xkcd #3195: International Station

Title text:

Welcome to the International Space Station Exclamation Point!

Transcript:

Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com

aramis87 75 points 9 months ago

This joke makes fun of the parity between 'space', as in the invisible character between words, and 'space', as in the void between astronomical bodies. In this case, it is said that the word 'space' was never meant to be there at all, but it was included as a word due to a formatting error.

Oooohhhh, now I get it!

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flambonkscious 12 points 9 months ago

Thanks! It's great to know what half of the bell-curve I'm on today

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trolololol 1 point 9 months ago

Maybe they should stick to science jokes and leave the English jokes to another cartoon

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regedit 0 points 9 months ago

I must be one of the few who have never found this comic funny, even when it's a science joke.

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Claidheamh 0 points 9 months ago

Yes, you're a very special snowflake, different from all the rest.

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lugal 36 points 9 months ago

This took me far longer than I'm willing to admit

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thecaptaintrout 13 points 9 months ago

I had to read the 'explained' 😭

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sik0fewl 4 points 9 months ago

To be fair, it doesn't really make sense. If it said "transcription error" instead, I'm sure I would have gotten it a lot quicker 🙂.

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elbarto777 12 points 9 months ago

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Zozano 7 points 9 months ago

Fun fact: I've been to space

spoiler

So has everyone. Everything exists in space you fucking moron

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Johanno 3 points 9 months ago

Technically correct.

However the term "been to space"

Usually describes the act of leaving earths atmosphere.

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AA5B 3 points 9 months ago

I’ve been at lots of places with little to no atmosphere. I generally leave them for somewhere nicer

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palordrolap 5 points 9 months ago

According to Wiktionary, Russian uses different words (as do a lot of languages for that matter) for the two concepts, so it's hard to imagine how this could have happened.

Yes, I know it's a joke. I think it would have been a cleverer joke if Russian was a language that used the same word for both, like English.

But then, if you do find a language that does this, the word order is generally different, and the word is generally conjugated into an adjective so it still can't be mistaken for a noun. (This is based on what happens with "European Space Agency" which would otherwise be a better candidate for the joke.)

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Allero 1 point 9 months ago

Yeah, Russians refer to space (the thing up above) as "cosmos" (which also happens to be present in English), and spacebar as probel (i.e. a white/blank segment)

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