­xkcd thread

Nice to learn, but what is it with the infinite looping network of diverging paths to ensnare Robert Frost? I associate diverging paths with Borges.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,”

That kind of wood, the one with trees! I was picturing a board. Thank you!
Wait: yellow? :thinking:

Yellow

And which was also briefly a meme:

“I gave Frost a golden thread to find his way out, but it disappeared.”

“‘If you’ve eliminated a few possibilities and you can’t think of any others, your weird theory is proven right’ isn’t quite as rhetorically compelling.”

Basically we’re at the mercy of presuming that our cognition works and gives correct answers. As anyone who has searched for a lost[1] item knows, we are worryingly fallible.


  1. the thing about items being lost is, if you had any idea where they went to, or if a quick search of the obvious locations turned it up, it wouldn’t be lost. ↩︎

You mean the Cat in the Hat lied to us?

How did you do that?

— hmmm. However you did it, it doesn’t show up in the quote.

A carat, and square brackets.

Let me see if this[1^] works.

Nope. Wrong order?

A carat, followed by the footnote, which is in square brackets.

Trying again 1[1]

Aha!

I guess maybe I didn’t need the number [2]

Yup. It does. Thanks!


  1. footnote, maybe ↩︎

  2. does it number them automatically? ↩︎

It’s under Options, Add Footnote.

“Oh, and do you have any tips on how to vacuum up copper that’s melted into your carpet?”

A search on 500 Amp cables reveals that they’re commonly sold as jumper cables for starting heavy trucks.

A vacuum capable of cleaning up molten copper would probably draw a lot of current…

Groan

“After a lot of analysis, I’ve determined that they’re actually big red dots; they’re just very far away.”