todays-xkcd
Today's xkcd
An active Tumblr posting xkcd comics. Ran by a meaty and sometimes forgetful human (who is also not randall munroe), so we'll see how long this one lasts. If the transcripts are bad, it's because sometimes I'm writing them.
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It's not far from the sign marking the exact latitude and longitude of the Earth's core.
Earth Formation Site [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Cueball is standing in front of a sign in a field of grass. Rocks and plants are scattered across the ground. The sign reads:]
HISTORICAL MARKER
EARTH FORMATION SITE
--- 4,450,000,000 BCE ---
At this location in the year 4,450,000,000 BCE, a cloud of dust and gas gravitationally collapsed to form the Earth.
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The creepy fingers that grow from a vibrating cornstarch-water mix can be modeled as a chain of inverted vertical pendulums (DOI:10.1039/c4sm00265b) and are believed to be the fingers of Maxwell's Demon trying to push through into our universe.
Pendulum Types [Explained]
Transcript
[Four types of pendulums are shown in a single panel. Each has a bullet list below the depiction.] [Label:] Simple pendulum [A basic pendulum consisting of a joint, rod, and weight swinging in a regular arc]
Periodic
Stable
Useful for timekeeping
[Label:] Double pendulum [A pendulum consisting of 2 joints, 2 rods, and a weight swinging in a more loopy arc]
Aperiodic
Chaotic
Moderately cursed
[Label:] Inverted pendulum [An upside-down basic pendulum with some apparatus underneath vibrating up and down]
Finely balanced
Unstable
Becomes stable when vibrated
[Label:] Nightmare pendulum [An inverted double pendulum, with an additional uninverted pendulum swinging within a large weight adorned with archaic/mystical symbols]
Forbidden
Unphysical
Summons Maxwell's Demon
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Concealed mostly beneath the surface, sharks are the icebergs of the sea.
Scary Triangles [Explained]
Transcript
[Cueball points with a stick to a poster hanging behind him to the left. The poster has a diagram of a shark. The dorsal fin is shown above a wavy surface of water. The part of the outline of the shark that are under water are drawn in dashed lines. There are unreadable text in the top and bottom left corner, and two labels with lines that points to its dorsal fin and its gills. Cueball's stick points to the label near the gills]
Cueball: Today's marine biology lecture is on sharks. We all know them as the scary triangles of the sea, but recent research has revealed that the triangle is only a small portion of the shark - over 90% of it is hidden beneath the surface.
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Bonus question: Where is London located? (a) The British Isles (b) Great Britain and Northern Ireland (c) The UK (d) Europe (or 'the EU') (e) Greater London
Pub Trivia [Explained]
Transcript
[Cueball, holding a wireless microphone in one hand and a pencil and notebook in the other, reading from the notebook]: Welcome to pub trivia! Round one is 10 questions:
Which member of BTS has a birthday this year?
How many sides does a platonic solid have?
What is the smallest lake in the world?
Which Steven Spielberg movie features more shark attacks - Jaws (1975) or Lincoln (2012)?
How many planets were there originally?
What NFL player has scored the most points outside of a game?
The Wright brothers built the first airplane. Who built the last one?
Is every even number greater than 2 the sum of two primes?
Not counting Canberra, what city is the capital of Australia?
Who played the drums?
[Caption below the panel]: A local pub trivia place hired me to run bad quizzes at competing bars.
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Okay, this eclipse will only be visible from the Arctic in February 2063, when the sun is below the horizon, BUT if we get lucky and a gigantic chasm opens in the Earth in just the right spot...
Eclipse Path Maths [Explained]
Transcript
Every eclipse path map
[A grey band representing the totality path of an eclipse travels along the map across several labels. Labels along the path from top to bottom:]
Zone where totality lasts 1-2 seconds
[On water] Bay of shifting ice
[On water] Shipwreck cove
[On land] Desert so harsh they train Mars astronauts there
[On water] Sea of rocky crags and maelstorms
[In square brackets] State department travel advisory
[On an island] Isle of perpetual fog
[On small part of a peninsula] Nice, scenic, accessible area (6 square miles, 40,000,000 visitors expected)
[On land] Tornado capital of the world
[On land] Area where the eclipse will be low in the sky, behind the tornadoes
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#now i would argue. molting is in fact one of the most normal activities done in a tree. (via @istherewifiinhell)
First comes blood / Then we perish / Then comes Death in his Eternity Carriage.
Sitting in a Tree [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Three children are singing. A kid with a bowl cut and a young Hairy are pointing with their fingers, while Jill stands in the middle. A pair of connected eighth notes and a detached eighth note are shown.]
Kid with a bowl cut, Jill and Hairy: [Name] and [Name], sitting in a tree...
[Label above the panel:]
Normal
[Cueball and Megan are sitting on a tree branch holding hands and kissing, with a heart above them.]
R-E-A-D-I-N-G
S-I-N-G-I-N-G
P-L-A-Y-I-N-G
S-H-A-R-I-N-G
H-U-G-G-I-N-G
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
[Label above the panel:]
Slightly worrying
[Cueball and Megan are sitting on a tree branch each ironing a cloth on an ironing board, with steam arising from the irons.]
S-O-B-B-I-N-G
I-T-C-H-I-N-G
P-R-U-N-I-N-G
B-A-N-K-I-N-G
P-O-S-T-I-N-G
I-R-O-N-I-N-G
[Label above the panel:]
Very alarming
[Cueball and Megan, her hair being uncharacteristically wild, sitting on a tree branch smiting with glowing hands, with two falling fireballs and fire below them. Cueball's hands are raised up, while Megan has her left hand up and her right hand pointing to her right.]
M-O-L-T-I-N-G
W-H-A-L-I-N-G
E-F-I-L-I-N-G
M-E-L-T-I-N-G
X-R-A-Y-I-N-G
S-M-I-T-I-N-G
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First comes blood / Then we perish / Then comes Death in his Eternity Carriage.
Sitting in a Tree [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Three children are singing. A kid with a bowl cut and a young Hairy are pointing with their fingers, while Jill stands in the middle. A pair of connected eighth notes and a detached eighth note are shown.]
Kid with a bowl cut, Jill and Hairy: [Name] and [Name], sitting in a tree...
[Label above the panel:]
Normal
[Cueball and Megan are sitting on a tree branch holding hands and kissing, with a heart above them.]
R-E-A-D-I-N-G
S-I-N-G-I-N-G
P-L-A-Y-I-N-G
S-H-A-R-I-N-G
H-U-G-G-I-N-G
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
[Label above the panel:]
Slightly worrying
[Cueball and Megan are sitting on a tree branch each ironing a cloth on an ironing board, with steam arising from the irons.]
S-O-B-B-I-N-G
I-T-C-H-I-N-G
P-R-U-N-I-N-G
B-A-N-K-I-N-G
P-O-S-T-I-N-G
I-R-O-N-I-N-G
[Label above the panel:]
Very alarming
[Cueball and Megan, her hair being uncharacteristically wild, sitting on a tree branch smiting with glowing hands, with two falling fireballs and fire below them. Cueball's hands are raised up, while Megan has her left hand up and her right hand pointing to her right.]
M-O-L-T-I-N-G
W-H-A-L-I-N-G
E-F-I-L-I-N-G
M-E-L-T-I-N-G
X-R-A-Y-I-N-G
S-M-I-T-I-N-G
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Fun fact: The standard North American NAD83 coordinate system is misaligned from the actual Earth, off-center by about 7 feet. Someone knows where I am, and I'm in the wrong place.
Survey Marker [Explained]
Transcript
[Zoomed in view of a round marker on the ground, with small specks of dirt around it. There is one line of text going around the central part in the outer rim of the marker, with the first three words written around the top, and the last two words written around the bottom (thus not text that are going all the way around in one single line). Inside this rim there are more text on three lines. In the center there is a small cross in a triangle pointing up in relation to the central text. There are more unreadable text below the last line of text and around the inner part of the rim. And off panel voice, which in the next panel turns out to be Cueball, is written above the mark.]
U.S. Geological survey bench mark Elevation above sea 447 feet
Cueball (off-panel): I love finding these survey markers. It's somehow reassuring.
[Cueball and Megan are show as they look down on the marker. Cueball has one leg on either side of the marker and Megan stands to the right.]
Cueball: I like that someone, somewhere, knows where this spot is.
Cueball: If I stand on it, they know where I am.
[Cueball and Megan looks up at each other.]
Megan: But the NAD83 and NAVD88 datums are getting replaced soon. That marker's coordinates could shift by like 5 feet.
[Megan is looking down at her phone in her hand, standing in the same relation to the marker. But Cueball is now floating in the air behind her 5 feet above the ground, while flailing with his arms and legs (as shown with three small curved lines at the end of either arm and above and below him.]
Megan: Oh look, it just got updated.
Cueball: Hey! Put me back!
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First comes blood / Then we perish / Then comes Death in his Eternity Carriage.
Sitting in a Tree [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Three children are singing. A kid with a bowl cut and a young Hairy are pointing with their fingers, while Jill stands in the middle. A pair of connected eighth notes and a detached eighth note are shown.]
Kid with a bowl cut, Jill and Hairy: [Name] and [Name], sitting in a tree...
[Label above the panel:]
Normal
[Cueball and Megan are sitting on a tree branch holding hands and kissing, with a heart above them.]
R-E-A-D-I-N-G
S-I-N-G-I-N-G
P-L-A-Y-I-N-G
S-H-A-R-I-N-G
H-U-G-G-I-N-G
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
[Label above the panel:]
Slightly worrying
[Cueball and Megan are sitting on a tree branch each ironing a cloth on an ironing board, with steam arising from the irons.]
S-O-B-B-I-N-G
I-T-C-H-I-N-G
P-R-U-N-I-N-G
B-A-N-K-I-N-G
P-O-S-T-I-N-G
I-R-O-N-I-N-G
[Label above the panel:]
Very alarming
[Cueball and Megan, her hair being uncharacteristically wild, sitting on a tree branch smiting with glowing hands, with two falling fireballs and fire below them. Cueball's hands are raised up, while Megan has her left hand up and her right hand pointing to her right.]
M-O-L-T-I-N-G
W-H-A-L-I-N-G
E-F-I-L-I-N-G
M-E-L-T-I-N-G
X-R-A-Y-I-N-G
S-M-I-T-I-N-G
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If you're really savvy, you can hide an entire set of illicit transactions by timing them to draw what looks like a graph inset.
Tick Marks [Explained]
Transcript
[A graph with two axes is shown. Each axis has tick marks with every fourth mark a bit longer than those in between. The Y-axis is labeled with text rotated 90 degrees clockwise. There is no label on the X-axis. The graph is a jagged curve with three clear peaks; the area beneath the curve is shaded in light gray. After the third and highest peak the curve drops to zero. At the point of decline, a dotted line goes up to a label above the last peak. To the right of this dotted line, the X-axis and the ticks on it are clearly thicker than the axis and the ticks to the left.]
Y-axis: Activity
Label: Deadline
[Caption beneath the panel:] If you need to conceal activity, try timing it to hide behind the tick marks on the graph axis.
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The most rare, top-tier eclipse photo would be the Solar Earth Eclipse, but the Apollo 12 crew's attempt to capture it was marred by camera shake. They said it looked spectacular, though.
Types of Eclipse Photo [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
Types of Eclipse Photo
[Eclipse during totality]
The standard
[Partial eclipse with lighter sky]
The partial
[Two Cueballs and Ponytail looking and pointing at the sky]
The reaction shot
[Eclipse during totality with red "ribbons" around the Moon]
The fancy lens
[A blurry ring of light in the center]
The focus issues
[The rear of an SUV]
The traffic jam
[A dark circle on Earth's surface]
The astronaut
[A gray cover of clouds]
The "frustratedly looking up the cloud situation in Australia for 2028"
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[Image ID: A moving gif of a machine entitled "at the quatum squirrel's service". Knit Cap carries a plank of wood, Ponytail is holding a hammer, and Cueball is holding a sword. The balls bounce off of each person's item down into the goal below, with the quantum squirrel supervising each.
The Credible Machine
Machine [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[A drawing of three differently colored balls bouncing off platforms.]
Caption: [Visit xkcd.com to view]
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[Image ID: a very complex machine that bounces and spins blue balls around to the goal.]
The Credible Machine
Machine [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[A drawing of three differently colored balls bouncing off platforms.]
Caption: [Visit xkcd.com to view]
#reblogs#xkcd 2916#machine#i was trying to make one will wall prisms and it crashed too#yours looks cool!
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[Image ID: A machine sorting red, green, and blue balls to different goals using pin-ball bouncers and a fan.]
The Credible Machine
Machine [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[A drawing of three differently colored balls bouncing off platforms.]
Caption: [Visit xkcd.com to view]
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this one is cute! (and not mine.)
The Credible Machine
Machine [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[A drawing of three differently colored balls bouncing off platforms.]
Caption: [Visit xkcd.com to view]
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The Credible Machine
Machine [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[A drawing of three differently colored balls bouncing off platforms.]
Caption: [Visit xkcd.com to view]
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For the record:
Two Wood Planks, wood mounted on wall, 2024.
The Credible Machine
Machine [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[A drawing of three differently colored balls bouncing off platforms.]
Caption: [Visit xkcd.com to view]
#xkcd#machine#xkcd 2916#i placed and tilted the first plank#then created the second but was fiddling with the pop-ups at which point the pile of balls tumbled all the ones on top into the hole
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