Damn, that might be THE definitive argument against those (understandably cat-hating) flat earthers.
In his autobiography, Mike Collins tells the story about a press officer talking about a shift in coordinate systems that the Apollo computers made partway through flight and the associated change in ship’s velocity and position due to the shift in frames - and how the press officer fumbled so badly that the press came away with the fixed impression that the crew should have felt a jolt when the changeover happened. This xkcd makes me think of that story.
Coordinate shifts, and especially those at the Date Line, have a long history of causing problems:
I hate it when that happens.
Same thing happened with the equator
Lethal bugs in computer software are unusual but not unique. Edward Yourdon, a vice president of DeVry Inc. who has written books about software, said that a programming error in an F-16 fighter plane avionics program would cause the plane to flip upside down whenever it crossed the equator, a bug that fortunately was found before it caused an accident.
It works on my machine…
On Tuesdays during day shift.
Rather atypical for this sort of XKCD, that half of the examples are real (though some of them fairly rare). Usually he starts going crazy well before that.
Any reference to the Late Bronze Age Collapse makes me happy.
Why did the Bronze Age collapse, and why was it not on time when it did?
I don’t know why it was late, but i was tapping my toes waiting
Oh, and is Omega Decay a specific reference to something? It feels like it should be.
Also:
Perhaps a reference to the science fiction movie The Omega Man - Wikipedia about the sole survivor of an earth-ravaging disease that leaves most of the infected dead and the few infected survivors as living kinda-zombies?
XKCD What If ? is now available on What if we aimed the Hubble Telescope at Earth? - YouTube