xkcd #3276: Recursive Trucker’s Hitch
Title text:
As if the americium smoke detector incident wasn’t enough, now nuclear regulators have ANOTHER reason to worry about the Boy Scouts.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3276/
The Explainxkcd for this lead me to the Wikipedia article for Block and tackle, which lead me to Block (sailing), whose first paragraph is giving me Plumbus vibes:
sailing is such a fun subject because it’s so fucking old and historically important that everything related to it is a thick soup of utterly inscrutable jargon
Nautical terminology is PRECISE, and for very good reasons. You don’t want to be in the middle of a gale and ask for the round thingamagig on the right side, to pull or something. That is why you use starboard instead of right. Starboard is the right when looking at the bow. “To the right” on a boat can mean your right, my right, etc.
hoist up the thing, batten down the whatsit
what’s that thing spinning, somebody should stop it
turn hard to port (that’s not port!) -wait i’ve got it
trust me i’m in control