Les œuvres ouvertes n’ont ni pièces ni publicité.
#2372 Dialect Quiz Do you make a distinction between shallots, scallops, and scallions? If you use all three words, do they all have different meanings, all the same, or are two the same and one different?
#2373 Chemist Eggs Chemists actually find it simpler to define a general odor of rotten eggs as a baseline, and the LACK of rotten eggs as a distinct smell.
#2374 10,000 Hours I'm proud to announce that as of this year I've become a world-class expert at chewing.
#2375 Worst Ladder [Six months later] "Well, our 'worst ladder' subscription series was a surprisingly lucrative success, but was completely canceled out by the losses from the disastrous Home Depot merchandising tie-in."![[Six months later] "Well, our 'worst ladder' subscription series was a surprisingly lucrative success, but was completely canceled out by the losses from the disastrous Home Depot merchandising tie-in."](https://img.comicstation.store/comics/xkcd/2375/0.png)
#2376 Curbside The state has had so many contact tracers disappear into that shop that they've had to start a contact tracer tracing program.
#2377 xkcd Phone 12 New phone OS features: Infinite customization (home screen icons no longer snap to grid), dark mode (disables screen), screaming mode (self-explanatory), and coherent ultracapacitor-pumped emission (please let us know what this setting does; we've been afraid to try it).
#2378 Fall Back Doing great here in the sixth and hopefully final year of the 2016 election.
#2379 Probability Comparisons Call me, MAYBE.
#2380 Election Impact Score Sheet You might think most people you know are reliable voters, or that your nudge won't convince them, and you will usually be right. But some small but significant percentage of the time, you'll be wrong, and that's why this works.
#2381 The True Name of the Bear Thank you to Gretchen McCulloch for fielding this question, and sorry that as a result the world's foremost internet linguist has been devoured by the brown one. She will be missed.
#2382 Ballot Tracker Tracker Good luck to Democrats in the upcoming Georgia runoff elections, and to the Google Sheets SREs in the current run-on elections.
#2383 Electoral Precedent 2020 He also broke the streak that incumbents with websites are unbeatable and Delawareans can't win, creating a new precedent: Only someone from Delaware can defeat an incumbent with a website.
#2384 Set in the Present She referenced Billie Eilish, so this must be getting pretty close to the pandemic. But we've seen the last two years in-universe, so if it's set in the future, they must be in at least 2023 by now. [*adds thumbtacks and string to wall*]![She referenced Billie Eilish, so this must be getting pretty close to the pandemic. But we've seen the last two years in-universe, so if it's set in the future, they must be in at least 2023 by now. [*adds thumbtacks and string to wall*]](https://img.comicstation.store/comics/xkcd/2384/0.png)
#2385 Final Exam For those of you also taking Game Theory, your grade in that class will be based on how close your grade on this exam is to 80% of the average.
#2386 Ten Years The ten-year cancerversary is traditionally the Cursed Artifact Granting Immortality anniversary.
#2387 Blair Witch "Are you concerned the witches won't breed in captivity?" "Honestly, we're more concerned that they WILL. We don't know what it involves, but our biologists theorize that it's 'harrowing.'"
#2388 Viral Quiz Identity Theft [scrolling through a giant spreadsheet of transcribed data] 'Wow, a surprising number of users grew up at 420 69th St.' 'Yeah, must be a high-rise or something.'![[scrolling through a giant spreadsheet of transcribed data] 'Wow, a surprising number of users grew up at 420 69th St.' 'Yeah, must be a high-rise or something.'](https://img.comicstation.store/comics/xkcd/2388/0.png)
#2389 Unread I'll never install a smart home smoke detector. It's not that I don't trust the software--it's that all software eventually becomes email, and I know how I am with email.
#2390 Linguists "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."
#2391 Life Before the Pandemic I can't wait until this is all over and I can go back to riding my horse through the mall.
#2392 Cyber Cafe Since we haven't really settled on a name for those online hangout/work spaces that try to recreate the experience of cafes, and I love confusion, I'm going to start calling them 'cyber cafes' or 'internet cafes.'
#2393 Presidential Middle Names The bottom of the list remains unchanged. Poor Rutherford Birchard Hayes.
#2394 Contiguous 41 States Linguists, settling some inscrutable grudge, have been steadily sneaking more backdated synonyms for 'sharing borders' into the dictionary. They've added 'contiguous,' 'coterminous,' 'conterminous,' and next year they're adding 'conterguous.'
#2395 Covid Precaution Level It's frustrating to calibrate your precautions when there's only one kind of really definitive feedback you can get, you can only get it once, and when you do it's too late.
#2396 Wonder Woman 1984 'Wait, why would you think a movie set in 1984 would do drive-ins as a retro promotion?' 'You know, 80s stuff. Drive-in movies. Britney Spears doing the hustle. Elvis going on Ed Sullivan and showing off his pog collection.' 'What year were you born, again?'
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