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.
In order to carry the necessary crafting supplies, they built the ships at 12:1 scale.
Tethys [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[An image of a planet, presumably Saturn, showing prominent rings as well as three distant moons (one to the apparent right of it, the other two at the left) and one close, large moon. In front of the large moon is a line of spaceships dwindling into the distance toward the moon, or perhaps toward an orbit around it. Each spaceship has prominent rocket nozzles aimed toward the viewer and away from the large moon, as well as what appears to be a pile of material on "top" of the spaceship, with tie-down ropes holding it in place.]
[Caption below the panel:]
After learning that Tethys is exactly 1/12th the size of Earth, the miniature art model builders launched a fleet of ships to begin their final, greatest project.
If you keep trying to spray your collaborators with the beam when they're not looking, I'm turning off the ion source and NO one will get to play with the beam!' --Physics's mom
Beam Pipe [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Megan and Cueball in front of a large hadron collider. Cueball is stood on the ground in front of it while Megan is on a stepladder with her hand up to the beam pipe.]
Caption: This year's Physics Nobel will go to the scientists who figured out that you could make the large hadron collider more powerful by covering part of the beam pipe with your thumb.
Gen-Z got a chunk of the Carboniferous, and now all their memes are about how pathetic and small today's dragonflies are.
Nostalgia Content [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Cueball is standing, with his arms out, in front of a Prototaxite towering over a mossy landscape. To his right, a Tamagotchi (bottom-left) and milk-caps (referred to in this comic as "pogs", top-left) appear. The 3 milk-caps that can be seen show a skull with a snake through its eyeball, a figure 8 & a star (3 more milk-caps are also shown, but have obscured pictures).]
Cueball: Who else remembers pogs? Tamagotchis? Vast forests of Prototaxites towering over the mossy landscape as armored fish stir in the deep?
[Caption below the panel:] Due to a database error, millennial nostalgia now includes a portion of the early Devonian.
The research was overseen by the Institutional Review Board, which is what I named my surfboard.
Planetary Science [Explained]
Transcript
[An article from a journal is shown.]
[Title of journal article:] Evidence for Liquid Water on the Surface of a Terrestrial Planet in the Habitable Zone
[Below the title are four lines of blurred text presumably representing the name of the author or authors and their affiliations. Below that, the text of the article is blurred, displayed in two columns. There are three sections of blurred text each with a blurred boldface heading. Two pictures are included amid the blurred text. The picture in the left column shows the sea running alongside a beach. The picture in the right column shows Jill and Kidball playing at the beach, with Jill running and Kidball building a sandcastle, while Cueball and Megan are sitting under a beach umbrella watching them.]
[Caption below the article:] Planetary science journals have asked astronomers to please stop submitting their vacation photos.
It's possible to do sea navigation without a compass, but you'll have to get some spoilers from the Polynesians.
Time Machine Conversation [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[1st Panel. Cueball is on the left with a ghostly halo around him. Hairbun is on the right, holding a hoe vertically.]
Cueball: Oh hi! Guess my time machine works. How's life in the Iron Age?
Hairbun: Not bad. Developing new kinds of plows.
Cueball: Cool.
Hairbun: And my brother was just lost at sea.
[2nd Panel. Only Cueball is shown, with Hairbun out of the panel.]
Cueball: I'm sorry.
Hairbun [from outside the right side]: It's OK. I think sea navigation is probably impossible.
[3rd Panel. Cueball and Hairbun are both shown again.]
Cueball: Oh yeah, you don't have the compass, right?
Hairbun: The what?
Cueball: The weird rock that always points north?
Hairbun: What are you talking about?
[4th Panel. Cueball and Hairbun are both shown. Cueball holds his hand to his chin.]
Cueball: It does sound ridiculous when I say it out loud. Anyway, spoilers for the magnetic compass. Sorry.
Hairbun: What's a spoiler?
Cueball: ...Spoilers for the concept of a spoiler, too.
We definitely put the pool in a mine for shielding. It was absolutely not to hide it from the funding people.
Neutrino Project [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[There is a large pool with a curved edge at the bottom of the panel, with a diving board and several stickfigures in and around it. Ponytail and Cueball are talking in the pool; two characters with relatively indistinct hair are in the water either side of them, passing a beachball between themselves; a Cueball has somersaulted off the diving board in a 'cannonball'-like jump; a Danish and a Ponytail with a drink are walking along the outside of the pool.]
Ponytail in pool: How much trouble do you think we'll be in when they find out we used the grant money to throw a huge pool party instead?
Cueball: We could argue that we did build a neutrino detector.
Cueball: There's a lot of water here. A solar neutrino will probably interact with it at some point.
Ponytail: ...Wait. Actually, if we got some photomultiplier tubes...
[Caption below comic:] How the neutrino detector was invented
Remember, your answers to the physics census are confidential; we will not be issuing Pauli exclusion principle citations.
Particle Census [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Megan is standing behind a lectern, addressing an unseen audience.]
Megan: Remember, Tuesday is the decennial particle census.
Megan: Physicists will be recording the location of all particles in the universe.
[Zoom out to show Megan is on a podium behind the lectern. She holds one hand, palm up, out towards the still unseen audience]
Megan: Of course, this will cause their momenta to become indeterminite, so please plan for some disruption.
[The same scene with Megan's hands held down. A voice comes from off-panel at the left through a star burst at the edge of the panel.]
Audience member [off-panel]: Wait, disruption? Where will my particles go?
Megan: No one can say, but you'll know exactly where they were.
Usain Bolt holds the world record in the 100 meter speedrun.
Speedrun [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Cueball is sitting at a desk with a laptop, typing on it. Megan is standing behind him.]
Cueball: Aw man, Speedrun.com removed my world record just because I listened to Lateralus and Ænima to get in the flow.
Megan: Oh, a copyright thing?
Cueball: No, they don't allow Tool-assisted speedruns.
"How does the spring not run out almost immediately?" "We pull it back REALLY far."
Pullback Drive [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Hairy and Cueball are standing to the right of a medium-size car. Hairy has raised one hand slightly to point to the car.]
Hairy: You won't have to worry about gas prices or electricity prices with our new pullback drive model.
Hairy: At the factory, we put the car on the ground and tow it all the way backward until it starts clicking.
Hairy: To drive forward, you just release the brake and it goes.
Scientists occasionally invent alternative periodic table layouts, which is usually a sign that they don't have enough enrichment in their enclosures.
Aperiodic Table [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
The Aperiodic Table of the Elements
[Rectangles showing the atomic symbols and atomic numbers from H 1 through Og 118 are arranged in a serpentine chain. The color of each rectangle matches the the pattern of a standard periodic table. For example, the noble elements all have a red background.]
Borat came out twenty years ago this year--closer to the breakup of the Soviet Union than to today--but it honestly feels like it's been even longer, somehow.
Husband and Wife [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[Megan & Cueball talk.]
Megan: I still feel a little weird saying the phrase “my husband”.
Megan: It makes me feel so traditional, like a Victorian gossip.
Cueball: Yeah, well, my plight isn’t much better.
Megan: What do you mean?
Cueball: What’s the most salient cultural reference for the phrase “my wife”?
[Cueball has his hands raised.]
Megan: Ughhhh, true.
Cueball: Even now, after two decades, when I speak of you I hear his voice, echoing through the halls of memory like a cringy ghost.
I can't believe Candles of Vienna caved to commercial pressure and added the Goku expansion.
Types of Board Game [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
Types of Board Game
[Under this header text, the comic contains 8 panels. Each of them is labeled at the top with a short description of the board game being played and features (from left to right) Cueball, Ponytail, Megan, and White Hat sitting on chairs around a table trying to play it.]
Boring
Megan: Each turn, roll a die and move your token. Turns proceed clockwise around the table until we get bored and go home.
Abstract
Cueball: Each turn, you can place any number of red triangles or blue squares on a hexagon, or move any hexagon to a...
Hyperspecific Theme
Ponytail: It's October 2, 1814. The Congress of Vienna convenes. You are each in charge of distributing and lighting candles for the opening ball, which was held at these three locations...
Overcomplicated
White Hat: It's a cross between *Twilight Imperium* and *Cones of Dunshire,* but implemented entirely in category theory. Every cone is a monad, and...
Cooperative
Megan: We're working together to sort these decks of cards using only hand gestures. After that, we'll silently organize my junk drawer.
Branded
Cueball: You can play as Phoebe, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Joey, or, due to an ill-advised tie-in, Goku.
Party
Ponytail: Each of the cards in your hand has a bad word on it. On the count of three, yell the...
Social Deduction
Megan: Remember, per our *Find the Secret Murderer* house rules from last week, discovering that a player had committed a real-life murder does *not* count.
#I am reminded of the war games following specific battles that can be argued to be real time strategy board games #not because all the pieces move at once; but because the game takes roughly as long to play as the actual battle took (via @faolonfiendrender)
I can't believe Candles of Vienna caved to commercial pressure and added the Goku expansion.
Types of Board Game [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
Types of Board Game
[Under this header text, the comic contains 8 panels. Each of them is labeled at the top with a short description of the board game being played and features (from left to right) Cueball, Ponytail, Megan, and White Hat sitting on chairs around a table trying to play it.]
Boring
Megan: Each turn, roll a die and move your token. Turns proceed clockwise around the table until we get bored and go home.
Abstract
Cueball: Each turn, you can place any number of red triangles or blue squares on a hexagon, or move any hexagon to a...
Hyperspecific Theme
Ponytail: It's October 2, 1814. The Congress of Vienna convenes. You are each in charge of distributing and lighting candles for the opening ball, which was held at these three locations...
Overcomplicated
White Hat: It's a cross between *Twilight Imperium* and *Cones of Dunshire,* but implemented entirely in category theory. Every cone is a monad, and...
Cooperative
Megan: We're working together to sort these decks of cards using only hand gestures. After that, we'll silently organize my junk drawer.
Branded
Cueball: You can play as Phoebe, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Joey, or, due to an ill-advised tie-in, Goku.
Party
Ponytail: Each of the cards in your hand has a bad word on it. On the count of three, yell the...
Social Deduction
Megan: Remember, per our *Find the Secret Murderer* house rules from last week, discovering that a player had committed a real-life murder does *not* count.
Thanks to differences in logging regulations, the messages actually turned out to be visible from the air.
Border Message [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
[A section of a map showing the border between the geographic areas East Valley and Southlake. The border is shown as a dotted line, and it spells out a message:]
WE HOPE YOU'RE ENJOYING THIS MAP
[Caption below comic:]
When local legislators get bored
I can't believe Candles of Vienna caved to commercial pressure and added the Goku expansion.
Types of Board Game [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
Types of Board Game
[Under this header text, the comic contains 8 panels. Each of them is labeled at the top with a short description of the board game being played and features (from left to right) Cueball, Ponytail, Megan, and White Hat sitting on chairs around a table trying to play it.]
Boring
Megan: Each turn, roll a die and move your token. Turns proceed clockwise around the table until we get bored and go home.
Abstract
Cueball: Each turn, you can place any number of red triangles or blue squares on a hexagon, or move any hexagon to a...
Hyperspecific Theme
Ponytail: It's October 2, 1814. The Congress of Vienna convenes. You are each in charge of distributing and lighting candles for the opening ball, which was held at these three locations...
Overcomplicated
White Hat: It's a cross between *Twilight Imperium* and *Cones of Dunshire,* but implemented entirely in category theory. Every cone is a monad, and...
Cooperative
Megan: We're working together to sort these decks of cards using only hand gestures. After that, we'll silently organize my junk drawer.
Branded
Cueball: You can play as Phoebe, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross, Joey, or, due to an ill-advised tie-in, Goku.
Party
Ponytail: Each of the cards in your hand has a bad word on it. On the count of three, yell the...
Social Deduction
Megan: Remember, per our *Find the Secret Murderer* house rules from last week, discovering that a player had committed a real-life murder does *not* count.
#I am reminded of the war games following specific battles that can be argued to be real time strategy board games #not because all the pieces move at once; but because the game takes roughly as long to play as the actual battle took (via @faolonfiendrender)
today i learnt that, as a natural outcome of having "citation needed" as a joke, explainxkcd necessarily has "actual citation needed" for when an assertion needs citations.
