this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
1039 points (99.6% liked)

xkcd

16098 readers
650 users here now

A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

xkcd #3232: Countdown Standard

Title text:

Anyone who is caught counting 'three ... two ... one ... zero ... GO!' will be punished with a lifetime of eating only ISO standard food samples.

Transcript:

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

Source: https://xkcd.com/3232/

explainxkcd for #3232

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

I think you’re both right, but this is a great reason for ISO8601. This weekend is the weekend in the current week. In most of the world it’s Monday-Sunday which makes this way clearer, in which case he would have said “next weekend” and you would be completely correct, but if you’re in a country that starts on a Sunday then “this weekend” is two things. Sunday and Saturday, with 5 days in between. Since you were already in part of the two parter you could only be referring to the next part, the upcoming Saturday, part of this week.