@todays-xkcd / todays-xkcd.tumblr.com
me & the tumblr ui are fighting.
accidental reblog shame counter: 4
sometimes i reblog cool additions outside of the actual feed. these are tagged #reblogs.
transcripts are under a cut when ~95% identical to the image description in the alt text.
what's the most common tags you get on a post?
"the xkcd guys have names???"
about potential delays:
The company tried to document how often employees were celebrating Software Testing Day, but their recordkeeping system kept mysteriously crashing.
Transcript Under the Cut
The Doppler effect is a mysterious wavelength-shifting phenomenon which seems to primarily affect sirens, which is why the 🚨 emoji is red.
Transcript
[Miss Lenhart is pointing with a stick to a whiteboard with various scientific drawings and words, including but not only a graph.] Miss Lenhart: The more distant a galaxy is, the redder its light. Miss Lenhart: Why? Well, that's an interesting question.
[Zoom in on Miss Lenhart.] Miss Lenhart: Ever notice how, when a siren is approaching, it sounds like Bweeeeeeeeee...
[Zoom in on Miss Lenhart with her arms raised.] Miss Lenhart: ...but then it zooms past you and goes Nyeeeeooooowww? Miss Lenhart: And sometimes they hit a button that makes it go Pyeew! Pyeew! really loud?
[Miss Lenhart with her finger raised is standing in front of the whiteboard and holding the stick down.] Miss Lenhart: And in Europe they go Ooooeeeeooooeeee... Off-panel voice: So why are galaxies red? Miss Lenhart: Oh, no idea. Miss Lenhart: Anyway, another siren I like is...
It's not far from the sign marking the exact latitude and longitude of the Earth's core.
Transcript Under the Cut
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.
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]
[Label:] Double pendulum [A pendulum consisting of 2 joints, 2 rods, and a weight swinging in a more loopy arc]
[Label:] Inverted pendulum [An upside-down basic pendulum with some apparatus underneath vibrating up and down]
[Label:] Nightmare pendulum [An inverted double pendulum, with an additional uninverted pendulum swinging within a large weight adorned with archaic/mystical symbols]
Concealed mostly beneath the surface, sharks are the icebergs of the sea.
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.
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
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:
[Caption below the panel]: A local pub trivia place hired me to run bad quizzes at competing bars.
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...
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
First comes blood / Then we perish / Then comes Death in his Eternity Carriage.
Transcript Under the Cut
First comes blood / Then we perish / Then comes Death in his Eternity Carriage.
Transcript Under the Cut
My personal favorite:
Two asexuals, sitting in a tree S-I-T-T-I-N-G
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.
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!
First comes blood / Then we perish / Then comes Death in his Eternity Carriage.
Transcript Under the Cut
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.
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.
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.
Transcript Under the Cut
For the record:
Two Wood Planks, wood mounted on wall, 2024.
Flawless design
this one is cute! (and not mine.)
I didn't get what was happening at first, but my second try is one to be proud of.
[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.
