# ­xkcd thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-strips\ **Created:** [May 28, 2020, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574 "2020-05-28T00:57:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 138
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2024, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2743 "2024-02-14T22:45:27Z")
No it’s not! ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2024, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2744 "2024-02-14T22:51:18Z")
> [@](#): > > There ought to be something about the size of a poppy seed that tastes really, really awesome Yes, it’s called a poppy seed. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2024, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2745 "2024-02-17T11:39:12Z")
> **[Treasure Chests](https://xkcd.com/2895/)** > > \[earlier\] "Your vintage-style handmade chest business is struggling. But I have a plan." ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2024, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2746 "2024-02-20T19:44:30Z")
> **[Crossword Constructors](https://xkcd.com/2896/)** > > Also, we would really appreciate it if you could prominently refer to it as an 'eHit'. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2024, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2747 "2024-02-20T19:51:09Z")
XKCD adjacent – latest What If video: > **[Could you make an umbrella out of lasers?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgBTwtg7H8E%2F)** > > Get a copy of What If? 2 and Randall’s other books at: https://xkcd.com/booksMore serious answers to absurd questions at: https://what-if.xkcd.com/Stopping r... Brian ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2024, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2748 "2024-02-21T18:15:29Z")
> **[Light Leap Years](https://xkcd.com/2897/)** > > When Pope Gregory XIII briefly shortened the light-year in 1582, it led to navigational chaos and the loss of several Papal starships. Someone will have to explain the crossword one to me. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2024, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2749 "2024-02-21T18:20:12Z")
Crosswords love to use short words that have lots of vowels, like oleo and epee as well as using “e” things like a shopping website site is for “etail”, and modern people going on “edates”. I don’t believe those specific artists have any particular crossword connection. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2024, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2750 "2024-02-21T22:47:23Z")
Certainly cruciverbalists have gotten a lot of mileage out of Swift’s ERAS tour, but that was already a valid word, and Swift just made it a bit easier to clue. I think that it’s just that they’re all popular enough artists that their album names would be well-known. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2024, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2751 "2024-02-24T17:36:55Z")
> **[Orbital Argument](https://xkcd.com/2898/)** > > "Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!" ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2024, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2752 "2024-02-24T18:00:03Z")
> light is some in-between thing that’s both wave and particle More correctly, light is neither wave nor particle, because it fails to meet the definitions of either. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2024, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2753 "2024-02-25T16:35:19Z")
It’d be fine if it were “Some people say that light is a wave, because it behaves like a wave under certain experimental conditions, but other people say that light is a particle, because it behaves like a particle under certain experimental conditions”. > [@Pleonast](#): > > More correctly, light is neither wave nor particle, because it fails to meet the definitions of either. Depends on what definitions you’re using for both. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2024, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2754 "2024-02-25T17:46:40Z")
Light behaves like particles when it’s emitted or absorbed, and like waves in-between. Which led to my question in another thread over whether photons “exist” while in transit. [Do photons exist? - #17 by Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-photons-exist/554215/17) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2024, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2755 "2024-02-25T18:17:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It’d be fine if it were We don’t bother with that for anything else, though. Do we say that water waves aren’t really waves, just that they behave like waves under certain experimental conditions (like length scales)? IMO, the answer is that photons are both waves and particles, and that we used to think those were mutually exclusive states but now we realize they aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2024, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2756 "2024-02-25T18:31:31Z")
It’s easy enough for me to conceptualize photons as particles whose wavelike nature is due to uncertainty about their location, which follows a wavelike distribution. But how does one do the reverse: regard light as waves that for some reason occasionally act quantized? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2024, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2757 "2024-02-25T18:57:14Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/EnHnzpbqE-Y/hqdefault.jpg "S3E14.04 - It's a Wave.wmv") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnHnzpbqE-Y) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2024, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2758 "2024-02-25T19:19:32Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > It’s easy enough for me to conceptualize photons as particles whose wavelike nature is due to uncertainty about their location, which follows a wavelike distribution. But how does one do the reverse: regard light as waves that for some reason occasionally act quantized? If anything, I’d be inclined to call the wavelike nature more fundamental, with the particles an emergent property from that. But you really, really need to start with precise definitions of all of the terms to make the question even sensible. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2024, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2759 "2024-02-27T02:42:17Z")
> **[Goodhart's Law](https://xkcd.com/2899/)** > > \[later\] I'm pleased to report we're now identifying and replacing hundreds of outdated metrics per hour. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2024, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2760 "2024-02-27T13:52:17Z")
I think this metric / target duality fits in very nicely with our recent aside into wave / particle duality. Of course our aside was prompted by Randall’s pop-up in his last comic. Makes me wonder if he set them up that way on purpose, or stumbled into it? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2024, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2761 "2024-02-27T16:17:34Z")
Why The Foundation had to be kept a secret. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2024, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/2762 "2024-02-29T18:45:32Z")
> **[Call My Cell](https://xkcd.com/2900/)** > > 'Hey, can you call my cell?' '...I'm trying, but it says this number is blocked?' 'Ok, thanks, just checking.' [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574.md?page=137) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574.md?page=139)