number stringlengths 1 4 | date stringlengths 11 176 | title stringlengths 1 49 | before stringclasses 47
values | image imagewidth (px) 106 2.53k | titletext stringlengths 0 820 ⌀ | transcript stringlengths 0 8.93k ⌀ | explanation stringlengths 0 16.5k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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... | 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... | |
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:] E... | 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 ... | |
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 pe... | 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 b... | |
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... | |
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 minim... | 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 strateg... | |
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... | |
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 t... | 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 fossi... | |
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 actua... | 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, sculp... | |
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... | 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 t... | |
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 t... | 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... | |
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]
:: Eve... | ''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 appea... | |
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 pan... | 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, allow... | |
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, tota... | 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... | |
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 N... | 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 a... | |
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... | 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 typ... | |
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.
... | 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. ... | |
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 i... | 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. W... | |
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... | 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 yourse... | |
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 of... | 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... | 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 w... | |
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 lapt... | 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 ... | |
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 approxim... | 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 surro... | |
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 ... | 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 h... | |
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, t... | 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 ... | |
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 w... | 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 bac... | |
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 leav... | 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 ... | |
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... | 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 ar... | |
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 s... | 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 ex... | |
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 change... | |
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 ri... | 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 ... | |
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 / Dishwashe... | 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... | |
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 ... | 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 o... | |
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 wh... | 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|busin... | |
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 Ch... | 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 com... | |
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 a... | 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"), w... | |
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... | 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 ner... | |
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 Internati... | 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 o... | |
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 jok... | |
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 thi... | 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 a... | |
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 consen... | 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 scientif... | |
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... | 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 Novembe... | |
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 recordin... | 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 referen... | |
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 eject... | 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 par... | |
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... | |
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 classe... | 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... | |
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... | 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 ... | |
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: oooOOOOO... | 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 ... | |
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 a... | 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 ... | |
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 wit... | 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 furt... | |
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 disti... | |
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.
:J... | 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... | |
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 E... | 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 so... | |
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 - Probabl... | 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 lon... | 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... | |
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 i... | 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 Entert... | |
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 si... | 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 '... | |
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 l... | 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, t... | |
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 cl... | 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 asymptot... | 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 in... | |
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:
:[... | 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 molecule... | |
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 respecti... | 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 bei... | |
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... | 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 somethin... | |
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 b... | 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 ty... | |
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.''</s... | 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 be... | |
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... | |
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!!'''''
... | 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 ''i... | |
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... | 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.
... | |
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 northe... | 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 somethi... | |
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 hea... | 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 foo... | |
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 ar... | 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 ... | |
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... | 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 opinio... | |
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 go... | 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 ... | |
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 risi... | [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 p... | 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... | |
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... | 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 ... | |
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 i... | 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'.... | |
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 f... | 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 wo... | |
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 fina... | 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 ... | 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... | |
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 unhelpfull... | |
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, whi... | 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 ... | |
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 h... | 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... | |
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 footprin... | 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). Re... | |
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 pro... | 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 ... | |
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 ... | 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... | |
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 paym... | 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 superg... | |
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... | 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 t... | |
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... | 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 learnin... | |
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 plane... | 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 pro... | |
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 formin... | 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 c... | |
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... | {{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 '... | |
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 ... | |
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 a... | {{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 ... | |
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:]
... | {{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... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.