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701 | Science Valentine | Science Valentine | https://www.xkcd.com/701 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/701:_Science_Valentine | I wanted to make you a science valentine with charts and graphs of my feelings for you. [A graph shows romance and happiness. Romance cuts off, indicating a breakup before the meeting of Cueball and his current significant other, and happiness dips accordingly. A line indicates where the couple first met; romance is jagged thereafter, initially upwards but later down. Happiness climbs slightly more steadily and then dips again. More lines indicate a period of dating and then one of engagement.] and the happiness you've brought me.
But the more I analyzed [Cueball works at a computer.] r 0 = 0.20 r 1 = -0.61 r 2 = -0.83 the harder it became to defend my hypothesis.
In science, you can't publish results you know are wrong and you can't withhold them because they're not the ones you wanted.
So I was left with a question: do I make graphs because they're cute and funny, [Cueball sits, looking at a sheet of paper.] or am I a scientist?
Enclosed are my results. I hope you can find somebody else [A jagged, declining graph is superimposed over a red heart.] to be your valentine.
| Cueball is taking a scientific approach to creating a valentine card. Based on the first chart, the recipient is his fiancée since he noted major events (first meeting and engaged, thus they are not married yet, or it should have been noted on the graph). The labels of a heart and smiley represent Cueball's feelings for her and happiness accordingly. This implies that Cueball had love and feelings for someone else before he first met the love he is breaking up with. While they were dating, the feelings and happiness levels were very unstable, as is expected for any new relationship. That later dropped to current levels, probably due to Cueball's lack of love towards her.
In the second panel, there are variables r 0 , r 1 , r 2 , each value at 0.20, -0.61, -0.83 accordingly. Given their names and values between -1 and 1, these are probably correlation coefficients . If they are based on the data in the graph in the preceding frame, they could compare how well one of the variables correlates with time passed since the relationship. For example, if they are based on the heart line, they could measure the correlation between heart (Cueball's feelings for his fiancée) and time, being a weak positive correlation for the first period (0.20), a moderate negative correlation for the second period (-0.61), and a strong negative correlation for the third period (-0.83). Alternatively, they could be comparing the correlation for the accumulated periods, 0.20 for the first, -0.61 for the first and second, -0.83 for all three. Either way, it looks like there becomes a strong negative association between times passed and Cueball's love. The same reasoning would apply if the values are based on the smiley (Cueball's happiness) line.
The text in the space between 2nd and 3rd panels show that Randall Munroe is against scientific misconduct . It also shows that Cueball's rigorous approach makes him realize that the happiness he derives from the relationship is declining, which presents him with a choice. Will he be a true scientist by accepting data that he doesn't like, or will he be romantic and just make a cute card?
The last panel is a parody of a broken(torn) heart, a common symbol used to represent people falling out of love. The line could be interpreted as a graph of the amount of love between the two or a literal tearing of the heart in two.
He decides that he is a scientist and so presents his significant other with a breakup valentine even though he originally intended it as a confirmation of their love.
The comic may be intended as a cautionary tale to new scientists; while the graph in the leftmost panel shows an apparent correlation between Cueball's love and his happiness, and it shows his happiness is lower than it might be expected to be without his partner, it fails to show that the falling love effects falling happiness-- it may be the case that falling happiness effects falling love, or that both happiness and love are affected by an unidentified factor. For example, temporary external crises may be weighing on Cueball's relationship as well as his happiness.
The title text seems to be him trying to console himself that he did the right thing. You should not use science to prove that your theory is right, but to find out which theory is the right one!
I wanted to make you a science valentine with charts and graphs of my feelings for you. [A graph shows romance and happiness. Romance cuts off, indicating a breakup before the meeting of Cueball and his current significant other, and happiness dips accordingly. A line indicates where the couple first met; romance is jagged thereafter, initially upwards but later down. Happiness climbs slightly more steadily and then dips again. More lines indicate a period of dating and then one of engagement.] and the happiness you've brought me.
But the more I analyzed [Cueball works at a computer.] r 0 = 0.20 r 1 = -0.61 r 2 = -0.83 the harder it became to defend my hypothesis.
In science, you can't publish results you know are wrong and you can't withhold them because they're not the ones you wanted.
So I was left with a question: do I make graphs because they're cute and funny, [Cueball sits, looking at a sheet of paper.] or am I a scientist?
Enclosed are my results. I hope you can find somebody else [A jagged, declining graph is superimposed over a red heart.] to be your valentine.
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702 | Snow Tracking | Snow Tracking | https://www.xkcd.com/702 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/702:_Snow_Tracking | BACKYARD SNOW TRACKING GUIDE
[Each panel contains an overhead view of tracks through the snow, with a caption indicating the apparent source.]
[Standard paw prints through the snow.] CAT
[Large split-toe tracks and smaller rodent tracks.] MOOSE AND SQUIRREL
[Cat prints, but with more space between the pairs of prints.] LONGCAT
[Two similar careening tire tracks.] MOUSE RIDING BICYCLE
[Longer tracks, with a large melted ring surrounding a point in the middle of the frame.] RABBIT STOPPING TO USE HAIR DRYER
[No visible tracks.] LEGOLAS
[Single deep holes with cratering.] BOBCAT ON POGO STICK
[Round prints that suddenly turn to the right halfway into frame.] KNIGHT
[Human footprints up to a square melting pattern, turning into animal prints.] KID WITH TRANSMOGRIFIER
[Human footprints up to a rectangular melted area, which are then doubled to another rectangular area, which are then doubled again up to another rectangular area, which are then doubled.] KID WITH DUPLICATOR
[Right curve on a road, with tire tracks careening out of frame.] Out of Frame Garden Owner: MY VEGETABLE GARDEN! PRIUS
[A series of spiraling and outwardly traveling lines extend from a point in the middle of the frame.] HIGGS BOSON
| This comic is a guide to recognizing various animals by their footprints. However, the comic typically detours into strange, ridiculous or pop-culture-referencing footprints. In order:
BACKYARD SNOW TRACKING GUIDE
[Each panel contains an overhead view of tracks through the snow, with a caption indicating the apparent source.]
[Standard paw prints through the snow.] CAT
[Large split-toe tracks and smaller rodent tracks.] MOOSE AND SQUIRREL
[Cat prints, but with more space between the pairs of prints.] LONGCAT
[Two similar careening tire tracks.] MOUSE RIDING BICYCLE
[Longer tracks, with a large melted ring surrounding a point in the middle of the frame.] RABBIT STOPPING TO USE HAIR DRYER
[No visible tracks.] LEGOLAS
[Single deep holes with cratering.] BOBCAT ON POGO STICK
[Round prints that suddenly turn to the right halfway into frame.] KNIGHT
[Human footprints up to a square melting pattern, turning into animal prints.] KID WITH TRANSMOGRIFIER
[Human footprints up to a rectangular melted area, which are then doubled to another rectangular area, which are then doubled again up to another rectangular area, which are then doubled.] KID WITH DUPLICATOR
[Right curve on a road, with tire tracks careening out of frame.] Out of Frame Garden Owner: MY VEGETABLE GARDEN! PRIUS
[A series of spiraling and outwardly traveling lines extend from a point in the middle of the frame.] HIGGS BOSON
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703 | Honor Societies | Honor Societies | https://www.xkcd.com/703 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/703:_Honor_Societies | [Cueball sits at a desk, while someone off-screen answers his question.] Cueball: Wait. I should join this honor society to show colleges I'm honorable, and I'm honorable because I'm in an honor society? Off-screen voice: Basically, yes.
[Close up of Cueball.] Cueball: Sounds like I could save time by joining the Tautology Club directly. Off-screen voice: That's not a real club. Cueball: Then I'm starting it.
[Inserted in a frame crossing the top of the third panel's frame is a caption. Cueball is standing on a podium in the right part of the panel speaking. From left to right we find Ponytail, a Cueball-like guy, a short guy with glasses, a buzz cut version of Hairy, Science Girl, and to the right of Cueball, a woman that looks like Megan although with an uncharacteristically white stripe in her hair.] Caption: Tautology Club: Ponytail: So how'd you learn about us? Cueball-like guy: From your Facebook group, "If 1,000,000 People Join This Group, It Will Have 1,000,000 People In It." Cueball: Listen up! The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.
| Cueball has apparently been invited to join an honor society , but he considers the reason he should join to be a circular argument: because honorable people are in honor societies and people who are in honor societies are supposedly honorable. He objects that this is a tautology : a claim that something is true because it is true (and thus a meaningless claim). From this, he concludes that he might as well be in a "tautology club" and then starts one. Thus Randall mocks honor society clubs for being pointless.
In the final panel where Cueball has formed the club, Ponytail asks a new member (a Cueball-like guy) how he found out about them and he tells about their Facebook page. The reference to Facebook mocks Facebook groups whose names refer to a number of members they hope to attract (such as I Bet I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Dislike Romanian Dog Abusers ), usually ostensibly to raise awareness for some issue but perhaps in fact just for the ego-stroking pleasure of amassing a large number of followers. Tautology Club employs this tactic only for the sake of creating yet another tautology.
Cueball is listing the rules of the club from a podium. The phrase "The first rule of _______ Club" is a reference to the 1999 movie Fight Club (see also 922: Fight Club ), which contains the famous line "The first rule of Fight Club is 'You do not talk about Fight Club,'" a reference to the club's intended secrecy. This phrase has been appropriated for myriad other varieties and parodies, such as the one mentioned in the comic.
The short guy with glasses could be Jason Fox from the FoxTrot comic (see the first two frames of 824: Guest Week: Bill Amend (FoxTrot) .) Although it takes a little imagination to see, the hair, the height, the glasses, and the geek factor fits. Three of the other characters from the audience look like regular characters but with slightly different hairstyles than usual. There is a buzz cut version of Hairy , a curly-haired version of Hairbun with a ponytail ( Science Girl ), and Megan is drawn with an uncharacteristically white stripe in her hair.
The answer to the title text would also be a tautology: he gets to be the president because he is the president.
Tautologies were mentioned again in 1310: Goldbach Conjectures . Tautology Club was mentioned in 1602: Linguistics Club .
[Cueball sits at a desk, while someone off-screen answers his question.] Cueball: Wait. I should join this honor society to show colleges I'm honorable, and I'm honorable because I'm in an honor society? Off-screen voice: Basically, yes.
[Close up of Cueball.] Cueball: Sounds like I could save time by joining the Tautology Club directly. Off-screen voice: That's not a real club. Cueball: Then I'm starting it.
[Inserted in a frame crossing the top of the third panel's frame is a caption. Cueball is standing on a podium in the right part of the panel speaking. From left to right we find Ponytail, a Cueball-like guy, a short guy with glasses, a buzz cut version of Hairy, Science Girl, and to the right of Cueball, a woman that looks like Megan although with an uncharacteristically white stripe in her hair.] Caption: Tautology Club: Ponytail: So how'd you learn about us? Cueball-like guy: From your Facebook group, "If 1,000,000 People Join This Group, It Will Have 1,000,000 People In It." Cueball: Listen up! The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.
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704 | Principle of Explosion | Principle of Explosion | https://www.xkcd.com/704 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/704:_Principle_of_Explosion | [Cueball's Cueball-like friend is talking to him.] Friend: If you assume contradictory axioms, you can derive anything. It's called the principle of explosion. Cueball: Anything? Lemme try.
[Cueball is writing on a piece of paper on a desk.]
[Cueball is holding up a piece of paper to his friend, while holding a phone.] Cueball: Hey, you're right! I started with P∧ ¬ P and derived your mom's phone number! Friend: That's not how that works.
[The friend is looking at the piece of paper, while Cueball is talking to someone on a phone. The desk from before can be seen to the right.] Cueball: Mrs. Lenhart? Friend: Wait, this is her number! How— Cueball: Hi, I'm a friend of— Why, yes, I am free tonight! Friend: Mom! Cueball: No, box wine sounds lovely!
| Cueball's friend (who also looks like Cueball) explains the principle of explosion , a classical theorem of logic, which shows that if within a system of logic you can use the axioms and rules of deduction to derive (prove) a contradiction, it then becomes possible to derive any statement at all within that system (whether it’s actually true or not). In particular, if you start by assuming a self-contradictory statement, you can derive anything.
Cueball then proceeds to misinterpret (perhaps intentionally) that you can derive any fact about the physical world. His formula of propositional logic in the third panel reads " P and not P ", where ∧ is the formal logic symbol for "and" and ¬ is the symbol for "not". P stands for a proposition. As " P and not P " is shorthand for " P is both true and false", this forms a contradiction from which the principle of explosion can begin. Humorously and to his friend's bewilderment he then successfully manages to 'derive' the phone number for his friend's mom.
An example from math : If you assume that √2 is a rational number, you can 'prove' things that are obviously false, such as the fact that some numbers must be both even and odd. Consequently, you can draw the conclusion that √2 must be an irrational number (provided such a thing exists at all! - luckily, it does and obeys the same calculation rules as for rational numbers; this is how proof by contradiction works.)
This can be seen in a Truth Table :
P ¬P P ∧ ¬P P ∧ ¬P ⇒ Q T F F T F T F T
The formula P ∧ ¬P ⇒ Q is true in every possible interpretation. No matter what propositions are substituted for P and Q the implication is true. So if a single example of a contradiction were found, then every proposition would be true, (and simultaneously false).
After deriving the phone number Cueball instantly calls his friend's mom, who turns out to be Mrs. Lenhart . She asks Cueball out, without any preamble, to his friend's vexation. It does not get better when it is obvious that she wishes to drink "cheap" boxed wine with him, and Cueball is free tonight! There is definitely a hint of Mrs. Robinson over Mrs. Lenhart here.
In the title text we hear more of Cueball's (one-sided) conversation with Mrs. Lenhart. She asks him to pick up waffle cones, a variety of ice cream cone . And when he sounds bewildered by this she explains that it is for drinking the wine. This is probably not a very good idea, since waffles are typically not water proof and would also dissolve into the wine. But it could also be considered kinky; something Mrs. Lenhart's son would not like to hear about. The rest of the title text is just more of the main comic's derivation joke, since Cueball will use a second to derive her son's credit card number, so he can buy the cones at his expense.
In reality, Cueball really could start with the principle of explosion and "prove" a statement such as "Mrs. Lenhart's phone number is 867-5309 ", but the same could be said of any conceivable phone number, most of which don't actually belong to Mrs. Lenhart, and because his axiom system is inconsistent, he has no way of knowing which is correct. Likewise for his friend's credit card number. Much like The Library of Babel , an axiom system which can prove any statement might as well prove nothing. Perhaps Cueball already knows these phone and credit card numbers, and is just talking about the principle of explosion to mess with his friend.
[Cueball's Cueball-like friend is talking to him.] Friend: If you assume contradictory axioms, you can derive anything. It's called the principle of explosion. Cueball: Anything? Lemme try.
[Cueball is writing on a piece of paper on a desk.]
[Cueball is holding up a piece of paper to his friend, while holding a phone.] Cueball: Hey, you're right! I started with P∧ ¬ P and derived your mom's phone number! Friend: That's not how that works.
[The friend is looking at the piece of paper, while Cueball is talking to someone on a phone. The desk from before can be seen to the right.] Cueball: Mrs. Lenhart? Friend: Wait, this is her number! How— Cueball: Hi, I'm a friend of— Why, yes, I am free tonight! Friend: Mom! Cueball: No, box wine sounds lovely!
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705 | Devotion to Duty | Devotion to Duty | https://www.xkcd.com/705 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/705:_Devotion_to_Duty | [Bearded criminal is holding a pistol and talking on a mobile phone.] Criminal: We took the hostages, secured the building and cut the communication lines like you said. Phone: Excellent.
[Still talking on the phone, waving gun around in the air animatedly.] Criminal: But then this guy climbed up the ventilation ducts and walked across broken glass, killing anyone we sent to stop him.
Phone: And he rescued the hostages?
[Criminal looking confused and defeated, shoulders hunched and pistol hanging limply at his side.] Criminal: No, he ignored them. He just reconnected the cables we cut, muttering something about "uptime". Phone: Shit, we're dealing with a sysadmin .
This comic was made into a shirt in the xkcd store, which includes a new illustration on the back.
| In this comic, we see a man talking on a phone. We are unsure of his aims (terrorism, robbery, etc.) but he has taken hostages and cut all links to the outside world, in order to control the situation and prevent the police from observing the interior of the building (as popularly depicted in film and television). Initially, the villains seem to have everything under their control, but then the hostage-taker explains on the phone that someone has entered the building, climbed the air vents to bypass their cordon, effortlessly killing other hostage-takers (who are likely hardened killers with weaponry) on his way to the server room and then ignored the hostages, preferring instead to reconnect the servers to the outside world. The hostage-taker is evidently puzzled by this and explains it to the person on the other end of the phone, who immediately recognizes the reason: the man that entered the building is a sysadmin (short for system administrator ), and he is concerned that his servers are losing uptime (time spent running or connected to the internet). This evidently concerns the man on the phone, who knows that a good sysadmin is an unstoppable force once started!
This comic is a reference to one of two things (or both): the Hollywood depiction of heroes able to perform superhuman feats in tricky situations (such as John McClane in Die Hard , which the first two panels are a deliberate reference to), or the duty that people impose upon themselves to go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that they carry out their work (in this case a dutiful sysadmin, concerned for those trying to use his server).
The title text is a simple joke about the fact that the sysadmin will crawl through broken glass and defeat criminals/terrorists (forces of darkness) just so a cat blog (where owners write about their cats) can stay up. This creates a humorous contrast between the seriousness with which large websites treat issues like uptime and business continuity and the often mundane and banal uses people actually have for them.
A sysadmin is also mentioned in the title text of 309: Shopping Teams and in 1305: Undocumented Feature .
[Bearded criminal is holding a pistol and talking on a mobile phone.] Criminal: We took the hostages, secured the building and cut the communication lines like you said. Phone: Excellent.
[Still talking on the phone, waving gun around in the air animatedly.] Criminal: But then this guy climbed up the ventilation ducts and walked across broken glass, killing anyone we sent to stop him.
Phone: And he rescued the hostages?
[Criminal looking confused and defeated, shoulders hunched and pistol hanging limply at his side.] Criminal: No, he ignored them. He just reconnected the cables we cut, muttering something about "uptime". Phone: Shit, we're dealing with a sysadmin .
This comic was made into a shirt in the xkcd store, which includes a new illustration on the back.
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706 | Freedom | Freedom | https://www.xkcd.com/706 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/706:_Freedom | [Cueball is talking to his Cueball like friend.] Cueball: Sometimes I'm shocked to realize how many options I have. Friend: Oh?
[The text is written above a half height frame with a zoom in on Cueball who shakes his fist.] Cueball: Like, at any moment in any conversation, I could just punch the person I was talking to, and all these potentially life-changing events would unfold.
[Zoom further out than the first panel with Cueball holding his arms out and his friends taking his hand to his chin.] Cueball: It's only my mental rules that stop me from punching you, or stripping naked, or getting on a plane to Fiji. Sure, rules have reasons. But shouldn't you exercise that freedom at least once before you die? Friend: Hmm.
[In very big black letters written vertically between the two panels:] WHAM
[Cueball is knocked to the ground, dazed (three stars over his head) and bruised while his friend is looking down at him with his fist raised.] Cueball: Okay, I should have seen that coming. Friend: But you couldn't! That's the beauty!
"Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins."
| Cueball on the left, here most likely representing Randall as given in the title text, comments on the absence of physical enforcement for social norms . He tells his friend that he is sometimes shocked to realize how many options he has. Cueball then goes through a list of possible things he could do that only his conscience and learned social norms (and his cerebrum) prevent him from doing, including stripping naked, taking a plane to Fiji or just punching his conversation partner for no reason at all, with all the "interesting" ensuing events that would result, potentially life changing (he could go to prison for instance).
Cueball continues, explaining that he does understand the mental rules and also the reason, but also that at least once in his life he should exercise that "freedom", hence the title. This is enough to convince his friend who promptly exercises his option to punch Cueball in the face, perfectly in keeping with Cueball's beliefs of how everyone should do so at least once.
On the ground, Cueball remarks that he should have expected this reaction. That he didn't was the beauty of it all, his friend states, because only when the "freedom" is used to do something completely unexpected could the person doing so denounce his mental ruleset.
The title text is a restatement of the first line of the comment, but reversed to show that Randall is terrified about his realization that the same freedoms apply to other people. This is justified by the comic, as some of these people could engage in actions detrimental to others, as Cueball's friend demonstrates; combined with the fact that there are many other people, [ citation needed ] that makes for a lot of unpredictable possible situations.
[Cueball is talking to his Cueball like friend.] Cueball: Sometimes I'm shocked to realize how many options I have. Friend: Oh?
[The text is written above a half height frame with a zoom in on Cueball who shakes his fist.] Cueball: Like, at any moment in any conversation, I could just punch the person I was talking to, and all these potentially life-changing events would unfold.
[Zoom further out than the first panel with Cueball holding his arms out and his friends taking his hand to his chin.] Cueball: It's only my mental rules that stop me from punching you, or stripping naked, or getting on a plane to Fiji. Sure, rules have reasons. But shouldn't you exercise that freedom at least once before you die? Friend: Hmm.
[In very big black letters written vertically between the two panels:] WHAM
[Cueball is knocked to the ground, dazed (three stars over his head) and bruised while his friend is looking down at him with his fist raised.] Cueball: Okay, I should have seen that coming. Friend: But you couldn't! That's the beauty!
"Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins."
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707 | Joshing | Joshing | https://www.xkcd.com/707 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/707:_Joshing | Cueball: So, is the new project going forward? Friend: I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you!
[The men laugh cautiously.]
[The men resume conversation.] Friend: I mean, kill you even sooner.
| "I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you" is a flippant response to a question that's been around at least since the movie Top Gun , and has entered regular use in the English speaking world, even among people who don't know its origin.
The Cueball uses the line here, but the joke is that he actually is planning to kill the other one, and if he answered the question he'd have to kill him even sooner.
According to the title text, he'd go from #49 on his hit list (which apparently includes an approximation of the entire world population) to #31.
The title 'Joshing' refers to the colloquial American verb 'to josh', meaning to joke with.
Cueball: So, is the new project going forward? Friend: I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you!
[The men laugh cautiously.]
[The men resume conversation.] Friend: I mean, kill you even sooner.
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708 | Sex Dice | Sex Dice | https://www.xkcd.com/708 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/708:_Sex_Dice | [Cueball and Megan kneel on a bed, Cueball, on the foot of the bed, is shaking a cup of dice. Behind Megan is a pillow and the bed poles.] Cueball: All right, baby. Get ready for... Shake shake shake roll
[There is no frame around the next drawing of the two dice that have been rolled. The first is a regular five (seen almost from the top, but the sides with one and three can be seen). The second die has text written on it:] Breasts
[Cueball and Megan are bent over the dice lying on the bed staring at them. Beat panel.]
[Cueball leans back on one hand while taking the other to his chin while Megan sits straighter.] Cueball: I really need to organize the game cupboard. Megan: Wait, so where's the other sex die?
[A Cueball-like guy lies on his stomach, and another Cueball-like guy sits to the left. Hairbun is sitting and Ponytail also lying on her stomach, hands beneath her chin. They are sitting/lying down around a game board. On the board is what appears to be two dice.] Guy lying: I... fondle the castle guard? That doesn't seem right. Hairbun: It did 6 damage, though.
| Sex dice consist of two dice, one listing various actions, and one listing various body parts ( sometimes a third specifying a manner in which the action should be done). Roll the dice, do the specified action to the specified body part, repeat as necessary.
Because most games require the same dice, in many peoples' game collections, the dice get mixed around between games. Unfortunately it seems Cueball and Megan have accidentally exchanged one of their sex dice (the one that contains actions) with a normal six-sided die; as a result, the people playing a role-playing game in the last panel find themselves doing unusual actions.
Given the situation, it's likely the player who fondled the guard was supposed to roll 2 or 3 six-sided dice to determine the damage of his attack. The sex die came up as "fondle," while the other dice added up to six; hence, he fondled the guard for 6 damage.
The title text is another possible situation that might arise: "rolling for initiative " in role-playing games is how the players determine who attacks in what order during combat. Here, the player rolled the sex die as part of his initiative roll, and therefore "took initiative" in an entirely different way.
Typically the missing sex dice will show different actions like these: Blow, bite, nip, lick, pat or suck (from a set that did not include fondle). The other dice with places on the body like breasts might also have these options: Ass, thigh, ear, navel or lips. Other dice may show positions to use, like doggy style, or places in the house on which to perform these, as in the kitchen. It is a little difficult to imagine any of the actions mentioned above resulting in the response in the title text: Wow, do you ever take it. Maybe there are other types of dice, but they are not easily found with a Google search...
[Cueball and Megan kneel on a bed, Cueball, on the foot of the bed, is shaking a cup of dice. Behind Megan is a pillow and the bed poles.] Cueball: All right, baby. Get ready for... Shake shake shake roll
[There is no frame around the next drawing of the two dice that have been rolled. The first is a regular five (seen almost from the top, but the sides with one and three can be seen). The second die has text written on it:] Breasts
[Cueball and Megan are bent over the dice lying on the bed staring at them. Beat panel.]
[Cueball leans back on one hand while taking the other to his chin while Megan sits straighter.] Cueball: I really need to organize the game cupboard. Megan: Wait, so where's the other sex die?
[A Cueball-like guy lies on his stomach, and another Cueball-like guy sits to the left. Hairbun is sitting and Ponytail also lying on her stomach, hands beneath her chin. They are sitting/lying down around a game board. On the board is what appears to be two dice.] Guy lying: I... fondle the castle guard? That doesn't seem right. Hairbun: It did 6 damage, though.
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709 | I Am | I Am | https://www.xkcd.com/709 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/709:_I_Am | [The Burning Bush of Exodus fame speaks to Moses, who is shielding himself with his arm, as if a great gust of wind is overtaking him.] Bush: I AM THAT I AM, THE LORD YOUR GOD AND THE GOD OF YOUR FATHERS, OF ABRAHAM, OF ISAAC, AND OF JACOB. [A droid comes into frame, Moses looks down at it.] Bush: AND THIS IS MY COUNTERPART, R2-D2. BLEEP BLOOP | In the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible , God announces his presence to Moses by way of a burning bush . The quotation in this comic is a combination of Exodus 3:14 - "I am that I am", and Exodus 3:16 - "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."
The punchline comes when God introduces his "counterpart, R2-D2 ", implying that the "god" in this case is not actually the God of the Jews as expected, but rather C-3PO , a droid from the Star Wars universe; theoretically, in the mind of the reader, God's voice might humorously go from booming and sepulchral in the first frame, to snooty and British in the second frame. It could be a reference to a plot point from Return of the Jedi , in which the Ewoks believe C-3PO is a god . (In the movie, C-3PO states that it's against his programming to "impersonate a deity ", but he does so anyway; whether it's actually a violation of his programming is debatable .)
The joke is that "I AM", the name of God in the Bible, is represented in Hebrew by the Tetragrammaton , YHWH. This abbreviation coincidentally [ citation needed ] follows the 4-character naming convention of Star Wars droid characters such as C-3PO and R2-D2 and, like the latter, contains identical characters in the 2nd and 4th positions. (In English translations of the text, this is the part rendered as "LORD" in capitals.)
In the title text, "LO-M" refers to the LOM , a model of protocol droid in the Star Wars universe similar to the 3PO model; "L-O-M" sounds like " Elohim ", a Hebrew word for "God". Bocce refers to a language that Owen Lars wanted his protocol droid to be able to speak; C-3PO claimed that it was "like a second language to me" .
[The Burning Bush of Exodus fame speaks to Moses, who is shielding himself with his arm, as if a great gust of wind is overtaking him.] Bush: I AM THAT I AM, THE LORD YOUR GOD AND THE GOD OF YOUR FATHERS, OF ABRAHAM, OF ISAAC, AND OF JACOB. [A droid comes into frame, Moses looks down at it.] Bush: AND THIS IS MY COUNTERPART, R2-D2. BLEEP BLOOP |
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710 | Collatz Conjecture | Collatz Conjecture | https://www.xkcd.com/710 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/710:_Collatz_Conjecture | [Cueball sits in a chair at a desk, papers piled on top, writing furiously. Depicted above are apparently the writing, a series of nodes in various Collatz sequences (starting with 7, 21, 24, 29, 106, 176 and 256), all eventually leading back to 1.] The Collatz Conjecture states that if you pick a number, and if it's even divide it by two and if it's odd multiply it by three and add one, and you repeat this procedure long enough, eventually your friends will stop calling to see if you want to hang out.
| The Collatz conjecture is a longstanding unsolved problem in mathematics. It states that repeating the sequence of operations described in the comic will eventually lead to the number 1. The description in the comic starts out accurate, then veers into the joke.
The comic illustrates the sequence with a graph in which an arrow connects each number to its successor. For example, the number 22 is even, so the next number in the sequence is 22 ÷ 2 = 11, and there is an arrow from 22 to 11. On the other hand, 11 is odd, so the next number is 3 × 11 + 1 = 34, and there is an arrow from 11 to 34.
According to the caption, Cueball is obsessively writing out the graph by hand, and is so preoccupied with the task that he has stopped socializing with his friends. He will be busy for a very long time, because the Collatz conjecture has been confirmed for all starting values up to 5 × 10 18 .
The Strong Collatz Conjecture in the title text is a humorous extension of the Collatz Conjecture. Some other mathematical conjectures and axioms also have normal and Strong variants, where the Strong variant gives a more general rule. This practice is further parodied in 1310: Goldbach Conjectures .
[Cueball sits in a chair at a desk, papers piled on top, writing furiously. Depicted above are apparently the writing, a series of nodes in various Collatz sequences (starting with 7, 21, 24, 29, 106, 176 and 256), all eventually leading back to 1.] The Collatz Conjecture states that if you pick a number, and if it's even divide it by two and if it's odd multiply it by three and add one, and you repeat this procedure long enough, eventually your friends will stop calling to see if you want to hang out.
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711 | Seismograph | Seismograph | https://www.xkcd.com/711 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/711:_Seismograph | [Cueball is standing over another man, who is strapped into a chair with wires attached to his head and arms. The wires lead to a large lie detector on a stand next to him, which has jagged lines drawn across it.] Cueball: IS THERE AN EARTHQUAKE HAPPENING?! Sitting man: No! Lie detector: scritch scritch
[Caption below the panel:] Pro tip: In a pinch, a lie detector can double as a seismograph.
| A polygraph (popularly referred to as a lie detector) measures and records several physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while the subject is asked and answers a series of questions. The belief underpinning the use of the polygraph is that deceptive answers will produce physiological responses that can be differentiated from those associated with non-deceptive answers. Polygraphs are generally considered to be pseudoscientific and are not admissible as evidence. (They've been described as worse than coin toss to determine whether as individual is a trained double agent, for instance. The reasoning is that while the coin toss is [also] randomly incorrect about half the time, at least you can't train to beat the coin toss every time). However, they can be an effective prop to convince suspects that interrogators will know if they lie.
A seismograph is a machine which measures and records the ground's motion during e.g. an earthquake. Older seismographs held a pen against a slowly turning roll of paper, and ground motions were amplified and recorded as spikes in the pen line.
The lie detector works by measuring physiological signals which could presumably be visualized by drawing a line on paper like a seismograph. It is assumed that when someone is lying, their physiological signatures will be sharper and more stressed. In the comic, the character on the right is hooked up to the lie detector, and apparently must answer "No" to the question of the earthquake. As long as there is no earthquake, then the subject will be telling the truth, and the polygraph signal will be more stable. But if there is really an earthquake happening, then the subject is lying, and so the polygraph will show sharper signals. This mimics the effect of an actual seismograph. It is not clear why the two characters seem to be upset with each other. It is perhaps because the scene mimics a polygraph test where the subject is trying to hide something. Or, more likely, they are simply panicked.
The title text considers the idea of using a seismograph as a lie detector. If the subject has a nervous twitch, presumably they will twitch in some way when they are telling a lie. This would require them to twitch hard enough to vibrate the ground around them, a vibration that can be picked up on a nearby seismograph.
[Cueball is standing over another man, who is strapped into a chair with wires attached to his head and arms. The wires lead to a large lie detector on a stand next to him, which has jagged lines drawn across it.] Cueball: IS THERE AN EARTHQUAKE HAPPENING?! Sitting man: No! Lie detector: scritch scritch
[Caption below the panel:] Pro tip: In a pinch, a lie detector can double as a seismograph.
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712 | Single Ladies | Single Ladies | https://www.xkcd.com/712 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/712:_Single_Ladies | [Beret Guy is talking to Sauron; Sauron is wearing his trademark helmet, but his head is downcast. Music plays in the background.] Music: All the single ladies, All the single ladies Beret Guy: Hey Sauron, why so glum? Sauron: Gil-galad saw through me and threw me out of Lindon. Galadriel as well. I'll never rule anyone at this rate.
Music: All the single ladies, All the single ladies Sauron: Eru created such beautiful creatures - Elves and men and dwarves - and all I've got are these stupid orcs.
Music: 'Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it Sauron: I mean, I-
[Sauron is suddenly quiet.] Music: If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
| The character in armor is Sauron , the main villain in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the backstory of the The Silmarillion , he takes control of Middle-earth by giving several Rings of Power as "gifts" to the great kings of men after teaching the craft to dwarves and elves. However, he also forged a master ring, the One Ring , to control the Rings of Power and ultimately rule over the kings. However, the elves were not deceived by his plan and took off their rings. Enraged, Sauron started War of the Elves and Sauron . After losing that war Sauron started a religion in Númenor . After using his influence to convince Númenóreans to attack Aman , the island is destroyed by Eru . Then Sauron started War against the Last Alliance . Sauron is eventually defeated in said war by Isildur who cuts off his ring finger. The books tell the story of a small group of adventurers who rediscover the lost Ring and attempt to destroy it, as Sauron's army gathers its forces to attempt to reclaim the Ring for their master.
Gil-galad is a high Elven-king, and Galadriel is an Elf of royal blood who serves as a matriarch of sorts to the remnants of the Elven race. Lindon is a location on the westernmost side of the continent, serving as the final transition point for Elves passing on to the Undying lands. Sauron refers to an actual event in the first panel, when he tried to gain control of Lindon through deceit; Galadriel and Gil-galad saw through his disguise and cast him out.
In the second panel Sauron is talking about Eru Ilúvatar , the creator in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. While Eru created elves and men it was Aulë who created Dwarves, Eru gave them life. Orcs were Elves twisted by Morgoth so Sauron, being his principal lieutenant, would be a natural leader to orcs by the time he created the One Ring.
The song playing in the background is "All the Single Ladies" by Beyoncé, which includes the line "If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it," referring to wedding rings . This is shown as being what inspired Sauron to devise his plan to control others through the gift of rings.
The title text refers to an often-suggested fan theory that the One Ring is actually meant to be symbolic of marriage. This theory is incorrect. The Nazgûl , also known as ringwraiths, are the former nine human kings who were bound by the rings, now a band of nine servants to Sauron who constantly seek out the Ring for him.
[Beret Guy is talking to Sauron; Sauron is wearing his trademark helmet, but his head is downcast. Music plays in the background.] Music: All the single ladies, All the single ladies Beret Guy: Hey Sauron, why so glum? Sauron: Gil-galad saw through me and threw me out of Lindon. Galadriel as well. I'll never rule anyone at this rate.
Music: All the single ladies, All the single ladies Sauron: Eru created such beautiful creatures - Elves and men and dwarves - and all I've got are these stupid orcs.
Music: 'Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it Sauron: I mean, I-
[Sauron is suddenly quiet.] Music: If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
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713 | GeoIP | GeoIP | https://www.xkcd.com/713 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/713:_GeoIP | [External view of a the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting the blue Earth below, shown with white clouds as stripes below and black sky above. Dialog, written in white on the black sky, comes from within the ISS.] Cueball (inside the ISS): Yes! Ponytail (inside the ISS): What? Cueball (inside the ISS): I got our downlink into a GeoIP database.
[Internal view of the satellite, Cueball and Ponytail are floating weightlessly around, Cueball is at a laptop style computer mounted to the wall. They are in a white room, with black around, but due to being weightless in space, the room is turned on edge as to not give any semblance of a given up/down direction.] Ponytail: Why? Cueball: To mess with advertisers. Check it out.
[A zoom in on the computer screen is shown, it shows an ad on a pink background. The ad has a heading and then shows two photos of long haired girls in sexy poses each with captions below and a labeled button at the bottom. The location (as messed up by Cueball) is written in gray, the rest of the text is in black, to indicate that this part of the text has been inserted in the ad based on the location.] Meet local girls in Low Earth Orbit tonight! Tanya, 18 Amber, 19 Chat live
| GeoIP is a service that converts IP addresses to their respective location on the Earth. This is done by looking up the IP address in a database maintained by various internet service providers. Advertisers often take advantage of the Jones effect by creating localized ads which misleadingly appear to be specific to your location, but are often simply stock photographs with the name of the nearest town superimposed on top.
The comic satirizes this phenomenon. The International Space Station (ISS) has a high speed data downlink, but no direct connection to the internet. But here, Cueball trolls the advertisers from on board the ISS, by inserting his actual location on low Earth orbit into the database under that IP address. He proudly presents his result to Ponytail where the advertisements claim that there are "local girls" in low Earth orbit; a distance of roughly 420 kilometers above the Earth surface, and thus at least that far away from all other girls in the world if they are not on the space station (or a nearby spacecraft, such as one bringing supplies to the space station).
The title text shows GeoIP has become so accurate that it can now pinpoint the user's location to his Mom's basement. In United States, an adult living with his parents is considered shameful for that person, since it means that the adult does not have a job and cannot support himself. The ads are typically of the form -- "Meet hot young singles in <user's location>" where the <user's location> part is filled in from GeoIP. In this case, the GeoIP is so accurate that it not just identifies that user is in his parents' house, but it also pinpoints the location that he's hiding in the basement, perhaps because he does not want to be seen by people visiting his parents. Thus GeoIP is unknowingly shaming the user by reminding him that he is in his mom's basement, and hence the "Screw you" response. However, this would also prove the false nature of these advertisements, as the user is unlikely to have not noticed any hot young singles currently sharing his mom's basement. [ citation needed ]
[External view of a the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting the blue Earth below, shown with white clouds as stripes below and black sky above. Dialog, written in white on the black sky, comes from within the ISS.] Cueball (inside the ISS): Yes! Ponytail (inside the ISS): What? Cueball (inside the ISS): I got our downlink into a GeoIP database.
[Internal view of the satellite, Cueball and Ponytail are floating weightlessly around, Cueball is at a laptop style computer mounted to the wall. They are in a white room, with black around, but due to being weightless in space, the room is turned on edge as to not give any semblance of a given up/down direction.] Ponytail: Why? Cueball: To mess with advertisers. Check it out.
[A zoom in on the computer screen is shown, it shows an ad on a pink background. The ad has a heading and then shows two photos of long haired girls in sexy poses each with captions below and a labeled button at the bottom. The location (as messed up by Cueball) is written in gray, the rest of the text is in black, to indicate that this part of the text has been inserted in the ad based on the location.] Meet local girls in Low Earth Orbit tonight! Tanya, 18 Amber, 19 Chat live
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714 | Porn For Women | Porn For Women | https://www.xkcd.com/714 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/714:_Porn_For_Women | [Megan sits at a desk, typing on a computer with a fairly large flat-panel display.] Megan: To the authors of Porn for Women : Your book features pictures of hot, clothed guys cooking, doing laundry and vacuuming.
[Megan continues typing.] Megan: The idea seems to be that my deepest fantasies, like the rest of my life, likely revolve around housework.
[Megan continues typing.] Megan: So I wanted to write in to clarify: in my porn,
[Megan leans forward in her chair.] Megan: People fuck .
| Porn for Women is a popular illustrated humor book that features exactly what the comic says.
There is an opinion that women especially dislike blunt porn that objectifies the people involved in the intercourse. The authors of the book follows this line, presenting no sex but several images of extremely attractive men performing household chores. Megan objects to this, stating that her porn contains sex.
Galactica is the ship from the show Battlestar Galactica . Megan likely has a romantic attraction to some of the characters on the show, possibly involving "shipping" fanfiction .
[Megan sits at a desk, typing on a computer with a fairly large flat-panel display.] Megan: To the authors of Porn for Women : Your book features pictures of hot, clothed guys cooking, doing laundry and vacuuming.
[Megan continues typing.] Megan: The idea seems to be that my deepest fantasies, like the rest of my life, likely revolve around housework.
[Megan continues typing.] Megan: So I wanted to write in to clarify: in my porn,
[Megan leans forward in her chair.] Megan: People fuck .
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715 | Numbers | Numbers | https://www.xkcd.com/715 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/715:_Numbers | Google Result for Various Phrases: {Each panel is a scatterplot of the described X against the number of Google hits, with trend lines. The scales vary.}
<X> Bottles of Beer on the Wall [There are peaks at 1, 49, 73, and 99. A dip in the middle is marked "They lose steam at 66." After 99 is a steep dropoff. The largest peak is around 100,000 hits.]
I've Had <X> Boy/Girlfriends [Both lines descend at roughly the same rate from 1 to 10, although the boyfriend graph is smoother; the girlfriend graph has a small peak at 4 and a small dip at 6. The peaks are between 100,000 and 1,000,000 hits.]
I'm in <X>st/nd/rd/th Grade [The curve is a bell peaking at 7th grade and about 500,000 hits. A second line labeled "Including Junior, Senior, etc." follows the bell curve until the peak, then dips only slightly for 10th grade and resumes climbing.]
I Have a/an <X>-Inch Penis [The line ascends shallowly from 100,000 hits for 3 inches to a peak of 180,000 for 9 inches, then descends steeply to 20,000 for 13 inches.]
I'm a/an <X>-Cup [A has a few hundred thousand hits; the graph dips to a few thousand for C, peaks again around 100,000 for E, and then tails off.]
I'm <X> and Have Never Had a Boyfriend [The graph is mostly a simple bell, starting and ending around 300,000 hits for 13 or 21, but there is a sharp peak of 700,000 at 18 (well above the trend line).]
Drink <X> Glasses of Water a Day [There are barely any hits below 4 or above 12; between the two it rises steeply to about 1,000 hits, with a steep, narrow peak of 10,000 at 8.]
There Are <X> Lights [The graph descends smoothly from several hundred thousand hits for 1 to about 10,000 for 10, except for a peak of about 1,000,000 for 4.]
I Got <X> Problems [The plot is extremely jagged, with the largest peak of 10,000,000 hits at 99, another of 10,000 at 96, and 100 and 88.]
My IQ Is <X> [A smooth curve starts and ends at a few thousand hits for around 85 and around 170, with the peak at several tens of thousands for 140, but there are several prominent outliers: 100, 110, 133, and 142 are all around 100,000 hits, and 147 is around 1,000,000.]
| This comic use the popular search engine Google to show how many hits (or web pages) are returned as relevant based on a given search replacing <X> by different numbers.
Bottles of beer The top one is of the old drinking song 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall . In this song, the singers begin with 99 bottles and with each repeat of the verse, decrease the bottles of beer by one. The graph shows a slowdown at 66 bottles of beer, something highlighted. A spike occurs at 49 bottles of beer, which seems to be a popular variant (possibly due to 49 bottles taking about half the time that 99 would).
Boy/girlfriends On the second row, the left graph represents how many girlfriends or boyfriends someone has had. They seem pretty similar, though the logarithmic chart may be working on that. There is a clear peak at four girlfriends.
School grade In the middle of second row is a curve for how old (in grade) Internet users seem to be. Going purely by grade, the average is at 7th grade. However, using the notation of Freshman (9)/Sophomore (10)/Junior (11)/Senior (12), there's a notable resurgence.
Penis length The graph on the far right of the second row describes Internet users talking about the lengths of penises that they have. 5-6 inches (~13-15 cm) is generally considered average, but it doesn't appear that way on the Internet. There is a general trend (also shown by the line), but the maximum, 9 inches (23 cm), peaks way above the trend line - indicating that guys think they can pull this one off, although 12 inches (30 cm) peaks way above the trend line as well. Probably because 12 inches equals a foot.
Cup size The third row contains four graphs. The far left is the breast size of the Internet user. (This presumably refers to female users, since male breasts are not typically measured in cup size.) The actual breast size is generally considered a bell curve around a B or C cup, yet the hits on Google describe almost an exact opposite trend. Taken with the above male penis length and this describes a trend where either the "average" person posting information seems to embellish or the majority stay quiet. Typically those with small breast will complain, and those with large breast will complain or brag. Those that are content with a C cup do not need to do either.
I have never had a boyfriend The second graph on row three is number of hits per (mostly) female Internet users talking about how old they are without having a boyfriend. There's a spike at 18. The comic was written in 2010; as of 2014 the spike does not exist. Google behaves very strangely in this case, as it shows two very different numbers for each search.
Glasses of water a day Third from the left in row three is the number of glasses drunk per day. Many "health authorities" claim that 8 glasses of water a day should be the most healthy. This common misconception is not supported by scientific research. This is the subject of 1708: Dehydration and is also mentioned 1853: Once Per Day . In both these six glasses of water is mentioned first rather than eight. (New research...)
Number of lights On the far right is a description of the number of lights. The spike at four is due to a famous scene from Star Trek: The Next Generation , episode Chain of Command Part II where Captain Picard answers that there are four lights, despite pressure to answer that there are five. This is itself a reference to George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , where Winston Smith is tortured until he "learns" to be unsure of the number of fingers being held up by his torturer, despite him only holding up four.
Number of problems Bottom left is a reference to the popular Jay-Z rap song 99 Problems . It is the only reason that 100 problems only ends up second by more than a factor of 100.
IQ Bottom right describes the IQ of the Internet goer compared to the average. By the definition of the test the average is 100 with a standard deviation of 15. However, the comic implies that the average claimed IQ closes in on 133 more than 2 standard deviations above the real average! This high average are thanks mainly to the million who has given their IQ as 147. There are four other peaks that are also labeled, and these peaks are the only other above 100,000 hits, but neither of these have much more than 200,000 hits. Apart from these five there are only 5 more with more than 50,000 hits. Note the log scale of the y.axis! Many studies have shown that people today would score a higher average than 100 if they took the earlier test - an effect know as the Flynn effect . However, new tests from today should still average out to 100, as an IQ of 100 is defined as the average of any given IQ test. The five labels: Why is 147 so popular? The maximum break in snooker is 147, but it is unlikely that this is known by enough to make a difference here. There is also a frequently repeated factoid that Albert Einstein scored an IQ of 147 but there's no real record or consensus of this. The 100 (the average) peaks out is obvious. 110 - ten more also makes sense. In general there are almost always more hits at every 5 and 10, than the two values before or after. 133 is a third of the way to 200, and also it will take you clear of the Mensa requirement for membership of 132 on the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales . Why 142 is popular is also difficult to say. Of course 42 is a special number for fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , so 142 for an IQ score could be helped to peak for this reason. Although then it is no longer 42... (But an IQ of 42 would be really bad!) The scale of the graphs x-axis is completely off. This can easily be seen from the labeled points. Whereas 100 and 110 is close to the mark, the point labeled 133 is much closer to 140 than 130 (at about 138) and the 147 point lies clearly past 150 (at around 152). It is, however, for sure the scale that is off as there are the correct number of points between all five labeled points. There is a clear point on the y-axis at 80, but then there seems to be a gap up to the next point, and there are also only 16 points between this first point and the point labeled 100. It thus seems that while there are in fact about 20,000 who claim as low an IQ as 80, then there are not enough who claims a score of 81-83 for them to be shown in this graph. The graph begins at around 80-90 hits because of the log scale so there could be some hits, but way less than the lowest point on the graph which lies close to 1000 hits. From an IQ of 84 and up to 168 there are a point for each IQ for a total of 86 points (with the point at 80).
Title text The title text refers to the searches. It concludes that the average (male) internet user has a 9-inch penis and an IQ of 147. Humorously it continues to state that this is better than the reverse - having a 147-inch penis (over 12 feet or 3.7 m) and an IQ of 9 (only 2 % of the population have below 70).
Google Result for Various Phrases: {Each panel is a scatterplot of the described X against the number of Google hits, with trend lines. The scales vary.}
<X> Bottles of Beer on the Wall [There are peaks at 1, 49, 73, and 99. A dip in the middle is marked "They lose steam at 66." After 99 is a steep dropoff. The largest peak is around 100,000 hits.]
I've Had <X> Boy/Girlfriends [Both lines descend at roughly the same rate from 1 to 10, although the boyfriend graph is smoother; the girlfriend graph has a small peak at 4 and a small dip at 6. The peaks are between 100,000 and 1,000,000 hits.]
I'm in <X>st/nd/rd/th Grade [The curve is a bell peaking at 7th grade and about 500,000 hits. A second line labeled "Including Junior, Senior, etc." follows the bell curve until the peak, then dips only slightly for 10th grade and resumes climbing.]
I Have a/an <X>-Inch Penis [The line ascends shallowly from 100,000 hits for 3 inches to a peak of 180,000 for 9 inches, then descends steeply to 20,000 for 13 inches.]
I'm a/an <X>-Cup [A has a few hundred thousand hits; the graph dips to a few thousand for C, peaks again around 100,000 for E, and then tails off.]
I'm <X> and Have Never Had a Boyfriend [The graph is mostly a simple bell, starting and ending around 300,000 hits for 13 or 21, but there is a sharp peak of 700,000 at 18 (well above the trend line).]
Drink <X> Glasses of Water a Day [There are barely any hits below 4 or above 12; between the two it rises steeply to about 1,000 hits, with a steep, narrow peak of 10,000 at 8.]
There Are <X> Lights [The graph descends smoothly from several hundred thousand hits for 1 to about 10,000 for 10, except for a peak of about 1,000,000 for 4.]
I Got <X> Problems [The plot is extremely jagged, with the largest peak of 10,000,000 hits at 99, another of 10,000 at 96, and 100 and 88.]
My IQ Is <X> [A smooth curve starts and ends at a few thousand hits for around 85 and around 170, with the peak at several tens of thousands for 140, but there are several prominent outliers: 100, 110, 133, and 142 are all around 100,000 hits, and 147 is around 1,000,000.]
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716 | Time Machine | Time Machine | https://www.xkcd.com/716 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/716:_Time_Machine | [Rob is working at a workbench. Future-Rob appears out of nowhere with a baseball bat.] Future-Rob: Hi, Rob. Rob: Whoa, you're me!
[Future-Rob holding the baseball bat, standing next to Rob.] Future-Rob: You're about to have an idea for a time machine. Rob: I am?
[In a frameless panel, Future-Rob hits Rob over the head with the baseball bat.] WHAM
[Megan approaches Future-Rob working at the workbench, with Rob nowhere to be seen. The bloody baseball bat is stashed behind it.] Megan: Hey, Rob. What's up? Future-Rob: Nothing.
[Caption below the last panel:] This happens somewhere roughly once a month.
This comic's title is very similar to 1203: Time Machines .
| Rob is about to discover time traveling , but a future version of him comes back in time and hits him with a baseball bat before he can actually build this time machine.
A common theme in time travel fiction is going back into the past to fix some mistake or stop some tragedy before it happens (see for instance The Terminator movies). In this comic, it is implied that Rob's time traveling turned out to cause a tragedy of some kind, so in order to stop it, Future-Rob must go back in time to stop himself from time traveling in the first place. The last panel supports this by suggesting that at least once a month somebody discovers time travel, but inevitably ends up going back in time to prevent themselves from doing so.
This is a plot point from the 2004 time-travel drama film Primer : one character intends to travel back in time to prevent them from discovering time travel in this way, and another character has already traveled back in time, drugged his earlier self, and taken over the operation to discover time travel before the narrative of the film begins. Primer has a notoriously complicated plot that Randall already has made a jocular attempt at explaining in 657: Movie Narrative Charts . Some more thorough attempts to explain it can be found here and here . Doubtless, this has also been spoofed in countless other comedic settings.
The blood on the bat suggests that future Rob actually killed past Rob. This is of course a paradox like the grandfather paradox - but there are theories about how it would still be possible - see the link. The obvious paradox is that when Rob dies the future Rob never existed. But also the time travel Future Rob undertakes uses a technique that is now never invented. This was the reason for future Rob's travel.
The title text states that this is why we never see any time travelers since they would have stopped their own past selves from time traveling. After getting rid of their past selves they would then assume their place in the timeline, hence why a friend would suddenly look older: they have aged, just in another timeline before returning to the past.
[Rob is working at a workbench. Future-Rob appears out of nowhere with a baseball bat.] Future-Rob: Hi, Rob. Rob: Whoa, you're me!
[Future-Rob holding the baseball bat, standing next to Rob.] Future-Rob: You're about to have an idea for a time machine. Rob: I am?
[In a frameless panel, Future-Rob hits Rob over the head with the baseball bat.] WHAM
[Megan approaches Future-Rob working at the workbench, with Rob nowhere to be seen. The bloody baseball bat is stashed behind it.] Megan: Hey, Rob. What's up? Future-Rob: Nothing.
[Caption below the last panel:] This happens somewhere roughly once a month.
This comic's title is very similar to 1203: Time Machines .
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717 | Furtive | Furtive | https://www.xkcd.com/717 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/717:_Furtive | [Inspector Gadget in a trench coat and hat stands mid-frame.]
[Gadget turns his head, looking to his right.]
[Gadget stands alone in a wide expanse.]
[Gadget finally speaks.] Gadget: Go go gadget two lesbians doing it.
| The person in the comic is Inspector Gadget from the animated series of the same name . Gadget was a cyborg detective that had access to a wide variety of gadgets which he would activate with the words "Go go gadget [insert item here]." The gadgets would usually spawn from his hat, such as his trademark personal helicopter ("go go gadget copter!"). One of the running gags of the series was that Gadget was completely clueless during his missions, and unbeknownst to him, relied heavily on the assistance of his niece Penny, her computer book, and her dog, Brain.
In this strip, Inspector Gadget (wearing his trademark hat and trench coat) looks around furtively and apparently moves away from the listener (or the camera pans out to reveal the empty environment) before saying the words "Go go gadget two lesbians doing it." The fantasy of lesbians having sex is a common turn-on for straight men. The command, given in the last panel of the comic, also serves to identify the person speaking. Identification along with the punchline is a common comedy trope.
In the title text, Gadget requests further gadgets: A video camera, to record the action, and a cup. The cup is probably a reference to the well-known, scatological pornographic video 2 Girls, 1 Cup , which was prominent at the time the comic was created.
[Inspector Gadget in a trench coat and hat stands mid-frame.]
[Gadget turns his head, looking to his right.]
[Gadget stands alone in a wide expanse.]
[Gadget finally speaks.] Gadget: Go go gadget two lesbians doing it.
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718 | The Flake Equation | The Flake Equation | https://www.xkcd.com/718 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/718:_The_Flake_Equation |
The Flake Equation: P = W P × (C R + M I ) × T K × F 0 × F 1 × D T × A U ≈ 100,000 Where: W P = World Population (7,000,000,000) C R = Fraction of people who imagine an alien encounter because they're crazy or want to feel special (1/10,000) M I = Fraction of people who misinterpret a physical or physiological experience as an alien sighting (1/10,000) T K = Probability that they'll tell someone (1/10) F 0 = Average number of people they tell (10) F 1 = Average number of people each friend tells this "firsthand" account (10) D T = Probability that any details not fitting the narrative will be revised or forgotten in retelling (9/10) A U = Fraction of people with the means and motivation to share the story with a wider audience (blogs, forums, reporters) (1/100) Even with conservative guesses for the values of the variables, this suggests there must be a huge number of credible-sounding alien sightings out there, available to anyone who wants to believe!
| This strip parodies the Drake equation , which is an method for estimating of the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. The Drake equation starts with the best estimate for the number of stars in our galaxy, then multiplies it by successive probabilities (such as the number of stars with planets, the number of planets which can support life, etc), to ultimately calculate how many civilizations exist. While such a calculation necessarily uses speculative numbers, it gives a good sense of how many civilizations could potentially exist.
The Flake equation presented in this strip provides an estimate about how many false or fake stories about aliens are likely to exist. It does so in similar manner as the Drake equation, by starting with the entire population, estimating how many people are likely to believe that they've had an alien encounter, and then calculating how likely those stories are to become public. Just like in the Drake equation, exact numbers are unknown, but can be estimated, and the equation in the comic shows Randall's guesses about these values. See an explanations of values below.
"Flake" is American slang for a person who is casually dishonest or unreliable, implying that such a person would be likely to imagine an alien encounter. Note that, while the Flake equation includes people who imagine encounters "because they're crazy or want to feel special", it doesn't attempt to include outright lies or deliberate hoaxes.
The final results tells us that there should be about 100,000 stories about aliens that have reliable explanations. (The numbers given in the equation gives 126,000 stories). The data is obviously highly speculative, and as with the Drake Equation, you can plug in your own numbers, but if you keep your guesses realistic, you will most likely get a very large number. This convinces the reader that the fact that there are many stories about aliens does not necessarily mean that many people actually met aliens.
The title text refers to Fermi's Lack-of-a-Paradox. The Fermi paradox refers to the contradiction between high numbers of calculated civilizations and the total lack of verified alien contact with earth. This is related to the Drake Equation, many estimates calculate that there should be large numbers of civilization in the galaxy, and they should have existed for long periods of time, suggesting that humanity should have been contacted by them, or at least seen some clear evidence of their existence. There are multiple explanations for this paradox, but it remains a question of scientific debate. The Lack-of-a-Paradox in this strip, however, is that the math suggests that there should be huge numbers of claimed alien sightings, and that's exactly what we observe.
Another comic parodying this equation is 384: The Drake Equation . The credibility of paranormal reports in general is revisited in 1235: Settled , which posits that if such phenomena were real they should have been unambiguously captured on camera by now.
The Flake Equation: P = W P × (C R + M I ) × T K × F 0 × F 1 × D T × A U ≈ 100,000 Where: W P = World Population (7,000,000,000) C R = Fraction of people who imagine an alien encounter because they're crazy or want to feel special (1/10,000) M I = Fraction of people who misinterpret a physical or physiological experience as an alien sighting (1/10,000) T K = Probability that they'll tell someone (1/10) F 0 = Average number of people they tell (10) F 1 = Average number of people each friend tells this "firsthand" account (10) D T = Probability that any details not fitting the narrative will be revised or forgotten in retelling (9/10) A U = Fraction of people with the means and motivation to share the story with a wider audience (blogs, forums, reporters) (1/100) Even with conservative guesses for the values of the variables, this suggests there must be a huge number of credible-sounding alien sightings out there, available to anyone who wants to believe!
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719 | Brain Worms | Brain Worms | https://www.xkcd.com/719 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/719:_Brain_Worms | [Megan sits at a computer desk, and Cueball stands near her holding a book.] Cueball: Weird-this parasitic worm infects the brain, damaging the areas responsible for spatial reasoning in dreams. Signs of infection include dreams about not fitting in your car comfortably, driving from the backseat, or veering all over the road. Megan (thinking): Oh God.
My Hobby: Taking advantage of the fact that some specific dreams are weirdly common, but not everyone who has them realizes this.
| Another comic in the My Hobby series. Cueball is tricking Megan by pretending to read from a book about a parasitic brain worm, describing the apparent symptoms caused by an infection. The dreams described sound very specific, which leads Megan to believe that since she has been having these types of dream, she must be infected. The comic text asserts that these types of dream are fairly common however, and this knowledge can be leveraged to trick people who aren't aware of this.
Dream contents are likely to be affected by many factors, however because people share common thoughts, feelings and experiences in waking life, it is unsurprising that our dreams share common features. In the case of the comic, cars are a ubiquitous feature of life for most people, and for many driving or being a passenger in a car is a regular experience. It is therefore to be expected that cars are likely to feature in dreams. What is less logical, but still common is there being something strange about the situation. The car may be huge, tiny, backwards, upside-down, flying, underwater, non-descript, etc. The examples given in the comic are typical of the 'unusual factor' reported in dreams.
Some people believe (to varying degrees) that dreams may be interpreted as a representation of a persons thoughts, emotions, or their subconscious. One of the more generally accepted interpretations of dreams involving driving or riding in a car, is that it expresses how you feel about your control over your own life. A dream about not fitting or not being comfortable in a car might be interpretted as the dreamer feeling out-of-place or uncomfortable in their own life, while dreams about losing control of a car might indicate the dreamer feels their life is out of control.
Megan of course does not have an infection from these fictional brain worms. Cueball is taking a "shot in the dark", with the success of his trick relying on Megan recognising these dream types as ones she has experienced. He may be playing on fears possibly carried by many people that these types of dreams hold a deeper significance which they can't identify. In the comic, Megan appears not to realize that he is pulling a prank on her and begins to get scared.
The title text continues the joke with another common dream, this time about teeth falling out. One commonly-accepted meaning of teeth falling out is a loss of confidence or power in one's life.
Common dreams are also discussed in 1943: Universal Dreams .
[Megan sits at a computer desk, and Cueball stands near her holding a book.] Cueball: Weird-this parasitic worm infects the brain, damaging the areas responsible for spatial reasoning in dreams. Signs of infection include dreams about not fitting in your car comfortably, driving from the backseat, or veering all over the road. Megan (thinking): Oh God.
My Hobby: Taking advantage of the fact that some specific dreams are weirdly common, but not everyone who has them realizes this.
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720 | Recipes | Recipes | https://www.xkcd.com/720 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/720:_Recipes | [Three people sit along a table with dishes and drinks in front of them. Cueball is walking in, a plate with food on it in one hand, a laptop in the other.]
[Blondie looks down at her bowl. She has a cup with what appears to be a lump of coal in it.] Blondie: I've got... Cheerios with a shot of vermouth. [Cueball 1 has a plate with some kind of cubic food on it. He has a cup of what appears to be two lovebirds in it.] Cueball 1: At least it's better than the quail eggs in whipped cream and MSG from last time. [Cueball 2 has a plate with a several lumps of some form of white stuff on it. They have a cup of what appears to be some kind of superfluid flowing out of it.] Cueball 2: Are these Skittles deep-fried ?
Cueball 3: C'mon, guys, be patient. In a few hundred more meals, the genetic algorithm should catch up to existing recipes and start to optimize. We've decided to drop the CS department from our weekly dinner party hosting rotation.
| A genetic algorithm starts with a set of candidates and evaluates them. The best candidates are combined and randomly mutated to form the candidates for the next generation. After being allowed to proceed for an extended period, a genetic algorithm can often produce remarkable results. If the initial candidates are randomly-generated (as appears to be the case here), the initial generations are usually horrible.
In the comic, the computer science (CS) department is the host of a dinner party. They choose to create a genetic algorithm to generate their recipes. Based on the remarks of the second diner, this is probably not the first generation, and the results are still horrible. Vermouth is a type of fortified wine , usually served alone or in cocktails. It seems unlikely that cheerios would complement the flavor of it. Quail eggs are a delicacy in many countries, as opposed to whipped cream , which is usually served on desserts. It was topped off with MSG, or Monosodium Glutamate , which is a non-essential amino acid used to enhance the flavor of savory foods. The last person has skittles , a brand of candy with a hard outer shell and a inside composed of corn syrup and hydrogenated palm kernel oil . Deep-frying is usually done to savory starches and meats, not sweet confectionaries. The host of the party is so enamored of the promise of the genetic algorithm that he fails to take into account that it will be several years before the recipes become remotely good.
The title text could make reference to the fact that genetic algorithms will sometimes return results which are highly abnormal and vastly deviate from what we would think to be "selected for," but nonetheless can be quite successful, albeit unorthodox. Braising is a cooking practice involving both searing on an open pan and boiling in a pot with liquid; newts are small lizard-resembling amphibians that are not commonly eaten in America, and Doritos are a cheese-covered tortilla chip. None of these are elements that a sane chef would use together when preparing dinner, but the title text concedes that it did taste good despite the abnormality. It also showcases that the algorithm has stumbled upon a recipe that engages in wordplay with the movie and common phrase "Dazed and Confused".
[Three people sit along a table with dishes and drinks in front of them. Cueball is walking in, a plate with food on it in one hand, a laptop in the other.]
[Blondie looks down at her bowl. She has a cup with what appears to be a lump of coal in it.] Blondie: I've got... Cheerios with a shot of vermouth. [Cueball 1 has a plate with some kind of cubic food on it. He has a cup of what appears to be two lovebirds in it.] Cueball 1: At least it's better than the quail eggs in whipped cream and MSG from last time. [Cueball 2 has a plate with a several lumps of some form of white stuff on it. They have a cup of what appears to be some kind of superfluid flowing out of it.] Cueball 2: Are these Skittles deep-fried ?
Cueball 3: C'mon, guys, be patient. In a few hundred more meals, the genetic algorithm should catch up to existing recipes and start to optimize. We've decided to drop the CS department from our weekly dinner party hosting rotation.
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721 | Flatland | Flatland | https://www.xkcd.com/721 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/721:_Flatland | [Cueball talks to a square on the ground.] Cueball: Hey, A. Square. How's Flatland? A. Square: Still flat. What's up? Cueball: I just spent an hour playing a demo of this 4D game called Miegakure.
[In a frameless panel, a character in Miegakure jumps around the 4D landscape.] Caption above the panel: Trying to jump from block to block in four dimensions hurt my brain.
[Cueball continues talking to A. Square on the ground.] Cueball: So I apologize for giving you a hard time when you were slow to understand 3D space. I sympathize now. A. Square: It's okay.
[Zoom in on Cueball's head] Cueball: Also, I apologize for drawing arms, legs, and eyes on you to make you look like SpongeBob. That was out of line. A. Square: Yes, it was.
| This comic is a reference to the satirical novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions , in which a society of flat shapes live in a 2D world. Half the book is a direct satire of Victorian society, and the other half explores the experience of discovering a new dimension, where a sphere introduces a square (named A. Square) to 3D . Cueball appears to have taken the place of this sphere, and the comic takes place after the square knows the third dimension exists.
Humans will never fully be able to fully grasp the concept of a fourth spatial dimension (at least not in the foreseeable future), but there are ways of squashing or slicing four dimensions to create partial visualizations of 4D space. Miegakure is a yet-to-be-released 4D game that uses cross-sections of 4D space. Cueball attempted to play a pre-release version of it, but after having his "mind blown", he gained more sympathy for A. Square, who'd had similar trouble understanding 3D. A. Square accepts his apology.
The joke here is that Cueball was being silly and drew lines on A. Square to make him look like SpongeBob , which did not make the square happy. Cueball apologizes again.
The title text is a third apology for when Cueball crawled down into the second dimension. Being a stick figure, he is composed of a circle and straight lines. In Flatland, circles are priests (Flatland's highest social level), and all women are lines; thus, to a watcher in Flatland, Cueball would look very much like a priest above many connected women, which may look like a lesbian orgy.
[Cueball talks to a square on the ground.] Cueball: Hey, A. Square. How's Flatland? A. Square: Still flat. What's up? Cueball: I just spent an hour playing a demo of this 4D game called Miegakure.
[In a frameless panel, a character in Miegakure jumps around the 4D landscape.] Caption above the panel: Trying to jump from block to block in four dimensions hurt my brain.
[Cueball continues talking to A. Square on the ground.] Cueball: So I apologize for giving you a hard time when you were slow to understand 3D space. I sympathize now. A. Square: It's okay.
[Zoom in on Cueball's head] Cueball: Also, I apologize for drawing arms, legs, and eyes on you to make you look like SpongeBob. That was out of line. A. Square: Yes, it was.
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722 | Computer Problems | Computer Problems | https://www.xkcd.com/722 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/722:_Computer_Problems | [Cueball and Megan are looking at his computer, on the desk.] Cueball: You know this metal rectangle full of little lights? Megan: Yeah.
Cueball: I spend most of my life pressing buttons to make the pattern of lights change however I want. Megan: Sounds good.
Cueball: But today, the pattern of lights is all wrong ! Megan: Oh god! Try pressing more buttons! Cueball: IT'S NOT HELPING!
| Cueball explains to Megan that he is having computer problems. Normally, he is able to manipulate a "pattern" on his "metal rectangle full of little lights" (a reasonable, if oversimplified description of generated images displayed on a monitor). Today, however, the "pattern" is "all wrong". Megan suggests that he might be able to fix it by pressing more buttons, but following her advice doesn't seem to have the desired effect.
According to the title text, Randall uses a similar technique to explain his computer problems to his cat. Some cats have the habit to walk over or lay on keyboards (pressing a lot of buttons) or to lie on it (because keyboards of notebooks are designed to dispense heat, which many cats enjoy sleeping on). This is, however, not to fix a "pattern" which they usually don't care about but rather to get the same attention the keyboard receives from the cat's owner. "My cat seems happier than me," implies that "pressing buttons to make the pattern [of the 'metal rectangle full of lights'] change," makes a person less happy.
As evidenced by both past and future comics, Randall likes to make an effort to explain things for simple minds.
Speculatively, Randall may be commenting on the abstract nature of events that effect Cueball's happiness or well being. While the work Cueball does on the computer seems very important to him, the deconstructed version as discussed by Megan and Cueball make his resulting distress seem out of proportion. This interpretation is further supported by the title text in which Randall's cat, unaware of more abstract representations of activity on the computer, enjoys greater happiness overall.
[Cueball and Megan are looking at his computer, on the desk.] Cueball: You know this metal rectangle full of little lights? Megan: Yeah.
Cueball: I spend most of my life pressing buttons to make the pattern of lights change however I want. Megan: Sounds good.
Cueball: But today, the pattern of lights is all wrong ! Megan: Oh god! Try pressing more buttons! Cueball: IT'S NOT HELPING!
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723 | Seismic Waves | Seismic Waves | https://www.xkcd.com/723 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/723:_Seismic_Waves | When an earthquake hits, people flood the internet with posts about it-some within 20 or 30 seconds. [A room with a desk, chair, and computer are shaking. The person in it is on his phone, using Twitter.] RobM163 Huge earthquake here!
Damaging seismic waves travel at 3-5km/s. Fiber signals move at ~200,000km/s. (minus network lag)
This means when the seismic waves are about 100km out, they begin to be overtaken by the waves of posts ABOUT them. [There is a geographical border on a map; the front edge of the wave of the quake is shown, with the front edge of the wave of tweets surpassing it.]
People outside this radius may get word of the quake via Twitter, IRC, or SMS before the shaking hits. [Megan and Cueball are standing, holding cell phones. Megan is looking at hers.] Megan: Whoa! Earthquake!
Sadly, a Twitterer's first instinct is not to find shelter. Megan and Cueball (on phones): RT @RobM163 Huge earthquake here!
| One stereotype surrounding Twitter users is that they are more concerned with broadcasting their current status than they are with addressing it. Earthquakes are natural disasters caused by the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates , known for the destruction that they leave in their wake. The comic outlines the potential that technology can have in warning people about earthquakes, which is unfortunately negated by the tendency of the typical users of the technology to care more about sharing the warning message than they are to preserve their own lives.
The title text is a geology pun, as "fine-grained" is a common term used by geologists to describe rocks.
Real scientists are trying to turn this speed difference into a practical tool . Go figure.
Nine years later they succeeded , as covered in 2219: Earthquake Early Warnings .
When an earthquake hits, people flood the internet with posts about it-some within 20 or 30 seconds. [A room with a desk, chair, and computer are shaking. The person in it is on his phone, using Twitter.] RobM163 Huge earthquake here!
Damaging seismic waves travel at 3-5km/s. Fiber signals move at ~200,000km/s. (minus network lag)
This means when the seismic waves are about 100km out, they begin to be overtaken by the waves of posts ABOUT them. [There is a geographical border on a map; the front edge of the wave of the quake is shown, with the front edge of the wave of tweets surpassing it.]
People outside this radius may get word of the quake via Twitter, IRC, or SMS before the shaking hits. [Megan and Cueball are standing, holding cell phones. Megan is looking at hers.] Megan: Whoa! Earthquake!
Sadly, a Twitterer's first instinct is not to find shelter. Megan and Cueball (on phones): RT @RobM163 Huge earthquake here!
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724 | Hell | Hell | https://www.xkcd.com/724 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/724:_Hell | [The panel shows the display of a Tetris game where the bottom of the pit is curved into a semicircle making the two blocks at the bottom, a square and a reverse L piece lean crookedly towards each other at the bottom of the pit; an S piece is falling and the next piece is an L piece.] Next Top 000000 Score 000000 Level 01 [Below the panel:] Hell
| Tetris is a game where the player has to manipulate falling blocks into forming complete rows, which will then be deleted and give points to the player. This comic is a play on this, presenting the player with a version of the game with a curved bottom that renders forming flat rows nearly impossible. Hell is a mythological and/or religious concept of a posthumous punishment for wrongdoers, depicted in many religions as eternal torment. Here the Tetris player feels they are in Hell when they try to play this game.
The title text presents similar situations where frustration is likely to occur. Katamari Damacy is a video game in which the player controls a sticky sphere which grows by assimilating objects smaller than itself, so gameplay would be extremely frustrating if none of the objects available is smaller than your sphere. Super Mario is a long-running franchise of platforming games; in some of the games (beginning with Super Mario 64 ), levels are completed by collecting large, golden Power Stars – so it would be very frustrating if one is impossible to reach.
This last part may also be a reference to the Ancient Greek myth of Tantalus ; as punishment for cannibalism, he suffers in Hades , confined to a pool with a fruit tree above it. As his punishment, the fruit branches on the tree recoil every time he tries to eat, and the water recedes every time he tries to drink.
Also see comic 888: Heaven , which presents an inverse situation in which the Tetris game provides unfairly perfect pieces to help the player win.
There is a playable version of this comic at Kongregate which, unsurprisingly, is frustratingly difficult ( but not impossible ) to play.
[The panel shows the display of a Tetris game where the bottom of the pit is curved into a semicircle making the two blocks at the bottom, a square and a reverse L piece lean crookedly towards each other at the bottom of the pit; an S piece is falling and the next piece is an L piece.] Next Top 000000 Score 000000 Level 01 [Below the panel:] Hell
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725 | Literally | Literally | https://www.xkcd.com/725 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/725:_Literally | [Cueball and a Cueball-like friend are walking left together. The friend turns his head towards Cueball who speaks, but is interrupted by voice from behind them off-panel right.] Cueball: I was literally glued to my seat through the entire- Off-panel voice: Hah! Off-panel voice: You mean "figuratively"!
[A crazy man walks into the next frame-less panel. He has messy hair and a messy beard. Cueball and his friend stop walking and turns toward him.] Cueball: Who are you? Crazy man: Eighteen years I've watched you! Crazy man: Waiting!
[A flashback panel. Four kids are standing around talking to each other. To the left is a girl with a ponytail and in front of her is a kid looking like Cueball - this is the Crazy man as a kid. He speaks to two kids in front of him, the one looking like Cueball, is actually Cueball as a kid, and then another kid with short black hair is standing with him. Above this panels frame, which is not as high as the other panels, there is text narrated by the crazy man. He also narrates a line at the bottom of the panel where the flashback panels frame is cut of at the bottom right.] Crazy man (narrating): Ever since that day in seventh grade when you humiliated me. Crazy man as a kid: I told him and he literally exploded! Cueball as a kid: Uh, unless he physically burst , you mean "figuratively". Kid with hair: Hah. Crazy man (narrating): Remember?
[Cueball and his friend has moved back away from the crazy man to get some more distance between him and themselves.] Crazy man: I knew one day you'd slip, and I vowed I'd be there to see you fall. How does it feel? Cueball: You are literally the craziest person I've ever met. Crazy man: You did it again! Cueball: No, I didn't.
| The adverb "literally" implies that the action it describes actually happened, while its opposite, "figuratively", is used when the action it describes is being used as a figure of speech, and is not a representation of what actually happened. However, "literally" is often used colloquially as an intensifier, to mean "really" or "very", and even though many dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster and Oxford Learner's Dictionaries state that this is a valid use of the word, many people object to this usage. It is noteworthy that these dictionaries try to catalog how words are used, not whether any one usage is more valid than another. Many might say it is more consistent to say a word such as "practically" for this usage.
In this comic, Cueball mentions he was literally glued to his seat, at which point a crazy man off-panel loudly corrects him. The crazy man declares that he has been stalking Cueball for eighteen years since an incident in seventh grade, when the crazy man (as a kid) used literally in the colloquial sense, and young Cueball corrected him. He felt humiliated and began to follow Cueball everywhere, waiting for Cueball to make the same mistake, presumably to save face.
When Cueball tells him that he is "literally the craziest person" he's ever met, the crazy man thinks that he is incorrectly using the word "literally" again; however, Cueball reassures him that he did not misuse it, meaning the crazy man actually is the craziest person he has ever met. This is reminiscent of the title text in 1652: Conditionals .
The title text points out that a chemistry experiment gone wrong is one of the few things that could cause someone to literally be glued to their seat, having previously been figuratively glued to their seat in fascination.
In this manner the title text could provide an alternative interpretation of Cueball's original sentence: "I was literally glued to my seat through the entire [chemistry experiment.]"
If this interpretation were correct, then the crazy person interrupted Cueball before he had a chance to finish his sentence, thereby never fulfilling his vow.
On a side note, if they were in seventh grade when Cueball corrected the crazy man's mistake, then Cueball and the crazy man are 30-31 (12|13 + 18) years old, approximately the same conclusion as in 1577: Advent .
[Cueball and a Cueball-like friend are walking left together. The friend turns his head towards Cueball who speaks, but is interrupted by voice from behind them off-panel right.] Cueball: I was literally glued to my seat through the entire- Off-panel voice: Hah! Off-panel voice: You mean "figuratively"!
[A crazy man walks into the next frame-less panel. He has messy hair and a messy beard. Cueball and his friend stop walking and turns toward him.] Cueball: Who are you? Crazy man: Eighteen years I've watched you! Crazy man: Waiting!
[A flashback panel. Four kids are standing around talking to each other. To the left is a girl with a ponytail and in front of her is a kid looking like Cueball - this is the Crazy man as a kid. He speaks to two kids in front of him, the one looking like Cueball, is actually Cueball as a kid, and then another kid with short black hair is standing with him. Above this panels frame, which is not as high as the other panels, there is text narrated by the crazy man. He also narrates a line at the bottom of the panel where the flashback panels frame is cut of at the bottom right.] Crazy man (narrating): Ever since that day in seventh grade when you humiliated me. Crazy man as a kid: I told him and he literally exploded! Cueball as a kid: Uh, unless he physically burst , you mean "figuratively". Kid with hair: Hah. Crazy man (narrating): Remember?
[Cueball and his friend has moved back away from the crazy man to get some more distance between him and themselves.] Crazy man: I knew one day you'd slip, and I vowed I'd be there to see you fall. How does it feel? Cueball: You are literally the craziest person I've ever met. Crazy man: You did it again! Cueball: No, I didn't.
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726 | Seat Selection | Seat Selection | https://www.xkcd.com/726 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/726:_Seat_Selection | [A seat selection diagram to book your seat on a plane is displayed on a gray background. It shows the front end of a plane to just behind the wings. The outline of the plane is in a darker gray color, while the seating section is light gray with black seats. The cockpit windows are shown as well as the entrance section in the front of the plane where two arrows point out of the two possible exits one on each side. The first class section with only four seats for each of the 3 rows are clearly separated from the rest of the seats. The six seats for each row is labeled with letters A to F and the rows are labeled for every third seat starting at 9 and ending after two numbers behind the wings at 27. Below, going over the wing pointing down is a frame with light gray background and the following text:] Select desired seat by clicking on the above chart. F E D C B A 9 12 15 18 21 24 27
[Megan in a scarf with two suitcases behind her is standing in an airport, contemplating her choice at the self-check-in looking at the display from the first panel. Behind her is a manned check-in counter with Cueball and Ponytail sitting behind three screens at the counter. Above them is a big sign with an arrow to the right:] Gates
[Back to the seat selection diagram where a hand shaped cursor indicates that Megan has chosen the cockpit of the plane.] *Click* Select desired seat by clicking on the above chart. F E D C B A 9 12 15 18 21 24 27
[Close up of Megan seen through the front window in the cockpit of the plane, holding the yoke, her scarf hanging behind her into the next windows frame, like if she was riding a motorcycle, because she makes the plane rise enough for it to fall behind her. A pilot sitting behind her seen in the third window, is wearing a cap and sunglasses. He looks at her with both his hands held in front of his mouth.] Megan: WOOOOOOO!
| Many airlines give passengers the opportunity to select a preferred seat when booking a flight. In this case, Megan appears to be checking in at a self-check-in at the airport, where she is given the opportunity to select her seat. Rather than selecting a seat on the diagram, Megan clicks on the pilot seat (which is of course not an actual option for online seating reservations [ citation needed ] ). In the last frame, we see that, because she chose the pilot seat, she is now actually sitting in the captain’s seat, flying the plane while whooping. A worried-looking pilot sits behind her at the back of the cockpit, holding both hands in front of his mouth.
The title text says to not click on the wing. The implication is that if you did click on the wing you would, similarly, end up sitting outside on the wing. Even if you were able to hold on, this would put you above the Death Zone, which is at 7 km (See the what if? Rising Steadily ). Standard cruising altitude is 10 km . It would be an unpleasant death, as the air is so thin that you actually lose oxygen to the air (as explained in the mentioned what if?).
This kind of event could lead to situations as the one depicted in 1660: Captain Speaking .
[A seat selection diagram to book your seat on a plane is displayed on a gray background. It shows the front end of a plane to just behind the wings. The outline of the plane is in a darker gray color, while the seating section is light gray with black seats. The cockpit windows are shown as well as the entrance section in the front of the plane where two arrows point out of the two possible exits one on each side. The first class section with only four seats for each of the 3 rows are clearly separated from the rest of the seats. The six seats for each row is labeled with letters A to F and the rows are labeled for every third seat starting at 9 and ending after two numbers behind the wings at 27. Below, going over the wing pointing down is a frame with light gray background and the following text:] Select desired seat by clicking on the above chart. F E D C B A 9 12 15 18 21 24 27
[Megan in a scarf with two suitcases behind her is standing in an airport, contemplating her choice at the self-check-in looking at the display from the first panel. Behind her is a manned check-in counter with Cueball and Ponytail sitting behind three screens at the counter. Above them is a big sign with an arrow to the right:] Gates
[Back to the seat selection diagram where a hand shaped cursor indicates that Megan has chosen the cockpit of the plane.] *Click* Select desired seat by clicking on the above chart. F E D C B A 9 12 15 18 21 24 27
[Close up of Megan seen through the front window in the cockpit of the plane, holding the yoke, her scarf hanging behind her into the next windows frame, like if she was riding a motorcycle, because she makes the plane rise enough for it to fall behind her. A pilot sitting behind her seen in the third window, is wearing a cap and sunglasses. He looks at her with both his hands held in front of his mouth.] Megan: WOOOOOOO!
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727 | Trade Expert | Trade Expert | https://www.xkcd.com/727 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/727:_Trade_Expert | [Cueball as a news anchor is sitting behind a desk with his hand on the desk, leaning towards his off-panel guest to the right.] Cueball: And for more on the summit, we turn to trade expert Dr. Steven Berlee. Cueball: Steven?
[Zoom out to include Dr. Steven Berlee, also drawn like Cueball, with his hands below he desk, sitting behind the desk to the right of Cueball facing towards him, still with his hands on the desk.] Steven Berlee: I'm not actually a doctor or a trade expert. I'm just a programmer who lies to get on news shows.
[Close-up on Steven Berlee.] Cueball (off-panel): What? Why? Steven Berlee: To share a message with newscasters.
[Zoom back out to show both men, the news anchor now also with his hands below the desk.] Cueball: Which is? Steven Berlee: Every time you say "backslash" as part of a web address on air, I die a little.
| Cueball as a news anchor has another Cueball-like character as guest in the studio, a doctor who is also a trade expert. However, Steven Berlee turns out to be a fraud. In reality he is a frustrated programmer willing to lie his way on to news show to share his message with any newscasters willing to listen:
Every time you say "backslash" as part of a web address on air, I die a little.
The slash character (/), also known as forward slash, is the correct way to separate distinct parts of a web address; for example in the address " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_(punctuation) ", a slash follows the "org" and the "wiki". However, some newscasters are unfamiliar with the distinction between the different types of slashes, thus confusing the normal slash with the backslash (\), the wrong character. They may also be somewhat overzealous by trying to specify forward- or backslash since just saying "slash" would be sufficient. Also as mentioned in the title text the backslash is used in addresses on a windows PC.
Steven Berlee claims that he suffers every time this mistake is made in a news program, explaining his reason for cheating his way on the air. Steven's name is most likely made up, as it seems to be taken from two or three of the inventors of the Internet :
Searching the internet lists no one called Steven Berlee, and the only references point back to this comic.
The title text refers to how in the Windows operating system, the backslash is actually used instead of the slash as a separator (in contrast to Unix-based systems, which use the forward slash). Thus, the path to any Windows file encoded in a URI (uniform resource identifier) would correctly contain the backslash character. It is possible to pass parameters, including strings, in an internet URI and so you could have an identifier that directly embedded the path of a windows file on a windows server - this would be such a weird and terrible thing to do.
In the title text Steven complains that after having had the modern version of the Internet for 20 years (since early 90s and this comic was released in 2010) they should have learned the difference by now. He also continues to claim that if they do not understand the difference between an internet url and Windows directory paths, and thus embedding these into their urls, then he cannot help them with just a short lecture while he cons his way to time on the air.
[Cueball as a news anchor is sitting behind a desk with his hand on the desk, leaning towards his off-panel guest to the right.] Cueball: And for more on the summit, we turn to trade expert Dr. Steven Berlee. Cueball: Steven?
[Zoom out to include Dr. Steven Berlee, also drawn like Cueball, with his hands below he desk, sitting behind the desk to the right of Cueball facing towards him, still with his hands on the desk.] Steven Berlee: I'm not actually a doctor or a trade expert. I'm just a programmer who lies to get on news shows.
[Close-up on Steven Berlee.] Cueball (off-panel): What? Why? Steven Berlee: To share a message with newscasters.
[Zoom back out to show both men, the news anchor now also with his hands below the desk.] Cueball: Which is? Steven Berlee: Every time you say "backslash" as part of a web address on air, I die a little.
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728 | iPad | iPad | https://www.xkcd.com/728 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/728:_iPad | [Cueball is sitting in an armchair, playing with an iPad. Megan is looking over his shoulder.] Cueball: Navigating Google Maps on the iPad is fun. It feels so futuristic. Cueball: Swoosh! Zoom!
Megan: There are, right now, monkeys controlling robotic arms via neural implants.
Megan: A huge and alien future is barreling toward us. And I can't WAIT.
Megan: But no, your iPad is cool, too. Cueball: Stop spoiling my future with your slightly more distant one.
| In this comic, Cueball is entertained by his iPad (which came out a few days prior) because messing around with it is so fun and feels futuristic. Megan tries to bring perspective to him by telling him that his fun is really not so fun because so many exciting and much more impressive things are to come. Cueball still objects, because that makes him feel that he's too easily impressed by trivial things, and says that Megan is spoiling his fun by trying to make his source of entertainment seem less cool.
The title text is showing how Cueball is, instead of being horrified by all the new ways to die technology could present, like a scientist, enthralled by the many newer ways that death could occur.
[Cueball is sitting in an armchair, playing with an iPad. Megan is looking over his shoulder.] Cueball: Navigating Google Maps on the iPad is fun. It feels so futuristic. Cueball: Swoosh! Zoom!
Megan: There are, right now, monkeys controlling robotic arms via neural implants.
Megan: A huge and alien future is barreling toward us. And I can't WAIT.
Megan: But no, your iPad is cool, too. Cueball: Stop spoiling my future with your slightly more distant one.
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729 | Laser Pointer | Laser Pointer | https://www.xkcd.com/729 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/729:_Laser_Pointer | [Cueball points a laser pointer at the floor. A black cat crouches, staring at the red dot.]
[The cat pounces.]
[The cat lands with its paw on the dot, claws out.]
[The cat tugs on the dot.] tug tug
[Cueball tries to use the laser pointer, which is no longer emitting a beam.] Cueball: ??? click click
[The cat nibbles on the red laser dot.] Cat: lick? nom nom
[The cat arches, emitting red shock lines.]
[The cat shoots lasers out of its eyes at Cueball, who is covered in a bright red glow.] FWOOSH Cueball: AUGH! [The right side of the panel is the end of a thought bubble.]
[The black cat, sleeping, has dreamed the entire strip.]
| It is common to use a laser pointer as a cat toy because cats are attracted to the dot and attempt in vain to catch it in their paws. They will chase the dot as it moves around, sometimes pouncing on it or swiping at it with its claws, however, they will never be able to catch it. [ citation needed ] This is very frustrating for cats (and dogs), because it triggers a hunting instinct, but removes the satisfaction of actually catching their prey.
Cueball is messing with his cat with a laser pointer, however, he is unprepared when his cat pounces and successfully grabs the laser dot. As Cueball looks around and tries to figure out what happened to the laser, his cat licks it, before eating it and starting to glow with a red light.
By this point, the best choice would be to run away screaming, as normal cats cannot eat lasers and start to glow. [ citation needed ] However, before he can run, the cat shoots lasers from its eyes and disintegrates a surprised Cueball on the spot.
It is then revealed that everything that happened was just a cat's dream. Only in its dreams can a cat successfully catch and consume the dot. Also, it is only in a dream that this will give it the power to shoot laser light from its eyes, and vaporize the human in revenge for taunting it with the laser pointer. [ citation needed ]
Real cats' eyes (and some other animals' eyes) have a tapetum lucidum behind their retinas, which increases their sensitivity in low-light conditions. This can cause their eyes to appear to glow, but they're actually just reflecting light from the environment.
The title text makes a pun on the chamber in which lasers are formed, known as a laser cavity .
[Cueball points a laser pointer at the floor. A black cat crouches, staring at the red dot.]
[The cat pounces.]
[The cat lands with its paw on the dot, claws out.]
[The cat tugs on the dot.] tug tug
[Cueball tries to use the laser pointer, which is no longer emitting a beam.] Cueball: ??? click click
[The cat nibbles on the red laser dot.] Cat: lick? nom nom
[The cat arches, emitting red shock lines.]
[The cat shoots lasers out of its eyes at Cueball, who is covered in a bright red glow.] FWOOSH Cueball: AUGH! [The right side of the panel is the end of a thought bubble.]
[The black cat, sleeping, has dreamed the entire strip.]
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730 | Circuit Diagram | Circuit Diagram | https://www.xkcd.com/730 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/730:_Circuit_Diagram | [In the upper left corner there is a map scale, labeled with 1 mi (1 km).] [Underneath the scale is a circuit diagram with the following items connected:] An antenna symbol. A blender. An Arduino, labeled with "Arduino, just for blog cred". A chip, labeled "Most expensive chip available". A symbol for an inductor. A pattern that looks like a highway cloverleaf. A battery symbol (with the + and - symbols on the wrong ends) with a value of √2V. A resistor symbol label "120Ω or to taste". A switch that is labeled "glue open". A transistor with two emitters, one P and one N, and no collector. A jar of scarab beetles. A resistor labeled "brown blue orange". An unlabeled resistor with a center tap. A capacitor. A diode. A ground. An inductor. An another inductor. The two inductors and ground are all covered by a "solder blob". A "666 timer" that has pin 5 going into a question mark. A compass rose. A battery, labeled 50V, with grounds on both sides. A long horizontal wire that is labeled "pull this wire really tight". An AC source that is labeled 240V, shorted out, with a label on the short "Omit this if you're a wimp." An inductor that is labeled with "11kg". A Batman symbol. A squirrel. A wire that is labeled as a distance 3/8". A 50V battery. A frowny face. A vertical wire with a 90 degree bend labeled "caution". A balloon. An inductor symbol with a line on the bottom edge labeled as "warm front". A resistor labeled "ë". An electric eel. A capacitor. An unlabeled resistor. A gob of hot glue attached to a chip with an inverter hooked to an XOR gate, both with feedback into each other. A neck strap. A bridge rectifier labeled as "Moral rectifier". A bottle of magic smoke. A fishing bobber. A broken wire labeled with a question mark. A vertical wire labeled with "electrons single file". A switch labeled "Hire someone to open and close switch real fast." A contact labeled "touch tongue here". A resistor labeled "5Ω (decoy)" with only one terminal connected. A methyl group attached to a wire. A complex mesh of 1Ω resistors labeled with "Oh, so you think you're such a whiz at EE201?" A wire labeled "electrons single file". A wire bent in a U shape with an upside-down ground on the end. A flux capacitor with the bottom wire labeled "I-95". A wire labeled "yarn". An arena with two diodes going in and one leaving. An anode labeled "Bury deep, but not too deep." A motor labeled "vibrator". A resistor with a value of π. A 500V AC source. A wire that leads out of frame with a label "to center of sun". A 55 MPH speed limit sign. An SR latch (flip-flop) labeled "may use an actual sandal instead". A holding pen. A wire in a knot. A resistor labeled "8mm". A resistor symbol labeled "not a resistor; wire just does this". A motor symbol labeled "to scale". A tangled mess of wires connected and jumping over each other. A photo diode labeled "tear collector". A wire in the shape of a ECG. A light bulb. A capacitor-looking symbol labeled "3 liters". A resistor labeled "yes". An unlabeled inductor. A resistor with a question mark as a label. An inductor labeled "Take off shirt while wiring this part. Ooh, yeah, I like that." A ground symbol immersed in a beaker of holy water.
| Another fine example of nerd sniping , as mentioned in the title text.
There are pieces of circuit diagrams, road maps, chemical diagrams, and other things all mixed in.
Explanations for each below!
[In the upper left corner there is a map scale, labeled with 1 mi (1 km).] [Underneath the scale is a circuit diagram with the following items connected:] An antenna symbol. A blender. An Arduino, labeled with "Arduino, just for blog cred". A chip, labeled "Most expensive chip available". A symbol for an inductor. A pattern that looks like a highway cloverleaf. A battery symbol (with the + and - symbols on the wrong ends) with a value of √2V. A resistor symbol label "120Ω or to taste". A switch that is labeled "glue open". A transistor with two emitters, one P and one N, and no collector. A jar of scarab beetles. A resistor labeled "brown blue orange". An unlabeled resistor with a center tap. A capacitor. A diode. A ground. An inductor. An another inductor. The two inductors and ground are all covered by a "solder blob". A "666 timer" that has pin 5 going into a question mark. A compass rose. A battery, labeled 50V, with grounds on both sides. A long horizontal wire that is labeled "pull this wire really tight". An AC source that is labeled 240V, shorted out, with a label on the short "Omit this if you're a wimp." An inductor that is labeled with "11kg". A Batman symbol. A squirrel. A wire that is labeled as a distance 3/8". A 50V battery. A frowny face. A vertical wire with a 90 degree bend labeled "caution". A balloon. An inductor symbol with a line on the bottom edge labeled as "warm front". A resistor labeled "ë". An electric eel. A capacitor. An unlabeled resistor. A gob of hot glue attached to a chip with an inverter hooked to an XOR gate, both with feedback into each other. A neck strap. A bridge rectifier labeled as "Moral rectifier". A bottle of magic smoke. A fishing bobber. A broken wire labeled with a question mark. A vertical wire labeled with "electrons single file". A switch labeled "Hire someone to open and close switch real fast." A contact labeled "touch tongue here". A resistor labeled "5Ω (decoy)" with only one terminal connected. A methyl group attached to a wire. A complex mesh of 1Ω resistors labeled with "Oh, so you think you're such a whiz at EE201?" A wire labeled "electrons single file". A wire bent in a U shape with an upside-down ground on the end. A flux capacitor with the bottom wire labeled "I-95". A wire labeled "yarn". An arena with two diodes going in and one leaving. An anode labeled "Bury deep, but not too deep." A motor labeled "vibrator". A resistor with a value of π. A 500V AC source. A wire that leads out of frame with a label "to center of sun". A 55 MPH speed limit sign. An SR latch (flip-flop) labeled "may use an actual sandal instead". A holding pen. A wire in a knot. A resistor labeled "8mm". A resistor symbol labeled "not a resistor; wire just does this". A motor symbol labeled "to scale". A tangled mess of wires connected and jumping over each other. A photo diode labeled "tear collector". A wire in the shape of a ECG. A light bulb. A capacitor-looking symbol labeled "3 liters". A resistor labeled "yes". An unlabeled inductor. A resistor with a question mark as a label. An inductor labeled "Take off shirt while wiring this part. Ooh, yeah, I like that." A ground symbol immersed in a beaker of holy water.
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731 | Desert Island | Desert Island | https://www.xkcd.com/731 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/731:_Desert_Island | [Cueball sits writing in a diary on a desert island, only the sandy tip of which with a palm tree on it stands above the water. Beneath the surface is a kelp forest, some sharks, a stingray, a shipwreck, a submarine, several large jellyfish, a giant squid fighting a sperm whale, a crashed plane, some coral formations, a thermal vent emitting a plume of smoke surrounded by several annelids, and a snail.]
Cueball: Day 44: Still stranded, with nothing but flat empty water as far as the eye can see.
| This comic is making the point that there is a wonderful world waiting to be explored in the ocean. From above it seems so plain, endless, and boring. But underneath the surface lies the most unexplored area on the planet. This comic is a commentary on the need to head below the waves and start exploring.
Cueball sits writing in a diary on a desert island which is really a mountain of which only the sandy tip with a palm tree on it stands above the water. From his diary entry, it appears that he has been stranded on this island for 44 days, and only sees "flat empty waters" around him. The waters around him may be "empty", in that there are no other boats or coastlines around him, however, there are many objects below the surface.
Beneath the surface is:
The most important items from the title text are:
The title text itself is a poem:
[Cueball sits writing in a diary on a desert island, only the sandy tip of which with a palm tree on it stands above the water. Beneath the surface is a kelp forest, some sharks, a stingray, a shipwreck, a submarine, several large jellyfish, a giant squid fighting a sperm whale, a crashed plane, some coral formations, a thermal vent emitting a plume of smoke surrounded by several annelids, and a snail.]
Cueball: Day 44: Still stranded, with nothing but flat empty water as far as the eye can see.
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732 | HDTV | HDTV | https://www.xkcd.com/732 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/732:_HDTV | [Cueball is pointing to a huge flatscreen HDTV on the wall. His friend is holding a cell phone.] Cueball (HDTV Owner): Check out my new HDTV-a beautiful, high-def 1080p. Friend: Wow, that's over TWICE the horizontal resolution of my cell phone. Friend: In fact, it almost beats the LCD monitor I got in 2004. It baffles me that people find HDTV impressive. | This comic pokes fun at the differing standard between image quality for television sets and other electronic devices, even though both are based on essentially the same standards. When rating television sets, a 1080p screen, that is, a screen 1,920 pixels wide and 1,080 pixels tall with progressive scan, is considered impressive. In contrast, the same resolution with a computer device is considered standard fare, given that, at the time of writing, a 4:3 ratio computer screen 1,024 pixels wide would have been expected. Widescreen monitors have already surpassed 1,920 pixels wide, and double widescreen monitors have become more common. As of the end of the 2010s, even most smartphones had a horizontal resolution nearing or at 1,080 pixels.
The title texts explains another disagreement involving images and popular opinion. The feeling that a viewer gets from watching a film in a theatre is different from the feeling from a home film, or again, between a serialized programme from an international television channel and a locally-broadcast programme. The disparity is that the small-time productions actually implement better-quality equipment than the big-time productions, in terms of higher frame rate (although not in image fidelity or other respects). However the small productions really are cheaper in other respects, and this feeling is transferred to the look of high frame rates, thanks to videotapes often being used instead of film stock. Low frame rates on more big budget films (and all old, nostalgic productions before high frame rates were commercially possible) mean low frame rates are associated with quality, despite not being as able to capture as much motion as better-quality high frame rates. Blur, judder, and slow pans are mostly absent in high-frame rate productions. This is changing, however, since the major films The Hobbit and Avatar 2 are/will be shot with better framerates.
[Cueball is pointing to a huge flatscreen HDTV on the wall. His friend is holding a cell phone.] Cueball (HDTV Owner): Check out my new HDTV-a beautiful, high-def 1080p. Friend: Wow, that's over TWICE the horizontal resolution of my cell phone. Friend: In fact, it almost beats the LCD monitor I got in 2004. It baffles me that people find HDTV impressive. |
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733 | Eagle | Eagle | https://www.xkcd.com/733 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/733:_Eagle | [Ponytail is looking up into a tree, holding a clipboard in one hand and a radio in the other.] Ponytail: The eagle has left the nest. Off-panel: *KHHHKHT* Roger that. Alert the agents. *KHKKHHKT* Ponytail: Will you stop that? [Caption below the panel:] My hobby: Following field biologists around and interpreting everything they say as code phrases.
| Another comic in the My Hobby series. This comic is making a play on the typical "secret agent" code phrases such as the one above or "The Eagle has landed." or "The cobra has struck." The word "eagle" is especially popular for code phrases, referring to craft containing a VIP. Randall says that his hobby is to follow field biologists around and interpreting everything they do as a code phrases.
"The Eagle has landed" was also the first sentence Neil Armstrong sent back to earth on the first manned moon landing by Apollo 11 back in 1969.
The *KHHHKHT* noises that the character is making are imitations of the static sounds made when using a walkie-talkie or other radio devices. On real radios, this happens only at the end of a transmission; the first use of the sound would be the end of Ponytail's legitimate transmission, while the second one is from the fake transmission.
The title text is saying that when the character in the comic is not following field biologists and pretending they're saying code phrases, he is doing the reverse to secret agents. By hiring an animal trainer he can give them a situation they are unable to report, such as seeing an actual eagle land in front of them.
[Ponytail is looking up into a tree, holding a clipboard in one hand and a radio in the other.] Ponytail: The eagle has left the nest. Off-panel: *KHHHKHT* Roger that. Alert the agents. *KHKKHHKT* Ponytail: Will you stop that? [Caption below the panel:] My hobby: Following field biologists around and interpreting everything they say as code phrases.
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734 | Outbreak | Outbreak | https://www.xkcd.com/734 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/734:_Outbreak | [Cueball and Megan stand outside a door into a laboratory (with the word "LAB" in large letters on the door). Cueball is leaning back against the door. A Cueball-like zombie which is clearly falling apart, walking with its hands stretched out in front of it, is visible through a window into the laboratory. At the top of the panel there is a frame around a yellow area with narration, which goes over the top of this panel's frame.] Narrator: The outbreak started with Patient Zero... Cueball: He was exposed to toxin X-7— now he's a bloodthirsty monster! Megan: Has he been in isolation? Zombie: Braaains!
[Cueball turns towards the door, pushing on it and partly blocking the door's label ("LA"). A noise indicates the zombie banging on the door from inside. Megan runs right her head and hand already partly outside the frame.] Cueball: Yes, but I can't hold this door for long! Megan: Hang on, I've got a gun in my truck. Zombie (hitting the door): Wham
[In this frame-less panel Cueball opens the door a crack, leaning back with a hand in front of his face, as Megan shoots with her shotgun through the open door at the zombie inside. The word "LAB" on the door is no longer blocked.] Shotgun: BLAM
[Cueball and Megan stand together away from the laboratory door. Megan still holds shotgun down. At the top and bottom of the panel there is two more frames around a yellow areas with narration, which goes over the top and bottom of this panel's frame. As Cueball and Megan talk, their names are revealed.] Narrator: And ended with Patient Zero five minutes later. Cueball: So, I never got your name. I'm Ryan. Megan: Laura. Narrator: The remaining 90 minutes of the movie will be a romantic comedy.
| Patient Zero is the usual terminology for the first patient tested or infected with an outbreak -style infection, (in the comic's case, a zombie outbreak,) like in the movie Outbreak , which is not the main inspiration for this comic, except maybe the title.
This comic, however, serves to make fun of the stereotypical zombie movie in which an unlikely series of events, coupled with extreme oversight on part of the staff, leave an opening for an outbreak to begin. Often, the infected find themselves lacking any restraint or containment, and freely move about in search of humans to infect.
In the comic Ryan (drawn as Cueball ) tells Laura (drawn as Megan ) that the patient has been exposed to toxin X-7 . The patient (a zombie version of a Cueball-like guy) can be seen through a window inside a laboratory, with Ryan trying to block the door. The patient has turned into a bloodthirsty monster that in true zombie-style calls out for brains, while walking with both arms stretched out and bits of him falling off, three typical cliches for zombie movies.
Laura then asks if the zombie has been kept in isolation , a standard medical procedure that prevents the patient from coming into contact with anyone or anything not specifically approved, and thus prevents the spread of the disease. Her question serves to point out the drastic difference in real-life procedure and zombie movies.
When told that so far the zombie has been isolated her next action is to run to her car to obtain the weapon she has there to destroy the zombie, again showing contrast against the often irrational and illogical actions of medical staff in movies, whose behaviors usually lead to their deaths and to the spread of the disease, which causes the real outbreak. Because one person (or a few people) dying from a disease is not called an outbreak.
When Laura returns, she kills patient zero before he can spread the infection, and thus the outbreak ends in the third panel five minutes after it started in the first panel.
The comic ends with a little "mock the audience" joke as romantic comedies stereotypically have a very different audience from zombie horror movies. [ citation needed ] The two characters had never been introduced before, their names are first given in the last panel. Having such an intense and life-threatening experience often causes people to fall in love. But for a zombie/disaster movie this is supposed to happen just before the end titles, so you have all the fun first, and can go home on the happy ending. Since the "fun" part only lasted for five minutes the rest of the movie will now describe Ryan and Laura's romantic relationship after this comic.
As a result, the director(s) of this movie are deliberately showing the wrong kind of film to the audience attracted by the title or teaser. This would be disastrous for a movie in real life given that audiences do not take kindly to such antics and are likely to pour hate about it online, dissuading others from going, and alienating both those audiences who enjoy romantic comedies and those who enjoy zombie films, leaving just a niche occupied by the people who enjoy both.
The title-text is included as another example of the logical real-life actions versus the illogical movie ones, as any dangerous substance in a real lab would be disposed of, preventing further harm. In zombie movies, another major trope is the medical staff thinking that they are safe after they eliminate the first zombie, only to find the remaining chemicals have been used to make more. But before Ryan and Laura have had dinner, they promptly go back and destroy both the X-7 toxin and the last hope of the zombie fans seeing the movie of any further action...
Zombies are a recurring theme in xkcd. Though zombies are often depicted as being raised from the dead they are as mentioned often created (in films) through disease or toxins as is the case here. Apart from the three typical features of zombies mentioned, the zombie in this comic is also called zombie in the official transcript on xkcd.
[Cueball and Megan stand outside a door into a laboratory (with the word "LAB" in large letters on the door). Cueball is leaning back against the door. A Cueball-like zombie which is clearly falling apart, walking with its hands stretched out in front of it, is visible through a window into the laboratory. At the top of the panel there is a frame around a yellow area with narration, which goes over the top of this panel's frame.] Narrator: The outbreak started with Patient Zero... Cueball: He was exposed to toxin X-7— now he's a bloodthirsty monster! Megan: Has he been in isolation? Zombie: Braaains!
[Cueball turns towards the door, pushing on it and partly blocking the door's label ("LA"). A noise indicates the zombie banging on the door from inside. Megan runs right her head and hand already partly outside the frame.] Cueball: Yes, but I can't hold this door for long! Megan: Hang on, I've got a gun in my truck. Zombie (hitting the door): Wham
[In this frame-less panel Cueball opens the door a crack, leaning back with a hand in front of his face, as Megan shoots with her shotgun through the open door at the zombie inside. The word "LAB" on the door is no longer blocked.] Shotgun: BLAM
[Cueball and Megan stand together away from the laboratory door. Megan still holds shotgun down. At the top and bottom of the panel there is two more frames around a yellow areas with narration, which goes over the top and bottom of this panel's frame. As Cueball and Megan talk, their names are revealed.] Narrator: And ended with Patient Zero five minutes later. Cueball: So, I never got your name. I'm Ryan. Megan: Laura. Narrator: The remaining 90 minutes of the movie will be a romantic comedy.
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735 | Floor | Floor | https://www.xkcd.com/735 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/735:_Floor | [Three Cueball-like kids are in a living room. Furniture and other things are knocked over, broken, or tilted. The first kid is holding a handle of a plunger with cables going offscreen.] First Kid: I've dynamited a trench through the kitchen to divert flow! BOOM
[The second kid is aiming a hose at the floor.] Second Kid: More hoses! We need to cool and solidify the surface layer! FWOOSH
[The third kid is standing on a chair, using a cell phone or radio.] Third Kid: Where are the damn helicopters?
[Caption beneath the panel:] Like many kids, we sometimes pretended the floor was lava.
| The floor is lava is a game many kids play where they pretend the floor is lava , meaning that they can't step on it or else they'll get 'burned'. In this comic, the three kids are taking this game too seriously, causing great damage to the house with what appears to be a garden hose and some dynamite.
Stopping a lava flow by diverting it into an artificial trench or cooling the flow with (sea)water are both tactics that have been used in the past with varying success .
The title text refers to events like the 2010 eruptions at Eyjafjallajökull , the ash clouds of which caused the shutdown of most of Europe's IFR airspace. The first joke there is that grounding a child often means to consign him to his/her bedroom for a set period of hours (as a punishment), whereas grounding a plane means to disallow any use of that plane for an extended period of time. The most notable example of this is Concorde , which has been indefinitely grounded. The second joke is that causing panic and diverting a large number of flights would cause lots of financial damage, and would normally be subject to more punishment than simply giving the kids a time-out.
[Three Cueball-like kids are in a living room. Furniture and other things are knocked over, broken, or tilted. The first kid is holding a handle of a plunger with cables going offscreen.] First Kid: I've dynamited a trench through the kitchen to divert flow! BOOM
[The second kid is aiming a hose at the floor.] Second Kid: More hoses! We need to cool and solidify the surface layer! FWOOSH
[The third kid is standing on a chair, using a cell phone or radio.] Third Kid: Where are the damn helicopters?
[Caption beneath the panel:] Like many kids, we sometimes pretended the floor was lava.
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736 | Cemetery | Cemetery | https://www.xkcd.com/736 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/736:_Cemetery | [Cueball is in a cemetery, near a gravestone. Other people stand around staring. One Cueball-like figure stands to the right of him, and three figures, further away, look on as well. Of the three figures in the back, the tallest left-most Cueball-like figure covers his mouth with his hands. Megan is standing next to him, using her arm to block the view of a smaller figure to the right of her, presumably a child.] Cueball: Frankly, you deserve this. You knew I wanted a sans-serif font, and you ignored me. So really, this is your fault.
[Caption below the panel] I've discovered the worst place to wander while arguing on a hands-free headset.
| Here, Cueball appears to be putting blame on someone who called him. This could be a result of...
...the person insisting on a font that was not sans-serif, but the results were typographically unappealing. ...the person having problems because he used a font that was not sans-serif. ...Cueball being "forced" to tell person who is wrong, due to him giving Cueball something that was in a font that was not the sans-serif font for which Cueball asked.
In any case, the onlookers seem horrified at this sight. Cueball is using a Bluetooth headset that allows one to speak without actually holding the cell phone. The problem is that, since the headset is a small object attached to the user's ear while the phone is out of sight, someone using a Bluetooth headset may give the impression that he is talking to himself, or again, to a person who happens to be in front of him (even if the "unintended recipient" is dead). With Cueball standing in front of a grave and saying "This is your fault", to onlookers he looks like he's talking to the person buried there, who presumably died from a font-related incident.
A sans-serif font is a font without serifs, small lines or strokes regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol. Common sans-serif fonts include Arial and Helvetica .
The title text suggests that Cueball is not on good terms with his mother, thus meriting a worse argument. The problem is that Cueball was in front of a different tombstone, thus giving the impression that he had an even worse grudge against his seemingly deceased mother, said argument creating an even worse impression of Cueball.
A different example of not knowing someone is talking on the phone: [1]
[Cueball is in a cemetery, near a gravestone. Other people stand around staring. One Cueball-like figure stands to the right of him, and three figures, further away, look on as well. Of the three figures in the back, the tallest left-most Cueball-like figure covers his mouth with his hands. Megan is standing next to him, using her arm to block the view of a smaller figure to the right of her, presumably a child.] Cueball: Frankly, you deserve this. You knew I wanted a sans-serif font, and you ignored me. So really, this is your fault.
[Caption below the panel] I've discovered the worst place to wander while arguing on a hands-free headset.
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737 | Yogurt | Yogurt | https://www.xkcd.com/737 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/737:_Yogurt | [Cueball is holding a yogurt cup at arm's length. Waves of stink are rising from it.] Cueball: Oh God, how old is this yogurt in your fridge? [Someone speaks from off-panel.] Friend: What's the expiration date?
[Cueball holds up the cup to look at the bottom.] Cueball: May 12th, but there's no year. [From off-panel again.] Friend: It's May 7th. So it's fine.
[Now the second person is on panel, and Cueball speaks from off-panel. The second person is sitting down working on a laptop.] Cueball: I'm not sure. When it was packaged, was civilization using the Gregorian or Julian calendar? Friend: Okay, I'll throw it out. Cueball: No, it might still be good!
| Most packaged food has an expiration date that indicates when the food will probably no longer be suitable for consumption. This could be due to any number of reasons; most products will rot or grow mold after their expiration date passes, but some processed foods will "dry out" or just generally become "unpleasant" long before they actually spoil. The expiration date is sometimes called a "best before" or "use by" date for this reason.
Some products don't list the year as part of the expiration date, on the assumption that by the time the year becomes an issue, the food will obviously be spoiled. Cueball is encountering this issue; clearly the yogurt has gone bad - it's raising "stink lines" and appears to have visible mold - but the expiration date only lists "May 12th" and it's currently May 7th, so the characters reason that it must still be good since the expiration date hasn't passed yet. Somehow, they fail to notice the terrible smell coming off of it.
The Gregorian calendar was initially adopted in the Catholic European countries in 1582 to correct the slow drift of the seasons relative to the calendar year that occurred under the Julian calendar. The Protestant and Orthodox countries were slower to adopt it. The British Empire, including the American colonies, adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Cueball (in a seemingly sarcastic manner) wonders whether the expiration date might have been printed under the Julian Calendar, i.e., at least just under a century prior (there were some nations in Eastern Europe who changed from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar only around the time of the First World War).
The Gregorian calendar (our current calendar) is mostly the same as the Julian calendar with two major differences:
The last line spoken by Cueball may mean one of two things: either 1) he is continuing to be sarcastic toward his friend, or 2) he is genuinely considering that it may not have gone bad, despite all the clues saying otherwise.
The title text is Randall's own (absurd) [ citation needed ] view: for a short period of time preceding the expiration date of any food, no matter how many years have passed, it suddenly becomes good to eat again.
[Cueball is holding a yogurt cup at arm's length. Waves of stink are rising from it.] Cueball: Oh God, how old is this yogurt in your fridge? [Someone speaks from off-panel.] Friend: What's the expiration date?
[Cueball holds up the cup to look at the bottom.] Cueball: May 12th, but there's no year. [From off-panel again.] Friend: It's May 7th. So it's fine.
[Now the second person is on panel, and Cueball speaks from off-panel. The second person is sitting down working on a laptop.] Cueball: I'm not sure. When it was packaged, was civilization using the Gregorian or Julian calendar? Friend: Okay, I'll throw it out. Cueball: No, it might still be good!
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738 | Incision | Incision | https://www.xkcd.com/738 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/738:_Incision | [Two doctors wearing surgical masks are standing over a prone patient. One of them is touching the patient's chest with a scalpel.] Doctor: I'm making the incision above the left— BZZZZT! Doctor: Augh!
[Caption below the panel:] October 8th, 2004: A child swallows an "Operation" buzzer, leading to the single most difficult surgery ever performed.
| Operation is a board game wherein one attempts to remove the organs of a patient, named Cavity Sam, with a pair of tweezers. A flat board has a cartoon image of a "patient", and dotted around various areas are holes inside of which contain plastic pieces representing the organs.
Additionally, each hole is lined with a metal connector, and the tweezers are made of metal, connecting via wire to the board. When the tweezers make contact with a metal connector, a buzzer sounds and a lamp on the patient's nose lights up to signal an error.
The game is notoriously difficult as the organs are quite small, and the buzzer is considered by players to be annoying, if not actually startling, particularly considering how much focus and steady hand is required to avoid the tweezers making contact with a metal connector.
In the comic, a child swallows a buzzer from such a board game, and the joke lies in the similarity between the game and actual surgery when the buzzer is brought into the mix. The title text brings this further by describing an incident where the doctor ended up removing several organs (the object of the game, but obviously not a good idea in real life). [ citation needed ]
The surgery would probably have been hard, as surgery requires concentration, [ citation needed ] with the game Operation being hard as well.
[Two doctors wearing surgical masks are standing over a prone patient. One of them is touching the patient's chest with a scalpel.] Doctor: I'm making the incision above the left— BZZZZT! Doctor: Augh!
[Caption below the panel:] October 8th, 2004: A child swallows an "Operation" buzzer, leading to the single most difficult surgery ever performed.
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739 | Malamanteau | Malamanteau | https://www.xkcd.com/739 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/739:_Malamanteau | [The strip is set up as the top of a Wikipedia page.] [The Wikipedia logo.] Wikipedia The free encyclopedia [Side navigation options.] Navigation -Main Page -Contents -Featured Content -Current Events [Wikipedia header options.] Article Discussion Edit this page History [The article itself.] Malamanteau From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A malamanteau is a neologism for a portmanteau created by incorrectly combining a malapropism with a neologism. It is itself a portmanteau of [...the article cuts off.] [Below the panel.] Ever notice how Wikipedia has a few words it really likes?
| A malapropism is the use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical utterance. An example of a malapropism is Yogi Berra 's statement: "Texas has a lot of electrical votes," rather than "electoral votes". A portmanteau is a word made up of two or more combined words. For example, motel is a portmanteau, from the words motor and hotel. A neologism is simply a newly coined word that is not yet in common use.
Here, Randall shows a hypothetical Wikipedia page of the word "malamanteau" which is both a portmanteau of "malapropism" and "portmanteau" and a neologism. The method used to create this new word is one of the very words used in the process. This is called a meta or "self-referential" joke.
By using many large obscure words in one sentence, Randall may also be picking on linguists, one of his favorite subjects , who are known for coining and using such words.
"Malamanteau" was originally coined in 2007, when it was proposed by user ludwig_van on Metafilter as a term for language errors like "flustrated" (flustered & frustrated) and "misconscrewed" (misconstrued & screwed).
The bottom line of the comic (Ever notice how Wikipedia has a few words it really likes?) is a reference to a large number of Wikipedia pages that start by labeling their subject matter as a malapropism, a portmanteau, or a neologism.
In response to this comic, editors at Wikipedia created a malamanteau page. It was deleted multiple times and eventually turned into a redirect to the Wikipedia page for xkcd . Malamanteau and the controversy at Wikipedia got coverage at The Economist and The Boston Globe . The comic is used to illustrate this section of the xkcd Wikipedia article. In order for this to be possible Randall had to change the license for this particular comic. This has been explained in a unique xkcd Header text that is only displayed on the page for Malamanteau .
The title text refers to Wikipedia's requirements of citations for a page on there to exist. It also refers to the wide range of places citations can be obtained from, showing a direct opposition due to the use of very different citations (The Language Log arguments are modern and informal, whereas the obscure manuscript is formal and much older). The title text also refers to the fact that Language Log is frequently used for Wikipedia citations.
Language Log is a blog that posts content relating to language and linguistics, including things like malapropisms and portmanteaus. While an informal source, it has produced new linguistic terms before, such as eggcorn . Its comments sections frequently contain discussions and arguments about English, whose participants are probably the same people who write Wikipedia articles about linguistic phenomena like malamanteaus. In actual fact, Malamanteau did not appear on Language Log until after this strip. Malamanteau has since been referenced on the Language Log website, with a link to the comic in question. Language Log has referenced xkcd many times before, reposting the comics and linking to the xkcd website.
The title text jokingly refers to the "malamanteau" citations being Language Log references and a document from the 1490s, in reference to the fact that linguists, like those who post on Language Log, often use old documents as evidence, possibly to prove that construction is a longstanding feature of the language. The joke is that the only references to this word or concept are a 500-year-old document and linguists informally arguing about what it means. In reality, if these citations were the only evidence of the term's use, then it would be unlikely to be a notable feature worthy of a Wikipedia article. Most articles that are only cited by a single website tend to get deleted unless the subject has achieved significant coverage in outside news media.
The comic shows Wikipedia as it would have looked at the beginning of May 2010, using its then-current logo and the then-default “Monobook” skin. Incidentally, just a day after the comic’s publication, a new version of the Wikipedia logo was published, and the default skin was switched to the “Vector” skin. Both of these still define the look of Wikipedia as of 2021 (though Vector undergoes continuous updates).
[The strip is set up as the top of a Wikipedia page.] [The Wikipedia logo.] Wikipedia The free encyclopedia [Side navigation options.] Navigation -Main Page -Contents -Featured Content -Current Events [Wikipedia header options.] Article Discussion Edit this page History [The article itself.] Malamanteau From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A malamanteau is a neologism for a portmanteau created by incorrectly combining a malapropism with a neologism. It is itself a portmanteau of [...the article cuts off.] [Below the panel.] Ever notice how Wikipedia has a few words it really likes?
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740 | The Tell-Tale Beat | The Tell-Tale Beat | https://www.xkcd.com/740 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/740:_The_Tell-Tale_Beat | [The three panels show portions of a single scene. Although the characters are still stick figures, the artwork style is heavily crosshatched and shaded.] [In the first panel there is a desk with monitor on it, and a painting of a woman above that. Next to it is a bookshelf.] Ever since I murdered Daft Punk
[There is a fireplace, with no fire. A rug lies before it. At the left end of the mantelpiece are two bottles, one tall, one round. Another photograph of a woman is in a frame at the right end. The bookshelf continues from the previous panel.] And hid their bodies beneath the floorboards, I've been haunted
[The narrator is clutching his head and leaning forward. A grandfather clock is behind him, next to a doorway. Above the doorway is a pallid bust of Pallas.] By this pounding . [White text on black.] Unn-Tss Unn-Tss Unn-Tss
| Daft Punk was a French electronic music group. The beat used in electronic music can be vocalized or spelled as "unn-tss". ' The Tell-Tale Heart ' is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe , in which the narrator tries to appear sane while describing how he killed a man and hid his body in the floorboards. Eventually, he imagines he hears the dead man's heartbeat through the floorboards. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is referenced again in the later comic 2344: 26-Second Pulse .
Cueball narrates that he killed Daft Punk and hid their bodies under the floorboards, as the narrator of 'The Tell-Tale Heart' did. (Having to outsmart a band named Daft Punk is quite ironic.) He says he has been haunted by the sound of the band's beats.
In the title text, the narrator continues trying to assert his sanity. The line, "You fancy me mad," comes directly from The Tell-Tale Heart. He then insinuates that he will kill Roderick Usher's band; Roderick Usher was a character in ' Fall of the House of Usher ', another story by Edgar Allan Poe, making puns on 'house' and 'trance', genres of electronic music (the character of Madeline Usher in the story suffers from catalepsy, frequently falling into trances). The title-text is also a pun on the musician Usher ; although Usher does not have his own band, one of his best-selling albums was titled Confessions , appropriate to the themes of Poe.
The title text mentions techno music, which is the subject of 411: Techno and is also mentioned in 586: Mission to Culture .
[The three panels show portions of a single scene. Although the characters are still stick figures, the artwork style is heavily crosshatched and shaded.] [In the first panel there is a desk with monitor on it, and a painting of a woman above that. Next to it is a bookshelf.] Ever since I murdered Daft Punk
[There is a fireplace, with no fire. A rug lies before it. At the left end of the mantelpiece are two bottles, one tall, one round. Another photograph of a woman is in a frame at the right end. The bookshelf continues from the previous panel.] And hid their bodies beneath the floorboards, I've been haunted
[The narrator is clutching his head and leaning forward. A grandfather clock is behind him, next to a doorway. Above the doorway is a pallid bust of Pallas.] By this pounding . [White text on black.] Unn-Tss Unn-Tss Unn-Tss
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741 | Blogging | Blogging | https://www.xkcd.com/741 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/741:_Blogging | [Cueball stands on a stage before a large audience, holding a pointer and using it to highlight something on a screen behind him. He interacts with a member of the audience after making a point.] Cueball: The key to making a successful blog is building a relationship with your readers. Audience Member: I thought it was "make your updates good so people will want to read them." Cueball: We'll discuss content generation in part three. Audience Member: Awesome! I LOVE content.
| This comic is a satire of the conflict between consumers who expect quality results and creators who just want to make easy money by pandering to their audience. Cueball says the key to making a successful blog is to build a relationship with your readers. While this may be a good way to ensure you are delivering content that is relevant to your audience, if a blogger keeps the audience's interests as the foremost priority, the blog may become focused on making their core audience happy rather than quality. When an audience member raises the concern that quality should be a paramount concern if you want to impress people, Cueball responds that content (the quality of the blog's content) will be addressed later in the speech. This quickly placates the audience member, illustrating how the audience (for example, readers) of a service can be easily satisfied by telling them what they want to hear. This validates Cueball's point that the audience does not want quality as much as they want to hear their own ideas repeated back to them.
Alternative explanation:
This comic is a shot at all the typical blogging and social media instruction that is given. Cueball indicates he believes great content is not the highest priority when writing a blog, relegating it to at least part three of the coverage. The person in the audience, who is representing the "normal people", shows that people actually go to blogs for good content and couldn't care less about the other "strategies" the person on the stage is talking about. "Awesome! I love content," is probably highly sarcastic, implying that Cueball's talk is rather devoid of it. It could imply that the speaker thinks this talk is mostly marketing jargon that misses the fundamental aspects of writing skills (style, personality, good ideas, research, basics of style) and focusing instead on schemes to artificially gain popularity.
The title text takes a jab at blogs concerned with " viral content " and "monetization". That is, bloggers are only concerned about their audience because they might potentially give them money. Cueball drops some marketing jargon — "monetize the reader's eyeballs" — in order to disguise his true purpose: illegal organ harvesting . "Virally" in this context might indicate that the reader may become infected with a virus during organ extraction.
[Cueball stands on a stage before a large audience, holding a pointer and using it to highlight something on a screen behind him. He interacts with a member of the audience after making a point.] Cueball: The key to making a successful blog is building a relationship with your readers. Audience Member: I thought it was "make your updates good so people will want to read them." Cueball: We'll discuss content generation in part three. Audience Member: Awesome! I LOVE content.
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742 | Campfire | Campfire | https://www.xkcd.com/742 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/742:_Campfire | [Cueball and three children are around a campfire at night. Cueball is standing up, with a flashlight under his face.] Cueball: But when she traced the killer's IP address... it was in the 192.168/16 block! Children: Gasp!
| Cueball is telling a scary story to kids by the campfire about a killer. It seems as if the main character was able to trace the killer's computer to a local address (most likely one in her own house). 192.168/16 refers to the subnet the computer is on. The 192.168/16 subnet is reserved for private networks and traffic to or from addresses on that subnet and will not be routed by most internet-facing routers. Most home networks that are behind a router usually have addresses such as 192.168.0.xx or 192.168.1.xx and use NAT to present different addresses to the rest of the internet. Thus, the killer must have been extremely close, likely inside the house, using the victim's own computer network.
This is a modern update of a similar actual scary story, where the victim attempts to find the source of threatening phone calls only to find that they are coming from inside the house. Variations of this story made its way into several movies, including When a Stranger Calls (released in 1979, and re-made in 2006 ) or another version of the legend the movie was based on . All have a similar basic plot: the killer calls the victim at home; when traced, the call is coming from a phone inside the victim's home .
The title text claims that this story will still be scary in 100 years, as the killer is on IPv4 . Currently the number of available IPv4 addresses are dwindling. There are plans to replace the addresses with IPv6 , which will largely increase the number of available addresses. In 100 years it would be very (technologically) scary for someone to still be using IPv4. This would be analogous to receiving a message by telegram today, rather than as an email or text.
[Cueball and three children are around a campfire at night. Cueball is standing up, with a flashlight under his face.] Cueball: But when she traced the killer's IP address... it was in the 192.168/16 block! Children: Gasp!
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743 | Infrastructures | Infrastructures | https://www.xkcd.com/743 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/743:_Infrastructures | 2003: [Cueball approaches a bearded fellow.] Cueball: Did you get my essay? Bearded Fellow: Yeah, it was good! But it was a .doc; You should really use a more open- Cueball: Give it a rest already. Maybe we just want to live our lives and use software that works , not get wrapped up in your stupid nerd turf wars.
Bearded Fellow: I just want people to care about the infrastructures we're building and who- Cueball: No, you just want to feel smugly superior. You have no sense of perspective and are probably autistic.
2010: Cueball: Oh my God! We handed control of our social world to Facebook and they're DOING EVIL STUFF!
Bearded Fellow: Do you see this?
[Inset, the bearded fellow rubs his index and middle fingers against his thumb.] Bearded Fellow: It's the world's tiniest open-source violin.
| Cueball has sent an essay to his bearded friend (possibly a caricature of Richard Stallman ) who is an advocate of free and open-source software. While the essay itself was good, his friend was worried because the essay was in the .doc format, the proprietary format that old versions of Microsoft Word used. The friend advises Cueball to use a format based on an open standard, possibly a format like ODF, ODT, ODS, ODP, or OpenOffice XML.
Cueball, who does not appreciate his friend criticizing the file format over the actual contents of the file, accuses his friend of pedantically stirring up trouble instead of simply caring that the software works (which is what most regular users would be concerned about). Given that it can be a challenge to move from a familiar proprietary application to an open-source rival which may lack compatibility, features, support and popularity, Cueball's stance is not entirely unjustified.
The bearded guy tries to explain that he is just concerned about the current proprietary software infrastructure that forces users to use software in a specific way, penalizing them for sharing the software or even preventing looking at the source code in order to learn what the program actually does or how it works. Cueball, however, isn't buying it, and accuses his friend of having an arrogance that crowds out his perspective , while also claiming that he is autistic — an epithet often aimed, particularly by denizens of online forums and imageboards, at people who have an intense fixation on seemingly trivial things.
Seven years later, Cueball runs to the friend, having become alarmed at Facebook's immense control and dubious policies about the personal information it collects. Since this is exactly the kind of situation the bearded guy was warning against, he sarcastically retorts by producing "the world's tiniest open-source violin". This is a twist on " playing the world's smallest violin ", a gesture used to convey sarcastic pity at someone else's misfortune. Interestingly, the guy does actually appear to possess the physical instrument itself, which is uncommon; usually it's just a quip or gesture. This implies that the bearded guy has been carrying around the violin for this eventuality (not unlike what Black Hat does in 757: Toot ), or perhaps he uses this sarcastic expression often enough to warrant it.
The title text references the following pieces of infrastructure that are compatible with the "free software" ideology:
The problem with the lack of open source and Facebook is also the subject of 1390: Research Ethics .
2003: [Cueball approaches a bearded fellow.] Cueball: Did you get my essay? Bearded Fellow: Yeah, it was good! But it was a .doc; You should really use a more open- Cueball: Give it a rest already. Maybe we just want to live our lives and use software that works , not get wrapped up in your stupid nerd turf wars.
Bearded Fellow: I just want people to care about the infrastructures we're building and who- Cueball: No, you just want to feel smugly superior. You have no sense of perspective and are probably autistic.
2010: Cueball: Oh my God! We handed control of our social world to Facebook and they're DOING EVIL STUFF!
Bearded Fellow: Do you see this?
[Inset, the bearded fellow rubs his index and middle fingers against his thumb.] Bearded Fellow: It's the world's tiniest open-source violin.
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744 | Walkthrough | Walkthrough | https://www.xkcd.com/744 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/744:_Walkthrough | [Cueball sits at a computer. His friend enters the room.] Cueball: How did the date go? Friend: I wanted to be prepared, so I looked up a sex walkthrough video.
[The two men silently contemplate the words of the previous panel.]
[Cueball turns his head around. His friend looks down.] Cueball: ...and? Friend: It turns out it was a speed run. Cueball: Ouch.
| A walkthrough video is a recorded explanation of how to accomplish a certain task, usually beating a video game (or a particular level of one). A speedrun is an attempt to complete a level or game as fast as possible. The man is implying that because he followed the speedrun video, intercourse didn't last long enough to satisfy his partner — who now probably doesn't want to date him again as a result.
The title text (humorously) shows what the narration on such a video might be like, based on typical video game walkthroughs. In a video game, a spawn point is a place where enemies, items, or players will appear; here, spawn is also being used in the biological sense of mating and reproduction. The "separate... more inside" part is similar to typical instructions about how to get past certain enemies or traps, while it could also refer to the labia majora and minora. Separating the labia majora would reveal the labia minora.
[Cueball sits at a computer. His friend enters the room.] Cueball: How did the date go? Friend: I wanted to be prepared, so I looked up a sex walkthrough video.
[The two men silently contemplate the words of the previous panel.]
[Cueball turns his head around. His friend looks down.] Cueball: ...and? Friend: It turns out it was a speed run. Cueball: Ouch.
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745 | Dyslexics | Dyslexics | https://www.xkcd.com/745 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/745:_Dyslexics | [A t-shirt is shown with the text "DYSLEXICS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! " screen-printed on it.] The dyslexic support group ran into difficulties when they tried to make a joke fundraiser t-shirt.
| The joke shirt is supposed to be " Dyslexics of the world, Untie!", a nod to the The Far Side comic touching on the same topic (Dyslexics marching in parade, carrying a sign (inadvertently) reading "Dyslexics of the world UNTIE" because dyslexics mixed up the T and the I). In this case, the dyslexics were trying to make a parody of their propensity to transpose letters. The double transposition cancelled out, resulting in the original (but unintended) untransposed message.
The title text is an inversion of the inversion of the joke in the comic, in which Randall accidentally wrote the "incorrect" version of the shirt while trying to draw the comic. The last sentence ("I kept doing 'doing 'doing it wrong' wrong' wrong") means that, unwittingly, Randall kept failing at failing at failing.
[A t-shirt is shown with the text "DYSLEXICS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! " screen-printed on it.] The dyslexic support group ran into difficulties when they tried to make a joke fundraiser t-shirt.
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746 | Birth | Birth | https://www.xkcd.com/746 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/746:_Birth | [Megan is giving birth. A doctor stands near the end of the table.] Doctor: Okay, the head is starting to crown. Doctor: Push!
Doctor: Wait, that's... that's a tube.
Doctor: It looks like the barrel of a...
[A Click noise comes from Megan's vagina.]
[A voice, that of the baby, comes from Megan's vagina.] Baby: Nobody move— This is a stick-up! Doctor: Oh, God! Stop pushing, Megan! Can you ... Pull?
| Megan is in the process of giving birth. Instead of the normal birth we would expect, a baby's head and a gun emerge. The baby, who can already talk, attempts to rob the doctor saying, "Nobody move-this is a stick-up!" as is typical in movie robberies. It is not explained how the gun ended up in Megan's womb. (Maybe the gun grew there?)
The title text explains the comic by explaining that the baby learned this bad behavior because the mother played the video game Grand Theft Auto (GTA) too frequently, as some people believe that if children play too many violent video games they act like the video games in real life. Grand Theft Auto has been criticized and publicly blamed for its potential to encouraging violent behavior in children. Thus, this comic is a parody of the studies and news stories about the effects of video games, especially Grand Theft Auto , on children; it hyperbolizes them by imagining what effects video games would have on an unborn baby.
This is one of the few comics that features Megan's name in the text.
In Grand Theft Auto III players gained the ability to pay the services of prostitutes to recover their health, and if they wished, kill them to get their money back. There is also criticism from the focus on illegal activities in comparison with traditional "heroic" roles that other games offer. The main character can commit a wide variety of crimes and violent acts while dealing with only temporary consequences, including the killing of policemen and military personnel.
Some people believe that if children play too many violent video games they act like the video games in real life. Most of the news stories are usually based on anecdotal evidence.
These stories were in the news or the public consciousness at the time of the comic:
On June 25 teens William and Josh Buckner opened fire on vehicles on a local Tennessee highway with a shotgun and killed a 45-year-old man. They later told police they were emulating Grand Theft Auto and they did not intend to hurt anyone.
Later in 2003 a 17 year old Devin Moore then grabbed a pistol from one of the police officers and shot and killed him along with another officer and dispatcher before fleeing in a police car. One of Moore's defense attorney, Jack Thompson, claimed it was Grand Theft Auto 's graphic nature—with his constant playing time—that caused Moore to commit the murders, and Moore's family agreed. In May 2005, Thompson appeared via satellite on the Glenn Beck program on CNN's Headline News. Thompson mentioned Devin Moore and said regarding Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City "There's no doubt in my mind [...] that but for Devin Moore's training on this cop killing simulator, he would not have been able to kill three cops in Fayette, Alabama who are now dead and in the ground."
In September 2006, Thompson brought another lawsuit, claiming that Cody Posey played the game obsessively before murdering his father Delbert Paul Posey, stepmother Tryone Schmid, and stepsister Marilea Schmid on a ranch in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
[Megan is giving birth. A doctor stands near the end of the table.] Doctor: Okay, the head is starting to crown. Doctor: Push!
Doctor: Wait, that's... that's a tube.
Doctor: It looks like the barrel of a...
[A Click noise comes from Megan's vagina.]
[A voice, that of the baby, comes from Megan's vagina.] Baby: Nobody move— This is a stick-up! Doctor: Oh, God! Stop pushing, Megan! Can you ... Pull?
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747 | Geeks and Nerds | Geeks and Nerds | https://www.xkcd.com/747 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/747:_Geeks_and_Nerds | [There is a two-circle Venn diagram; the circles are labeled and there is text in the intersection.] Left circle: Geeks Right circle: Nerds Intersection: People with strong opinions on the distinction between geeks and nerds
| The words "geek" and "nerd" are both commonly used to describe people who are looked down upon due to being too intelligent and not socially conventional enough. Distinction between the two varies, but it commonly involves differences in range of interests, depth of interests, choice of hobbies, social capability, if you play sports, and so on.
The title text gives Randall 's personal definitions: geeks are people passionately into something to a greater extent than casual hobbyists, while nerds are analytical logic-oriented people, often with underdeveloped social skills.
The comic makes the argument that if you care a lot about the distinction between a geek or a nerd , then you are most likely too invested in the result to not be either a nerd or a geek. But although one who maintains this distinction strongly could be a linguistics geek merely expressing their general interest in words/expressions, given the more pressing controversies linguistic geeks have to deal with, the strong interest one might have in the words "geek" and "nerd" is probably due to simply being a nerd geek .
[There is a two-circle Venn diagram; the circles are labeled and there is text in the intersection.] Left circle: Geeks Right circle: Nerds Intersection: People with strong opinions on the distinction between geeks and nerds
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748 | Worst-Case Scenario | Worst-Case Scenario | https://www.xkcd.com/748 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/748:_Worst-Case_Scenario | [Two reporters, Cueball and Ponytail, point microphones toward a scientist, Megan.] Ponytail: Dr. Scientist! The "Top Kill" has failed! What's the worse-case scenario for the gulf? Megan: The worst-case scenario is what's happening now.
Ponytail, out of frame: Yes, but is there any way it could get worse? Megan: Sure, but there are real disasters happening now, and you're substituting speculation and voyeurism for the investigative journalism we— Ponytail: Screw this! Let's ask Michael Bay.
[The reporters, now joined by a camerawoman, approach Michael Bay with their microphones.] Michael Bay: The worst case? A hurricane tracks into the gulf, whipping the surface of the spill into a frothy mix of oil and air.
[An alligator-filled conflagration atop a massive ocean wave approaches land.] Michael Bay, narrating: As the storm surges through the bayous, sparking power lines ignite the fuel air mixture into a roiling, alligator-filled wall of flame.
[A map of the gulf coast of Louisiana and southwest Mississippi is depicted with the current routes of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers highlighted. An arrow indicating a new primary flow of the Mississippi's waters into the Atchafalaya points toward southern Louisiana.] Michael Bay, narrating: Plowing northward, the fire hurricane destroys the Old River Control Structure in Concordia, rerouting the Mississippi westward and sweeping Morgan City and the heart of cajun country out to sea.
Michael Bay: James Carville emerges from the conflagration riding a burning alligator... Ponytail, out of frame: Will this affect the midterm elections? Michael Bay: Massively .
| This comic is a reference to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that happened in the Gulf of Mexico . Top kill is a reference to a procedure used as a means of regaining control over an oil well that is experiencing an uncontrolled eruption of crude oil. Michael Bay is an American film director known for his over the top special effects and plots, one example being the Transformers movie franchise .
Should the proposed firestorm actually happen, residential areas and hundreds of square miles of sensitive vegetation would be fouled by the mix of oil and sea water. A firestorm would certainly make the bad situation worse, and would certainly make a great scene in a typical Hollywood disaster movie. Lightning could set an oil slick on fire, in regions where the oil is most dense and very fresh. About 50-70% of the evaporation of oil's most flammable volatile compounds occurs in the first 12 hours after release, so fresh oil is the most likely to ignite. However, the winds of a hurricane are so fierce that any surface oil slick of flaming oil would quickly be disrupted and doused by wave action and sea spray. Heavy rain would further dampen any lightning-caused oil slick fires. So Michael Bay's firestorm would not actually happen in real life. However, if he decides to direct a new movie...
This comic is a commentary on the state of broadcast journalism and how they are always looking for speculation and voyeurism rather than facts. That they ask if Mr. Bay's proposed firestorm will have any effect on the then-upcoming congressional elections just serves to underline how little the journalists actually care about the damage that has actually been caused.
James Carville is a political commentator who was born and lives in Louisiana, and thus relates to media, politics, and Louisiana at once.
The title text has a reference to Jeff Masters, who was director of meteorology at Weather Underground and runs a blog ( archived ), and Bruce Schneier , who is a world-renowned security expert and also has a blog and several books. Vitamin D is a vitamin that the human body can synthesize with the aid of direct sunlight; the joke, "go outside", is Randall accusing us of all being shut-ins.
[Two reporters, Cueball and Ponytail, point microphones toward a scientist, Megan.] Ponytail: Dr. Scientist! The "Top Kill" has failed! What's the worse-case scenario for the gulf? Megan: The worst-case scenario is what's happening now.
Ponytail, out of frame: Yes, but is there any way it could get worse? Megan: Sure, but there are real disasters happening now, and you're substituting speculation and voyeurism for the investigative journalism we— Ponytail: Screw this! Let's ask Michael Bay.
[The reporters, now joined by a camerawoman, approach Michael Bay with their microphones.] Michael Bay: The worst case? A hurricane tracks into the gulf, whipping the surface of the spill into a frothy mix of oil and air.
[An alligator-filled conflagration atop a massive ocean wave approaches land.] Michael Bay, narrating: As the storm surges through the bayous, sparking power lines ignite the fuel air mixture into a roiling, alligator-filled wall of flame.
[A map of the gulf coast of Louisiana and southwest Mississippi is depicted with the current routes of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers highlighted. An arrow indicating a new primary flow of the Mississippi's waters into the Atchafalaya points toward southern Louisiana.] Michael Bay, narrating: Plowing northward, the fire hurricane destroys the Old River Control Structure in Concordia, rerouting the Mississippi westward and sweeping Morgan City and the heart of cajun country out to sea.
Michael Bay: James Carville emerges from the conflagration riding a burning alligator... Ponytail, out of frame: Will this affect the midterm elections? Michael Bay: Massively .
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749 | Study | Study | https://www.xkcd.com/749 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/749:_Study | [A posted flier with nine tear-off strips at the bottom reads: "Volunteers Needed for a scientific study investigating whether people can distinguish between scientific studies and kidney-harvesting scams. (Healthy Type-O Adults Only) TAKE ONE" Five of the nine strips are torn off.]
| This comic is about the ubiquitous study fliers that are placed around cities and especially college campuses.
This one obviously takes it to the absurd because it is a thinly-veiled attempt to get volunteers so that their kidneys can be "harvested" or stolen. Type O is a blood type that omits both A and B antigens so it won't cause reaction in blood types having anti-A or anti-B antibodies and thus people having this blood type are the most valuable for transplants (there are still other antigens that can cause reactions but these two are the most important).
Urushiol is an oily toxic irritant present in poison ivy and some related plants, digital contact means touching something with fingers and fibrous cellulose pulp is a scientific description of paper. This together suggests that the person who put up the flier soaked the strips with urushiol and is trying to see if it will cause irritation in anyone who will touch the strips with their fingers (and it will within ten minutes) [ citation needed ] .
[A posted flier with nine tear-off strips at the bottom reads: "Volunteers Needed for a scientific study investigating whether people can distinguish between scientific studies and kidney-harvesting scams. (Healthy Type-O Adults Only) TAKE ONE" Five of the nine strips are torn off.]
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750 | Book Burning | Book Burning | https://www.xkcd.com/750 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/750:_Book_Burning | [Cueball holds a book aloft, displaying it to his two friends.] Cueball: This book is full of heresy! Friend: Let's hold a book burning! [They confer more, then one friend runs off.] Cueball: I only have one copy. Friend #1: I guess we could buy more. Friend #2: I'll look online. [A screenshot from an online retailer's page displays pricing for the hardcover ($17.99) and Kindle ($9.99) editions of the mentioned book.]
[The front page of a newspaper, titled "News", is shown above the fold. The first article's headline reads "Eight dead from toxic fume inhalation" and a picture is shown depicting three bodies strewn around a massive plume of tar-black smoke.]
| A group of people wanting to hold a book burning find themselves in a conundrum when they only have one book. Going to an online retailer reveals that the Kindle edition of the book is considerably less expensive than the hardcover edition. Unfortunately for the book-burners, the burning of a Kindle proves fatal because of the toxic fumes from the burning of its plastic shell, internal electronics, and/or the lithium polymer battery that powers it.
One purpose of book burning is to destroy heretical material and thus prevent the spread of those ideas. In this case, where a Kindle version downloaded and the device is burned, no heretical material is destroyed as the electronic version is still available for distribution. Those who survived the incident will then find that their actions did not prevent the spread of the heretical ideas, they have lost dear friends, and have to purchase new electronic devices.
Another purpose for a book burning is to have a public demonstration in protest of the ideas presented in the book. This may have been the purpose of the book burning mentioned in the comic, but this plan failed, as indicated by the title text, because it was reported in the newspaper, which no one reads.
In the past there were many book-burning incidents .
There is also a subtle pun in that " kindle " means "to start a fire".
The title text further drives home the point that electronic media is becoming the norm, while print is being supplanted by inventions like the Kindle.
[Cueball holds a book aloft, displaying it to his two friends.] Cueball: This book is full of heresy! Friend: Let's hold a book burning! [They confer more, then one friend runs off.] Cueball: I only have one copy. Friend #1: I guess we could buy more. Friend #2: I'll look online. [A screenshot from an online retailer's page displays pricing for the hardcover ($17.99) and Kindle ($9.99) editions of the mentioned book.]
[The front page of a newspaper, titled "News", is shown above the fold. The first article's headline reads "Eight dead from toxic fume inhalation" and a picture is shown depicting three bodies strewn around a massive plume of tar-black smoke.]
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751 | Swimsuit Issue | Swimsuit Issue | https://www.xkcd.com/751 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/751:_Swimsuit_Issue | Child: What's this? Father: Oh! That's daddy's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue! It's not appropriate for— Child: Wow! They look just like the ladies who get double-penetrated in the popup ads! But with clothes on! Gosh!
| Sports Illustrated , while a sports magazine (from what the title implies), is infamous for its Swimsuit Issue , a yearly issue that heavily features women wearing revealing swimsuits (again, from what the title implies), something generally agreed upon as inappropriate for children.
However, the joke is on the father. Before he could stop the child from reading, the child had already made it clear that they have seen hard-core pornography in the pop-up ads they have encountered. They are familiar with the sight of women being "double penetrated" (i.e. engaged in simultaneous vaginal and anal sex), and indicates that these women are completely naked (implied by their surprise to see similar-looking women wearing swimsuits in the magazine). Thus, the swimsuit issue, in which the women are wearing some clothing and are not engaged in sexual activity, is relatively tame by comparison.
The title text has Randall suggest that pop-up blockers are far more important than The birds and the bees , a stance that most people do not agree with [ citation needed ] . There is some sense towards this approach, however. While "the birds and the bees" would have to wait until the child has developed sufficiently in order to get the proper effect, pop-up blockers are a more urgent need that would prevent a child from looking at inappropriate content before then. Pop-up blockers alone would not prevent everything , but they are a valuable asset nonetheless.
Child: What's this? Father: Oh! That's daddy's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue! It's not appropriate for— Child: Wow! They look just like the ladies who get double-penetrated in the popup ads! But with clothes on! Gosh!
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752 | Phobia | Phobia | https://www.xkcd.com/752 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/752:_Phobia | [Blondie, with extra long hair and Megan in the background of the image observes a long snake on the ground in the foreground.] Blondie: Whoa, a snake! Megan: Cool! Blondie: I'm afraid of snakes.
[Zoom in only on Megan's upper half.] Megan: I'm afraid of saying "everything's complicated right now, but maybe next year" until there are no more years left.
[Slim panel with a zoom to a full picture of only Blondie as she considers this. Beat panel.]
[Same type of image of Megan, who cuts Blondie's reply (from off-panel) off in mid-sentence.] Blondie (off-panel): Do you- Megan: I want to be a storm chaser.
[A black tornado reaches from the black storm clouds to the earth, kicking up a sizable cloud of debris at its base. Blondie is at the wheel of a car, with Megan hanging out the window and holding a camera.]
| This comic seems to be about phobias , i.e. being afraid of specific and non-specific things like Blondie 's fear of snakes .
Prompted by Blondie's admission, Megan becomes philosophical (as she often does) and reveals an unusual phobia of her own: uncomfortable with outrightly rejecting a romantic advance, she would respond to such an advance by making the excuse that everything is complicated right now. This would postpone the advance until the next year, when the other person would ask again and she would defer again, and on and on until one of them dies or moves on. This is what Megan states she is afraid of.
After Megan has said this, Blondie thinks for some time (in the beat panel). When she finally decides to ask Megan something (perhaps to go out on a date), Megan cuts her off. It seems that Blondie has misread the situation, having guessed incorrectly that Megan is romantically interested in her. In fact, Megan is not. Rather than risk having to reject Blondie in the manner described above and beginning the cycle of annual rejections she so fears, Megan prevents the inquiry and interrupts Blondie to say that she wants to be a storm chaser.
Given that Blondie believes Megan may have feelings for her, it is understandable that she follows Megan's ambition and together they become storm chasers —individuals who pursue severe weather conditions, for either scientific investigation or providing media coverage, or simply for adventure. Ironically, chasing adverse weather, especially tornadoes, is more dangerous than the source of either character's original phobia. Indeed, one's ability to control the risk while being near a tornado is far less than one's ability to control the risk of being bitten by a snake; the tornado is violent and unpredictable, while snakes only attack humans when they feel threatened. Additionally, one needs to deliberately expose oneself to the snake in order to have any risk of being attacked.
This comic is related to the movies Snakes on a plane (snakes), Twister (tornadoes and storm chasers), and Thelma & Louise . The last of these movies has two women friends on a road trip, and in the end they kiss, and there have been several discussions on whether one or both of them are lesbian or not.
In the title text, Megan and Blondie notice that the snakes have been picked up by the tornado they are chasing; so now, in addition to the violent weather, they are also exposed to the danger of snakes falling from the sky. (This is similar to the plot of Sharknado , although that movie was released several years after this comic.)
This is the third comic about tornadoes and storm chasers, a recurring subject on xkcd. These were first mentioned in 402: 1,000 Miles North , and first shown in 640: Tornado Hunter .
[Blondie, with extra long hair and Megan in the background of the image observes a long snake on the ground in the foreground.] Blondie: Whoa, a snake! Megan: Cool! Blondie: I'm afraid of snakes.
[Zoom in only on Megan's upper half.] Megan: I'm afraid of saying "everything's complicated right now, but maybe next year" until there are no more years left.
[Slim panel with a zoom to a full picture of only Blondie as she considers this. Beat panel.]
[Same type of image of Megan, who cuts Blondie's reply (from off-panel) off in mid-sentence.] Blondie (off-panel): Do you- Megan: I want to be a storm chaser.
[A black tornado reaches from the black storm clouds to the earth, kicking up a sizable cloud of debris at its base. Blondie is at the wheel of a car, with Megan hanging out the window and holding a camera.]
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753 | Southern Half | Southern Half | https://www.xkcd.com/753 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/753:_Southern_Half | "The great battlefield for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe - Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East." -John F. Kennedy, 1961 speech to Congress.
[An ovoid world map, with Latin America colored in red, Africa in yellow, the Middle East in green, and Asia in Blue. There is an arrow pointing to the top of the map marked 'northern half', and another arrow pointing to the bottom half marked 'southern half.' The majority of these places are actually in the northern half.]
Okay, so I'm half a century late on this, but it's been bugging me: did JFK own a globe?
| On May 25, 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave a speech before a joint session of Congress , in which he set as a goal for the American people the task of landing a man on the moon and returning him successfully to earth. Though Kennedy didn't live to see that goal become a reality - he was assassinated in 1963 - the Apollo 11 lunar module landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in July, 1969.
During that speech, Kennedy said the sentence that the comic is referring to, and the map provided shows that the vast majority of the regions he mentioned are actually in the Northern Hemisphere, despite Kennedy calling them "the whole southern half of the globe", not to mention the Southern Hemisphere has regions which are not included (like Australia).
The actual meaning behind Kennedy's statement is likely a reference to the common lingo used describing the 'third world' as the ' Global South ', which is a metaphorical rather than geographical description which includes all of the regions mentioned (though leaving out the USSR from Asia). At the time, a number of proxy wars between the U.S. and the USSR had broken out and were in progress in many third world countries across the entirety of the regions mentioned. Thus, Kennedy was describing the Cold War and his expectation that it would continue, and that the 'Global South' would be the actual battlefield. Out-of-context, and insisting on a literal geographic interpretation for the words, this part of the speech sounds particularly funny.
Another way to understand Kennedy's phrasing is a reference to the "southern half" of the land on earth. Because the area south of the equator is mostly water, the geographical centre of Earth (geometric centre of all land surfaces) is in Turkey, meaning that (with the exception of the Russian part of Asia) almost the entirety of the regions Kennedy listed are in the southern half of Earth's land surfaces.
The title text refers to a September 1962 speech Kennedy gave at Rice University. One of the most famous quotes from that speech is, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Randall suggests that all of the arguments Kennedy made for going to the moon could also serve the cause of many different "innovations", such as blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or, ridiculously, constructing a towering penis-shaped obelisk on Mars. Or, as seen here , eating a bag of pinecones.
"The great battlefield for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe - Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East." -John F. Kennedy, 1961 speech to Congress.
[An ovoid world map, with Latin America colored in red, Africa in yellow, the Middle East in green, and Asia in Blue. There is an arrow pointing to the top of the map marked 'northern half', and another arrow pointing to the bottom half marked 'southern half.' The majority of these places are actually in the northern half.]
Okay, so I'm half a century late on this, but it's been bugging me: did JFK own a globe?
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754 | Dependencies | Dependencies | https://www.xkcd.com/754 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/754:_Dependencies | [A portion of a page from an imaginary course catalog.] Page 3
[A table with four columns]
Department Computer Science
Course CPSC 432
Description Intermediate compiler design, with a focus on dependency resolution.
Prereqs CPSC 432
[The very top of the text for the next course in the table is visible but unreadable.]
The letter code "CPSC" is the letter code Christopher Newport University, Randall 's alma mater, uses for Computer Science.
| A compiler is a program that converts code written in a high-level programming language into an executable program. A section of code is said to be dependent on a second segment of code if the second segment is required for the first segment to work. Dependency resolution is part of compiler design, and is the study of determining and correcting dependencies which result in an unwanted, ambiguous, or impossible definition of the dependent section. Requiring that an action occurs if and only if the action has already occurred, like the prerequisite in this comic, is one type of potentially unwanted dependency.
The comic envisions a college computer science course (CPSC432) focusing on "compiler design with dependency resolution" which has itself as a prerequisite. The joke is that the prerequisite is an unresolved dependency, as you must complete this course before you can enroll in it, a phenomenon called Catch-22 .
This dependency would send a poorly designed compiler into an infinite loop. In real life, the problem is solved by allowing an object to satisfy itself as a prerequisite. This stops the compiler's infinite loop, but may not produce the desired functionality in the program. Another layer of the joke may be that any student who successfully enrolls in the class already knows this solution because they must have employed it in order to get past the apparent infinite recursion in the class prerequisites.
Managing dependencies is useful in other areas of computer science, e.g. package management . Collections of files are known as "packages". A software package might require that a particular operating system patch (a type of package) be installed first. That package might in turn require other packages be installed, and so on. Therefore, a package installer must know the dependencies of a package, and be able to figure out whether any required packages are missing before continuing with the installation.
The title text envisions a course on package management which has itself as a prerequisite, as well as the compiler design course with the impossible prerequisite presented in the main comic (CPSC 432), and glibc2.5 or greater. By looking at the course number it can be observed that CPSC 432 is a fourth year course, and this package management course (CPSC 357) is a third year course. Glibc is a commonly used package on Unix systems, and therefore should be taught in the course. This continues the joke since this course has the following unresolved dependencies:
[A portion of a page from an imaginary course catalog.] Page 3
[A table with four columns]
Department Computer Science
Course CPSC 432
Description Intermediate compiler design, with a focus on dependency resolution.
Prereqs CPSC 432
[The very top of the text for the next course in the table is visible but unreadable.]
The letter code "CPSC" is the letter code Christopher Newport University, Randall 's alma mater, uses for Computer Science.
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755 | Interdisciplinary | Interdisciplinary | https://www.xkcd.com/755 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/755:_Interdisciplinary | [In the foreground, 2 men and 1 woman are standing.] Cueball: This is an interdisciplinary program in which Physics students try to hit Psychology students with pendulums. Megan: Promising! [In the background, a woman stands on a platform and releases a pendulum hanging from the ceiling that swings toward a man who is running away.] Psychology student: AAAAAAA!
My professors had an ongoing competition to get the weirdest thing taken seriously under the label "interdisciplinary program".
| An "interdisciplinary program" is a program at a school or university that involves students from multiple disciplines, or fields of study. Here, this comics lampoons the concept by envisioning an oddball exercise involving physics students and psychology students. Strictly speaking, this could be categorized as an interdisciplinary program. Further, the study of pendulums is common in physics courses, and the concept of fear arises in psychology, thus the joint effort can be supposedly said to unify both subjects.
The intersection of physics and psychology suggests the classic demonstration in which someone holds a heavy pendulum up against his face and releases it. Basic physics shows that the pendulum will, at most, harmlessly touch the person's face on the backswing (provided that he released it with no initial push and does not lean forward); however, it may take some force of will to refrain from flinching as the pendulum approaches. This experiment (with Black Hat's twisted take) is referenced in 1670: Laws of Physics and 2539: Flinch .
In another example where the two concepts meet, the pendulum-like motion of objects (such as a gold pocketwatch on a chain) is stereotypically used in portals of psychology as a device for hypnotism.
The ripping of Psychology, History, and English majors is a common theme in various xkcd comics.
The image text suggests that replacing the pendulums with history students would guarantee funding of a grant, perhaps because of the increased number of disciplines involved. In reality it of course serves to increase injuries among students in majors that the author does not approve of. Interestingly, this is apparently being said by the grant funders rather than the professor.
[In the foreground, 2 men and 1 woman are standing.] Cueball: This is an interdisciplinary program in which Physics students try to hit Psychology students with pendulums. Megan: Promising! [In the background, a woman stands on a platform and releases a pendulum hanging from the ceiling that swings toward a man who is running away.] Psychology student: AAAAAAA!
My professors had an ongoing competition to get the weirdest thing taken seriously under the label "interdisciplinary program".
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756 | Public Opinion | Public Opinion | https://www.xkcd.com/756 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/756:_Public_Opinion | [Cueball as a news anchor reads from a paper. There is a picture on the left side of screen of a man with black hair speaking behind a lectern holding up one hand. In the bottom right-hand corner is the logo for the news.] Cueball: A leading politician today charged that the media, rather than informing people, now merely report on public ignorance. Cueball: Do our viewers agree? Let's hear from some voices on the street... Logo: News 24
| Cueball as a news anchor is reporting a message from a politician, shown behind him.
The comic is mocking the "old media" (television, radio, newspapers) for their move to opinions as an information source. Such change came with development of the internet and "new media" as source of information (websites, blogs, social networks), which pushed "old media" back and diminished their significance. In their attempt to return to relevance, "old media" tried to copy the opinion part of the news, taking what could be considered a bad thing from them. The humor of the comic comes from news anchor cutting to an opinion piece from people on the street, thus proving the politician's point.
The title text illustrates what Randall sees as the problem with this approach. The new media, for the large part, consists of uninformed opinions from people of average intelligence and abilities. However, the sheer volume and immediacy of information is threatening to destroy old media, much as the iceberg destroyed the Titanic. You don't join with the iceberg or try to emulate its methods; the iceberg does not care, it's too big and will destroy you anyway. If possible, then the best way to survive is to steer far away to avoid it and find your own path. (Ironically, the Titanic sank because it steered away just enough for the iceberg to scrape its side, tearing into multiple compartments. If it had steered straight into the iceberg, although the bow would have been severely damaged, the ship might have stayed afloat.) Old media must present us with something better than new media (for example: informed, analytical, intelligent), otherwise we have no need of them.
[Cueball as a news anchor reads from a paper. There is a picture on the left side of screen of a man with black hair speaking behind a lectern holding up one hand. In the bottom right-hand corner is the logo for the news.] Cueball: A leading politician today charged that the media, rather than informing people, now merely report on public ignorance. Cueball: Do our viewers agree? Let's hear from some voices on the street... Logo: News 24
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757 | Toot | Toot | https://www.xkcd.com/757 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/757:_Toot | Cueball: I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I was first in my class at Caltech.
Black Hat: Really? I don't mean to toot my own horn, but BRAAAAAAP! [Cueball falls backward as Black Hat sounds an air horn in his face.]
[A picture of an air horn.] Air horns: Worth carrying around your entire life for those few perfect moments.
| "Toot my own horn" is an idiom meaning to brag. Cueball here is using this idiom to mean that he is not bragging, although he obviously is. However, Black Hat , being the classhole he is, takes this idiom literally and toots (blows) an air horn . An air horn is a horn attached to a can of compressed air, and at close range is extremely loud. Cueball is obviously surprised, as he was expecting Black Hat to start bragging instead of making an extremely loud sound with an air horn.
Black Hat's actions could also be interpreted as punishment of Cueball, who began by claiming that he didn't want to boast about his accomplishments, but then did so anyway. Or he could just be proving that he is a classhole by 1'upping Cueball.
The title text refers to the Vuvuzela , which is a noise-generating instrument , mainly used for making noise at soccer matches in South Africa. This comic was published during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and the constant buzzing from vuvuzelas throughout the matches attracted attention and controversy.
Cueball: I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I was first in my class at Caltech.
Black Hat: Really? I don't mean to toot my own horn, but BRAAAAAAP! [Cueball falls backward as Black Hat sounds an air horn in his face.]
[A picture of an air horn.] Air horns: Worth carrying around your entire life for those few perfect moments.
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758 | Raptor Fences | Raptor Fences | https://www.xkcd.com/758 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/758:_Raptor_Fences | [Cueball checks a computer terminal while a friend is running off in the opposite direction.] Cueball: The raptor fences are down. They're loose. Friend: I'll get a broom and dustpan.
Jurassic Park got a lot less scary when the researchers discovered they could activate the gene for extreme dwarfism.
| In the film Jurassic Park , the protagonists are menaced (some fatally) by carnivorous dinosaurs, including very large velociraptors , which are a genus of dromaeosaurid . In this film, the dinosaurs had been recreated via the sampling of ancient DNA recovered, primarily, from the stomachs of mosquitoes trapped in amber (fossilized tree sap).
Cueball is holding a lit cigarette, recalling the role of chain-smoking John "Ray" Arnold, the Chief Engineer of Jurassic Park, played by Samuel L. Jackson . He is reporting that the (veloci)raptors have escaped from their enclosure, but nobody seems overly concerned by this; they do not represent a danger. Apparently, the fear of being hunted by dinosaurs is greatly reduced if they have been genetically engineered to be small enough to gather up with a broom and dustpan.
The "gene for extreme dwarfism" may also be a reference to the "Ender's Game" series, which has previously been referenced in 635: Locke and Demosthenes , 304: Nighttime Stories , and 241: Battle Room . In the parallel book to "Ender's Game", "Ender's shadow", the main character has had the gene for extreme dwarfism activated on himself as an infant.
Note that while growth is dependent on genes, it is extremely unlikely that any kind of genetic manipulation could reduce an animal in size by the factor of approximately 10,000 that is implied here. However, it is perhaps no less unlikely than being able to recreate the dinosaurs at all in the first place. People seem ready to ascribe almost limitless powers to DNA and genetic engineering, but there are many practical constraints.
In reality, velociraptors were only about 50 centimeters in height. It is also believed that they were covered in feathers. Together, these factors paint a very different picture of velociraptors. The velociraptors from Jurassic Park more closely resemble Deinonychus, a relative of the velociraptor, in fact the Deinonychus was used as the model for the Jurassic Park raptors. Still the name "velociraptor" has been consistently, and incorrectly, associated with their portrayal.
The title text suggests that even very small dinosaurs could be terrifying to some, if they imagined a huge number of them. The author would be pleased if this were the case.
[Cueball checks a computer terminal while a friend is running off in the opposite direction.] Cueball: The raptor fences are down. They're loose. Friend: I'll get a broom and dustpan.
Jurassic Park got a lot less scary when the researchers discovered they could activate the gene for extreme dwarfism.
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759 | 3x9 | 3x9 | https://www.xkcd.com/759 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/759:_3x9 | [A problem is given on an arithmetic test: "4) 3x9=?". In handwriting, the student's work follows. The student has accurately reformatted the question as 3 times the square root of 81, which visually resembles the long division problem of 3 divided into 81, and then solved the latter to get 27 — the correct answer to both.]
| In college courses with a very large number of students (picture the huge, tiered, amphitheater-style lecture halls shown in any movie or TV show about college), teaching assistants are often employed to help the professors grade student work. In math and science courses, students are expected to solve the problems and show their work as supporting evidence. Due to the high volume of work to grade, whether it's being done by the professor or a TA, the grader may get lazy and look for correct answers and the existence of work without checking that the work is accurate.
The math shown in this comic switches from √ being square root notation to it being division notation midway. That is an illegal operation. [ citation needed ] But the correct answer is reached anyway, because 27 is the correct answer to 3 × 9, 3√81, and 81 ÷ 3.
More generally, this pattern holds true for any number and its square; namely, 𝑥𝑦 = 𝑦² ÷ 𝑥 whenever 𝑦 = 𝑥².
The title text describes another technique usable when you remember the answer but not the calculations. It requires modifying the equation and the answer at the same time, hoping that at one point they'll look similar. Some students picture every step in the calculations, others skip some, as they seem obvious to them. Merging the equations once they look similar may trick the examiner into thinking that the step between them is obvious to the student, even if they ARE checking the calculations. The side effect (not mentioned) is that while doing this, you may actually realize what the calculations should be.
Alternatively, the title text could be a description of the calculations shown in the comic.
[A problem is given on an arithmetic test: "4) 3x9=?". In handwriting, the student's work follows. The student has accurately reformatted the question as 3 times the square root of 81, which visually resembles the long division problem of 3 divided into 81, and then solved the latter to get 27 — the correct answer to both.]
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760 | Moria | Moria | https://www.xkcd.com/760 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/760:_Moria | [A far shot of Gandalf the Grey and the four hobbits standing in a dark, underground city.] Gandalf: Behold, Khazad-Dûm; the Dwarrowdelf; the mines of Moria -- once the greatest and mightiest city of the dwarves.
[Full body shot of Gandalf.] Gandalf: But the dwarves delved too greedily.
[Close-up on Gandalf.] Gandalf: And too deep.
[Full shot of the hobbits and Gandalf.] Hobbit: ...and awoke a terror of shadow and flame? Gandalf: No. They couldn't get out.
| This is Randall 's take on the story of Moria in the fantasy story The Lord of the Rings . In the original the dwarves, hunting for the precious metal mithril dug so deep that they awoke a balrog — Maiar corrupted by Morgoth . Gandalf is telling about the story to four hobbits standing next to him. One of the hobbits has apparently read The Lord of the Rings , because he asks if the dwarves "awoke a terror of shadow and flame", but then Gandalf says that they were trapped in their hole and couldn't get out.
However, Gandalf's final line may be a hint that the comic's version is closer to the original than it appears — in the story, the adventuring party discovers a journal of the last dwarves to occupy Moria. The last page starts ominously: "We cannot get out. We cannot get out." That memorable sentence is used again near the end of the page as the impending final orcish attack is described by the now-dead dwarves, and repeated by Gimli as they reflect on the terrible news, lending a much darker tone to the comic's punchline.
The title text suggests a mundane solution to their problem — a long ladder. The Endless Stair was a very long staircase from the lowest dungeon up to the top of the mountain above Moria.
[A far shot of Gandalf the Grey and the four hobbits standing in a dark, underground city.] Gandalf: Behold, Khazad-Dûm; the Dwarrowdelf; the mines of Moria -- once the greatest and mightiest city of the dwarves.
[Full body shot of Gandalf.] Gandalf: But the dwarves delved too greedily.
[Close-up on Gandalf.] Gandalf: And too deep.
[Full shot of the hobbits and Gandalf.] Hobbit: ...and awoke a terror of shadow and flame? Gandalf: No. They couldn't get out.
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761 | DFS | DFS | https://www.xkcd.com/761 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/761:_DFS | [In a caption that breaks the top of the first panels frame:] Preparing for a date:
[Hairy with wet hair and a towel around his waist thinks with his hand to his chin. There are four situations, but it is not possible to read the fourth line.] Hairy: What situations might I prepare for? 1) Medical emergency 2) Dancing 3) Food too expensive
[Close-up on Hairy's face, who is still thinking. There are again four situations, but again it is not possible to read the fourth line.] Hairy: Okay, what kind of emergencies can happen? 1) A) Snakebite B) Lightning strike C) Fall from chair
[Zoooming out again to full figure of Hairy. He is still thinking... There are four snakes mentioned, but again it is not possible to read the fourth line. The word Danger stands beneath the three dots above the "?" after each snake.] Hairy: Hmm. Which snakes are dangerous? Let's see... Danger 1)A)a) Corn snake ? b) Garter snake ? c) Copperhead ?
[Hairy is sitting down in a chair with a laptop in his lap, while still wearing the towel.] Hairy: The research comparing snake venoms is scattered and inconsistent. I'll make a spreadsheet to organize it.
[Bottom panel is larger than top four, and aligned to right. Ponytail meets Hairy on his front stoop. She is carrying a purse, and looks down at the towel he is still wearing. Hairy holds his arms in the air.] Ponytail: I'm here to pick you up. You're not dressed? Hairy: By LD 50 , the inland taipan has the deadliest venom of any snake!
[Below this last panel is the following caption:] I really need to stop using depth-first searches.
| In this comic Hairy is preparing for his date with Ponytail , and has just finished with a shower, as seen from the fact that he is wearing a towel around his waist.
He is also preparing mentally by thinking about which situations he might encounter during the date. Since he cannot know for sure he is performing a "blind search" in his head. When doing a blind search in computing, there are two main tactics— depth-first search (DFS), and breadth-first search (BFS).
Hairy uses the DFS technique, as indicated in the comic title, which means going as far as you possibly can down one path before looking at other possibilities. This turns out to be a bad idea, as Hairy's searches takes him out on a tangent. Instead of preparing for his date, Hairy instead spent the whole time doing research on snake venom , to the exclusion of even getting dressed in time for the arrival of his date. The way the last panel is the only panel and at the far right in the second row vs. four panels in the top row, indicates all the time he has used on DFS. And although he may realize his mistake, throwing up his arms, he has to tell Ponytail the fact he has found out that the inland taipan 's has the deadliest venom of any snake (see more below).
By contrast, a breadth-first search will look only minimally into a topic before moving on to another; any new depth exposed by this minimal check will be added to a list of stuff to do later. This would have allowed Hairy to briefly check many more things within the time allotted, and probably still have been able to get dressed if, in dealing breadth-first in the first layer of concerns, he quickly identified (and prioritised/satisfied) the need to be properly dressed and ready to go out.
The relationship advice given in the title text on using breadth-first search may not be meant too seriously. However, one might be more sure about what kind of person one is looking for after already having dated a few people. But then the right one, might have slipped by. It is by no means certain that you can return to one of the first persons you dated after having dated another dozen.
It is, however, not very useful, if you wish to have a stable family life, to "only" be with a person for five years. So DFS is for sure a bad way to find out who you wish to spend you life with. One might conclude that blind search is not a good way to find your significant other. But for most people, there is no other way to search.
DFS and BFS make another appearance in 2407: Depth and Breadth , together with variations based on them.
Hairy begins to think of several situations to prepares for.
In the first panel there are four situations:
In the second panel there are also four situations continuing the first option from the first panel:
In the third panel there are four types of snakes with questions marks as to whether they are dangerous. This is a continuation of the first option from the second panel:
This third step takes him to his computer in the fourth panel where he does lots of research on snake venom .
LD 50 , or median lethal dose, is the dose of a toxin required to kill 50% of the population studied, usually expressed in milligrams of toxin per kilogram of body mass, and most often for rats or another type of guinea pig .
The inland taipan 's venom does, indeed, have the lowest median lethal dose among snake venoms. Fortunately, it is extremely shy in temperament, and will always escape danger rather than bite if it can, which is why it isn't considered to be a particularly dangerous snake. It also resides only in inland Australia, unlike any of the snakes that Hairy enumerated as potential risks. (If he does happen to live in Australia, he should be more concerned about the much deadlier eastern brown snake and coastal taipan .)
Incidentally, corn snakes and garter snakes are not even remotely dangerous to humans (in fact they're the most popular pet snakes), and of the four different species commonly known as " copperheads ," the only dangerously venomous one is deinagkistrodon acutus or sharp-nosed viper that only lives in Southeast Asia. In the US, the snake going by the name of copperhead is the agkistrodon contortrix .
The item that is almost entirely cut off by the thought bubble seems to be " coral snake ". Coral snakes are in a similar position as the inland taipan: they are extremely venomous, but also extremely reclusive.
[In a caption that breaks the top of the first panels frame:] Preparing for a date:
[Hairy with wet hair and a towel around his waist thinks with his hand to his chin. There are four situations, but it is not possible to read the fourth line.] Hairy: What situations might I prepare for? 1) Medical emergency 2) Dancing 3) Food too expensive
[Close-up on Hairy's face, who is still thinking. There are again four situations, but again it is not possible to read the fourth line.] Hairy: Okay, what kind of emergencies can happen? 1) A) Snakebite B) Lightning strike C) Fall from chair
[Zoooming out again to full figure of Hairy. He is still thinking... There are four snakes mentioned, but again it is not possible to read the fourth line. The word Danger stands beneath the three dots above the "?" after each snake.] Hairy: Hmm. Which snakes are dangerous? Let's see... Danger 1)A)a) Corn snake ? b) Garter snake ? c) Copperhead ?
[Hairy is sitting down in a chair with a laptop in his lap, while still wearing the towel.] Hairy: The research comparing snake venoms is scattered and inconsistent. I'll make a spreadsheet to organize it.
[Bottom panel is larger than top four, and aligned to right. Ponytail meets Hairy on his front stoop. She is carrying a purse, and looks down at the towel he is still wearing. Hairy holds his arms in the air.] Ponytail: I'm here to pick you up. You're not dressed? Hairy: By LD 50 , the inland taipan has the deadliest venom of any snake!
[Below this last panel is the following caption:] I really need to stop using depth-first searches.
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762 | Analogies | Analogies | https://www.xkcd.com/762 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/762:_Analogies | [Megan stands by a TV set and addresses Cueball in the couch and his Cueball-like friend who sits in front of the TV on the floor.] Megan: While I'm up, does anyone want a sandwich? Cueball: Is "sandwich" a metaphor?
[A frame-less panel with the same scene, without the TV. Cueball has taken a hand to his chin and the friend on the floor looks down.] Megan: No, I'm bad at metaphors. But I could try a simile. Cueball: I guess that's like a metaphor. Cueball: Sure.
[While Megan walks past them, Cueball leans forward and his friends looks back up at him as they continue to speak.] Friend: Well, "a simile is like a metaphor" is a simile. Cueball: Is that simile itself a metaphor for something? Friend: Maybe it's a metaphor for analogy.
[Cueball and his friend are still sitting and talking while Megan replies from off-panel.] Cueball: Similes are like metaphors in that they're both analogies. Megan (off-panel): Analogies are like sandwiches in that I'm making one now.
| This comic revolves around the similarities (and differences) between the concepts of "analogy", "simile" and "metaphor" (as well as "synecdoche", "sandwich" and "sex.")
When Megan stands up and asks Cueball and his Cueball-like friend if anyone would like a sandwich, she is very literally meaning that she will would go an make a sandwich in the kitchen, and she would make one for either of them if they wished.
Cueball is thus cheeky when he asks if this is a metaphor, because in that case the metaphor would be a reference to sex sandwich , in which case the two Cueball's would make up the bread in the sandwich with Megan as the meat in the middle, in a special kind of threesome (NSFW).
Megan effectively turns him down by saying she is bad at metaphors, thus indirectly saying that she is determined not to understand his innuendo, rather than actually understanding it and having to reply to his smart remark. As she probably also knows him rather well, she also knows that by introducing the similar word simile, she immediately turns the focus off the poor sexual joke to a discussion of language, and she is able to leave the room while the guys are discussing this rather than smirking over the sexual joke.
She also manages to make the punch line after the friend introduces analogy, as she is now actually making a sandwich and using this sentence to make an analogy.
The dictionary defines a " metaphor " as a figure of speech that uses one thing to mean another and makes a comparison between the two. For example, Shakespeare's line, "All the world's a stage," is a metaphor comparing the whole world to a theater stage. Metaphors can be very simple, and they can function as most any part of speech. "The spy shadowed the woman" is a verb metaphor. The spy is not literally her shadow, but he follows her so closely and quietly that he resembles one.
A " simile ", also called an open comparison, is a form of metaphor that compares two different things to create a new meaning. But a simile always uses "like" or "as" within the phrase and the comparison is more explicit than a metaphor. For example, Shakespeare's line could be rewritten as a simile to read: "The world is like a stage." Another simile would be: "The spy was close as a shadow." Both metaphor and simile can be used to enhance writing.
An " analogy " is a bit more complicated. At the most basic level, an analogy shows similarity between things that might seem different — much like an extended metaphor or simile. But analogy isn't just a form of speech. It can be a logical argument: if two things are alike in some ways, they are alike in some other ways as well. Analogy is often used to help provide insight by comparing an unknown subject to one that is more familiar. It can also show a relationship between pairs of things. This form of analogy is often used on standardized tests in the form "A is to B as C is to D".
There is a famously confusing analogy, often falsely attributed to Einstein, that attempts to explain how radio works: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
" Synecdoche " (from the title text) is the naming the whole of something by referring to a part, or vice versa. E.g. using "the Internet" when meaning "the World Wide Web", which is only a part of it; or using "Band-Aid" when referring to any adhesive bandage. Randall is saying that he doesn't really understand the difference between them, but instead of using one of the names as a placeholder for them all (that is, as a synecdoche), he actually uses the word 'synecdoche'. What a mind he has.
[Megan stands by a TV set and addresses Cueball in the couch and his Cueball-like friend who sits in front of the TV on the floor.] Megan: While I'm up, does anyone want a sandwich? Cueball: Is "sandwich" a metaphor?
[A frame-less panel with the same scene, without the TV. Cueball has taken a hand to his chin and the friend on the floor looks down.] Megan: No, I'm bad at metaphors. But I could try a simile. Cueball: I guess that's like a metaphor. Cueball: Sure.
[While Megan walks past them, Cueball leans forward and his friends looks back up at him as they continue to speak.] Friend: Well, "a simile is like a metaphor" is a simile. Cueball: Is that simile itself a metaphor for something? Friend: Maybe it's a metaphor for analogy.
[Cueball and his friend are still sitting and talking while Megan replies from off-panel.] Cueball: Similes are like metaphors in that they're both analogies. Megan (off-panel): Analogies are like sandwiches in that I'm making one now.
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763 | Workaround | Workaround | https://www.xkcd.com/763 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/763:_Workaround | [A relative stands at a computer terminal. Cueball stands behind him with his head in his hands, double-facepalming.]
Relative: See, I've got a really good system: if I want to send a YouTube video to someone, I go to File → Save, then import the saved page into Word. Then I go to "Share this Document" and under "recipient" I put the email of this video extraction service...
[Caption below the panel:] I'll often encourage relatives to try to solve computer problems themselves by trial and error. However, I've learned an important lesson: if they say they've solved their problem, never ask how.
| A relative of Cueball is depicted, who explains how he goes about sending a YouTube video to someone. The relative appears to be a stereotypical 'non-computer person', perhaps the father or grandfather of Cueball. The relative explains how he first saves a web page and opens it in Microsoft Word, then uses the 'Share' feature in Word to generate an email that contains the web page reformatted as a Word document, then sends that email to a service that extracts YouTube videos. Perhaps this service would then email back a link to some extracted file on some server, and this link could in turn be copied and pasted in another email, which could finally be sent to the intended recipient. It's all very complicated.
The premise is that non-computer-literate people will find a clumsy, highly elaborate way of achieving some task on a computer. They will do this by stringing together the functions they stumble upon in the few software packages they have limited familiarity with, rather than taking a more sensible, straightforward route. In this case, a much faster and simpler route would be to copy the address of the YouTube video from the address bar in the browser, then paste the address in an email to the intended recipient.
The caption says that though Randall encourages his relatives to solve their computer problems on their own, by trial and error, he has to resist the urge of asking them the method they used. That method is likely to be unnecessarily complicated. Perhaps this complexity, inefficiency or illogicality will cause Randall to be exasperated, or perhaps Randall feels it is unwise to tell them why their method is inefficient because of the possibility of humiliating or upsetting them, especially after they have spent a long time experimenting to arrive at this suboptimal solution; it would be disrespectful to correct them. Or perhaps it would take too long to explain an alternative, even a much simpler one, because of the questions that it would lead to or because of the further misconceptions that would be exposed of which the relative should be disabused.
The title text just explains another example of a complicated and elaborate way of working that people who don't understand computers can create. Partitions on a hard drive are separately managed regions of storage. Partitions are usually used for recovery purposes or to load different operating systems. It seems that Randall's friend's dad has created 6 partitions for no real purpose, and files are arbitrarily being saved to a random partition.
[A relative stands at a computer terminal. Cueball stands behind him with his head in his hands, double-facepalming.]
Relative: See, I've got a really good system: if I want to send a YouTube video to someone, I go to File → Save, then import the saved page into Word. Then I go to "Share this Document" and under "recipient" I put the email of this video extraction service...
[Caption below the panel:] I'll often encourage relatives to try to solve computer problems themselves by trial and error. However, I've learned an important lesson: if they say they've solved their problem, never ask how.
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764 | One Two | One Two | https://www.xkcd.com/764 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/764:_One_Two | [A television set with The Count from 'Sesame Street'.] The Count: One! Ah ah ah... Two! Ah ah ah... ...Many! ah ah ah... Primitive cultures develop Sesame Street.
| The comic parodies Sesame Street , an American children's TV show. The Count is a character in Sesame Street who teaches counting to viewers. The Count usually laughs after counting numbers, an innocent version of the sinister laugh that is a stereotype of old Hollywood horror films. In the book One Two Three ... Infinity , the writer describes African tribes that only have words for numbers up to three and their inability to distinguish or comprehend larger numbers. The Pirahã language of Brazil was originally thought to only have numerical terms for one, two, and many, although it is now thought these words are relative terms like "few" rather than absolute terms like "one." Similarly, see Edmund Blackadder try to teach Baldrick to count beans .
In the title text Randall predicts that anthropology majors will write to complain that this view of primitive tribes is a myth no longer held true by today's anthropologists. He makes a jab at them saying they would have time to write letters to complain about things because they don't have to spend time doing real science and thus real research.
[A television set with The Count from 'Sesame Street'.] The Count: One! Ah ah ah... Two! Ah ah ah... ...Many! ah ah ah... Primitive cultures develop Sesame Street.
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765 | Dilution | Dilution | https://www.xkcd.com/765 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/765:_Dilution | [Cueball stands at a desk with a beaker in one hand and a turkey baster in the other. Megan lies in a bed in the same room.]
Cueball: Okay, this time I've diluted the semen 30x. Megan: We'll be sure to get pregnant now!
Belief in homeopathy is not, evolutionarily, selected for.
| Homeopathy is the belief that poisons, bacteria, and other harmful substances can actually cure the diseases they normally cause, if they are administered in sufficiently dilute form. The normal procedure is to prepare a solution, then successively dilute it with water or alcohol by multiple factors of 10. (There's also a "succussion" step between rounds, which basically consists of shaking or striking the mixture, but no serious mechanism for how this would affect anything has been provided.) In the medical world, it's known to be total bunk , with countless scientific studies repeatedly showing it to have no more effectiveness than a placebo .
Here we find Cueball , a firm believer in homeopathy, applying the idea to fertility by diluting his semen. 30X means that the semen has been diluted with water at a 1:10 ratio 30 times, so the solution contains 1 part semen to one-nonillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) parts water. Since the average ejaculation contains 200 to 500 million sperm cells, this means the solution Cueball is holding has a 3.5x10 -20 % chance of containing even a single sperm cell. Clearly, Megan will not be getting pregnant from this, so she and Cueball will not be passing on their genes, which is why the comic states that the belief in homeopathy is not selected for.
According to the belief of homeopathy, diluted sperm should not help in getting pregnant, but help to cure the symptoms, e.g. pregnancy, caused by it. So even if diluting it 30X, would have a homeopathic effect, it would be the opposite of the one Cueball states he wants to achieve.
Echinacea is a genus of flowers commonly used in herbal remedies to stimulate the immune system. Scientific studies have not shown that such an effect exists. The title text is intended to represent a letter to the editors of fictitious journal 'Homeopathy Monthly', starting with a minor complaint that they seem unable to perform the basic proof-reading and fact-checking necessary to correctly spell one of the most well-known herbal remedies. This is followed up by a complete dismissal of homeopathy as a whole and the magazine in particular.
[Cueball stands at a desk with a beaker in one hand and a turkey baster in the other. Megan lies in a bed in the same room.]
Cueball: Okay, this time I've diluted the semen 30x. Megan: We'll be sure to get pregnant now!
Belief in homeopathy is not, evolutionarily, selected for.
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766 | Green Flash | Green Flash | https://www.xkcd.com/766 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/766:_Green_Flash | [Black Hat and Cueball are standing on the beach, watching the sun set. Black Hat is holding something in his left hand.] Black Hat: Did you know that if you stare at the sun just as it sets, you can see a green flash? Black Hat: And feel a sharp blow to the head, and hear the faint hum of me driving away in your new Tesla Roadster?
| Green flash refers to an optical phenomenon which occurs at twilight (early dawn or late dusk ), where a flash of green light can be seen at the very edge of the sun. Black Hat attempts to distract Cueball with this event so that he may knock out Cueball with the bottle in his hand and steal his new car, a Tesla Roadster . If the bottle is green, it would also be the cause of the green flash.
The title text simply continues this, wherein Black Hat jokes that Green Flashes are actually caused, at least in part, by the fact that he has a cool car worth stealing.
[Black Hat and Cueball are standing on the beach, watching the sun set. Black Hat is holding something in his left hand.] Black Hat: Did you know that if you stare at the sun just as it sets, you can see a green flash? Black Hat: And feel a sharp blow to the head, and hear the faint hum of me driving away in your new Tesla Roadster?
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767 | Temper | Temper | https://www.xkcd.com/767 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/767:_Temper | [A black frame with the text [NO VIDEO] in the center, speech is in bubbles.] Voice: Sometimes, when we disagree, I feel frustrated. But I never forget how lucky I am to have you in my family. Voice: Always remember how special you are.
[Caption below the panel]: 1981: An audio recorder on the set catches Fred Rogers fighting with his wife.
| Actor Mel Gibson was the subject of controversy a few days before this comic came out because a telephone rant was taped and released to the public. He laughed off the call, saying simply "I have a bit of a temper."
Fred Rogers was a minister and television personality best known for his children's educational show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood . He's also famous for his testimony before the US Senate Communications subcommittee to secure a much-needed increase in funding for public educational broadcasting. He died of stomach cancer on February 27, 2003, but the legacy he left is substantial; to quote Wikipedia: "Rogers received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, some forty honorary degrees, and a Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame, was recognized by two Congressional resolutions, and was ranked No. 35 among TV Guide's Fifty Greatest TV Stars of All Time. Several buildings and artworks in Pennsylvania are dedicated to his memory, and the Smithsonian Institution displays one of his trademark sweaters as a 'Treasure of American History'."
Part of what made Fred Rogers (and, by extension, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood ) so successful was the perpetually cheerful, genuine way he presented himself. He was always sincere, but he was polite and gentle in his sincerity. Additionally, in stark contrast to the celebrity stereotype, he was an enormously compassionate and kind-hearted person even when off the screen. People who knew him in real life often observed that the Mister Rogers shown on TV wasn't just a character, it was Fred Rogers himself - as the title text notes. This counterstereotype has fueled urban legends that he was a former child molester, that he served in the military and killed many, etc., none of which are true.
This comic subverts these false suspicions. Fred Rogers is fictionally recorded having a fight with his wife, but instead of a Mel Gibson-style explosive rage, he approaches it with a calm, diplomatic, and loving attitude consistent with his real personality. The title text does the same, setting up for a shocking reveal and failing to meet it.
[A black frame with the text [NO VIDEO] in the center, speech is in bubbles.] Voice: Sometimes, when we disagree, I feel frustrated. But I never forget how lucky I am to have you in my family. Voice: Always remember how special you are.
[Caption below the panel]: 1981: An audio recorder on the set catches Fred Rogers fighting with his wife.
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768 | 1996 | 1996 | https://www.xkcd.com/768 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/768:_1996 | [Cueball is going through a cardboard box marked "MISC", and finds a catalog. Megan looks on.] Cueball: Check it out - old Computer Shoppers! Wow - in 1996, $3,000 would get you a 100 MHz Pentium system with a parallel port, two serial ports, a 2MB video card, and "MS-Windows" Megan: Nice!
[The two are face-to-face, and they each have a separate copy of Computer Shopper.] Megan: And $299 would get you a Palm Pilot 100- - 16MHz, 128Kb storage, and a memo pad, calendar, and state-of-the-art address book that can store over 100 names! Cueball: Oooh!
[Cueball continues to read from his.] Cueball: And $110 would get you a bulky TI graphing calculator with around 10MHz CPU, 24Kb RAM, and a 96x64-pixel B/W display! Megan: Times sure have... ...have... uh.
[They both put down their catalogs.] Cueball: Okay, what the hell, T.I.? Megan: Maybe they cost so much now because there's only one engineer left who remembers how to make displays that crappy.
| There has been a stunning amount of progress in pretty much any measurable dimension of technology since 1996. We laugh at our prior naivete, pointing out that what would be a non-functionally awful computer now was considered state of the art at that time. Likewise with a Palm Pilot , arguably a precursor to today's omnipresent smartphones. Texas Instrument (TI) calculators, however, appear to have been left behind, not having made any significant advances (or price drops) since the newly discovered issues of the US computer magazine Computer Shopper were published. Thus, while we groan at how awful our state of the art technologies truly were in 1996, we are reminded that some technologies have remained in relative stasis over the years.
The title text, after alluding to the fact that academia's practice of only allowing (or requiring) specific models is at the root of how TI can charge high prices for stagnant technology, reminds us that when they were new, TI calculators were relatively powerful tools if you knew how to use them. TI-Basic was a fairly versatile programming language that could be used to make anything from games to reference files to computational programs.
The second half of the title text is a reminder to those of us who felt like gods for knowing how to program that power comes at a price—in this case, the power to program a calculator costs friends . Since, as of this comic's publication date, no program yet devised had truly passed a Turing test, even the most sophisticated Chatterbot (program designed to mimic conversation) couldn't quite qualify as a friend. As of June 2014, however, a computer convinced 33% of the people who spoke to it that it was a human, qualifying it to pass the Turing Test . Though some skepticism on this point is needed , as it only passed the University's contest, not the actual Turing test .
Being unable to "make" friends was also later mentioned in 866: Compass and Straightedge .
While many people aren't aware of them, TI does make more modern calculators in their TI-Nspire series , although they were introduced after this comic was published. The newest versions have color screens and ( finally! ) non-BASIC programming support through Lua and Python .
[Cueball is going through a cardboard box marked "MISC", and finds a catalog. Megan looks on.] Cueball: Check it out - old Computer Shoppers! Wow - in 1996, $3,000 would get you a 100 MHz Pentium system with a parallel port, two serial ports, a 2MB video card, and "MS-Windows" Megan: Nice!
[The two are face-to-face, and they each have a separate copy of Computer Shopper.] Megan: And $299 would get you a Palm Pilot 100- - 16MHz, 128Kb storage, and a memo pad, calendar, and state-of-the-art address book that can store over 100 names! Cueball: Oooh!
[Cueball continues to read from his.] Cueball: And $110 would get you a bulky TI graphing calculator with around 10MHz CPU, 24Kb RAM, and a 96x64-pixel B/W display! Megan: Times sure have... ...have... uh.
[They both put down their catalogs.] Cueball: Okay, what the hell, T.I.? Megan: Maybe they cost so much now because there's only one engineer left who remembers how to make displays that crappy.
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769 | War | War | https://www.xkcd.com/769 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/769:_War | [A soldier is sitting on the ground behind a low wall, leaning against his pack and writing a letter.] My Dearest Cordelia, it has been far too long since I last gazed upon your lithe and supple body through my telescopic sights, and I fear you may have found a superior vantage poin—
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
—a splendid effort, my love, but your shots find only a decoy, and reveal your position atop the maintenance shed.
I pray this missive and my grenades find you well.
War is hell.
| This comic seems to be a parable about the perils of love during wartime. Our protagonist is seen here leaning against his pack behind a low wall, surely a good hiding spot for any gentleman with a rifle and scope. Judging by the letter he's in the midst of writing, he has a complex relationship with Cordelia. On the one hand, she's attractive. On the other hand, she's a hostile combatant, as evidenced by the shots fired mid-missive. Cordelia's fire works against her, though, as her volley of shots has revealed her own position atop the maintenance shed. We can presume that in a matter of minutes, this love affair will go sour as the love letter is wrapped around a live grenade and "delivered," so to speak. War is indeed hell.
As to the title text, the green berets are worn only by Special Forces soldiers. It takes a lot of training to become a green beret, and as evidenced by our protagonist's clever use of decoys to outwit a sniper, he may be qualified for the honor. However, evidence for his naiveté is given immediately thereafter, as he confesses that he wears a beret under his helmet — thus revealing our protagonist's true identity (and explaining how he fell in love with an enemy soldier actively trying to kill him): Beret Guy . Then again, he does not have a choice, since he has stapled the beret on his head.
"Cordelia" is possibly a reference to Cordelia Rosalind —the sniper from the miniature game Anima: Tactics . Alternatively, it may be a reference to Cordelia Naismith from Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor . In the book, Cordelia Naismith and Lord Aral Vorkosigan are on opposite sides of the Beta-Barrayar war, and fall in love while forced to spend a week in each other's company on an unpopulated planet. This may be further corroborated by the green color of Beret Guy's uniform, which is very similar to the color used for the uniforms of the Barrayan Imperial Service.
[A soldier is sitting on the ground behind a low wall, leaning against his pack and writing a letter.] My Dearest Cordelia, it has been far too long since I last gazed upon your lithe and supple body through my telescopic sights, and I fear you may have found a superior vantage poin—
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
—a splendid effort, my love, but your shots find only a decoy, and reveal your position atop the maintenance shed.
I pray this missive and my grenades find you well.
War is hell.
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770 | All the Girls | All the Girls | https://www.xkcd.com/770 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/770:_All_the_Girls | [Cueball and Megan are standing together.] Cueball: I'm so lucky to have you.
Cueball: I love you most out of all the girls in all the world
[They embrace.] Cueball: who love me back.
| A young couple ( Cueball and Megan ) are in love. In the first panel, Cueball says he's lucky to have Megan, a perfectly fine thing to say to someone when you're in love. In the second panel, Cueball tells Megan he loves her most out of all the girls in the world, which is again a perfectly fine thing to say when you're in love. Trouble sets in, however, in the third panel, where Cueball offers his qualifying statement, that he loves Megan the most of the subset of girls who also love Cueball back.
In the title text, written in Cueball's voice, we have another compliment/qualifier pair. Cueball assures Megan that he'll never leave her—so long as some other girl is with someone. Cueball clearly has an unrequited love for another, and so really is being as shitty as we all thought he was originally. The world can be a cruel place.
This comic is related with stable marriage problem , which is usually stated as: Given n men and n women, can they all be married off in such a way that there is no possible "adulterous" pairing that both the man and woman would prefer over their current partner? It turns out the answer is yes, and there are even algorithms that can be used to find such a set of marriages. However, such algorithms don't usually give people their first choice, just their first choice among potential partners who prefer them to all the alternatives. The algorithms also favor either the men or the women, so one side will typically get closer to their ideal preferences than the other. Such algorithms do get in used in situations like assigning medical students to residencies (technically it's a polygamous generalization, but it's basically the same idea), in which case it's biased in favor of the medical students.
In the comic Cueball and Megan could be a couple arranged through a stable marriage algorithm. In most cases that would mean that they both have potential partners that they would prefer over the one they're with, and the only reason that they aren't with that person is that their love was unrequited. That leaves both of them with a certain amount of emotional baggage that most people would consider detrimental to stable marriage. In short, while a stable marriage algorithm may provide good solutions to certain matching problems, it may not be the best way to produce actual stable marriages.
[Cueball and Megan are standing together.] Cueball: I'm so lucky to have you.
Cueball: I love you most out of all the girls in all the world
[They embrace.] Cueball: who love me back.
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771 | Period Speech | Period Speech | https://www.xkcd.com/771 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/771:_Period_Speech | [A sword-wielding Cueball on a stage addresses three others; one has a spear, another a handgun and a knife, and the third a laptop.] Cueball: Forsooth, do you grok my jive, me hearties? Actors: Ten-four! [The caption below.] A few centuries from now, all the English of the past 400 years will sound equally old-timey and interchangeable.
| The actors on this stage are using language and technology from wildly different time periods:
Put together, the exchange roughly translates to "Do you truly understand what I'm saying, my friends?"/"Yes, we understand!".) The characters also combine archaic weapons like a spear and a sword with a presumably modern handgun and a laptop, adding to the growing heap of anachronisms.
Randall 's contention is that hundreds of years from now, people will make similar errors that we do today when depicting historical items and language. Modern movies, fiction, and other forms of media that depict history often confuse terms, items, and equipment that were in one place and time period and place them in another, but few people notice because to them, all of it fits under the very broad category of "old, historical things" - only those with an interest in history really notice or seem to care. Thus following this trend, in the future, things like laptop computers and "grok my jive" will seem just as historical and "old-timey" as a spear or the saying "Forsooth!", except to those who participate in such things like "Blogger Reenactment Festivals", as mentioned in the title text.
For instance, take a suit of full plate armor. To most people, plate armor is a "Medieval thing". So thus, when depicting King Arthur, a figure from 500 to 800 AD (if he even existed at all), one would (and has) put him in a suit of full plate because he is "medieval" and that is the stereotypical equipment of a Medieval figure. In actual fact, plate armor only came about after 1350, many centuries after King Arthur would have lived, and it coexisted alongside firearms for a very long time. King Arthur would have worn chainmail, but all of this would be lost on an average person watching a movie about King Arthur, to whom chainmail and full plate are interchangeable under the label of "historical armor" in their minds. It is not much of a jump from a span of 500 to 800 years of equipment being considered interchangeable to 1500 years of equipment and language being interchangeable. A similar confusion of "interchangeably old things" is seen in the title text to 2396: Wonder Woman 1984 .
The title text likely refers to 239: Blagofaire , which features the said "Blogger Reenactment Festivals".
[A sword-wielding Cueball on a stage addresses three others; one has a spear, another a handgun and a knife, and the third a laptop.] Cueball: Forsooth, do you grok my jive, me hearties? Actors: Ten-four! [The caption below.] A few centuries from now, all the English of the past 400 years will sound equally old-timey and interchangeable.
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772 | Frogger | Frogger | https://www.xkcd.com/772 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/772:_Frogger | [The dark green frog, Frogger, is standing in the middle of the panel on the green grass by the side of a light gray road with at least four tracks divided by black midlines. The last track being mainly outside the top frame of the panel. It is looking out into the traffic, which includes three trucks (two in the nearest lane one in the third) with different color of the cabin (one blue and two dark gray) and white behind the cabin. There is also a red car in the second lane. All four vehicles are driving towards left.]
[Lines behind the frog and sound indicates that Frogger hops, and it moves out right in front of the right truck which is now close to it. The left truck is partly outside the panel, and the other two have moved further left and a new gray car has entered from the right in the second lane.] Hop
[The truck in the inner lane swerves into the second lane to avoid Frogger, which takes the truck out in front of the gray car. The other truck in the inner lane has exited the panel and the red car only shows the rear part. ]
[The truck and the car collide with a great noise displayed with shaky letters above them. The car and the cabin of the truck both crumples. Behind the car is two lines of skid marks. Frogger is left unharmed in the inner lane. The red car is gone and the third lane truck is leaving the panel to the left, the cabin just outside the frame.] Boom
[Only the two crashed vehicles are left on the road with smoke pouring out of their hoods. The trucks rear end also seems to have crumbled more than in the previous image, and strangely enough the skid marks of the car now stretches longer towards the right than before... Frogger turns around and hops back to the side of the road, again indicated with lines and sound. At the bottom of the panel three off-panel voices calls out:] Hop Off-panel voice 1: Oh god! Off-panel voice 2: Someone call 911! Off-panel voice 3: Mom!
Randall made a mistake in the last panel, where the skid marks of the car stretches longer towards the right than in the panel before, even though the car and truck did not move (and the view has also stayed the same through out the comic.) However, this could just be smoke plumes.
| Frogger is a classic video game introduced in 1981. The aim of the game is to safely get a frog across a busy road and a river to a lily pad at the top of the screen.
The title text reveals that a team of programmers misinterpreted a task to make the game "more realistic", i.e. with better graphics, and instead made the trucks swerve to avoid the car-sized frog, causing another vehicle to crash into the truck resulting in a serious road accident. This is instead of the traffic just inexorably moving at a constant rate in their assigned lanes and disregarding the movements of the frog, who is normally the only one who ever needs to take evasive action or suffer the consequences.
The game continues to introduce increasing drama with the reactions of off-panel bystanders.
This is similar to the idea behind the modification of the game in 873: FPS Mod , in which realism makes a video game much less enjoyable.
[The dark green frog, Frogger, is standing in the middle of the panel on the green grass by the side of a light gray road with at least four tracks divided by black midlines. The last track being mainly outside the top frame of the panel. It is looking out into the traffic, which includes three trucks (two in the nearest lane one in the third) with different color of the cabin (one blue and two dark gray) and white behind the cabin. There is also a red car in the second lane. All four vehicles are driving towards left.]
[Lines behind the frog and sound indicates that Frogger hops, and it moves out right in front of the right truck which is now close to it. The left truck is partly outside the panel, and the other two have moved further left and a new gray car has entered from the right in the second lane.] Hop
[The truck in the inner lane swerves into the second lane to avoid Frogger, which takes the truck out in front of the gray car. The other truck in the inner lane has exited the panel and the red car only shows the rear part. ]
[The truck and the car collide with a great noise displayed with shaky letters above them. The car and the cabin of the truck both crumples. Behind the car is two lines of skid marks. Frogger is left unharmed in the inner lane. The red car is gone and the third lane truck is leaving the panel to the left, the cabin just outside the frame.] Boom
[Only the two crashed vehicles are left on the road with smoke pouring out of their hoods. The trucks rear end also seems to have crumbled more than in the previous image, and strangely enough the skid marks of the car now stretches longer towards the right than before... Frogger turns around and hops back to the side of the road, again indicated with lines and sound. At the bottom of the panel three off-panel voices calls out:] Hop Off-panel voice 1: Oh god! Off-panel voice 2: Someone call 911! Off-panel voice 3: Mom!
Randall made a mistake in the last panel, where the skid marks of the car stretches longer towards the right than in the panel before, even though the car and truck did not move (and the view has also stayed the same through out the comic.) However, this could just be smoke plumes.
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773 | University Website | University Website | https://www.xkcd.com/773 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/773:_University_Website | [A venn diagram.] [The left circle is labeled "Things on the front page of a university website" and contains:] "campus photo slideshow" "alumni in the news" "promotions for campus events" "press releases" "statement of the school's philosophy" "letter from the president" "virtual tour"
[The right circle is labeled "Things people go to the site looking for" and contains:] "list of faculty phone numbers and emails" "campus address" "application forms" "academic calendar" "campus police phone number" "department course lists" "parking information" "usable campus map"
[The only item in the overlapping section is:] "full name of school"
| This comic uses a Venn diagram to point out that there is often a significant disparity between what a university displays on the front page of its website and what users — particularly prospective students — are primarily interested in finding there.
This is often because those who are making the university website instinctively believe, from their perspective, that the website should contain things that the university is proud of, or that they personally find useful, so they are unable to look at it from the perspective of a person who is new on campus and simply wants to know what number to call for campus security. Thus, simple details like contact information and university data are often overlooked.
The title text presents a satirical response from the school defending their site design, consisting mostly of PR worthy of an alumni magazine (a publication that is seldom anticipated so eagerly). It also uses sarcasm to make fun of university websites that have wildly out of date site design (web technology was relatively primitive in 2001 [ citation needed ] ) and a CS (Computer Science) student built it instead of a professional.
[A venn diagram.] [The left circle is labeled "Things on the front page of a university website" and contains:] "campus photo slideshow" "alumni in the news" "promotions for campus events" "press releases" "statement of the school's philosophy" "letter from the president" "virtual tour"
[The right circle is labeled "Things people go to the site looking for" and contains:] "list of faculty phone numbers and emails" "campus address" "application forms" "academic calendar" "campus police phone number" "department course lists" "parking information" "usable campus map"
[The only item in the overlapping section is:] "full name of school"
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774 | Atheists | Atheists | https://www.xkcd.com/774 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/774:_Atheists | [Cueball and Megan talking. Cueball has his palm out.] Cueball: Personally, I find atheists just as annoying as fundamentalist Christians. Megan: Well, the important thing is that you've found a way to feel superior to both.
| In public debates, some fundamentalist Christians and some atheists , while having different opinions, can behave surprisingly similar. Both can be very dogmatic about their beliefs, and be very disrespectful and accusative towards people of the other standpoint. Cueball is blaming both parties for being annoying. Megan sarcastically remarks that Cueball then must feel superior to just about everyone.
The title text takes this one step further when Cueball realizes that Megan's reply is just as smugly superior as his. For practical reasons (that is, the prevention of an endless, useless thought loop about your own thought process), Megan stops the tactic, by humorously stating that the statement expires after one use in a conversation. Of course, statements cannot expire. [ citation needed ]
[Cueball and Megan talking. Cueball has his palm out.] Cueball: Personally, I find atheists just as annoying as fundamentalist Christians. Megan: Well, the important thing is that you've found a way to feel superior to both.
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775 | Savannah Ancestry | Savannah Ancestry | https://www.xkcd.com/775 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/775:_Savannah_Ancestry | [Cueball and Megan are at a blackboard with equations and graphs on it.] Cueball: Look, I'm doing my best, but the fact is your savannah ancestors just didn't prepare you for doing abstract math. Megan: See, that's just the kind of bullshit sexism that discredits evo-psych. Your "evolutionary histories" always seem tuned to produce 1950's gender roles. Cueball: Evolutionary? What? I meant Savannah, Georgia. Megan: ...Hey! Let's leave my mom out of this.
| Savannah ancestry usually means our ancestors in the African savanna , millions of years ago.
Evo-psych means evolutionary psychology .
Cueball is apparently trying to teach Megan something mathematical, feels frustrated at his lack of success, blames that lack of success entirely on his student, and appears to use evolutionary psychology, specifically a popular trope/myth about women being bad at abstract thinking, as an excuse. Evolutionary excuses in this context are trying to lay blame somewhere other than either participant, and so can be seen as comforting, but of course they falsely place all women in an inferior position to all men, at least when it comes to "abstract math". She naturally objects to the excuse, rightly calls it bullshit sexism, and, depending on how you interpret it, may indicate this isn't the first time she's heard him say something similar.
But the twist is that he turns out not to be talking about her lower-case savannah ancestors, the ones in the African savannah of eons ago, but rather of her very recent "Savannah ancestors", better called parents, who live in the city of Savannah, Georgia, USA . They apparently know each other well. The implication is now much more personal: that her mother didn't prepare her. Of course, Randall uses only upper case everywhere, so he has avoided giving the reader a clue about the misdirect-joke he is working toward.
Teasing people about their mothers in the USA, specifically about their mothers' stupidity or fatness, is a common enough theme in popular culture that there is a series of jokes that start with the words "Yo mama" that exemplify the genre. There is also an extremely common theme that the South's education system is failing; the comic combines the two.
The title text is apparently Megan starting to defend her mother, but then lapsing into a Yo Mama joke without the introducing words, showing that her mother is stupid enough to think that a quarterback (one of the positions played in American football) would be a river in Egypt. This is a conflation of the Yo Mama joke "Yo mama so stupid she thinks a quarterback is a refund!" and the common pun, "Denial (sounds like "The Nile") is not just a river in Egypt".
[Cueball and Megan are at a blackboard with equations and graphs on it.] Cueball: Look, I'm doing my best, but the fact is your savannah ancestors just didn't prepare you for doing abstract math. Megan: See, that's just the kind of bullshit sexism that discredits evo-psych. Your "evolutionary histories" always seem tuned to produce 1950's gender roles. Cueball: Evolutionary? What? I meant Savannah, Georgia. Megan: ...Hey! Let's leave my mom out of this.
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776 | Still No Sleep | Still No Sleep | https://www.xkcd.com/776 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/776:_Still_No_Sleep | [Woozy Cueball walks and speaks.] Cueball: The sleep deprivation madness worsens.
[Cueball examines his hands.] Cueball: Things seem unreal. Am I even awake? Maybe I'm dreaming.
[Cueball approaches a tree with a squirrel on it.] Cueball: I'm pretty sure I'm hallucinating this tree.
[Cueball is now in front of the tree, and the squirrel is on the ground. Cueball has his arms open.] Cueball: But what if I'm hallucinating that I'm hallucinating, and I'm actually totally sane? Squirrel: Listen. Squirrel: I wouldn't worry about that.
| Lack of sleep causes hallucinations different from insanity — insane people find it very difficult or impossible to distinguish between a hallucination and reality because the part of their brain that checks for normality in a situation is also broken. Level-1 sleep hallucinations do not make it through this "sanity filter" in a sane human being.
Cueball has been sleep deprived for quite a while now, and he begins questioning his reality. He wonders if he is awake, or he is dreaming. He also wonders whether or not he is hallucinating a tree, then proceeding to question whether his hallucination might be a hallucination, and he might actually be sane. This double negative would not work mainly due to the fact that if you are hallucinating a hallucination, you are still hallucinating, and most likely you are not completely sane. In the end a squirrel comes up to him, and tells him not to worry about the possibility that he might be sane, thereby proving that Cueball is at the very least, hallucinating.
In the title text, Cueball doesn't want to listen to the squirrel because, "what does a SQUIRREL know about mental health?" This is final proof that Cueball is insane, because he cannot distinguish between a hallucination and reality (talking to a squirrel).
[Woozy Cueball walks and speaks.] Cueball: The sleep deprivation madness worsens.
[Cueball examines his hands.] Cueball: Things seem unreal. Am I even awake? Maybe I'm dreaming.
[Cueball approaches a tree with a squirrel on it.] Cueball: I'm pretty sure I'm hallucinating this tree.
[Cueball is now in front of the tree, and the squirrel is on the ground. Cueball has his arms open.] Cueball: But what if I'm hallucinating that I'm hallucinating, and I'm actually totally sane? Squirrel: Listen. Squirrel: I wouldn't worry about that.
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777 | Pore Strips | Pore Strips | https://www.xkcd.com/777 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/777:_Pore_Strips | [A box of pore strips, marked "deep cleaning."]
[Cueball examines the box.]
[Cueball applies strip to face.]
[Cueball pulls on strip.]
[Cueball pulls skull out of head with pore strip.]
| This comic shows a box of "Deep-cleaning pore strips," which are a skin-care product designed to clean your pores. You stick them on your face, wait a while, and then rip them off. When they come off, a whole lot of disgusting gunk, like dirt and body oils, is lifted out of your pores with them. The kind shown in the comic, however, is "deep cleaning", and rips out not only the user's pore gunk, but also his entire skull.
The title text indicates that while Randall is aware that pore-cleaning strips are useless and possibly harmful products created to make money by "solving" something that isn't actually a problem, they are quite effective at getting things out of the pores on a person's nose.
The title text also refers to the cosmetics industry as the "cosmetics-industrial complex", which is a play on the term " military-industrial complex ", coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States.
[A box of pore strips, marked "deep cleaning."]
[Cueball examines the box.]
[Cueball applies strip to face.]
[Cueball pulls on strip.]
[Cueball pulls skull out of head with pore strip.]
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778 | Scheduling | Scheduling | https://www.xkcd.com/778 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/778:_Scheduling | [A pizza delivery guy enters through a door and a maid is dusting.] Pizza guy: Pizza delivery! Did someone order a hot sausag— Maid: Mon dieu! Monsieur is home early— Both: Wait, who are you ?
Pizza guy: Wait, this is the Joneses', right? Their daughter was supposed to be having a party! Maid: No, I thought Mr. Jones was coming home early.
[The pizza guy is off-panel left as a plumber enters from the right.] Pizza guy: But I thought— Plumber: Howdy, Mrs. Jones. I hear you need some plumbi — Who are you?
[The pizza guy looks in a cabinet; the others are off-panel right.] Maid: Sorry, big mixup. Pizza guy: Hey, check it out—the Joneses have Agricola ! Plumber: I love that game!
[Mr. Jones and Mrs. Jones arrive home. The pizza guy, the maid, and the plumber are sitting on the floor playing Agricola.] Mr. Jones: What in the name of... Pizza guy: Dammit, I wanted that grain. Maid: Hush, you have starting player.
| This comic is a take on the common plots of pornographic movies. There are several "stereotypical" setups for porn videos - the suggestive pizza deliveryman ("hot sausage" being a suggestive pun), the French maid who finds out her master is home early and the wife is still away, and the plumber who, while performing routine repairs on a woman's house, becomes enamored with her (while quoting "woman in need of plumbing" as another suggestive pun). In all cases, it is usually a simple plot in order to set up a scenario for the pornography. In this comic, all three of these common stereotypical plots seem to have occurred at once. Realizing that none of their intended targets for sex (ostensibly, members of the Jones family) are at home, and thus they are all in the house alone with nothing to do, one of them grabs a game of Agricola off of the shelf, and they sit down to play, their confusion about this mixing of scenarios forgotten. Then the Joneses come home and are baffled by the assemblage of random professionals playing Agricola on their floor.
Agricola's objective is to build a stable family farm, contrasting with the apparently dysfunctional family in the comic.
In Agricola, one can choose among certain actions with your (very limited) "workers" (Thus it's called a worker placement game). Those actions contain for instance "Take a grain" and "Be starting player (the next round)". Other examples are "Build a fence", "Take a cow", "Plowing" and other farm-related things.
The starting player has the advantage of choosing the first item/resource/action in the next round. Once an item/action/resource is occupied by a player it can't be chosen by another player in that round. The game is easy to learn and hard to master since it needs a lot of planning and anticipating the other player's next moves. As such "scheduling" is a very important part of the game.
In the game shown, it appears that Pizza-guy has used his first move to choose "Starting Player" (for the next round), followed by Maid choosing "Take grain". Pizza-guy had previously planned to take that grain with his second action, which has now been denied by Maid. Essentially Maid is telling Pizza-guy to stop complaining, he made his decision, and too bad that his plan isn't going to work as he'd hoped.
The title text references "family growth", which could be interpreted as a cheesy euphemism for sex (in the porn-movie-plot context) or as a game mechanic for gaining another worker (in the Agricola-game context). The "not until round two" response could be used for either interpretation.
[A pizza delivery guy enters through a door and a maid is dusting.] Pizza guy: Pizza delivery! Did someone order a hot sausag— Maid: Mon dieu! Monsieur is home early— Both: Wait, who are you ?
Pizza guy: Wait, this is the Joneses', right? Their daughter was supposed to be having a party! Maid: No, I thought Mr. Jones was coming home early.
[The pizza guy is off-panel left as a plumber enters from the right.] Pizza guy: But I thought— Plumber: Howdy, Mrs. Jones. I hear you need some plumbi — Who are you?
[The pizza guy looks in a cabinet; the others are off-panel right.] Maid: Sorry, big mixup. Pizza guy: Hey, check it out—the Joneses have Agricola ! Plumber: I love that game!
[Mr. Jones and Mrs. Jones arrive home. The pizza guy, the maid, and the plumber are sitting on the floor playing Agricola.] Mr. Jones: What in the name of... Pizza guy: Dammit, I wanted that grain. Maid: Hush, you have starting player.
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779 | Anxiety | Anxiety | https://www.xkcd.com/779 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/779:_Anxiety | [There is an airport security checkpoint where a queue of ten passengers is waiting to go through a backscatter x-ray scanner. Near the back of the line, Black Hat is standing next to a stand and a sign which says "Viagra $20". One passenger next to him is drinking a glass of water, probably just before taking the pills; another is contemplating the sign.] Security Guard (thinking): Oh god.
| Some people are upset about airport security policies that mandate the use of backscatter X-ray machines, since the machines can create an image of the subject naked. In protest, the travellers in the lineup (or at least the male ones) are taking Viagra , sold to them by Black Hat ; there is a heteronormative expectation that the male security guard will be disgusted at being forced to look at erect penises. (An expectation which is supported by the guard's thought bubble of 'Oh god', which could either be in response to seeing what Black Hat is doing or in response to an unseen person, presumably sporting such an erection, already in the scanner.)
Given Black Hat's personality, it is unlikely he himself is doing this in protest; rather he is monetizing the opportunity, a supposition reinforced by the inflated price ($20 for a single dose) at which he is selling the medication.
An alternate interpretation is that many men feel self-conscious (or anxious, as the name puts it) about their size when flaccid, [ citation needed ] and thus might wish to "put their best foot forward" and look their best, as it were.
Realistically, given the size of the line, there would be insufficient time between consuming the pills and entering the scanner for them to take effect.
In the title text, one of the people in the line explains he has a fetish with being X-ray scanned, and thus doesn't need Viagra to achieve the above effect.
[There is an airport security checkpoint where a queue of ten passengers is waiting to go through a backscatter x-ray scanner. Near the back of the line, Black Hat is standing next to a stand and a sign which says "Viagra $20". One passenger next to him is drinking a glass of water, probably just before taking the pills; another is contemplating the sign.] Security Guard (thinking): Oh god.
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780 | Sample | Sample | https://www.xkcd.com/780 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/780:_Sample | [Caption above the panel:] How to become the most hat ed band in the wo rld: Record an album that's nothing but brilliant, catchy instant classics guaranteed popularity and airtime, [Cueball is at the steering wheel of a car.] Music: So far from hooome but I can't sto— HONK Cueball: AUGH! WHAT? [Caption below the panel:] with a sample of a car horn, cell phone, or alarm clock inserted randomly in each song.
| This strip suggests that even a band with the most brilliant and catchy music would soon become the most hated band in the world if it included sound effects of car horns, cell phones, or alarm clocks in its songs. Listeners would most likely mistake the sound effects for the real thing, which could cause havoc.
For comparison, " Indiana Wants Me ", a 1970 hit single by R. Dean Taylor , had the sound of police sirens removed from later pressings because drivers were reportedly mistaking the sound effects for actual police cars and pulling over.
This can also be a reference to an unusual anti-piracy method, where P2P and Torrent networks are seeded with altered copies of songs that contain obnoxious sounds at random points.
The title text refers to the common sensation of having sounds from the real-world incorporated into a dream, especially as one is waking up. This gives a (false) sensation that is the reverse of the dream described in 557: Students . It implies that the author has been dreaming his entire life since his junior year of high school, which is obviously not true. [ citation needed ]
[Caption above the panel:] How to become the most hat ed band in the wo rld: Record an album that's nothing but brilliant, catchy instant classics guaranteed popularity and airtime, [Cueball is at the steering wheel of a car.] Music: So far from hooome but I can't sto— HONK Cueball: AUGH! WHAT? [Caption below the panel:] with a sample of a car horn, cell phone, or alarm clock inserted randomly in each song.
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781 | Ahead Stop | Ahead Stop | https://www.xkcd.com/781 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/781:_Ahead_Stop | [Words are painted in white on a black road with green grass on each side and a gray sidewalk along the road to the left with a single flagstone going of from the sidewalk and out of the frame to the left. The words get smaller towards the top due to the perspective.] BACKWARD. I READ THINK ENGINEERS HIGHWAY
| This comic refers to how, in some countries including the US, words or instructions written on the highway are always backwards from how you would read them. It seems that the "highway" engineers write the words as if you would read them as your car goes over them. Sometimes this approach works, other times (probably most of the time) it is terribly confusing. The sentence on the comic is: Highway Engineers Think I Read Backward. Adding the period is a perfectly hilarious touch, as there are probably not too many periods on the highways.
The title text is referring to how the words of the opening sequence of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (released in 1977) move from the bottom of the screen to the top so that it can be read by a normal human being. However, the image text says the engineers initially reversed the text because people were driving BACKWARDS down the highway trying to re-enact the opening sequence, so they started reversing the word order to get people to drive the "correct" direction.
The title of the comic ("Ahead Stop") is also a reference to this phenomenon because the common "Stop Ahead" instruction would be written on the highway as "Ahead" and then "Stop".
This could also be a reference to Top-posting in email threads and online discussion forums, as summarized in the following comedic signature line:
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
[Words are painted in white on a black road with green grass on each side and a gray sidewalk along the road to the left with a single flagstone going of from the sidewalk and out of the frame to the left. The words get smaller towards the top due to the perspective.] BACKWARD. I READ THINK ENGINEERS HIGHWAY
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782 | Desecration | Desecration | https://www.xkcd.com/782 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/782:_Desecration | [Megan is running towards Rob.] Megan: Rob! Rob! Rob: You look terrified! What's wrong? Megan: We've made a huge mistake!
[In a frame-less panel Megan holds her hands up in an explaining gesture in front of Rob.] Megan: Remember last week when we dug up all those Indian bones and made puppets out of them? Rob: Sure...
[Megan is throwing her arms out to the sides while Rob holds both hands to his mouth.] Megan: It turns out they were buried over an ancient Indian burial ground! Rob: Oh my God!
| Megan and Rob are horrified to discover that the bones they had dug up and turned into puppets were actually buried over an ancient Indian or presumably Native American 's burial ground. The joke is that they weren't concerned about repercussions from the Indian bones themselves, but since they were OVER an Indian burial ground that they're just as haunted or cursed, as houses built on such grounds usually are in Hollywood tropes and other fiction. They didn't consider it desecrating something holy, as per the title, until they discovered this fact. The humor comes from the fact that "digging up Indian bones" obviously makes it already an Indian Burial Ground itself, but apparently it didn't occur to Megan until after she and Rob knowingly desecrated a site at which Indians had been buried that they discovered that it was over another Indian Burial Ground, which is a common site of mystery and negative supernatural occurrences in horror films, etc. Such stories usually involve a building built on top of (over) the burial ground becoming haunted, which is why Megan uses the phrase above.
A common trope in horror fiction is that anyone defiling an ancient Indian burial ground will have a horrible curse cast upon them. Another common trope is having a curse cast upon oneself by a gypsy or voodoo woman, or a wizened wizard or monk as mentioned in the title text.
Megan and Rob seem to be unknowingly, and stupidly, angering every supernatural being and force in their entire town, thus setting themselves up for at least a dozen potential horror plots at the same time.
A common complaint about many horror stories is that the protagonists are flat out stupid in order to make the plot and horror work. This comic deliberately targets and makes fun of this, mocking the obliviousness that many stock horror characters show as to getting themselves into trouble with supernatural forces.
[Megan is running towards Rob.] Megan: Rob! Rob! Rob: You look terrified! What's wrong? Megan: We've made a huge mistake!
[In a frame-less panel Megan holds her hands up in an explaining gesture in front of Rob.] Megan: Remember last week when we dug up all those Indian bones and made puppets out of them? Rob: Sure...
[Megan is throwing her arms out to the sides while Rob holds both hands to his mouth.] Megan: It turns out they were buried over an ancient Indian burial ground! Rob: Oh my God!
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783 | I Don't Want Directions | I Don't Want Directions | https://www.xkcd.com/783 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/783:_I_Don%27t_Want_Directions | [Cueball on phone.] Cueball: Looking forward to seeing your new place! What's the address? Cueball: Mm hmm. Yes, I'm taking 495, but I have a GPS, so I really just need the street address.
[Close up.] Cueball: ...then south on 18, okay, but I have a GPS, so if you just want to skip to the street address, I can...
[Full body shot, facing other direction.] Cueball: Thanks, I'm glad to know Highland Road comes a mile after the big intersection, but I keep saying I have a GPS , can you tell me the street address? Cueball: ... Cueball: Technically that's just more information on how to get to your place, not the address itself. If you could-
[Close up again, Cueball writing on pad.] Cueball: ...I appreciate that you want to help, but I'm ignoring you and just waiting for the... Cueball: Listen, I just remembered I need to mail you a letter. What's your address? Cueball: Mhm... okay... Cueball: Great, thanks! I'll see you in an hour!
| Cueball wants to use his GPS device to find an individual's house, and therefore needs the house's address. The person on the phone is giving him directions, something that is useless because by giving Cueball the address, the GPS can give directions to the address, possibly better than the ones he is getting over the phone. Cueball then decides to tell the person that he would like to mail something to their house, hoping they will give him the address, because you must have the address to mail something. [ citation needed ]
The title text is a continuation of the comic's joke. By the end of the comic, Cueball has got the information he needs, and has just ignored the directions he did not want. However, if the person on the phone insists on checking Cueball has remembered the directions correctly, Cueball has to be able to learn the useless information he did not want in the first place, and has been mostly ignoring, at least well enough to repeat it once.
Judging by the roads mentioned in the comic (Highland Rd and presumably I-495 and MA-18 ), the person on the phone lives somewhere around southern Lakeville, Massachusetts , and Cueball is starting from the Boston area.
[Cueball on phone.] Cueball: Looking forward to seeing your new place! What's the address? Cueball: Mm hmm. Yes, I'm taking 495, but I have a GPS, so I really just need the street address.
[Close up.] Cueball: ...then south on 18, okay, but I have a GPS, so if you just want to skip to the street address, I can...
[Full body shot, facing other direction.] Cueball: Thanks, I'm glad to know Highland Road comes a mile after the big intersection, but I keep saying I have a GPS , can you tell me the street address? Cueball: ... Cueball: Technically that's just more information on how to get to your place, not the address itself. If you could-
[Close up again, Cueball writing on pad.] Cueball: ...I appreciate that you want to help, but I'm ignoring you and just waiting for the... Cueball: Listen, I just remembered I need to mail you a letter. What's your address? Cueball: Mhm... okay... Cueball: Great, thanks! I'll see you in an hour!
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784 | Falling Asleep | Falling Asleep | https://www.xkcd.com/784 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/784:_Falling_Asleep | [Cueball gets into bed.] It's so much easier falling asleep
[Megan is lying in bed, gripping her pillow.] With you beside me—
[Cueball is lying on his back in bed.] All the incentive I need
[Full shot of the bed, Megan is on the left, gripping the pillow, Cueball is as far to the right as possible, nearly falling off, facing away from her.] To leave the world behind.
| The first few panels of this strip seem romantic and sentimental, as it's common to hear that people sleep better next to people they love. The last panel reveals that Cueball and Megan are actually going through some relationship trouble, because Cueball uses her presence as a good reason for leaving this world behind. He does, however, not intend to commit suicide to escape from her and the world; he just wishes to escape by falling asleep (either that, or it's a double-meaning joke based on the fact that he's about to fall out of the bed).
As the title text reveals, he also wishes to avoid her in his dreams, as he wishes their dreams do not intersect - i.e. he hopes he will not dream of her (and vice versa). The opposite of "I'll see you in my dreams".
The cartoon seems to be a homage to the webcomic a softer world , which takes the same format.
[Cueball gets into bed.] It's so much easier falling asleep
[Megan is lying in bed, gripping her pillow.] With you beside me—
[Cueball is lying on his back in bed.] All the incentive I need
[Full shot of the bed, Megan is on the left, gripping the pillow, Cueball is as far to the right as possible, nearly falling off, facing away from her.] To leave the world behind.
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785 | Open Mic Night | Open Mic Night | https://www.xkcd.com/785 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/785:_Open_Mic_Night | [Megan on stage, holding microphone, hip-hop stance.] Megan: Yo, I'm M.C. Aphasia and I'm here to say that, I... Uh... Megan: ...Um... Megan: ...Hi?
[Black Hat on stage, holding microphone.] Black Hat: So I... oh? Does she? Well, when yo mama sits around the house, she finds herself wishing she'd finished her degree instead of having kids right away, maybe started that business. Then she might have created something she's proud of.
[Cueball on stage, holding microphone, fist pumping toward audience.] Cueball: Yo, I'm M.C. Quine and I'm here to say, "Yo, I'm M.C. Quine and I'm here to say!"
[Beret Guy on stage, holding microphone.] Beret Guy: Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in hordes ten thousand strong, clad all in sable armor and bristling with swords and spears? Audience member (off-screen): Those are orcs. Beret Guy: Oh.
| The comic depicts four acts at an open mic night , where performances typically include comedy, poetry, music and other similar performance arts.
Megan confidently introduces herself as M.C. Aphasia, and starts to talk to the audience. Midway through her sentence however, she appears unable to continue to talk, ending with a sheepish "Hi?". Aphasia is a language disorder, symptomized by disturbance in formulation and comprehension of language. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write. M. C. stands for Master of Ceremonies - in the context of hip-hop performance, it means a rapper. Because a rapper's delivery depends on the ability to deliver lyrics fluently at high speed, aphasia would render an MC unable to perform.
The second panel shows Black Hat on the stage, just after a heckler in the audience fired a 'Yo Mama' joke at Black Hat (probably "when yo mama sits around the house, she sits around the house"). A heckler's aim is usually to put the performer off of their routine, and appear funny themselves. Responses from the performer vary from simply ignoring the heckler to replying with a witty put down to get the audience back on the comedian's side and dissuade the heckler from continuing. Rather than a short witty over-the-top reply in the typical style of Yo Mama jokes, Black Hat's response is a dark, detailed, realistic insult, implying that the heckler's mother is a failure and isn't proud of the heckler.
The third panel is a reference to the Quine paradox , whereby a sentence repeated twice in succession proves to be paradoxical. For example:
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.
The sentence is another way of saying "this statement is false" but without the explicit self-reference. Named after the paradox, a quine is also a computer program which outputs its own source code.
The first sentence uses the word "say" in the normal way, as a transitive verb, with the second sentence in quotation marks as its object. The second sentence has the same words as the first, but now the word "say" is used as an intransitive verb: a non-standard usage approximately meaning "speak impressively".
In the fourth panel, Beret Guy 's speech begins as if with the common observation, "Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in groups", but somehow gets derailed through the use of the word hordes instead of groups, and a confusion between women and orcs. When an audience member (or heckler) points this out, Beret Guy's response shows that his observations weren't intended as comedy in the first place.
The title text continues the riff on different kinds of stand-up comedians, commonly referred to as comics. Observational humor is a joke that presents a typical real-life situation humorously, often with a touch of exaggeration. The title text is likely referring to stand-up comedians, like Jerry Seinfeld , who use observational humor. When an observational comic becomes more successful, they will probably "go on tour" resulting in a great deal of travel. This gives them lots of experience with airplanes and hotels, and more jokes about them will show up in the routine. Furthermore, the title text is itself an observational joke.
[Megan on stage, holding microphone, hip-hop stance.] Megan: Yo, I'm M.C. Aphasia and I'm here to say that, I... Uh... Megan: ...Um... Megan: ...Hi?
[Black Hat on stage, holding microphone.] Black Hat: So I... oh? Does she? Well, when yo mama sits around the house, she finds herself wishing she'd finished her degree instead of having kids right away, maybe started that business. Then she might have created something she's proud of.
[Cueball on stage, holding microphone, fist pumping toward audience.] Cueball: Yo, I'm M.C. Quine and I'm here to say, "Yo, I'm M.C. Quine and I'm here to say!"
[Beret Guy on stage, holding microphone.] Beret Guy: Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in hordes ten thousand strong, clad all in sable armor and bristling with swords and spears? Audience member (off-screen): Those are orcs. Beret Guy: Oh.
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786 | Exoplanets | Exoplanets | https://www.xkcd.com/786 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/786:_Exoplanets | [Beret Guy runs into a bedroom arms up calling to someone who is in the bed under the covers. Only part of the bed is visible. The person under the covers speaks. Later part of his face can be seen, and it could be Cueball.] Beret guy: Wake up! Wake up! Cueball (under the cover): What is it?
[Beret Guy stands with his arms out talking to Cueball hiding under the covers of the bed now completely inside the panel.] Beret guy: We're alive during the time when they're first discovering other planetary systems! They're finding them as fast as they can build new instruments to look for them!
[In this frame-less panel only Beret Guy is shown standing with one arm out and one arm up looking left away from the off-panel bed.] Beret Guy: And if one of Earth's cultures advances its space program enough to start enriching uranium on asteroids, we'll lose the main barrier to restarting Project Orion and building nuke-riding city-ships!
[Beret Guy bends down, hands on his knees, to eye level with Cueball in the bed, who is finally peaking out from the covers, only showing part of his face (so it could be any character, as any hair could be hidden and the hat could be on the bed stand).] Beret Guy: The only known technology capable of fast interstellar travel could be operational within just a few generations, and we're discovering all these destinations to pick from! Beret Guy: Come on! Cueball: Can I hit "snooze"? Beret Guy: Okay, but just once!
| Beret Guy runs to wake up Cueball , who is probably under the covers in bed, with his potentially middle of the night revelation that Humankind is discovering " exoplanets " or planets that exist outside of our solar system. The indication is that these planets are habitable enough for humans, even if just for a visit.
Then Beret Guy takes it a bit further thinking that one of the countries on Earth could restart Project Orion . As Beret suggests, Project Orion was an early project to come up with a spacecraft that would ride the shockwave from a series of nuclear bombs it dropped in order to travel very, very fast. However, the one major downside of Project Orion was the fallout that the launching of any such craft would present on Earth. One could try to boost the Orion spacecraft into orbit with conventional rockets, but Orion spacecraft are heavy — being composed of giant pusher plates and rows upon rows of nuclear bombs, they are hard to lift. On top of this, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty means that the craft would be flatly illegal to build and launch on Earth, no matter what you did. However, if an asteroid mining project were to be started, the Orion drive spacecraft, the nuclear bombs, and all the infrastructure needed to man, build, and crew it could all be built safely in space, well away from the Earth's fragile biosphere, where little harm could be done. Some commercial spaceflight programs are interested in starting asteroid mining in the future, or even now: For example, see: https://www.planetaryresources.com .
In summary, Beret is very excited that we can see (with the Hubble telescope and other earth-bound telescopes) and find exoplanets. Then with some advances in space technology we can create nuclear propulsion in space to reach these planets, and it will all be happening quite possibly within a few decades. He is thus worried that Cueball will miss all of this ongoing excitement.
Cueball would just rather snooze, as he is not impressed. Beret Guy gives him only one snooze because as is apparent in the title text he is afraid that Cueball will be be left behind if he snoozes too long! Giving the fact that he just stated that it may take hundreds of years this is of course silly, but fits well with Beret Guy's behavior.
Exoplanets have been discovered starting in 1996, but there are still only a few confirmed planet candidates in the habitable zone at a distant star. This did change fast after that time since new ways of finding planets are created — see 1071: Exoplanets , which was posted with the same title. At that point, there were exactly 786 Exoplanets confirmed — the number of this comic - probably not a coincidence when it comes to Randall .
Part of the humor of this particular strip is that Beret Guy seems to have a sense of urgency and immediacy about something that is actually occurring at a snail's pace over decades, where Cueball finishing sleeping, or hitting snooze twice, couldn't possibly make one crystalline erg of difference.
1624: 2016 is similar to this comic in that in each case, one character wakes up another character in order to inform that character about an event that is neither immediately relevant to that character nor short/urgent enough that that character could miss it if he slept until the morning.
[Beret Guy runs into a bedroom arms up calling to someone who is in the bed under the covers. Only part of the bed is visible. The person under the covers speaks. Later part of his face can be seen, and it could be Cueball.] Beret guy: Wake up! Wake up! Cueball (under the cover): What is it?
[Beret Guy stands with his arms out talking to Cueball hiding under the covers of the bed now completely inside the panel.] Beret guy: We're alive during the time when they're first discovering other planetary systems! They're finding them as fast as they can build new instruments to look for them!
[In this frame-less panel only Beret Guy is shown standing with one arm out and one arm up looking left away from the off-panel bed.] Beret Guy: And if one of Earth's cultures advances its space program enough to start enriching uranium on asteroids, we'll lose the main barrier to restarting Project Orion and building nuke-riding city-ships!
[Beret Guy bends down, hands on his knees, to eye level with Cueball in the bed, who is finally peaking out from the covers, only showing part of his face (so it could be any character, as any hair could be hidden and the hat could be on the bed stand).] Beret Guy: The only known technology capable of fast interstellar travel could be operational within just a few generations, and we're discovering all these destinations to pick from! Beret Guy: Come on! Cueball: Can I hit "snooze"? Beret Guy: Okay, but just once!
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787 | Orbiter | Orbiter | https://www.xkcd.com/787 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/787:_Orbiter | Cueball: Okay, people. The orbiter is passing south of Iceland. The next scheduled check-in will be at 32.0N 35.5E, over the Palestinian territories. Off-screen character: You mean over the state of Palestine? Frank (off-screen): You mean over Israel? [Frameless beat panel.] Cueball: I've rescheduled the check-in for 35.2N 96.6W, over Oklahoma. Frank (off-screen): You mean occupied North Texas? Cueball: Dammit, Frank.
| This comic is about disputed territories and low Earth orbits .
In the early days of manned spaceflight and also the Space Shuttle the communication to the mission control center in Houston required many ground stations all around the Earth. Each station could provide a link for only a few minutes and there were still gaps between them. After 1989/90, when the geostationary TDRS system became fully operational, these ground stations became obsolete.
In this comic Cueball , the main controller at mission control, is planning the next check-in with the Space Shuttle (also called orbiter), which is set to occur at 32.0N 35.5E , approx 20 miles north-east of Jerusalem, over the hotly contested Israeli-Palestinian territories . Frank and the other off-screen character start to dispute the ownership of this geographical location, and rather than becoming involved in an argument, Cueball decides to change the check-in location to 35.2N 96.6W , approximately 50 miles east of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which he considers to be a neutral, non-disputed location. Unfortunately, Frank is being a dick, and he then starts to make the claim that part of Oklahoma in fact should belong to Texas .
In the title text Randall incorrectly states that the orbiter would require a different orbit to reach both Palestine and Oklahoma, which cannot be achieved from a launch at Cape Canaveral . Thus, Randall proposes that the comic exists in an alternate history in which the Space Shuttles launch from Vandenberg . This is a reference to the plans to launch shuttles from there before the Challenger accident occurred. After Challenger was lost, the Vandenberg missions were scrapped and Cape Canaveral became the sole launch site for the Space Shuttle. Another possibility in this alternate history is that the rules forbidding orbital launches from Cape Canaveral to a northern direction don't exist, because nobody likes the Outer Banks (which would be in the flight path) and thus don't care about space debris falling on them.
Randall's incorrectness was discussed in many forums and probably based on the wrong assumption that the inclination cannot be higher than the latitude of the launch site (28° at Cape Canaveral). But this is only the optimal inclination, actually all shuttle launches to the Mir station and the International Space Station did reach an inclination of 51.6°, with the cost of some payload mass. And following the ISS at Heavens above when it moves over Israel to the south it will pass over Texas approximately an hour later. Nevertheless this orbit is not possible at the first orbit after a launch in Cape Canaveral.
The title text doesn't mention the region south of Iceland from the beginning of the comic. This is roughly at 64° North or less (if more south) and the distance from the highest possible orbital inclination of 57° from the Cape is 780 km. But even 1,000 km south of Iceland is only the Atlantic Ocean and the nearest landmass is still Iceland, which could explain this vague location.
Cueball: Okay, people. The orbiter is passing south of Iceland. The next scheduled check-in will be at 32.0N 35.5E, over the Palestinian territories. Off-screen character: You mean over the state of Palestine? Frank (off-screen): You mean over Israel? [Frameless beat panel.] Cueball: I've rescheduled the check-in for 35.2N 96.6W, over Oklahoma. Frank (off-screen): You mean occupied North Texas? Cueball: Dammit, Frank.
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788 | The Carriage | The Carriage | https://www.xkcd.com/788 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/788:_The_Carriage | [Death with his scythe is driving a horse-drawn carriage. The text is written in two frames above and below the carriage:] Because I could not stop for death He kindly stopped for me
[Hairbun grabs Death by the arm and pulls him off the carriage. There is a circle with the letter Y in the lower left corner. The text above the carriage is in a frame.] The carriage held but just oursel- Death: Hey! Hands holding Death: Grab Circle: Y
[Hairbun takes off in the carriage with the scythe, leaving Death behind on the ground in the dust from the carriage taking off.] Hairbun: Hyah!
[Hairbun stands with her arms crossed, and Death's scythe next to her. The first text above her is printed as the official logo and the text below is in a type of square brackets.] Grand Theft Auto Emily Dickinson Edition
| Emily Dickinson is a famous American poet, who wrote a poem called " Death ", about the personification of Death kindly stopping for her to pick her up.
Grand Theft Auto is a well known video game series where players commonly steal cars by grabbing the driver and throwing them out of the vehicle. In the lower left corner of the second panel, there is a picture of the Y-button used to enter (and steal) vehicles in the Xbox versions of the game.
The proposed Emily Dickinson edition of Grand Theft Auto mashes up these two concepts. When Death stops to pick up the protagonist ( Hairbun , possibly representing Dickinson herself), she violently carriage-jacks him and takes over his carriage to use for her own purposes.
The title text refers to this strip from the webcomic Achewood where it is pointed out that poems written in ballad metre can be sung to the same tune as the theme song of Gilligan's Island , a 1960s sitcom. Upon learning this it can (as it seemingly has for Randall) become difficult to read Dickinson's poem without singing it.
[Death with his scythe is driving a horse-drawn carriage. The text is written in two frames above and below the carriage:] Because I could not stop for death He kindly stopped for me
[Hairbun grabs Death by the arm and pulls him off the carriage. There is a circle with the letter Y in the lower left corner. The text above the carriage is in a frame.] The carriage held but just oursel- Death: Hey! Hands holding Death: Grab Circle: Y
[Hairbun takes off in the carriage with the scythe, leaving Death behind on the ground in the dust from the carriage taking off.] Hairbun: Hyah!
[Hairbun stands with her arms crossed, and Death's scythe next to her. The first text above her is printed as the official logo and the text below is in a type of square brackets.] Grand Theft Auto Emily Dickinson Edition
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789 | Showdown | Showdown | https://www.xkcd.com/789 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/789:_Showdown | [Two cowboys face off silently in the desert, the blazing sun beating down.]
[They exchange steely glares, hands poised to reach their guns, as a tumbleweed rolls into frame.] TUMBLE
[Close-up on the tumbleweed. It draws two guns.] CLICK CLICK
[The tumbleweed shoots both cowboys simultaneously, and they fall backwards.] BLAM BLAM
| Shootouts were common in many old Western films, most famously in spaghetti Westerns . Commonly, to accentuate the silence and dreariness of the scene before the fight, a tumbleweed would roll past the fighters. In this comic, the two gunmen, as per the cliche, stand quietly. The tumbleweed then rolls past, and pulls a pair of revolvers. It then shoots both of the gunfighters simultaneously, winning the duel. This is somewhat unusual. [ citation needed ]
The title text refers to a common trope in Westerns to have the hero (or in this case, the tumbleweed) ride (roll) into the sunset at the conclusion of the film. However, given that prevailing winds go from West to East, that means that the tumbleweed would be unable to tumble into the sunset, thus meaning it cannot reenact this trope no matter how hard it tries.
[Two cowboys face off silently in the desert, the blazing sun beating down.]
[They exchange steely glares, hands poised to reach their guns, as a tumbleweed rolls into frame.] TUMBLE
[Close-up on the tumbleweed. It draws two guns.] CLICK CLICK
[The tumbleweed shoots both cowboys simultaneously, and they fall backwards.] BLAM BLAM
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790 | Control | Control | https://www.xkcd.com/790 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/790:_Control | [Caption above the frame:] My Hobby:
[Cueball looks down at his arm calmly, while next to him Megan is violently flailing around in terror. In the foreground a Cueball-like guy stands next to Ponytail who is holding a clipboard. They look on in puzzlement.] Cueball: My rash seems to have shrunk by about 20% today. Megan: OH GOD SPIDERS Cueball-like guy: ? ? Ponytail: ?
[Caption below the frame:] Sneaking into experiments and giving LSD to the control group.
| This is another in the My Hobby series. In a product experiment, two groups of people are given a certain pill or lotion. Some people are given the product to be tested, while others (the control group) are given a placebo; nobody is told which group they belong to. The control group acts as a norm for comparison against the others.
Randall has messed with this process by giving LSD ( lysergic acid diethylamide ) to the control group. LSD is a drug that causes hallucinations and distortions in the perception of time and space. Megan , apparently a control, is experiencing spiders in her hallucinations. Since the control group is supposed to reflect what "normally" happens, this is indeed very confusing to the scientists. While hallucinating in the comic Megan is drawn as if she has 8 limbs showing that she's waving her arms. Alternatively, although not especially likely, this could signify that she actually has grown four extra arms - which would be very confusing even if the scientists knew about the LSD. [ citation needed ]
However, given the scientists are confused, this means that they must know which person is in which group. This implies that the trial isn't double-blinded, which in and of itself would impact the veracity of the study. In a properly double-blinded study, the scientists would not know Cueball or Megan was the control and would only dutifully record their observations. (Alternatively, this is simply an unexpected result for either group.)
The title text suggests that, in a different study, this substitution was performed when the product being tested was itself LSD. This led to the conclusion that LSD is no more likely to cause hallucinations than a placebo, somehow implying that LSD is not a hallucinogen. We can only hope they were able to redo the test, as in layman's terms "Nonsense MUST be wrong". If this were true, this would imply that Randall would only have needed to sneak placebo LSD into the studies to get the same effect.
[Caption above the frame:] My Hobby:
[Cueball looks down at his arm calmly, while next to him Megan is violently flailing around in terror. In the foreground a Cueball-like guy stands next to Ponytail who is holding a clipboard. They look on in puzzlement.] Cueball: My rash seems to have shrunk by about 20% today. Megan: OH GOD SPIDERS Cueball-like guy: ? ? Ponytail: ?
[Caption below the frame:] Sneaking into experiments and giving LSD to the control group.
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791 | Leaving | Leaving | https://www.xkcd.com/791 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/791:_Leaving | [Cueball looks down at a puddle on the floor and speaks to someone out-of-panel.] Cueball: Hey, while you're out, can you pick up some spray cleaner that works on cat vomit? Voice: Can do! Voice: Bye!
[Cueball extends his arm and faces the leaving person.] Cueball: ...Wait! Voice: Yes? Cueball: Uh. ...You are in my heart always. Voice: ...?
Sometimes, when people leave, I'm seized by a sudden fear that they'll die while they're out, and I'll never forget the last thing I said to them.
| The caption below the frame tells us that Cueball is afraid that if someone were to die unexpectedly, then he is afraid that he will not be able to forget the last thing he said to that person. In the comic panel, Cueball has observed a mess on the floor, presumably cat vomit. He asks the second, off panel, character who is leaving to "pick up some spray cleaner that works on cat vomit." Cueball suddenly realizes that should the off-panel character die on that errand that this would be the last thing he said to them. Panicking slightly, Cueball interrupts their departure and says something more appropriate as last words - "You are in my heart always." The off-panel character is confused by this statement, not being aware of Cueball's fear.
In the title text, Cueball is realizing that if he hadn't have made this last-minute addition, and this person dies, his last memory of them might instead be that he was staring at cat vomit when he heard. This thought might in fact be the thought that prompted him to make his parting comment.
[Cueball looks down at a puddle on the floor and speaks to someone out-of-panel.] Cueball: Hey, while you're out, can you pick up some spray cleaner that works on cat vomit? Voice: Can do! Voice: Bye!
[Cueball extends his arm and faces the leaving person.] Cueball: ...Wait! Voice: Yes? Cueball: Uh. ...You are in my heart always. Voice: ...?
Sometimes, when people leave, I'm seized by a sudden fear that they'll die while they're out, and I'll never forget the last thing I said to them.
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792 | Password Reuse | Password Reuse | https://www.xkcd.com/792 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/792:_Password_Reuse | [Black Hat is standing to the left behind Cueball, who is sitting in an office chair at his desk working on his computer. A message from the computer is indicated with a zigzag line from the screen.] Black Hat: Password entropy is rarely relevant. The real modern danger is password reuse. Cueball: How so? Computer: Password too weak
[Zoom in on Black Hat's upper part as he holds a hand up with the palm up.] Black Hat: Set up a Web service to do something simple, like image hosting or tweet syndication, so a few million people set up free accounts.
[Zoom out to Black Hat standing in front of Cueball who has turned in the chair facing Black Hat, the desk is not shown in the panel.] Black Hat: Bam, you've got a few million emails, default usernames, and passwords.
[Only Black Hat is shown as he holds out his arms.] Black Hat: Tons of people use one password, strong or not, for most accounts.
[The next panel is only half the height of the other panels. Above the panel is the text that Black Hat narrates. In the left part of the panel, there is a piece of paper that seems to have been torn off at the bottom resulting in a jagged edge, which could also indicate that it continues further down than shown. On the paper, there are three labeled columns, and below each of them about 18 lines of unreadable sentences (mostly just one word). The @ in the e-mail addresses may be indicated with a larger unreadable sign. To the right a broad line goes right from the paper and splits up in five lines that go up or down ending in five arrows to the right, pointing at five labels.] Black Hat (narrating): Use the list and some proxies to try automated logins to the 20 or 30 most popular sites, plus banks and PayPal and such. Labels on paper: Email User Pass Labels at arrows: Banks Facebook Gmail PayPal Twitter
[Same setting as panel 3 but Cueball has taken a hand to his chin.] Black Hat: You've now got a few hundred thousand real identities on a few dozen services, and nobody suspects a thing. Cueball: And then what?
[Same setting in a larger panel with more white space to the left, Cueball has his hand down again.] Black Hat: Well, that's where I got stuck. Cueball: You did this? Black Hat: Why do you think I hosted so many unprofitable web services?
[Zoom in on Black Hat's head now turned towards left.] Black Hat: I could probably net in a lot of money, one way or another, if I did things carefully. But research shows more money doesn't make people happier, once they make enough to avoid day-to-day financial stress.
[Zooming a bit out, but still only showing Black Hat's head in the bottom right corner, again facing right.] Black Hat: I could mess with people endlessly, but I do that already. I could get a political or religious idea out to most of the world, but since March of 1997 I don't really believe in anything.
[This panel is the last in this row, but it does not reach the end of the row above, an indication that this does not directly belong to the panels below. The same setting as panel 3 but Black Hat has his arms out.] Black Hat: So, here I sit, a puppetmaster who wants nothing from his puppets. Black Hat: It's the same problem Google has. Cueball: Oh?
[This panel is the first in the last row. It does not begin to the left, but has been shifted a bit to the right, just as the last panel above to the right, ended before reaching the right edge of the row above (and this one below). This is to indicate that this is row has a different story. A Cueball-like executive at Google is standing up leaning his arms on a table with Google's logo on the side. His office chair has been pushed to the left behind him and it is partly off-panel. He addresses the other executives at the table, two of which are shown. The first is Hairbun with glasses holding her head with both hands, elbows resting on the table. The other executive is also a Cueball-like guy, his head is partly outside the right edge of the panel. At the top of the panel to the left, there is a small frame breaking the panel's frame, inside which is a caption:] Google... Cueball executive: Okay, everyone, we control the world's information. Now it's time to turn evil. What's the plan? Hairbun: Make boatloads of money? Table: Google
[Only the Cueball-like executive standing at the end of the table is shown, the table is left out. He is face-palming. One of the executives at the table is speaking off-panel. Could be either of the two above or someone not shown before] Cueball executive: We already do! Executive (off-panel): Set up a companywide CoD4: Modern Warfare tournament each week? Cueball executive: That's not evil! Executive (off-panel): Ooh, Dibs on the lobby TV! Cueball executive: Okay, we suck at this.
| This comic has three layers: hacking, philosophy, and Google satire.
It starts off on a practical level, with Black Hat describing to Cueball a devious social engineering scheme. It relies on the fact that people commonly reuse the same password on multiple websites, and tend to create accounts on new websites somewhat indiscriminately. Thus, one could create a simple Web service to collect users' usernames, email addresses, and passwords. Since many users will reuse this combination on other websites as well, the website owner can try to hack their accounts on other common sites, such as Amazon , PayPal or even people's banks, using the same login information.
In panel 7, the comic suddenly develops a philosophical and ethical bent. Black Hat reveals that he has already carried out step 1, through his numerous unprofitable Web services which he had been running for this very purpose. However, after successfully executing the hack, he realizes that he does not know what to do with all this power.
He reveals that he is already financially self-sufficient, and makes a point that money can't buy happiness once past that point, stating that research has proven this. He could use his power to realize his sadistic pleasures of messing with people, but he's already a serial classhole and does not need this information to continue that trend.
If he had any beliefs or ideology, he could use this power to try to spread them. However, he reveals that "since March of 1997 " he doesn't really believe in anything. While he doesn't reveal specifically what in March of 1997 caused this, it could possibly refer to the March 26, 1997 incident in San Diego, California, where 39 Heaven's Gate cultists committed mass suicide at their compound. One of the cultists was the brother of Nichelle Nichols (a Star Trek actress), so the event got a big resonance in nerd circles (and Randall often references Star Trek in xkcd). However, given Black Hat's strange behavior, it could be anything, from Bill Clinton banning federal funding for human cloning research on the fourth, to the launch of Teletubbies on the thirty first. Later, in 1717: Pyramid Honey , Black Hat seems to finally find something to believe in.
The dilemma: Black Hat has cleverly executed a hack that has given him a lot of power, but he doesn't know what to do with it.
The last part of the comic now transitions to a satire on how Google has already gone through both the stages described above. It describes how all of Google's free services are simply a ploy to collect and control all the world's information, similar in concept but grander than the hack described in part 1. It satirizes the notion that behind Google's "Don't be evil" motto is actually an end-goal of using their powers eventually for evil. (Google has since removed the motto from their code of conduct, so maybe Randall's on to something...)
However, just like Black Hat, once Google reaches the stage where they are able to capitalize on their powers, the Cueball-like head-executive finds that there is nothing evil left for them to desire, except (as Hairbun states) make even more money. As they already make a lot of money this ploy is moot, and anything remaining that they wish to do, such as hosting Call of Duty (CoD) tournaments, isn't evil at all.
In the end, the secretary calls dibs on the TV in the lobby in order to play CoD4 on what (one can assume) is a large screen. The Cueball-like executive who wished to implement the evil plan in the first place facepalms when he realizes that Google just sucks at being evil.
In the title text, “The first few times this happens” may refer to the weekly CoD4 “tournament.” Alternatively, it could also mean the “first few times” a company decides to turn evil (but then has no idea how). It could also refer to the first couple of times an individual follows through on this plan but fails after the first part due to a lack of planning for the second part.
This comic was directly referenced in the title text of 1286: Encryptic .
[Black Hat is standing to the left behind Cueball, who is sitting in an office chair at his desk working on his computer. A message from the computer is indicated with a zigzag line from the screen.] Black Hat: Password entropy is rarely relevant. The real modern danger is password reuse. Cueball: How so? Computer: Password too weak
[Zoom in on Black Hat's upper part as he holds a hand up with the palm up.] Black Hat: Set up a Web service to do something simple, like image hosting or tweet syndication, so a few million people set up free accounts.
[Zoom out to Black Hat standing in front of Cueball who has turned in the chair facing Black Hat, the desk is not shown in the panel.] Black Hat: Bam, you've got a few million emails, default usernames, and passwords.
[Only Black Hat is shown as he holds out his arms.] Black Hat: Tons of people use one password, strong or not, for most accounts.
[The next panel is only half the height of the other panels. Above the panel is the text that Black Hat narrates. In the left part of the panel, there is a piece of paper that seems to have been torn off at the bottom resulting in a jagged edge, which could also indicate that it continues further down than shown. On the paper, there are three labeled columns, and below each of them about 18 lines of unreadable sentences (mostly just one word). The @ in the e-mail addresses may be indicated with a larger unreadable sign. To the right a broad line goes right from the paper and splits up in five lines that go up or down ending in five arrows to the right, pointing at five labels.] Black Hat (narrating): Use the list and some proxies to try automated logins to the 20 or 30 most popular sites, plus banks and PayPal and such. Labels on paper: Email User Pass Labels at arrows: Banks Facebook Gmail PayPal Twitter
[Same setting as panel 3 but Cueball has taken a hand to his chin.] Black Hat: You've now got a few hundred thousand real identities on a few dozen services, and nobody suspects a thing. Cueball: And then what?
[Same setting in a larger panel with more white space to the left, Cueball has his hand down again.] Black Hat: Well, that's where I got stuck. Cueball: You did this? Black Hat: Why do you think I hosted so many unprofitable web services?
[Zoom in on Black Hat's head now turned towards left.] Black Hat: I could probably net in a lot of money, one way or another, if I did things carefully. But research shows more money doesn't make people happier, once they make enough to avoid day-to-day financial stress.
[Zooming a bit out, but still only showing Black Hat's head in the bottom right corner, again facing right.] Black Hat: I could mess with people endlessly, but I do that already. I could get a political or religious idea out to most of the world, but since March of 1997 I don't really believe in anything.
[This panel is the last in this row, but it does not reach the end of the row above, an indication that this does not directly belong to the panels below. The same setting as panel 3 but Black Hat has his arms out.] Black Hat: So, here I sit, a puppetmaster who wants nothing from his puppets. Black Hat: It's the same problem Google has. Cueball: Oh?
[This panel is the first in the last row. It does not begin to the left, but has been shifted a bit to the right, just as the last panel above to the right, ended before reaching the right edge of the row above (and this one below). This is to indicate that this is row has a different story. A Cueball-like executive at Google is standing up leaning his arms on a table with Google's logo on the side. His office chair has been pushed to the left behind him and it is partly off-panel. He addresses the other executives at the table, two of which are shown. The first is Hairbun with glasses holding her head with both hands, elbows resting on the table. The other executive is also a Cueball-like guy, his head is partly outside the right edge of the panel. At the top of the panel to the left, there is a small frame breaking the panel's frame, inside which is a caption:] Google... Cueball executive: Okay, everyone, we control the world's information. Now it's time to turn evil. What's the plan? Hairbun: Make boatloads of money? Table: Google
[Only the Cueball-like executive standing at the end of the table is shown, the table is left out. He is face-palming. One of the executives at the table is speaking off-panel. Could be either of the two above or someone not shown before] Cueball executive: We already do! Executive (off-panel): Set up a companywide CoD4: Modern Warfare tournament each week? Cueball executive: That's not evil! Executive (off-panel): Ooh, Dibs on the lobby TV! Cueball executive: Okay, we suck at this.
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793 | Physicists | Physicists | https://www.xkcd.com/793 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/793:_Physicists | [Cueball stands at a blackboard covered in equations and diagrams, an open laptop and scattered paper at his feet. His fists are balled in anger and there is a little angry squiggle over his head. A Cueball-like physicist stands behind him, arms out in a shrug.] Physicist: You're trying to predict the behavior of <complicated system> ? Just model it as a <simple object> , and then add some secondary terms to account for <complications I just thought of> . Physicist: Easy, right? Physicist: So, why does <your field> need a whole journal, anyway?
[Caption below the panel:] Liberal-arts majors may be annoying sometimes, but there's nothing more obnoxious than a physicist first encountering a new subject.
| This comic shows a view that many physics students, upon first encountering a well-known problem, think that it is not a difficult problem, since they think they can fix it using an extremely simplified model. The obvious problem with this is that if it was that simple to solve the problem to a useful degree, there wouldn't be an entire department studying the problem. This attitude leads to great annoyance from those who have probably spent years and years working on the problem, hence the Cueball with balled up fists, implying that he wants to punch the physics major.
This argument is similar to the spherical cow , an idea that basic models taught in early physics classes only work in frictionless vacuums, as shown in 669: Experiment .
The title text takes the dismissive attitude to its logical extreme. The comment "liberal-arts majors can be annoying sometimes" seems to be referencing the stereotype that they're all elitist know-it-alls.
Cueball later behaves similarly in 1831: Here to Help .
[Cueball stands at a blackboard covered in equations and diagrams, an open laptop and scattered paper at his feet. His fists are balled in anger and there is a little angry squiggle over his head. A Cueball-like physicist stands behind him, arms out in a shrug.] Physicist: You're trying to predict the behavior of <complicated system> ? Just model it as a <simple object> , and then add some secondary terms to account for <complications I just thought of> . Physicist: Easy, right? Physicist: So, why does <your field> need a whole journal, anyway?
[Caption below the panel:] Liberal-arts majors may be annoying sometimes, but there's nothing more obnoxious than a physicist first encountering a new subject.
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794 | Inside Joke | Inside Joke | https://www.xkcd.com/794 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/794:_Inside_Joke | [A man with a beard and a turban stands to the left of a crude wooden counter. On the right of the counter is a man with a beard and no turban. Both men are laughing. Further behind the counter is a woman with a bun kneeling on the ground and putting something into a box.] Turban man: Nine silvers for a ham? That's too much! No-turban man: Too much? There's a monk out back with a ladder!
Caption: There's no reason to think that people throughout history didn't have just as many inside jokes and catchphrases as any modern group of high-schoolers.
| Inside jokes occur between friends and family members that live through a shared experience, which makes them laugh when they make reference to it later on. For people not "in the know", these inside jokes can come across as being completely incomprehensible, and in extreme cases just sound like random words strung together.
Randall posits the hypothesis that this has been going on throughout history and that historical figures probably had the same number of inside jokes as any modern group of high-school students. He probably chose to compare them to high-school students because that is a time of complex social interactions and cliques, which are conducive to the formation of inside jokes.
The title text says that there are several classic books that make pop-culture references to events that no modern reader was alive to see. Topicality sometimes has the unfortunate side-effect of the work being far less understood to later generations. Suggested examples so far include Homer's Odyssey , Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing , and Lewis Carroll's Alice books, whose many nineteenth-century cultural references are enumerated in The Annotated Alice .
The inside joke presented in the comic appears to be a reference to the esoterically-named Buddha Jumps Over the Wall , a type of fish soup that allegedly smelled so delicious, Buddhist disciples would sneak out of their meditative ceremonies to eat it. In this case, the ham seller comments that his products are so delicious that even the monk nearby is climbing over the wall to get some ham after the buyer remarked that his product was too expensive.
[A man with a beard and a turban stands to the left of a crude wooden counter. On the right of the counter is a man with a beard and no turban. Both men are laughing. Further behind the counter is a woman with a bun kneeling on the ground and putting something into a box.] Turban man: Nine silvers for a ham? That's too much! No-turban man: Too much? There's a monk out back with a ladder!
Caption: There's no reason to think that people throughout history didn't have just as many inside jokes and catchphrases as any modern group of high-schoolers.
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795 | Conditional Risk | Conditional Risk | https://www.xkcd.com/795 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/795:_Conditional_Risk | [Lightning strikes the ground, illuminating trees with a bright white light. Two people are standing near it. One has a walking stick.] CRACK BOOM First person: Whoa! We should get inside! Second person: It's okay! Lightning only kills about 45 Americans a year, so the chances of dying are only one in 7,000,000. Let's go on!
[Caption below the panel:] The annual death rate among people who know that statistic is one in six.
| The comic deals with the difference between the general probability of a certain event based on history and the probability of the same event in particular circumstances. The chance of any American selected randomly from the general population to be killed by lightning is very low, but part of the reason for this is that an average American would seek shelter and safety when caught in a lightning storm. The joke is that someone armed with this particular statistical knowledge would not take the normal precautions and therefore leave themselves far more vulnerable.
In the title text, since the statistic provided talks only about Americans, the other character wrongly assumes that lightning strikes only happen to Americans, rather than the data for lightning strikes for other nationalities being simply not included in the discussion. Because of this, as a non-American, he believes his chance of being struck by lightning is nonexistent - which underlines the difference between knowing a certain event can't or didn't happen and not having any data about the event.
The "one in six" statistic is probably invented by the author - which also illuminates the danger of dealing with "statistical data" provided by random sources without any attribution to actual statistical surveys or hard data. And of course, now a lot of xkcd readers know the statistic, likely bringing down the death rate.
[Lightning strikes the ground, illuminating trees with a bright white light. Two people are standing near it. One has a walking stick.] CRACK BOOM First person: Whoa! We should get inside! Second person: It's okay! Lightning only kills about 45 Americans a year, so the chances of dying are only one in 7,000,000. Let's go on!
[Caption below the panel:] The annual death rate among people who know that statistic is one in six.
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796 | Bad Ex | Bad Ex | https://www.xkcd.com/796 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/796:_Bad_Ex | [Cueball and White Hat are walking.] Cueball: It just blows my mind. She seemed so genuine. I had no idea she was such a serial liar. Cueball: I just wish I had our six months back.
[The view focuses on Cueball.] Cueball: Her exes say the same thing happened to them. Cueball: Maybe what we need is a terrible-ex tracking and notification service.
[Cueball turns, thoughtfully.] White Hat: But after all the problems with sex offender registries, who would agree to run it? Cueball: Maybe one of the state governments more willing to experiment could try it out...
Soon... [Megan and a person with glasses and a goatee are sitting at a table, on which sit wine glasses and plates. Cueball approaches them carrying a clipboard and a license.] Cueball: Excuse me, ma'am. Megan: Yes? Cueball: This man is known to the state of California to be a total douchebag .
| Cueball has been betrayed by his girlfriend, and later found out that he's not the first one she betrayed. He thinks that the society should provide a service that collects reports about such notorious liars, warning future dates about their true nature.
Cueball's friend, White Hat , is concerned about the matter of personal integrity, comparing this proposed service to sex offender registries . Cueball, though, thinks that there are certain governments who would have no problem with personal integrity infringement.
In the last panel, we see such a notification being given to a woman at a date. One interpretation of this comic could be that the bearded man is not, in fact, a douchebag, but Cueball is calling him one because he likes her, and thus wants to separate them.
The "State of California" dialog is a reference to California Proposition 65 which requires specific products to state: "This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." California is also known to be one of the states where liberal experimentation would occur.
The title text mentions a few " douchebag " warning signals that the woman should have observed, for instance his interest in the infamous filmmaker duo Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer , known for making shallow parody movies.
[Cueball and White Hat are walking.] Cueball: It just blows my mind. She seemed so genuine. I had no idea she was such a serial liar. Cueball: I just wish I had our six months back.
[The view focuses on Cueball.] Cueball: Her exes say the same thing happened to them. Cueball: Maybe what we need is a terrible-ex tracking and notification service.
[Cueball turns, thoughtfully.] White Hat: But after all the problems with sex offender registries, who would agree to run it? Cueball: Maybe one of the state governments more willing to experiment could try it out...
Soon... [Megan and a person with glasses and a goatee are sitting at a table, on which sit wine glasses and plates. Cueball approaches them carrying a clipboard and a license.] Cueball: Excuse me, ma'am. Megan: Yes? Cueball: This man is known to the state of California to be a total douchebag .
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797 | debian-main | debian-main | https://www.xkcd.com/797 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/797:_debian-main | [A swarm of insects cover Cueball and his computer. They are leaning back on their chair, flailing to get away.] Cueball: AAAAAAAA
Caption below comic: My package made it into debian-main because it looked innocuous enough; no one noticed "locusts" in the dependency list. | Debian is a Linux distribution most notable for introducing APT (Advanced Packaging Tool). APT is a tool that functions as an automated general software installer for Linux systems; all one has to do is tell it what software package they would like to install, and the program will automatically fetch the software and all of its dependencies (other packages that a program relies on, such as a library for processing ZIP archives) from a central repository . It will also automatically handle upgrades by automatically checking if the repository version of a package is higher than the currently installed version, and it can even handle the use of multiple repositories and linking between them; for example, if a piece of software is deemed worthy of inclusion in Debian's main repository, but as a stable release, the software developers can provide their own repository to provide a more experimental version for users who want it, and once that repository is added to APT's source list, APT will automatically realize that it should use the experimental version, since it has a higher version than that of the main repository. Although this wasn't the first package management system for easy Linux installation (that honor goes to RPM ), it is the first one that seamlessly integrated online installation and upgrades into the mix.
Debian's main repository, debian-main, is included by default in all Debian installations. It's what you might call the "canon" of Debian, containing only those packages that have been approved by official Debian developers. Thus, getting a package on debian-main means that it, theoretically, conforms to a standard of quality.
In this case, however, the Debian developers seem to have not noticed that one of the dependencies for the package is "locusts." Locusts are real insects, the migratory forms of several grasshopper species, that are best known for breeding extremely quickly, swarming, and devouring all green plant matter they come across, resulting in crop devastation (some consider this a plague). In some parts of the world they are also considered a delicacy. Cueball probably does not appreciate this as they crawl over his body searching for food, apparently spontaneously generated by APT as it saw that it needed "locusts" to install the package.
The title text is an error line from dpkg , the program used to install/remove APT packages. Every package contains several scripts (although some of them may be empty) that are run on various events related to that package; these are used to perform any setup/cleanup tasks the package needs. This line is an error line indicating that one of those scripts has failed. The relevant portions are:
[A swarm of insects cover Cueball and his computer. They are leaning back on their chair, flailing to get away.] Cueball: AAAAAAAA
Caption below comic: My package made it into debian-main because it looked innocuous enough; no one noticed "locusts" in the dependency list. |
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798 | Adjectives | Adjectives | https://www.xkcd.com/798 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/798:_Adjectives | Frequency with which various adjectives are intensified with obscenities (based on Google hits) [The legend above the plot reads:] Red marker: "fucking ____" Blue marker: "____ as shit" [Mathematical formula for scale next to the legend:] Scale: ln(hits for intensified phrase/hits for adjective alone) [The plot itself lists a series of adjectives in approximately descending order. Each has a red and a blue marker corresponding to the scale described.] [Horizontal axis starts with none, then has a vertical dashed line, then 'rarely' at -17, increasing to 'often' at -5.] [Each adjective is listed with approximate red and blue values, in that order.] Annoying -5 -4.5 Pissed -5 -6 Stupid -5 -8 Bored -6 -6 Sexy -5.5 -6.5 Adorable -6.5 -9.5 Disgusting -6.5 -12.5 Calm -7 -10 Delicious -8 -13 Obscene -6 -14 Prosaic -10 -13.5 Bemused -8.5 -14 Apropos -10.5 -16 Ambivalent -12 -17 Improper -12.5 -18 Evanescent -14 -14.5 Piquant -9.5 never Jejune -9 never Kafkaesque -10 never Stochastic -14 never Fungible -12 never Peristeronic ("Of or pertaining to pigeons") never never [There are two small scenes in the bottom right of the plot. The first shows a pair of women holding wine glasses.] Megan: Yes, the Cabernet is piquant as shit this year. [The second shows Cueball sitting at a computer desk.] Cueball: Whoa — these commodities are fucking fungible!
| This comic is a plot graph comparing how often certain adjectives are used alone versus in the phrases "fucking [adjective]" and "[adjective] as shit" . Plot data is based on Google search engine result count, or hits . The graph's formula uses the natural logarithm of the hits for the obscene phrase divided by the hits for the adjective alone.
It's a social observation of linguistics pointing out that the use of swear words as intensifiers is more common with everyday words ( eg. annoying, pissed, stupid ) than it is with more arcane words ( eg. piquant, fungible ). Two words are used as examples in a sentence shown to the right. These sentences are not something you would be likely to overhear. In the case of fucking fungible it is also a way to justify its relatively high occurrence online. Of course given the log scale, it is still very rarely used like this.
The only word included in the graph that's never found in either obscene phrase is peristeronic . Its definition ("Of or pertaining to pigeons") is included due to its extreme obscurity. (The words was used again later as a difficult word in the survey part of comic 1572: xkcd Survey .
The title text mocks the use of the word fucking in combination with ineffable since the colloquialism effing or F-ing is a way of censoring "the F-word", fuck . The two used together resembles someone partially self-censoring the phrase "fucking unfuckable."
Prosaic - lacking originality/creativity
Ambivalent - having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone
Evanescent - which disappears very quickly, transient/ephemeral
Piquant - which has a tangy, appetizing taste
Jejune - naive, simplistic
Kafkaesque - nightmarishly bizarre and surreal, read more about it here
Stochastic - random and unpredictable, most often used in a technical sense
Fungible - things that are interchangeable and equivalent substitutes for each other - e.g. different cans of diet coke are fungible with each other
Frequency with which various adjectives are intensified with obscenities (based on Google hits) [The legend above the plot reads:] Red marker: "fucking ____" Blue marker: "____ as shit" [Mathematical formula for scale next to the legend:] Scale: ln(hits for intensified phrase/hits for adjective alone) [The plot itself lists a series of adjectives in approximately descending order. Each has a red and a blue marker corresponding to the scale described.] [Horizontal axis starts with none, then has a vertical dashed line, then 'rarely' at -17, increasing to 'often' at -5.] [Each adjective is listed with approximate red and blue values, in that order.] Annoying -5 -4.5 Pissed -5 -6 Stupid -5 -8 Bored -6 -6 Sexy -5.5 -6.5 Adorable -6.5 -9.5 Disgusting -6.5 -12.5 Calm -7 -10 Delicious -8 -13 Obscene -6 -14 Prosaic -10 -13.5 Bemused -8.5 -14 Apropos -10.5 -16 Ambivalent -12 -17 Improper -12.5 -18 Evanescent -14 -14.5 Piquant -9.5 never Jejune -9 never Kafkaesque -10 never Stochastic -14 never Fungible -12 never Peristeronic ("Of or pertaining to pigeons") never never [There are two small scenes in the bottom right of the plot. The first shows a pair of women holding wine glasses.] Megan: Yes, the Cabernet is piquant as shit this year. [The second shows Cueball sitting at a computer desk.] Cueball: Whoa — these commodities are fucking fungible!
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799 | Stephen Hawking | Stephen Hawking | https://www.xkcd.com/799 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/799:_Stephen_Hawking | [Stephen Hawking with glasses and dark hair is sitting in his special wheelchair with a computer screen in front stuck to the chair and a large black rear wheel with four large white spokes. He is facing Cueball and Megan. His voice appears in a square machine readable font.] Stephen Hawking: I thought maybe later we should go see a movie. Cueball and Megan: !!!
[Cueball and Megan are running right.]
[The top half of a front page of a folded newspaper is shown in a frame-less panel. There are wavy plants on either side of the papers name at the top. Below this there is a big headline covering the page width in three rows. Below this is the article that covers the rest of the front page in five columns. The first column is the broadest and it is the beginning of the articles main body of text which is unreadable all the way trough. This columns has text all the way down. The top of the second and third column has a close up picture of Stephen Hawking face, he is sitting in his chair, but it can only be seen down to the top of the screen. The picture sits in the center of the article. Below there is a large caption. The rest of these two columns is more unreadable text. The fourth and fifth column begins with another large sub heading that covers an area of the same size as the picture to the left of it. Above this text there is a line that aligns with the top of the picture, so that it with the picture and the first line of text to the left makes a kind of division line all across the paper below the heading. The rest of these two columns is more unreadable text, except in the fifth column just above the middle where a small heading, with a frame around, raises a question which is just readable.] The Times Physicist Stephen Hawking suggests we see more films Caption: Smartest man alive Secondary headline: What could he know that we don't? Question: Is this a warning?
[Stephen Hawking is sitting alone in his chair (like in the first image), looking down.]
| Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) was a renowned theoretical physicist. He was almost completely paralyzed due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and communicated with a speech-generating device , as shown in the first panel. In this comic, he mentions to Cueball and Megan maybe they could go to a movie together later, but they take it as a scientific declaration that they should go see a movie and have it published in a newspaper, which portrays it in hyperbolic tones, vastly exaggerating and misinterpreting his actual intent. In the final panel, Hawking is shown hanging his head in sadness since all he wanted to do was see a movie with his friends.
This can be taken as a satire of sensationalism of science in popular media, particularly in emphasizing the viewpoints of well-known and popular personalities in science. A similar theme was used in 1206: Einstein .
The title text continues the joke, with innocuous comments by Hawking interpreted as important revelations.
The Town is a movie which was released 10 days before this comic's release. Hawking tries to suggest they go see The Town which should be good, as he may know since it both received positive reviews and was a box office hit . But instead the newspapers again sensationalize his statements and declare The Town to be the best in the universe.
When Hawking then tries to state that this was just something he had heard, the newspaper asks if science should play a role in judging Ben Affleck . Ben Affleck directed, wrote and starred (top billing) in this movie, so any judgment of this film would reflect on Affleck. The media asks if science should have an opinion on art, in this case Ben Affleck, and thus judge it. It could be argued that it should not as art is not necessarily based on anything scientific, but to thus state that a scientist must now have an opinion on art is a completely different story. Hawking is here defined as Science. If he says so then it is the opinion of the Scientific community and not just his personal opinion.
Before Hawking even gets close to finishing his next sentence, the media asks what about Matt Damon -- should he judge him as well. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have a long history together and came to prominence together as screenwriters of Good Will Hunting , winning an Oscar for the script. They also co-starred in the movie, with Matt Damon in a main role opposite Robin Williams . Following that, Matt Damon's acting career has been more commercially successful than Affleck's, causing speculation that their friendship could be in trouble over such details. But they have kept working together and are co-owners of the production company Pearl Street Films , so this is probably not the case.
But still more than ten years after their shared Oscar moment for best script for Good Will Hunting , many people think of Damon when they hear of Affleck and the other way around. This is the reason for the last question by the press.
Those of you feeling bad for Steven Hawking might feel good to know that he had a healthy social life in reality, and had even dabbled in a brief acting career (typically as cameo appearances) .
A drawing of Stephen Hawking also appeared in 1000: 1000 Comics . If you wish to try and find him yourself first then do not read on or click the links below. If you need a bit of help to find him then this link will show you which number of 1000 he is in. Else you can find him fast as he is no. 49 in this numbered image .
[Stephen Hawking with glasses and dark hair is sitting in his special wheelchair with a computer screen in front stuck to the chair and a large black rear wheel with four large white spokes. He is facing Cueball and Megan. His voice appears in a square machine readable font.] Stephen Hawking: I thought maybe later we should go see a movie. Cueball and Megan: !!!
[Cueball and Megan are running right.]
[The top half of a front page of a folded newspaper is shown in a frame-less panel. There are wavy plants on either side of the papers name at the top. Below this there is a big headline covering the page width in three rows. Below this is the article that covers the rest of the front page in five columns. The first column is the broadest and it is the beginning of the articles main body of text which is unreadable all the way trough. This columns has text all the way down. The top of the second and third column has a close up picture of Stephen Hawking face, he is sitting in his chair, but it can only be seen down to the top of the screen. The picture sits in the center of the article. Below there is a large caption. The rest of these two columns is more unreadable text. The fourth and fifth column begins with another large sub heading that covers an area of the same size as the picture to the left of it. Above this text there is a line that aligns with the top of the picture, so that it with the picture and the first line of text to the left makes a kind of division line all across the paper below the heading. The rest of these two columns is more unreadable text, except in the fifth column just above the middle where a small heading, with a frame around, raises a question which is just readable.] The Times Physicist Stephen Hawking suggests we see more films Caption: Smartest man alive Secondary headline: What could he know that we don't? Question: Is this a warning?
[Stephen Hawking is sitting alone in his chair (like in the first image), looking down.]
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800 | Beautiful Dream | Beautiful Dream | https://www.xkcd.com/800 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/800:_Beautiful_Dream | [Megan with disheveled hair stretches her arms. A sunburst indicating sleepiness is above her head.] YAWN Megan: I just woke up
[Megan continues speaking from off panel, to Cueball who's sitting at a table with a laptop and cup. He's leaned his elbow on the chair, turning to face Megan.] Megan: from the most beautiful dream. Cueball: Which was?
Megan: All the girls who read and follow The Rules and all the guys who swear by the techniques in The Game paired off with each other and left the rest of us alone forever. Cueball: Mmmmmm...
| In this comic, Megan has just woken from a dream in which the girls who follow The Rules and the guys who play The Game have paired off and left everyone else alone.
"The Rules" refers to a book entitled "The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right" which the authors describe as a self-help book for women seeking a man to marry. It's often decried for being formulaic and for reducing the women who follow it and the men they seek to outdated stereotypes about gender roles. The rules themselves amount to a complicated game of "hard to get", which is not exactly a new strategy, nor is it always the best approach to take.
"The Game" refers to a series of books entitled "The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists", which is a purported exposé on the pickup artist community (which is not similar to a pick-up basketball game, see 1178: Pickup Artists ), and its follow-up "Rules of the Game", which describes the techniques used. Pickup artistry involves the use of psychological and emotional tricks intended to coerce women into casual sex. Practitioners of pickup are considered by many to be manipulative and creepy for reducing women to little more than objects for conquest.
It's clear that Megan has a low opinion of those who put stock in these works. The idea of removing the Rules Girls and the Game Players from social interaction by pair bonding them to each other is one that appeals to her. Cueball's response seems to indicate that he agrees with her.
The title text takes a surrealist step with Cueball 's response to Megan . The Giving Tree is a children's book by Shel Silverstein about the relationship between a tree and a young boy who grows to be an old man. The Metamorphosis is a work of fiction by Franz Kafka in which a travelling salesman wakes up after having strange dreams to find that he has been turned into a nondescript giant bug. The implication is that it would be extremely bizarre to have a dream in which all those people who had experiences regarding these books paired off, due to them being entirely unrelated.
[Megan with disheveled hair stretches her arms. A sunburst indicating sleepiness is above her head.] YAWN Megan: I just woke up
[Megan continues speaking from off panel, to Cueball who's sitting at a table with a laptop and cup. He's leaned his elbow on the chair, turning to face Megan.] Megan: from the most beautiful dream. Cueball: Which was?
Megan: All the girls who read and follow The Rules and all the guys who swear by the techniques in The Game paired off with each other and left the rest of us alone forever. Cueball: Mmmmmm...
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