palordrolap

Install a net or mesh of some sort about halfway to the danger depth, that way if some fool decides to go for a dip they can’t get down low enough to do themselves harm.

Also, it’d be useful for catching the bodies of people who got shot by security on the way there but still fell in.

Or they could push for the sort of crosswords with more black squares (very common here in Britain) that rarely have anything bigger than a 1x1 intersection. There are other ways to challenge the solver.

As a fan of log-scale axes, Randall really ought to at least suspect that the vertical axis is also logarithmic. If so, the average 800m sphere is very much not tasty.

There’s no need to worry. There will always be someone around to point out that prices were cheaper back in the olden days, whether that pointing out is needed or not.

And yes I appreciate the subtle(?) irony in this comment.

(I am pointing something out. (Which these parentheticals are also doing.))

Reminds me of the guy who was the original reporter of a fault in some software that went unfixed for years.

He eventually applied for, and got, a job at that software’s company.

His first day, he logs on, and goes to find and then fixes that bug.

With a sigh of relief, he then logs off and quits the job.

(I believe this is a true story, but someone will undoubtedly be along in a minute to confirm or correct. With a sigh of relief no doubt.)

Triangular grid guy: “Guess I’m going back the way I came.”

Hexagonal grid guy: “What is left. What is right. This did nothing! Nothing!”

Guy on Penrose tiling: “Get me out of here!”

(In before: “You have the first two the wrong way around.” Not if they’re walking the edges.)

Write if(0){ on the back of your left hand and } on the back of your right. Use perspective - or whatever - to put the person between your hands.

This, of course, assumes a person is executable, but as circumstances not limited to but including the French Revolution proved, people are definitely executable.

Curiously, this trick makes the person not be executed, but it also means they can’t execute you. Theoretically.

The dead pirate captain’s name is literally a penis joke. I don’t think anything in that movie is supposed to be legit.

Likewise there are no states with a B in the name.

Allegedly real names that didn’t break a database so much as people’s brains:

Female (fe-MAA-leh) - the story goes that the mother didn’t know the word “female” or didn’t know it was spelled that way, so assumed the nurses named the child for her.

Ampersand (pronounced as the regular word) - the mother liked the sound of it, and well, IMO, it does have an “Amber” + “Amanda” + “Sandra” kind of ring to it (Not now, Lou Bega).

Shithead (shuh-THEED) - there may be at least two people with this name, or else I’ve heard the same urban legend / of the same person from two different directions. That is, I had heard of this name prior to chatting online with someone who claimed to have met a person by this name.

In before someone posts the Key & Peele sketch.

If the planets remained in conjunction as they went around the Sun, yes. The planets don’t wander as though they’re attached to the spoke of a wheel though… and as I click through the explainxkcd link, it seems that someone else has pointed that out, albeit in other words.

Let |ε| < 0…

First row is real. Second row, not so much.

That said, the “one big nucleon” is pretty close in concept to a neutron star. It needs a few more nucleons than there are in a single atom though. Just a few. And it’s not really a decay mode as it is a gravitational effect.

It’s also kind of reminiscent of superatoms - clusters of atoms that act like one single atom - but that is very much not the same. (The nuclei aren’t fused. They maintain regular, sensible, atomic distances. Electrons are free to pass between. etc.)

Do they mean weary, or do they mean wary?

Weary means worn down (it’s literally the “wear” as in “wear and tear” with a y on the end to make an adjective), usually signifying tiredness or apathy.

Wary means overly aware (it’s literally the “ware” as in “aware” with a y on the end to make an adjective*), usually signifying nervousness or apprehension.

Given the context, they could mean either. Or both.

* Though for orthographic reasons, the e is dropped. I see you, fellow pedants.

Two of the inescapable ones* are from the 70s and a couple of others besides, but yes, 1990 is a significant dropping-off point.

Curiously, one Top 40 chart for Christmas songs streamed in the UK, from December 2021 has Feliz Navidad in there at 35, which is kind of funny because that’s above our own band The Darkness. Their '00s Christmas effort tried so hard to re-capture the spirit of the '70s and do well. To some extent it did but the magic wasn’t quite there. It probably didn’t help that it was based around a riff stolen wholesale from Queen’s Brian May (Somebody to Love if memory serves.)

But importantly, that chart does list several others. It’s a fairly safe bet that if you see a song, or band (or both) you’ve not heard of, it’s probably one of our home grown ones that hasn’t made it big where you are.

* 9 and 12 on the linked chart.

Here in Britain we have a whole slew (or sleigh) of others, but, sticking with the theme, very few of those are from the last 30 years.

I’m surprised at least a couple of them didn’t catch on in the US. Maybe they’re too whimsical or alien for the average US audience.

Similarly, Feliz Navidad is largely unknown over here. Then again, we don’t have the large Hispanic cultural influence that might have allowed it gain a foothold.

If “Indirectly” is an allowed answer, as demonstrated by the answers after “Precious Metals”, then the answer to “Are regular holes created by the Big Bang?” is not “No.”

Reminds me of the time I made a comment on Spez-site about passwords of exactly 64 characters. Oh wait. This is 128. Never mind.

Counterpoint: Read panels 6 and 10 again. (The ones beginning “We’ve ceded” and “People approach” if I’ve messed up my counting somehow).

all my troubles seemed so far away?