# ­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:** 14
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2020, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/261 "2020-11-24T16:52:09Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > If you open a thread near the middle there’s no need to scroll to the end; a bell icon is displayed below the bottom of the scrollbar at right. Click that to open the same dropdown with the same selections. Thanks! I hadn’t noticed that. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2020, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/262 "2020-11-24T17:52:07Z")
Thanks for the help on how to unsubscribe. It’s kind of tedious to do a lot of them, but vBulletin was also a bit tedious. ---
**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:** [November 24, 2020, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/263 "2020-11-24T23:14:59Z")
I just dismissed all 500+ of my unread page, then went to the Latest page, and starting from the top, Ctrl-clicked everything in gray = previously visited unless I’d knew I’d lost interest in the thread. I kept going until I had about 50 tabs. Which took about 3 minutes. Then just let them sit a few minutes to re-trigger tracking on them. Then closed the browser to get rid of all the tabs. Viola! I have a nice fresh manageable unread page that’s not full of threads from 2 weeks ago that I’ve since lost interest in but those _other people_ (you know the ones 😉 ), just keep reviving and reviving and … Easy & worthwhile. ---
**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:** [November 25, 2020, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/264 "2020-11-25T01:42:33Z")
What the heck computer do you have, that can handle 50 tabs of Discourse open at once? Anything more than 4 clobbers my computer into submission. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2020, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/265 "2020-11-25T01:54:16Z")
Don’t know what LSLGuy has but I have a Mac Mini and while I rarely have 50 tabs open at once it does happen; and I’ve almost always got more than 4. I’ve got about four sites (this is one) that I’ll just leave a main window open in and then from time to time open multiple tabs from that one window. I’ve got a crawlingly slow internet connection; but number of tabs open doesn’t seem to be a problem. The net’s slow even if there’s only a window or two open, it’s the far end of an overly long DSL line. ---
**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:** [November 25, 2020, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/266 "2020-11-25T13:31:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > What the heck computer do you have, that can handle 50 tabs of Discourse open at once? Anything more than 4 clobbers my computer into submission. My current ride is a Surface Pro7 with a 4-core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and an SSD. It’s pretty damn amazing for a sorta-tablet. Using Win10 (of course) and Chrome for the browser. My immediately prior ride was a 2010 model year Toshiba laptop w some Intel 2-core processor, the max 4GB of RAM and a 5400 RPM HD. Elderly to say the least. That would get pretty flummoxed with about 20-30 tabs, mostly due to what I diagnosed as VM thrashing. In each case I don’t have any other workloads running; MS Outlook & OneNote are open but minimized, maybe Adobe PDF reader is idling, and that’s about it. ---
**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:** [November 25, 2020, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/267 "2020-11-25T14:24:14Z")
Oh, browser tabs holding webpages, I can easily have a bunch of those open at once. And back when the SDMB delivered webpages, I could have as many threads open as I wanted (I’m sure there was some limit, but it was higher than the number I ever wanted at once). But Discourse pages are a lot more resource intensive than webpages. ---
**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:** [November 25, 2020, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/268 "2020-11-25T19:36:13Z")
I just tried an experiment. I went to my Activity page and simply Ctrl-clicked on each link from top to bottom as fast as I could, scrolling as I went along so more links were added at the bottom. I probably averaged about 3/4th of a second per click. I stopped when I got to 100 tabs. They each loaded quickly; I never had more than 2 or 3 spinning no matter how fast I tried to click to create more faster than they loaded. The last loaded about as fast as the first; about 3/4ths of a second. Should’ve used a stopwatch of the whole effort but I didn’t think of that until after. Then I clicked around amongst all the tabs at random. They were filled with content and scrolled to the right place. No perceptible lag swapping from tab to tab. I have seen in the past that Discourse has a request throttle where too many requests too quickly spits back an error message about that and says to slow down. So a few had that message, but an F5 on each of them promptly reloaded them with the proper content. I was surprised that at 100 open tabs all to different Discourse threads there was zero visible slow-down. But that’s what I found. I then closed the whole browser using the X at the upper right of the title bar. It took about1.5 seconds for the window to disappear and the desktop to render where it had been. Modern tech is amazing. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/269 "2020-11-26T08:00:51Z")
> **[Linguists](https://xkcd.com/2390/)** > > "Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you're currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out." ---
**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:** [November 26, 2020, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/270 "2020-11-26T13:43:20Z")
Now that’s a cunning topic. Sorry; couldn’t resist. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/271 "2020-11-26T15:17:57Z")
There was also one a few years ago about a [linguist with a foot fetish](https://xkcd.com/1383/). (One of the few times, along with [Knights](https://xkcd.com/1078/), when I got the joke instantly and got to enjoy all the scientists being mystified. I knew that PhD in English literature had to be good for _something_…) ---
**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:** [November 26, 2020, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/272 "2020-11-26T16:55:36Z")
My English lit is _very_ weak. _Knights_ I got as a matter of history. The _foot fetish_ may as well have been written in Chinese for all I got of it. Care to enlighten an unwashed philistine? ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/273 "2020-11-26T17:09:21Z")
Metrical feet. > **[Foot (prosody)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_(prosody))** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, and is usually two, three, or four syllables in length. The most common feet in English are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, and anapest. The foot might be compared to a bar, or a be... ---
**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:** [November 26, 2020, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/274 "2020-11-26T17:29:38Z")
D’oh. :smack: I was trying hard to make the nonsense phrases be some allegorical reference to obscure stories or plays every English Lit major knows. Knowing Munroe’s mind I should have known that wasn’t the right avenue of attack. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2020, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/275 "2020-11-28T04:00:45Z")
> **[Life Before the Pandemic](https://xkcd.com/2391/)** > > I can't wait until this is all over and I can go back to riding my horse through the mall. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2020, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/276 "2020-11-28T04:14:22Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > D’oh. :smack: I was trying hard to make the nonsense phrases be some allegorical reference to obscure stories or plays every English Lit major knows. Knowing Munroe’s mind I should have known that wasn’t the right avenue of attack. I didn’t get it either. I was trying to figure out oronyms. ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2020, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/277 "2020-11-28T16:12:36Z")
What I want to know is (A), what gas stations he’s been frequenting, and (B), how exactly they define a “refill.” ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2020, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/278 "2020-11-28T16:36:32Z")
It’s the one with the indoor fireworks. But you only get a free refill for your horse. ---
**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:** [November 28, 2020, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/279 "2020-11-28T16:48:16Z")
Remember when horses didn’t need to wear masks? ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2020, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/280 "2020-11-28T17:01:36Z")
Yeah. Those poor horses forced to wear masks… [![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/aplus-media/sc/06896c5c-a0cf-46e4-a52d-2139c94b43b3.jpg) ](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/aplus-media/sc/06896c5c-a0cf-46e4-a52d-2139c94b43b3.jpg) Oh, the equinity! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574.md?page=15)