Editor ZBicyclist is on vacation, and taking a cue from comics that repeat old episodes is dipping back into the past: June 2021. This was originally posted by EditorM. Is modal fabric still around?
I only recently learned there is a newfangled fabric called “modal”, popular for linens[*] and underwear; which mostly explains the modal-logic joke for me. But some of the rest of these are still puzzling.
[*] No, linens are not presumptively made from linen. Though they can be. Oy!
Comics I Don't Understand 
Well, the fake barn is a famous example of the Gettier Problem, which is a pushback against the idea that knowledge is a justified, true belief. In it we observe a barn in a field. We believe we are seeing a barn, and indeed we are. But what we don’t know is that it’s the only real barn in the area, and all others are fake. The belief is justified, but it’s only true by coincidence. Is it knowledge?
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The sommelier may or may not be able to be described as of fine distinction, but she is certainly making a fine distinction between those two wines.
I’m not sure what that has to do with philosophy, though.
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I had a few minutes and went poking around, I think the statue thing is a reference to the puzzle of the statue and the clay, a question described as to what relationship the material constitution of an object has to its identity as an object. Is the statue the clay? Clearly they can be differentiated, but if you remove the clay from the statue there’s nothing left. This is related to the more famous Ship of Theseus thought experiment.
Also I only just noticed “to φ or not to φ” at the bottom. That’s your phi, which can be shorthand for philosophy as a whole (it’s the first letter), and in ethics is sometimes used to represent a generic action that need not be described. Either one kind of works.
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