Function: butterfly

butterfly is an autoloaded, interactive and byte-compiled function defined in misc.el.gz.

Signature

(butterfly)

Documentation

Use butterflies to flip the desired bit on the drive platter.

Open hands and let the delicate wings flap once. The disturbance ripples outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the upper atmosphere. These cause momentary pockets of higher-pressure air to form, which act as lenses that deflect incoming cosmic rays, focusing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit. You can type \M-x butterfly C-M-c to run it. This is a permuted variation of C-x M-c M-butterfly from URL https://xkcd.com/378/.

View in manual

Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 23.1.

Key Bindings

Source Code

;; Defined in /usr/src/emacs/lisp/misc.el.gz
;;;###autoload
(defun butterfly ()
  "Use butterflies to flip the desired bit on the drive platter.
Open hands and let the delicate wings flap once.  The disturbance
ripples outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the
upper atmosphere.  These cause momentary pockets of higher-pressure
air to form, which act as lenses that deflect incoming cosmic rays,
focusing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit.
You can type \\`M-x butterfly C-M-c' to run it.  This is a permuted
variation of `C-x M-c M-butterfly' from url `https://xkcd.com/378/'."
  (interactive)
  (if (yes-or-no-p "Do you really want to unleash the powers of the butterfly? ")
      (progn
	(switch-to-buffer (get-buffer-create "*butterfly*"))
	(erase-buffer)
	(sit-for 0)
	(animate-string "Amazing physics going on..."
			(/ (window-height) 2) (- (/ (window-width) 2) 12))
	(sit-for (* 5 (/ (abs (random)) (float most-positive-fixnum))))
	(message "Successfully flipped one bit!"))
    (message "Well, then go to xkcd.com!")
    (browse-url "https://xkcd.com/378/")))