1999

Explanation:
This comic is a parody of the movie The Social Network , a movie about the founding of the popular social network site Facebook. Here, scenes from the movie are reimagined to feature Zombo.com instead. Zombo.com, also known as Zombocom, is a website that was created in 1999 and using only Flash animations . The animation consists of a circle of quickly pulsating dots and a friendly deep male voice repeatedly welcoming the visitor to "Zombocom" and explaining that there was no limit to what could be done at the site, or rather, no limit except yourself. The message repeats while, ironically, there is absolutely nothing that can be done at the site until the message completes, at which point a link saying "Sign up for our newZletter" appears, linking to a page saying that the selected option is not available yet. If the link is not clicked, the Flash player will reset. Thus, you can still do nothing on the site.
The humor of the parody comes in substituting Facebook, a site that, at the time this comic was made, was a useful and popular website; for Zombo.com, a novelty site which gained attention for its complete uselessness.
You can visit the site at zombo.com .
The last four panels are all direct parodies of specific scenes from The Social Network . The second panel is a takeoff of the scene where Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg comes up with the idea for the site, saying that people like checking up on their friends and acquaintances, so why not build a site that lets them do that? Because Zombo.com has no actual function, in this version the founder can't specify what he wants the site to do.
The third panel is taken from a scene where Zuckerberg is seen intensely focused on programming the site, his headphones insulating him from the outside world. His assistant describes his state as "wired in" and demands that he not be disturbed. In the comic, as Zombo.com is a very simple site which does not need much coding, the assistant offers the possibility that the founder is stoned. Indeed, it's one of the few conceivable reasons that one would be this focused on such a useless website. As "the infinite is possible" is a phrase in Zombo.com's audio clip, it is also plausible that the founder is currently recording the clip, and the assistant is telling the others not to bother him for fear of adding background noise to the clip.
The fourth panel is taken from a scene where co-founder Eduardo Saverin tries to push for monetization of Facebook, while investor and consultant Sean Parker argues against. The actual dialogue is "You don't even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? A billion dollars." Here, instead of a billion dollars, the Parker character argues "Circles," playing off Zombo.com's un-lucrative nature and the silliness of the design.
The final panel is taken from a scene where Parker advises Zuckerberg to change the name of the site from TheFacebook to just Facebook, calling it "cleaner." Here, he advises to change the name of Zombo.com to just Zombocom. Why the website is pronounced "Zombocom" rather than the more expected Zombo Dot Com is a mystery known only to its creators; perhaps, like in the movie, they also considered it cleaner.
The title text is a reference to a quote from the movie, specifically a conversation between Zuckerberg and Delpy (Zuckerberg is the first quote). In the actual film, Zuckerberg answers "twenty-two thousand" rather than just "twenty-two". This is a joke to the effect that, back in 1999, there weren't really that many people on the internet, and very few of them would have gone to Zombo.com.
It's easy to forget, as we heap awards on The Social Network , That before there was Facebook, MySpace, or even Friendster... One website dreamed bigger than them all.
[Cueball and another are talking.] Cueball: People like doing stuff. So why not build a website that offers that? Another: Offers what? What would I do there? Cueball: Anything! The only limit is yourself!
[Another scene. Hacker, wearing headphones and oblivious, working at computer. Cueball runs in to interrupt; Another holds him back.] Cueball: Hey, we need more— Another: Don't–he's wired in. Hacker: The infinite is possible. Another: Or baked. It's hard to tell.
[Cueball and another at table in bar.] Cueball: It's time to monetize. We could make millions! Another: No way. A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? Cueball: A billio– Another: Circles.
[Long shot in bar. Drinks on table in foreground; dim figures in doorway in background; Cueball, alone, shouting into the distance.] Cueball: Hey–a tip: drop the dot. Cueball: Just "Zombocom". Cueball: It's cleaner.


Trochee Fixation

Explanation:
A trochee is a type of poetic foot . A foot is a measure in poetry; it consists of stressed beats and unstressed beats. A trochee is a foot that consists of one stressed beat followed by an unstressed beat. "Trochee" itself is an example of this as you stress the first syllable and don't stress the second syllable ("TROH-kee".)
Trochee fixation is supposedly caused by people experiencing rushes of dopamine when they hear or speak trochees during their youth. Due to the rush of dopamine, they become more fixated on trochees. In the endless quest for dopamine, they continue to search for trochees (typically on the internet) while also producing more places to encounter trochees meaning more fixation for others with the disorder. Megan proposes a "radical trocheeotomy" which appears to be a type of psychosurgery due to the erasing of memory. Cueball misinterprets Megan's intent as a " tracheotomy ", which he mistakenly believes to be a removal of the girl's vocal cords, of which he is in favor.
Megan proceeds with the trocheeotomy, but luckily it does not have the intended effect. Though the previous trochees have been forcefully and unkindly removed, the girl immediately generates new ones: "BAN-jo," "TUR-tle," "JET-pack," "FER-ret," and so on. The correct way of removing the fixation would be to alter mesolimbic pathway . Megan, not realizing this, succumbs to attempting to removing the girl's trochee fixation via cranially-applied brick. Depending on how hard the girl is hit with the brick she may have memory loss and potentially forget all the trochees she knows, but if this method is carried out she will have significant brain damage and will likely start fixating on trochees that she hears.
There are references to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers , both of which are examples of actual, trochaic TV show titles. Additionally, there is a reference to sci/fi author Neal Stephenson who has written Snow Crash , Anathem and many other books.
"Jetpack ferret" could be a reference to 20: Ferret , although the ferret in question only had wings.
Huffman coding is a lossless data compression algorithm that works by organizing characters into a tree structure (called a Huffman tree) with the most used characters in a string closer to the top. The characters in the string are then replaced by the sequence of bits representing their place in the tree, allowing for characters that are used very often to be represented with only a handful of bits compared to the 16 or 32 bits usually needed (depending on the character set used). In highly repetitive data this can cut down the file size immensely, which is what Randall is implying by saying you would only end up with 30–40 bytes. Most of the " random " stuff said on the Internet has been said before, and isn’t particularly random either, following predictable patterns.
Trochee and other types of poetry "feet" is the subject of 1383: Magic Words , and the trochaic form is explored further in 1412: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles .
On the blag , Randall published statistics about the occurrence number of certain combinations (now obviously inaccurate).
Girl: Robot ninja! Pirate doctor laser monkey! Narwhal zombie badger hobo bacon kitty captain penguin raptor Jesus!
Megan: We'd been seeing this brain damage for years, but only recently did our linguists identify the pattern behind it.
Megan: The patients fixate on animals and types of people whose names are trochees (two syllables, with the accent on the first).
The malfunction causes a rush of dopamine whenever these trochees are heard or spoken. [Chart shows "internet" and "brain," with arrows marked "trochees" traveling both ways between them. An arrow marked "dopamine" loops from the brain back to the brain.]
The warning signs appear in childhood: [Child sits in front of TV.] Child: Yeah! Mighty teenage morphin' ninja power mutant turtle rangers! Social reinforcement focuses the fixation on a few dozen words. Cueball (off-panel): Is there a cure?
[Girl is reclining under a big machine pointed at her face.] Megan: We're about to try a radical trocheeotomy. Cueball: Rip out her vocal chords? I'm in favor. Megan: No, we're modifying her vocabulary* to erase the words she's fixated on. *Digitoneurolinguistic hacking! It's totally real! Ask Neal Stephenson.
Megan: Either the gap will be filled by normal words, or she'll just generate a new set of trochees. Megan: Here goes. [She pulls the lever on a large panel.] kachunk bzzzZZZZZZ
[Girl is waking up.] Girl: ...GzZhRmPh ... Girl ...banjo turtle! Girl: Jetpack ferret pizza lawyer! Dentist hamster wombat plumber turkey jester hindu cowboy hooker bobcat scrapple! Megan (off-panel): Sigh. Megan: Time for plan B. Cueball: Someone get a brick.


Archimedes

Explanation:
This comic references a famous quote made by Archimedes : δῶς μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω , which could translate as "Give me a long enough lever and a place to rest it, and I will move the Earth". Archimedes was illustrating the power of force multiplication by stating that, in theory, even a mass as immense as the entire planet Earth could be moved by a single human being using a simple lever .
While Archimedes is theoretically correct, in practice the lever would need to be millions of light years long, and the person operating it would need to push it by several light years to move the Earth even a microscopic amount. In fact, a much simpler way to move the Earth, which achieves similar distances, is to jump in the air - by Newton's third law, the same amount of force that is applied to you will also be applied to the Earth.
Here, Cueball begins as if he is quoting Archimedes, but then produces a gun and threatens to execute hostages if he does not receive the lever, indicating that he is, for some reason, actually trying to enact Archimedes' thought experiment for real.
The title text references another famous proverb, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." The quote starts out the same, but again ends with a sentence that is more fitting for an action movie.
[Cueball is standing normally.] Cueball: In the words of Archimedes,
[Cueball extends his left arm slightly.] Cueball: Give me a long enough lever and a place to rest it
[Cueball is now holding a gun in his right hand.] Cueball: Or I will kill one hostage every hour.


Milk

Explanation:
Megan and Cueball are sitting quietly, engaged in their own solo pursuits.  Without any preamble, Megan answers a question that has not been asked, pointing out to Cueball that he would not be able to obtain milk from her breasts right now, as she is not lactating .  Cueball is flabbergasted that she seems to have read his mind, as this was exactly what he was wondering.
Megan, like any healthy adult female mammal , is capable of producing milk from her mammary glands .  However, this facility is not always available; Megan would have to become pregnant and give birth to trigger the bodily changes that result in normal lactation.
The title text indicates that this is not proof of Megan's psychic powers, as Cueball seems quite obsessed with this particular topic, although, if you interpret it as a response to Cueball's thoughts in the last panel it could remain ambiguous.
[Couple sitting opposed, Megan on couch reading book and Cueball a chair with a laptop.] Megan: The fact that I have breasts doesn't mean you could milk me now. I'd have to be lactating. [A beat passes.] [In the third panel, Megan's legs are not seen, probably tucked under the armchair to feel more secure.] Cueball (thinking): Oh my god she's psychic.


Explanation:
In programming, punctuation is often used to mark sections of code. Paired punctuation marks must always be matched up with a corresponding closing mark, otherwise a so-called syntax error occurs. The programming language Lisp (also featured in 224: Lisp is known for large numbers of nested/paired parentheses. Even in literary works intended only for human consumption, the absence of a matching closing parenthesis as appears in this sentence or other "balanced" punctuation sets creates a mental expectation of eventual closure and completion that remains unfulfilled even long after the unmatched mark is encountered.
There is also reference to 312: With Apologies to Robert Frost which could contain the missing parentheses.
It can also be interpreted as a metaphor , which compares the reader with a Lisp interpreter . The interpreter looks for the parenthesis until the end of the file, where it eventually halts, and prints out the error. The comic claims that if you read an unmatched parenthesis, you will look for it for the rest of the day too.
It also refers to an awkward feeling when you see something out of place in a piece of literary text (like unmatched parentheses, spellying error or a randomly-plac,ed comma..
Finally, in some countries (Russia in particular) they use just parentheses instead of text smileys so that :) turns into ) and :( becomes (. Hence Russians can magically resist the unresolved tension of the comic but may feel a bit sad instead as a side effect.
The title text refers to the same issue as already highlighted in 327: Exploits of a Mom : if your scripts trust external input, you sometimes will be surprised. At the time of this comic, there were quite a few websites that would grab the  xkcd comic three times a week and publish them on their own site. This comic likely broke at least some of the websites because of either the unmatched brace or the extra unmatched markup that is in the title text.
[Caption inside an oblong panel:] (An unmatched left parenthesis creates an unresolved tension that will stay with you all day.


Never Do This

Explanation:
Cueball shows his new pocket microscope to Megan . With the curiosity of scientists, they quickly decide to use the microscope to look at a number of different things.
But after they use the microscope to inspect what is under their fingernails, they both sink into a catatonic state . Our fingers are how we interact with the world, and all manner of things get trapped under our fingernails; different kinds of dirt, fungus, spores, fragments of insects, insect droppings and so on. Such things that obviously look pretty horrific when magnified a few hundred times. Cueball and Megan never suspected what they would find, and seem unable to process or deal with the horror they have uncovered.
The title text refers to Rule 34 (see 305: Rule 34 ), an internet meme which states "If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions.". The book referenced is "The Secret House: 24 hours in the strange & wonderful world in which we spend our nights and days" by David Bodanis and is a study in microphotography . It features extreme close-ups of everyday phenomena in the common house, but as seen from a microscopic perspective. "Rule 34" states that there must be porn of this nature, but it is not clear what form this would take. You would, however, probably be able to see the individual sperm cells .
Randall may have done this check himself - and now chooses to warn others not to make the same mistake. Thus, the title: Never Do This . He later gives the same type of advice against using a UV lamp in the bathroom through this comic: 1469: UV .
Given his likely negative feelings towards Valentine's Day , as seen in the most of his Valentines comics , it may not be a coincidence he send this gross comic out on February 14. He did not draw any Valentines related comic this year as he for instance did the two years before and the year after.
[Cueball walks toward Megan holding a pocket microscope.] Cueball: Check it out—a pocket microscope! Megan: Ooh! Let's look at stuff!
[Cueball holds a pencil; Megan peers at a quarter through the microscope.] Cueball: The tip of this pencil is neat . Megan: This quarter is really scratched.
Cueball: Let's look at the skin under our fingernails!
Minutes later... [Cueball and Megan curl up in a black pit of despair.] Cueball and Megan: oh god oh god


Wisdom Teeth

Explanation:
Wisdom teeth , as many people are no doubt painfully aware , are the third set of molars found in humans. Because human jaws are smaller than other ape jaws, most of us don't have room for a third set of molars, and the teeth become impacted so they grow straight into the other teeth, requiring a painful, debilitating procedure to remove them.
Because recovering from dental surgery often entails a period of rest following the operation and the use of prescription painkillers (which have a tendency to make a person go a little loopy), Cueball prepares to play Minecraft the entire time. Minecraft is a PC game known for its addictive qualities; the game itself primarily revolves around a three-dimensional world in which the goal of the player is centered on the aspects of structural creation using blocks found in the environment and the creation of different materials for use in building these structures. Despite its addictive nature, the game doesn't provide the player with a goal, so most people take to building lots of nifty stuff, such as large cities, computers made from the game's built-in redstone (electricity) mechanics, massive scale replicas of Earth, etc.
Cueball's conversation with Megan indicates that he has previously decided against playing Minecraft precisely due to its addictive gameplay and lack of internal goal, deeming it unproductive. However, 'productivity' is not something that Cueball believes he can achieve post-extraction, and so Cueball decides that addictive gameplay and lack of internal goal "sounds like the perfect distraction".
Unfortunately for Megan (and any other users of her server), Cueball, while intoxicated with painkillers, has instead opted to flatten an entire continent and sort it into layers (by type of block, presumably). While there's no real indication of how big the continent is, as Minecraft worlds are randomly generated, sea level in Minecraft is at Y level 64, which means he sorted at least 65 layers of a continent large enough to be sufficiently developed, so it is clear that this task would take a lot of time. Collecting a block in Minecraft takes a certain minimum amount of time, depending on the block type, so even if he did everything as fast as he possibly could, there's still a substantial lower bound.
Ironically, in the second panel Megan says she'll set Cueball up on her server, which indicates she probably uses a whitelist to secure the server from griefers who might destroy structures created by others, not expecting that Cueball would do exactly that. The last panel simply illustrates that painkillers tend to make one loopy.
The title text refers to people waking up during surgery. Because anesthesia requires a lot of careful calibration and dosage - there's a reason anesthesiologists are paid hundreds of dollars an hour to be there, after all - it's possible to sometimes get it wrong, resulting in the patient waking up in the middle of the surgery. The three most important parts of anesthetics used for surgery are an analgesic (blocks pain), a sedative (puts you to sleep), and a paralytic (keeps you from moving). The worst-case scenario that most people hear about is when the analgesic and sedative are under-dosed, but the paralytic is correct, leaving the person awake, able to feel pain, but unable to alert the surgeons that anything is wrong. As a result, some countries and medical institutions have passed laws requiring surgeons to monitor brain activity so that these problems can be quickly remedied. The situation the title text is describing, with both the sedative and paralytic wearing out (leaving the person able to write notes), would be quite unlikely. As for confiscating all the pens, it was probably just to keep the patient from disturbing the procedure while the anesthesiologist corrected the dosage.
Sorting a Minecraft world into layers like this would be a near impossible task, especially in the version of Minecraft , Beta 1.2, that was current when this comic was released, which did not even include the enchantment system that allowed for tools that could mine exceptionally fast, meaning that even the sheer time to mine out such a large area would be astronomical, not even considering the time to replace the blocks in proper layers, or to gather resources for the many tools you would need. In later versions of Minecraft , it is possible to naturally generate worlds that resemble the world in this comic using the "superflat" world generation mode, but this was not a feature in Minecraft when this comic was released.
Cueball, on phone: Hey! Know how you've been bugging me to play Minecraft for the past year? I'm game. Megan, on phone: But you said you didn't want to "get hooked and spend days on end moving virtual cubes around while sitting motionless." What changed?
Cueball, on phone: I'm having my wisdom teeth out, and I'll be useless and doped up on painkillers for the next few days, so that actually sounds like the perfect distraction. Megan, on phone: Oh. I'll set you up on our server!
72 hours later... [Megan sitting at computer.] Megan, on phone: Hey — starting to feel better? Enjoying the game? Let's see what you've... What the hell? Where IS everything?
[View of a Minecraft screen showing a vast empty expanse of land. In Cueball's hotbar is, from left to right, an stone pickaxe, sword, and shovel, seven feathers, 42 torches, a non-enchanted bow, a blank space, 64 blocks of stone and a clock. He has full health and 15 armor points.] Megan, offscreen: ...You made the entire continent perfectly flat? Cueball, offscreen: And sorted it into layers. Megan, offscreen: ... Cueball, offscreen: I feel good about things. This is a good game.
[Cueball sitting on the floor at his laptop, bleeding from the mouth, surrounded by bloody wadded-up tissues and holding a bottle of medication.] Megan, on phone: ...What exactly is in the painkillers they gave you? Cueball, woozy: I can't read the label because I'm a hologram.


Let Go

Explanation:
It is human nature to lose interest in difficult or boring tasks, and instead do something easier, more interesting or more rewarding in the short term. While procrastination and distraction from more important tasks has always been present, this comic casts a light on the internet and the huge potential for distraction which it provides.
The first two frames in this comic are the set-up, and contain the websites CNN and Reddit and thoughts over the top of them. These types of websites are regularly updated with new content are prime candidates for distraction. The thought bubbles indicate that the reader is fully aware that they shouldn't be looking at these websites, but is unable to stop himself. Even the very rational thought that checking news stories more than once a day is bordering on pointless doesn't seem to stop him.
In the third frame, it starts to look a little different as the screen is not a computer but is in fact the targeting computer from Luke Skywalker's X-wing . At this point it becomes clear that there are far more important tasks at hand, namely flying the craft. Even then, Luke has an internal conflict and considers checking Facebook , but mentally checks himself, and to prevent himself from further compulsive browsing shuts down the system. The thought bubble at the bottom is one that is probably familiar to many people (especially students), where he realizes that he has to turn off the computer to actually concentrate on the important task.
In the fourth frame, we finally get the movie reference from Star Wars as Princess Leia and one of the Rebel Alliance's officers are gathered around the holographic table that allows them to follow the battle. In the movie, Luke turns off his targeting computer because he uses the force to fire the torpedoes at the right time. But in this comic, Luke turns off the computer because he keeps getting distracted by Reddit and CNN. When they ask whether he is alright, he responds in the way most people would who have nearly been caught wasting time on the internet. This is however a quote of what he actually replies in the movie.
See the Destruction of Death Star scene on YouTube. The Let Go remark from Obi-Wan Kenobi that had given the title to this comic occurs about two minutes into the clip . Though here it is a reference to let go of refreshing websites...
The headlines on CNN read 'Bees?', 'Where is Oman ?', and 'iReport (we mean you, that is.)'.
The headline Bees? could be a reference to Cards Against Humanity . One of the white cards says exactly that. It could also just be a question to the picture above - if it was bees following the guy.
The headline Where is Oman? is below a map where land is white. It shows Cyprus, Northern Egypt and the Middle East with the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf (seas are grey). Oman is not on this map as it is not situated on the Persian Gulf; it's on the Gulf of Oman and on the Arabian Sea, both of which can be considered parts of the Indian Ocean.
The title text is a serious solution to a procrastination problem that we see in the comic, later explained to take the form of simply rebooting the computer.  Randall just used the honor system, rather than enforcing this behavior with a program, but he solicited suggestions from his commenters for browser addons, for people who could not simply reboot their computers for whatever reason.  At the time, a commenter suggested DelaySites, but that addon is no longer available; nowadays, Mozilla recommends LeechBlock NG (also available for Chrome ), which can be configured to implement the loading delay or block websites entirely, with additional parameters for adjusting time limits for browsing and the time of day and days of the week that each behavior is active.
[Reddit page.] Luke (thinking): I shouldn't be looking at Reddit. Why can't I stop?
[CNN page.] Luke (thinking): Refreshing CNN again. Do news stories so affect my life that I benefit from checking them more than once a day?
[Shutdown screen.] Luke (thinking): I should at least check Faceb... no. Screw it. I can't do my job when I'm distracting myself every five minutes like this.
[Cueball and Princess Leia looking at a battlefield screen.] Cueball: His computer's off. Luke - You've switched off your targeting computer. What's wrong? Luke: Nothing. I'm all right.


Major in the Universe

Explanation:
Several authors are referenced here. Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian author who wrote such books as "The Tipping Point", "Outliers" and "Blink." Steven Levitt is one of the co-authors of the book Freakonomics and the Freakonomics blog on NYTimes.com.
Robert Krulwich is a science correspondent for NPR (National Public Radio, for those outside of the US) and a co-host of the show Radiolab .
A. J. Jacobs is a journalist who immerses himself in different ideas and lives them out for periods of time. For example, he lived for a year according to all the rules in the bible literally .
In this comic, Cueball as a college student, meeting with his adviser or professor ( Hairbun ) trying to decide what to major in. He decides to major in "The Universe", but when his adviser details the real work required of that major, Cueball scratches his head and tells what he really means. If you have not read Malcolm Gladwell's books, their disparate parts are usually tied together by a common thread. For example, in Blink , a motif of intuitive judgments ties together the examples of the Getty kouros , John Gottman's marriage studies , the Millennium Challenge war game , speed dating , and Paul Ekman's FACS , to name a few. These books have been criticized for supposedly presenting an incomplete picture of such phenomena, but they are hugely entertaining and eloquent.
Randall is making fun of people who claim to have a broad range of interests, but apparently just to deflect attention from the fact that they are too lazy to master even one field.
[Cueball before a professor.] Cueball: How can I pick a major? I'm interested in everything! Can't I major in "the universe"?
Professor: Okay. First, I'll need papers on every European trade summit that did not result in an agreement. Then, spend a year memorizing every microprocessor instruction set ever used in a production chip.
[Cueball scratches head.]
Cueball: What I meant was I just want to read Malcolm Gladwell books and drink. Professor: We all do, sweetie.


Flying Cars

Explanation:
Cueball is complaining to Megan , on a phone call on his smartphone , about the lack of flying cars even though it is the year 2011. This is a reference to the joke "where's my flying car?" This was explored further in 1623: 2016 Conversation Guide where Randall proposes that flying cars would in fact just be helicopters.
Megan counters that phone technology has taken off. For example in many science fiction movies it was predicted that by now we would have flying cars, but in the same movies the computer technology was pretty much similar to what they had achieved at the time of the movies release (see for instance Blade Runner set in 2019; even back in 2011 very few believed that flying cars would roam the streets by then.) The flying car is still not perfected (although there are some prototypes flying today). But almost any computer technology shown in old movies pales in comparison to the current state of smartphones and other computers.
Cueball chooses to be resentful about the lack of flying cars while calling her from a phone on which he can buy and read books. He should instead be amazed at the current state of computers and communication technology. She continues to say that she even interrupted him in playing a 3D shooter game on his phone, when she called him. And the call could have been a video call , had it not been because Megan chose not to do so, since she is currently shirtless.
Typically, Cueball keeps fixating on the flying car. Megan assumes that if he ever had a flying car he would crash it while using his smartphone to text or play Angry Birds (a game released in 2009, two years before this comic). Given that many car accidents happens because people use their phones while driving , this seems a realistic assumption.
The title text references RealDoll , known as "the world's finest lovedoll", but specifically an android version, which the world has yet to see. This is a direct callback to the android series . It also refers to jet packs , another invention that many people were expecting to have by this point in time. Cueball complain on in the title text that there is not enough space on the backseat of his flying car to have sex with his android girlfriend when they are both wearing their jet packs. (Maybe they would wear those for safety purposes when flying in a car while having sex... Even if it is a self-driving flying car...)
This strip is quoted at the top of the TV Tropes article I Want My Jet Pack , having a similar theme to the strip.
[Cueball, looking right, is talking on his phone held up to his left cheek. The reply from Megan is shown to come from the phone with a zigzag line.] Cueball: It's 2011. I want my flying car. Megan (over the phone): Dude.
[In a frame-less panel Megan, looking left, is talking with Cueball over her phone, which she holds up to her left cheek.] Megan: You're complaining to me using a phone on which you buy and read books,
[Zoom in on topless Megan as she takes the phone down in front of her looking at it and talking to it.] Megan: And which you were using to play a 3D shooter until I interrupted you with what would be a video call if I were wearing a shirt.
[Cueball is now also looking down at his phone held in front of him, talking to it. Again the reply from Megan is shown to come from the phone with a zigzag line.] Cueball: Can't I have a flying car, too? Megan (over the phone): You'd crash it while texting and playing Angry Birds.


Nanobots

Explanation:
Megan and Ponytail are in orbit while nanobots are devouring the earth in a swarm. The nanobots stop after devouring 40% of the planet. This is a take on the " Grey goo " scenario in which self-replicating nanobots destroy the earth while creating more and more of themselves non-stop.
However, the nanobots are only able to destroy 40% of the planet because (40% of the earth's mass) = (# of IPv6 addresses) x (A few cubic microns) x (density of nanobots). Without more IP addresses, the nanobots cannot continue to replicate (assuming that each nanobot must be individually addressable).
IPv6 supports approximately 3.4×10 38 addresses, while the Earth's mass is around 5.972×10 24 kg. Assuming "a few cubic microns" is the minimum of 2 µm 3 (according to 1070: Words for Small Sets ), the nanobots would have a density of 4 g/cm 3 , a bit less dense than the earth.
This is a joke on the shortage of IPv4 addresses. The only difference is that we are on IPv4 and the nanobots are on IPv6 .
1998 is when the IPv6 Specification (RFC 2460) was published and IETF is the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Note that an April fool joke for IPV9 exists and would have guaranteed Earth's doom in this comic's scenario.
[Megan and commander are on a space station.] Megan: Commander! Come quick! It's the nanobots—they've STOPPED!
Megan: They devoured 40% of the Earth, and then just... quit! They're just sitting there! Why?!
Ponytail: It's a mystery. ...unless... What's the volume of each nanobot? Megan: A few cubic microns. Why? Ponytail: I think the year 1998 just bought us some time. [Earth's surface, covered in mountains of nanobots.]
In the swarm: Nanobot: What do you mean, "Run out of addresses?" Other Nanobot: Look, we should've migrated away from IPv6 AGES ago...


Compass and Straightedge

Explanation:
Compass and straightedge constructions are a class of problems in classical geometry. They take the form "Using only a compass and a straightedge, construct X", where X is a geometric figure such as a regular pentagon. The subject is typically covered in high school mathematics. Three such constructions ( squaring the circle , trisecting the angle and doubling the cube ) remained unsolved for thousands of years before being shown impossible with the use of modern algebraic techniques.
The comic begins as if it were stating a problem in classical geometry but veers into an observation that no amount of technical knowledge can substitute for human companionship. An additional layer of humor is that Cueball is a stick figure so technically it is possible to create friends with a straightedge and a compass, a figure constructed like Cueball is. Yet two other layers are the reference to the "straight edge" subculture that believes that one can find fun, friends and partners without alcohol and drugs and the fact that it claims one can construct a awesome birthday party using only two means that together often fail to construct even simple geometrical objects.
Ferdinand von Lindemann was a German mathematician who showed in 1882 that pi is not a zero of any polynomial with rational coefficients, i.e. it is a transcendental number. Transcendental numbers cannot be constructed with straightedge and compass. This proves that squaring the circle (a problem where it is required to construct a square with the same area as a given circle) is impossible, being as the sides of the square would need to be √π times the radius of the circle, and pi is not constructible.
I learned in high school what geometers discovered long ago: [Cueball, holding a compass and straightedge, looks sad.] Using only a compass and straightedge, it's impossible to construct friends.


Herpetology

Explanation:
Herpetology is the branch of zoology that studies reptiles and amphibians . Ornithology is the branch of zoology that studies birds .
At an ornithology conference, Ponytail is using the Cladistics method by showing a Cladogram to argue that the combining of amphibians and reptiles into a single field of study is  misguided.  In terms of their evolutionary history , reptiles are more closely related to birds (and even to mammals) than to amphibians.  She states, in a patronizing way, that the study of reptiles should more properly be combined into her own field.
Herpetologists would rightly see this view as a threat to their territory, their budgets and even their existence.
The claim made by the ornithologist is fundamentally correct; the evolutionary history of those groups did actually diverge in that way. So, instead of arguing the science, Megan , the presenter at the herpetology conference resorts to a personal attack on the profession of ornithology.  At their own conference, they retaliate with a chart that purports to demonstrate that douchebags and ornithologists are more closely related to each other than either are to nice people , and they can therefore be grouped into an encompassing asshole classification.
Since the intent of the earlier presentation was presumably to rile herpetologists rather than achieve any particular scientific goal, this response seems appropriate.
In the title text, birds are class Aves which is a subset of the suborder Theropoda which is a subset of the order Saurischia and the superorder Dinosauria . Under the normal rules of classification, this means that all birds are technically dinosaurs.
This was also shown in more detail later in 1211: Birds and Dinosaurs .
[Ponytail is standing on a podium looking right while pointing behind her with a pointer stick on a sketch showing a Cladogram, i.e. a large tree split that split up several time. Starting with one line at the bottom, this splits left and right and then both continues up. The left does not split again. The right splits again in a similar way, with the right not splitting anymore. The left, now in the middle splits a final time. All four ends are at the same hight and have labels above them written at 45 degree angle. A small frame sits over the top of the panels frame. Inside there is a caption:] Ornithology conference: Ponytail: As you can see, herpetology is a silly field; reptiles are actually more closely related to birds and mammals than to amphibians. Ponytail: It should really be broken up, with lizards folded into ornithology. Labels: Amphibians Reptiles Birds Mammals
[Megan is standing on a podium looking left while pointing behind her with a pointer stick on a sketch similar to the previous panel. Starting with one line at the bottom, this splits left and right and then both continues up. The left does not split again. The right splits again in a similar way. All three ends are at the same hight and have labels above them written at 45 degree angle. The top of the right part that split in two, including the labels has been encompassed by a dotted line which also has a label written over this line at the top left. A small frame sits over the top of the panels frame. Inside there is a caption:] Herpetology conference: Megan: As you can see, ornithologists are actually assholes. Labels: Nice people Ornithologists Douchebags Dotted-line: Assholes


Nolan Chart

Explanation:
The Nolan Chart is a visual representation of the political spectrum that measures not only liberal vs conservative tendencies but also libertarian and statist tendencies. Libertarians tend to like Nolan Charts because they feel that the Democratic/Republican spectrum, the most common visualization of political beliefs, isn't nuanced enough to explain libertarian beliefs.
In this comic, it is taken to a different end. On one side are both Democrats and Republicans and on the other side are baseball fans. In the typical Nolan Chart, Libertarians are in the top quadrant, but in this one "Internet Libertarians" take the spot because they love the Nolan Charts (which are found online) and have a lot of political opinions.
Nolan may also refer to baseball Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan .
In the title text, the NFPA-compliant chemical manufacturers are mentioned because of this diagram . Sir Charles Wheatstone was the inventor of the Wheatstone bridge , which is also diamond-shaped . The title text also refers to Nate Silver, who previously worked for Baseball Prospectus and now writes a data-driven political and sports blog called FiveThirtyEight for ESPN. He is both a lover of diamond-shaped diagrams (baseball) and has political opinions. Politically-active kite designers both would have strong political opinions (it comes with the territory of being politically active) and would love diamond-shaped diagrams, presumably because they would be interested in blueprints of kites.
[Diamond-shaped four-panel diagram with each panel labeled. Two arrows indicate axis up along the left and right lower side of the diamond:] [Left]: Political opinions [Right]: Love of diamond-shaped diagrams [Top panel]: Internet libertarians [Left panel]: Democrats, Republicans [Right panel]: Baseball fans [Bottom panel]: Other


Server Attention Span

Explanation:
The comic shows - in human language - part of the conversations that a browser and web server do in order to get the right page. The protocol they use is called HTTP .
This comic makes fun of the issue that many web-servers that see a mobile browser will automatically suggest to load the mobile version of the website, but then serve the front page of the mobile site, not the page the user had requested. In quite a few sites, there is no 1-to-1 correspondence of pages between the regular and the mobile site, so this problem is difficult to solve and very annoying.
A second issue with HTTP is identified in the last panel. HTTP is a stateless protocol . After serving the web page, the connection is severed. Any new request for a page will have to start afresh - which is where the server starts with again: "Hi! I'm a server!" Of course, browsers do not have egos nor do they hold grudges but it can be annoying for users. This design issue can also slow down the browsing experience.
The title text is a joke that all the other servers in the rack think the web server is being childish. /var/log/syslog is where Linux (used by the vast majority of servers) and other POSIX systems store their system log messages. The 'trying to start conversation' comment is probably a joke on ARP discovery packets that are sent out to the network to see who is who. All servers send out ARP packets to see what other machines are on the network, but some machines send them out every 5 minutes, which can be extremely annoying for someone monitoring network traffic logs.
The coffee comment is another jab at web servers. Some websites use Java , or other JVM based languages ( Apache Groovy , Scala , etc.) as the back end of the website, as opposed to using PHP or ASP . Of course, java is another word for coffee, so a web server running on coffee is likely to be well-caffeinated, and well-caffeinated people tend to bounce off the walls with enthusiasm.
[Single server in a server rack.] Server: Hi! I'm a server! Who are you?
[Mobile device with a web browser.] Browser: I'm a browser. I'd like to see this article.
Server: Oh boy! I can help! Let me get it for— ...Whoa! You're a smartphone browser?
Browser: Yeah. Server: Cooool! Hey, I've got this new mobile version of my site! Check it out! Isn't it pretty?
Browser: Sure, but this is just your mobile site's main page. Where's the article I wanted?
Server: What article? Browser: The one I— Server: Who are you? Browser: I— Server: Hi! I'm a server!


Advertising

Explanation:
This comic pokes fun at millions of advertising tricks, analyzing them mathematically.
The equation at the top of the panel expresses the same thing using set theory notation.  It reads out as: The union of sets A and B equals the set of all x, such that x is less than or equal to 15, or greater than 15, which equals the set of all real numbers .
The same is expressed again with a number line ; the numbers being interpreted as percentages .  The first range, ending with a black dot, indicates that everything below, as well as the number 15, is included ("up to 15%").  The second range beginning with a white dot indicates that it only includes numbers strictly bigger than 15 ("more than 15%").  The two ranges combined clearly cover the entire number line.
The phrase "up to 15% or more" may be a reference to the Geico slogan at the time: a phone call lasting "15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance." However the reference is unclear, as the words " up to 15%" are not actually used by Geico. Though Geico's advertising is also referenced in 42: Geico .
We are even given a little formula to calculate the average amount of money they expect to make from the readers. The assumption is that they expect to generate at least as much income from the ad as what they paid to print and publish it in the first place.
The title text compares Randall's realization of the "FREE"-fraud to the revelation that Santa Claus is not real.
Mathematically Annoying Advertising:
A ∪ B = {x:x ≤ 15 or x > 15} = ℝ [line graph representing the above equation.] When discussing real numbers, it is impossible to get more vague than "up to 15% or more".
[" FREE! *" in large text, with substantial illegible fine print.] If someone has paid $x to have the word "free" typeset for you and N other people to read, their expected value for the money that will move from you to them is at least $(x / (N+1))
[Graph representing inverse relationship between "amount you spend" on the y axis and "amount you save" on the x axis.] It would be difficult for the phrase "the more you spend the more you save" to be more wrong.
Randall changed the image name from advertising.png to mathematically_annoying.png, since adblocking extensions interpreted it as an ad and made the comic blank. He had the same problem again just three months later with 906: Advertising Discovery .


Charity

Explanation:
Organizations such as Steam often offer sales where certain games are available for low prices--in order to compel or persuade buyers to make donations to worthwhile charities. Cueball is participating in one of these purchases (to fight malaria ), but Megan 's snide denigration of Cueball's act of charity as inadequate and self-serving has dissuaded him from any act of charity at all. Many people donating to charity are in fact buying a feeling that they are good people doing good things. If you take this feeling away, many people stop donating, which is shown on the third panel.
This also shows the stupidity of the situation: donating some of your money to charity can result in insults and arguments, while donating nothing at all does not.
However, whatever somebody's internal motivation was, charity is a good thing. Therefore the proper response is to neither care what people say about you nor attack other people's charitable giving. The action that Randall recommends here is the right one, which is to donate anyway without caring about what others say or do. Clicking on the original image leads to the website of Nothing But Nets , an organization that distributes mosquito bed nets in Africa for the eradication of malaria.
A subtext here is that the friendship between Cueball and Megan has been strained or even broken.  Cueball has picked a new friend to talk to, who reacts positively to his decision.
In the title text, Randall expresses an opinion critical of "respond[ing] to someone else doing something good by figuring out a reason that they're not really as good as they seem", in part because supporting charity shouldn't cause "internet arguments."
Cueball: I'm going to buy this $10 game I want, and I'm donating $10 for malaria eradication.
Megan: If you actually cared, you'd skip the game and donate all $20. Megan: What's more important? Games, or mosquito nets and medicine for kids?
(Caption above the comic) Later: Cueball: I think I'm going to buy these two $10 games I want. Friend: Cool; which ones?
Following the publication of this comic, comments responding to anti-malaria charities, celebrities who raise money for charity, and charity directors in general, by figuring out reasons that they're not really as good as they seem, were posted on the discussion page for this comic .  However, this did not lead to internet arguments.


Fairy Tales

Explanation:
Eigenvectors are a mathematical concepts that can be applied to a matrix . A matrix is mostly displayed as an rectangular array of elements used to describe the state of objects in physics. In pure mathematics they can be much more complex. The most important issue to the understanding of the comic is that a matrix can be transformed through various processes. These transformations can include rotation, movement and scaling of the object described by the matrix. An eigenvector refers to elements of the vector space of the matrix which remain unchanged (except possibly being scaled to be longer or shorter) after the transformation is applied. The prefix 'eigen-' applied to the term is adopted from the German word eigen for "self-" or "unique to", "peculiar to", or "belonging to." As the eigenvector remains unchanged through the transformation of the matrix it can be used to describe something unique about that matrix.
The concept of an eigenvector has nothing to do with the fairy tale Cinderella ; therefore Megan confuses Cueball when she asks whether it occurred in the story of Cinderella.
The story of Cinderella includes Cinderella going to a ball in disguise, dancing with a prince and then leaving early and quickly, so that she accidentally leaves a glass slipper behind. The prince then uses the shoe to find Cinderella. Megan says that the way she learned it, the prince used an eigenvector and corresponding eigenvalue to match the shoe to its owner. This is a somewhat logical mathematical connection to make as eigenvectors, unchanged properties of mathematical matrices that may allow for mathematical identification of the changed matrix, correspond to the unchangeable property of the shoe (size) that allowed the prince to correctly identify the owner of the shoe even after the shoe was misplaced. Eigenvectors are sometimes used in facial-recognition software to match 2 faces.
Megan explains that her mother, a math professor (drawn as Hairbun with glasses) would continue to talk when she fell asleep in the midst of reading bed time stories, and then would ramble on mixing the adventures with the math from her work. The middle panel refers to the story of The Ant and the Grasshopper with the addition of what is likely a reference to the Poincaré conjecture , a (now-misnamed) theorem in mathematics.
Megan explains that even today she is not sure which versions are the real ones. Cueball cannot understand how she would not have noticed the drastic subject changes (which seems obvious to adults, but maybe not to small children).
Megan then mentions two other story changes, the first Inductive White and the ( n −1) Dwarfs was better than the original. The story is a combination of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with the principle of induction . But The lim x→∞ (x) Little Pigs was a little weird toward the end. That story combines the Three Little Pigs with mathematical limits . The reason it got weird toward the end was because the number of pigs tends to infinity as the story progresses.
Each of the stories has a varied degree of similarity to the mathematical concepts that were mixed in as though her mom began to talk about a mathematical principle that may have been brought to mind while reading the story or already on her mind.
In the title text Megan mentions another adventure: Goldilocks' discovery of Newton's method for approximation . Newton's method for approximation is a method for finding successively better approximations to the zeroes (or roots) of a real-valued function. In Goldilocks , the protagonist finds successively better porridge and comfier chairs in a house where three bears lived. In the same way, in the Mom's version of the fairy tale, she would find successively better approximations to zeroes instead of successively better bowls of porridge, and Megan notes that it was surprising how few changes that story needed compared to the original adventure.
[Megan sits in an armchair, reading a book looking over her shoulder at Cueball as he walks in.] Megan: Are there eigenvectors in Cinderella? Cueball: ...No? Megan: The prince didn't use them to match the shoe to its owner? Cueball: What are you talking about? Megan: Dammit.
[In this frame-less panel Megan is shown in a flashback as a little girl lying in bed, head on pillow and hands held on the edge of the blanket at her throat. Hairbun with glasses, as her mom, is sitting on the edge of the bed reading, while her head is hanging down. Above and below there are two frames with Megan's narration. Hairbun's reading text is smaller than the other text in this comic.] Megan (narrating): My mom is one of those people who falls asleep while reading, but keeps talking. She's a math professor, so she'd start rambling about her work. Mom: But while the ant gathered food ... Mom: ...zzzz... Mom: ...the grasshopper contracted to a point on a manifold that was not a 3-sphere... Megan (narrating): I'm still not sure which versions are real.
[Cueball now stands in front of the arm chair. Megan has put the book away, and is leaning her head on her left arm which rests on the armrest of the chair.] Cueball: You didn't notice the drastic subject changes? Megan: Well, sometimes her versions were better. We loved Inductive White and the (n−1) Dwarfs . Megan: I guess The lim x→∞ (x) Little Pigs did get a bit weird toward the end...


FPS Mod

Explanation:
FPS stands for First Person Shooter , which is a type of video game (like Halo or Duke Nukem ) in which you are looking at the world from the first person perspective of the character you are controlling. Randall notes in the caption that no one liked his FPS mod (short for "modification" of the FPS game), and in the title text it is clear that Cueball who played this modified version no longer enjoys the game.
FPS games are controversial for their (supposed) quality of encouraging violence such as killing (especially other human beings). One point of the controversy is that, while virtual enemies are just pixels on a screen, real enemies have actual lives, emotions, and the like. In the games, there is a disconnect between the act of killing and its emotional cost, thus leading to the controversy that FPS games encourage wanton killing (or violence in general) to solve problems instead of considering the other party. Randall makes reference to this by adding a mod that gives biographical snippets of the enemy you shoot in the game, thus giving Cueball the perspective of the enemy he just shot, and causing emotional consequence and remorse by removing the disconnection between pixel and life.
The comic can also be a reference towards making games more realistic. Giving the enemies a life above being mere targets definitely makes the game more realistic, but such a game may not be that enjoyable. This has been explored previously in 772: Frogger .
Having lots of unread e-mails was mentioned in 2389: Unread . The third comment ("take care of the plants back at base") may be referring that many FPS videogames have some sort of base that you must defend or start the game in. These games do not usually feature any way to take care of plants. [ citation needed ]
The title text talks about how gender is portrayed in games. For some people it is more emotionally affecting to kill a woman, as women are considered biologically "weaker" than men by many societies, and societal norms state that men must protect them. Gender equality is a highly debated topic with many different viewpoints, where one's conscious reasoned views may sometimes stand at odds to subconscious feelings. When a player becomes aware that killing women bothers one more than killing men, it exposes an inconsistency in the player's own logic, one that's very uncomfortable to confront.
In the 1993 post-apocalyptic novel The Fifth Sacred Thing , the eco-pacifist residents of San Francisco defeat an invading army using a similar tactic. Rather than engage in armed defense, the family and friends of each dead San Franciscan speak directly to the soldiers who killed them, saying, "My wife was the mother of five children, and I loved her dearly," or "My cousin liked baseball." Eventually the soldiers suffer psychological breakdowns and defect en masse , rather as Cueball seems to do in the title text.
Amusingly, the 2014 game Watch Dogs does something quite similar to this; the in-game "Profiler" provides a brief summary of a targeted enemy, and if the enemy does not have a gameplay-relevant feature (i.e. "Can call for backup"), it will mention their hobbies or interests.
Like most other games in the Sniper Elite series, the 2017 Third Person Shooter Sniper Elite 4 allows the player to track and see brief overviews of any visible enemy by "Tagging" them with binoculars. However, Sniper Elite 4 has the distinction of also being very similar to Randall's mod in that it displays short character bios in the "Allied Intelligence" section of the overviews when Tagging in the campaign mode. They range from the mundane (year of conscription, former occupation) to the dark (Sapper Oswald Sander's brutal murder of a cowering fifteen year old makes even his fellow soldiers suspect him) to the comedic (Ewald Amsel regularly steals chocolate from his best friend Wolfram Wasser; Wolfram Wasser wonders who's stealing his supply of chocolates and has sworn to kill them).
The 2012 Third Person Shooter Spec Ops: The Line also has a section where one of the antagonists will chide you with radio message when you kill one of the enemy soldiers, often with short sympathetic descriptions of the enemy you just killed (although he'll sometimes admit he didn't actually know or like that particular person). As this game is a deconstruction of the military-style shooting games of its time and their portrayal of violence, evoking a negative emotional response in the player when killing these enemies is very much intentional.
The game Borderlands 2 directly references this comic with the Morningstar, a unique aftermarket talking Hyperion sniper rifle which berates the user in a nagging, whiny voice any time they reload, kill an enemy, swap weapons, or score a critical hit. The weapon is obtained from the mission Hyperion Contract 873 (a reference to this comic being comic number 873) and is referred to as "the Hyperion ex-K seedy experimental weapon" upon completion of the mission.
[Cueball is sitting in a chair in front of his TV holding a gamepad while playing a video game. Every time he shoots the sound is written inside a ring of small curved lines to indicate the noise. Text on the screen is noted after each round of blasts with a zigzag line from the screen and between each entry.] Blam Game: He once built a treehouse. Blam Game: She has 110 unread emails that she was hoping to get to tonight. Blam blam Game: He was the only one who took care of the plants back at base.
[Caption below the panel:] No one liked my FPS mod that gives you three-second snippets from the bios of people you shoot.


Time Management

Explanation:
In the first two panels we see snippets from Cueball 's posting on blogs explaining the importance of time management and its benefits. The schedule on the wall is a direct contradiction to the initial ideas and follows a very simple plan for the day, making willpower only seem necessary for getting up on time and posting on these blogs, leaving the rest of the day to do whatever he wants.
The title text explains what the schedule is about, possibly alluding that Cueball's goal in life is to be successful at messing around, not actually being successful at what would in common be considered someone would do to become successful.
It could also suggest someone who has a (shallow ego driven?) goal of "success" itself, but who may not much care about what they are achieving for itself. Thus, achieving it is would not be an intrinsic reward to them — to borrow an concept from Eliezer Yudkowsky , they are clearly ambitious, but they don't truly have an ambition. These people are probably not be the type of people Randall enjoys spending time with, since the reward for him is primarily the interesting world around him, as he has occasionally pointed out. At the same time, it could also be expressing a general skepticism of people in fields like internet marketing or inspirational coaching (who are usually also selling a product) and therefore are potentially just out to make a buck on you, especially the ones who have a free blog with a paid product, since it is often significantly more expensive than, say, buying a book on time management at the bookstore.
Since this comic came out (and before) there have been many comics about wasted time and general time management , see the Time management category .
[Cueball sits at a desk with a computer. There's a schedule on the wall next to it. Cueball is typing.] The key to leading a productive life is time management. type type
Choose goals, build a schedule, and have the WILLPOWER to follow it- or be LEFT BEHIND by those of us who DO. type type type
[We see the schedule in closeup.] SCHEDULE 7:00am Wake up 7:15am-8:00am Post on productivity blogs about my schedule 8:00am-whenever Fuck around


2009 Called

Explanation:
The comic deconstructs a snowclone or common idiom - "X called, they want their Y back." Usually, X is a year (like 2009 here), and Y is something very popular in that year that is seen as ridiculous in the present day.
Here, Megan notices a Three-Wolf Moon T-shirt that Cueball apparently owns. The Three-Wolf Moon is a shirt of three wolves howling at the moon that reached meme status when several people posted ironic reviews giving it supernatural powers on Amazon around late 2008.
Megan says the snowclone, but before she can finish, Cueball pretends to take it literally (that is, that the year 2009 actually called her) and admonishes her for not telling them about the February 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan . The comic was posted shortly after the latter, so it is reasonable to assume that it was created as a response to the disaster. Knowing Cueball, he's either preempting Megan's attempt to humiliate him and giving her a pretty good burn, or Cueball, being Cueball, actually thinks the past called.
The title text continues the snowclone by implying a terrible future awaits in 2017. Likewise, non-apocalyptic events, such as political protests, can generate "yelling and screaming". Given the public's general inclination to focus on the negative the prediction of a "bad future" may have worked with any date.
2017 has occurred, and the world hasn't exploded. [ citation needed ] In hindsight, 2020 would work better for the joke. [insert hindsight is 2020 joke here]
[Cueball is at computer. Megan is standing behind him, looking at clothes on the floor.] Megan: Is this a three wolf moon shirt? Megan: Dude, 2009 called, and they- Cueball: OH MY GOD! Cueball: DID YOU WARN THEM? Cueball: ABOUT HAITI AND JAPAN? Megan: What? No, I- Cueball: You ASSHOLE!
See also:


Trapped

Explanation:
Cueball 's brain seems to be unaware it is in his body, and is freaked out by the fact that all the information it receives is through Cueball's sensory organs. The brain has no means of verifying that the information received from the senses indeed corresponds to the actual outside world, and is thus in Plato's cave.
The 911 operator references Plato's cave . This is a reference to an allegory by Plato in which he creates a world in which prisoners are chained against a wall and know only the shadows that cross the wall and how they create their own reality from those shadows. They would create words for the things they were seeing, but that would only correspond to the shadows and not the physical things themselves.
The title text is also about Plato's cave and treats it like an actual cave with prisoners; Randall is saying that Socrates , Plato's teacher, should have just gone into the cave and brought the prisoners out instead of dealing with the extended allegory. The tranquilizer gun is for the prisoners, so they don't completely freak out while being taken out of the cave.
[Cueball is on a corded wall phone.] Cueball: Hello? 911? I'm trapped! Cueball: It's dark and I can't see anything except these two distorted splotches of light! Cueball: Help!
[Ponytail, a 911 operator is in an office, wearing a headset.] Ponytail: Splotches of light? Your... eyeballs? Cueball (over phone): I think that's what they are! There's meat everywhere!
[Focus on Ponytail's head.] Ponytail: ...so you're a brain. Cueball (over phone): Yes! Ponytail: Yeah, we all are. You're not trapped. Use your body to walk around and experience reality.
Cueball: But everything's just signals in my sensory cortices! How can I be sure they correspond to an external world?! Ponytail (over phone): I'm sorry, but we can't send a search-and-rescue team into Plato's cave.


Beauty

Explanation:
Many people believe that over-analysis is boring and only serves to detract from the beauty, wonder, or emotional moments of the subject. This is especially compounded in literature classes, but it's a gripe common throughout many studies. Keats in particular is said to have joked that Newton had "destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow , by reducing it to the prismatic colors". Many experts and professionals, however, disagree greatly, claiming that they see more wonder and excitement in those subjects than they did before.
Ponytail 's statement to Cueball in the first panel is proved wrong by Megan 's actions throughout the comic and the statement in the title text, to the point where she retracts and changes her statement.
Megan comes in, excited about slime molds , in particular F. septica . Slime molds are not particularly attractive [ citation needed ] — in fact, the average person would probably say they were gross and slimy. Ponytail is rather grossed out and horrified by the mold, and changes her statement in response to Megan's enthusiasm for the mold, in keeping with Ponytail's own disgust. She thinks that Megan is crazy to see the wonder in such a disgusting-looking creature.
F. septica is a remarkable species. As the comic says, it can tolerate extremely high zinc levels. The yellow pigment bonds to the zinc and renders it biologically inactive. As with other slime molds, it forms a multi-nucleate mass which can move like an amoeboid. It changes to a sponge-like form before releasing spores. Although the taxonomy is still fluid, the slime molds are distinct enough to be classified as neither animals, plants or fungi, but form a kingdom of their own, with some types of amoeba.
In the title text the hagfish is described as the best hugger as it can create a huge blanket of slime around it self in a few seconds, which is uses as a defense against predators, and maybe also to move out of its own "prey", which is often dead fish and whales that it burrow into to feed. "Their unusual feeding habits and slime-producing capabilities have led members of the scientific and popular media to dub the hagfish as the most 'disgusting' of all sea creatures." Nevertheless, they too fascinate researchers, and the slime may have various medical applications. See for instance the slime in this video and active slime defense (and knotting) in this video .
[Ponytail and Cueball are discussing science. They are interrupted by an off-panel shout.] Ponytail: The problem with scientists is that you take the wonder and beauty out of everything by trying to analyze it. Megan (off panel): Dude!
[Megan runs across this frame less panel, carrying a microscope and a yellow slime mold.] Megan: My plasmoidal slime molds have heightened pigment production! Check out that yellow color! That actually makes them zinc-resistant. Amazing, huh?
[A close up of Megan's hands holding the yellow slime mold up to Ponytail who takes her hands up to her mouth.] Ponytail: It looks like dog barf. Megan (off panel): Hah, yeah! F. Septica is nicknamed "dog vomit slime mold." Cool, huh? Check out my slides!
[Megan has set down the microscope on the floor of the panel, and the slime mold is jiggling in her hands, while Cueball watches but Ponytail looks away.] Ponytail: Okay, never mind: What's wrong with scientists is that you do see wonder and beauty in everything. Ponytail: Oh God, it's moving! Megan: It wants to hug you! So cute!


Model Rail

Explanation:
In model rail construction, the HO scale refers to the most popular scale for modeling railroads, in which 3.5 millimeters in the model corresponds to 1 real-world Imperial foot. As the comic suggests, it works out to a ratio of about 1:87.1 (or 3048:35 exactly, which equals 1:87.08̄5̄7̄1̄4̄2̄8). In Europe, the scale is defined as exactly 1:87 instead, to avoid references to non-metric measurements.
This comic features two Cueballs conversing; we'll refer to them as Lefty and Righty to avoid confusion. The conversation takes place in Lefty's basement. Lefty is apparently a less-experienced train modeler, and he tells Righty that he wants to make an HO model layout of his town. However, the more-experienced Righty points out that this is a bad idea, due to nesting. To make it a perfectly accurate model, Lefty would have to include a model of his house, which includes his basement, which includes the model. So, he would have to make a model of the model, which will include a smaller model of the model, and so forth. This is illustrated in the comic.
At the end of these six nested models The Matryoshka limit is stated: "It is impossible to nest more than six HO layouts". Matryoshka dolls are toys of Russian origin that can be stacked inside one another. Here, the "Matryoshka limit" is the hard barrier that follows as a result of the nesting. Matter is not infinitely divisible; once one gets to the level of atoms, it is impossibly difficult to go any smaller. The unit shown in the last diagram is the ångström , a very small unit of measurement (1/10000th of a micrometre , 1/10 of a nanometre , 100 picometres or 10 −10 m) which was created when humans started discovering objects on an atomic scale, such as crystal structures or wavelengths. The last nested model looks like the atoms on a surface as seen using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM).
The rules of model train layouts reference the 1999 cult classic Fight Club , where the first rule of Fight Club is "do not talk about Fight Club." However, while the club instituted the rule because their activities were morally and legally questionable, the rule in the comic was instituted by friends and family members who were apparently sick of hearing the train enthusiasts talk about model train layouts all the time.  The second rule of Fight Club is "you do not talk about Fight Club", repeated for emphasis, but evidently Cueball and his friend are good enough at following the first rule of model train layouts that they only had to be told once.
The "Philistines" comment is not referring to citizens of ancient Philistia (at least not directly), but rather the philosophy of Philistinism . Friedrich Nietzsche defined a Philistine as someone who is purely negative in how they define style, i.e. they know exactly what they hate and don't really have anything they like. A common stereotype for artists is to refer to anyone who dislikes their work as "Philistines," thus dismissing their criticism as being part of a larger personality defect on the critic's part rather than any particular failing of the artwork in question.
The title text references HO scale and, more specifically, whether it should be spelled with the letter "O" or the number zero (0). Such debates often seem petty to the "layman", yet the people involved in the debates can form very strong feelings for their side. Randall recognizes "nerdy tendencies" almost immediately when he gets the urge to take a side.
[Cueball to the left and his friend, who also looks like Cueball, are standing in the friend's rather large basement, where the celling is held up by six thin columns, and the walls are shown angling in towards a point of perspective, to display how big the room is.] Friend: I want to build a perfect HO-scale (~1/87) model train layout of my town. Cueball: In your basement? Bad idea. Never make a layout of the area you're in.
[Zoom in on the two friends without the basement visualized.] Friend: Why not? Cueball: Because it'd include a little 10" replica of your house.
[Zoom in Cueball's friend who takes his hand to his chin.] Friend: So? That's be cool! I'd make tiny replicas of my rooms, my furniture— Cueball (off-screen)l: —And your train layout?
[Beneath this first row of the comic is the zoom-out of how the full model would look in the basement. The town lies beneath some small mountains. There is some water with a bridge over it continuing to the roads going through the city. There is no frame around this section, but instead there follows five zoom-outs, each one going from the friend's house, that proceeds to a circular frame. Within each of these is shown a nested model. Starting to the right of the main model, and then moving down, then left, and then down and right. Each layer has a broken arrow above the model between two vertical lines to indicate the scale, the length being written between the two parts of the arrow. Some foreign objects are also labeled to help understand the scale.]
[Layer 1, the model with the two friends standing to the left of it.] 18 m
[Layer 2, looks exactly as the model, but without the friends.] 21 cm
[Layer 3, with a mosquito shown for comparison. It stands over half the model covering the mountains.] 2.4 mm
[Layer 4, with a strand of spider silk (labeled) shown for comparison. The silk is much thicker than the roads, almost as thick as the mountains and much longer than the model. But the model still looks fairly much like the original one.] 28 μm Spider web
[Layer 5, with a cold virus (labeled) shown for comparison. It covers roughly a quarter of the model, taking up the water part of the model. At this level the whole model becomes notably "fuzzy" as individual atoms are discernible, and most of the features apart from the mountain is indiscernible. There may be two viruses. The other would then be to the right of the one in the water but above the model. The label stands between them.] 320 nm Cold virus
[Layer 6, is simply spheres (atoms) at this point. The mountain near the back is the only noticeable feature, consisting of five atoms jutting out from the surface of atoms, which is by no mean flat.] 37 Å
[Beneath these six versions of the model is a caption:] The Matryoshka limit: It is impossible to nest more than six HO layouts
[Back to the two friends in the basement, still not showing the basement.] Friend: My God. Cueball: Yeah. It's the second rule of model train layouts: No nesting.
[Zoom in on the heads of the two friends.] Friend: ...What's the first rule? Cueball: "Do not talk about model train layouts." That rule was actually voted in by our friends and families. Friend: Philistines.


Lamp

Explanation:
Cueball finds a lamp. It has a shape which suggests it is a magic lamp, which might contain a genie . Traditionally, genies grant three wishes to whoever rubs their lamp, thus freeing them. Cueball rubs the lamp, but instead of releasing a genie, the lamp appears to ejaculate. Cueball is grossed out by this and holds the lamp away from him.
The imagery and style of the comic are intentionally similar to male stimulation and ejaculation. The act of rubbing one's genitals to stimulate orgasm is well known and well documented in both literature and science. However, almost anyone would be disturbed by unintentionally giving sexual pleasure to a stranger.
In the title text, a discussion is shown between Cueball and the lamp. Cueball states that what happened was NOT one of the three wishes he would have asked for if a genie had been released, and the lamp retorts, "Who said anything about YOUR wishes?", implying that the lamp's wish was to receive "handy" stimulation (or possibly that the last user of the lamp wished for that to happen to the next owner).
Genies are also mentioned in at least four other comics:
In the song Genie in a Bottle , from 1999 by Christina Aguilera , the sexual comparison of rubbing a genie in  bottle is very clear in the song, although here it is a woman genie that needs to be rubbed in the right way to be let out.
[Cueball stumbles on a lamp, lying on the ground.]
[Cueball picks it up.] Rub rub
[The lamp sprays fluids.] Splort
[Cueball holds the lamp at arm's length, a puddle of fluid on the ground.]


Headache

Explanation:
This was the second April fools' comic released by Randall , but in principle the first real one to be released on April 1st, which in 2011 fell on a Friday, a normal release day for xkcd. The previous fools comic was literally Not Found . After this comic Randall began releasing April Fools comic every year on April 1st disregarding the weekday of that date. The next was 1037: Umwelt released on Sunday April 1st 2012, the first to use another day of the week than Monday, Wednesday or Friday.
Some people suffer from headaches, eyestrain, motion sickness and other problems when watching 3D movies , playing 3D games, watching 3D television , playing hand-held Nintendo 3DS , etc.
In this comic, Cueball is using the excuse that 3D gives him a headache to get out of going outside into the real world, where everything is in 3D . Instead he stays inside and looks at his 2D computer monitor. In the title text, he says he will only go to flat places (i.e. places where everything he could see would be 2D-like).
This comic was released on April Fools' Day . The April fools joke for 2011 made every comic on the site 3D, thus forcing people like Cueball to endure 3D even at their computer screens. An exception to this is 848: 3D , for which the third dimension is not visible. The 3D view is still available at xk3d.xkcd.com for all comics prior to this one.
In his Øredev 2013 talk Randall mentions that a few of his friends created this 3D view and told him just 1.5 hours before the scheduled comic for that day would go live. Randall quickly drew a 3D themed comic to match.
The title text suggests that Cueball is only comfortable seeing objects with visible flat surfaces like flat movie and TV screens (which the entertainment industry would not call "3D").
[Megan has a bike, and is wearing a helmet. Cueball is at a computer.] Megan: Wanna go for a bike ride? Cueball: Nah, I hate 3D stuff. It gives me a headache. When you think about it, this excuse can get you out of almost anything.


Probability

Explanation:
Cueball and Megan are sitting on a hospital bed, reading a piece of paper with the statistics for breast cancer survival. It looks like Megan has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. The thick line represents the survival rate distribution (probability to be alive after X years, unconditioned): 81% are alive at 5 years, while 77% survive to 10 years. The dashed line represents the hazard function (the negative derivative of the thick line divided by the value of the thick line at each point, i.e. how fast the thick line falls with respect to the current value, or the risk of failing/dying at time t+Δt after having survived until time t as Δt approaches zero), which is the rate between the density of the failure distribution and the survival function. Cueball expresses how he used to find probability enjoyable because of its applicability to the real world, but now sees things differently facing a painful situation involving it.
Randall wrote this comic after his fiancee was diagnosed with breast cancer. Two months after posting this strip, he posted this blog post explaining the cancer comics .
The title text is a reference to 55: Useless , where his normal approach also fails him regarding love. Cueball's (and Randall's) normal approach — math — isn't much help in dealing with these types of emotional situations.
[A plot of percent vs. years, with a solid and a dashed line. The solid line starts at 100%, and drops constantly. The dashed line starts around 85%, rises to 95% after 5 years, then drops.]
[A simple table.] 5 years 81% 10 years 77%
[Cueball and Megan are sitting on a bench, next to an Intravenous drip hanging from a rack. Cueball is holding a paper.] Cueball: You know, probability used to be my favorite branch of math Cueball: Because it had so many real-life applications.
[They embrace, faces together.]


Significant

Explanation:
This comic is about data dredging (aka p -hacking), and the misrepresentation of science and statistics in the media. A girl with a black ponytail comes to Cueball with her claim that jelly beans cause acne and Cueball then commission two scientists (a man with goggles and Megan ) to do some research on the link between jelly beans and acne. They find no link, but in the end the real result of this research is bad news reporting!
First some basic statistical theory. Let's imagine you are trying to find out if jelly beans cause acne. To do this you could find a group of people and randomly split them into two groups - one group who you get to eat lots of jelly beans and a second group who are banned from eating jelly beans. After some time you compare whether the group that eat jelly beans have more acne than those who do not. If more people in the group that eat jelly beans have acne then you might think that jelly beans cause acne. However, there is a problem.
Some people will suffer from acne whether they eat jelly beans or not and some will never have acne even if they do eat jelly beans. There is an element of chance in how many people prone to acne are in each group. What if, purely by chance, all the group we selected to eat jelly beans would have had acne anyway while those who didn't eat jelly beans were the lucky sort of people who never get spots? Then, even if jelly beans did not cause acne, we would conclude that jelly beans did cause acne. Of course it is very unlikely that all the acne prone people end up in one group by chance, especially if we have enough people in each group. However, to give more confidence in the result of this type of experiment, scientists use statistics to see how likely it is that the result they find is purely by chance. This is known as statistical hypothesis testing . Before we start the experiment, we choose a threshold known as the significance level. In the comic the scientists choose a threshold of 5%. If they find that more of the people who ate jelly beans had acne and the chance it was a purely random result is less than 1 in 20, they will say that jelly beans do cause acne. If however, the chance that their result was purely by random chance is greater than 5% they will say they have found no evidence of a link. The important point is this – there could still be a 1 in 20 chance that this result was purely a statistical fluke .
At first the scientists do not want to stop playing the addictive game Minecraft , but they do eventually start. Minecraft was previously referenced in 861: Wisdom Teeth .
The scientists find no link between jelly beans and acne (the probability that the result is by chance is more than 5% i.e. p > 0.05) but then Megan and Cueball ask them to see if only one colour of jelly beans is responsible. They test 20 different colors each at a significance level of 5%. If the probability that each trial gives a false positive result is 1 in 20, then by testing 20 different colors it is now likely that at least one jelly bean test will give a false positive. To be precise, the probability of having no false positive in 20 tests is 0.95 20 = 35.85%. Probability of having no false positive in 21 tests (counting the test without color discrimination) is 0.95 21 = 34.06%.
This leads to a big newspaper headline saying Green Jelly Beans Linked To Acne where it is said that they have 95 percent confidence with only a 5% chance of a coincidence.  Unfortunately, although this number has been reported by the scientists' stats package and would be true if green jelly beans were the only ones tested, it is also seriously misleading.  If you roll just one die, one time, you aren't very likely to roll a six... but if you roll it 20 times you are very likely to have at least one six among them.  This means that you cannot just ignore the other 19 experiments that failed.
There are good methods for handling this problem, notably Bayesian inference , but they can be difficult to use and explain, and complexity does not sell newspapers.
In the title text we find out that the scientists repeated the experiment (another key part of the scientific method), but now they no longer find any evidence for the link between acne and green jelly beans. They try to tell the reporter something, maybe that it was probably a coincidence, but the reporters are not interested since that is not news. So they do not listen to what the scientist has to say and instead uses the information they have to make another major headline saying Research conflicted and recommend more study on the link. But that was just what the scientist already did.
This is (sadly) often an issue with more serious matters than jelly beans and acne – at any one time there are many studies about possible links between substances (e.g. red wine) and illness (e.g. cancer). Because only the positive results get reported, this limits the value any single study has - especially if the mechanism linking the two things is not known.
In 2015 some journalists demonstrated the same problem: just how gullible other news outlets are with the same sort of flawed "experimental design": How, and why, a journalist tricked news outlets into thinking chocolate makes you thin - The Washington Post
[A girl with a black ponytail runs up to Cueball, who subsequently points off-panel where there are presumably scientists.] Girl with black ponytail: Jelly beans cause acne! Cueball: Scientists! Investigate! Scientist (off screen): But we're playing Minecraft! Scientist (off screen): ...Fine.
[Two scientists. The man has safety goggles on, Megan has a sheet of notes.] Scientist with goggles: We found no link between jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
[Back to the original two.] Cueball: That settles that. Girl with black ponytail: I hear it's only a certain color that causes it. Cueball: Scientists! Scientist (off screen): But Miiiinecraft!
[20 identical small panels follow, 4 rows 5 columns. The exact same picture as in panel 2 above. The scientist with goggles are stating the results and Megan holds some notes in her hand. The only difference from panel to panel is the color and then in the 14th panel where the result is positive and there is an exclamation from off screen.] Scientist with goggles: We found no link between purple jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between brown jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between pink jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between blue jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between teal jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between salmon jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between red jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between turquoise jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between magenta jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between yellow jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between grey jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between tan jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between cyan jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found a link between green jelly beans and acne (p < 0.05). Voice (off screen): Whoa!
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between mauve jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between beige jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between lilac jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between black jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between peach jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
Scientist with goggles: We found no link between orange jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).
[Newspaper front page with a picture with three green jelly beans. There are several sections with unreadable text below each of the last three readable sentences.] News Green Jelly Beans Linked To Acne! 95% Confidence Only 5% chance of coincidence! Scientists...


Pain Rating

Explanation:
In medical examinations, a doctor will sometimes ask the patient to assess their pain , to give the doctor a rough idea of the patient's condition. Cueball is asked by doctor Ponytail to compare the pain in his arm with the worst pain that he can imagine; however, a one-to-ten scale is not useful for Cueball because in his imagination the worst possible pain reduces him to a huddled ball, makes him forget his injured arm (which he somehow is able to bend without screaming), and rescales his current pain to a 1. Apparently, he has the capacity to imagine pain so intense that it dwarfs any possible real-world pain, thus skewing the scale, and this is what his friend Megan refers to when Ponytail asks what is wrong with his imagination. (According to the official transcript Megan is the patient's friend, and Ponytail is a doctor).
The title text further emphasizes that idea: If the pain was higher than one on his pain scale, it would already be so high that he would be reduced to uncontrollable screaming.
A similar doctor Ponytail is shown in 996: Making Things Difficult with Megan and again in 1713: 50 ccs along with both Cueball and Megan. In 647: Scary Cueball (as Rob ) also ends up in such a huddled up position.
[Ponytail in a doctor's coat is carrying a clipboard and consulting with Cueball, who's sitting on a high medical table one arm down the other holding on to this arm at the inside of the elbow.] Ponytail: Any pain? Cueball: My arm really hurts.
[Zoom out of same scene to include Megan is standing behind Ponytail.] Ponytail: How would you rate the pain, from one to ten, where ten is the worst pain you can imagine?
[This frame-less panel zooms in on Cueball sitting on the table.] Cueball: The worst pain I can imagine?
[Zoom in on the top of Cueball who ponders this, raising a thoughtful hand to his jaw.]
[Same image but Cueball appears to be shocked having taken both hands in front of his mouth, four small lines coming out from the top of his head.]
[Zoom out again as Cueball huddles up on the table, legs all the way up to his chin, arms tightly folded around the knees. Ponytail leans back towards Megan, both whispering as indicated with smaller font.] Cueball: One. Ponytail: ...What the hell is wrong with his imagination? Megan: It's not a normal place.


Rogers St.

Explanation:
This comic is a reference to the game of creating your "porn star name" by putting your pet's name as your first name and the street you grew up on as your last name. For example: Max (Dog's name) Pine (Street name). In this comic, Randall would have named his cat "Mister" and had moved to "Rogers" Street and so his kid's porn name would be " Mister Rogers " (from the children's show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood , and previously the topic of 767: Temper ), which is pretty high on the unsexy name scale (if there was one) especially for a porn actor, although it may attract people with weird sexual fetishes.
In this way, Randall has prevented his kid from getting into porn.
In the title text, he references the other way of creating a porn star name by using your middle name as your first name and the street still as your last name. Additionally, the title text references comic 327: Exploits of a Mom in which Mrs. Roberts puts SQL instructions into her son's name so that it will mess with the database at school. In the comic, the kid's name is Robert'); DROP TABLE students;-- and we are led to believe the person in the comic above may be the same Little Bobby Tables . His middle name supposedly would be '); DROP TABLE students;-- , which is something incomprehensible about dropping tables (In SQL , commands are separated by semicolons ; , and strings of text are often delimited using single quotes ' . Parts of commands may also be enclosed in parentheses ( and ) .  Data entries are stored as "rows" within named "tables" of similar items (e.g., Students ). The command to delete an entire table (and thus every row of data in that table) is DROP TABLE , as in DROP TABLE Students; ).
If this is indeed Bobby Tables shown trying to get into porn using his pet and street name, then he has grown considerably since his last appearance from the above mentioned comic where he talks to his mother Mrs. Roberts , the famous hacker, who gave him the name with the code. Given his developing curly hair and looks that have taken him to the porn industry, it was clever of her to move to Roger St... But that seems her way, being clever with names.
Here's a link to the location of Rogers Street, which is near Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[A person with long curly hair is standing to the right of a hanging crocked on the wall behind him. A person speaks from off-panel (a judge of some sort, according to the official transcript). Given the title text there is reason to believe the long haired "woman" is indeed a man named Bobby Tables.] Sign: Auditions Judge: Seriously? Judge: Sorry, no, that's a huge mood killer. Judge: Next!
[Caption below the panel] Before I have a kid, I'm moving to Rogers Street in Cambridge, MA, and then getting a cat named "Mister" Just to guarantee the kid will never go into porn.


Recycling

Explanation:
Recycling plants often can only process one type of material at a time, which necessitates some form of sorting facility. Randall shows some degree of thoughtfulness in separating his paper from metals for the convenience of the people working at the facility, but then he leaves congealed juice in a bottle, rendering it unrecyclable without cleaning and extra effort on the part of the recycling facility.
Obviously, this would be very annoying, causing the Cueball in the comic (who works in one such facility) to call him an asshole.
The title text implies that the workers know his address, most likely from various envelopes and junk mail that he has recycled.
As always, Randall is both a self-conscious man and a paranoid man.
[Cueball is picking through various items of trash or recycling on a conveyor belt. A juice bottle, empty cardboard box, opened tin can, bottlecap, crumpled and flat sheets of paper, a soda or pop can, and miscellaneous junk are visible.] Cueball: This guy tears the labels off his cans, so he clearly understands they're going to be sorted somewhere— Cueball: Yet in the same batch he includes a bottle with like an ounce of congealed juice in it. Cueball: What an asshole.
I worry a lot about what the people at the recycling center think of me.