Captain Picard Tea Order

Explanation:
Captain Jean-Luc Picard is a primary character in the science fiction TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation , which is focused on the crew of a starship.  The ship is equipped with replicators , which can create virtually any object or material requested, including food and drink, and which respond to verbal commands.
In the show, Picard's beverage of choice is Earl Grey tea .  His habitual method for ordering is to first specify what he wants (tea, in this case), then specify a particular type (Earl Grey), and then give specific instructions for how it is to be served (hot, as opposed to iced tea ).  Because this is his favored drink, he repeatedly places the exact order " Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. " The first picture in the strip implies that the display shows each part of the order, and provides a list of options for the next step.
Randall parodies this repeated order by suggesting other words that could follow "Tea. Earl Grey.", starting from ones he considers more "normal" moving to those he presumes increasingly "less normal" down a long and winding arrow.
The results of two examples from the normal/less-normal scale are also illustrated: Sticky tea and loud tea. Sticky is kind of obvious, though perhaps not immediately understandable, the loud version is a tea that screams "Teeee..."  The vibrating and screeching teacup may be a reference to the various Star Trek episodes about tribbles , which behave in a similar way in the presence of Klingons.
The very last qualifying addition, the least normal is not a single word but "Tea for him, too." This reinterprets the meaning of the standard introductory words, suggesting that "tea", and "Earl Grey" are separate orders, which implies that he wants the replicator to produce tea, then replicate a human being named Earl Grey (either one of the Earls Grey or a person surnamed Grey with the given name of Earl), then a second tea to serve to this newly created person. Earl Grey tea is named after the Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey , a 19th century British Prime Minister, and Captain Picard possibly wishes to have said Earl be generated to provide him with company.
In contrast to the often trivial use of a replicator as merely a potentially infinitely versatile vending machine, the comic sets up a number of quite esoteric options, culminating in Earl Grey himself potentially drinking (generic) tea, after both the tea and he have been replicated into existence by Picard.
In the title text, someone tells Picard that they should wait until the Earl has been fully extruded from the dispenser, and then ascertain what he would actually wish to drink. The presumption is that it could take some time to get a full living person out of the replicator.  This sort of operation would be better suited for the holodeck, which has been used to create simulacra of other historical figures, including Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, and Sir Isaac Newton, with the limitations that they are mere simulations without their own autonomy and cannot exist beyond the limits of the fixed holotransmitters; though at least two others seem to have gained full sentience, and granted (or be convinced they were granted) physical freedom.
In the various versions of Star Trek , it's established that replicators aren't capable of producing living things , so canonically this version of the order could not be filled.
[At the top of the panel, there is a large caption covering two lines with a sub-caption below in a normal-sized font:] Other words Captain Picard tried at the end of his tea order before settling on "hot" From most normal to least
[Bellow this we see Picard, drawn bald except for a bit of hair near his ears and behind his head. He stands next to a machine, which is a standing rectangle of the same dimensions as Picard. In the front, there is an opening around the middle, a dispenser from where the ordered items can be retrieved. There is a label at the top of the machine. Picard is giving a command to the machine. His first three words are clearly spoken out as they stand, but then at the end of the sentence, instead of just adding one more word, there is a list of five words in a column between two gray lines. Five words are visible, but the top and bottom words are fading out, presumably other words are above and below, but no longer visible. All except the middle are gray. The middle word is placed as the direct follow up to the first three words in the sentence Picard speaks out, and this word is black like the previous three words. So this middle word is clearly the one he actually speaks out. The others were options, presumably on his mind.] Label: Replicator Picard:
[To the left of the machine, a long arrow begins snaking its way towards the bottom, where it ends in an arrow pointing down towards the bottom of the panel. At the top, there is a broad and thick bar from which it starts. Beneath this there are several ticks, the first three are close together and on a part of the arrow that goes almost straight down. But then the arrow curves in under the drawing of Picard, and goes over another drawing of him, placed in a captioned frame. The arrow goes around this and up on the other side, where it goes around another drawing of Picard in a similarly captioned frame. After having gone around this frame it goes a bit up before turning almost straight down before the final arrowhead that points down. In total there are 36 labeled ticks on the arrow, see labels below. The ticks have very varying distances between them. There are especially long between them around the first panels with Picard, but closer together at the start and towards the very end. Above the top bar from where the arrow starts there is also a label and just below this and to the left of the long arrow is a smaller arrow pointing down in the direction of the long arrow. This small arrow has a label at its starting point.] Bar label: Normal Small arrow label: Less normal
[The second drawing of Picard, shows him standing next to the labeled machine. Picard is this time holding a cup, with sticky lines connecting his hands and the machine to the cup. He clearly looks down at the cup rather than on the machine, as the hair behind his ear is turned differently than the first drawing, where he looks straight towards the machine. Above is a label inside a frame overlaid on the top line of the panel, with what Picard ordered:] "Tea. Earl Grey. Sticky." Label: Replicator
[The third drawing of Picard, only displays him and not the machine. He is holding a vibrating cup in both hands and has now turned the other way, away from where the machine was in the previous drawings (again clearly seen by his hair). Very large letters are displayed in three lines behind him to the exclusion of all else. Four of the 15 letters are partly hidden behind the panel's frame, and seven of them are partly covered by Picard. Above is a label inside a frame overlaid on the top line of the panel, with what Picard ordered:] "Tea. Earl Grey. Loud." Teacup: Teeeeeeeeeeeeee
[Words on the arrow from start to finish:] Hot Iced Decaf Good Lukewarm Tasty Boiled Watery Sour Meaty Solid Dry Raw Deep-fried Sticky Grilled Fossilized Magnetic Ballistic Unstable Blessed Blurry Loud Virtual Intravenous Expanding Ironic Segmented Verbose Cursed Unexpected Bipedal Afraid Infinite Tea for him, too


Hydraulic Analogy

Explanation:
Electric flow is commonly represented by a " hydraulic analogy ". In this analogy, the water pressure represents voltage and the flow of the water is the current . Electric resistance is represented by a constricted section of a pipe.
Miss Lenhart is teaching a class and starts to explain this analogy when Cueball suddenly has an idea and changes her diagrams - connecting the electrical diagram and the hydraulic diagram. In doing this, he has envisioned what comes to be called a "liquitricity device", combining liquid water and electric current flows together and given a suitably portmanteau title.
The last panel shows that Miss Lenhart and Cueball eventually receive the Nobel Prize , presumably the Nobel Prize in Physics , for the design and construction of the device - indicating that rather than being purely theoretical it has actually been practical to make this device.
The title text 'explains' how this device works and references Ohm's Law , one of the fundamental laws of electricity, but strangely seems as much an incomprehensible mix of the two as the diagram in explaining whatever form of possible duality it actually employs.
One of the featured Footer comics , 730: Circuit Diagram , displays a very complex circuit diagram. Although no pump or direct water flow can be found here, it all ends up in a beaker with holy water. And there is a symbol labeled 3 liters, at the bottom close to the beaker. This is the symbol for an orifice or flow restriction used on plumbing or hydraulic diagrams. So Randall already mixed water flow and circuit diagrams over 10 years ago.
[Miss Lenhart stands next to a white board with two diagrams while pointing to the first. While she is explaining Cueball interrupts her from off-panel as seen by his voice coming from the right side out of a starburst on the panels edge. The diagrams are a schematic circuit diagram and a water flow diagram. There is a battery (with labels on top and bottom) on the left and a resistor on the right of the circuit as well as labels on each of these and one at the top part of the wire. There is a pump to the left and a tighter section of the pipe to the right, as well as labels on these and on the top part of the pipe. At the bottom there is two arrow pointing in towards the pipe, this also has a label.] Miss Lenhart: Electric current is like water flowing in a pipe. The pressure represents- Cueball [off-panel]: Wait, hold on. Labels on circuit: + - V I R Labels on flow diagram: Pump F R D
[The view changes so Miss Lenhart and the white board are seen from the side. She still stands next to the white board, arms now down, as Cueball approaches the board with a marker held in one hand. The diagrams can still be seen, but distorted from being viewed from the side, and no labels are readable.] Cueball: Do you mind if I just...
[Zoom in on Cueball, who is drawing on the white board, which is the left edge of the panel, i.e. not visible in the panel. Noises from the marker drawing on the board comes up from the tip of the marker pen. The movement of the pen is indicated with small lines on either side.] Scribble Scribble Scribble
[Miss Lenhart and Cueball, holding the marker pen down, stand on either side of the white board looking at Cueball's version with the merged diagram. He has connected the two, so instead of the wire going down after the resistor in the circuit diagram, it now is connected with water flowing to the right just below the resistor, and then up into the pump to the right of the resistor. At the bottom where the water pipe before bent up into the pump, the water now continues running to the left (the pipe was not drawn around it by Cueball), and it now flows where the bottom part of the wire, from the circuit, was before, turning up below the battery and connecting with it there. All the labels from before have been retained as follows.] Labels on diagram: + - V I R Pump F R D
[Miss Lenhart and Cueball stand on a podium with a Cueball-like presenter. The presenter is holding two Nobel Prize medals up in his hands. He is holding them from the strings they are attached to, so the medals hang below his hands.] Presenter: And for the design and construction of the liquitricity device, the Nobel Prize goes to...


Alien Observers

Explanation:
This strip depicts a group of aliens observing earth, and discussing their "restricted flight zone", which they appear to change each time a human acquires a more powerful camera.
This comic was followed directly by 2573: Alien Mission , where aliens use similar looking flying-saucer type spacecrafts to observe Earth. It is not specifically stated that these two form a series, but the next comic could be seen as a direct follow up to the this one, indicating that the aliens are the same in the two comics. Just 7 comics later 2579: Tractor Beam also used similar spacecraft.
Both strips are based on UFO conspiracy theories , which are common in the US and a number of other countries.  It is often claimed that Unidentified Flying Objects seen in the sky are, in fact, extraterrestrial space craft, visiting earth for various reasons. Reports of such sightings have existed for a long time, and ever since cameras became widely available, photographs (and later videos) have been produced which are claimed to show such flying vessels. Almost invariably, these images are sufficiently distant, blurry, or otherwise obscured as to make any kind of detailed identification impossible - they could not be Unidentified Flying Objects if it were possible to identify them!
This strip lampoons such ideas by positing that aliens are real, but deliberately maintain a distance such that no clear photographs can be taken. While this concept might seem initially plausible, it doesn't stand up to examination.  Over the past several decades, cameras have become far more common, with most of the population of many countries carrying cameras every waking moment (and even sleeping with those same cameras within reach). At the same time, cameras available to the average consumer have dramatically increased in resolution and zooming capabilities.  The same shot that resulted in blurry and vague photographs in early digital photography could result in much more detailed images today, and also overcome many of the pitfalls associated with 'analogue' photography without sufficient skill and/or bulky equipment.  What's more, the cameras owned by individual consumers have a wide range of resolutions and other capabilities, meaning that an image that would show little detail from one person's camera could result in highly detailed photograph if someone else took a picture.  The fact that improving camera technology has not resulted in improved images of these supposed vessels is an impossibly weak point in these conspiracy theories.
The humorous premise of the strip is that these aliens are real, and are monitoring earth, but are taking deliberate actions to keep evidence of their presence ambiguous.  To do this, they would need to not only monitor what camera technology exists on earth, but the exact type of camera each individual owns, and maintain their flights right at the outer visual limit of those cameras.  Such information would need to be implausibly detailed, and constantly updated, because technology is constantly improving and people are constantly getting new phones with new cameras.  Part of the joke is that the aliens would have to know the visual range of our cameras, but instead of remaining safely outside of it (so that no pictures of their vessels could be taken at all), they stay close enough to be seen, but never close enough for detailed images.
In a broader sense, this strip addresses the same issue as previous strips, such as 718: The Flake Equation and 1235: Settled , in which the phenomenon of UFO sightings/reports is still left not resolved (either way) despite what modern technology should suggest is possible. The suggestion is that this trend either means that sufficiently advanced aliens are deliberately leaving ambiguous evidence of their presence, or that no such alien visitors are here, and the purported evidence is either faked, or misinterpretations of other phenomena. It's pretty clear which explanation Randall favors.
In the title text, the aliens note that one particular human now has a YouTube account, meaning they are likely to record video instead of attempting to capture still images. This means that the alien craft used to create the sighting must behave as erratically as possible, in order to avoid being identified. This relates to the often wildly oscillating (as well as blurry) films and videos of 'UFOs' that have been taken by the impromptu human observer beyond the limit of their ability to hold their fully-zoomed camera steady. Here it is explained as the flying saucers actually moving in an improbably jerky manner to prevent detailed recording of their craft. Further briefings of the sort depicted would doubtless accompany upgrades in optical/digital-stability features or the purchase of a camera tripod.
The identifier for the one buying the phone begins with "Human 38XT11". This seems likely to be a reference to THX 1138 as this was the title of George Lucas 's first film, which is also referenced in the original Star Wars film. The name contains the number in reverse, as well as the letters, if "human" could be written as H.
[Three aliens are looking at a screen. They each have six tentacles, of which four are used as legs, and the other two can be used as arms. They also have a small mouth and two eye stalks with a large eye at the end of each. The eyes has large eyelashes all the way around. One of the aliens is standing to the left of the screen, pointing to it by raising one of its tentacles. The other two aliens stand to the right of the screen looking at the picture. The screen's image depicts a cross-sectional diagram showing two humans in a rough landscape. There is a shaded area above each of the humans and the terrain. The shaded area's boundary consists of arcs of differing sizes centered upon each human. To the left of the first human there is also a small straight area over the ground. To the left of this towards the edge of the screen, what appears to be an arc with a very large radius that begins and rises high up compared to the other two arcs, around a point beyond the on-screen image's edge. The rightmost human's zone has a dashed region between concentric radii of different sizes indicating that this zone has been revised further out than before. Four flying-saucer like spaceships are shown in the air close to, but above, the shaded areas. One high near the left curve, one over the flat area, one near the intersection between the two small arcs and one over the middle of the right arc.] Left Alien: Human 38XT11-B-C54  just bought a new phone with a 10x zoom, so we have to expand our restricted flight zone by 1,800 meters to keep our ship blurry. Right Alien 2: Seriously? Didn't they just upgrade? Left Alien: I know, I know...
[Caption below the panel:] The hardest part of being an alien observing Earth is keeping track of what cameras everyone has.


Alien Mission

Explanation:
This comic followed directly after 2572: Alien Observers , both comics featuring alien flying saucers observe Earth. It is not specifically stated that these two form a series, but this comic could be seen as a direct follow up to the previous one, indicating that the aliens are the same in the two comics. Just 6 comics later 2579: Tractor Beam also used similar spacecraft.
The comic portrays a conversation between aliens inside two flying saucers (or alternately, two aliens whose form is that of flying saucers) in which they discuss their long-secret observation of Earth. It seems that the leader of the mission is in the right saucer, as the alien in left saucer begins by saying "Sir, can we talk". The left alien then continues to state that they have been secretly observing Earth for almost a century (perhaps from the early 1930's or late 1920's, and the title text suggests they already were there in 1937). During these almost 100 years, they have repeatedly flown over every (square) inch of Earth's surface, while trying to avoid being spotted by humans. (This is related to the previous comic, which is about improving cell-phone cameras making it increasingly difficult for flying saucer occupants to avoid being photographed.)
This leads up to the punchline, which reveals that the leader in the right saucer has been hunting for Bigfoot . The left alien tells him that if a Bigfoot exist anywhere in the universe, it is not on planet Earth. Apparently even advanced aliens have been unable to spot Bigfoot.  The alien leader continues his delusion by citing intriguing human videos of something that looks like Bigfoot. When the other alien sighs, implying that this conversation has occurred many times before, the leader continues his arguments with the typical conspiracy line, "How else do you explain the..."
The first panel alludes to the fact that UFO sightings became commonplace only in the 1940s .
The humor derives from the fact that UFO enthusiasts and cryptozoology enthusiasts have a similar mindset: They both believe in phenomena that the scientific establishment believes baseless. Both systems are fully lacking in clear evidence but have an abundance of eyewitness accounts and vague/blurry photographic evidence. And both belief systems have existed for many years, but rapidly advancing technology, accumulating data, and ubiquity of high quality cameras have still failed to capture any clear and detailed evidence. ( Randall seems to find this point particularly significant, and although his previous comic explained the bad flying saucer photos, he already made the comic 1235: Settled long ago, where he calls it settled that Bigfoot, UFOs, and similar phenomena don't exist since everyone has a camera handy at all times.) While these concepts are parallel, they're logically independent, as one deals with species that are presumably native to Earth and the other deals with advanced alien species visiting the Earth. The notion of alien visitors being interested in cryptozoology is incongruous: to them, all Earth animals would presumably seem equally alien.
In previous strips, Randall has suggested playing conspiracy theories off against one another (see 966: Jet Fuel ). This comic has a similar theme: suggesting that UFOs are here to search for Bigfoot (and the Yeti) sounds ridiculous on its face. But any explanation of why it's ridiculous would apply equally well to the notion of Bigfoot and UFO's individually.
Some of the aliens clearly have a similar belief, at least in Bigfoot, which is why they came to Earth. This implies that they had some prior knowledge or suspicion of its existence, and only then possibly narrowed it down to this one planet because of the videos humans have made.
Whatever the arguments about Bigfoot, the title text reveals a separate discussion regarding the Yeti , a similar large hominid purported to reside in the Himalayas , and the tentative permission to conduct one last search for it. As the Yeti and Bigfoot are very similarly described, they could also be seen as the same, so the only difference is that finding a Bigfoot in the Himalayas would make it a Yeti. In the discussion about this last search, they caution about staying high above the Pacific and watch where they are going. This is because, as it turns out, they were the cause of the Amelia Earhart incident. Amelia Earhart disappeared  while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 and neither her nor her plane have ever been found. The title text implies that she disappeared because of an encounter with a flying saucer. She has previously been the main character in 950: Mystery Solved and has since been a recurring theme on xkcd.
That their clearly superior observation technology and methods have been apparently unable to resolve these issues at first seems like it shouldn't bode well for our own cryptozoologists. But since lack of results does nothing to deter them, and since it is always impossible to prove a negative, they would likely not change their beliefs even if they heard of the alien results: "Bigfoot of course hides when the aliens look! And how else do you explain the..."
[Two 'classic' Flying Saucer spacecraft are hovering in the sky with speech-lines indicating communication from someone within each saucer. The rightmost is tilted a bit, like it is being attentive to the left.] Left Saucer: Sir, can we talk? Left Saucer: We've been observing earth for almost a century.
[Same setting but both saucers are level.] Left Saucer: Hovering and zooming from place to place, trying to avoid being spotted by humans. Right Saucer: Yeah.
[In a Frameless panel only the left saucer is shown. The right saucer's voice emerges from an edge-of-panel starburst.] Left Saucer: By now we've flown over every inch of the surface many times. Right Saucer (off-panel): Yes? And?
[Same setting as in the first panel, with the right one tilted towards the left saucer.] Left Saucer: Face it: If Bigfoot is real, he's not anywhere on this planet. Right Saucer: But humans have captured some intriguing videos! Left Saucer: *sigh* Right Saucer: How else do you explain the...


Autoresponder

Explanation:
Cueball and White Hat are going to some kind of show (a movie or concert, perhaps), and Cueball asks White Hat if he is ready to go, who affirms this but asks for Cueball to email him the tickets before they go.
When Cueball does this he apparently opts to send them to White Hat's work email address. When White Hat is not at work, he has an autoresponder activated that tells people to not disturb him as he is not at work. Usually this means that his email server sends an automatic response telling the sender of the mail that he is not at work, and not to expect an immediate reply.
But in this comic, White Hat has a physical autoresponder standing behind him, drawn as a human with thicker/rougher lines as if clad in bulky clothing, wearing spiky knee and elbow guards and a spike-embossed and notably scarred crash-helmet upon its head. It holds a glinting, sharp sword in its hand. When Cueball inadvertently activates it, it plunges forward to 'defend' White Hat from being disturbed by work related things during his spare time. It is so aggressive that it even violently pushes White Hat out of the way, with a blow to the face so that he falls back and dislodges his hat, as it prepares to confront the perpetrator, Cueball.
In the caption below, Randall states that he feels bad when he activates his friends' autoresponders. It is unclear if this is because he thinks he disturbs them with what they might think is work, because he then knows he will not get a reply or if he feels attacked (like Cueball in the comic) by their "aggressively worded" auto-replies.
In the title text Cueball shouts out (in all caps) to the autoresponder "I admire how you set boundaries and I hope your colleagues respect them! Please spare my life!"  He therefore thinks it is a good idea to have time away from work where you cannot be contacted by your colleagues.
It is unclear if the autoresponder is a human or a robot, but the open-faced helmet reveals the fringe and neck-length hair generally seen on female characters, although for instance Megan 's hair is usually longer and not so messy as this creature. This would be reminiscent of the Android series , especially 600: Android Boyfriend , where one of the androids moves past its owner.
[Cueball and White Hat are talking to each other while Cueball is typing on his smartphone. A dark-haired figure stands behind White Hat, drawn with thicker/rougher lines as if clad in bulky clothing; wearing spiky knee and elbow guards, a spike-embossed and notably scarred crash-helmet upon its head; and is holding a glinting sharp sword in its hand.] Cueball: Ready to go? White Hat: Yup! Can you email me the tickets before we leave? Cueball: Sure, one sec.
[The next panel is nested inside the first, although at first it just looks like two individual panels. This could indicate the second panel is an immediate response to the first. The armored figure aggressively moves forward towards Cueball, who drops his phone in surprise. The armored figure has its sword-arm raised, the other hand pushing White Hat behind it, by pushing him in the face which causes him to stumble backwards so his hat starts to fall off.] Cueball: Okay, I sent it to- Armored figure: It is outside work hours! Armored figure: Prepare to die! Cueball: Augh!
[Caption below the panel:] I always feel bad when I trigger my friends' work autoresponders.


What If? 2

Explanation:
This comic is Randall 's way of announcing and promoting his new book, what If? 2 , based on his what if? blog and following his first what if book.
The entire comic (including the xkcd Header text ) is a link to a what if? 2: the book page on xkcd .
Apart from promoting the book, the comic also explains why he ended up writing a sequel. After the first book came out Randall was flooded with what if? questions. Presumable mainly from his readers via e-mail, but his friends and families also started texting him with these questions. Some of these texts are displayed in the comic, but only partially, so none of the six question texts can be read. But where one might think that this would become tiresome, Randall instead tells the readers the opposite: "Honestly, I love it."
He then continues to praise the quality of the questions, mentioning no less than nine examples of what the questions were about. And in the process ensures the reader that planets, including the Earth, will be destroyed multiple times in his new book. At the end he lets the readers know that some of the features of the first book, with short answer sections and disturbing questions (likely not answered), are also included in this book.
He also states that a few of his favorites from the What If? site site have been included, so it is not all new material. From the book stores, it seems like he includes his very last online What If? ( Earth-Moon Fire Pole ) for instance, which was released on 2018-05-21, almost four years before this comic was released. Also, by the time the book is released, it will be almost four years and four months since the last article on What If?
The final part of the comic is a picture of the book that both makes it clear when the book is released and how to preorder it.
Randall ensured the maximum possible attention to his announcement by placing a countdown in the header about three weeks prior to the announcement. This has caused a lot of speculation as to what would be revealed on the day of this comic's release 2022-01-31. The timer was inside a panel at the top right of the xkcd header text next to the standard header text: xkcd updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday . Inside the panel a picture began emerging after the first day, but the picture only changed approximately once every four hours. After a few weeks was it certain that it was a plane that was being revealed. And on the second to last day, around day twenty, it was clear that it featured a T. rex -like dinosaur en silhouette standing on top of the aircraft, apparently trying to eat its way into the fuselage, and it might have been possible to guess the relation to the What If? sequel. On the day before the announcement on xkcd, however, Amazon made visible a preorder page for the book , so the answer was made clear about a day before Randall had intended. This clearly annoyed users of this page as can be seen in the talk page for the countdown .
Until then, however, there were numerous theories about the countdown and what the image would reveal as the image gradually changed throughout the eventual 136 frames .
In the title text, Randall feels that he must clarify the release day (as in 2562: Formatting Meeting ), since he has often joked about the way different countries (and people) write dates. He did not use the one version he himself had promoted in earlier comics. He does however give two different versions of the release date: the first is "9/13" in the first panel, which is at least (usually — see below) only readable one way; harder to misinterpret is the more expansive "Sep 13, 2022" in the final panel. A format that he could have used to avoid any confusion is: "the book is released on 2022-09-13," using the international standard as defined in the ISO 8601 standard and shown in 1179: ISO 8601 .
The clarification reads: By 9/13, I mean September 13th, not the 9th day of Jancember, the cursed 13th month that exists between December and January in the transdimensional temporal plane.
Since there are only 12 months in the year, [ citation needed ] 9/13 actually cannot be mistaken, while 9/12 might be. So there was really no need for this clarification, especially with the last text in the last panel. So this is of course just a title text joke, where he can manage to make a portmanteau of January and December ("Jancember") and then then call this a cursed month as it would be the 13th month if it came before New Year. This comic came out at the end of January, so it could have been at the end of Jancember instead. The number thirteen is seen by many as an unlucky number, so a thirteenth month would be considered cursed by some, or at least unlucky.
In reality, a 13th month can exist in some alternate calendars and is then called " Undecimber ".
At the release of this comic, the header changed to promote the website, the xkcd links in the top left section of xkcd was changed to promote the book and he made his first Blag post in more than two years with the What If 2 post.
The what if? header was also changed to accommodate promotion of the new book; not so strange, seeming as it was based on that blog. A picture is displayed at the top with the book at both ends and this text in between, with the first line taking up the top and the two other lines below, the first in a frame:
What If? 2 Preorder now On sale 9/13
The entire picture links to the what if? 2 page.
Exactly two months after the release of this promotion comic Randall made another comic about his new what if? 2 book: 2600: Rejected Question Categories . In this he also gives the release day as 9/13, in the title text, although without any mention of the ambiguity of this date format.
[Randall, drawn as Cueball, is throwing his arms out as he stands next to a big red book with white drawings on the cover. The cover shows a large passenger plane that has just taken off, as can be seen since the landing gear still has the wheels extended (only one wheel is visible at the middle part and then the one in the front). A Tyrannosaurus Rex has jumped on to the plane and it is biting down on the ceiling of the plane a bit in front of the wings, as if on the back of a prey. The dinosaur has already broken through the ceiling. Below is a jagged landscape with small mountain like peaks in the background. Megan and Cueball are standing on the top of the second of two raised plateaus, looking up at the plane and dinosaur. There is unreadable white text above the plane, then a title beneath the plane, and the authors name below the landscape, and more unreadable text beneath that, all in white. Below the book, there is a small arrow pointing to the right bottom of the book, with a label beneath.] Randall: Announcement: I’m publishing a what if? sequel! Book cover: what if? 2 Book cover: Randall Munroe In stores 9/13, available for preorder now: xkcd.com/whatif2
[Randall is shown holding up his smart phone in one hand. The screen lights up as indicated with small lines at the top. These point up to at least six SMS texts, each with two lines of text. They are shown in speech bobbles with a small arrow in the bobbles lower left corner. All six are covered partly by either the other five, or by Randall’s head, and none of them can be read in any meaningful way; only parts of sentences or words are clearly visible. The bobbles and the text in them are all drawn in gray. Randall is narrating (not speaking) in this panel, both above the SMS texts, and below.] Randall narrating: Ever since I wrote what if? , I’ve been flooded with questions. Randall narrating: And not just from readers- My friends and family stated texting them to me, too. Text 1: Hey, could s.. ele Text 2: Hypothe… Text 3: If you s… Jupiter… Text 4: Could my c… or… Text 5: Do you… my car… Text 6: If I trie… the sun, would I… Randall narrating: Honestly, I love it.
[Randall is again standing next to his red book talking. There is also a second version of the book lying to the right of the closed book, and this has been opened up to reveal two pages. The text is unreadable and the images are very hard to see, but it seems that two people are standing next to each other on the right page. The image at the top of the left page has been enlarged and shown to the right of the open book. It is an image of the Earth that is being peeled by a potato peeler, which takes off a large peel from the north part of Scandinavia and then goes via Russia into Asia. The title and author name can still just be read on the book,but maybe only because they are already known...] Randall: The questions are so good. People have asked about touching exotic  materials, traveling across space and time, eating things they shouldn’t, and smashing large objects into the Earth. There are questions about lasers, explosions, swingsets, candy, and soup. Several planets are destroyed-one of them by the soup. Book cover: what if? 2 Book cover: Randall Munroe
[Zoom in on the top part of Randall speaking on.] Randall: Like the first book, what if? 2 also features collections of short answers, new lists of weird and worrying questions, and some of my favorite answers from the What if site.
[Only the closed red book are shown in this panel, in an even larger version than in any of the previous panels. But it is still only the title and the author name that can be read, but in this version these can also be read on the spine of the book. Randall is narrating again, and there are text both above and below the book.] Randall narrating: If you want to get it when it’s released, you can preorder a copy at xkcd.com/whatif2 Book spine: what if? 2 Randall Munroe Book cover: what if? 2 Book cover: Randall Munroe Randall narrating: Available Sep 13, 2022


Control Group

Explanation:
Wordle ( [1] ) is a web-based word puzzle game that was popular when this comic was released. In the comic, Ponytail asks Cueball whether he's playing the game; Cueball replies that he isn't, because he's "in the control group".
In scientific studies, the control group stands in opposition to the treatment group; whereas the treatment group receives the experimental "treatment", the control group does not, instead receiving a placebo or nothing at all. This is done to establish a baseline—what would happen without intervention—against which the result of the experimental treatment is compared later.
When Cueball replies that he's "in the control group", this implies that Ponytail and other Wordle players are part of a "treatment" group. This implies that playing Wordle may have some long-term effects worth studying.
Jokingly, this may also imply that Wordle is some sort of social experiment , perhaps a sociological study conducted by Harvard . As noted in the caption to the comic, Randall has been using this line as his new all-purpose excuse when he is not doing something. It's a clever way of saying that you're determined not to take part, as a control group requires him to avoid it. Mind control studies can also be nonconsensual experiments that massively impact public behavior.
More realistically, Cueball may be part of a real market research control group, which was not exposed to advertisements and memes supporting the game or anything associated with the game. Market research studies have been common since the advent of advertising.
The title text is a parody of Wordle's sharing feature, which users have been posting on Twitter or other social media platforms to show their success or failure at the game. The title text shows a 5x6 grid, but calls it "Placeble" (a portmanteau of Placebo and Wordle) and has a number after it, suggesting that not only is the game a social experiment, but that a "placebo version" is being given to the control group. In the real Wordle sharing feature, the number represents the current day's game. On the date this comic was released, the Wordle website itself was on game 228, matching the number in the title text. Randall's placebo version of Wordle has blank/incorrect squares and has a score of "x/6" which is a loss in Wordle — unsuccessful after the maximum 6 tries.
[Ponytail is looking at her smartphone which she is holding in her hand, while she is talking to Cueball.] Ponytail: Are you playing Wordle? Cueball: No, I'm in the control group.
[Caption below the panel:] My new all-purpose excuse for when I'm not doing something


Sea Chase

Explanation:
In this comic, Randall returns to one of his pet subjects: map projections . Unusually, [ citation needed ] this time it is from the perspective of people living — or, in this case, sailing — upon the world that is quite literally being mapped.
Two sailing ships, of circa 18th-century design, are engaged in a close chase across the Atlantic , the aggressor flying the Skull and Crossbones of a stereotypical pirate vessel. It can be seen from the flags of both ships that they are tacking into the wind, the trailing ship seeming to be lighter and yet deploying more effective canvas with two active sails than the forward one can with three.  The ship being chased has a plan to escape and the means to do so. At a crucial moment, Cueball is told to flip a large incongruous switch that (like several other artifacts in the xkcd universe) alters the nature of their reality.
Whereas beforehand the world is directly represented upon a simply contiguous map, the Robinson projection , it is now changed to one (which is actually the new reality) known as Goode Homolosine in which the flattening of the world mitigates localized warping of angle, distance, and area by introducing discontinuities in relatively "unused" parts of the mapped world, such as the center of the Atlantic.
By precisely timing the change (as they cross a particular meridian , possibly the 40°W one), they leave the pursuer now on the wrong side of the very real gap, allowing the pursued ship to escape whatever fate they were trying to avoid. Though there is still an oceanic connection, it requires sailing down the edge towards the tropics, rounding this particular rent in the planet's surface, and heading back up the other side. This is vastly further than Cueball's ship needs to travel to reach (presumably) any European port in which they can safely moor.
The title text elaborates on the policies of the ship: crewmates are never to look into the "projection abyss" and to never hit the red button labeled " DYMAXION ."
The first rule suggests that changing the projection of physical reality produces a gap in reality — a void. This may be dangerous to gaze into or simply unnerving to crewmates, hence the rule. This may also be a reference to a well-known quote by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche : “He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”  See Beyond Good and Evil at Project Gutenberg
The second rule references a button that seems to do the same thing as the lever but changes the world into a Dymaxion projection . The Dymaxion map projects the Earth onto 20 triangles, which are typically chosen such that landmasses are contiguous while adding many discontinuities in the oceans. This would make navigating by ship in such a 2D world even more difficult than in the Goode homolosine projection. In particular, crossing the Atlantic ocean becomes impossible because of the introduction of a projection abyss from Norway to the Caribbean.
The Robinson, Goode Homolosine, and Dymaxion projections have been referenced in 977: Map Projections .
[A pirate ship flying the Skull and Crossbones is sailing after a merchant ship. Two sailors' voices come from the merchant ship.] Merchant ship sailor #1: They're closing in! Merchant ship sailor #2: Hang on, we're almost at the meridian!
[A map of the Earth in the Robinson projection, with two red dots in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. A voice comes from the red dot further to the east.] Merchant ship sailor #2: Now! Throw the switch!
[In a frameless panel, Cueball, representing merchant ship sailor #1, pulls down a giant lever switch labeled "Projection", from "Robinson" to "Goode Homolosine".]
[A map of the Earth in the Goode Homolosine projection, with one red dot on the American side of the split and one red dot on the European side of the split.]


Sword Pull

Explanation:
A surprised Cueball walks up to a stone where apparently a sword is stuck in almost to the hilt, embedded in a stone much like a particularly well-known fable in the legends of King Arthur . This may mean this sword is called Excalibur . Usually, the narrative is that the one who can free the significant sword becomes king of England (or, technically, Britain), see for instance Disney's The Sword in the Stone — or the scene as featured in 1521: Sword in the Stone , where Megan decides to return the sword back into the stone after reading about England on Wikipedia. (It has been commented that the one who managed to embed the sword in the stone in the first place may have had the greater skill and/or strength.)
Cueball rises to the challenge and stands atop the stone, for leverage, and pulls hard to yank it almost out of the stone. With a surprise even greater than before, he finds that the pulling of the sword merely starts a motor within the stone and, almost immediately,  the whole assemblage starts moving to the right with Cueball still standing upon it. Having failed to fully remove the sword from the stone, after he releases it the sword is retracted back to its original position inside the now moving stone.
The title text implies that the sword is actually the rope starter for Merlin's dirt bike . Merlin , a wizard, is typically known as King Arthur's mystical advisor. The title text mentions that Merlin really should not just let his dirt bike lie around, indicating that this is a common occurrence and has caused problems before. Since rocks are usually not dirt bikes in disguise, [ citation needed ] Randall may be describing this literally, as in a stone-bike that travels through the dirt, as it appears to represent in the last panel.
Some similarly-sized stones, namely sailing stones , do move spontaneously with up to 0.3 km/h in precise conditions. However, the stone in the comic appears to be moving at a higher speed, and sailing stones require no rope starting. [ citation needed ]
[Cueball walks towards a large stone on the ground from which the hilt of a sword is protruding. The ground he walks on is uneven, with small plants growing and small stones lying on the ground.] Cueball: ??
[Cueball stands on the stone and attempts to pull the sword out of the stone using both hands and leaning a bit back away from the sword.]
[Cueball manages to pull the sword partially out of the stone, still using both hands, and now he is almost standing in full height, but still leaning a bit back. Both he and the sword is vibrating from the effort, as indicated by several sets of two lines around the sword and Cueball's arms. The pull gives off a loud sound, and also a buzzing sound comes because of the pull.  And three small lines above the right part of the stone indicated that other sounds are coming from the stone] Pull: Yank! Sword: Zzz z z Stone: Put put put Stone: Brrr rr rr
[Cueball is still holding on to the sword, with the tip still inside the stone. But he is not pulling anymore and is now looking down on the stone beneath him. There are now several lines from both sides of the stone indicating noises coming from the stone, which now is written on both sides of Cueball on the stone.] Cueball: ?? ?? Stone: Rr r r rrrrrrrr r r
[Cueball has released the sword which has then returned to the original position deep in the stone. The stone is now clearly moving to the right of the panel, with Cueball on top of it. He is looking behind him and holding his arms out to the side to keep his balance. The patch where the stone lay to start is dark. Four large lines behind the stone indicates how it is moving. The stone is already partially outside the right edge of the panel. The sound from the stone is floating behind the stone as it moves to the right] Stone: R r r r rrrrrr r rr


Tractor Beam

Explanation:
Cueball is being pulled into a spaceship by a beam of light, called a tractor beam in the title. This is a common trope in science fiction, and usually pretty scary for the person involved. However, while Cueball is being pulled up, he asks a series of questions about the beam, about the force on the ship, and about the ship itself. The punch line is the caption - the aliens, frustrated by Cueball's questioning, release him and move on, to presumably find a different human to abduct and study. Many people have reported being abducted by aliens in real life, though none of these have been confirmed. [ citation needed ]
The first three questions deal with the properties of the beam – how it can be controlled to pull only him (and his clothes), not anything else. He also wonders whether the beam would still continue to lift his shoes if he took them off midway. Perhaps his apparel is only rising with him because it normally stays attached to him, perhaps it is similarly levitated with equal force or impulse. Theoretically, it could only lift his clothing, with enough force to hoist him along with it, though if this was done with insufficient finesse, it could cause damage to the clothing or the person. (One might be tempted to call this a Space Wedgie .) It is highly unlikely that this type of tractor beam could be used on Cueball without him realizing it, which would likely lead to him asking how the tractor beam lifted the clothes and not him.
Next, Cueball asks if his weight is pulling the ship downward. This would be the case, for example, if he were hoisted upwards by a rope instead of the beam, as equal but opposite forces act against each other, but not if the beam alters the nature of his surroundings such as with Cavorite or another means of gravitational shielding or alteration.
Then he asks what will happen if a bat flies through the beam. Things that could happen include the beam breaking (and him falling downward) due to the projected effect being interrupted, the bat being pulled up ahead of him as it enters the effective volume of the levitating beam or else nothing at all as it is outside the actual volumetric segment of the beam that is more than ambient light-effects. It may presumably have a relationship with the same focal effect as that which avoids the ground upon which he previously stood being drawn upwards. Also, the shadow of the bat on the ground might make the light beam look like an inverted Bat-Signal .
As the ship leaves, Cueball continues asking questions, as shown in the title text. Those questions address the shape of the ship. He asks whether the aliens based the saucer shape on depictions of extraterrestrials in earth popular culture, or if classic flying saucers were inspired by them.
His next question was cut off, but what we heard is "does the rotational symmetry help with".
Whether Cueball actually arrived onboard the ship is uncertain. If he started badgering the aliens with questions during the lift and then (as stated) was immediately set down again then he did not. Either way, they got fed up and decided to return him to the ground instead of sharing their knowledge, or just because they preferred someone less talkative. They may prefer or expect more scared, overawed, or surprised abductees but, by whatever alien criteria they judge their catches, it seems he isn't what they want.
This was the third comic in less than three weeks featuring aliens using this type of flying saucer type spaceship. The other two comics were in a row just 6 and 7 comics before this one, 2572: Alien Observers and 2573: Alien Mission
[A flying saucer type spacecraft hangs in the air above a flat area with scattered rocks and two hills in the background. A beam of 'light' emerges, a conical region textured with wavy lines radiating along its length, from a small square opening beneath the bottom of the craft going down to the ground a bit right of the saucer where its conceivably circular cross-section is rendered elliptic by both its angle of projection and our own viewing perspective. Cueball hangs suspended within the middle of the beam, above the ground but still some way from the saucer. His arms are held out to either side and his legs are bent up behind him. He is looking up at the saucer while talking.] Cueball: Does this beam only lift me? How do you avoid pulling up dirt and leaves and stuff? If I kick off my shoes, will they fall? Cueball: Is my weight pulling your ship downward? What will happen if a bat flies through the beam? Cueball: Hey, why does your ship have those blinky lights? Are they...
[Caption below the panel:] Moments later, the aliens set me back down and left.


Rest and Fluids

Explanation:
Black Hat congratulates Cueball on his recovery from some type of illness or injury. Common advice when someone is sick is to get plenty of rest and drink lots of water, to aid recovery and to ensure they don't ignore various common causes of fluid loss.
However, being Black Hat, he targets Cueball (who has been restored to full health) to tell him that he now should do the opposite of this. While a healthy person should get a reasonable amount of exercise, and should not spend excessive time in bed, Black Hat goes to an absurd extreme.  He tells Cueball to stop drinking water entirely and engage in an excessive amount of activity — in this case, by running on a treadmill to the point of physical collapse. The caption explains this, saying that it is "important" to tell people who have recently recovered from sickness to stop resting and drinking fluids, suggesting that these behaviors are for the exclusive purpose of healing and that they are useless (or even counter-productive) for someone who is now healthy.
Part of the joke may be that the most basic common and basic advice to people who are sick is good, general advice in any case. While a person who's sick should be particularly attentive to these needs, and will generally require more rest than a person who's healthy, getting adequate rest and hydration are important for maintaining health, not just recovering from illness, and pursuing the opposite would be dangerous.
The title-text expands on this backward line of thinking by suggesting to do the opposite of common remedies for various usual remedies: a hot cloth, standing, breathing parched air, taking histamines (this is as opposed to reducing fever with a cool compress, resting in bed, inhaling hot water vapors and using antihistamines ). These are increasingly bizarre.  A hot cloth on the forehead would range from useless to dangerous (if too hot, it could cause burns or overheating).  Remaining standing isn't harmful for most people, but would soon become exhausting.  Breathing dry air isn't harmful for most people, but without adequate water would dehydrate you even faster.  Histamines are compounds created in the body that regulate the immune system. They're generally not available as a supplement so it would be difficult to "take" histamines. If you could somehow raise your histamine levels artificially, it could interfere with any number of bodily functions.
This comic has some resemblance to 2279: Symptoms since it also makes a joke out of symptoms or the opposite of symptoms. Although not mentioned here, this comic is probably, like Symptoms, related to the COVID-19 pandemic , as many people were still sick with it at the time of publishing this comic.
[Cueball and Black Hat are talking to each other. Black Hat has his arms outstretched.] Black Hat: So glad you're feeling better! Black Hat: Be sure to get dehydrated and run on a treadmill until you black out!
[Caption below the panel:] Once people aren't sick anymore, it's important to remind them to stop resting and drinking fluids.


Health Stats

Explanation:
Cueball's has a smartwatch that tells him a new health statistic. It is clearly either a new watch or a newly discovered feature added to his existing one.
It seems to monitor the volume of blood currently in his left hand (specifically the one the watch is being worn on the wrist of, implying it tracks the inflow and outflow and maintains a running tally) and conveys this quantity in milliliters (ml). It also tracks other stats like his pulse, as seen later, but this is not what currently interests Cueball. Instead he studies the blood volume information and finds it changing from moment to moment. This may be from a combination of his pulse (misaligned to the frequency of the updates) or the vertical position and attitude of his hand (he subtly changes the hand's position from panel to panel). It could just be inaccuracies in the data, an issue with all scientific instruments but more so for consumer devices used without practiced expertise - it is unlikely he has strapped the measuring device tight enough onto his wrist to give scientifically consistent results, even with such slight arm movements as he makes.
He reports his thoughts on this to someone off-panel, who is heard replying to all his comments. At first, Cueball just voices the assumption that the small change is normal, and accepts the movement away from a number he had no reason to disbelieve as realistic. But then two measurements in a row both increase. Although all the changes are slight, compared to the magnitude of the numbers themselves, this freaks him out. He may be extrapolating these two data points into the future - if this rather selective trend continues, his hand may explode from its ever-increasing volume of blood. Either this, or Cueball noticed that the variation in the first three data points was ±0.025, but the final variation suddenly surpasses this level by ten times this range, massively redefining his evolving expectations.
For whatever reason he becomes anxious, a consequence of this is that his pulse also begins to rise, as also documented by the watch. This could simultaneously increase his blood pressure (not noted as being another monitored statistic) and in turn causing another rise in the volume of blood in his hand. Knowledge of the pulse increase makes him even more alarmed, which will cause a positive feedback loop at least in the short term.
The total difference between the maximum (22.09 ml) and minimum volume (21.81 ml) of blood in his hand is only 0.28 ml compared to an average of 21.9 ml, so less than 1.5% difference. This can realistically be assumed to be a normal fluctuation from heartbeat to heartbeat and/or with change of posture. For that matter, neither Cueball nor ourselves may have any idea what a normal volume of blood in his left hand would be. His comment in the first panel is that he's "not sure how to interpret" the initial measurement, and it might need rather uncommon medical knowledge to do so - even those who have learnt how much blood a typical human body should contain might be stumped by how much of that is just within a typical (or specific) human hand. However, he seems to have assumed that 21.83 ml was a normal measurement simply since it was the first one he saw (a stereotypical preference for early information ).
Just before his anxiety reaches breaking point, his off-panel friend begins to tell him to stop looking at the watch all the time, but is interrupted mid-sentence by Cueball actually freaking out. This final outbreak causes his off-screen companion to tease him by saying that "We will treasure your memory", thus joking that Cueball will soon die from the blood loss when his hand explodes.
The title text continues with this teasing where the friend jokes that after his demise he will live on forever in his friends' hearts. From there he will thus also be responsible for pushing a bit more blood into his friends' left hands, now and again, so they can feel this as a squeeze to remind them of how they lost their friend to a left-handed blood explosion.
This is likely meant to parody the tendency of people to monitor minute details of their own health, pandered to by possibly misguided developments in personal meditech, without having a clear idea of what any of the data means. This is arguably much more common today with health devices readily available, which can give the average person data about their own body but often don't offer useful context. Cueball is apparently sufficiently fixated on data that apparent changes to any metric causes him to panic. He doesn't know what the blood volume of his hand means for his health, or even whether it's a useful metric, yet he obsesses over perceived trends in the data.  The irony is that his very focus causes a more important metric (his pulse rate) to elevate. This may be intended to suggest that excessive fixation on one's own health can cause elevated anxiety. Ironically, this stress can potentially be more harmful than the things that the person has become upset about.
[Cueball is looking down and to the right at his bent arm, where a small device is radiating as shown with several small lines. Above him the message from the device is shown in a frame, that is divided in two by a line. The top part has one line of text, with a x at the end for closing the message. And below in the second half are two lines of text. Cueball is speaking to someone off-panel, who replies from a starburst at the panel's edge.] Box title bar: New health stat! Box: Left hand blood volume: 21.83 mL Cueball: Oh. Cool. Not sure how to interpret that, but good to know, I guess. Off-panel voice: I guess!
[Same setting but Cueball has turned to the left, still looking at his device on his bend arm. The message on the device is now only showing the message part, so it is no longer divided into two parts.] Box: Left hand blood volume: 21.81 mL Cueball: Huh, it's going down. I guess that happens. Off-panel voice: Mhm.
[In a frame-less panel, Cueball now has both arms bent with his hands close together in front of him. He has once again turned toward the right, and is still looking at the device.] Box: Left hand blood volume: 21.86 mL Cueball: Oh weird, now it's going up higher than before. Off-panel voice: Maybe you shouldn't look at-
[Cueball now holds his arm with the device outstretched towards the right, with his other arm bent in front of him a finger raised.] Box: Left hand blood volume: 22.09 mL Cueball: It's going way up! Is my hand exploding?! Cueball: And now my pulse is rising! Aaaaa!!!! Off-panel voice: So sorry. We will treasure your memory.


Data Trap

Explanation:
Cueball wants to analyze a "bunch" of data that he has, likely from a survey or study. Megan warns him against doing analysis because analysis produces more data — specifically, data about the data . This is implied to be a bad thing, as in, having "too much" data is undesirable — perhaps he will be expected to analyze the metadata, then analyze the metadata created by the metadata, and so on. However, data generated from analysis may provide useful insights about the original data set, e.g. finding trends or correlations between data points. Avoiding the analysis or deleting its data could deprive the analyzer of useful information. And, in the case that the analysis is flawed or impossible, there is little danger in disposing of any resulting reports. [ citation needed ]
The title text proposes an alternate solution: destructive analysis. It is important that the method chosen to analyze the data destroys as much information as it created, thus keeping the total amount of data constant. This expands on the concept of not having a surplus of data, suggesting that any analysis should destroy as much data as it produces. This would make data constant in quantity or in an equilibrium; of course, data doesn't actually have this limitation, [ citation needed ] and the user can create as much data as is needed or desired.
In the quantum world information can neither be destroyed or created; see the no-hiding theorem , for instance. Destructive analysis is a term used in archeology; as the name implies the thing that you study is destroyed by the analysis. However, destructive analysis is rarely or never used to study data. [ citation needed ]
[Cueball is sitting in an office chair at his desk, hands on his knees, looking at his laptop. Megan stands behind him, with her arms raised to the sides and above her head.] Cueball: Hey, look, we have a bunch of data! I'm gonna analyze it. Megan: No, you fool! That will only create more data!


Chorded Keyboard

Explanation:
This strip is a parody of the first verse (and in the title text, the end of the last verse) of Leonard Cohen 's " Hallelujah ", which has become a distinctive and popular song of which covers and versions exist. Written as a ballad , it is partly based upon the allegory of a mystical musical chord of several musical notes, that the words and tune both describe and illustrate by example.
Here is the verse from the song (see the lyrics here ):
Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do ya? It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing "Hallelujah"
Cueball is filking upon this theme, but in his case he has somehow set up his computer so that, upon pressing a certain combination of multiple keys on his keyboard, the system will automatically type out the word "hallelujah" (xkcd's all-caps lettering makes it unclear how the word is capitalized). In his description of the process, in both the comic proper and the title text, he uses adapted lyrics that again both describe and illustrate by example. Most of the initial lyrics are floating 'thoughts'. The punchline "hallelujah", however, is 'spoken' out of his computer monitor - typical of how on-screen text is indirectly shown in this comic series. It partially continues as a song parody through the title text but then trails off into a typical computer-complaint that he perhaps may often have cause to make .
The original lyrics rely upon typically nuanced rhymes, such as "do you" (or "do ya'") with "Hallelujah", and "fifth" with "lift", but fairly reliably rhymes "chord" with "Lord". In Randall 's version, it starts with "chord" and "word" which look like they should rhyme, but would be /kɔɹd/ vs. /wɝd/ in an typical US accent. Similarly "shift" and "left" might be considered not a perfect rhyme when read as prose, but should still be possible to meaningfully sing.
Technically, a chorded keyboard is one in which (nearly) all inputs are made by simultaneous pressing of a given combination of a limited number of keys, such as a literal handful of non-alphabetic keys, that the user learns to combine to represent the key-presses of more standard keyboards or (in some cases) signify entire phonemes or words. The workings of such a keyboard tends to be handled internally, sending to the computer the signal(s) that would have been sent from its larger cousin.
A big thing among Xennial hackers like Randall and his original audience was customising keyboard uses. The linux operating system was originally designed and used for personal customisation, and people move their configurations from system to system, often customising how things respond to such a degree that other users struggle to make use of their system at all. The first major two text editors, vim and emacs, were composed of different camps of how to efficiently type. The emacs camp believed it was more effective to hit many keys at once to accomplish a large task, but both editors were designed to be highly customisable. It's erroneously believed that the traditional qwerty keyboard was specifically designed to make typing inefficient so as to reduce engineering burden in making old typewriters responsive and reliable. Given the prevalence of them, it has been common among hackers to remap a keyboard to something they may personally consider more efficient, such as to use a dvorak layout layout rather than a qwerty layout. Chorded configurations are an order of magnitude more efficient than the dvorak layout, but are more complex to configure because the result is not at all a one-to-one mapping. The traditional court reporting device is a chorded keyboard, to keep up with human speech.
Using a combination of normally single-use keys (the 'H' and a cursor) with others, including modifiers ('shift' and 'control'), i.e. 'chording' with his keyboard, is a kind of key combination found traditionally in emacs and operating system commands (such as pressing ctrl+alt+c, to copy a selection to clipboard). The ballad then comes across as an ode to system customisation and the practice of user-interface hacking, wherein a computer user knows how to rebuild their interface in almost any way they desire.
The chording example goes beyond mainstream use (shift and an alphabetic character changes the character case, whilst ctrl and a character may initiate an editing command) or mainstream multi-modifier combinations (ctrl, alt and the 'e' may result in the 'é', where the keyboard does not otherwise support it) and even goes beyond emacs-like command sequences which are generally software-specific. It seems likely that a setup such as that depicted in this comic is handled within the computer, either defined within the OS (all mainstream desktop operating systems support alternative keyboard mapping and customisable key-combinations, often for accessibility and international keyboard support), or (as is often the case with specialist configurable gaming keyboards) via the driver installed to mediate such esoteric keyboard combinations as the user has predefined for themselves.
Cueball's combination-keypress may in fact be better termed a 'macro', in some contexts. The single event, somehow triggered by this particular simultaneous multi-key input, invokes the injection of a pre-specified sequence of standard characters into the appropriate text-buffer/-stream, in lieu of manual per-character input.
The title text spoofs the last verse of the (original) song, with "Hallelujah" being replaced by Cueball trailing off musing about having apparently lost the backup of his keyboard configuration, implying that he ended up in a position where he would want to restore said backup (for instance, having tampered with it to the point he is no longer capable of operating the keyboard efficiently, if at all).
Here is the original verse, where the title text spoofs the last three lines:
I did my best, it wasn't much I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool ya And even though it all went wrong I'll stand before the lord of song With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah
As added irony, while in the original that verse is hopeful, with the singer being thankful for experiencing joy even from a relationship that ultimately failed, contrarily in the alt text Cueball is apparently expressing regret. Or, if taken literally, it could instead imply that God himself is questioning Cueball about his tampering with software, which could fit with the running gag of Cueball's (often self-inflicted) computer problems being hyperbolically atrocious .
When one modifies one's keyboard config, it can make the system seem unusable (or at least highly unexpected) to things like a boss, a spouse, or an automated maintenance system. When an error is made somewhere in the process, it can make the system seem unusable to the very person who made the changes, making it hard to change them back.
[Cueball is sitting in an office chair at his desk, typing on his keyboard as shown by small lines over one hand, while looking at the screen of his stationary computer. The screen is on a raised platform on his desk. Lyrical text is written upon each scene, presumably what Cueball is typing.] I heard there was a secret chord That David pressed and it typed a word
[A closeup on Cueball in a slim panel. We see him from the waist up, with his hands on the keyboard just beneath the panels frame.] But you don't use a chorded keyboard, do you
[Same setting as in the first panel, except Cueball's arms have moved and there are movement lines above and below his arms.] It goes like this, <control> and <shift> The other hand hits H and <left>
[Slimmer panel but same setting as in the first panel, again the arms have moved a bit, with movement lines above them. The final written word of text is marked as arising directly from the computer.] And all at once it types out Computer: Hallelujah


Headline Words

Explanation:
White Hat , Megan , Cueball and Ponytail are planning a party. Megan mentions that the party was planned to be at Rob's place, but that this might not be a good idea, since he has cats, and some of the participants in the party are allergic to cats. This is a valid reason [1] . Seems likely that Megan is one of those that are allergic. Usually Rob is drawn as Cueball, but it is not necessarily Rob that is present, it could just be a discussion among some of the friends that are supposed to come to the party.
Cueball then replies to this in news-commentary fashion, using words and phraseologies that are common in headlines but rare in day-to-day use. This is strange enough to prompt Megan to ask him to stop. He continues though, although the gist of his second line is that he will stop speaking that way.
That this is indeed the case and what he is actually trying to do is explained in the comics caption. It states that Cueball's project was to speak in weird headline words. And that the project did not last for long.
News headlines are often very dramatic explanations of minor events; so are the things Cueball says here. Furthermore, some newspapers write their headlines in a stylized way which relies heavily on shorter words (such as "nixed" for "rejected"), often uses cliches (such as "tension mounts") and omits 'unnecessary' grammatical padding, a style colloquially known as Headlinese .
See below for explanation of his headlines.
The title text continues with a final headline statement from Cueball, telling everyone that the project was halted. Probably permanently.
Here each of the three headlines will be explained. Several of the words used are listed in the wiki article on Headlinese.
Wow, major snub for widely-touted top spot as lavish gala bid nixed.
According to the list of words: "snub" means to reject; "tout" can mean to suggest something, for approval; here, a "bid" means an attempt; and "nix" also means to put to an end/not allow to happen. The "top spot" is a venue which has status and popularity, while a "lavish gala" is an expensive/impressive festive celebration, in this case being a party.
Translating it step by step to more normal English:
Almost literal word replacement:
"Wow, a significant rejection for a widely suggested venue, which was looking like it was going to be used. Their attempt to host the party will probably fail now"
Trim excess words:
"This is a big surprise. We have had a significant rejection for the most widely suggested and popular venue. This means they probably won't host the party."
What he probably meant:
"Gosh, having heard that, it looks like Rob probably won't host the party after all."

Ill-advised scheme mulled as tension mounts amid growing backlash.
We can use a similar process, along with the list of words, to translate it step by step to more normal English:
Almost literal word replacement:
"This idea wasn't well thought-out and I'm now reconsidering it as I feel pressured to stop by your increasingly negative reactions"
Apply more context and rearrange:
"This idea wasn't well thought-out, and your reactions are making me uneasy, so I should probably stop"
What he probably meant:
"This was a bad idea and I can tell that you won't tolerate this much longer, so I should probably stop."

Roundly-condemned headlinese initiative shuttered indefinitely. (title text)
This time the sentence yields to relatively trivial word replacement:
"Nobody liked me trying to speak like this, so I'm going to stop forever."
What he probably meant:
"You all clearly hate me doing this, so I'll stop."
[White Hat, Megan, Cueball, and Ponytail stand in a row, with White Hat and Megan facing toward the right and Cueball and Ponytail facing toward the left.] Megan: Maybe Rob shouldn't host the party. He has cats and some of us are allergic. Cueball: Wow, major snub for widely-touted top spot as lavish gala bid nixed. Megan: Why are you talking so weird? Please stop. Cueball: Ill-advised scheme mulled as tension mounts amid growing backlash.
[Caption below the panel:] My project to speak only in weird headline words didn't last long.


Rounding

Explanation:
This comic is about the follies of unit conversion. Normally, when you say you can ride a bike at 45 mph if you round, you mean that you can ride at a speed between 44.5 and 45.5, something most people are incapable of doing. [ citation needed ] The joke is that Cueball actually means if you go through a extremely long chain of rounding imprecisely (see below ), starting at 17 mph (which is equivalent to 27.4 km/h and not an improbable speed for an ordinary road-bike and a reasonably fit rider), you can get to the value of 45 (72.4 km/h).
Randall also esoterically uses some more historic units here: fathoms/sec, furlongs/min, and furlongs/hr. A fathom is a unit of length, in the modern era being equivalent to six feet, usually used to measure the depth of water. Fathoms/sec could potentially be used to measure the ascent/descent speed of a submersible, but it would normally be a strange choice to enumerate the speed of a bike. A furlong is also a unit of length, equivalent to one eighth of a mile (or 660 feet or 110 fathoms) but is mostly unused except in horse racing. It is possible that furlongs/min or furlongs/hour could be used to measure the speed of a horse. Knots (nautical miles per hour) are a standard unit of measuring speed, but are typically used for measuring speed for airplanes or ships, not speed on land. However, km/h (kilometers per hour, spelled kph in the comic) is commonly used internationally to state the speed of land vehicles, while m/s (meters per second) is a measurement encountered in scientific usage.
The title text furthers the joke by taking the imprecise rounding literally, implying that this increase could actually be used/abused as a novel form of propulsion, but it isn't clarified for what type of vehicle. It could be an engine for ground or air travel, but contains the implication that it is trying to 'trick physics' similar to the theoretical 'warp drive' conceived to propel interstellar spacecraft at otherwise impossible speeds. One interpretation of the supposed chain of conversions is that it has somehow created a great deal of energy from nothing. Suppose there existed a device or system that could magically accelerate an object from 17 mph to 45 mph without any energy input. The sped-up object could be harnessed to a generator or engine in such a way that the object was slowed back down to 17 mph, with the difference in energy being output in a useful way, and the object fed back into the device. The result would be an engine that could create both free energy and non-conserved changes in momentum.
At the demonstrated rate of about 4% medium rounding gain, it would just take 73 more steps of rounding-acceleration to reach supersonic speed from the starting speed of 45 mph. If the speed of light could be approached without relativistic effects, another 349 steps would go from supersonic speed to the speed of light. (More efficient approaches may exist.)
[In the top left part of the panel is a small drawing where Cueball, wearing a bike helmet and holding a bike, is speaking to Megan.] Cueball: I can ride my bike at 45 MPH. Cueball: If you round.
[To their right is a large number with unit, with an arrow going straight down to a normal sized similar number. From there and proceeding all the way down to the bottom, in alternating leftward and rightward rows, the rest of the comic shows arrows connecting conversions from one measured unit into another unit. Straight arrows show the direction of the sequence on each line, the end of each line curveing down to start the next line in the opposite direction. The last of these lines ends close to the middle of the panel, with a straight arrow down to another large number with unit, like the first.] 17 MPH 8 meters/sec 16 knots 5 fathoms/sec 3 furlongs/min 6 fathoms/sec 40 KPH 22 knots 41 KPH 204 furlongs/hr 26 MPH 12 M/S 4 furlongs/min 15 yards/sec 8 fathoms/sec 15 M/S 34 MPH 5 furlongs/min 33 knots 19 yards/sec 10 fathoms/sec 36 knots 6 furlongs/min 45 MPH


Greek Letters

Explanation:
Mathematics uses lots of Greek letters, typically using the same letter consistently to represent a particular constant or type of variable. This comic gives a (non-)explanation of what they typically mean, see below .
In the title text the joke about capital Xi from the main comic is continued. In the main comic those using Ξ (capital xi) greets us as Earth mathematicians, indicating they are not from Earth, but have come here to learn what we know of math. In the title text the idea that any one using Ξ must be aliens is made clear. So if you ever meet someone using this letter while doing math, then learn as much as you can by quietly observing them, before they return to their home planet. Either learn from their possible advanced math (that allowed them to construct a way to get from one star system to another), or learn about them as the aliens species they represent.
Previously Randall made a similar comic, 2520: Symbols , about math symbols.
[A list with 21 explanations of different Greek letters. To the left, the letter (in one case two letters) are shown, and then the explanation is written to the right in one or two lines (and in one case on three lines). Above these explanations, there is a header in a slightly larger font:] What Greek letters mean in equations π This math is either very simple or impossible. Δ Something has changed. δ Something has changed and it's a mathematician's fault. θ Circles! Φ O R B S ϵ Not important, don't worry about it. υ,ν Is that a v or a u? Or...oh no, it's one of those . μ This math is cool but it's not about anything that you will ever see or touch, so whatever. Σ Thank you for purchasing Addition Pro ®! Π ...and the Multiplication ® expansion pack! ζ This math will only lead to more math. β There are just too many coefficients. α Oh boy, now this is math about something real. This is math that could kill someone. Ω Oooh, some mathematician thinks their function is cool and important. ω A lot of work went into these equations and you are going to die here among them. σ Some poor soul is trying to apply this math to real life and it's not working. ξ Either this is terrifying mathematics or there was a hair on the scanned page. γ Zoom pew pew pew [space noises] zoooom! ρ Unfortunately, the test vehicle suffered an unexpected wing separation event. Ξ Greetings! We hope to learn a great deal by exchanging knowledge with your Earth mathematicians. ψ You have entered the domain of King Triton, ruler of the waves.


For the Sake of Simplicity

Explanation:
Cueball appears to be explaining a gardening-related board game to Ponytail and White Hat . The game mechanics being employed are ridiculously overcomplicated for a game that seems to be about gardening — the cardiovascular health of the gardeners is tracked, for example. However, Cueball uses the refrain "for the sake of simplicity" to imply that the rules could be even more complicated . For example, the walking speed — already a surprisingly complex element — is constant instead of varying based on conditions, and the cardio scores — inherited matrilineally, requiring players to keep track of their gardeners' lineage — at least does not require players to calculate a random combination of many ancestors.
It's shown pretty quickly that Cueball's mechanics are needlessly intricate, and his definition of "simplicity" is not nearly simple enough: the lore of the game says gardeners may tend to secondary plots no more than "a 30-minute walk from their home plot", but where most games would simply state an arbitrary number of tiles a gardener token may walk, Cueball expects his players to calculate how far an adult human actually walks in 1800 seconds. This immediately spirals into the game tracking far more variables than necessary such as height and "cardio score", or even things like the curvature of spacetime in the area, and the direct inheritance of a single "cardio score" which requires tracking the gardener's matrilineal line — instead of factors more typical to games such as weather or terrain.
Features of Cueball's game include:
As gardening is itself an oddly mundane premise for a board game, [ citation needed ] it is entirely possible that gardening is just a minor element of a much broader game.
The title text mentions that the space is assumed to be Euclidean , which is what most people would assume since it corresponds to our normal experience, so this is not something that normally needs to be explained. But then it says that this isn't true in the vicinity of a Schwarzschild Orchid. An orchid is a type of flowering plant, which is relevant to a gardening game, but Schwarzschild refers to Karl Schwarzschild , a physicist who solved equations related to general relativity ; the Schwarzschild radius is the boundary of a black hole , and spacetime is severely warped in this vicinity, so Euclidean geometry and Newton's Laws don't describe motion here well. Most boardgames that even care about Euclidean principles only apply them to the 2D planar playing-surface, it seems possible that Cueball has already accounted for the slight (but non-zero) effects of the curvature of the Earth and/or changes in elevation across the apparently detailed simulation within the game environment, through 3D Euclidean space. And, further, the title text implies he actually sat down to calculate the distortion of general relativity upon the walking speed of an adult human, then later used these equations for an entire game mechanic — albeit one that players can mercifully skip when there are no gardeners in proximity of Schwarzschild Orchids.
The next comic 2588: Party Quadrants , also mentions complicated rules for scoring a contest. This seems somewhat related to the complicated rules of this game.
[Cueball is standing beside a table holding his arms out to each side. He has a small object in his right hand. Ponytail and White Hat are sitting on either side of the table. They have a board game between them with several small objects, like the one in Cueball's hand, but with different heights standing on the table. There is also a stack of cards near Ponytail to the left. Both players have their hands on some of the small objects on the table.] Cueball: You may assign each gardener's token to a secondary garden plot within a 30-minute walk from their home plot. Cueball: For the sake of simplicity, each gardener is assumed to have a constant walking speed proportional to their height and cardio score. Cueball: For the sake of simplicity, cardio scores are inherited matrilineally...
[Caption below the panel:] If you're worried that you're making something too complicated, just add "for the sake of simplicity" now and then as a reminder that it could always be worse.


Party Quadrants

Explanation:
In this comic there is a graph divided into quadrants to visualize the range of possibilities of fun for Randall and for guests at parties hosted by Randall.  The top and bottom halves are labeled as "fun for guests" with "no" in the top quadrant and "yes" in the bottom quadrant. The left and right halves labeled as "fun for me", i.e. fun for the host Randall, with "no" in the left quadrant and "yes" in the right quadrant.
In the bottom right quadrant (which indicates fun for everyone), are two separately outlined but largely overlapping regions, like a Venn diagram . One is the appropriate zone for a party (in general) and the other other applies to Randall's own birthday party. They are both vaguely ellipsoid and both enclose a reasonable to nearly maximal amount of fun in both dimensions. The key difference is that the range of the birthday party is skewed towards being marginally more for Randall's enjoyment, but is still firmly in the bottom right quadrant. By contrast, the range for a party is weighted more towards "Fun for Guests" and less towards "Fun for Me", as befits an event hopefully hosted to entertain its guests and make them feel special.
Omitting the extreme edges may indicate that there are no points there because it's impossible to completely please everybody, or it may be a warning that a party should not be such extreme fun that it gets out of hand nor let the balance of fun stray too far from equal. There are no specific points labeled in this quadrant.
The joke is that the only data point, presumably Randall's latest idea for a party, is in the upper right quadrant, signifying that it is only fun for Randall! It is very far right and fairly close to the top, indicating extreme fun for Randall and not fun at all for anyone else. The point is labeled "Sporcle geography tournament with snacks! Live-updating scoreboard, no distracting music". The elements of Randall's "fun" party include:
In the caption it is mentioned that for some reason, Randall keeps "accidentally" planning parties in the top right quadrant (fun for him, not for guests). Presumably he is so caught up in what he considers entertaining that he doesn't take into account the interest level of the guests. This is regardless of which party-context, and well outside either of the appropriate zones. This diagram though indicates that he know this is the case, but maybe he is first able to place the point on the diagram after the party, when he realizes that his guest leaves early (again) out of boredom.
The title text elaborates on the Sporcle trivia game night that Randall has planned in the upper right quadrant. It makes mention of a comprehensive, and perhaps overly complicated, scoring system to determine who is the party's winner. That he's talking about "winning the party" suggests he is fundamentally misunderstanding the point of parties -- they're supposed to be fun for everyone attending, not (exclusively) a competition.
See the previous comic 2587: For the Sake of Simplicity , which seems to be a bit related to what Randall thinks is fun, whereas other might not.
[A solid black lined square chart is divided into four quadrants with two light gray lines. Above the chart the left and right column are labeled, and above the labels there is a bracket with a label written on the bracket. Similarly there is labels to the left, of the top and bottom rows, with a bracket indicating those also with a label written on the bracket:] Top: Fun for me Top: No Yes Left: Fun for guests Left: No Yes
[The top left quadrant is empty. The same goes for the bottom left quadrant, except labels for items in the bottom right quadrant is written in the bottom left quadrant. In the top right quadrant, there is a single black point which is almost touching the right edge of the chart, and lies about a quarter of the way down from the top towards the gray line. The point is labeled:] Label: Sporcle geography tournament Label: with snacks! Label: Live-updating scoreboard, no distracting music
[In the bottom right quadrant there is a Venn diagram. It consist of two skewed ellipsoids, one with a solid line overlapping the other with a dotted line. The solid lined region goes further to the left, and the dotted line region goes further to the top, but both are mainly in the bottom right region, and the bottom right section is completely overlapping. Both regions are indicated with an arrow that goes to them from a label. The solid lined regions label is written to the left and it is entirely inside the bottom left quadrant. The dotted lined regions label is written in both of the lower quadrants, thoug mainly above the Venn diagram in the bottom right quadrant.] Solid lined label: Appropriate zone for a party Dotted lined label: Appropriate for my birthday party


Outlet Denier

Explanation:
This is the fifth installment in the series of Cursed Connectors and presents Cursed Connectors #78: The Outlet Denier.
The outlet denier connector in this comic is the large connector to the right. It has a plug on the downward side that is supposed to go into a power strip or other type of outlet. It has two long bars extending up and down off the plug, as well as a D shape on one side with another, slightly less long bar on the other side of the D, that has the cord connected to it. The purpose of the outlet denier is to block access to as many other ports on a power strip as possible, hence the name. It is designed to work with many different types of power strips, such as the standard one displayed in the comic, as well as ones with the sockets rotated 90 degrees (the long bar extending to the cord) and other types of outlets like the triple outlet on the end of many extension cords and two dimensional power strips that extend a couple of outlets left and right as well as up and down (the D shape on the side). The extreme bars to each side may also prevent plugging the Denier into an outlet close to the floor, forcing the user to use a power strip or similar item for it.
There is an example power strip displayed to the left of the outlet denier, used to help explain that the outlet denier is designed to block as many other sockets on a power strip as possible. The power strip is presumably of the type with a rocker switch that can turn the entire power bar off. This power bar has five outlets.
Many appliances require transformers or other large components on their power cord. Sometimes these "power bricks" are built around the plug. The comic is making fun of these types of power bricks, as they often block access to other sockets on a power strip or wall outlet. This can be really annoying when you want to plug in many different appliances into a power strip.
Other plugs are deliberately designed to block the other half of a duplex outlet, preventing users from plugging anything else in that could overload the circuit. The comic could be depicting an extreme case of a cumbersome connector shape designed to block an entire power strip, as the appliance connected to it uses so much power that a single extra item plugged into the power strip would cause problems.
The title text says that the outlet denier has bumps on the underside of the long bar that would match up with the location of the rocker switch no matter which outlet of the strip it is plugged into. It's not clear whether this will turn the power switch off or force it always on. But either way, it gets in the way of the user being able to control the power themselves.
If it forces it off, then the Outlet Denier cannot even be used. So to at least assume someone might actually use it, it must force it on. Since there are nothing else that can go into the power strip, it is not that important it it is possible to switch it off though.
[To the left is a power strip with a rocker switch at the top and five outlets, and a connected wire goes from the top off to the left. To the right is the plug that should go into one of the outlets. A curved wire comes from the right and connects to the end of the connector, which is longer than a normal plug. The prongs are visible underneath where the box ends. But instead of ending there, there is a bar horizontal to the first part, which is longer than the power strip itself. There is a D shaped bar attached to this long bar, centred on the middle of the bar. If it was plugged in, the long bar would cover all the other outlets of the power strip.]
[Text above the image:] Cursed Connectors #78 [Text below the image:] The outlet denier