xkcd – Page 3 – Coffee Spoons

Appliance Matrix

Well, it’s Friday. And in the Northeast that means another snowstorm. In normal times, that would mean a nice half-hour walk to the office wherein my overcoat would likely become covered in snow and my trousers soaked in disgusting, salty, slush water. In other words, I’d need to wash and dry my clothes. But what household appliances should I use?

Thankfully, over at xkcd, Randall Munroe tackled that very problem with this helpful matrix.

Of course my aforementioned scenario is entirely moot, because like so many of you, I haven’t seen my office nor really left my flat in 11 months now. But here’s looking at you vaccines.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

The Earth Is a Bit Bumpy

Last Friday I shared an xkcd post about the relative smoothness of the Earth. This week he posted an illustration but a slightly different scale. You can see more of Earth’s jagged edges.

Gotta love the Star Trek reference. I’m betting he used the length of the Kelvin timeline Enterprise, which I personally dislike, as it’s significantly larger than the prime timeline Enterprise of Shatner and Nimoy.

Anyway, Happy Friday, all.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

The Earth Is Actually Quite Smooth

At scale. Not quite as smooth as a billiards ball, as is often claimed. But still, with the majority of the Earth’s surface covered by water, the highest mountains of Everest and K2 make for mere fractions of differences in height relative to the Earth’s size.

But that did not stop xkcd from making a scale model of Earth.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

2020 Election Results…

Via xkcd.

It’s Friday and we’ve made it all to the end of the week. A little while back xkcd posted about the 2020 US election, showing where the votes for both candidates are approximately located.

This isn’t quite funny like I normally might post on a Friday, but it felt appropriate after this week we had with the impeachment.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

But What About New Zealand?

It’s time for another Friday just for fun posting. I once worked with a guy who could draw a map of the United States or the world on a whiteboard incredibly accurately. He then left it in the break room for the office to try and label correctly.

This is kind of that, but in reverse, from xkcd. Good luck.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

You Have Mail

Who remembers when AOL used to announce that to you? Old millennials, am I right?

Anyway, your humble author is using up some more holiday time the next several days and will be on holiday for Thanksgiving. Not that I will be travelling anywhere to see anybody. And for my American audience, you really shouldn’t be travelling either.

But that’s for a Covid-19 post. This is about e-mail. Because even though today is a Wednesday, it’s more like a Friday. So thanks to xkcd we have this post on how everything eventually becomes like e-mail.

Subj: RE:RE:RE:RE:Did you get that memo I sent you?

For the record, I’m at 999+ on my personal account and at 1200+ at work. So yeah, one of these days maybe I’ll clean it out.

And if you have a thought about this, just send me an e-mail. I’ll read it eventually.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Mask Up

Well, we made it to Friday. But, if you’ve been following me on the social, you’ll know that Covid is beginning to spread once again in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois. I live in a tower block and I can say that many of my neighbours are no longer wearing masks indoors. Yet mask-wearing is the easiest defence we have against the spread of the coronavirus. So let’s take a look at the most effective types of masks, thankfully charted by xkcd.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Text Me

Well that was a week. Thankfully we all made it to Friday.

Now, your humble author is an old millennial, which means I remember a time before the Facebook and the Whatsapp and the internets. I also remember the first carphones and mobile bricks and flip phones. But what’s stayed consistent amongst all these platforms? It’s the humble old text message. Yep. Those still work. (And your humble author prefers it for his personal communications.) The technical term for a text is SMS. And despite approaching 30 years old, it’s still a widely used channel. If someone has a phone, but they don’t have Facebook? You can text them. No Whatsapp? Text. No Slack? Text. No Teams? Text. No Skype? Text. No whatever? Text.

xkcd recently looked at the ye olde SMS and its perseverance.

I don’t even know what half of these are. Get off my lawn.

And after all that, if you still want to come at me, bro, just text me first.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from…Venus?

If you didn’t hear the news, scientists have discovered a compound in the atmosphere of Venus. They’ve also ruled out a number of the normal ways the compound is created, and we’re left with two possibilities: some kind of unknown chemistry/chemical process or…aliens.

It’s got to be aliens. Because it’s Friday.

And because it’s Friday, we can turn to xkcd, who covered this news brilliantly.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Pretty Much My Life These Days

It’s another Friday. Which means another work week come and gone. Most of my days now consist of Covid-related work. A couple of months ago, Memorial Day began the surge in Covid-19 cases. Hopefully people take it more seriously now, and everyone masks up and stays distant so that Labour Day does not become a new big inflection point. Consequently, this piece from xkcd feels most appropriate.

For my American audience, since it is a holiday weekend, again, enjoy Labour Day. For my British audience, you already had your summer bank holiday. For everyone, have a good weekend.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.