minus one for the Earth's rotation...
:Cueball (thinking): Okay, that's a net of 17 right.
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Spacetime health tip: Remember to cancel out your accumulated turns at the end of each day to avoid worldline torsion. | This is another one of Randall|Randall's :Category: Tips|Tips, this time a Spacetime health tip.
This comic may refer to a thing that some people with OCD do, which is to spin around to get rid of "net rotations," hence the title of this comic. Cueball (perhaps representing Randall?) takes this one step beyond the typical person with OCD - he calculates the net rotations each day and spins around at the end of the day to cancel this out. In this case, he would be spinning left 17 rotations to return to zero.
The offered reason for the necessity to do this is a physics joke: the reference to spacetime and to one's "worldline" has to do with relativity and the Einstein-Cartan theory, which is an extension of Einstein's general relativity. The theory suggests a coupling between the intrinsic spin of elementary particles (fermions) and the torsion of spacetime, and this comic appears to humorously extrapolate this idea to even supermolecular structures like a human, telling readers to "cancel out your accumulated turns at the end of each day to avoid worldline torsion", where in reality, it is highly unlikely the spin on such a large scale would cause any torsion in anyone's worldline, or their path traced by a particle or observer in spacetime.
A mobile device with position and orientation sensing might be able to keep track of one's net rotations, eliminating the need for calculations. One would need only to do one's spinning while monitoring the device to see when it returned to zero.
The caption suggests that this is healthy and necessary/highly recommended to do this. However, most people don’t, and most people are still OK.{{Citation needed}} In fact, xkcd's own characters are perfectly OK with 162: Angular Momentum|accumulating net rotations and 2679: Quantified Self|similar topological excesses.
Possibly a reference to the 1966 novel, [//archive.org/details/revolvingboy0000frie The Revolving Boy] by Gertrude Friedberg whose protagonist suffered from being out of correct positioning depending on the number of turns he was forced to make in his everyday life.
The title text mentions that Cueball was on a merry-go-round when he was eight and he accumulated so many rotations that he's still trying to counter these rotations to this day. | |
2883 | January 19, 2024 | Astronaut Guests | null | They didn't bring us a gift, but considering the kinetic energy of a bottle of wine at orbital speed, that's probably for the best. | :[Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, and Hairbun are eating around a table. Cueball is leaning on the back of his chair and has his palm out.]
:Cueball: We don't have houseguests often, but we once had six astronauts over for dinner.
:Hairbun: Oh, wow!
:Cueball (muttering): <small>''…for 7½ milliseconds in mid-August 2012.''</small>
:[Caption below the panel:]
: If you spend enough time looking at orbital records and property lines, you can make this claim in a lot of places. | In this comic, Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, and Hairbun can all be seen eating dinner together. Presumably, Ponytail and Hairbun were invited over for dinner, as, to impress them, Cueball misleadingly claims that they previously "had six astronauts over for dinner." Normally, this would be interpreted as the astronauts being friends with the hosts (which confers social prestige), going inside their house, and eating. As it turns out, the astronauts only briefly passed overhead while in orbit, and, by chance, this happened during dinnertime. This is a pun on the word "over", as the personnel of the International Space Station are overhead when it passes above you; yet they did not go "over ''to'' someone's house" in the sense that English speakers would usually assume.
Cueball may also be considering the property lines to extend up indefinitely (just like in "What If?" article "{{what if|161|Star Ownership}}"), causing the astronauts to 1475: Technically|technically be at their house despite being hundreds of miles away, vertically.
The astronauts in question were presumably occupying the International Space Station, which has an orbital period of between 90 and 93 minutes (depending on its altitude) or 5400 to 5580 seconds.[https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Tools/orbitTutorial.htm] If the astronauts were "over" for 7½ milliseconds, that would be somewhere between 1.34x10⁻⁶ and 1.39x10⁻⁶ of an orbit. Earth's circumference (at the equator) being approximately 40,000 kilometres (24,850 miles), the station was apparently "over" for a ground distance of between 53.9 m and 55.7 m (177 to 183 feet). That would imply quite a large property, but may also consider the astronauts' locations within the ISS, which is 109 m (356 feet) long. (The effect of 1276: Angular Size|angular size is small in this case because the ISS's elevation is small compared to the radius of the Earth. The route traced by the ISS in orbit is only slightly larger than its projection at ground level.)
The caption makes Cueball's statement even less impressive, alleging that statements like it are correct in many places. This would make it uninteresting as a coincidence. It can only happen for latitudes of less than 51.64° north or south, which is as far as the orbital inclination of the ISS takes it, leaving almost 21.6% of the Earth's surface never directly "over"ed. Nonetheless, these areas of the globe will be, overall, significantly more sparsely populated than those that are "over"ed, meaning that the claim could be made in much more than 88.4% of places, assuming that by "places" we mean "properties where people are likely to be having dinner".
The title text suggests that Cueball didn't want a gift (a bottle of wine) from the astronauts. The kinetic energy of a 1.2 kg (full) bottle of wine travelling at the linear velocity of the International Space Station (8000 m/s) is on the order of [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i | |
2884 | January 22, 2024 | Log Alignment | null | A video can have a log scale that's misaligned with both the time AND space axes. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Distorted bar graph on top of gray log scale lines in the background that are slightly tilted, with the lower ends on the left]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:There's actually no rule in math that says your log scales have to be aligned with your graph axes. | In the comic, we see a background distribution of straight and parallel (but notably off-orthogonal) lines, such as might normally define the log-magnitude on a log-log or semi-log graph. But there are no perpendicular gradations ''and'' the bar graph drawn upon it appears to have no relation with the background, drawn distorted in an almost Salvador Dalí|Dalíesque manner, as if it were a projection of one twisted in 3d space. Both its bars and the base/vertical axes seem to have no relation to the supposed underlying log-scale.
With the slight exception of the bar tops crossing the log lines at an angle, and the curved vertical axis having graduation (scale)|graduation ticks that bear no linear ''or'' log relation with the intersecting background, the distorted bars only travel unidirectionally across the underlying parallels and ''could'' feasibly be read as indicating a definitive magnitude (or range) of some kind. Or at least could with number-labels to give an idea of what values to associate with each log-line. That two bars appear from outside the frame of the comic (the base axis having fallen out of the bottom of the frame) might not even matter, so long as we can work out what quality or sample each of the bars represents (being similarly unlabeled).
The humour in the comic is that a more practical log-chart can be seen as the result of logarithmically compressing a normal chart in one or both axes. Normal parallel and perpendicular axes remain straight lines when doing this; lines that aren't parallel or perpendicular to the squishing process get turned into curves of the exact kind depicted. A plot ''can'' be made according to measures not consistent with the graph axes, especially where [https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Curvature-introduced-by-pen-type-recording-system-Comparison-of-a-raw-seismogram-showing_fig5_364100386 other factors dictate the plotting], but then it is more common to make use of Graph paper#Examples|variant grid systems.
Skewed log charts are real and occur in fields of science with useful applications. For example, a "Skew-T log-P diagram" depicts the relationship between temperature and pressure of a parcel of air in the atmosphere. On this chart, the x-axis is skewed with relation to the rest of the graph, and its isotherms, or lines of equal temperature, slant diagonally upwards and to the right of the diagram. The y-axis is normal and represents pressure on a log scale. A more detailed explanation can be found [https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/upperair/skew-t-log-p-diagrams here], and there are several related pressure/temperature charts which optimise the dimensional comparisons and skewings to allow for the results of somewhat codependent variables (such as normal changes along a slice of altitudes) to produce lines that are more recognisably consistent, or revealing of actual signature changes that provide more key information to those who study such diagrams.
The title text further reinforces the concept of misalignment by stating that the time axis represented by the progressive changing of a moving image can be misaligned against (by the other elements of the data within the video itself, including any log scale element), adding at least one further dimension through which to twist and skew axial and non-axial components of such a dynamic graph. It's possible this may be a reference to cutting between scenes in TV shows. | |
2885 | January 24, 2024 | Spelling | null | Any time I misspell a word it's just because I have too much integrity to copy answers from the dictionary. | :[Cueball is sitting on an office chair at a desk and looking at a laptop while resting his hands on it. Megan is standing behind him and looking at the laptop as well.]
:Megan: When I can't spell a word I usually just Google and copy and paste it from the results.
:Cueball: Yeah, but I can't do that '''''here!!'''''
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Why spelling "plagiarism" is especially hard | Search engines like Google offer the correct spelling of most misspelled words. Some people get help with hard-to-spell words like "plagiarism" by entering their best guess into Google, then copy-pasting the correct version.
Cueball has an unusually strict interpretation of {{dict|plagiarism}} in which copying the ''individual word'' "plagiarism" without attribution would be plagiarizing, and this misplaced integrity makes him morally opposed to doing so.
He also does not consider the option to cite his Google search of the often misspelled word as a source when including the correct spelling "plagiarism" in his document:
"plagerism - Google Search." Google, https://www.google.com/search?q | |
2886 | January 26, 2024 | Fast Radio Bursts | null | Dr Petroff has also shown that the Higgs boson signal was actually sparks from someone microwaving grapes, the EHT black hole photo was a frozen bagel someone left in too long, and the LIGO detection was just someone slamming the microwave door too hard. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball standing behind a lectern, with a poster hung from the ceiling behind him, raising his hand]
: Potential sources of fast radio bursts:
:(1) Energetic stellar-sized astrophysical objects floating in space
:Cueball: We're pretty sure this is what most of them are.
:[Close-up on Cueball, not raising hand.]
:(2) Microwave ovens in the observatory break room
:Cueball: This was some of them, oops. (Petroff et. al., 2015)
:(3) Energetic steller-sized microwave ovens floating in space
:Cueball: We think this one is unlikely.
: [Zoom out back to perspective of first panel.]
:(4) Energetic stellar-sized astrophysical objects in the observatory break room
:Cueball: This is almost certainly not it, though we're sending a grad student to double-check. | Cueball is giving a presentation, stating the different sources of fast radio bursts, which are short high-energy signals which have been detected by astronomers, but whose sources are not known. His team is pretty sure that most of these bursts are energetic stellar objects in space - that is, astronomical phenomena.
He then says that some of them are caused by microwave ovens, citing Dr. Emily Petroff's work on identifying the apparent source of "Peryton (astronomy)|perytons" at the Parkes Observatory.<ref>E.Petroff et al. (2015). "[https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/451/4/3933/1119649?login | |
2887 | January 29, 2024 | Minnesota | null | In addition to 'squishy', after reviewing my submitted intraplate ground motion data, the National Geodetic Survey has politely asked me to stop using the word 'supple' so often when describing Midwestern states. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Hairy standing in front of Ponytail and Cueball, who are sitting behind a desk]
:Hairy: Does anyone have any other concerns?
:Cueball: I'm concerned that Minnesota is getting shorter.
:[A map of Minnesota beside Cueball, with arrows pointing from the northern and southern borders towards the middle]
:Cueball: Because of post-glacial crust rebound, the northern border is moving toward the southern border. It's less than an inch a decade, but I still don't like it.
:Cueball: Minnesota shouldn't be squishy.
:[Hairy again standing in front of Ponytail and Cueball at the desk. Ponytail is looking at Cueball, whose finger is now raised in the air, gesturing]
:Hairy: Okay. Does anyone have any concerns related to the topic of this meeting?
:Cueball: All meetings should be about Minnesota until we resolve this. | Hairy, Ponytail, and Cueball are in a business meeting of an unknown nature, but one which (it transpires) is unrelated to either geography, geology or geopolitical boundaries. Hairy asks if anyone has any other concerns, a common enough question to ask when trying to ensure that nobody at the meeting has still something to say that had not already been covered directly by the agenda or the resulting discussions.
Cueball voices an opinion on Minnesota. Due to the post-glacial rebound present in Minnesota, this US state is apparently slowly decreasing in size. The humor comes from the fact that this may be a genuine concern to Cueball, but is completely unrelated to the topic of the meeting, is not really a 'problem' that has any practical significance, and in any case there is also no reasonable way to prevent this{{Citation needed}}. And yet Cueball clearly finds it important enough that "all meetings should be about Minnesota" until the 'problem' is solved.
The title text implies that Cueball has also brought this issue up to the National Geodetic Survey; rather than commenting on his data or findings, they have simply requested that he stop using suggestive language in his papers ("supple" and "squishy" are sometimes used, especially in erotic literature, to describe certain body parts<sup>[<i>citation greatly appreciated</i>]</sup>).
The Midwestern states, particularly in areas like the New Madrid Seismic Zone, are subject to the movement of tectonic plates well within a tectonic plate boundary. While these areas are typically less active than boundary zones, they can still experience significant seismic activity. The flexible way the Earth's crust in these regions responds to tectonic stresses – gently stretching and flexing over centuries in response to deep stresses – could imaginatively be described as "supple."
Minnesota's northern border is legally defined in part by reference to geographical features, most notably Lake of the Woods and a chain of rivers and lakes connecting it to Lake Superior. As such, movement of these features due to glacial rebound may indeed be reducing Minnesota's size at a very gradual rate. Minnesota's southern border, in contrast, is legally defined as a line running at 43º 30′ N, which would not be affected by the motion of the land. Indeed, it is possible that glacial rebound is effectively moving land out of Iowa and into Minnesota, again at a very gradual rate. | |
2888 | January 31, 2024 | US Survey Foot | null | Subway refuses to answer my questions about whether it's an International Footlong or a US Survey Footlong. A milligram of sandwich is at stake! | :[Closeup on Cueball.]
:Cueball: We thought it was over. After 60 years of struggle, the US survey foot was dead, deprecated by NIST in 2023.
:[Cueball is shown to be talking to Ponytail, Hairy, and Megan. He has a presentation behind him.]
:Cueball: We thought architects and engineers could rest easy, free of the headaches of having two conflicting definitions of the foot that differ by 610 nanometers.
:International foot: 0.304 800 000 m
:US survey foot [crossed over in gray] <span style | This comic pokes fun at the difference in length between the Foot_(unit)#U.S._survey_foot|US Survey Foot and the Foot_(unit)|International Foot. After Carl Edvard Johansson's Carl_Edvard_Johansson#Johansson_and_the_inch|gauge blocks in 1912 led to International_yard_and_pound|an international agreement in 1959, the foot has been defined to be exactly 0.3048 meters, whilst the US survey foot continued to use the Mendenhall Order|definition of 1893, making it a bit longer than the international foot at 1200/3937 meters. However, the difference between the two is proportionately too small to be meaningful for most purposes, as they only differ by 2 parts per million. At foot-length scales, the difference is a fraction of a micron, with longer measures (where the error grows to a notable degree) requiring an already excessive implied precision likely to mismatch its true accuracy. Some engineering or scientific applications ''may'' involve such tolerances, but would be expected to consistently use some more modern standard of measurement to Mars Climate Orbiter|avoid such confusion.
In the third panel, Cueball says that someone is using the survey foot again: it turns out to be Black Hat, an action that sounds very typical for him. Cueball claims that he is drawing the world 610 nm closer to madness, which is about the difference between the two measures (per foot). Cueball, outraged, then says that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (usually abbreviated as NIST) will capture Black Hat to stop him from using the US survey foot. The joke here is that his coordinates show that he is 8000 miles away, but since he is using the US survey foot, he is 0.016 miles (around 25.75 meters or 84.48 feet) away from the search team, making them unable to find him at that exact spot. They are probably at the same lake in the last two frames, with maybe little more than a frame border between them. (A good strike team would likely keep looking, but perhaps being strictly NIST-trained to adhere to particularly exacting standards has ironically made them vulnerable to the same inaccuracies that they are supposed to be preventing.)
Part of the joke is the imaginative idea that NIST employs and dispatches strike teams to apprehend persons that use incorrect measurements. This may be a play on words about the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or "NEST", a United States Department of Energy group who respond to nuclear and radiological emergencies such as reactor accidents or nuclear terrorism, and who might reasonably have access to resources such as the helicopters depicted during a crisis.
The title text references a Subway (restaurant)#Sandwich_size|2013 lawsuit over the length of a "Footlong" sandwich sold by Subway fast food chain. However – in contrast to the issue at stake in that lawsuit – the difference in length between an 'international footlong' sandwich and a 'US survey footlong' sandwich is way below the precision ''or'' accuracy by which sandwiches are usually produced – making it understandable that Subway would not think it necessary to clarify which definition of 'foot' they use for their products. | |
2889 | February 2, 2024 | Greenhouse Effect | null | Once he had the answer, Arrhenius complained to his friends that he'd "wasted over a full year" doing tedious calculations by hand about "so trifling a matter" as hypothetical CO2 concentrations in far-off eras (quoted in Crawford, 1997). | :[At the top of the comic a timeline is shown as a long line. It has three dots, one at each end a bit inside the end of the line and one close to the middle Each dot has a gray curved line going up to it from below. Below the end of these lines a year is given. And beneath the year is a caption. Above the time line are two gray double arrows going from three gray lines above each of the three dots. The lines are broken in the middle where a label is written.]
:[Label of arrow that spans from first to second dot:]
:120 years
:[Label of arrow that spans from second to third dot:]
:128 years
:[Label for the first dot:]
:'''1776'''
:James Watt develops a steam engine that helps kick off the Industrial Revolution
:[Label for the second dot:]
:'''1896'''
:Arvid Högbom and Svante Arrhenius note that industrial activity is adding CO<sub>2</sub> to the atmosphere, and calculate how much the Earth will heat up if the CO<sub>2</sub> concentration doubles. Their answer closely matches modern estimates.
:[Label for the third dot:]
:'''2024'''
:Today
:[Caption below the panel:]
:We figured out the greenhouse effect closer to the start of the Industrial Revolution than to today. | This comic has :Category:Climate change|climate change as its topic, a recurring theme on xkcd. There is no 'joke' <em>per se</em>, just a wry (and serious) observation on the timeline of climate change, and our understanding of it. The fact in question here is when science became aware of anthropogenic global warming and its primary cause.
The comic depicts a timeline with three events:
* The introduction of the Watt steam engine in 1776. The comic takes it as the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the event that most directly ushered in the boom of fossil fuels' burning.
* [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Influence_of_Carbonic_Acid_in_the_Air_upon_the_Temperature_of_the_Ground The first quantitative prediction] of the greenhouse effect by Svante Arrhenius in January and April 1896 (that, a. o., doubling CO<sub>2</sub> concentration would increase mean temperature by 5 to 6 °C, depending on latitude). Arrhenius drew on and included a summary of Arvid Högbom's 1894 Swedish article, which dealt with carbon cycle over geological periods and first estimated annual global carbon emissions.
* The present day, early 2024.
As the caption points out, less time elapsed between the start of the Industrial Revolution and the work by Arrhenius, than has elapsed since then. Some present-day climate discussions may cite [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1957.tb01849.x a 1957 paper by Revell and Seuss] as "the starting point" for modern inquiries into global warming. While it was more advanced and detailed, the comic notes "we figured out the greenhouse effect" 61 years prior; see both [https://folk.universitetetioslo.no/roberan/t/EarlyEstimates1.shtml Robbie 2018] and even longer History of climate change science which includes earlier, qualitative works.
The implication, consistent with other :Category:Climate change|climate change themed xkcd comics, is that humans have taken insufficient action to stop global warming despite knowing about it for more than a century, and understanding, at least intellectually, the consequences of inaction.
The title text portrays Arrhenius as dismissive of his work. A reading of the reference cited (page 8 in [https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Greenhouse-effect/Arrhenius/3-optional-Crawford-1997.pdf Crawford 1997]: 'Writing to a friend at the end of [1895], he found it "unbelievable that so trifling a matter has cost me a full year".') suggests instead that Arrhenius was complaining about the unanticipated difficulty of answering what he thought initially was a simple question, about the historical (geological time) connection between carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperature. Per this reading, Arrhenius's complaint was about the work required to achieve the result, <em>not</em> about the significance of the result. His interpretation of the significance, though, differed from today's (page 11 in Crawford 1997): "[Global warming will] allow our descendants, even if they only be those of a distant future [estimating the doubling time as 500 years], to live under a warmer sky and in a less harsh environment than we were granted". | |
2890 | February 5, 2024 | Relationship Advice | null | Good to be a little wary of advice that sounds too much like a self pep talk. | :[White Hat, Cueball and Ponytail are walking. White Hat has his palm out.]
:White Hat: What you have to remember is, relationships aren't easy.
:Ponytail: Yeah, fair.
:[Close-up of White Hat with his finger raised.]
:White Hat: They're hard. They require constant work.
:White Hat: A relationship is a job.
:Off-panel voice: I guess...
:[White Hat has stopped walking and is facing Cueball and Ponytail standing a bit further away.]
:White Hat: It's a challenge that feels overwhelming. It's a crushing burden.
:Cueball: Umm.
:[White Hat has his arms raised while still facing Cueball and Ponytail.]
:White Hat: A relationship is a grueling ordeal.
:Cueball: ...Who are you trying to convince, exactly?
:Ponytail: Yeah, are '''''you''''' okay?
:White Hat: I'm '''''fine!''''' This is '''''normal!''''' | In this comic, White Hat, Cueball, and Ponytail can be seen having a conversation about relationships. White Hat expresses the opinion that "relationships aren't easy". The others accept this advice, which is generally accepted as a reasonable view: two people are always going to have at least some difference in opinions, desires and needs that need to be communicated, negotiated and worked out. This requires mutual effort and some level of compromise in any healthy and successful relationship.
In the subsequent frames, however, White Hat continues to push the matter, describing relationships in increasingly unpleasant terms, starting with calling them "constant work" and ultimately calling it a "grueling ordeal". Cueball and Ponytail correspondingly agree with him less, and instead The lady doth protest too much, methinks|begin to worry about him.
White Hat's views on what is necessary and appropriate in relationships appear to go to unhealthy extremes. While his initial comments about relationships requiring efforts are reasonable, the notion that relationships consist of endless, overwhelming effort is not, for most people, though for some people who experience significant asociality this can be how most relationships feel. However, Cueball and Ponytail appear to suspect that White Hat may be describing a relationship that he's currently in or that has severed, and trying to rationalize an unhealthy situation by telling himself that "this is normal".
When someone is in an abusive relationship, they may struggle to see that the relationship is abusive, often confusing genuinely destructive behavior with normal relationship troubles. There are various reasons this may occur. Some people experience traumatic bonding, some have spent so much time in or around unhealthy relationships that they've come to seem 'normal', and some experience various forms of Codependency|codependence. For people in such situations, help from friends and/or professional counselors is often necessary to allow them to even identify the situation they're in, and particularly to separate themselves from the situation.
Seeing Randall’s often negative thoughts on 223: Valentine's Day|Valentine’s Day and the 1016: Valentine Dilemma|problems it produces, it may not be a coincidence that this comic was released only nine days before the event.
The title text explains that advice which focuses on remaining upbeat in a bad situation (like a "pep talk"), should give others pause. There's a good chance that the person giving such advice is trying to Reaction formation|convince themselves that their situation is alright, rather than providing useful guidance for others. In this comic, this sentiment is seemingly applied to White Hat, whose "relationship advice" may be much more personal than such advice should reasonably be, and the reader is thus warned to take advice like this with a grain of salt. This is similar to 449: Things Fall Apart where Cueball tells Megan "I love you" repeatedly and Megan points out he's only saying it to reassure ''himself'' rather than express it to her.
This comic's title is reminiscent of Randall|Randall's :Category:Tips|Tips comics. Here, though, there turns out to be no actual advice or tip, and thus not part of the tip category. | |
2891 | February 7, 2024 | Log Cabin | null | I'm sure the building inspectors will approve my design once they finally manage to escape. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A drawing of the top view of a log cabin, which includes two beds, a kitchen, a bathroom and furniture. A smaller version of the log cabin is connected to the main building. An even smaller version is connected to the smaller version, and so on, forming a golden rectangle.]
:[Caption below the panel]:
: Log cabin | File:log_cabin_golden_spiral.png|thumb|301px|Golden spiral (approximately) overlaid on the floor plan
This is a comic featuring a floor plan, presumably of a log cabin, and a pun on the word "log". The odd part about it is the right half, which appears to be infinitely recursive copies of the building, a self-similar fractal. The house as a whole represents a golden rectangle with a side ratio of the golden ratio (phi | |
2892 | February 9, 2024 | Banana Prices | null | It's a linear extrapolation, Michael. How big could the error be? 10%? | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A graph with the x-axis showing time, from the years 1950 to around 2275. The y-axis is a log scale showing the price of a banana from $0.10 to over $10.00. A label called "Price of a banana (BLS/St. Louis ''Fred''[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/])" show a rising trend in the price of a banana. There are two dots on that trend. One is labeled "Episode airs" and the other one "Now". 3 extrapolations shown as dashed lines labeled "General inflation rate", "Fresh fruit price trend" and "Banana price trend" extend until reaching the $10 mark, indicated by 3 dots.]
:[Caption above the graph:] "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10?"
:[Caption below the panel:] That line probably has another century or so left. | [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v | |
2893 | February 12, 2024 | Sphere Tastiness | null | Baseballs do present a challenge to this theory, but I'm convinced we just haven't found the right seasoning. | :[Graph with Y axis using an arrow indicating tastiness from "Not Tasty" to "Tasty" and X axis labeled "Sphere Diameter (meters)" with a logarithmic scale running from 10<sup>-5</sup> to around 10<sup>8</sup> (with 10<sup>-3</sup>, 10<sup>0</sup>, 10<sup>3</sup> and 10<sup>6</sup> labeled).]
:[The graph contains two points for "Grapes" and "Melons" at the "Tasty" end of the Y axis, between 10<sup>-2</sup> and 10<sup>-1</sup> meters, and two points for "The Earth" and "The Moon" at the "Not Tasty" end, both around 10<sup>7</sup> meters. A straight dashed line shows a linear interpolation between the points. There's a circle with a question mark about halfway between them.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
: My research suggests the existence of an 800-meter sphere that tastes okay. | This comic graphs the tastiness vs. the size of four roughly spherical objects: melons, grapes, Earth|Earth and the Moon. Based on the the fact that melons and grapes are (in this context) relatively small and tasty to most people, and that planetary scale bodies are relatively large and made mostly of rocks and metals generally considered not remotely tasty,{{cn}} Randall postulates the existence of an intermediate body, one which is approximately 800 meters in diameter and "tastes okay".
This is the second comic in a row to feature fruit, graphs and predictions (after 2892: Banana Prices), and continues the theme of a logarithmic axis scale to facilitate plotting a linear regression. Here the line is interpolated between known data, rather than extrapolated beyond it. Such interpolation is quite common in scientific analysis, and is often useful, but this example clearly leads to a ludicrous conclusion. Using such ridiculous analyses to show the dangers of flawed and/or sloppy methodology is a common theme in xkcd.
There are multiple ways in which this analysis is flawed, and therefore why the conclusion is unsupportable:
* there are only four data points, which is insufficient to interpolate from.
* these clusters represent entirely different sub-classes of spherical object (fruit vs. astronomical bodies) while other subclasses are not represented at all (the title text mentions this flaw).
* as tight clusters of 2533: Slope Hypothesis Testing|similarly sourced data, it effectively reduces the data down to two useful data points. This also makes the choice of log-median interpolation unjustified.
* the 'tastiness' scale has no indication of what assessment (subjective or objective) it records. Nor does it even have graduations, making it unknown if the graph is linear-log or log-log (or otherwise), changing the implied meaning behind the choice of straight-line interpolation.
* according to astronaut John Young, who visited the Moon's surface during the Apollo 16 mission, [https://phys.org/news/2006-02-mysterious-moondust.html "moondust doesn't taste half bad"]. (Although other Apollo astronauts likened its smell and taste to burnt gunpowder, so make of that what you will.)
The title text points out that baseball (ball)|baseballs seem to refute this theory since they're not usually thought of as tasty, but they're between the sizes of grapes and melons, which would place them in the bottom left of the graph, way off the fit line. Baseballs are typically made of a combination of a rubber or cork center wrapped in yarn, and covered by either horsehide, cowhide or synthetic leather. In point of fact, there are many, many common round objects that completely fail to conform to this graph, but rather than acknowledge that this analysis is fatally flawed, Randall uses special pleading to justify its exclusion from the graph, suggesting that the problem is that we lack "the right seasonings". While seasonings can improve the taste of foods, it's implausible that the inedible components of baseballs would be rendered "tasty" with any conceivable combination of seasonings. Even if they could, there's no evidence that such would give them the proper level of 'tastiness' to conform to the graph. This argument lampoons the use of "cherry picking" and motivated reasoning, in which researchers include only data points which fit their hypothesis and make up reasons to exclude those which don't. This is obviously very poor science, but less exaggerated versions are all too common in scientific studies.
The comic refers to this plot as research. This is an exaggeration, since two clusters of paired points are rarely considered sufficient for research purposes. But plotting a justifiably sufficient quantity of data points on a logarithmic plot, and then drawing a line through them, is a common way to visualize an actual exponential relationship more comprehensibly. An example of that is the Gutenberg–Richter law where the magnitude of earthquakes (an intrinsically logarithmic scale) in a particular region is plotted together with the frequency of occurrence, typically resulting in a statistically significant straight line.
Other fruit opinions have previously been mentioned in 388: Fuck Grapefruit, but it is unknown what the line would be like if Randall included grapefruit.
Other absurd uses of linear regression are seen in 605: Extrapolating and 1204: Detail. | |
2894 | February 14, 2024 | Research Account | null | Focus of your research: EXTREME PETTINESS AND UNWILLINGNESS TO LET ANYTHING GO | :[Cueball sits at a desk, typing at his laptop computer.]
:[Above him, there is a box indicating his computer screen.]
:[Caption above screen:] Application for research account
:[Under the caption, there is a panel, representing the computer screen; in the panel: (cut off from above) "Institution: Other/none", where the option has been selected from a drop-down menu. Under that is written "Reason for requesting access to our datasets:", under which is a comment field where "To win an argument with someone in a group chat" has been written. Under that, two long bubbles containing the words "Select all" and "Delete" separate another panel, with a panel featuring the comment field with "Independent research" written. The cursor can still be seen blinking.]
:[Caption below the comic panel:]
:I never know how honest to be on these forms. | Cueball has a longstanding craving to win online arguments and to prioritize these arguments (see 386: Duty Calls, one of Randall's viral comics). In the comic he is filling out a form to register for a research account. Such accounts are typically intended for people doing serious work in the relevant field, who need access to the materials provided to support that work. Cueball, however, has filled out “other/none” for institution, and “to win an argument with someone in a group chat” for “reason for requesting access to our datasets”, making it clear that his interest is both petty and personal. While this may be honest, it doesn't match the assumed purpose, and he may be worried that it might mean that his registration would be rejected or subsequently cancelled. So he then selects all and deletes his previous justification, replacing it with “independent research”, which is an accurate, if generic, explanation. Randall is undoubtedly familiar with such registration forms from doing background research for xkcd and What If?.
In the title text, he says that his research focuses on “extreme pettiness and unwillingness to let anything go” (in all caps), further reinforcing the reason that he is doing this solely to win an argument. It is possible this is a pun on different meanings of the word "focus" - while the question about the focus of one's research is typically about the subject matter they are researching (raft building in fire ants, etc), Cueball appears to be writing about what drives his desire to do research. Similarly, Cueball is not doing research INTO pettiness, but rather is focusing entirely on his pettiness as his main reason to perform research and achieve his goals. Of course, there is a focused area of research related to individuals who obsessively pursue matters disproportionately to their severity, who are known as querulant|querulants.
It is not uncommon for online forms to include fields like these, where it's unclear what, if anything, will be done with the input, and therefore how much it matters what is entered. It's unlikely that anyone would have the capacity to review all the freetext answers submitted, and in any case, by the time they did so, Cueball would presumably have already accessed the materials he wanted. | |
2895 | February 16, 2024 | Treasure Chests | null | [earlier] "Your vintage-style handmade chest business is struggling. But I have a plan." | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Black Hat is holding a treasure chest in one hand and pointing with a stick to a poster that features a shovel at the top, three circled X's below it, and five question marks around them.]
:Black Hat: First, I'll fill three of these chests with $1,000 each in small silver and gold coins, and take videos of them being buried in unidentified lawns around town.
:Black Hat: Next year, I post the videos.
:Black Hat: Then we sit back and let the local kids do the rest.
:[Caption below the panel:]
:The proposal for creating business for our lawn care company was unorthodox but ''extremely'' effective. | This comic features Black Hat proposing a way to create significant business for a "lawn care company", for which the comic narrator has an attachment (perhaps owner or employee), albeit in an extremely unethical and possibly illegal manner which is very much congruent with Black Hat's character of being a 'classhole'.
His plan is to create the conditions for a large number of lawns all over a certain town to be dug out by random members of the public, via the motivation of a large potential reward for digging up a lawn (in this case, a chest with $1,000 in the form of silver and gold coins). By filming the burials in such a way that the subsequently posted videos are tantalizingly open to many interpretations as to where they actually were, and then waiting a year to let time obscure any obvious signs of disturbed earth and digging, he encourages feverish speculation among treasure-hunters about the location of the chests, and an incentive to dig up lawns more or less at random, with or without permission.
It is also possible that waiting a year leaves time for one or more chests to have been discovered prior to the 'start' of the deliberate competition to find them. So long as all three weren't (publicly) discovered, it leaves open the possibility that those competing to find the 'unfound' chests will continue with their efforts to find what is now unfindable, prolonging the exercise beyond the point at which all chests could be known to be discovered and that there are no more chances to gain their riches. Indeed, there is nothing to stop Black Hat from simply digging the chests back up once the videos have been filmed, so that he is not out $3000 and there is nothing to find, prolonging the search indefinitely.
The many homeowners who soon find themselves with ruined lawns would then proceed to contact the lawn care company in order to fix the broken lawns, thus making the business lots of money. For the maximum initial expenditure of $3000 (plus the cost of the containers, and other trivial overheads), a need for significant remediation work will be generated. According to the caption below the panel, the proposal set out by Black Hat turns out to be VERY profitable and EXTREMELY effective. It would be cheaper than most other forms of effective advertisement, such as Flyer (pamphlet)#Distribution and use|mass-flyering the catchment area or buying advertising time/space in traditional media, whilst being much more penetrating and focused than any but the most sophisticated (and expensive) forms of online advertising. As long as the 'competition' isn't actually linked to the lawn-care businesss, it also has the advantage that it can create a near maximum potential demand for the service without risking media fatigue and perhaps aversion to the product being advertised. There is no indication that this will be <em>ever</em> be promoted as the company's very own competition, which would probably actively drive the numerous victims of the scheme to find (or found!) rival businesses, not to mention risk the instigation of claims for recompense through civil liability.
The title text shows how Black Hat, before sharing his proposal in this comic, saw a struggling business that made vintage-style handmade chests and cooked up the lawn care plan as a way to boost their sales by generating demand for chests from the lawn company. Sales of three chests doesn't seem a significant uplift for the chest company, which potentially implies that Black Hat has pushed his treasure hunt scheme to multiple lawn care companies, perhaps each in a different town, each buying three chests. One can only speculate about what other companies he may have enticed to take part in this {{tvtropes|ChainOfDeals|chain of deals}}, at each point being paid for the pleasure (and keeping the accumulated proceeds), leaving arbitrary amounts of disruption in his wake.
As of the time of posting, [https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/silver-price/ silver prices] were roughly $23 per ounce / $8 per cm^3, and [https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/gold-price/ gold prices] were roughly $2000 per ounce / $1250 per cm^3. This means that even the fairly small chest Black Hat has procured, which appears to be around 4 litres, would be very empty if holding $1000 in pure gold or silver coins. Accounting for space between coins, a $1000 chest entirely containing silver coins would be only be filled between 1/8-1/4 liter / 1/2-1 cup, whereas $1000 would only constitute a single medium/large gold coin or a few small ones. However, 'gold' and 'silver' coins may simply refer to higher value coins made either partially from gold and silver, or from some other alloys that give gold and silver colourings. The value might also be based on the face value of gold and silver coins that differ from the market value based on the metal content, or Black Hat might be using another dollar currency rather than the US dollar. If using U.S. currency, he probably filled it with Dollar_coin_(United_States)|dollar coins, which currently exist in both gold (the "Sacagawea dollar", the "Native American series", and the "Presidential dollar") and silver (the "American Silver Eagle", the "Susan B. Anthony dollar", the "Morgan" and "Peace" dollars, and the extra-large "Eisenhower dollar") colorations. 1,000 dollar coins would nicely fill a small chest and look impressive enough. | |
2896 | February 19, 2024 | Crossword Constructors | null | Also, we would really appreciate it if you could prominently refer to it as an 'eHit'. | :[Cueball is sitting in an office chair at a table and typing on his laptop, with small movement lines above his hands indicating typing. White Hat and Hairbun are standing behind him and looking at what he writes. The text he writes can be seen above them. The list of words at the end are written in two columns with four words in each. Here below, the second column of words is written below the first:]
:Dear Ms. Swift, Mr. Sheeran, Ms. Minaj, Ms. Grande, and Mr. Weeknd,
:We are a group of crossword puzzle constructors, and we would like to suggest some titles for your future albums:
:*Aete
:*Eni
:*Oreta
:*Aroe
:*Oine
:*Aen
:*Enta
:*Aerae | This comic is inspired by a common situation when people try to make Crossword#American-style crosswords|US-style quick crossword puzzles (where the grid is media:CrosswordUSA.svg|almost completely filled with words). Here, Cueball, Hairbun, and White Hat are crossword puzzle constructors, but some of the words they would like to use would result in awkward sequences of letters which are not English words or familiar names, such as "aete", "eni", etc. However, they have an idea to write a letter to persuade prominent singers (Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande and The Weeknd) to choose these awkward sequences of letters as titles of their future albums, thereby letting Cueball, Hairbun, and White Hat write clues about those albums and use those letter sequences as answers.
The particular sequences of letters that are selected are notable for their exclusive usage of the Letter frequency|most common English letters. Most of them also begin and end with a vowel. These are two features that are common in "crosswordese", i.e., words which appear significantly more often in crosswords than in reality. Examples of crosswordese that are actually used include the words "OREO", "Épée|EPEE", and "Yoko Ono|ONO".
The title text lists another sequence of awkward letters, "eHit". Here, Cueball, Hairbun, and White Hat ask these singers to refer their hits (popular songs) as "eHit"s, adding the "e" for electronic such as in e-mail and e-dating. This is also a reference to common crossword entries like "E-TAIL" or "E-MAG" which are often criticized for using the prefix "E" to create words that no one really uses. | |
2897 | February 21, 2024 | Light Leap Years | null | When Pope Gregory XIII briefly shortened the light-year in 1582, it led to navigational chaos and the loss of several Papal starships. | :[Cueball is sitting at a desk with a laptop on it and leaning to the back of his office chair, while having his other hand on the laptop. He is looking at Ponytail, who is standing behind him. The text from the laptop screen is shown above it, indicated with a zigzag line.]
:Cueball: It took until February, but I finally got all the distances updated!
:Ponytail: I really wish we didn't have to do this.
:[Laptop screen:]
:<u>Proxima Centauri</u>
:Distance: [in red, crossed out] <span style | The comic features Cueball and Ponytail updating astronomical distances in a database. The caption imagines a world in which leap years, which add an extra day to the year, making it 366 days long instead of 365, purportedly extend light-years by 0.27% due to the additional day (366/365 | |
2898 | February 23, 2024 | Orbital Argument | null | "Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!" | :[From left to right, Cueball, White Hat and Megan standing. Cueball and Megan are arguing. Cueball is raising a finger while Megan's arms are outstretched. White Hat stands between them, both hands out in an equivocal gesture.]
:Cueball: The sun orbits the earth!
:Megan: The earth orbits the sun!
:White Hat: When two people disagree, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Maybe the earth and the sun orbit a common center!
:[Caption below the panel:]
:It's annoying when people are right by accident. | In this comic, White Hat is using the Argument to moderation|middle ground fallacy to try to make a compromise between the positions of Cueball and Megan.
Cueball appears to be asserting a geocentric viewpoint, whilst Megan adheres to a heliocentric one, both of which are flawed descriptions of the way things are, but the latter is much closer to reality. White Hat, however, considers it {{wiktionary|politic#Adjective|politic}} to 'split the difference' and declares his intention to compromise with a 'middle' option, to try to uncritically please both parties. (Though it's probable that he may instead just equally annoy them both!)
On a naive reading, which imagines a point of common orbit midway between the bodies, his thesis is simply wrong. However, by one way of looking at it, it happens that he is also correct. Because two bodies exert equal but opposite gravitational forces on each other, each orbits around the average location of the other, and therefore they both orbit a common center. This Barycenter (astronomy)|barycenter is located somewhere between the centers of mass of the two bodies; the distance of each body's center of mass from the barycenter is proportional to the other body's mass. This is most apparent in systems where the two bodies have similar masses, but it is present to an extent in all orbital pairs, even when one body is far more massive than the other. For this reason, Earth does not orbit the center of the stationary Sun as described by the heliocentric model. However, the Earth-Sun barycenter is only slightly different from the Sun's own true center, still well within the Sun. It is around this which the Sun wobbles, in contrast to the way the Earth orbits around this unequally proportioned midpoint.
That White Hat has worded his compromise solution in a way that (arguably) encompasses the deeper truth of the barycentric viewpoint is not treated as justifying his mediating approach. It is clearly understood, by someone who seems to understand the complexities (e.g. a Randall Munroe#NASA|NASA physicist) that White Hat's 'successful' conclusion is just accidental, and such a person may therefore find this vexatious. This seems to be a case of a Gettier problem: White Hat reaches a true statement via unjustified logic.
The title text extends the principle of the comic's astronomical viewpoint down to the correspondingly opposing 'quantum world'. For various well-studied reasons, light is often described ''either'' as particles ''or'' as waves. White Hat's approach would be to give both viewpoints equal credit and suggest a compromising middle-ground explanation. In this case, also, he would have the Wave–particle duality|correct answer but, in the continuing view of an increasingly exasperated witness to his chronic False balance|"half-and-half"ism, not through a logical proof. Averaging predictions of experts is used to reliably improve the accuracy of the Ensemble learning|ensemble, as well as other methods that might produce a consensus forecast, so his heuristic may indeed have some validity for some types of prediction along a continuum of possibilities. But, for this case, two opposing philosophical positions do not represent the right kind of data to merge into a balanced 'best fit' intermediate predictive model.
Another example of the middle ground fallacy was used in 690: Semicontrolled Demolition, although in that case the person offering the compromise solution was not portrayed as getting the right answer by accident.
Orbits of celestial bodies are quantified using a set of parameters called orbital elements. Some of these parameters are commonly known as arguments, such as the Argument of periapsis. However, these kind of arguments tend to lead to consensus rather than disagreements. Independent measurements of the arguments might indeed be combined by taking the mean (to discover the middle ground).
The Earth-Moon barycenter is located approximately ¾ of the way from Earth's center of mass to its surface, towards the Moon's center of mass. The equivalent Jupiter-Sun barycenter, meanwhile, is located just ''above'' the 'surface' of the Sun due to the masses involved being not as different (but still significantly so), and the much greater distance between them. Pluto-Charon barycenter is located completely outside of Pluto, in part because they are much more similar masses, and are thus considered to orbit each other (tidally locked) around a point approximately 5.4% along the distance between the surfaces of Pluto surface and Charon, or 11% of their center-to-center distance.
As each of the planets and the Sun are simultaneously orbiting/'being orbited' (and every planet also measurably pulls on every other, etc, even discounting every smaller and/or more distant body in the universe), the combined solar-system's barycenter is a less simply-defined point (that being more likely to be within the Sun, at any given point of time), which can often be considered to more simply average out to "<each planet> orbits the Sun" for most purposes. | |
2899 | February 26, 2024 | Goodhart's Law | null | [later] I'm pleased to report we're now identifying and replacing hundreds of outdated metrics per hour. | :[Cueball and White Hat are standing and talking, White Hat with hand on his chin.]
:Cueball: When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric.
:White Hat: Sounds bad. Let's offer a bonus to anyone who identifies a metric that has become a target. | In this comic, White Hat suggests creating a meta-metric, "number-of-metrics-that-have-become-targets," and making it a target.
First, Cueball introduces and defines Goodhart's Law, which is the observation that when a metric — a performance indicator|measure of performance — becomes a goal, efforts will be unhelpfully directed to improving that ''metric'' at the expense of systemic objectives.
For example, imagine a scenario in which a car dealership is looking to grow profits, and its managers decide to focus on increasing a component metric of profit: how many cars it sells. So they offer a bonus to their salespeople to sell more cars. But then the salespeople offer deep discounts to rack up sales, rendering the car sales unprofitable. This example shows how a ''metric'' (cars sold) can become the ''target'', replacing the real target, profit growth, if individual incentives are not properly managed.
Hearing about Goodhart's Law, White Hat suggests eliminating metrics that have become targets.
White Hat's suggestion could be a good or a bad idea. It all depends on how the bonus incentive is awarded:
* A '''well-designed implementation''' would award bonuses only for finding metrics which truly aren't serving their purpose, so the organization's managers could fix the measurement issues (assuming the fix isn't worse than the status quo), and would employ sufficient management oversight to discourage trivial submissions. If submissions are in good faith, bonuses are awarded only for approved submissions, and the identifications result in real improvements, the organization will likely be better off.
* A '''poorly-designed implementation''' would offer a bonus to every identification, regardless of quality. This would incentivize the identification of even quite useful metrics — and perhaps even the ''creation'' of new metrics-as-targets for the sole purpose of then removing them and collecting the bounty.
The title text imagines this '''poorly-designed implementation''', leading to the creation of a new metric (metric changes per hour) and the organization identifying — and ''replacing'' — hundreds of metrics per hour, crowding out actual focus on the organization's true goals. It's the ultimate example of "change for change's sake."
Part of the joke is that White Hat's original suggestion — the new metric causing the issue and one that ''should'' be replaced — seems to be ironically surviving the replacement of hundreds of other metrics.
This comic illustrates that the thoughtless combination of Goodhart's Law and poorly designed incentives can have ruinous results for an organization.
The proper usage of organizational metrics and incentives is the focus of managerial accounting, a field within organizational management. | |
2900 | February 28, 2024 | Call My Cell | null | 'Hey, can you call my cell?' '...I'm trying, but it says this number is blocked?' 'Ok, thanks, just checking.' | :[Black Hat walks in from the right approaching Cueball. Black Hat has his finger raised.]
:Black Hat: Hey, can you call my cell?
:[Cueball has taken his phone up and is pressing the screen, presumably dialing Black Hat's number. Black Hat looks down at his back pocket, which is ringing. He reaches for the pocket, which has his phone in it.]
:Black Hat: Oh, one sec.
:''Ring''
:[Cueball, still holding his phone, looks at Black Hat. Black Hat has turned his back to Cueball and is looking at his phone which he is holding in both hands. Above his head is both his one line of speech but also a separate jagged speech bubble indicating what is written on his phone screen.]
:Black Hat: Ugh, it's '''''this''''' guy.
:Phone: ''Send to voicemail''
:[Cueball, holding his phone down, watches Black Hat walk away from him, already partly outside the right frame of the panel.] | When a person cannot find their cell phone, it is not uncommon to ask a friend to call the phone in question. This will activate the device's ring tone and/or its haptic actuator, assuming the device is not off or silenced, making it easier to find (this is also one of the meanings of 207: What xkcd Means|"xkcd").
At first, Black Hat appears to have misplaced his cell phone, as he asks Cueball to call it. However, when Cueball does call Black Hat's cell, it is revealed to be in Black Hat's (supposed) pocket. He then makes a show of ''annoyance'' that Cueball ("''this'' guy") is calling him, sends the call to voicemail, and leaves. From this, it might be inferred that Black Hat was simply trying to demonstrate that he doesn't ''want'' Cueball to call him, showing another of his ''72: Classhole|classhole'' tendencies, as Black Hat is quite often depicted as deliberately inconsiderate and rarely prone to actual carelessness.
The title text is a similar situation. Cueball calls Black Hat, but instead Black Hat demonstrates that he was only "checking" that he had Call blocking|blocked Cueball's number so Cueball is unable to reach his cell, making an even stronger insult. This can also be seen as a grammatical accuracy. When Black Hat asks "Can you call my cell?" he is asking whether Cueball is ''able'' to place a call on Black Hat's cell phone. This would be a variation of a particularly pedantic authority figure replying to a "Can I...?" question with the response like "I imagine you ''can'', but (right now) you ''may not''..." and so denying the request. In this case, the answer to the strict interpretation would have been "No", rendering the implied issue of permission entirely moot.
This comic may be related to 1284: Improved Keyboard, where Black Hat stops Cueball from texting him by changing his keyboard. | |
2901 | March 1, 2024 | Geographic Qualifiers | null | 'Thank you for the loveliest evening I've ever had...' [normal] '...east of the Mississippi.' [instant intrigue!] | :[The scene in this comic is shown from afar and drawn in black silhouette on a white background. It depicts a huge statue of a squirrel standing on a skateboard, which is on a pedestal. Below and in front of the statue there are two Cueball-like guys. The Cueball on the left is pointing at the statue and speaking to his friend on the right who has a thought bubble above him.]
:Cueball: At over 40 feet, it's the tallest statue of a skateboarding squirrel in the Northern Hemisphere.
:Friend [thinking]: ...Wait, who in the heck...Brazil? South Africa? Australia? Squirrels aren't even native there...
:[Caption below the panel:]
:I love the instant mystery created by qualifiers like "east of the Mississippi" or "in the Northern Hemisphere." | In this comic, Cueball is bragging to a :Category:Multiple Cueballs|Cueball-like guy in front of a giant statue of a squirrel standing on a skateboard. Cueball states that this is the largest statue of that theme in “the Northern Hemisphere”. The other guy then becomes intrigued, as he realizes that this seems to imply the existence of a taller one in the Southern Hemisphere, not to mention the existence of additional smaller one(s) in the Northern Hemisphere. A skateboarding squirrel is a peculiar enough subject that to find one example of such a statue would be a surprise, and to learn that there is at least one other would be even more surprising.
He quickly considers several countries in that hemisphere, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia. Native squirrel species are found in both Sciurus ingrami|Brazil and Smith's bush squirrel|South Africa, and people there might plausibly choose to erect statues to them. Australia, however, has no native squirrels, and introduced populations of Eastern gray squirrel|gray and Northern palm squirrel|palm squirrels [https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/palm-squirrel reportedly] have been eradicated, at considerable expense of time and money. "Confused Cueball" wonders whether Australians would know or care enough about squirrels to erect statues to them. It so happens, though, that many animals (and many entirely fictional ones) are depicted as statues in countries where they are not native, Australia is known for its many Big things (Australia)|overly large statues, and 1.5 m (5 foot) tall [https://natureworks.com.au/products/animals/mammals/farm-forest-animals/giant-wirral-the-enormous-squirrel-statue/ squirrel statues] are already sold there. So the existence of squirrel statues in the Southern Hemisphere that are larger than the one Cueball is bragging about is not out of the question - but the comic doesn't permit "confused Cueball" the half hour he'd need to drag out his phone and look up all these facts. The question about whether, and how many, of these putative squirrel statues are mounted on a skateboard is separate, although there is nothing in the urban cultures of the places named to preclude this possibility.
It's entirely possible that this qualifier is unnecessary. If the statue were the largest of its kind in the world, or even the only one in the world (which is a distinct possibility, given the very specific nature of the statue), the description would still be true. Sometimes qualifiers are added simply due to incomplete information. They've exhaustively surveyed skateboarding squirrel statues in the Northern Hemisphere and determined that this one is the largest, but since they haven't searched the Southern Hemisphere, they don't want to commit to it being the largest in the world. On the other hand, it's possible that, paradoxically, he deliberately added a needless qualifier in an attempt to make the claim sound more impressive, even though technically it limits its scope, by implying intense competition for a title that, in reality, no one else is interested in claiming. Randall states, in the caption, that he loves the mystery that such qualifiers create. Doing so could thus have been one of Randall's :Category:My Hobby|hobbies, but he doesn't make that explicit.
Another example appears in the title text, where Randall uses the other example qualifier given in the caption. Here someone is expressing gratitude at the end of a date, saying that it's the loveliest evening they've ever had. This seems normal until they add the location qualifier of "east of the Mississippi River|Mississippi" (the river). This leaves the companion wondering what kind of great evening they had in some other location. In this case, it's unlikely that the speaker would have incomplete information about their own personal history.
The statue may be a reference to [https://www.worldrecordacademy.org/2022/06/worlds-largest-squirrel-sculpture-cedar-creek-texas-sets-world-record-422206 Ms. Pearl], the [https://www.google.com/maps/@30.1663034,-97.5110882,3a,75y,51.89h,82.93t/data | |
2902 | March 4, 2024 | Ice Core | null | If you find an ash deposition layer from a year in which an eruption destroyed an island that had Camellia sinensis growing on it, you can make a Gone Island Ice_τ. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Knit Cap and Megan are both wearing knit caps and scarves in a snowy and icy environment, most likely a glacier, looking at an ice drill that is a tripod with the drill in the middle. There is a helicopter on the ground in the background, with their footprints between them and the helicopter, suggesting they flew with the helicopter to the glacier. Knit Cap is holding a small container between her hands while Megan is holding the middle of the drill.]
:Megan: Next, we'll identify the ice core layer matching your birth year. Do you have the shaker ready?
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Making the traditional paleoclimatologist cocktail | Some people may like to taste a wine dated to the year they were born, or perhaps are subject to it as a family tradition. This would more typically be for a special occasion such as a milestone birthday than because it happens to be a 'good year' for the wine(s) they favor (unless they were particularly fortunate). Reaching the legal drinking age would be an appropriate opportunity to partake in a wine that is the same age as themselves. This comic extends this practice into a joke that paleoclimatologist|paleoclimatologists, who study the climate, use dated ice instead of dated wine, drilling into the ground to find the layer of ice matching the birth year of the recipient, either to drink 'neat' (once sufficiently melted) or as the 'Bartending terminology#On the rocks|on the rocks' part of another drink, perhaps a cocktail.
Megan, a paleoclimatologist, decides to make a cocktail with the ice from the ice sheets (present in the Arctic and Antarctic, for example). Normally, scientists would try to date the ice and then use it to describe the state of the climate when these ice sheets formed. Here, Megan tries to find the ice layer corresponding to Knit Cap's birth year to use the ice for the chosen drink. The caption asserts that this method of creating drinks is “traditional” for paleoclimatologists. She then asks if Knit Cap has the cocktail shaker that they presumably brought to the site ready. Cocktail shakers are used in the preparation of many mixed drinks, which often contain ice (usually produced by refrigeration, rather than harvested from natural sources).
The title text says that if they manage to find some ice with ash coming from an eruption which destroyed an island with Camellia sinensis growing on it, they'll be able to make a cocktail called a 'Gone Island Ice_τ', which is a punning reference to the cocktail known as a Long Island iced tea. Camellia sinensis (common name, "tea plant") is generally used for making tea, so this cocktail would have tea infused into the ice. The Greek letter tau is used in place of "tea". The joke here likely is that this character is used in various fields to denote time, and presumably in this case refers to the time the ice deposit in question dates to. | |
2903 | March 6, 2024 | Earth/Venus Venn Diagram | null | Actually, the fact that Mars is still orbiting safely over here means that it was technically an *Euler* apocalypse, not a Venn one. | :[Two circles are drawn so they overlap. The segments of the circles that overlap are drawn in dashed lines. Each circle has a label and text are written in the central overlapping part the circle. Above the circles there is a caption:]
:Earth/Venus Venn Diagram
:Left: Earth
:Right: Venus
:Center: Shock-waves and production of impact ejecta | A Venn diagram illustrates the relationships and differences among sets by showing common and distinct elements, using overlapping circles (or other shapes). This comic is both a '''Venn diagram''' and a '''proximity illustration''' of Earth and Venus colliding, physically 'overlapping' each other.
* As a '''proximity illustration''', it depicts Earth and Venus smashing into each other, resulting in "shockwaves and production of impact ejecta" occurring where they collide. The relative circle sizes are accurate; the circumference of Venus is 5% smaller than Earth's.
* As a '''Venn diagram''', it shows a collision moment in which the commonality between Earth and Venus is "shockwaves and production of impact ejecta" at the spot of intermingled Earth-Venus overlap.
'''Shockwaves''' are intense, high-pressure waves caused by the immense force of the impact, that propagate through the materials of both planets faster than the speed of sound.
'''Impact ejecta''' are the materials expelled from the impact site, consisting of molten rock, vaporized material, and solid debris, flung out at high velocities due to the energy released by the collision. The production of impact ejecta would indeed occur in the overlapping impact area.
The title text is 2721: Euler Diagrams|another xkcd joke about the difference between a :Category:Venn diagrams|Venn diagram and an :Category:Euler diagrams|Euler diagram, which is similar to a Venn diagram except that it's acceptable to have circles (or other shapes) that do not intersect if there are no common elements between those sets. The observation that Mars is still orbiting by itself makes Mars an additional set (out of the frame of the diagram), in addition to - but not intersecting with - Earth and Venus, making this technically an Euler diagram. Therefore if the Earth-Venus collision is a "Venn apocalypse," the inclusion of Mars as a non-intersecting entity makes this technically an "Euler apocalypse."
As a thought experiment, if you expand the diagram infinitely, a "Big Crunch|Venn apocalypse" would consist of every body in the universe being in the process of colliding, simultaneously. This would be very dangerous.{{Citation needed}} | |
2904 | March 8, 2024 | Physics vs. Magic | null | 'At the stroke of midnight, your brother will be hurtling sideways at an altitude of 150 meters' is a regular physics prediction about your nonmagical trebuchet, whereas 'you are cursed to build a brother-launching trebuchet' falls out of the Lagrangian. | :[Miss Lenhart is standing in front of a whiteboard and pointing to it with a stick. The whiteboard contains two lines of scribbles at the top, two drawings below them featuring a curve on the left and a circle on the right, and below them four additional lines of scribbles with smallest line of scribbles in the lower left corner.]
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Physics''''' and '''''magic''''' are different in a very deep way.
:[Close-up of Miss Lenhart pointing the stick to the left to a depiction of a projectile's motion due to gravity. The path of movement is shown as a dashed line that first heads directly to the right but starts increasingly curving downward. There are five small circles at different points within the path. There are labels "V<sub>0</sub>" for an arrow pointing right on the left side of the leftmost circle, "F" for an arrow pointing downward below the leftmost circle, and "T<sub>0</sub>" to "T<sub>4</sub>" for the five individual circles from left to right.]
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Physics''''' works by describing the forces that act on a system.
:Miss Lenhart: To predict outcomes, we progressively apply those forces over time.
:[Miss Lenhart is holding the stick down and standing in front of Jill and Hairy sitting at their desks. Jill has her hands on her desk while Hairy has his hands on his lap.]
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Magic''''' specifies the outcome, but not the intermediate events.
:Miss Lenhart: '' "Ere the clock strikes twelve, you are cursed to slay your brother" '' is magic, not science.
:[Same setting as in the third panel, except Miss Lenhart is holding the stick slightly lower and Jill has her other hand on her lap.]
:Miss Lenhart: ... And that's how we know thermodynamics is magic.
:Miss Lenhart: Conservation laws are, too.
:Hairy: What about Lagrangians?
:Miss Lenhart: '''''Deep''''' magic. Speak not of them here. | This comic explores the distinctions between magic and physics through the perspective of Miss Lenhart, a schoolteacher. She explains that physics involves the continuous application of forces to objects over time, whereas magic reveals the outcome without detailing the process. She illustrates her point with a magical curse example that dictates the recipient will slay their brother by midnight (or possibly noon), highlighting its lack of scientific basis due to the absence of a causal explanation. She further contends that the laws of thermodynamics, among other laws, fall into the category of magic, with Lagrangian (physics)|Lagrangians representing a deeper level of magic.
The humor in this comic arises from the observation that foundational physical laws, despite being empirically derived, lack explanations for their inherent truths. According to the logic presented in the second panel, these laws resemble magic as they specify outcomes without clarifying the means to achieve them. While some laws might be derived from others, ultimately, we accept certain principles as given, akin to magical reasoning.
The second panel references Newtonian mechanics, depicted as an initial value problem, which establishes a system's initial conditions and its temporal evolution based on specific rules. This formulation aligns with our intuitive understanding that the present is a known state and the immediate future is determined by present conditions. The final panel humorously juxtaposes this notion with various physics concepts that challenge our basic assumptions in progressively disconcerting ways.
Specifically, equilibrium thermodynamics, a major branch of thermodynamics familiar to students, makes predictions about a system's eventual state without accounting for its current state or intermediate behaviors. This perspective seemingly contradicts the principle introduced in the first panel, although the concept of inquiring about long-term stability without detailed process knowledge remains intuitively accessible.
Conservation laws, emerging naturally from Newtonian physics, present another conceptual challenge. While basic explanations involve calculus and elementary algebra, more advanced interpretations connect conservation laws to physical system symmetries in a highly abstract and enigmatic manner. These laws, therefore, make permanent statements about a system's state, independent of its evolution, challenging the initial principle in a manner that feels even more counterintuitive than thermodynamics. Notably, particle physics conservation laws, except in cases involving the Wu experiment|weak nuclear force, maintain certain system properties like charge, spin, and parity.
Lagrangian mechanics, a reinterpretation of classical physics equivalent to Newton's laws, diverges by considering both initial and final states to determine physically permissible trajectories. This approach directly opposes the first panel's principle, mirroring the magical definition by surprisingly and counterintuitively aligning the intuitive Newtonian perspective with the "magical" frameworks of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics. Therefore, the comic labels Lagrangians, central to Lagrangian mechanics and system dynamics description, as 'Deep Magic', highlighting their role in encapsulating physics' magical aspect.
Furthermore, the comic might hint at the teleological debate within physics, especially regarding the stationary-action principle's potential teleological interpretations. This principle, foundational to deriving various equations of motion across physics fields, suggests a teleological element by inferring initial conditions from specified final conditions, challenging the conventional causality narrative.
The title text merges the comic's thematic elements, contrasting a nonmagical trebuchet prediction with the mystical implications of the curse, further blending the lines between physics predictions and magical foresight. | |
2905 | March 11, 2024 | Supergroup | null | I love their cover of 1,200 Balloons, Dalmatians, and Miles. | :[Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, Knit Cap, and Hairy are in line at a theater box office with Ponytail looking in at the window at the tickets sale. The window is partly shaded/reflectively-marked and cannot be seen through in the comic. There is a speaking grille in the window, plus a opening at the bottom for passing payment and tickets. To the left of the window are double doors and above all this there is a large theatrical billboard with small lights all around it. It reads:]
:<big>Playing Tonight</big>
:''The New Supergroup:''
:176 Pilots, Seconds of Summer, Non Blondes, Live Crew, gecs, Doors Down, Inch Nails, Republic, Direction, and Seconds to Mars | In popular music, a supergroup (music)|supergroup is a musical group formed by collaboration of existing solo artists and members of other musical groups.
This comic shows a marquee announcing a concert by a supergroup formed from members of 10 musical groups whose names all begin with a number. The name of the supergroup is the sum of all those numbers, 176, followed by the names of the original groups without their numbers. It's reasonable to estimate that there could be up to 32 members of the supergroup (see #band_member_numbers|below).
Musical groups mentioned in the comic:
* Twenty One Pilots
* 5 Seconds of Summer
* 4 Non Blondes
* 2 Live Crew
* 100 gecs
* 3 Doors Down
* Nine Inch Nails
* OneRepublic
* One Direction
* Thirty Seconds to Mars
Sum: 21 + 5 + 4 + 2 + 100 + 3 + 9 + 1 + 1 + 30 | |
2906 | March 13, 2024 | Earth | null | Just think of all the countless petty squabbles and misunderstandings, of all the fervent hatreds, over so insignificant a thing as the direction and duration of a rocket engine firing. | :[Carl Sagan (drawn Cueball like but with flat hair) is standing in front of a black screen with a tiny pale blue dot in the middle. He indicates the screen by holding out his right hand palm up towards the screen. He is speaking to someone off-panel, who replies from a star burst on the right edge of the panel.]
:Carl: Look again at that dot. That's home. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives...
:Carl: On a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
:Off-panel voice: We '''''know,''''' Carl.
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Carl Sagan was '''''not''''' making us feel better about how badly he'd messed up the low Earth orbit reentry burn. | File:Pale Blue Dot.png|200px|right|thumb|The ''Pale Blue Dot'' image from Voyager 1. Earth is the "pale blue dot" halfway up the rightmost color band.
At first sight, this appears to be the famous Carl Sagan commentary, upon the ''Pale Blue Dot'' image of Earth, a picture taken by the Voyager 1 probe in 1990 (at that time 6 billion kilometers away) but having been transmitted back to Earth to be appreciated as one of the most iconic 'photos of Earth from space', along with ''Earthrise'' and ''The Blue Marble''. Sagan's written, and later spoken, words evoke how the lives of all of us are somehow confined to barely more than a single pixel's-worth of existence upon an already zoomed-in view of space.
From the caption, however, it appears that 'Carl' is not looking at an image. Instead it is a spacecraft window. The minute apparent size of the Earth is as a result of the spacecraft being very far from Earth. This is an unintended consequence of an attempt to deorbit from low Earth orbit (i.e. not more than 2000 kilometers from the Earth's surface, from which the Earth should still mostly fill any view that points towards it). Rather than transitioning from LEO into a re-entry trajectory, somehow the vessel and crew have been sent into a ''much'' higher-reaching orbit, if not into a solar or extra-solar trajectory. And it is apparently Carl's fault. The speech is thus not an inward view of where we all are, but an outward look at somewhere that all the crew (unwillingly, and against all recent expectations) are ''not''.
<!-- NOT SURE IF THIS NEW PARAGRAPH IS NEEDED. "BLUE MARBLE" ALREADY MENTIONED (AS SEPARATE), AND WE ALREADY HAVE REFERENCED CORE INFLUENCES AND MORE. THOUGH MAYBE SOMEONE CAN RE-USE/RE-EDIT SOME OF IT? -- This comic is not (although it appears as to the uneducated pre-astronomer who watches [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Foreman_(comedian) map men]) a reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble Blue Marble] image taken on the moon. The most common distribution of this image has been cropped to remove most of the empty space, and rotated so [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v | |
2907 | March 15, 2024 | Schwa | null | Doug's cousin, the one from London, runs a Bumble love cult. | :[Megan, Cueball, and Ponytail stand in front of a dinner table, with Megan and Cueball facing Ponytail. Megan has her hand on the rightmost chair while Ponytail has her palm out.]
:Megan: What's up? Was Doug gonna come? Doug loves brunch.
:Ponytail: Nuh uh, Doug's stuck 'cause of a tunnel obstruction. A truck dumped a ton of onions.
:Megan: Ugh.
:[Caption below the panel:]
:The schwa is the most common vowel sound in English. In fact, if you stick to the right conversation topics, you can avoid learning any other ones. | English features a lot of Reduced vowel|vowel reduction, where vowels in unstressed syllables often become a short 'uh'-like sound called a schwa (ə). As Randall notes, this makes it by far the most common sound in English, and Randall makes the observational joke that one can learn the English language without learning any other vowel sounds, if one sticks to the right topics of conversation. He gives conversational examples which demonstrate exactly that, using words that contain ''only'' the schwa vowel -- accurate for US and UK dialects with the Phonological history of English close back vowels#STRUT–COMMA merger|STRUT-COMMA merger.
The humor lies in the unusal and impractical elements of this tip:
* It's ''impractical'', since limiting oneself to only words with schwa will exclude using many common words (like "no") and make for stilted speech (using "Nuh uh" every time instead).
* It's ''highly unusual'' for hyper-efficient language learning to focus on all words with a common vowel sound rather than, say, the 1,000 most common words. English learners learn between 14 and 20 vowel sounds - depending on the dialect - which are written with just six vowel letters (AEIOU and sometimes Y). For example, the 'a' in "cat" may not be the same 'a' in "father", depending on dialect.
Randall has had a longstanding interest in minimalist visions of English communication. He published a whole book, Thing Explainer, about explaining complex ideas — such as the Up-Goer 5 — using “only the ten hundred words people use the most often.”
The intended pronunciation of the conversation can be written in the International Phonetic Alphabet (while preserving punctuation marks) as:
:Megan: /wəts əp<font color | |
2908 | March 18, 2024 | Moon Armor Index | null | Astronomers are a little unsure of the applicability of this index, but NASA's Planetary Protection Officer is all in favor. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Text above diagram:]
:Moon armor index:
:How thick the shells around various worlds would be if their moon(s) were converted into protective armor
:≈Total moon volume/Planet surface area
:[Above the diagram, there is a depiction of two moons orbiting a planet, an arrow pointing right, and the same planet with an additional layer around it without orbiting moons.]
:[The diagram consists of vertical bars showing "moon armor" thicknesses for the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Salacia, Haumea, Quaoar, Gonggong and Eris. Earth's bar has a label named "43 km thick" and is compared to the height of a comparatively small Mt Everest, with randomly drawn features indicating a cross section of the additional layer's rocky material. Most of the other armor thickness bars are not very tall compared to Earth. Some bars, notably Jupiter's, are embellished with various strata-like lines that possibly correspond to different contributing moons. Most bars show some small dots and patterns. A circular viewport shows the zoomed in detail of the top of Mars's otherwise not visible bar that reveals a thin layer with the label of 2", and also the bottom of a Mars rover wheel on top of the new surface. Pluto's bar is slightly taller than Earth's and has a label "(Mostly Charon)" inside, with arrows pointing into the bar area, which looks similar to that of Earth's Moon.] | In this “What If?”-style comic, Randall hypothesizes an imaginative situation in which each planet's moon(s) become converted into protective armor (as a form of Overburden#Analogous uses|overburden) to coat the respective planet. For example, the Moon would coat Earth in a 43 kilometer layer if it were molded into protective armor, almost five times the height of Mount Everest.
This visual index illustrates that the moons of both Earth and Pluto are unusually massive in comparison to their planet. The large relative size of Earth’s moon — and its protective role in deflecting asteroids — is one reason that’s been suggested by astronomers for why intelligent life successfully evolved on Earth.
Mars's moons Phobos (moon)|Phobos and Deimos (moon)|Deimos are small compared to Mars, so they would contribute a thin 2-inch layer of 'armor' around Mars, in contrast to the 20-inch (0.5 m) diameter of a Mars rover wheel. Huge Jupiter would be covered with almost 3 km of "moon" matter, which indicates just how much moon mass orbits Jupiter, a situation mostly similar for Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Six trans-Neptunian dwarf planets and dwarf planet candidates are included, as well: Only Pluto, having a moon (Charon (moon)|Charon) of a comparable size to its planet, would have a layer thicker than Earth's. 120347 Salacia|Salacia, Haumea, 50000 Quaoar|Quaoar, 225088 Gonggong|Gonggong and Eris (dwarf planet)|Eris are among the List of trans-Neptunian objects#List|ten largest such objects. (Two dwarf planets with moons — Makemake and 90482 Orcus|Orcus — are not mentioned in the comic, but would be similarly depicted.)
The title text states that astronomers are "unsure" about the applicability of this index, a joking understatement that imagines this comic as being a serious contribution to astronomical academic knowledge. Astronomers might also point out additional issues:
* wariness of Giant-impact hypothesis|moons and planets getting too close.
* moons already serve a protective purpose by deflecting and even intercepting some incoming asteroids (with a ''slight'' chance of turning a future miss into a hit).
* the four gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — lack a solid surface to practically sustain a layer of armor without even ''more'' ambitious engineering than the already complicated process of somehow distributing soft-landed fragments of disassembled satellite evenly all across a planet.
* although the coating would provide some protection to the underlying surface on which it was placed, it would effectively become part of the planet, and raise the surface. The things we would normally care about protecting, such as any life forms that exist, would be forced to relocate to this new surface, and therefore not benefit from any protection, while suffering significant detrimental impact to habitats, etc.
The title text continues that NASA's [https://what-if.xkcd.com/117/ Planetary Protection Officer] is purportedly in favor of the idea. In reality, this officer is actually responsible for keeping other celestial bodies safe from Earth's contamination, not for shielding planets in armor. Theoretically, though, armoring other planets could indeed protect them from further Earth-sourced contamination, and armoring Earth would also theoretically protect other planets by burying the biosphere and all of Earth life not already sent into space — a potentially civilization-smothering action, though a surprisingly unapocalyptic result compared to many of Randall’s “What If?” scenarios.
{| class | |
2909 | March 20, 2024 | Moon Landing Mission Profiles | null | If you pick a low enough orbit, it gives you a lot of freedom to use a lightweight launch vehicle such as a stepladder. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Top left panel]
:'''Lunar orbit rendezvous'''
:Spacecraft orbits Moon, drops lander
:[A big circle and a small circle, depicting the Earth and the Moon, with a line starting from the left side of the Earth curving, then straight towards the Moon, then forming an orbit around it and then descending on the Moon. A spacecraft is located at about the middle of the line.]
:Chosen by the Apollo program
:[Top right panel]
:'''Earth orbit rendezvous'''
:Large lander assembled in Earth orbit via several launches, travels to Moon
:[The same circles depicting the Earth and the Moon. Two lines start from the left side of the Earth into an orbit around it, with a couple of different stages of spacecraft located in different parts of the orbit. The merged line heads straight towards the Moon to land on its left side, without orbit. A spacecraft is located around the middle of the line.]
:Rejected for requiring multiple Saturn Vs per landing and potentially taking longer
:[Bottom left panel]
:'''Direct ascent'''
:Lander launched from Earth directly to Moon
:[Another big circle and small circle, depicting the Earth and the Moon again. This time, the line curves the same way as in the lunar orbit rendezvous, heads straight towards the Moon, and ends on the Moon's left side. A spacecraft is located slightly on the left, to Earth's side.]
:Rejected for requiring an unreasonably large rocket
:[Bottom right panel]
:'''Lunar Earth rendezvous'''
:Moon transits to rendezvous with spacecraft in low Earth orbit
:[A big circle representing Earth and three small circles representing the Moon at different times. Starting from the right side, the small circle follows a path that curves slightly upwards. The path then straightens. Another small circle is located on the straight part. The path forms an orbit around the Earth, with another small circle on Earth's left side. Another small path leads from the left side of the Earth to the leftmost small circle.]
:Rejected because I guess no one thought of it?! | Getting astronauts to the Moon (and back) is hard. There are several different strategies to do it. This comic reviews three mission profiles considered for the Apollo Moon landings and one which is absurd. (While the profiles only depict the outbound leg of the trip, in each case the return journey would likely make compatible rocket and trajectory choices.)
'''Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR)'''
Description: Using a single large rocket to get the required lunar orbiter and lander systems into trans-lunar orbit, which can then fulfil their eponymous roles.
Status: Chosen by the Apollo Program in the 1960s and 1970s.
Explanation: This was the actual method used in the Apollo missions. It was efficient in terms of fuel and cost. The main spacecraft ('command module') orbits the Moon, as the lander separates and uses its descent-stage to safely reach the surface.
After the Moon mission, the lander (ascent-stage only) ascends to dock once more with the command module in lunar orbit, the crew then return to Earth in the command module (leaving the abandoned ascent stage behind, in most cases purposefully directed to impact the Moon).
'''Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR)'''
Description: A large lunar-landing system is assembled in Earth orbit through several launches. Once complete, it travels to the Moon as a whole. It is depicted here as not required to orbit the Moon in full, in any way, but is shown needing to orbit Earth, as an unavoidable part of its profile.
Status: Rejected for requiring multiple Saturn V rockets per landing and potentially taking longer.
Explanation: This concept involved launching different parts of the spacecraft into Earth orbit using multiple rockets and then assembling them before heading to the Moon. It would have allowed almost arbitrarily large sizes of equipment to have reached the surface, perhaps to simplify the return journey, but with the complication of adding multiple orbital docking procedures to the project rather than most assembling and spacecraft mating being carried out prior to launch. It should be noted that Randall made a mistake on this point of the comic; the Earth Orbit Rendezvous would have required multiple launches of the Saturn IB, not multiple launches of the Saturn V.
In theory, a returning craft (the final stage that breaks free of the Moon and heads back to Earth) would have made a direct crossing from the Moon's surface back to Earth's atmosphere, unless a Lunar Orbit aspect (perhaps a habitation module left as a waypoint for use by subsequent missions) was included in the plans. (In this particular regard, the Artemis program profile resembles this particular profile.)
'''Direct Ascent'''
Description: The lander is launched from Earth directly to the Moon without entering orbit.
Status: Rejected for requiring an unreasonably large rocket.
Explanation: This was a simpler but less feasible approach, where a single huge rocket (or a particularly large rocket stack) would send the lander straight to the Moon. The inefficiency comes in taking a comparatively huge rocket down to the Moon and back up, requiring a lot more fuel than a separate lander. It avoids having to 'park' items in orbit that it must later dock once more with, but then increases the mass that must land on/take off from the lunar surface, without being useful during this phase of the mission.
The return journey would be as direct as the original leg. This option does not preclude discarding various stages of the rocket as various transit phases are completed, but would not involve any complicated rendezvousing to enable the crew module to reach its waypoints.
In reality, this was the approach imagined for the Nova C-8 rocket as an Apollo alternative. This was also the approach used in Destination Moon (comics)|Destination Moon from The Adventures of Tintin, with the fuel problem addressed by using a nuclear reactor for much of the trip—which would be a really bad idea in reality since "rockets have a tendency to explode"[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v | |
2910 | March 22, 2024 | The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald | null | You know that asteroid that almost destroyed Earth in the 90s? Turns out the whole thing was secretly created by Michael Bay, who then PAID Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to look heroic while blowing it up! | :[Cueball is holding a guitar and singing on a pier. Two pairs of connected eighth notes are on the left and right of Cueball, as well as a detached eighth note on his right. Three seagulls fly in the background on his left. Four pillars of the pier and the water below it are also shown. Throughout the comic, alternate pairs of lines of the song are indented as indicated below.]
:Cueball:
:The ship was the pride
:of the American side
::It was due to set
::sail for Cleveland
:As the big freighters go,
:it was bigger than most
::With a crew and good
::captain well seasoned
:[Zoom on Cueball facing to his right, still holding the guitar, without the pier, water, and seagulls. A pair of connected eighth notes to his right, a half note and a detached eighth note to his left.]
:Cueball:
:But taking a walk on
:the shore by the dock
::Was a songwriter named
::Gordon Lightfoot
:He was humming a tune
:but it didn't have words
::For it's challenging
::trying to write good
:[Close-up on Cueball's face. A quarter note and a pair of connected eighth notes to his right, a detached eighth note and a quarter note to his left.]
:Cueball:
:Poor Gordon sought glory
:but needed a story
::His career in folk
::music imperiled
:He mulled over this as
:he watched them do work
::On the hull of the
::''Edmund Fitzgerald''
:[Zoom back to second panel. Cueball is now facing to his left. A pair of connected eighth notes to Cueball's right, a separated eighth note and a pair of connected eighth notes to his left.]
:Cueball:
:Perhaps it was wrong,
:what he did for a song
::He should never have
::bribed that mechanic
:But his maritime crimes
:are no worse than the time
::Young James Cameron
::sank the ''Titanic'' | {{incomplete|Created by ONE OF THE FBI'S MOST WANTED, FOR CRIMES AGAINST SHIPPING - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The comic features Cueball performing a narrative song, which parodies Gordon Lightfoot's song 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald|The Wreck of the ''Edmund Fitzgerald''' This song, which was one of the most recognizable and successful of Lightfoot's career, recounts the fate of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald|SS ''Edmund Fitzgerald'', a Great Lakes freighter which famously sank during a storm on Lake Superior, resulting in the deaths of the entire crew.
Cueball's song begins with lyrics based on the original song (though heavily modified), but quickly shifts into a (completely fictional) account of Lightfoot deciding to bribe a mechanic to sabotage the ship, implicitly causing the disaster for the purpose of writing a song about it.
In real life, the cause of the ship sinking remains unknown, but it's speculated that the ship's hull broke up in the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v | |
2911 | March 25, 2024 | Greenland Size | null | The Mercator projection drastically distorts the size of almost every area of land except a small ring around the North and South Poles. | :[Cueball and White Hat are looking at a world map on the wall showing a Mercator projection, with Cueball gesturing with his hand towards the map.]
:Cueball: This map is really misleading about the size of Greenland.
:Cueball: It's actually '''''much''''' bigger than that - it's hundreds of miles across. | Because the Earth is Empirical evidence for the spherical shape of Earth|curved, all flat maps have some distortion. (A common comparison is flattening an orange peel, which cannot be done without tearing and wrinkling it.) Different map projections can distort different Map projection#Metric properties of maps|metric properties, such as distances, areas, and angles, while leaving others intact. It can be desirable to preserve different metrics in different applications.
The Mercator projection, depicted in the comic, prioritizes depicting correct angles. This allows for easy course planning at sea, and makes shapes fairly accurate. In exchange, Mercator is often criticized for distorting size: distances near the poles look larger than the same distance near the equator. A common complaint is that Greenland appears as big on the map as Africa, when Africa actually has 14 times as much area as Greenland. When these size distortions are presented out of context, they can create bias and misconceptions about different places.
Cueball's dialogue leads the reader to expect this complaint. However, instead of comparing ''relative'' sizes of two landmasses within the map, Cueball compares the ''absolute'' sizes of the depiction of Greenland and the actual Greenland. On a typical world map, Greenland might be centimeters or inches across. Judging from the human characters, the mapped Greenland in this comic might be 10 cm across. In real life, Greenland is about 650 miles or 1,050 km across from east to west ([//britannica.com/place/Greenland source]). Cueball deems this difference misleading, presenting it as a failure of this specific map or projection.
Of course, this is absurd. The purpose of any map is to present information at a scale (usually much more compactly) at which it is easy to read and interpret. Any actual-size world map would have to be the size of the Earth's surface, in which case it would have few uses. In addition, if a map includes a Scale (map)|scale, it enables the user to use the ratio to calculate the actual size of the places depicted (though this would not be possible on a Mercator projection, since the map-to-reality scale is not constant).
The title text is about the fact that regardless of the size of the map there ''is'' a certain point where the area on the map is equal to the area at the actual pole at that latitude. This is because a horizontal line on a worldwide Mercator projection corresponds to a line of latitude. While most lines of latitude are thousands of miles (kilometers) long, they become smaller and smaller approaching the poles. As long as the projection (and choice of how much map to print) includes the pole (a point of zero length) expanded out as a measurable edge of the map, there will be a line of latitude around each pole whose length would equal the width of the map that Cueball is looking at (though the specific line would be different depending on the size and precise geometry of the map). If Cueball's map were 1 m wide, then this line of latitude would be at 89.999998568° N or S - that is, the line of latitude there would be a circle with a circumference of 1 m around each of the poles. Of course, in order for the map to actually include (say) the northern of those latitude lines as well as the equator, it would have to be over 3 meters tall.
A map at a scale of 1:1 was discussed in Lewis Carroll's "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded":
<blockquote>
''"What a useful thing a pocket-map is!" I remarked.''<br>
''"That's another thing we've learned from ''your'' Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than ''you''. What do you consider the ''largest'' map that would be really useful?"''<br>
''"About six inches to the mile."''<br>
''"Only ''six inches''!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six ''yards'' to the mile. Then we tried a ''hundred'' yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of ''a mile to the mile''!"''<br>
''"Have you used it much?" I enquired.''<br>
''"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."''
</blockquote>
The same idea was expanded in Jorge Luis Borges's "On Exactitude in Science".
Mercator projections have been mentioned previously in 977: Map Projections, 2082: Mercator Projection, and 2613: Bad Map Projection: Madagascator. The misleading size of Greenland on the Mercator projection is also the object of 2489: Bad Map Projection: The Greenland Special. | |
2912 | March 27, 2024 | Cursive Letters | null | 𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓬𝓪𝓹𝓲𝓽𝓪𝓵 𝓛 𝓲𝓼 𝓹𝓻𝓸𝓫𝓪𝓫𝓵𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓸𝓼𝓽 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓽𝓸 𝔀𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓼𝓮 𝓺 𝓲𝓼 𝓪𝓵𝓼𝓸 𝓪 𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻. | {{incomplete transcript|Do '''NOT''' delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A graph with 10 ticks on both the X and Y axes. The graph contains cursive uppercase and lowercase Latin letters. X axis is labeled "Looks cool" with an arrow pointing right and Y axis is labeled "Easy to tell what letter it's supposed to be" with an arrow pointing upward. From top to bottom, left to right, the letters are: C, B, P, K, d, X, R; M, N, c, O, x, t, y, L; D, W, a, Y, o, i; H; A, b, j; p, h; w, Q; m, u, k, g; E, I, l, q; f, J; U, V, T, e; n; v, F; G; r, S, s, z, Z.] | {{incomplete|Created by a ''𝓑𝓞𝓣 𝓦𝓘𝓣𝓗 𝓓𝓔𝓒𝓔𝓝𝓣 𝓗𝓐𝓝𝓓𝓦𝓡𝓘𝓣𝓘𝓝𝓖'' - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This graph ranks cursive Latin script letters. The type of cursive used is closest to D%27Nealian|D'Nealian though a few of the letters appear to be in the Zaner-Bloser_(teaching_script)|Zaner-Bloser style of cursive (specifically the P, Q, and p). The graph uses two criteria: legibility and coolness.
According to the graph in the comic: 'L' is in the top-right quadrant indicating it is both cool and easy to read; 'C' is in the top-left, meaning it is easy to read, yet not cool; 'Z' and 'z' are in the bottom-right which means cool looking, yet not easy to read; and 'r' which is bottom-left indicating it is neither particularly cool nor very easy to read (perhaps being confusable as a form of 'n', or even 'M', at least until actual cursive versions of those are comparable against).
The purpose of cursive is to allow efficient handwriting and make characters look nice and more "connected" at the same time. This is a particular issue when writing with a quill or fountain pen which tends to make noticeable marks when lifting the pen, so joined letters are generally neater than separated ones. The possible downside of this is the legibility of the individual letters. This may be due to the similarity of cursive letter shapes (e.g. 'U' and 'V' or 'e' and 'l' in the graph), especially when joined to other letters, or due their dissimilarity from more familiar "block letter" counterparts (e.g. 'Z' and 'z' in the lower right corner).
In the title text, Randall states 'L' and 'q' are letters that he enjoys writing in cursive, which could possibly add a third axis (most fun to least fun) to the graph. Notably, some RSS apps have challenges displaying the font and result in settings of '???'s.
The title text is written in cursive-looking font using upper unicode characters (encoded as UTF-8).
Example: the cursive 'I' character 𝓘 (Unicode [https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D4D8 120024 U+1D4D8]) is F0 9D 93 98 in UTF-8.
The title text includes 22 of 26 characters in the English alphabet|English lowercase alphabet and is thus 4 characters short of a pangram (missing letters: j, v, x and z). Pangrams are often used to show all the characters in a typeface in print or on a computer screen. It is unclear if the comic deliberately chose the words in the title text to show almost all the characters in cursive or if it is simply a coincidence.
To benefit those with lacking Unicode support, the title text reads: "''I think capital L is probably the most fun to write, though lowercase q is also a strong contender.''" | |
2913 | March 29, 2024 | Periodic Table Regions | null | Cesium-133, let it be. Cesium-134, let it be even more. | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A periodic table with regions labeled. Regions are marked with shapes that have rounded edges and sometimes a chemical element can be partially in two regions.]
:[Hydrogen:]
:Slightly fancy protons
:[Lithium and beryllium:]
:Weird dirt
:[4 elements below:]
:Regular dirt
:[6 elements further below:]
:Ends in a number, let it slumber
:ends in a letter, not much better
:[Left side of the transition metals group:]
:Boring alloy metals
:Probably critical to the spark plug industry or something
:(but one of them is radioactive so stay on your toes)
:[Most of the top row of the transition metals + aluminum:]
:Regular metals
:[Below the rightmost "regular metals":]
:Weird metals
:[Between "boring alloy metals" and "weird metals":]
:$$$$
:[Boron:]
:Boron (fool's carbon)
:[Top-center of p-block:]
:You are here
:[Top-right of p-block, excluding the rightmost column:]
:Safety goggles required
:[5 uppermost elements of the rightmost column:]
:Lawful neutral
:[Iodine and radon:]
:Very specific health problems
:[Below and to the right of "weird metals":]
:Murder weapons
:[Bottom row from the fourth column onwards:]
:Don't bother learning their names - they're not staying long
:[The lanthanides and actinides below the rest of the table, two rows of fifteen elements, arrow pointing to a conspicuous gap in the third column of the main table where the fifteenth would ordinarily be:]
:Whoever figures out a better way to fit these up there gets the next Nobel Prize | {{incomplete|Created by a LAWFUL NEUTRAL MURDER WEAPON COMMONLY USED TO MAKE SPARK PLUGS' VOICES SQUEAKY- Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The periodic table is used to arrange chemical elements based on their properties. This comic groups them together into regions with labels humorously reflecting their properties, characteristics, or uses. |
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