Evidence of Alien Life

Explanation:
This comic depicts a table of possible responses to new information on the possibility of alien life. It is presented in table form, with the columns representing three categories of reaction to new evidence, and the rows representing the strength of new evidence, increasing down the table. Each intersection then shows a small scenario of what the response would be. The left and right-hand column scenarios are hyperbolic in either their acceptance or denial. The center column represents a reasonable course of action.
This comic was a reaction to the discovery of phosphine gas on Venus , which is where Ponytail's "V" figure in the second row comes from (a representation of the phosphine absorption feature). Phosphine is a molecule whose presence in the Venusian atmosphere came as a surprise. Light breaks phosphine down, meaning something must be producing it. However, there is no known abiotic mechanism on Venus that would produce the gas in the quantities observed. The phosphine could therefore be a sign of life on Venus, but more evidence is needed. Venus was also an unexpected place to find a possible sign of life — although it was a common pulp fiction setting in the early 20th-century , the arrival of the space probe era dashed hopes that the hidden surface might be, say, an exotic jungle (one of the more common pulp-fiction concepts). More recent efforts at finding life in the Solar System have mostly focused on Mars and various ice moons with suspected subsurface oceans , but life more-or-less as we know it could exist within the upper atmosphere of Venus, which has more Earth-like conditions than the surface.  However, while the discovery of phosphine is interesting, it is not nearly enough evidence to claim that "life has been found" on Venus, and likewise, it is comically understated to refer to the paper as "evidence of molecules" in Venus's atmosphere.
The title text refers to an action which is simultaneously too cautious and not cautious enough: the speaker is skeptical that aliens exist, which is usually an appropriate belief, except that presumably Megan and Cueball are in the situation presented in the bottom row, where aliens have landed right in front of them.  Rather than modifying his belief (presumably it's Cueball, who was the one to approach the aliens in the other panels), he expresses an intention to approach the alleged aliens and attempt to remove their masks.  He believes that he will expose a human wearing a costume, perpetrating a "Scooby-Doo"-style hoax , but no matter what the outcome is, he's acting rashly.  If the beings before him are aliens, he will be initiating a very aggressive first contact and will likely receive a violent response, and even if the alien is not violent, Cueball might end up removing an environmental apparatus that is protecting it from Earth's environment (or vice versa).  On the other hand, even if the "aliens" really are fakes, Cueball might end up injuring someone who is just playing a harmless joke (and who'd want to keep some kind of mask on to reduce the spread of COVID-19 ).
In the first row, an asteroid looks like an "alien probe". The "least cautious" response immediately jumps to the conclusion that the asteroid is an alien probe. The "too cautious" response simply ignores the asteroid, while the "appropriately cautious"  response seeks to discover more information about the asteroid.
The "alien probe" asteroid refers to 'Oumuamua , which passed through the Solar System in 2017.  'Oumuamua's hyperbolic trajectory indicated interstellar origin.  Because of the unusual elongated shape suggested by its albedo (the object was never visualized as more than a point source of light) and indications of a slight non-gravity related acceleration, there were many wild speculations about 'Oumuamua's origin, including it being an alien probe similar to the one presented in the science fiction classic Rendezvous with Rama .  The image of an astronomer looking through a telescope and being alarmed by seeing "something huge" which is actually very small and very close is an old comic gag , but the difference in parallax would immediately distinguish a close asteroid from a far one.
The second row refers to the discovery of phosphine gas on Venus, with the "least cautious" response to simply conclude that there is life on Venus. The "appropriately cautious" and "too cautious" responses provide more general conclusions about "molecules" on Venus.
In the final row, aliens have arrived on Earth.  The insufficiently cautious approach is to immediately hug them.  Cueball might make a new friend, but he might also be mistaken as an attacker, or perhaps the aliens are intending to make a meal of whoever approaches them.  The more responsible approach is to (consider attempting to) communicate at a distance.  In the final panel, the United Nations building is being vaporized by energy beams.  This is technically "just" a "possible biosignature", as there are abiotic stellar events that produce energetic beams (although those are usually the size of planets or stars rather than buildings) and the beams could also be of human origin , but debating such semantics in the face of such destructive power seems excessively pedantic.  For that matter, even though that panel is presented as "too cautious", it's only "too cautious" in the sense of "discussing the possibility of alien life"; Megan and Cueball are showing extreme lack of caution by remaining in the vicinity of an alien attack.
The destruction of human governmental buildings is a common trope in science fiction films, as a way of aliens removing the ability of humanity to co-ordinate a response to an attack.  The United Nations building is allegedly the co-ordination centre for a worldwide response to an extraterrestrial incursion.  However, since popular culture in the USA currently doesn't pay much attention to the United Nations, in American movies it is more commonly the White House or larger cities like New York or Los Angeles that get blown up by aliens.
[The comic is laid out like a 3 by 3 grid, with the amount of evidence down the left-hand side (Weak Evidence of Alien Life/Promising Evidence/Definite Evidence) and the type of reaction across the top (Not Cautious Enough/Appropriately Cautious/Too Cautious). Each box is a combination of the row label and column label.]
[Row 1: Weak Evidence of Alien Life] [Column 1: Not Cautious Enough] [Cueball is looking through a telescope. There is a long, thin asteroid seen through the telescope, shown on the upper-left hand corner in the panel.] Cueball: This asteroid is probably an alien probe! [Column 2: Appropriately Cautious] [Same scene as before, except the asteroid is omitted.] Cueball: This asteroid is weird and we should take a closer look. Cueball: It's not aliens. [Column 3: Too Cautious] Cueball: This asteroid appears to be far away, but it could also be nearby and just very small.
[Row 2: Promising Evidence] [Column 1: Not Cautious Enough] [Ponytail runs excitedly to Cueball. She carries a notepad with a V on it.] Ponytail: They found life on Venus! [Column 2: Appropriately Cautious] [Same scene, except Ponytail is simply looking at her notepad.] Ponytail: These molecules might be produced by life, or by weird high-heat chemistry. [Column 3: Too Cautious] [Same scene, except Ponytail's arm is slack by her side.] Ponytail: There is growing evidence that the atmosphere on Venus contains molecules.
[Row 3: Definite Evidence] [Column 1: Not Cautious Enough] [There is a UFO with two aliens coming out of it. Cueball excitedly runs to the aliens, while Megan waits. There are three UFOs flying in the background.] Cueball: I'm going to go give those aliens a hug! [Column 2: Appropriately Cautious] [Two aliens are on the ground, and the foreground UFO is no longer in the frame. Cueball is talking to Megan. There are three UFOs in the background.] Cueball: Oh wow, aliens! Cueball: Should we try to communicate? [Column 3: Too Cautious] [Three UFOs are shooting beams into the United Nations building, vaporizing it. Cueball and Megan are watching.] Megan: The energy beams vaporizing the United Nations could be a possible biosignature.


Common Star Types

Explanation:
This 'infographic' chart purports to be a comparative guide to various star types, often described by a basic color, which is something that even naked-eye astronomy has determined, and may be qualified as 'dwarf' or 'giant' to describe relative sizes. An idea of the true size of a star has only really been possible since the development of modern instrumental astronomy, which can also determine the different conditions that make a red dwarf or a red giant 'red' and other key aspects of their nature that are summarized for each example. See table below .
In true xkcd tradition, this is taken beyond reality. The pantheon of stars illustrated extend the use of 'dwarf' and 'giant' as if describing mythical or fictional beings, drawing upon others from the fantasy ilk with hues and shades that may not be typically described, or even encountered, by astronomers. The aspect information provided for these 'star' types is based upon the respective mythologies.
The title text is in the style of a Wikipedia page's hatnote / reference note. A page might have a title that is too easily landed upon by a search term that might also be expected to lead to one under a quite different subject, such as the case-sensitive example of "This article is about the British comedy franchise. For the type of star, see Red dwarf ." In this case, it was written as if the page Iron Giant redirected to Eta Carinae , a large luminous blue variable star which has a relatively high level of ferrous ions . Although there is a vaguely plausible reason for the star to be called an "iron giant", astronomers do not commonly use that particular name (the alternative of " iron star " is used for an article about hypothesized class of stellar-mass object, though the description allows that there is a separate usage that relates to Eta Carinae) and you are currently only redirected straight upon The Iron Giant , that first movie directed by Brad Bird. This note was added to Wikipedia, but quickly removed.
[A chart, with ten colored circles representing stars of different colors and sizes. Each circle has a label, with a line going from the label to the circle. Below each label is a small description in smaller font. The text is listed from the top left. Above all the circles is the following heading:] Common star types
[A small yellow star.] Yellow dwarf Warm, stable, slowly-growing
[An even smaller white star.] White dwarf Small, hot, dim
[A very large red-orange star squishing the previous two stars into the corners of the chart.] Red giant Huge, cool, luminous
[A small red star.] Red dwarf Small, cool, ancient, dim
[An olive green, medium-sized star.] Green elf Old, diminishes into the west
[A fairly large pale blue star.] Blue giant Large, hot, short-lived
[A blue-green, medium-sized star.] Teal sphynx Cryptic, eternal
[A small silver-colored star.] Gray wizard Wise, powerful, mercurial
[A tiny blue star.] Indigo banshee Bright, portentous, extremely loud
[A beige, medium-sized star.] Beige gorgon Dangerous to observe at optical wavelengths.


Voting

Explanation:
The run-up to the 2020 United States elections , occurring on November 3, 2020 (less than 2 months from the time of the comic's publication), has been fraught with various overlapping worries about the legitimacy of the forthcoming result. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a new interest in voting by mail , at a historically large scale. See Postal voting in the United States for more detail. Cueball, however, is in a very patriotic mood and makes a series of hyperbolic statements to Megan about the trials he would be willing to endure in order to vote in the upcoming elections, none of which would (hopefully), in reality, apply to his or anyone else's circumstance.
Crawling across broken glass might have actually been necessary at some polling sites of the 2001 New York City mayoral election primary, which had begun on September 11, 2001, and would have continued had it not been postponed two weeks due to the terrorist attacks of that day. However, as Megan states, their polling sites, unlike those of the 2001 election, don't even feature any especially large windows or other such structures from which broken glass could be derived. The idea of being so intent on doing something (in this case, voting) that a person claims to be willing to crawl across broken glass to do so is a common expression.
The Sun, currently a yellow dwarf star on the main sequence, will eventually expand into a red giant, then collapse down to a white dwarf when its fuel is exhausted; this will not happen for billions of years, as Megan points out. Because of this, waiting until the sun burns out would result in Cueball's vote not being counted at all, both because it would be after the official deadline for ballots to be cast and because there would no longer be anyone alive on Earth.
As Megan observes, hot coals would most likely not even be present at their polling stations, and although some states have been accused of trying to make voting inconvenient or unsafe, this comic has not yet led any states to prohibit wearing shoes at polling places.
According to Megan, her and Cueball's municipality does not even include a single shark-infested body of water that Cueball would be able to swim through in order to cast his vote. Cueball's solution to this problem is to simply swim back to their location after swimming in his shark-filled channel.
Megan tries in vain to convince Cueball that his proposed actions are unnecessary or even impossible in their area, but, unable to bring him back to reality, she closes the final panel by asking if he'd be willing to put off all of this dangerous stuff until after voting, perhaps so that he will be alive long enough to vote in the first place.
Broken glass, the extinction of humanity, hot coals, and sharks aside, though, Cueball faces the risk of contracting COVID-19 from being in such close proximity to so many other voters, as he seems to plan on voting in person (his words show his desire for activities only possible by way of physical action; in the title text, he also ignores Megan when she says that mail-in voting is available).
In the title text, Megan tells Cueball that he does not need to go to such lengths to vote, as their state has mail-in voting and already sent forms either to cast a ballot or to apply for mail-in ballots. Cueball ignores her and continues looking online for shark-filled channels to swim through.  In doing so, he completely negates his professed desire to vote, as he is ignoring the easy path and going after paths that would end up making it impossible to cast his vote. Alternatively, he may just be caught in the normal rabbit hole of doing Internet research, where you start researching one thing (voting locations) and end up reading about another (locations of shark-infested channels).
Randall is making the point that, despite apparent obstruction tactics and threats and attempts to de-legitimize the process, voting is very important (Cueball is using hyperbole to illustrate the importance), and relatively easy (as Megan keeps reminding him).  He is also expressing an opinion that the increased danger of system compromise harming the legitimacy of the voting process due to massive mail-in voting is less worrisome than the corona-virus pandemic keeping people from voting at all, if in-person voting were the only viable option.
Randall lives in Massachusetts, a state with majority Democrat media, voters, and government.  Sharks are sighted off Cape Cod on occasion, so if he really wanted to, he could swim with them, but unless he lives on Cape Cod itself, it would take him very far outside his voting district.
[Cueball walks in from right, staring at his phone and talking to Megan.] Cueball: I will crawl across broken glass to vote this year if I have to. Megan: ...Why would there be broken glass? Megan: There aren't even any big windows at our polling place.
[Cueball raising a finger triumphantly.] Cueball: I will wait in line till the sun burns out. Megan: Ok, some places have lines, which is awful, but it's usually pretty quick here? Megan: Definitely not 5 billion years.
[Cueball raising a fist.] Cueball: I will walk barefoot across hot coals to cast my ballot! Megan: Where would you even find coals? Megan: You can wear shoes to vote. This scenario makes no sense.
[Cueball raising a finger, and walking back off-panel to the left] Cueball: I will swim across a shark-filled channel! Megan: That'll take you way outside our precinct. Cueball: Then I'll swim back! Megan: Can you do all this stuff after voting?


Volcano Dinosaur

Explanation:
This comic is a reference to this discovery of fossils of dinosaurs that were buried and killed by a volcanic eruption .
Megan asks if the dinosaur was okay. As living things typically don't survive being fossilized in volcano debris [ citation needed ] , the answer to the question would obviously be "no", but Cueball replies that he is unsure. Even if the dinosaur somehow survived the initial burial, it would be very difficult for it to survive being buried for 125 million years. 2020 probably wouldn't be the best year to dig it up and potentially let it free.
It is not an uncommon shortcut to refer to finds of relatively intact fossilized pieces of an animal using wording that sounds like they found an entire animal intact, as in the headline "New dinosaur discovered" rather than a wordier but more accurate "the fossil of a new dinosaur" or "the fossilized bones of a new dinosaur".  Most parts of an animal dead for millions of years don't survive that length of time, and those that do are usually transformed into something else, such as bones becoming fossilized into rock and minerals.
Megan's response is natural and expected in many situations when hearing of a person or creature experiencing misfortune. The humour here comes from the inaptness of asking the question millions of years after the event. Rather than responding to the ridiculousness of Megan's question, Cueball takes it seriously, and deadpans that he can't tell.
The title text suggests contacting its " next of kin ", which usually means a nearest living relative, e.g. a brother or a sister. The process of identifying and contacting next of kin is a standard step performed by authorities in the event of a death being discovered. The reason for this step is to allow the next of kin to exercise their rights to the property of the deceased under inheritance law. In this case, non-avian dinosaurs are extinct [ citation needed ] , so it is the job of phylogeneticists (those who study evolutionary relationships) to determine which living animal (presumably a bird of some kind) is the "nearest relative" to the deceased dinosaurs. However, even if the correct species could be identified, the specific animal would be all but impossible to find.  Statistically speaking, that dinosaur is almost certainly either a direct ancestor of all living birds , or else an ancestor of no living birds.
[Megan is standing facing right, talking to Cueball who is sitting at a computer desk and also facing right, looking at a computer screen.] Cueball: Oh cool, they just found a dinosaur that was buried by a volcanic eruption 125 million years ago. Megan: Wow.
[Pause. Megan is still facing right. Panel closes in on Megan and Cueball is not shown. This panel has no dialogue.]
[Megan has stepped closer to Cueball, who leans in and is still looking at the screen.] Megan: Was it okay? Cueball: Hmm, it doesn't say.


Message Boards

Explanation:
The joke of this comic lies in the dates of the forum posts and the (presumed) relation between the posters.
The initial post was made in 2000 by NIN85 who was, at the time, a teenaged girl (likely 14 or 15 years old given that her username ends in "85," implying she was born in 1985), complaining that her mother did not allow her to get a Vespa . Vespa is a brand of scooters and mopeds produced by the Italian manufacturer Piaggio. Most U.S. states require motorcycle licenses for any vehicle with an engine size over 50 cubic centimeters. Most Vespas are larger than this, although 49 CC models (classified as mopeds) do exist. Depending on the state, the minimum age to get a moped in the United States is 14, 15, or 16.
The reply was written in 2020 (twenty years later) by JULZ (or Julian), the presumed son of the now-adult NIN85, likely in his teenage years.  The "Z" may refer to "Generation Z", paralleling the "85." "JULZ" complains about his mother refusing to allow him to get an electric scooter, which doesn't require a license. He is implicitly pointing out the hypocrisy of his mother, as a fifteen-year-old, thinking that teenagers with scooters are perfectly reasonable, while as a thirtyfive-year-old, being against the idea.
The primary source of humor in this strip (made explicit in the caption) derives from the fact that the Internet has been in common use for so long that teenagers can now look up old posts that their parents made when they, themselves, were teenagers. The late 1990s to early 2000s was right around the time the average person would be expected to have access to the internet and use it regularly, which means that, as of 2020, that's been the case for around one human generation. This can be jarring for people who are still used to thinking of the Internet as a new technology. Noting how much time has passed since events that feel recent is a recurring theme in xkcd.
Of course, the basic premise of this exchange is nothing new. Teenagers have encountered (and been surprised by) the notion that their parents were once young for as long as there have been people. In the past, it's happened through finding old photographs, old videos, old diaries, or simply by hearing stories from their family and old friends. Young people are often shocked by what they learn, and accuse their parents of hypocrisy when they punish behavior that they once engaged in. Of course, this isn't true hypocrisy: we expect teenagers to grow and evolve, and develop mature, adult viewpoints. Parents naturally have both more understanding of dangers and lower tolerance for risk when dealing with their children. This strip points out that the internet has now existed for long enough (and preserves archives for long enough) that it's now become a potential medium for this whole dynamic. Part of the humor results from the unexpected situation that the child went to the trouble of tracking down his mother's old forum post, and that his mother is still active in the same niche forum 20 years later (as evidenced by her rapid response).
In the title text, the parent is apparently a moderator on that board now, or at least can quickly twist the ear of an actual mod. She has the thread locked (preventing further replies) and threatens banning the kid if he does not learn to post new threads, instead of dredging up dead threads from two decades ago. The act of reviving long-dead threads is often called "thread necromancy" or "necroing," and many forums (and users) frown upon it. It is seen as similar to bringing up a conversation from ages ago in real life. It often adds nothing new, and the original participants in the discussion may no longer be active or no longer interested in the topic. Some forums may actually encourage tagging onto existing but idle discussions (to add new or updated information) rather than repeatedly creating new threads, but that does not seem to be the case here.
Invoking the power of moderation could suggest that, in typical parental fashion, she's using her greater influence and social position to end the discussion, making clear that she's the one in charge.  "You'll be banned from this forum thread" could be seen as the Internet version of "as long as you live under my roof, you'll live by my rules".
[Single panel showing a view of the "MopedPro" forum on a message board, with a caption below the panel.] Forum Tab: MopedPro Forum (Top Left) | (4 tabs with illegible writing on them. None of them appear to be selected) (Top Right)
NIN85 (posted December 5, 2000 - 13:01): So mad that my mom won't let me get a Vespa. I'm old enough for a moped license and they're really not that dangerous.
JULZ [new user] (posted September 23, 2020 - 17:05): At least she's not stopping you from getting an electric scooter you don't even need a license for
NIN85 (posted September 23, 2020 - 18:36): Okay, Julian, (a) you know we talked about this, and (b) how the heck did you find this thread
[Caption below the comic]: I love that message boards are now old enough for this to happen.


Parity Conservation

Explanation:
Bloody Mary is a legend of a ghost, phantom, or spirit conjured to reveal the future. She is said to appear in a mirror when her name is chanted repeatedly. This is why Cueball says he said her name three times. This is her second apperance in xkcd, the first being 555: Two Mirrors .
The remark on parity conservation and cobalt-60 is likely a reference to the Wu experiment . In 1956, physicist Chien-Shiung Wu and her team at the National Bureau of Standards used cobalt-60 to show that the weak interaction breaks parity: beta particles leave the decaying nucleus in the direction opposite to nuclear spin.
One of the results of this is that it becomes possible to differentiate between the concepts of left and right on a purely technical level, even if the person (or distant alien) you're talking to can't see you. When we say that "parity is not conserved," we mean that the concepts of left and right are not purely symmetrical across all areas of physics. As Richard Feynman put it, this means that "nature's laws are different for the right hand and the left hand, that there's a way to define the right hand by physical phenomena."
It seems as if Cueball is trying to "hand" Bloody Mary his experimental apparatus either physically (as he is asking her to take the cobalt-60 "before [she] come[s] out of the mirror"), or perhaps by reflecting it onto her side. Because Bloody Mary exists in mirrors, her world is implicitly a mirror of ours. This would allow her to conduct mirror physics experiments, such as whether or not the beta particles leave the cobalt-60 in the same direction as they do in our universe.
The title text references antimatter . In physics, antimatter is like a mirrored version of matter — mirrored in charge, parity, and time — composed of antiparticles rather than particles. Antimatter and matter spontaneously annihilate each other when they meet, releasing extremely high-energy radiation. Therefore, Bloody Mary being made of antimatter explains why she kills people when she comes out of the mirror. (Bloody Mary would also be annihilated in such an interaction, so the fact that she keeps coming back may be attributable to her being a ghost.)
There have been a lot of science fiction-y stories featuring antimatter people; often, these are duplicates of "regular"-matter people.  The stories often show unrealistic ideas of what would happen if matter and antimatter versions of people met.  Sometimes, the duplicates simply disappear; sometimes, if the plot requires it only one may disappear.  Or sometimes the entire universe is destroyed.  In reality, what would happen is that the matter and antimatter would mutually annihilate, as pairs of subatomic particles, creating enormous radiation and heat.  It's likely that only a small fraction of the matter and antimatter would actually come into contact, rather than being propelled apart by the explosion.  Indeed, if the duplicates are in their versions of air, the air and anti-air particles would interact first! Even in interstellar space, an antimatter alien would give off significant radiation from collisions with matter particles. In these stories, it's often presumed that the corresponding duplicates of people can annihilate only each other, but can safely touch anything else.  In reality, the matching is at the subatomic level: any proton with any antiproton, any electron with any antielectron (or "positron"), etc.
[Cueball is standing in front of an oval wall mirror hanging over a small table.  He's holding a tube connected to an electronic device.  A face is dimly reflected in the mirror.]
Cueball: Listen, I know I said your name three times.
Cueball: But before you come out of the mirror and murder me, can you hold this cobalt-60 and take some measurements?
Cueball: See, I'm researching parity conservation...
[Caption below the comic]: It took some negotiating, but I've finally become the first person to coauthor a paper with Bloody Mary.


Messaging Systems

Explanation:
Messaging systems suffer from the network effect , as in order to communicate, both parties need to be using the same system.
Though relatively ancient by modern standards, SMS is supported by almost every mobile device (unless you're using a kosher phone or still on a DynaTAC ) that has a phone number attached, which means if you want to send a message to someone, but aren't sure if you have a messaging protocol in common, you can be sure at least they have SMS.
The comic mentions many other communication systems, which offer various advantages in either security ( end to end encryption ) and or a bunch of general improvements filed under the label "vaguely modern", such as longer character limits and the ability to share media such as images in-service.
The messaging systems are shown in a Venn Diagram , with the categories corresponding to these three advantages. The intersections between the categories are very minimal: there are a few systems that have both E2E encryption and are modern, but no intersections with "supported by everyone", and SMS is the only system in that category. So when choosing a method of communication, you're usually faced with a compromise.
The title text proposes an alternative, absurd mingling of technologies in the vein of 1636: XKCD Stack . IRC is Internet Relay Chat, a similarly antiquated messaging service that may also never die, as suggested in 1782: Team Chat . Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a layer of networking software that provides encrypted communication. DOSBox is an emulator that recreates the operating environment of MS-DOS ; part of the absurdity is that DOSBox is intended almost solely for video games. Additionally, this hodgepodge of technologies is running in a mobile browser, instead of a dedicated server or machine.
Various other comics have referenced the issue of chat services, including 1810: Chat Systems , 1254: Preferred Chat System , and 1782: Team Chat .
Slack
Facebook Messenger
Hangouts
Discord
Various DMs
End-to-end encryption refers to messaging systems where only the communicating users can read the messages posted. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers , internet providers , and even the provider of the communication service – from being able to access the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt the conversation.
PGP Email
Various Obscure Projects
Skype I Think
XMPP ( Jabber + TLS )
Signal
iMessage
WhatsApp
SMS
RCS (Rich Communication Services) is a more modern protocol, aimed at replacing SMS and MMS protocols. RCS support has been slow to rollout among cellular carriers, due to their preference for proprietary implementations and monetizable usage tracking and/or gatekeeping. Like SMS and MMS, RCS is a federated network, wherein failure of one provider's systems is unlikely to result in a total system outage. The single-provider messaging networks of other widely used systems (such as those mentioned on this page) can experience system-wide outages that prevent all users from communicating via them at all; this has happened multiple times for both Signal and Discord, among others. For this reason, single-provider networks are intrinsically more prone to total system outages than federated networks.
The long-standing interoperability of SMS+MMS networks is difficult (if not impossible) to match in terms of communicating with a maximum number of people, and maintaining functionality for other users when one provider experiences an outage.
A Venn Diagram is shown, framed in a box. It has three components:
Vaguely Modern, E2E Encrypted, Supported By Everyone
Items Solely in the Vaguely Modern category are:
Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, Discord, Various DMs
Items In both 'Vaguely Modern' and 'E2E Encrypted' categories are:
Signal, iMessage, Whatsapp
Items Solely in the E2E Encrypted category are:
PGP Email, Various Obscure Projects, Skype I think, XMPP and XMPP + XEP-0384: OMEMO
Items Solely in the 'Supported By Everyone' category is:
SMS
All other categories are empty.
[Caption below the comic]: Why SMS refuses to die


Amelia's Farm Fresh Cookies

Explanation:
The comic portrays the back side of a box of cookies (evidenced by the nutrition facts -style table on the left side). Many brands have a romanticized origin story on their packaging explaining the name or how they have a secret ingredient. Instead, this brand's origin story is a tale of petty one-upmanship as the brand's founder sets out to prove that her cookies are better than her grandmother's.
Grandma's cookies were apparently very fragile and crumbly. They also had "gooey exteriors and slightly crisp interiors." Normally items bake from the exterior in, so how the interior had gotten crisp and the exterior hadn't is not explained (maybe Grandma "bakes" them in a microwave oven ?). Grandma's cookies also had a "mysterious gritty texture", perhaps from sand getting into the flour from the stone grinders, that was unpleasant to Amelia.
To complete her revenge, the "story" contains the grandmother's address. Creating false addresses for their mascots is often used as a publicity stunt for children to write testimonials to the brand's PR or marketing department. However, here it appears to be Amelia's actual Grandma's actual address, the goal being for her to receive thousands of letters on a regular basis about how her granddaughter's cookies are so great, while jabbing "unlike yours!"
In retaliation, Amelia's grandmother has started submitting (presumably bogus) food safety complaints about Amelia's bakery to the health department in a ploy to overburden the bakery with unnecessarily frequent inspections. At one point Amelia eventually decided to offer a truce, which her grandmother emphatically rejected, underscoring it by sending Amelia an extra-large batch of the cookies she knows Amelia hates.
While the name of the city past the first letter and at least one of the zip code digits is too illegible to read, by process of elimination it is plausible that the city is Orlando and the zip code is 32891 (or less likely, 32861). No other location in Florida consists of one word starting with O and a zip code legibly close to the one in the comic.
[What looks like the back of a package of cookies is shown.]
[Top left: Product logo.] Amelia's Farm-Fresh Cookies [Parts of an oval surround the logo]
[Middle left: What appears to be a standard Nutrition Facts panel, though the details are illegible squiggles]
[Bottom left: What appears to be an ingredients list, though the details are illegible squiggles, and a few other squiggles]
[Right side:] Our Story Growing up on my grandma's farm, I spent so many cozy mornings in the kitchen, watching her take trays of fresh-baked cookies from the oven. Her cookies were just awful . She used the finest ingredients. Eggs straight from the coop, stone-ground flour, hand-churned butter. But she squandered them. It's so sad. She told me I was too picky, but I know what cookies are supposed to taste like. When I started a bakery, I vowed not to repeat her mistakes. These cookies won't fall apart in your hands. They have gooey centers, and slightly crisp exteriors, not the other way around, Grandma . There's no mysterious gritty texture. Why would there be? If you enjoy these cookies, please write to my grandma to let her know. Thanks! Amelia
[A partially legible squiggled address appears at the bottom left of the Our Story part of the box. The bracketed dashes represent portions that are illegible.] Ms W[——] M[——] 1[—] A[——] Ln O[——], FL 328[–]1


Masks

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
This comic is a line from top to bottom explaining how good different types of masks are at preventing respiratory virus transmission. As with many comics in 2020, it is a reference to the 2020 pandemic of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, a virus that primarily transmits through air droplets expelled from the human nose and mouth. This comic may have been inspired from a Polygon article published on May 15th .
[02%] Zorro/Lone Ranger [03%] Batman [07%] Theater [10%] Skincare [15%] Scarecrow [18%] Guy Fawkes [48%] Cloth [52%] Spider-Man [68%] N95 [71%] Scuba [80%] Vader [90%] Mysterio
[A chart is shown with a title and explanation at the top:] Masks By effectiveness at preventing respiratory virus transmission
[The chart consist of a vertical line going top to bottom with arrows at both ends. There are labels at the top, aorund the middle and at the bottom:] Not effective. Effective Extremely Effective
[Along the line there are 12 bullets. From each bullet there goes a line (often with one or two turns) to a depiction of a type of mask. Each mask type is labeled. The first six masks are all close to the top, the last only halfway down to the middle of the line. The next two are right around the middle, then two are halfway towards the bottom from there and the final two are close to the bottom, with the last very close to the botom. From top to bottom:] Zorro/Lone Ranger Batman Theater Skincare Scarecrow Guy Fawkes Cloth SpiderMan N95 Scuba Vader Mysterio


Bigger Problem

Explanation:
Cueball is asking White Hat to help fix an unspecified problem with the world. Presumably, he is working for some form of charity and perhaps asking for donations or signatures. White Hat responds by saying that Cueball doesn't care (about, presumably, the world) and that he would be working to fix an unspecified larger issue if he really cared. Cueball then asks if White Hat would rather be working to solve that problem. However, White Hat says that he doesn't want to, but that he also hasn't come up with an excuse not to yet. White Hat seems as if he couldn't be bothered, and wants to go on with his life.
The claim that someone is not working towards an important issue, while not always completely invalid , is commonly used as a cheap tactic to ignore a solution to a problem, even when the person using it does want to help out with either cause and is also a logical fallacy known as the " Not as bad as " fallacy, Fallacy of Relative Privation , or Appeal to Worse Problems . In the last panel of this comic, White Hat reveals that he isn't sufficiently devoted to either cause to act on them, so that his bringing up the larger issue appears less like interest in the larger issue than an excuse to not support Cueball's cause.
The title text furthers this point. While the argument used by White Hat is supposed to imply that the person giving the argument cares about an issue that matters more (to the exclusion of the other issue), it's often used, as seen in this comic, as an excuse to not work to fix any problem, making it "a real slam-dunk argument against fixing any of them."
Both causes in the comic are referred to ambiguously and surrounded with angle brackets to imply that they can be filled it with any two problems, as the comic is supposed to depict a common situation that happens during discussions of many different causes.
This comic is quite similar to 871: Charity because both have a character that responds to people trying to help "by figuring out a reason that they're not really as good as they seem". Additionally, it seems to relate to 1447: Meta-Analysis on being very meta. 1232: Realistic Criteria has an extremely similar conversation between Cueball and White Hat.
People sometimes use similar fallacious reasoning against themselves, thinking that they shouldn't tackle "simple" "unimportant" problems when there are "important" problems outstanding, even if the former are within their ability to handle but the latter aren't.  This can be a form of self-sabotaging behavior.
In essence, this may be an example of the principle "The perfect is the enemy of the good." That is, it is better to make a small advance which does some good. If you insist on doing nothing until you cure everything to perfection, nothing will be done.
[Cueball, holding a clipboard next to his body in his left hand, holds his right hand palm up towards White Hat.] Cueball: I'm trying to fix <problem with the world>. Can you help?
[Cueball stands with both arms down while white Hat lift one hand up toward Cueball.] White Hat: It's obvious you don't actually care. If you did, you'd be trying to fix <bigger problem> instead.
[Same setting as the first picture, wit Cueball's hand a bit further out towards White Hat.] Cueball: Okay, want to help fix <bigger problem>? White Hat: No, for another reason I'll think of later.


All-in-One

Explanation:
This is an xkcd-style parody of an all-in-one printer , a printer which typically can perform several functions, usually printing, scanning, copying, and faxing. This machine starts off with fairly standard printer functions but quickly becomes absurd. The machine is accordingly oversized, making room for all the status indicators and (presumably) the extra internal parts required to accomplish the uncommon functions.
The title text says that if both the "scan" and "shred" options are selected, it now scans documents before trying to destroy them. Previously the machine destroyed documents and then scanned the pieces and tried to reconstruct them, identifying the original location of each shredded piece on the original sheet(s) of paper, which takes a large amount of processing power.
Certain functions are lit green, indicating they are in use. To show which ones are in use, they are highlighted green (selected) .
[A large printer-like machine, with the label All-in-One Paper Processor on the top left of it. There are three columns of functions, with a few of them having a green light. At the top of the machine is a "paper feed" tray. At the bottom of the machine, is a large hole, for outputting the paper.]
Column 1 Print (lit green) Copy Fax (lit green) Shred Scan Translate Summarize Plagiarize Collate (lit green)
Column 2 Staple (lit green) Remove staples Add those perforated edge strips that are so fun to tear Roll Burn Eat
Column 3 Fold airplane Origami flower Corrugate Paper-mâché Découpage Notarize (lit green) Biodegrade Crumple and throw at trash like a basketball (lit green)


Prediction

Explanation:
This comic is about misunderstanding probability . Sometimes people will incorrectly assume that if two events are possible, and one of them is more likely than the other to occur, then the first event WILL occur; or, that if one names two or more outcomes they are equally likely to occur when in fact they might have different probabilities.
Saying that one event is more likely to happen than another is not the same as saying that the first event is definitely going to happen. A statement like "event A has a 70% probability of happening" often misleads people into believing that event A is inevitable, while in fact 3 times out of 10 event B will happen instead of A.
Some don't like probability statements because they are not definite and therefore cannot be proven wrong. For example, if a probability statement says "event A has a 1% probability of happening" and event A actually happens, that does not prove the statement wrong, because the statement admits of the possibility of event A happening.
For example, FiveThirtyEight famously gave Trump a higher odds, 28.6% of winning the 2016 U.S. presidential election than most other models did just before the election, but still not more likely than his opponent. However, many readers at the time interpreted that as "Trump is definitely going to lose", and after he won that election, blasted FiveThirtyEight for getting its prediction "wrong". However, that interpretation is mistaken. 28.6% means Trump had a real chance at winning: if you could put election results in a hat and draw them at random, he would win two out of every seven tries. For another example, in tabletop gaming terms, Trump's likelihood of winning was slightly lower than that of passing a flat check with a DC of 15 (6/20 or 30%).
The correct interpretation of a probability statement like "event A has a 70% probability to happen" is that in the long run, about 70% of events with this probability end up happening. If, for example, 99% of those events ended up happening, the 70% probabilities you gave those events may likely be wrong (you should've given probabilities closer to 99%), even though you "called" almost all events correctly (in the sense that 70% means the events are more likely to happen than not to happen, and almost all of them happened). Looking back at your predictions and seeing if the results are what you should expect is called calibration ( example ).
In the last panel, it is shown that Cueball anticipated this lack of understanding, so he plays pre-recorded audio of his prediction for the conversation.
The title text says that these people are gullible enough to the point that they would accept a disadvantageous bet. However, it also says that the probability that they might not actually go through with paying the bet if they lose brings into question whether to propose the bet is actually worth it. Randall has previously made allusions to betting on fallaciously claimed probabilities in comics such as 1132: Frequentists vs. Bayesians and 955: Neutrinos .
The comic doesn't rule out the possibility that event A and event B aren't directly related. For example, it is more likely to flip a coin and get a head than to roll a 6-sided die and get a 6. This is a fairly pointless observation in most cases, except perhaps if one is trying to explain the probability of an unfamiliar event by comparison with something very familiar.
At the time of writing, the 2020 United States presidential and congressional elections are less than a month away. This is a time when polls showing one or the other candidate leading are common, and may be misinterpreted to mean that the candidate is certain to win. Additionally, after the 2016 election saw Donald Trump, the trailing candidate in the polls, winning, many also interpreted this to mean that the polls were useless and/or wrong, or even go beyond this and take an adverse poll prediction as a perversely authoritative indication that the exact opposite result (which they would favour) is now a certainty. Cueball has previously shown an interest in U.S. election polling, for example in 500: Election .
In early October, famous statistician Nate Silver explained on his podcast "Model Talk" that, according to his model, Donald Trump had a 17% chance of winning reelection in 2020. That seems low, but it's a one in six chance, the odds of Russian roulette, the practice of shooting oneself in the head with a six-bullet barreled pistol with only one chamber loaded: it only has one chance in six to kill the person doing it. Would anyone in their right mind play Russian roulette? The answer he was implying was no. This illustrates how one chance in six is very real. While 17% seems low, it can absolutely happen.
[White Hat and Cueball standing next to each other. Cueball has his palm out.] Cueball: Event A is more likely than Event B.
[White Hat touches chin thoughtfully] White Hat: So you're saying that Event A will happen. Cueball: No, Event B could also happen.
[A frameless panel] White Hat: So you're saying it's 50/50. Cueball: No, it's definitely not 50/50.
[Cueball produces a phone] White Hat: Sounds like you have no idea what will happen. Cueball: And yet I knew exactly how this conversation would go. Here, listen: [Cueball clicks a button on his phone] *Click* Phone: Then you'll say, "So it's 50/50"


Election Screen Time

Explanation:
Cueball has an app on his phone which informs him of the time spent using it for various purposes. These are typically used to monitor one's own, or maybe one's teenage child's, (over)use of games, social media apps, general browsers, etc., and highlight any surprising issues.  It is unclear whether this is: a specific analyser, that somehow identifies just this narrow subset of uses; a more general app, currently filtered to give information on just these two politics-related interactions via some complex heuristic method; or he actually does nothing but these two classifiable things, on this particular device.
Whichever is the case, it is currently displaying and comparing just two curiously detailed statistics - the time used staying informed about politics, and the time he has spent reading election updates - and nothing else. The total time recorded would be a large slice of someone's typical day, if the report is for the last 24 hours, but is overwhelmingly dominated by the latter activity whatever the duration covered.
The comic reflects that most people spend a lot of time consuming news speculating about who will win the upcoming election, even though reading these "updates" will have no impact on the election because people are unlikely to change their minds because of them. People spend very little time researching information that will allow them to make informed decisions about voting, which is an important civic duty.  In addition, a recent article in The Atlantic said that " Reading Too Much Political News Is Bad for Your Well-Being ".
The title text suggests regret about the time spent consuming political news, possibly reflecting the sentiment that the 2020 United States presidential election has been especially divisive with little productive dialogue. The title text might also be a reference to the movie Airplane! (directly referencing the 1957 movie Zero Hour! ) where one of the most popular gags is when Steve McCroskey first says "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking", then "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines", "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue" and so on.
Randall has also mentioned "screen time apps" in 2223: Screen Time . Randall has previously remarked on poor time allocation in 1445: Efficiency , in which he admits that he reduces his overall efficiency by spending too much time figuring out which approach to a problem was more efficient.
In 2282: Coronavirus Worries , he indicated that worrying about other people's actions is much less healthy (although unfortunately more common) than looking after your own health.
[Cueball is looking at his phone screen time report. The screen appears above his head]
Screen Time Report
Staying informed about politics like a good civic-minded person [tiny blue bar] 26m
Reading election updates that won't affect your actions in any way but slightly improve your knowledge about what's going to happen in a few weeks [really extremely long blue bar-chart bar] 9h14m


Dialect Quiz

Explanation:
This comic is a parody of online quizzes that offer to compare the user's dialect of American English with others around the country. These quizzes generally contain questions about word usage, names for certain objects, and pronunciations that vary between different regions of the US. There are also quizzes about broader English dialects, but this comic focuses on commonly cited differences between American dialects.
The earliest quiz of this type to be widely disseminated online was the Harvard Dialect Survey , conducted in the early 2000s by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder. The survey created maps of the distribution of various word usage (such as pop/soda/coke for a fizzy softdrink) and was a relatively early example of widely shared Internet "viral" content. In 2013, Josh Katz of the New York Times created a new version based on the Harvard survey, which became the Times' most popular content of 2013 and spread the idea to many more people. Many of the questions in this comic directly derive from entries in those surveys.
Randall's previous two comics have been about election predictions, leading up to the 2020 US General Presidential Election. A prominent predictor of the election results is Nate Silver, who runs the FiveThirtyEight website. @NateSilver538 posted his results of taking the New York Times version of the survey on October 11, 2020... just three days before this comic was posted. 2371: Election Screen Time specifically suggests that Randall may be spending too much time obsessing over new posts and content from the election predictors. It's coincidental, but likely, that Nate Silver's tweet inspired Randall's post: he was reminded of the 2013 feature from the Times.
[Box with title at the top]
Dialect Quiz
[Smaller subtitle underneath]
Compare answers with your friends!
[Quiz is divided into two columns. Answers to questions are indicated by a letter followed by a closed parentheses, such as A). These letters are greyed out]
[Column 1:] How do you address a group of two or more people?
A) You B) Y'all C) I have not been around two or more people for so long that I can't remember
How do you pronounce "Penelope"?
A) Rhymes with "Antelope" B) Rhymes with "Develop"
What do you call the scientific field that studies the stars?
A) Astrology B) Agronomy C) Cosmetology
How do you pronounce "genre"?
A) Gone-ra B) Juh-neer C) Jen-er-uh
You pronounce "Google" with a high-pitched yelp on the...
A) First syllable B) Second syllable
What do you call the thing on the wall at school that you drink water from?
A) Gutter pipe B) Drainpipe
How do you pronounce the name for a short silent video file?
A) Animated give B) Animated gift
What do you call the baseball-sized garden bugs that, when poked, glow brightly and emit a warbling scream?
A) What? B) Lawn buddies
[Column 2:] What do you call the misleading lines painted by disgruntled highway workers to trick cars into driving off the road?
A) Prank lines B) Devil's Marks C) Fool-me lines D) Fauxguides E) Delaware lines
What do you call the blue-green planet in the outer Solar System?
A) Uranus B) Neptune
What do you call this tool? [Image of a claw hammer]
A) Banger B) Nail axe C) Wood mage wand D) I'm familiar with this tool but have no specific word for it E) I have never seen it before
What do you call a long sandwich with meats and lettuce and stuff?
A) A long sandwich with meats and lettuce and stuff B) A longwich C) A salad hot dog
What do you call the scaly many-legged animal often found in attics?
A) Lightbulb eater B) I have no special name for them C) I've never looked in my attic
What do you say when someone around you sneezes?
A) "What was that?" B) "Oh, wow." C) [Quietly] "Yikes."


Chemist Eggs

Explanation:
In this comic, Ponytail explains to Cueball that if he smells sulfides then the chemistry experiment on which they're working has failed. Ponytail then clarifies that sulfides smell like rotten eggs. The main and most distinct chemical rotten eggs emit is hydrogen sulfide , hence most people who smell them will link the chemical with "rotten egg smell".
Cueball replies, however, that he doesn't actually know what rotten eggs smell like, and it's odd that everyone uses that as a comparison. This is a result of changing times — decades ago, when the 'rotten eggs' descriptor became commonplace in chemistry education at high schools and universities, rotten eggs were indeed common enough that cooks avoided adding eggs directly to other ingredients, lest the rotten egg, not detected until after it was too late, force the cook to discard everything and start over. Vastly improved farming, shipping, and marketing practices have made the rotten egg vanishingly rare, at least at supermarkets in the USA. Moreover, much greater recognition of the health hazards of hydrogen sulfide means that, due to various occupational safety precautions, opportunities for sniffing the gas have become scarce, and usually engender swift reactions such as building evacuation.
Thus, the comparison has outlived the circumstances that spawned it, and chemistry teachers parrot a line they learned as students, which is no longer relevant to the students' experience. Cueball then takes the disconnect between the trope and his experience and pushes it for all it's worth. This could be taken as symbolic of people who spot such discordances and blow them out of proportion to troll others, in which case, Cueball has most definitely succeeded, based on how Ponytail reacts — she is clenching her fists in anger as she leaves the conversation, presumably to avoid further irritation. (Perhaps she smells eggs often from the people in 382: Trebuchet !)
Some of Cueball 's questions suggest that chemists use eggs in place of other items. For example, the superstitious may react to a spilling of salt by picking it up and throwing it over their left shoulder, ostensibly as an attempt to blind the Devil.  Another relates to the upcoming night before Halloween event called " Mischief Night ", where kids are known to throw eggs at houses. Cueball asks Ponytail how she will know if this has happened, as he thinks she keeps an unusually large number of eggs in her house.
Even though rotten eggs (and hydrogen sulfide in general) are much less common nowadays, many fuel gases are mixed with odorant compounds to signal that a leak is happening; even if the user might be unfamiliar with "rotten eggs" specifically, a large amount of unpleasant odor still works as an alarm that something bad is happening.  People who use natural gas or propane stoves should be familiar with the similarly rotten smell of methanethiol , ethanethiol , and/or tert-butylthiol (the "-SH" thiol group is a common feature of many pungent odors, including garlic and skunk spray).  Some mineral springs and other natural water sources also contain sulfides and have a strong sulfide odor and flavor; they are sometimes referred to as "sulfur springs".
The title text makes a joke about how often chemists use the comparison, saying that they use a rotten egg smell as the baseline and that a lack of the smell is a distinct one. Given the health hazards of hydrogen sulfide and the regulations now enforced in recognition of those hazards, the chemistry teacher probably doesn't often experience the smell either. Since hydrogen sulfide deadens the sense of smell, taking this smell as a 'baseline' is improbable and potentially dangerous, and it's unfortunate that the title text makes this suggestion.
[Cueball and Ponytail face a table with something like a lab stirrer or heater on it, supporting a flat-bottomed and -topped container from which bubbles are rising.] Cueball: How will I know if the reaction fails? Ponytail: You'll smell the sulfides. Cueball: What do those smell like? Ponytail: Sulfurous. Rotten eggs.
[A new panel, the table is gone. Cueball is now facing Ponytail.] Cueball: Chemists always compare sulfur to rotten eggs. Cueball: But why would I know that smell? Ponytail: I dunno, It's a common thing!
[Ponytail puts her hand out.] Cueball: Is it? My kitchen is messy, but there aren't eggs lying around rotting. Ponytail: You must have smelled one at some point.
[Ponytail is now walking right off-panel, away from Cueball. She is clenching her hands and is evidently annoyed] Cueball: Are all chemists' houses full of random raw eggs? Do you toss them over your shoulder for good luck? Ponytail: My house is not full of eggs! Cueball: What do you consider a normal amount of eggs in a house? Cueball: If kids egg your house this Halloween, how will you know??
The quantity of eggs eaten per person in the U.S was estimated at 289.5 in 2019. [1]


10,000 Hours

Explanation:
This comic references a common refrain that one must do something for 10,000 hours to become an expert on it.
The linked article states:
Popular smartphone operating systems automatically record the amount of time the user spends using their phone, broken down by time spent in each app. This feature is supposed to allow users to analyze their own habits. On iOS, this feature is called Screen Time . On Android, it is called Digital Wellbeing .
In this comic, Cueball 's phone tells him that, assuming that the 10,000-hour idea is correct, he is now a master of a task, because of the amount of time he has spent on his phone. The 10,000-hour refrain usually pertains to the arts or sports, because they require a certain level of skill; learning to spend time on one's phone does not require this level of training [ citation needed ] , so this stretch of time does not bring Cueball closer to achieving any goal. Furthermore, it is not clear exactly what task (or possibly tasks) Cueball is supposed to have mastered.
Randall often pokes fun at his extensive screen time, such as in 2223: Screen Time . Cueball's phone wants to delicately approach the topic so as not to make Cueball feel bad, so the euphemism about expertise is meant to distract him from realizing how much time he actually spends on his phone. Also, the phone tells Cueball that he was become a "world-class expert", when really he is just someone who checks his phone way too much. It is interesting that his phone decides to be kind to him, even when he has neglected it before ( 1668: Singularity ).
The title text refers to the fact that people eat a lot, 1-2 hours a day , though not all of this time is spent chewing. At the time of this comic's publication, Randall was just over 36 years old (13,151 days), so he has spent a large amount of time eating, well over 10,000 hours. It could also be a reference to the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, in which Calvin refers to routines he has created to improve at chewing.
[Cueball is staring at his phone. A report from the phone is shown above his head] If you buy into the "10,000 hours" thing, you are now a world-class expert!
[Caption below comic] My screen time reports have started trying to put a positive spin on things.


Worst Ladder

Explanation:
An always present concern of media industries is consumers shifting tastes or indeed abandoning a medium altogether (such as print newspapers or in-person theaters). This strip depicts one such scenario prompting a meeting to discuss the problem. The other attendees suspect the consumers are simply shifting to an online platform, but Megan reveals they are instead shifting towards image search results.
Of course, during the age of the internet, there are many sources of free entertainment. YouTube and TikTok provide examples of these services, as practically anyone can choose from a tremendous variety of content. Therefore, this abundance of free content hurts services that require money to see their content, particularly when this content does not have any factors that make it inherently more appealing than the free services. The Quibi paid service shut down, just 6 months after it opened, on the same day that this comic appeared.
The joke here is that instead of YouTube or TikTok, possible customers are going to the Google Image search page for "worst ladder" . Even the meeting participants are entranced by it, so the meeting devolves into everyone showing their favorites to each other.
Searching for images is an unorthodox source of entertainment, frequently only seen when searching for memes (this, in fact, is how Know Your Meme gauges interest in a meme). Depending on your relationship with Google's personalization algorithms, image results may change up between different people or different views, or remain roughly stagnant from day to day (contrasted with other services that contain new posts nearly every second), and the quality of any Google Images page will decline with scrolling. Therefore, an image search results page is not a sustainable source of entertainment [ citation needed ] , and may be unlikely to compete with the service in this comic.
Search results currently tend to vary widely from person to person, as Google uses the user's search history, IP address, and location to try to find the most relevant result for each person, even if they are not logged in. This provides social opportunities around searching, sometimes exploited by social media posts (which may be how Megan originally found out).
The title text explains that the company actually decided to use the idea, and created a subscription service for these images. The idea was a success and was indeed very lucrative. They then tried selling actual "worst ladders", or "worst ladders"-themed merchandise at a hardware store, thinking that people who enjoy looking at others' mistakes would also enjoy making that mistake themselves, but this tie-in ended up costing them as much money as they made from the subscriptions (if the word "disastrous" is meant literally, there may have been injuries and liability lawsuits involved).
[Ponytail, Cueball, Hairy and Hairbun are sitting around a boardroom table. Megan is giving a presentation and pointing to a chart behind her.] Megan: Our entertainment division is failing. We can't compete with free content.
[A frameless panel. Only Megan is shown, with her pointer to her side.] Off-panel voice: Where are they going? YouTube? TikTok? Megan: No.
[Zoomed in on Megan.] Megan: The Google Images search results for worst ladder . Off-panel voice: Huh? Off-panel voice: Let me see ...
[Ponytail and Cueball are looking at one laptop, and Hairy and Hairbun are looking at a second. Megan has her arms out in front of her, frustrated.] Ponytail: Yikes, look at this one! The stepladder is balanced on -- Hairy: Wow, they tied a ladder to -- Hairbun: Ooh, check out the -- Megan: No!
Searching Google for "worst ladder" at the time the comic was posted allows observing ladders that are comically unsafe or poorly designed (see sample results from shortly after the comic was posted ). It is worth noting that, while normally it does not undergo much change, the "worst ladder" page will likely now contain a barrage of results related to this xkcd comic, as happened with 369: Dangers . This influence is similar to the Slashdot effect . For reference, at the time of posting (0:00 UTC), the comic was the 30th Google image result. From about 0:20 to 1:15 UTC, it was the 18th result; by 1:30 UTC, it had become the third result. Searching Google for "worst ladder -xkcd" yields better results, but some xkcd is still there.


Curbside

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Beret Guy is making contact with a shop that sells cursed items, only to vanish when the customer tries to return the product . He has previously mentioned doing most of his shopping (including groceries) at such locations in 1772: Startup Opportunity , and visited one (possibly the same one) several months earlier in 2332: Cursed Chair . That visit ended with him trying to stop the COVID-19 pandemic by destroying the cursed chair, but evidently he either failed to destroy the chair (which claimed to be immortal) or found that doing so didn't halt the pandemic. (Apparently Beret Guy has visited this same store before, since he says that "it's so stuffy in there", but has not attempted to return any of his purchases, since the store has not disappeared yet. Or perhaps it is simply nonexistent when someone is trying to return something.)
After confirming that he has the right number, Beret Guy asks if the cursed store does curbside pickup, as he intends to place an order for bread and a cursed amulet, but does not wish to go inside during the pandemic. Many grocery stores have started offering such services, allowing a customer to place an order over the phone or online, then receive it outside the store, thus minimizing the interaction with store staff or other customers. Closed spaces are understood to pose a greater risk of contagion than the outdoors, where wind and sun can mitigate airborne viral particles.
The store's contact replies that no, they do not offer curbside pickup, but tries to assure Beret Guy that all employees at the location wear masks. (They might be wearing haunted Halloween masks .) When Beret Guy expresses disappointment at the revelation, complaining about the stuffy air of the shop, the contact advises him to consider the virus as part of the curses that come with their products. Beret Guy gets angry at this -- apparently, he's okay with buying cursed items, but not exposing himself to unacceptable risks of catching COVID-19.  Beret Guy promptly proclaims that he will not be doing business with the location if they are going to showcase such an attitude towards the pandemic. It's unclear how he will find another store with similar unusual characteristics, although it has been mentioned that there is an entire industry of these stores.
Beret Guy mentions that he wants to buy an amulet in order to 'do battle with ghosts', which is not an ordinary thing to do given that most people cannot interact directly with ghosts. [ citation needed ] Perhaps he has a ghost-fighting weapon that he has also bought from the shop, although a more likely explanation (given Beret Guy's peculiarity) seems that he is somehow able to engage in martial combat with them. A common argument for how ghosts can exist is that they are in another dimension; given that Beret Guy has extra dimensions in his bones ( 2310: Great Attractor ), he might appear as a skeleton warrior in the ghosts' dimension. Thus, being able to battle ghosts would be one of the many strange powers of Beret Guy . It is also unclear why Beret Guy specifically wants to anger the ghosts.
He also mentions that he is there to buy groceries, which is rather ordinary in contrast to the previous request. This is another example of Beret Guy's seemingly oblivious view of the world, putting the purchase of a ghostly amulet on par with buying bread.
The title text explains that contact tracers have been attempting to visit the store to figure out who else has been working or shopping there, which suggests that people may have been exposed to COVID there.  However, presumably because of the peculiar nature of the store, a notable number of the contact tracers have not returned from visiting it, leading the state to create a tracing program to find the missing contact tracers. The joke here is that the contact tracers must now be traced by another tracing program. This same kind of recursivity of tracking tracers has been previously explored for finding finders and incinerating incinerators .
[Beret Guy talking on a cell phone. The response from the person on the phone is in a jagged bubble.] Beret Guy: Hi, is this the shop that sells cursed items but when you try to return them the shop is gone? Phone: Yes, how can I help you?
[A frameless panel. Beret Guy still talking on the phone] Beret Guy: Do you do curbside pickup? I wanted to buy a cursed amulet that angers ghosts, and some groceries. Phone: No, but it's okay, we wear masks.
[Zoomed in on other side of Beret Guy's face] Beret Guy: So you can't bring stuff out? Phone: I'm afraid not. Beret Guy: But it's so stuffy in there!
[The callee's response is on the top of the panel. Beret Guy is now holding his phone in front of him, ready to end the call.] Phone: Why not think of the virus as part of the amulet's curse? Beret Guy: Excuse me!? I'm trying to buy some bread and do battle with ghosts, not endanger my family and friends in a pandemic! Beret Guy: I will take my business elsewhere.


xkcd Phone 12

Explanation:
This is the "12th" (actually the 8th) in the ongoing xkcd Phone series in which Randall explains his new joke phone designs with many strange and useless features. It is also a reference to the recently released iPhone 12 . However, there have only been 8 comics released, with the previous two being 2000: xkcd Phone 2000 and 1889: xkcd Phone 6 .
The note about the xkcd Phone 12 and the xkcd Phone 12 Max (only for people named Max) is a joke about the different models of iPhone 12: iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. The xkcd Phone 12 Max would be expected to have a larger screen, but it seems that this phone is also only for people with the name Max. If the phones are respectively placed, Max's (Maxes'?) phone is the smaller of the two models.
The slogan '"The only phone you'll ever own"' could be interpreted as something of a threat, which is believable given some of the purported features. The slogan has the "registered trademark" symbol, with that symbol supposedly itself trademarked, which is highly unlikely. It is similar to the phrase "The last suit you'll ever wear" , describing the black suits worn by the Men In Black in the movie of the same name.
Multiple features are labelled on the phone that are common when advertising other products, but highly unusual in mobile phones, for comedic effect:
The title text mentions xkcd phone OS updates, including:
[The comic shows two smartphones: one taller and wider than the other. ]
[Labels to the left of the larger smartphone:]
[Labels to the right of the larger smartphone:]
[Labels to the right of the smaller smartphone:]
[Text below the phone:] The xkcd Phone 12* and 12 Max**
*Standard **For people named Max
"The only phone you'll ever own"®™


Fall Back

Explanation:
Daylight saving time ends in the United States at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November, when 2 a.m. becomes 1 a.m. Election Day in the United States is on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
In 2020, Nov. 1 is Sunday, so the shift from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time will happen two days before the 2020 election . This has the effect of making Sunday, Nov. 1 a 25-hour day. The switchover is sometimes referred to mnemonically as "fall back," with its springtime counterpart (a day of 23 hours) being "spring forward" as mentioned in 1655: Doomsday Clock .
At the beginning of the comic, Cueball incorrectly calculates the time until the election day polls close (this varies from state to state); in the second panel, Megan reminds him about falling back. She goes on to possibly sarcastically treasure this extended moment, one more hour to experience the bitter election cycle and the COVID-19 pandemic .  Megan describes herself as dissociating here, and it is possible she is actually treating these emergencies as good now, instead of bad.  The behavior could be seen as an indirect demand for the situation to change, a demonstration that she may lose her sanity further if it does not.  Cueball hears how intense she is saying her experience is, and says he thinks they've both spent too much time engaging with the news (a sentiment echoed from other recent xkcd comics, like 2371: Election Screen Time and possibly 2374: 10,000 Hours ). When he mentions the 24-hour news cycle , Megan corrects him again, as Sunday will be a 25 -hour news cycle.
The title text refers to a popular sentiment that the issues and emotions raised in the 2016 United States presidential election were not settled when the election was over and have continued unabated since then.  Even though the election itself was held in November 2016, the primary candidates officially announced their campaigns in early 2015; thus, 2020 is the sixth year since that campaign season opened.  The implication could be that the whole nation, or at least Randall's community of political followers, has had to be in an altered state of consciousness to handle the past six years.  It could also be a reference to ongoing strong campaigning, in excess of what people have seen in the past.
[Cueball is looking at his phone.] Cueball: It's 8 PM. Exactly six days until the polls close here.
[Megan walks in from Cueball's left, holding up a finger. Cueball has lowered his phone.] Megan: Six days and one hour. Cueball: Oh right, fall back. Cueball: Ugh.
[Megan holds out her arms.] Megan: Personally, I think it's great. Megan: Don't you want this moment to last as long as possible?
[Close up on Megan.] Megan: My pandemic anxiety and election anxiety have finally fused. Megan: I have ascended. Megan: I get breaking news alerts in my dreams.
[Back to Cueball and Megan.] Cueball: I don't think the endless 24 hour news cycle has been good for either of us. Megan: Well, then I have good news about Sunday! Cueball: Ughhh.


Probability Comparisons

Explanation:
This is a list of probabilities for different events. There are numerous recurring themes, of which the most common are free throws (13 entries), birthdays (12), dice (12, split about evenly between 6-sided (d6) and 20-sided (d20) types), M&M candies (11), playing cards (9), NBA basketball mid-game victory predictions (9), Scrabble tiles (7), coins (7), white Christmases (7), and the NBA players Stephen Curry and LeBron James (7 each).
Themes are variously repeated and combined, for humorous effect. For instance, there are entries for both the probability that St. Louis will have a white Christmas (21%) and that it will not (79%). Also given is the 40% probability that a random Scrabble tile will contain a letter from the name "Steph Curry".
There are 80 items in the list, the last two of which devolve into absurdity - perhaps from the stress of preparing the other 78 entries.
The list may be an attempt to better understand probabilistic election forecasts for the 2020 United States presidential election , which was four days away at the time this comic was published and had also been alluded to in 2370: Prediction and 2371: Election Screen Time . Statistician and psephologist Nate Silver is referenced in one of the list items. On the date this cartoon was published, Nate Silver's website FiveThirtyEight.com was publishing forecast probabilities of Donald Trump and Joe Biden winning the US Presidential election. On 31 October 2020, the forecast described the chances of Donald Trump winning as "roughly the same as the chance that it’s raining in downtown Los Angeles. It does rain there. (Downtown L.A. has about 36 rainy days per year, or about a 1-in-10 shot of a rainy day.)" A day previously, when the chances were 12%, the website had also described Trump's chances of winning as "slightly less than a six sided die rolling a 1".
The probabilities are calculated from these sources , as mentioned in the bottom left corner.
The title text refers to the song " Call Me Maybe " by Carly Rae Jepsen (cited twice in the list). "MAYBE" is emphasized, perhaps because the probability of getting her phone number correct, as in the last item in the list, is very low. The capitalization could also be a reference to Scrabble tiles, as was previously mentioned in association with Carly Rae Jepsen.
In the original comic, "outside" in the 88% probability section is spelled incorrectly as "outide". In addition, the 39% section had "two free throw" instead of "throws".
The (seemingly unimportant) odds of LeBron James' versus Stephen Curry's free throws and names in Scrabble refer to 2002: LeBron James and Stephen Curry .
[Large heading, centered.]
Probability Comparisons
[Left column.]
0.01% You guess the last four digits of someone's social security number on the first try
0.1% Three randomly chosen people are all left-handed
0.2% You draw 2 random Scrabble tiles and get M and M
You draw 3 random M&Ms and they're all red
0.3% You guess someone's birthday in one try.
0.5% An NBA team down by 30 at halftime wins
You get 4 M&Ms and they're all brown or yellow
1% Steph Curry gets two free throws and misses both
LeBron James guesses your birthday, if each guess costs one free throw and he loses if he misses
1.5% You get two M&Ms and they're both red
You share a birthday with a Backstreet Boy
2% You guess someone's card on the first try
3% You guess 5 coin tosses and get them all right
Steph Curry wins that birthday free throw game
4% You sweep a 3-game rock paper scissors series
Portland, Oregon has a white Christmas
You share a birthday with two US Senators
5% An NBA team down 20 at halftime wins
You roll a natural 20
6% You correctly guess someone's card given 3 tries
7% LeBron James gets two free throws and misses both
8% You correctly guess someone's card given 4 tries
9% Steph Curry misses a free throw
10% You draw 5 cards and get the Ace of Spades
There's a magnitude 8+ earthquake in the next month
11% You sweep a 2-game rock paper scissors series
12% A randomly-chosen American lives in California
You correctly guess someone's card given 6 tries
You share a birthday with a US President
13% A d6 beats a d20
An NBA team down 10 going into the 4th quarter wins
You pull one M&M from a bag and it's red
14% A randomly drawn scrabble tile beats a d6 die roll
15% You roll a d20 and get at least 18
16% Steph Curry gets two free throws but makes only one
17% You roll a d6 die and get a 6
18% A d6 beats or ties a d20
19% At least one person in a random pair is left-handed
20% You get a dozen M&Ms and none of them are brown
21% St. Louis has a white Christmas
22% An NBA team wins when they're down 10 at halftime
23% You get an M&M and it's blue
You share a birthday with a US senator
24% You correctly guess that someone was born in the winter
25% You correctly guess that someone was born in the fall
You roll two plain M&Ms and get M and M.
26% You correctly guess someone was born in the summer
27% LeBron James misses a free throw
32% Pittsburgh has a white Christmas
33% A randomly chosen Star Wars movie (Episodes I-IX) has "of the" in the title
You win the Monty Hall sports car by picking a door and refusing to switch
You win rock paper scissors by picking randomly
34% You draw five cards and get an ace
35% A random Scrabble tile is one of the letters in "random"
[Right column.]
39% LeBron James gets two free throws but misses one
40% A random Scrabble tile is a letter in "Steph Curry"
46% There's a magnitude 7 quake in LA within 30 years
48% Milwaukee has a white Christmas
A random Scrabble tile is a letter in Carly Rae Jepsen
50% You get heads in a coin toss
53% Salt Lake City has a white Christmas
54% LeBron James gets two free throws and makes both
58% A random Scrabble tile is a letter in "Nate Silver"
60% You get two M&Ms and neither is blue
65% Burlington, Vermont has a white Christmas
66% A randomly chosen movie from the main Lord of the Rings trilogy has “of the” in the title twice
67% You roll at least a 3 with a d6
71% A random Scrabble tile beats a random dice roll
73% LeBron James makes a free throw
75% You drop two M&Ms and one of them ends with the "M" up so it's clear they're not Skittles
76% You get two M&Ms and neither is red
77% You get an an M&M and it's not blue
78% An NBA team wins when they're up 10 at halftime
79% St. Louis doesn't have a white Christmas
81% Two random people are both right-handed
83% Steph Curry gets two free throws and makes both
85% You roll a d20 and get at least a 4
87% An NBA team up by 10 going into the 4 th quarter wins
Someone fails to guess your card given 7 tries
88% A randomly chosen American lives outside California
89% You roll a 3 or higher given two tries
90% Someone fails to guess your card given 5 tries
91% You incorrectly guess that someone was born in August
Steph Curry makes a free throw
92% You guess someone's birth month at random and are wrong
93% Lebron James makes a free throw given two tries
94% Someone fails to guess your card given 3 tries
95% An NBA team wins when they're up 20 at halftime
96% Someone fails to guess your card given 2 tries
97% You try to guess 5 coin tosses and fail
98% You incorrectly guess someone's birthday is this week
98.5% An NBA team up 15 points with 8 minutes left wins
99% Steph Curry makes a free throw given two tries
99.5% An NBA team that's up by 30 points at halftime wins
99.7% You guess someone's birthday at random and are wrong
99.8% There's not a magnitude 8 quake in California next year
99.9% A random group of three people contains a right-hander
99.99% You incorrectly guess the last four digits of someone's social security number
99.9999999999999995% You pick up a phone, dial a random 10-digit number, and say 'Hello Barack Obama, there's just been a magnitude 8 earthquake in California!" and are wrong
0.00000001% You add "Hang on, this is big — I'm going to loop in Carly Rae Jepsen", dial another random 10-digit number, and she picks up
[In light grey colour and in the lower left corner there is text.]
Sources: https://xkcd.com/2379/sources/


Election Impact Score Sheet

Explanation:
This comic was published the day before Election day in the United States (November 3, 2020), which features a contentious presidential election between the incumbent, President Donald Trump , and the challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden . The United States does not elect presidents by popular vote, but instead uses an electoral college system, with each state getting a predetermined number of electoral votes, and a majority of electoral votes needed to win an election. The previous presidential election in 2016, which involved Trump and Hillary Clinton , was won by Trump, who lost the popular vote by 2 percentage points, but won the electoral vote 304-227 (270 was needed to win the election).
Electoral college votes are distributed based on the number of congressional representatives of each state, with the most populous state, California, receiving 55 votes, and the least populous states which are Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming receiving 3 votes each, along with the District of Columbia, which as of the writing of this comic was not a state. Because the United States Congress has two legislative houses, with only one (the House of Representatives) apportioning representatives to the states based on their percentage of the US population and the other (the Senate) allocating two senators to every state regardless of population, smaller states have a higher ratio of electoral college votes to population than larger states do.
Additionally, most states (all but Nebraska and Maine) give all of their electoral college votes to whoever earns the most votes in their state. This means that a small change in the percentage of voters who favor one party's candidate over another within a state doesn't make a difference on the final outcome unless that change tips the scales between the two candidates. Therefore, it's easy to predict the final electoral college votes of many states where one party has a clear lead. Other states, including some of the ones listed by Randall, are considered " swing states ", as they are competitive to both of the two major parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party .
Together, these factors make voting in some states - "swing states" with smaller populations - much more likely to influence the outcome of the election than others. Randall in this comic is encouraging his readers to " get out the vote " and encourage voting among their friends and family who live in these nineteen states which are most likely to affect the outcome of the election. The rest of the 31 states (and, presumably, the District of Columbia) are grouped under the "all other states" bucket, presumably as their election outcome is "safely" for Biden or Trump.
Per many analysts, the state of Pennsylvania is considered an absolute necessity for Trump, and considered very important for Biden. This is why Pennsylvania is weighted the most heavily in Randall's comic.
Of course, just because a state may be a clear win for one party does not mean the votes of anyone who votes for the other party are wasted. A higher percentage of voters voting for the losing candidate sends a signal that the state is more competitive than assumed, which forces representatives to compromise and could make future voters more likely to show up because they believe their vote is more likely to matter. Additionally, many "down-ballot" races, like races for governorships, US Congress, state legislatures, and county governments, may be more competitive than the presidential race, and may have just as much or more impact on most people's lives. Randall accounts for some of these local races in deciding how to rank the states on the scoresheet.
The text at the bottom says to post your scoresheet with #Hashtag . The "#" symbol (pronounced "hash") denotes a hashtag on platforms like Twitter, used to tag one's post as relating to the topic named following the symbol. However, this hashtag (said out-loud as "Hashtag Hashtag") would relate a post to the topic of hashtags rather than elections or votes, and so for the scoresheet is nonsensical and doesn't describe anything useful. It also refers to Nate Silver's famous election forecast model at FiveThirtyEight . Randall closes by urging people to contact Nate Silver to tell him to adjust his model to account for the added votes they have caused, but as the form doesn't indicate which candidate the filler has voted for or plans to vote for, never mind the people contacted, there's no way for him to know what sort of update to make.  Perhaps the flurry of posts bearing the hashtag "#Hashtag" and indicating an effort to increase civic engagement will be a heartwarming surprise on a day that will probably be very busy and stressful for him.
The title text explains that even if one thinks that their family and friends always vote, or that their reminder to vote won't work, they should do so anyway because of the chance they may be wrong.
As shown in previous comics ( 1756: I'm With Her and others), Randall was a supporter of 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton (who ran against Trump), but this announcement should be equally applicable to supporters of either of the two main candidates in the current presidential race.
The comic includes a link for a printable version: https://xkcd.com/2380/election_impact_score_sheet.pdf
As for all other states: President Trump won Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming; while former Vice President won California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington.
Do you know anyone in Arizona?
Research shows that reminders from friends and family to vote have a bigger effect on turnout than anything campaigns do.
One of the best ways you can help is to scroll through your contacts (or use apps like VoteWithMe) to find people you can check in with to see if they plan to vote or need help doing it.
This chart lets you tally the effect of your reminders on the outcome based on who you've contacted and where they live.
Election impact score sheet
*Multiplier based on 538 presidential vote impact, plus points for senate and local elections
In smaller text, to the right of the main score sheet, a duplicate of the score sheet with red tally marks and points is shown
Followed by an arrow, pointing to the "Your election impact" total box in the main table, is this text
Based on turnout experiments, 10 points on this scale has roughly as much effect on the  outcome as one average vote. For every 10 points you tally, it's as if you voted again!
Below the main score sheet table
[Click for printable version]
Share a pic of your score sheet with #Hashtag , and be sure to send a copy to Nate Silver to let him know to include those extra votes in his model!


The True Name of the Bear

Explanation:
The Canadian Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch tweeted about the theory that the word for bear became taboo in some branches of Indo-European languages - notably the Germanic one - and it was replaced by euphemisms. In the Germanic branch, the euphemism may have been "the brown one," and thus the modern word "bear" (derived from Germanic "beran") would more literally translate into the color "brown" rather than the animal.
The Indoeuropean root for bear is *rkto-, which has been inferred from modern languages that still use a word derived from it. In the comic, McCulloch applies sound shifting laws to it to guess how it would have evolved in English had it not been superseded, but saying it seems to actually summon a bear.
Interestingly enough, the hypothesized word “arth” is the same as the Welsh and Cornish for the word “bear.” Welsh belongs to the Celtic language family, which is one of the Indo-European branches that still uses a word derived from *rkto-, as do the Italic (Romance), Greek and Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) branches, while Germanic, Slavic and Baltic branches abandoned it for different euphemisms. Another Indo-European language where the word for bear is very close to this extrapolation is Armenian, where it's written արջ and pronounced “artch”. The comic does not explain why speakers of Welsh, Cornish, Italic, Greek, Indo-Aryan, and Armenian languages do not summon a bear every time they refer to one. [ citation needed ]
Use of true names appears to be highly effective in the xkcd universe, rather like a fairy tale , and it is also a common trope elsewhere. Some say a true name contains clear meaning of who someone or something really is.
In 2421: Tower of Babel a linguist that resembles Gretchen from this comic appears. Since that story takes place in biblical time, it is not Gretchen, but obviously this is how linguists look in xkcd from now on.
[Megan walks in front the left, looking down at her phone. Cueball and Ponytail are standing next to each other.] Megan: Wow - according to the internet, we don't know the true name of the bear. Cueball: What?
[Gretchen McCulloch, drawn with short, curly hair, comes on-panel from the right.] Megan: Apparently there was a superstition that saying its name would summon it. "Bear" and "bruin" mean "the brown one." Its actual name has been lost. Cueball: Wow. Ponytail: Gretchen, is this for real?
[Zoom-in on Gretchen.] Gretchen: Well, sort of Gretchen: The Proto-Indo-European root was *rkto- Gretchen: It was lost in the Germanic languages like English, but survived elsewhere, e.g. Greek "arktos" and Latin "ursus"
[Back to the second panel, with Megan holding her phone down, Ponytail with her hands in the air, and Gretchen with her hand on her chin.] Megan: So could we figure out what the word would have been in English? Gretchen: Hmm. I mean, we'll never know, but given Germanic sound shifts, a reasonable guess might be "arth"? Ponytail: No!!
[The panel zooms in again to Gretchen.] Ponytail (off-panel): Stop! AAAAA! Gretchen: What?? Ponytail (off-panel): Don't say it!
[Ponytail is holding her palms out. Megan is no longer in the panel.] Ponytail: What have you done ? Off-panel noise: ROAR Gretchen: Oh Gretchen: Oh no
The last comic strip that ended with the words "Oh no" was 2314: Carcinization , which also featured an unfortunate occurrence involving an animal as its punchline when Cueball spontaneously transformed into a crab.