US State Names

Explanation:
Randall has taken a map of the United States of America labeled "Geography Challenge: Name all 50 States" and filled in the states with words that sound similar to the states' names. The joke is that Randall is apparently terrible at remembering states by heart, or else that he interpreted "name" as "give a name to" and is giving each state a name similar to but different from its previous name. A similar joke is also seen in 1554: Spice Girls . Songs such as the 50 Nifty United States make these issues seem rarer, thus making it funnier. Below is the list.
This also may be a play on the ambiguity of the phrase "Name all 50 states".  When you are asked to "name" something, it can be a request to supply its given name or to come up with a new name for it.  Randall has apparently taken the latter interpretation.  He also may be playing with the distinction between an object's identity and its label, e.g., "The state of Texas (identity) is named Hexxus (label)", though you can argue that "Texas" is also a label.
This comic is similar to 1759: British Map . Also note that the text at the top of the comic is not in all caps.
Below are the Randall's fictional state names, next to the actual ones in parenthesis, and a short explanation for each one.
Alberta ( Alaska ) Alberta is a Canadian province known for being parochial, politically conservative, and having a strong independence movement, similarly to Alaska. Arkanoids ( Arkansas ) Arkanoid is an arcade game, developed by Taito in 1986. Bandana ( Alabama ) A bandana is a large handkerchief cloth, worn either around the head or neck. Often used in Westerns. Cafeteria ( California ) A cafeteria is both a kind of restaurant and a name for a lunch room that serves food. California is large and diverse, offering a wide variety of choices. California also grows a large proportion of common vegetables available in the US ( Source ), making it a 'Cafeteria' for the country. Candice ( Kansas ) Candice is an alternate spelling of the girl's name " Candace ", which comes from the Latinized version of " kandake ," a title used in the Kingdom of Kush (an ancient African monarchy) for a reigning queen, queen consort, or queen mother; possibly used for female members of the royal family in general. Colocated ( Colorado ) May refer to computer servers located in a colocation centre , or to collocation , a linguistic term for words or terms that appear together with a frequency greater than chance. Connectfour ( Connecticut ) Connect Four is a two-player game, in which the objective is to connect four of your checkers in a row while preventing your opponent from doing the same. It has already been mentioned in 1002: Game AIs . Dakota ( South Dakota ) Setting up the joke in North Dakota. Delorean ( Delaware ) The DeLorean DMC-12 is a car, made famous as the time machine in the Back to the Future movies. District of Colubrids ( District of Columbia ) The Colubridae are the biggest family of snakes, accounting for about two thirds of the world's species.  As the title text mentions, the District of Columbia, although not part of any state, is technically not a state itself, but is usually labeled on the maps like the 50 others for practical reasons. Here, Randall humorously explains the reason as people not wanting to upset the aforementioned snakes by dismissing their district for this pedantic reason. Fallout New Vegas ( Nevada ) Fallout New Vegas is a video game set in post-apocalyptic Nevada. Fyoridor ( Florida ) Possibly derived from the Russian name Fyodor, as in Fyodor Dostoyevsky . George ( Georgia ) Georgia was named for George II of Great Britain . Hexxus ( Texas ) The antagonist of FernGully . Ferngully is said to be the model for the later film Avatar . This is the second time Hexxus was mentioned in xkcd, the first occurrence being in 1750: Life Goals and the third being in 1918: NEXUS . May allude to the Texas oil industry and the state's general reputation for a lack of environmental protection. Idolatry ( Idaho ) Idolatry is the worship of a physical object as a god, forbidden in the Abrahamic religions. Iota ( Iowa ) Iota is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet . In English, the word iota may also mean "an inconsiderable amount". Kawaii ( Hawaii ) A Japanese term for cute, commonly romanized similar to Hawaii. Not to be confused with Kauai , a Hawaiian island. Kennedy ( Kentucky ) Kennedy Fried Chicken is New York City–based fast food brand that shares its initials with KFC, which was formerly (and still conventionally) Kentucky Fried Chicken.  "Kennedy" is also the name of a former US president ( John ) and two former US senators ( Robert and Ted ). Louisa ( Louisiana ) Louisa, feminine of Louis, is an Old German name meaning "famous warrior". Louisiana was named after King Louis XIV when it was founded as a French colony. Masseuses ( Massachusetts ) Women who give massages professionally. A contentious term in the therapeutic massage industry due to its appropriation by prostitutes. Randall might be making fun about how difficult he thinks it is to spell Massachusetts. Maybelline ( Maryland ) Maybelline is a make-up brand. Minestrone ( Minnesota ) Minestrone is a thick vegetable soup, originating in Italy. Mishy ( Michigan ) According to the Urban Dictionary, "mishy" means " mushy and horny at the same time ".  Or it could just be a nickname, the way a lot of people's names, often children, get shortened with a trailing y (Bobby, Becky, Johnny, Suzy, Davey, Jimmy, etc.). Misstate ( Mississippi ) The word "misstate" means to state improperly. "Mis-" is also a prefix meaning "wrong," "incorrect," or simply negating. "Misstate" could be a non-state. Miss State is a university in Mississippi. This may also be a joke on the fact that Mississippi is one of the most commonly misspelled state names. More Dakota ( North Dakota ) Might be a reference to "More Dakka" , a catchphrase by Orks from the Warhammer 40000 universe which is also a page on TVTropes referring to the large-scale use of ammunition. May also allude to the idea that North Dakota is less visible in popular culture than its Southern neighbor, owing to the fact that the latter contains Mount Rushmore but the former does not have any major landmarks. mount -a ( Montana ) A command to mount all disk volumes in fstab (except for ones with the noauto flag). Mossouri ( Missouri ) The single different letter represents probably a typo (O is adjacent to I in a keyboard). This typo has about 22,000 results on Google. Alternatively, this could be an attempt to "correct" the spelling of the state name to match its non-intuitive postal abbreviation , MO, which is sometimes used as a pronounceable acronym. Or it could be a reference to Katie Mossouris . Namaste ( New Mexico ) Namaste is a Hindu greeting. Probably unabbreviated from NM (postal code for New Mexico). Nebrunswick ( Nebraska ) New Brunswick , a Canadian province.  New Brunswick is abbreviated "NB" in the Canadian postal system , and "NB" was also as the postal abbreviation for Nebraska until 1969. It was then changed to "NE" specifically to avoid the confusion between the two. Nevertheless, people sometimes still use "NB" to refer to Nebraska. New Hamper ( New Hampshire ) A hamper is a large basket, often with lid, used for laundry. Also another name for a picnic basket. Newark ( New York ) The city of Newark is a suburb of New York City (NYC), and many people who live in Newark commute the 14 miles to work in NYC, however it is actually located in the state of New Jersey rather than New York. Other references: Newark Liberty International Airport (a major flight hub serving the New York metropolitan area ), the village of Newark, New York (near Lake Ontario), and Newark element14 (or simply "Newark"), the official distributor of Raspberry Pi. Possible reference to William Gibson's works. A mispronunciation of New York. Nude Juggalos ( New Jersey ) Juggalo is a name given to fans of the group Insane Clown Posse or any other Psychopathic Records hip hop group. Also shares the same initials as New Jersey. Oh Hi ( Ohio ) Oh (expression of surprise), Hi (greeting). A common utterance upon meeting an acquaintance unexpectedly. Okay ( Oklahoma ) OK is the state's abbreviation . Okay is a spelling of another abbreviation O.K., which means "yes" or "good", and has quite a few possible origins . Organs ( Oregon ) Could refer to either body parts that perform vital functions, or large musical instruments having rows of tuned pipes. Also a possible reference to Organ Trail , a retro survival video game that parodies The Oregon Trail . Pencilmania ( Pennsylvania ) Pencil Mania is a 1932 Tom and Jerry cartoon in which they pull out a pencil and proceed to draw figures in the air. Probably joking about how the first part of Pennsylvania sounds like the word "pencil". Roald Dahl ( Rhode Island ) A British writer , famous for child novels such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . This name does not actually rhyme well with Rhode Island. Dahl used the Norwegian pronunciation of his name (roo-ahl dahl, rather than ro-ahld dahl), as he had Norwegian parents. Because of how the pronunciation of the name has not been wildly known by readers, Randall may not have been aware of this. Sk8rbois ( Illinois ) "Skater Boys" or just "Skater Boy" if the '-ois' is pronounced the same as it is in "Illinois". Sk8er Boi is a song by Avril Lavigne . South Caroline ( South Carolina ) A further reference to song 'Sweet Caroline' by Neil Diamond, similar to 'Dakota' and 'More Dakota.' Plays on similarity between the names 'Caroline' and 'Carolina'. Spanish Maine ( Maine ) The Spanish Main was the mainland Spanish colonial possessions around the Gulf of Mexico.  Also refers to the surrounding sea, as in the opening of the (children's?) song, "Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main, ...". May also refer to the USS Maine (ACR-1) , which, upon sinking, started the Spanish-American war. Sweet Caroline ( North Carolina ) A song by Neil Diamond. That Other One ( Indiana ) 'That Other One' is something someone might say if they were trying to name all the states from memory, and knew where a state was but not what it was called. Appropriate for Indiana, due to being a state with relatively few distinguishing features. Thennessy ( Tennessee ) Hennessy is a brand of cognac. Uhaul ( Utah ) U-Haul is a company that rents moving vans which are frequently decorated with scenes from places that most people have never visited. Verizona ( Arizona ) Verizon , a telecommunications company, has the shared text "Rizon" with Arizona (Ve rizon , A rizon a). Vermouth ( Vermont ) Vermouth is an Italian alcoholic beverage. Virjayjay ( Virginia ) Virginia is similar to vagina . Vajayjay is slang for vagina. Wainscot ( Wisconsin ) Wainscot is a type of wood panelling covering only the lower half of a wall. Wilwheaton ( Washington ) Wil Wheaton is an actor and writer, famous for his role as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek . Wysiwyg ( Wyoming ) Acronym for " what you see is what you get ". A reference to Types of Editors . Wyvern ( West Virginia ) A Wyvern is a mythical creature.

[A political map of the United States is shown. The title reads:] Geography challenge: Name all 50 states
[The state names in red text color are:] Alabama => Bandana Alaska => Alberta Arizona => Verizona Arkansas => Arkanoids California => Cafeteria Colorado => Colocated Connecticut => Connect Four Delaware => Delorean District of Columbia => District of Colubrids Florida => Fyoridor Georgia => George Hawaii => Kawaii Idaho => Idolatry Illinois => SK8RBOIS Indiana => That Other One Iowa => Iota Kansas => Candice Kentucky => Kennedy Louisiana => Loisa Maine => Spanish Maine Maryland => Maybelline Massachusetts => Masseuses Michigan => Mishy Minnesota => Minestrone Mississippi => Misstate Missouri => Mossouri Montana => mount -a Nebraska => Nebrunswick Nevada => Fallout New Vegas New Hampshire => New Hamper New Jersey => Nude Juggalos New Mexico => Namaste New York => Newark North Carolina => Sweet Caroline South Carolina => South Caroline Ohio => Oh Hi Oklahoma => Okay Oregon => Organs Pennsylvania => Pencilmania Rhode Island => Roald Dahl South Dakota => Dakota North Dakota => More Dakota Tennessee => Thennessy Texas => Hexxus Utah => Uhaul Vermont => Vermouth Virginia => Virjayjay Washington => Willwheaton West Virginia => Wyvern Wisconsin => Wainscot Wyoming => WYSIWYG


Settling

Explanation:
This is a chart showing the outcomes when Randall was confronted with situations he wasn't happy with. It counts 13 situations which he realizes, in retrospect, he should have left sooner than he did, and only 2 situations where he should have stayed. The implication is that, in his experience, it's generally better to leave a situation you don't like, rather than stick with it in the hope that it will improve.
People often stick with situations they are not happy with (a broken relationship, an unfulfilling career, a stale piece of cake) because they think sticking with the situation is better than throwing it away, and fear that they won't find something better if they leave. This is sometimes referred to as "settling", thus the title of the comic. This risk aversion can lead to people sticking with something a lot longer than they ought to if they want to be happiest. Humans' aversion to loss is common; you, being at the necessary reading level for this wiki, can surely easily recall many times when you feared to lose access to something or someone you valued.
Economists and behavioral scientists refer to this behavior as the "sunk cost fallacy", more formally known as Escalation of commitment . Colloquially, this is a situation where resistance to change is justified by the amount of effort or time already expended. A proverb recognizing the error in this thinking is "Throwing good money after bad" , while a competing proverb seemingly justifying the behavior is "In for a penny, in for a pound" . The popular book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman details many "errors" in human decision-making, like our aversions to losses, the sunk cost fallacy, and others.
The title text references a common thread in human regret, which is wondering whether we should have turned the other way when making a choice ("I would have...", "I could have...", "I should have...", et al). Randall points out that it is literally impossible to know how it would have turned out, perhaps urging readers not to regret their decisions, and to live in the moment. It also points out that the previous "scorecard" cannot be regarded as certain, since a person is not given the luxury of knowing what would have happened if they had made a different choice. Thus, one can think that they made the wrong choice and would have been better off if they had left sooner, but in actuality, it may have turned out even worse. It is impossible to know, and therefore he can't be positive that he didn't actually make the right choice in the situations where he "should have left" .
Although knowing individual outcomes is impossible, and although it is difficult to separate correlation from causation when analyzing large numbers of decisions, rigorous attempts have been made. Notably, a paper titled "Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness" . The paper confirmed that "For important decisions (e.g. quitting a job or ending a relationship), those who make a change (regardless of the outcome of the coin toss) report being substantially happier two months and six months later."
Life Scorecard
Times when I thought...
"I'm not really happy here, but maybe this is the best I can expect and I'll regret giving it up."
...It turned out I...
Should have stayed: 2 (in tally marks)
Should have left sooner: thirteen (in tally marks)


Never Seen Star Wars

Explanation:
White Hat tries to start a conversation with Cueball about the Star Wars space opera film franchise, which Cueball cuts short by stating that he has never seen the movies. This deeply astonishes White Hat. Because the movies are known worldwide and are ingrained into American pop culture, White Hat considers seeing Star Wars a universal experience.
Cueball reasons that not having watched the films is the "default option", the option that applies if a person makes no explicit choice. In this case it means that if a person does not make the explicit choice to watch the films, then they remain in their initial state of not having watched them. It has been estimated that about 1 billion people, about 15% of the world's population, have seen at least one of the Star Wars movies. This means that about 85% of people alive today have, intentionally or otherwise, exercised that default option. Even accounting for people who have never had the option of seeing Star Wars movies (through poverty, age, country of residence, and so on), people who have not seen Star Wars are still in the majority.
However, the Star Wars mythology is so frequently referenced in American popular culture [ citation needed ] that it's difficult to consume a normal media diet in the US without being exposed to enough quotes, clips, references, parodies and analogies to piece together most of the plot and major scenes of the films, even having taken no action to see them. Even without having watched it, it's reasonable that White Hat would expect Cueball to know something about the series. He is right, as it happens, since Cueball is able to recognize that " Death Star " is a Star Wars reference, and later knows that Darth Vader is a major character and that there exists something known as Jedi.
When White Hat finally begins to grasp that Cueball has indeed not seen Star Wars , he declares that they must see it very soon or even immediately. When Cueball again shows a lack of interest, White Hat seemingly calls in social reinforcements to agree with him that having watched Star Wars is the norm. Cueball feels threatened by his friend's unreasonably assertive behavior and quickly removes himself from the situation.
Later, Ponytail likewise wishes to start a conversation about Star Wars , this time about a new movie coming out. Based on his previous experience, Cueball reconsiders admitting to not having seen the past movies, and instead pretends to be looking forward to the new one. Ponytail then tries to continue the conversation, so Cueball bluffs with an incorrect declaration that Darth Vader eats Jedi, likely constructed from other mentions of the Star Wars characters that he has overheard throughout his life. Cueball carefully chooses his words to make it seem as if he knows what he is talking about.
However, Ponytail doesn't call him out on this error, instead agreeing with it. Cueball is relieved — expressed as his thinking an onomatopoeic sigh of relief — as he believes he has guessed at an accurate piece of information and has avoided entering a similar situation to the previous one. The punchline of this part of the comic is Ponytail's identical feeling of relief, suggesting that she also hasn't seen Star Wars , and is also bluffing to hide that fact. It may be inferred that Ponytail has had similar experiences to Cueball, and now actually starts a conversation about Star Wars in order to avoid that social stigma. It might also be viewed as both of them having lost an opportunity to have a conversation with someone else who hasn't seen Star Wars , because both are afraid of how they'll be treated.
The " Expanded Universe " (EU) was the term used to refer to canonical content outside of original six motion pictures, including novels, comic books, and video games, which existed in a shared continuity. After the Star Wars franchise was acquired by Disney it was announced that the "Expanded Universe" would be discontinued and rebranded as "Legends", so that the new Star Wars movies would not have to adhere to the established EU canon.
The title text is a tip for people like Cueball, to help them hide deception when roped into conversations about the films. It argues that since the Jedi Prince series of novels established so many strange concepts that don't mesh with most other canon information, it makes for an excellent scapegoat to blame ill-fitting declarations on, seeing as even the most devoted, well informed fan has agreed to forget the entire series. Casually bringing up such a forgotten series might also make the bluffer out to be extremely knowledgeable about the Star Wars franchise as a whole.
[White Hat is facing Cueball while talking to him.] White Hat: You know the scene on the Death Star where– Cueball: Nah, I've never seen Star Wars .
[Close-up of White Hat in a smaller panel.] White Hat: WHAT.
[White Hat and Cueball are still facing each other.] White Hat: ...How?! Cueball: Uh, it was easy? Cueball: It was literally the default option.
[Close up of Cueball. White Hat is speaking off-panel.] White Hat: But... How did you– Cueball: Not doing things is my superpower. I'm not doing an infinite number of things as we speak!
[White Hat and Cueball are still facing each other.] White Hat: We have to watch it. Cueball: Nah, I'm good.
[White Hat has turned away from Cueball and has his hands to his mouth to shout to people off-panel. Cueball has likewise turned away as he walks away and is speaking back over his shoulder.] White Hat: Hey everyone! This guy's never seen Star Wars! Cueball: Listen, I gotta go.
[A small caption above the single panel.] Later...
[Ponytail is looking down at her phone in her left hand while Cueball is facing her.] Ponytail: Wait, there's a new Star Wars ? Cueball: Oh, I've nev– Cueball: ...yeah! Excited for it! Big fan.
[Ponytail holds her phone to her side, transferred to her right hand, as she and Cueball face each other.] Ponytail: What'd you think of the last one? Cueball: Uh... That Darth Vader, man. Cueball: Sure does love eating Jedi.
[Ponytail and Cueball continue facing each other.] Ponytail: Haha, he sure does! Cueball (thinking): Phew. Ponytail (thinking): Phew.


UI Change

Explanation:
The system that sets out the way in which the user interacts with an app or program is called its "user interface" (UI). For an app, that may be the graphic design of the app, and commonly the nature and location of certain controls.
Sometimes, when websites and apps are updated, the UI is modified. This is often done to make space for new features or to make what the developer considers to be an improvement, to the look or efficiency of the app. Occasionally UIs are modified with no obvious goal in mind other than to make changes to give the illusion of improvement when no new features have been added, thus making them completely arbitrary.
Given that some users use some apps many times a day, users tend to learn and get used to the UI of common apps. Whether or not these changes are good in the long term, users often complain because all the workflows they're familiar with have been changed, and often the software never tells you where buttons and other options have been moved to. On occasion, these changes actually make common tasks more difficult and slower to accomplish. For example, in iOS 10 , on the quick access control panel (which formerly consisted of a single page of controls), moves the controls for music to a second page (accessed by an additional swipe). While this has a benefit of allowing more information about one's music to be displayed, it adds an additional step to the UI before one can control their music from the control panel. Changes also often require users to "unlearn" the automatic behavior they have in using the app (such as automatically moving to press a button in its old location).
Old people get to see during their lifetime lots of these kind of changes to the way they did things in the past, and they often don't see the reason why they are made, since the young people who make the changes have a different cultural environment that the elderly won't "get".
Also, just as young people like to complain about petty changes to apps, old people complain about the way their body starts to break down as they age. Muscle weakness makes tasks like opening doors and jars more difficult, the senses such as sight and hearing deteriorate, and mental processes such as memory and rationalization can become slower and less reliable. These have a far bigger impact on one's day-to-day ability to do tasks than a simple UI change.
The comment in the title text could refer to either user interface changes or the effects of aging. As for the former, when websites and programs make unpopular changes, users sometimes start petitions to have them reverted - for example, 1.7 million Facebook users joined "Petition Against the New Facebook". Of course, they didn't get their way, and nowadays few will even remember the old Facebook layout. Cueball 's comment in the title text might refer to the fact that people naively believe that if they complain a lot about an undesired change on the UI of some app that is considered permanent, they might change it back, while in real life those complaints usually don't have any effect, just like the Facebook example given before.
As for the latter, there's no human with the power to undo the effects of aging yet [ citation needed ] , and a petition to God would typically be called a prayer, rather than a petition. Scientific research on how to stop or reverse the effects of old age is ongoing, with limited successes but no indication that we're anywhere close to the ability to "change things back" by restoring an old person to full youthful vigor, nor that this will necessarily happen within the lifetime of anyone currently alive (though neither is it guaranteed not to happen [ citation needed ] , but it will take a while if it does). There has always been a market for immortality, with many historical figures seeking it through alchemy, science, or magic, but as of yet, products claiming to grant it have all been shams. Perhaps Cueball is hoping that advancing technologies will become sufficient to keep him from experiencing the negative effects of old age at all, and that complaining about the situation might improve the pace of progress.
[Cueball is doing something on his phone]
Cueball: Ugh, I hate when apps make arbitrary changes to their UI.
Cueball: Stuff I do all the time just got harder for no reason!
Off-Screen Voice: Man.
Off-Screen Voice: You are not gonna like getting old.


It Was I

Explanation:
This comic starts with a scene from Return of the Jedi , with Emperor Palpatine , Luke Skywalker (drawn as an xkcd character) and Darth Vader .  The original scene in the movie had a tense mood as the hero faces the villains.  The comic's version of the scene, however, descends into a silly debate of grammar rules.
Initially Palpatine begins saying "It was I who..." in accordance with traditional prescriptive English grammar.  The verb "to be" is a copula , meaning that in a sentence of the form "A is B", both A and B are treated like the subject of the sentence. In most Indo-European languages, subjects use the nominative case ( I , he , she , and we ) while objects use the accusative case ( me , him , her , us ).  This rule is still strong in languages like German, where speakers still use cases and therefore are familiar with how they work.
The case system in English has almost died out, and only a few fossils of nominative case pronouns still remain.  English's case system is so weak that most people have reduced the rule to " I goes before a verb, me comes after a verb or preposition". This gives the correct result in sentences like "It saw me". By extension, speakers therefore often say "It was me" ( here's a famous example from Vince McMahon ) even though this is not true to the traditional rules.  Luke thinks that there's nothing wrong with this modern sense.  It's possible the intent was to portray a descriptivist approach to grammar.  His words could also be said to be prescriptivist in a different way, as he is objecting to Palpatine's grammar for not being modern enough.
Darth Vader counters by pointing out that regardless of the grammatical correctness of "It was I", it is a set phrase with a good archaic ring to it suitable for a dramatic revelation from an Emperor. Vader and the Emperor using English archaisms has canon basis in Star Wars , with Vader asking "What is thy bidding, my master?" in The Empire Strikes Back .  Historically, "thee", "thou", and "thy" were actually informal pronouns, but because they are not used in modern English, except in reciting historical works like some editions of the Bible, they are thought of as ceremonial and formal today.  Using the archaic form would be more consistent with the Emperor's speech pattern.
Palpatine finally decides to take a third option, and uses " it me ", a popular meme on Twitter in 2016. Darth Vader, out of embarrassment, begs him not to talk like that again.
One of Randall 's themes is that grammar pedants apply rules to correct other people long after those rules have fallen out of actual usage. Luke is here being an anti-grammar-pedant, asking the Emperor to disapply the rule. See 890: Etymology for another instance of Luke failing to notice semantics.
Characters concentrating on the linguistics of other characters speech while they deliver dramatic revelations, or the overall situation being already critical, is a classic joke . But characters interrupted for grammatical remarks typically ignore it or just blame the interrupter for not focusing on the important subject. Here, Randall goes one step further by having the other characters join the grammatical argument instead.
The title text runs with the joke in the final panel, applying the same meme to Darth Vader's iconic quote "No, I am your father." It could be said that such a phrasing robs the moment of all gravitas, but then again, Yoda managed to coin a phrase like "Do or do not; there is no try", and still be taken seriously.
[Emperor Palpatine, Luke Skywalker, and Darth Vader in throne room] Emperor: It was I who allowed the Alliance to know the location of the shield generator. Luke: You mean "It was me ." You're following an archaic grammar rule.
[Zoomed in on Darth Vader, with the Emperor speaking off panel] Emperor: It was me who allowed the- Vader: No, my master, an archaic tone is appropriate here. The sentence sounds-
[Zoomed in on Luke Skywalker, with the Emperor speaking off panel] Emperor: It was I who allowed- Luke: Come on, the accusative case is fine. Nominative pronouns are-
[Zoomed in on the Emperor, with Darth Vader responding off panel] Emperor: It me Emperor: I allowed it Vader: My master, Vader: Please never say that again.


Startup Opportunity

Explanation:
Beret Guy's company , first seen in 1032: Networking , 1293: Job Interview and 1493: Meeting , returns, and its purpose is as vague as ever.
Analysts, brought in to advise his company, determine that it doesn't actually serve any purpose (a problem which could ironically be attributed to business analysts in general). Beret Guy is dumbfounded, claiming that his company must do something , and takes a line of reasoning that faintly resembles the sort of logic a child might use. A child that visits an office building might conclude that an office does a lot because there are a lot of employees working inside, unaware that what really makes a successful business is how efficiently it uses its employees to deliver goods and services to the consumer, and whether said goods and services are competitive in their market (by their quality, or through advertising campaigns, or price).
Now, if Beret Guy is given the benefit of the doubt, his odd statement could be taken to mean that his company has many administrators (a.k.a. chairmen); as the owner of a sufficiently large business often interacts with the department in charge of overhead, a person in his position runs the risk of becoming myopic, losing touch with the workers that actually make the business function.
However, this is Beret Guy we're talking about here. He has demonstrated, time and time and time again, that he is hopelessly out of touch with reality, and this very strip shows no sign of him having gotten a firmer grasp of Earth logic. Displaying less business acumen than a child and less grounding in perspective than a CEO, he uses the number of chairs in the workplace as a yardstick for success, with no mention of his actual, human workforce. It may even be a stretch to say that a child would make the same assumption based on the number of chairs.
The analysts suggest that Beret Guy find an industry to disrupt. The mention of "industry" immediately reminds Beret Guy of SimCity , where Industrial (along with Residential and Commercial) is one of the three main zone types - it allows factories and farms to develop. Disruption means coming up with a product that redefines what the market expects and leaving existing competitors in the dust (for instance, smartphones disrupted mobile, digital photography disrupted film, and air travel disrupted rail and sea travel (and is in turn being disrupted by high-speed rail)) - it's now an industry buzzword and virtually every company claims to be "disruptive".
When pointed in the right direction, Beret Guy realizes that the main industry he deals with is weird disappearing shops selling cursed goods, such as the WiFi in 1812: Onboarding . This is a common trope in fantasy stories (notably Stephen King's novel Needful Things , using this exact premise), and as soon as Hairy hears about it he wants out of the building, but as his colleagues point out it also bears more than a passing resemblance to many dodgy startup companies . These appear suddenly with a lot of promotion and a marketable idea, looking for venture capital (or, a lot of times in recent times, pre-orders on Kickstarter ). However, many startups fail - either because they didn't take into account the difficulties involved in bringing a product to market, or because they were an active scam - and disappear without a trace, leaving customers either empty handed or with a buggy product that falls short of promises. As Cueball notes, these cursed shops are actually the perfect startup, at least from a moneymaking perspective. This humorously ignores the more obvious larger problem, that such a business would be impossible to create due to not actually having magical items to sell (unless, of course, one is referring to items that are sold by making unrealistic or implausible claims as to their use, which could be considered similar to "magic". This is common enough in the real world, and many such products call themselves "magic" without actually explicitly claiming to use mysterious powers of sorcery. One character could be thinking literally, and the other one figuratively). Apparently, the business may become one, if he does spend most of his money there.
As with most Beret Guy comics, there are multiple layers of absurdity. For a start, the fact that he-and by extension, the rest of the cast-live in a world including supernatural shops is, while not inconsistent, still supernatural. The assertion that this is where he buys most of his materials and other products is also curious, given the shops' inherent temporary nature, as it implies either something about him causes these shops to appear, or that he is drawn to these shops instinctively. Most absurdly, he apparently purchases his food from these establishments (which may also serve as an explanation for his 'soup outlet' in 1293: Job Interview ), despite previously stating everything they sell is cursed, conjures troubling images in the mind of how exactly food would be cursed-and its effects. Perhaps this explains Beret Guy's strange powers .
The title text alludes to the fact that irrespective of whether or not there is formal regulation, it is unwise to anger a group of people who have access to cursed magical items. It is easy to imagine numerous ways they could make one's life substantially worse.
In 2332: Cursed Chair , Beret Guy purchases a chair from such a shop. In 2376: Curbside it is revealed that while the shops seem to require masks, they do not have curbside pickup.
[Around a table, sitting in a meeting, are Ponytail, White Hat, Beret Guy, Hairy, Hairbun, and Cueball.]
White Hat: We've discovered that your company doesn't do anything. Beret Guy: How is that possible?! We have so many chairs!
[Close up on White Hat and Beret Guy.]
White Hat: You need to find an industry to disrupt. Beret Guy: An...industry? Beret Guy: Oh, yeah! Beret Guy: The zoning thing from SimCity!
White Hat: No, like, a kind of business. Beret Guy: How do I find those? White Hat: I don't know. What's something you spend a lot of money on?
[Beat panel showing only Beret Guy.]
[White Hat, Beret Guy, Hairy, and Hairbun are shown. At left and right, respectively, parts of Ponytail's and Cueball's arms and lower bodies can be seen.]
Beret Guy: You know those mysterious shops that sell you magical items, and then it turns out they're cursed, but when you go back later there's no sign the shop was ever there? Beret Guy: I get most of my stuff from those. Beret Guy: Like groceries.
[Closeup on Hairy, Hairbun, and Cueball. Cueball has his hand on his chin.]
Hairy: We should go. Hairbun: Wait. High-value sales, no regulation, and when customers try to complain, they can't find you... Cueball: Maybe this is the perfect startup.


Negativity

Explanation:
Cueball is going outside for some fresh air because he wants to escape the trolls of the Internet , which is known for hosting several hostile and unpleasant ideas and people. However, as he walks, some grass speaks up to insult him, and Cueball is upset to find that he hasn't escaped the negativity at all. (see 1749: Mushrooms which involves an unusual occurrence of a vocalizing angry mushroom).
The title text expands on this, with him searching Google for how to "block the lawn". Blocking someone refers to a standard setting on websites and online services that can prevent certain users from communicating with you, but it is as yet unknown how this would work for a lawn insulting you. This is made ironic by the fact he is using the Internet to find an Internet technique (blocking) on a non-Internet object, while at the start of the comic, he just wanted to escape the Internet.
The term " blocking " is actually used in lawn-care to refer to techniques where sunlight is restricted from reaching the lower parts of the grass stems and to persuade the root system to grow deeper into the soil.
The negativity Cueball meets on-line is likely due to the results of the recent 2016 United States presidential election and this one was released only three days before the U.S. Electoral College voted for Donald Trump to become the 45th president of the United States, and this was still a bit exciting as there where rumors/hopes that some of the electors would not vote for Trump . (But only two changed away from Trump!) That this is likely is further supported with other recent comics. The first of these 1761: Blame is almost a prequel to this one, as it is about being sad about what happens on-line. This comic here was thus the second sad comic following the election, culminating shortly after his inauguration with a comic simply titled 1790: Sad . (See more on other depressive comics here .)
Later in 1802: Phone , Cueball cannot go outside for a walk without bringing his phone as he cannot stand to be disconnected from his feed, which is the exact opposite of what he tries in this comic. Although in the title text he does try to disconnect, he then finds that this is also bad because it leads to social isolation.
[Cueball walking on grass] Cueball: It's nice to get outside, away from the pain and negativity of the internet,
[Cueball stops walking] Cueball: And just enjoy the cool breeze and the grass under my feet.
[Cueball stands there, hands to his hips, looking to the cloudy sky]
[Cueball looks down while pointing a finger at the grass behind him.] Grass: You suuuuck Cueball: Hey!


Adjective Foods

Explanation:
In this comic, Randall imagines creating food items whose labels contain only adjectives, and putting them on display in supermarkets.  This is likely a jab at food market buzzwords, which usually rely on adjectives that bring up certain feelings based on how the food is "supposed to be", rather than a factual description of what the food actually is.  By removing all nouns from product labels, Randall takes this trend to its extreme.  The items depicted in this comic are filled with popular descriptions that make them sound appealing, but give no useful information about their contents.  It is implied that some consumers who are susceptible to buzzword marketing will nevertheless purchase these products.
The adjectives seen in the comic are:
The title text may be a continuation of the main joke, in that Randall has removed the noun (nutrient type) which the recommended daily allowance is supposed to measure.  This leaves "100%" which gives an impression of good value, but it is useless without knowing what it describes.  Alternatively, it may be suggesting facetiously that the foods contain 100% of the recommended daily allowance of adjectives, given the high quantity of them in the product names. Obviously, adjectives are not a nutrient the human body needs that would normally be subject of a nutritional chart.
This joke is very similar to comic 1060, Crowdsourcing , in that Randall is doing nothing, and trying to make it look like he is doing something. It expresses the opposite idea from comic 993, Brand Identity .
[An arrangement of labeled foodstuffs, from left to right and top to bottom:] Premium Stone-ground Bespoke, Cage-free Gourmet Fire-roasted Glazed flambé Organic All-natural Locally-sourced Artisanal, Kosher, Grade A Craft Barrel-aged Smoked Authentic Homemade Sun-dried Whole Extra Sharp Low-calorie Lite Original Flavor [Caption:] I'm trying to trick supermarkets into carrying my new line of adjective-only foods.


Things You Learn

Explanation:
This graph shows various items of information plotted by two criteria: a horizontal "How Bad Is It If You Don't Know [THING]" axis and a vertical "How Easy It Is To Grow Up Without Learning [THING]" axis. Specifically, the vertical axis measures roughly how likely the average person is to remain ignorant of a particular item. The horizontal axis measures the likelihood and severity of bad consequences arising from such ignorance.
The title text describes an encounter Randall had where a cat climbed into the engine compartment of his car. It probably serves as an explanation for the seemingly out of place point on the graph about how serious cat bites are. The "two thumbs" is a reference to a well known type of jokes among English speakers. One of the most frequent forms is one person interrupting another mid-speech and asking "what has two thumbs and doesn't give a f*ck? THIS GUY!", before pointing to themselves with their thumbs. The idea is that you only direct the attention to your thumbs so that they can point back to you, though mentioning the thumbs was not actually required except as a topic change. Randall plays on an inversion of this joke as he (presumably) was bitten on the thumb might have lost a thumb or perhaps not have been able to make it at all without the intervention of the ER people. So here the "who has two thumbs", is not a deceiving distraction out of a boring conversation, and the thumbs are actually the focus of the phrase.
100% not bad: not bad at all . . . 100%>not-badness≥50%: not bad . . . 50%>not-badness≥0%: not too bad
100% very bad: very, very bad . . . 100%>very badness≥50%: very bad . . . 50%>very badness>0%: bad
100% hard: very, very hard . . . 100%>hardness≥50%: very hard . . . 50%>hardness>0%: hard
100% easy: very, very easy . . . 100%>easiness≥50%: very easy . . . 50%>easiness≥0%: easy
[A simple X and Y graph, with the X labeled "how bad it is if you don't know {thing}" and ranging from "not bad" to "very bad", and Y labeled "how easy it is to grow up without learning {thing}" and ranging from "easy" to "hard" from top to bottom.]
[Points on graph from top to bottom on the left side of the Y-axis:]
100 digits of pi Lyrics to We Didn't Start the Fire How to ride a bike How to escape movie quicksand Lyrics to 12 Days of Christmas TV theme songs
[Points on graph from top to bottom on the right side of the Y-axis:]
That cat bites are really serious and if bitten you should wash the bite and call a doctor immediately Red flags for an abusive relationship Signs for a stroke Cough into your elbow, not your hand That you have to empty the dryer lint trap Stop, drop, and roll That you have to pay taxes


Reindeer

Explanation:
In this Christmas comic Black Hat is at it again, freaking out a young child, by replacing the eight reindeer of Santa's sleigh with a single spider-legged reindeer, thus with eight legs. He considers this "more authentic" because Santa Claus is based on Odin (among many other things) , the chief god of Norse mythology. On the pagan holiday of Yule , Odin was said to ride his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir , across the land. Children would leave one of their boots out and fill it with hay for Sleipnir to eat, then Odin would refill the boot with gifts. This predates the Christmas tradition of hanging stockings by the chimney.
The traditional interpretation of the horse with eight legs is a normal equine body, with a pair of identical legs where each leg of a normal horse is.  As such, Sleipnir looks majestic and not entirely unnatural.  Black Hat's interpretation is to use the body plan of a spider. The result of this is to make a chimaera that is both creepy and terrifying, [ citation needed ] particularly to those with arachnophobia (the quite common fear of spiders). [ citation needed ]
The title text is a parody of two lines from the poem " Twas the Night Before Christmas ", "And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof / The prancing and pawing of each little hoof."
The lines are changed to what they could have been if Santa had a spider-legged reindeer - the sound of "eight tarsal claws", referring to the small pair (or triplet) of claws at the end of each of a spider's eight legs. These claws allow them to hold onto objects, including their own web. However, as such an eight-legged spider would have 16 or 24 claws, the text is slightly incorrect.
[Black Hat and a boy, with a lot of dark hair, are standing to the right of an empty sleigh pulled by a reindeer with eight spider-like legs. Black Hat has raised one arm towards the reindeer and the boy has his arms out to either side.] Black Hat: In earlier Norse myths, the eight reindeer were actually one steed with eight legs . Black Hat: So I think this is more authentic. Boy: Aaaaaa!


Dear Diary

Explanation:
Black Hat is writing in a diary (probably his, but possibly not; see below).  His entry starts with the common idiom "Dear diary". In a regular diary entry, this opening is used to give the impression of writing to a trusted friend, the diary being anthropomorphized to take that friend's role. However, where other people would write about their day or put their feelings into words, Black Hat's diary entry consists of a standard phishing scam attempting to request some private information in exchange for a large cash amount which does not exist. In this case, the scam is the infamous Nigerian Royalty scam , where the 'royalty' needs bank details to give money, when it will in fact be taken. Black Hat apparently is so used to tricking people that even his own anthropomorphized diary is not safe from his pranks. Alternatively, the entry is intended for anyone who looks at his diary without his permission. It's also possible he has obtained someone else's diary and is somehow trying to scam the diary's owner, although it's not clear how that might work.  Or, since it is a rather obvious scam, he may simply being trying to scare the diary's owner, perhaps the same child as he traumatized in the previous comic with a reindeer mutated to look like a spider.
This comic creates a stark contrast by putting together elements that seem similar, but do not belong together, for comedic effect.
It is possible that the diary is actually the journal from the Journal series, and that ever since being outdone by Danish , he no longer uses it for recording all the things he would say if he were nice.
The title text is similar to 1675: Message in a Bottle , which also uses the word "unsubscribe" in an unusual way. The title text also mimics a standard way to get off some mailing lists, so perhaps it's Randall 's diary that Black Hat is molesting, and therefore the title-text is Randall expressing a desire to be disassociated from it.
[Black Hat is seated at a table, writing with a pencil in a diary.]
Writing: Dear Diary, Writing: Hello. I am the Crown Prince of Nigeria. I have recently come into a large fortune, but...


Interest Timescales

Explanation:
Randall 's sharing a bit about himself and the things that interest him, in one of his strange but still funny graphs.
The caption reads: "Most of my interests fall under 'things rising up from the ground, hanging in the air, and then drifting away on the breeze,' just on very different timescales." The four examples fit this as follows:
In the case of a fireworks display, the fireworks fire up into the air, explode, and then the glowing embers drift away on the breeze in the course of a few seconds. This comic was the last released before this years New Year comic 1779: 2017 , so this may explain the thoughts of fireworks.
In the case of a rocket launch, the rocket launches from the ground into space, leaving a large plume of smoke that slowly dissipates over many minutes. The rocket remains in space for a time, and then later it re-enters the atmosphere and reaches the ground—in the case of a typical parachute-descent system, it literally drifts through the air. A typical timespan for such an event is several days or weeks.
In the case of a tree, it grows from the ground upwards, remains there until autumn comes, then drops its leaves, which drift on the breeze. This process takes months.
Entire trees like the one shown typically last several decades or even centuries before they die - if not felled by humans, most are eventually toppled by the wind as well. The breeze needed for that can be measured on the Beaufort scale , likely above 5.
Finally, in the case of a mountain, a mountain rises slowly from the ground due to movement of tectonic plates which result in mountains either via volcanic activity or by simply pressing the ground up through the process of subduction (see 1388: Subduction License ). The mountains are then very slowly broken down by natural erosion forces, and the stone particles disperse on the wind. These events are much slower than the others, typically taking tens of millions of years to completely erode away a mountain.
Additionally, some humor stems from the fact that Cueball acts like the mountain is a roller coaster , even though a mountain may take thousands or millions of years to noticeably change.
The title text refers to the dramatic event in which a mountain suddenly explodes due to a violent volcanic eruption. Such events are rare and potentially deadly to living things. Calling it "extra interesting" is an understatement.
[At the bottom of this chart there is a long double arrow pointing at two words:] Fast Slow
[Above the line there are four drawings going from left to right:]
[Cueball watches a fireworks display to the left of him, two firework rockets are going up and another one is exploding even higher.] Cueball: Ooooh!
[A tine Cueball is watching a space rockets launch to the left of him while he is holding his arms in the air. The main rocket rises on a hughe plume of smoke.] Cueball: Wow!
[Cueball climbs a tree, holding on to the left of the two main branches going out from the trunk beneath the treetop.] Cueball: Zoom!
[A person, presumably Cueball, is standing at the tip of the highest mountain in a mountain range. The largest mountain in the background has three peaks, with Cueball on top of the tallest central peak. Four other much smaller (or distant) peaks are shown behind the big mountain, two on either side. All five mountains have a line beneath the tip that most likely indicate snow. On the big mountain the two tallest peaks are above this line, but not the third.] Cueball: Wheeeee!
[Caption below the panel:] Most of my interests fall under "things rising up from the ground, hanging in the air, and then drifting away on the breeze," just on very different timescales.


2017

Explanation:
In this New Year comic , Cueball and Megan share some of their (or Randall's ) thoughts about the ending 2016 and the new year 2017 (hence the title). 2016 was a year which many people eagerly awaited the end of because of its increased turmoil (terrorist attacks, controversial political events in numerous countries including the election of Donald Trump for president in the United States and the United Kingdom voting for Brexit ) as well as the deaths of an unusually large number of well-known and beloved celebrities (several of these died in the first few days after Christmas).
Instead of simply condemning 2016 as a terrible year and expecting 2017 to be significantly better, Megan observes that much of what made 2016 bad is the effect that it will have upon future years rather than the actual events themselves (for instance, a divisive U.S. presidential election has caused significant controversy in 2016, but President Donald Trump actually took office and began to affect the world as President in 2017). Megan specifically states that 2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without. As it is known that Randall is a Hillary Clinton supporter (as shown in the 1756: I'm With Her comic), an additional reading of that line could be that we are headed into 2017 "without" a Hillary Clinton presidency. It can also refer to the many dead celebrities passing in 2016, (at least three famous musicians/actors so recent that they died after Christmas Eve), as we would be without all of them in 2017.
Cueball claims that they should still have hope for the future, but Megan states that people had claimed that many of the bad things that did happen in 2016, could not happen (for instance Trump and Brexit). And as these things did happen, she foresees even worse events occurring in 2017, that we did not even think would be possible.
However, Randall also offers a glimpse of hope in the last few panels when Cueball observes that, just as all of the bad things in 2016 were unexpected, good things in 2017 that are unexpected could also happen, which should make us less sure what good may come of 2017. As such, he argues that we should hold on to our hope even though things seem difficult right now.
As the conversation unfolds, Megan and Cueball encounter an uprooted tree and cross it like a balance beam. This is a visual metaphor; the dead tree represents the end of the old year, while the crossing represents the transition into the new year. This is similar to the magical toboggan from Calvin and Hobbes that serves as a metaphor for their conversations, mentioned in 529: Sledding Discussion and 409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic) .
In the last panel Cueball mentioned that 2017 will also have a cool eclipse , going through the central parts of North America. This may also serve as a reminder that the Earth continues to spin on despite all of the human turmoil going on on its surface. This is literally true, as the eclipse Randall is excited about is caused by the orbits of three celestial bodies lining up just right (the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon).
Cueball then also notes that 2017 is a prime number and states that prime-numbered years (prime years) have always been good to him. He thus illustrates the positive attitude that people can choose to take in order to see all that which is good and to spread a little bit more cheerfulness, and Megan is ready to take this positive view, although she may not totally buy in to it. This could also be a pun referencing the saying "being in his prime years".
The title text is a reference to Nate Silver who is well-known (in the United States) as an election polling analyst on FiveThirtyEight .  His model allowed for a higher chance that Donald Trump would win the presidency compared to other similar models — though the fact that he still favored a Clinton win may be contributing to getting humor from the idea that he may be "wrong" again, and the Moon could possibly vanish in 2017, making the year definitely worse than 2016. (Earth and Moon are so close in the space order of things, that any event affecting Moon orbit seriously will almost certainly end our civilization too.) This is accentuated by the qualifier "almost definitely", which is of humorously low confidence for presenting a fact as certain as the Moon not somehow disappearing within the next year.
In the background of the first few panels of this comic, we see a fallen tree, but a sapling growing in its place. This may be a subtle message by Randall that there is still hope, and that things will be alright in the end.
Randall previously mentioned his excitement for the 2017 eclipse exactly three years earlier in 1302: Year in Review , where Megan complains about not having seen an aurora during 2013, and she really hopes they don't cancel the 2017 eclipse. So this comic is the second time Randall has expressed concern that he will miss the eclipse. Leading up to and after the eclipse Randall released six more comics on the subject: 1868: Eclipse Flights , 1876: Eclipse Searches , 1877: Eclipse Science , 1878: Earth Orbital Diagram , 1879: Eclipse Birds , and 1880: Eclipse Review .
There have been three previous New Year's comics with only the year used as the title: 998: 2012 in 2012, 1311: 2014 in 2014 and 1624: 2016 in 2016. This is the first odd-numbered year (and thus of course the first prime year) using only the new year as the title.
[Cueball and Megan walking outdoors] Cueball: Can't wait for this stupid year to be over.
[The two approach a fallen tree] Megan: I can. This year made the future scarier. So much of why 2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without.
[Megan has hopped up onto the tree trunk and begins to walk along it] Cueball: You gotta have hope, though. Megan: You say that, but you also said all this awful stuff couldn't happen, and it did. You're as clueless as the rest of us.
[Cueball also walks along the tree trunk as Megan stops and turns to look at him] Cueball: Well, if we're wrong about which bad things can happen, it's got to make us at least a little less sure about which good things can't.
[Closeup of Megan hopping down from the tree] Megan: I guess.
[A distant shot of Megan and Cueball walking along again] Cueball: Plus, 2017 has a cool eclipse in it. Megan: Ooh, yeah! Cueball: And it's prime. Prime years have always been good for me. Megan: Sure, I'll take it.


Appliance Repair

Explanation:
Cueball is either trying to repair his appliances himself or possibly running an appliance repair service. Although, he isn't doing much in the repairs aspect, as he is diagnosing problems with the appliances that he himself caused. Megan and White Hat (supposedly) call him over to have him fix a humidifier that isn't working. As most repairmen/handymen do, he takes apart the machine to find the root of the problem. However, after this he states the reason it isn't working is because someone took it apart. In this case it was Cueball himself. This would not be very helpful for repairing the appliance. [ citation needed ]
In the title text it is mentioned that Cueball is holding up a three-phase motor that he has taken from the humidifier. Normally when a person repairing an appliance shows you a part, they are showing you the part of the machine that was broken. In this comic however, Cueball is just showing off a (presumably) random part of the machine and stating that the problem is that the machine it came from is broken – something that was already known and unlikely to help find the root cause of the problem. In addition, it is unlikely that the part being held ever would have worked, because three-phase motors won't work on residential power in North America. Residential humidifiers use single-phase voltage , while three-phase equipment uses three-phase voltage .
This might also be a reference to self reference which is referenced in xkcd sometimes.
[Cueball faces Megan and White Hat as he stands in the middle of a mess of a dissasembled machine, holding a screwdriver.] Cueball: After disassembling and inspecting the humidifier, I've determined that the main problem with it is that someone took it apart.


Artifacts

Explanation:
The comic shows Cueball presenting data that was probably gathered in research. It's not clear what type of data it is, but one spike has been highlighted on the graph, despite this spike being apparently no larger than the noise in the data (and is much smaller than the central peak). Cueball seems to have made some kind of mistake in either the statistics or the measurement of the undefined subject of his research, thus his data results in many outliers. The word artifact is a wordplay with two meanings. It is either an archaeological artifact (such as the Holy Grail as in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ) or a fault in your experiment, where you (usually accidentally) influence the measurement with your equipment or unanticipated environmental factors. These are called error artifacts .
Indiana Jones is (often humorously) cited as being a bad archaeologist . He often destroys the area he is looking for artifacts in, despite the context in which they were found being as or more important, archaeologically, than the artifacts themselves. He does not appear to make any records, carries the artifacts around without any thought for their ancient and fragile nature, and most often ends up losing the artifacts altogether.
An example of an error artifact is the measurement of the force between two charged metal spheres ( Coulomb force ), where the potential of unearthed nearby objects influences the measurement, thus causing an artifact. Artifacts have been mentioned before in xkcd, as in 1453: fMRI , where getting into the MRI machine induced unintended effects, such as thoughts of claustrophobia.
The title text refers to the entire data set being "outliers." In statistics, an outlier is an observation point that is distant from other observations. One way to have a data set composed entirely of outliers would be a data set with N points, in a 1/2 N-dimensional space, where each point is zero for every dimension except one, unique to itself. The 1/2 is because there would also be a -1 point. [1] All these points are equidistant from each other.
We could also infer that the accusation is a jab at the fact that the data points are all over the place; a good example of such chaotic data can be see in 1725: Linear Regression .
[Cueball is standing on a podium pointing at his presentation which includes a large line graph in the center part. There is plenty of text on the presentation, but none of it is readable. The central part of the line is raised high above the left and right part. The point where the line drops towards right is highlighted with a circle, with a double arrow above it pointing to a caption. There is also text next to the circle to the right.  Above the graph there are three smaller panels with drawings. There is one caption above these, and also one above the large graph. Below the graph there are two smaller panels with curves, each panel has it's own caption. Cueball addresses an unseen audience, and one from the audience interrupts him.] Cueball: The data clearly proves that- Offscreen voice: Are you Indiana Jones? Offscreen voice: Because you've got a lot of artifacts there, and I'm pretty sure you didn't handle them right.


Team Chat

Explanation:
Randall provides us with a – presumably anecdotal – montage of the Internet's changing attitude towards different instant messaging protocols, framed within the context of a team trying to remain in communication while tolerating each others' different tastes.
Although one-on-one "talk" programs date back to 1960s mainframes, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was one of the first real-time group communication protocols, invented in 1988. While it remains the format on which most later apps were based, the convenience and accessibility of other protocols such as AIM and Skype gradually exceeded IRC in popularity. Many users took to the new environments, but others preferred the old and familiar, hence schisms between groups began to grow.
Skype and Slack are both proprietary centralized communication protocols (usually used through their official clients). Skype focuses mainly on voice communication, be it for personal or business use, and own installable client, while Slack relies almost entirely on text communication, focuses on work communication and works completely well in its own web client, even though official desktop and mobile clients are available as well. Slack also features a huge customizability (bots, plugins) possibly inspired by IRC, and its users need to create communication teams, working inside subdomains at *.slack.com. It is possible to connect to Slack via IRC as well, using a third-party gateway. (Originally, Slack had a gateway feature , if allowed by the team's admin, but that was turned off in mid 2018, after the publication of this comic.)
Randall here seems to be commenting on the persistence of IRC; while generally considered to be ancient software in comparison to newer and still-competing protocols, its endless customizability has led some people to support it above all others.
Extrapolating for the sake of humor, the joke here lies in a particularly uncommon but memorable type of Internet denizen: even in a far-off distant future where the world's technology has led to a superlative messaging network encompassing all people in some supposed, incredible bliss, there is always — in Randall's vision — going to be That IRC Guy. This might also be a reference to the scenarios in science fiction stories such as Isaac Asimov's concept of Galaxia in the Foundation novels, or the concept of a merged human-computer intelligence as in "The Last Question" [1] , the concept of which is most notably highlighted by this line:
[...] One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain. [...]
In the title text, both screen and tmux are unix programs that help you multitask while working in terminal, and irssi and weechat are both communication clients supporting mainly IRC, capable of working in a terminal environment. Tmux is a newer and apparently more user-friendly project, complete with handy menus and titles, while screen is something of an industry standard, but relatively difficult to use – you need to know what you are doing or read help before using it, otherwise you get lost and frustrated. [2] The same it is with the newer, more feature-packed and user-friendly weechat vs industry-standard, harder-to-use irssi. [3]
Basically, that one guy is a hardcore UNIX geek who doesn't use any graphical user interface, and in 2051 he still chooses to use terminal-emulation-based tools.
Timing of this strip follows the release of irssi version 1.0.0 .
Randall touched on similar themes earlier in 927: Standards and later in 2365: Messaging Systems .
[Hairbun holding up her palm toward Cueball. A frame over the top border of the panel has a caption:] 2004 Hairbun: Our team stays in touch over IRC.
[Megan is looking at Ponytail who is holding up her palm toward her. A frame over the top border of the panel has a caption:] 2010 Ponytail: Our team mainly uses Skype, but some of us prefer to stick to IRC.
[Cueball is talking with Megan in a frameless panel. A frame at the top of the panel has a caption:] 2017 Cueball: We've got almost everyone on Slack, Cueball: But three people refuse to quit IRC and connect via Gateway.
[A black panel with white text and drawings. The main body of text is above a the singularity, a starburst around a circle with two more broken lined circles around the starburst. To the right another Cueball-like guy floats in space with his laptop computer, typing on the keyboard.  A frame, that is white inside, is over the top border of the panel has a caption: ] 2051 Narration: All consciousnesses have merged with the Galactic Singularity, Narration: Except for one guy who insists on joining through his IRC client. One Guy: I just have it set up the way I want, okay?! Galactic Singularity: *Sigh*


Emails

Explanation:
In this rather late New Year comic (January 9th), Megan asks Cueball if he has any New Year's resolutions . New Year's is, to many people, a time for thinking about the year and coming up with resolutions to improve themselves. These kind of resolutions hardly ever work .
Cueball replies that he has one resolution. It's to finish reading and replying to his backlog of emails from 2008, 9 years prior to this comic. He obviously does not read his email when they arrive in his inbox, and he now vows to at least get those e-mails from 9 years ago read.
As he further states in the caption below, he now (finally) begins to doubt his method for replying to e-mails, since his backlog now approaches 10 years. Some would probably say he should have found this out when his backlog approached 10 days, or at least when it reached a month.
A common technique for some more productive or efficient users of email is to batch reply to email instead of replying to each one individually as they come. The principle is that setting aside specific times to reply instead of always being "on call" gives the messages the attention they deserve while avoiding the urge to constantly check your email when you should be doing important work. Such a technique could be to check and answer all your emails once a day, or once a week, for instance and allocating a specific amount of time like one hour every day to do so. It is unlikely that somebody would wait years to start the task of checking emails, so obviously the time reserved per unit of time is way too short, if even existing. This would create a backlog of emails, that could soon be so large it would take years to catch up to the e-mail you just got right now.
Another technique for efficient people is not to answer certain e-mails; if a subject really is important, the sender will send a reminder a few days later. (If he does not, the sender can be presumed to have solved the problem himself, saving lots of time on the receiver's side. Of course then you have to check your e-mails to realize if someone has sent a reminder.) Cueball has possibly used this technique on a friend's request, but became remorseful after nine years.
The title text is a reply to an email in which Rob wished to see the movie WALL-E , a film that came out in 2008, with Cueball during its opening weekend. However, the opening weekend is now far in the past, and yet Cueball doesn't realize it and trails off with "are you still doing that, or...?" Mentioning the release of a popular movie and then making it clear that it will soon be ten years ago that the movie came out, feels a lot like a hidden comic to make one feel old , but it may be stretching it to include this directly in that category. But it is a technique often used by Randall , quite clearly in most of that category, for instance 891: Movie Ages .
A real (and useful [ citation needed ] ) New Year's resolution would involve trying to answer his emails as they arrive (instead of spending any more time on years old emails), which would have avoided the mess he's currently in, and will stop it from getting worse in the future.
In this comic Cueball may represent Randall . He receives so many e-mail due to the xkcd comic that he may have a hard time going through them all. Then there is his what if? email, and possibly many more. Hopefully he has a separate e-mail for friends that wish to send him a request for going to the opening of new recent movie. On the about page on xkcd he does write the following for one of the e-mails he cites as contact:
press @ xkcd.com -- Press questions, etc (may take a long time to get to me).
[Megan and Cueball are walking along.] Megan: Did you have any New Year's Resolutions? Cueball: Gonna finally finish dealing with those emails from 2008.
[Caption below the panel:] As my email backlog approaches 10 years, I'm starting to have doubts about my approach.


Bad Map Projection Liquid Resize

Explanation:
This is the first comic in the series of Bad Map Projections presenting Bad map projection #107: The Liquid Resize. This turned into a series when 1799: Bad Map Projection: Time Zones (#79), was released just a bit more than a month after this one.
There is no perfect way to draw a map of the world on a flat piece of paper. Each one will introduce a different type of distortion, and the best projection for a given situation is sometimes disputed. Randall previously explored 12 different projections in 977: Map Projections , and expressed his disdain for some types he sees as less efficient but whose users feel superior. None of them are truly perfect as any 2D map projection will always distort in a way the spherical reality, and a map projection that is useful for one aspect (like navigation, geographical shapes and masses visualization, etc.) will not be so for all the others. Local maps of smaller areas can be quite accurate, but the idea of both these map projection comics is to map the entire globe on a flat surface.
This comic suggests that there are many other projections than the 12 from the previous map projection comic, and Randall seems to have an entire list, of which at least 358 are "Bad Map Projections." The one presented here is #107 and is it called the "Liquid Resize." It is unclear if he includes the previous 12 in this list. Quite possibly he does, since all 2D projections of the surface of a 3D sphere will be bad in certain respects. (The next comic's projections Time Zones based on these, has #79 and could be concluded as being less bad than this one, which also seems realistic as this map looks more like a normal map projection, although it also has huge flaws).
The Liquid Resize map projection, however, is not only useless for most map applications -- as the size, shape, and position of most countries are quite distorted -- but its creation includes two steps which are outright counterproductive. If the list is sorted from best to worst it may be hard to find a worse projection method than this, so finding 106 projections better than this one seems realistic!
First, this method needs a planar map projection as its starting point, thus compounding the problems right off the bat. Planar projections are relatively accurate near the center but heavily distorted toward the edges. A famous example of a planar projection is the logo of the United Nations . Planar projections are basically only useful for 3D graphics rendering, if the user needs a quick, inexpensive way to store map textures that will later be attached to a sphere.
Second, the map uses Photoshop's content aware resizing tool , a very questionable choice. [ citation needed ] (Using a Photoshop tool for a task it is not intended for was also used in 1685: Patch where a GNU patch tool was replaced with Adobe Photoshop's patch tool to compile code.) The content aware resizing tool resizes images by identifying what it thinks are important details and preserving these, while shrinking or stretching less detailed areas. For example, when used on a face , the algorithm detects that the eyes and mouth are important details and tries to keep these in place, while stretching the skin around it. When applied to a map, this means that areas with lots of countries - and therefore lots of detail - such as Europe, West Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Central America/the Caribbean are relatively unchanged, while big countries like India, China and the US are very warped. The choices that the resizing tool makes are also dependent on the exact visual features of the original map, such as the choice of not having any topography or infrastructure drawn on, or not including a latitude/longitude grid, so what areas are deemed as unimportant is even more arbitrary than it would be on, say, a photographic picture of the Earth.
Bad content aware scaling is already a meme. This projection does do a good job, however, of making almost every country clearly visible and indicating which countries are neighbors.
South America fits into Africa almost as it did in the era of the super-continent Pangaea .
Tissot's indicatrices are equally sized small circles overlaid on a globe to show the distortion of a particular map projection; if the map distortion distorts the shapes or areas of countries, it will do the same to the circles. The title text suggests that the shapes of Tissot's indicatrices would be pretty well preserved by the Liquid Resize transformation, 'as long as you draw them in before running the resize'.  This is a joke. "Drawing them in before running the resize" means that a different projection would be generated (probably preserving the indicatrices themselves), making the use of the indicatrices meaningless, sort of like cheating. In fact by drawing them small enough there will be no resizing at all.
[Caption at the top of the panel:] Bad map projection #107: The Liquid Resize A political map compressed using Photoshop's content-aware resizing algorithm to cut down on unused blank space
[Below the caption there is a map of the world divided and colored by political boundaries, with outlines around each continent in black and around each country in dark gray. Antarctica is colored in light gray, bodies of water in white, and countries in pale shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The map is heavily distorted, with Africa in the center and the other continents curving around it, approximating the bounds of a square with rounded corners. The oceans have been removed but also huge countries like the US, Australia, Brazil, Russia and especially India and Argentina have been heavily distorted while areas in the center with many smaller countries like Africa and Europe is almost unchanged.]


Wifi

Explanation:
This comic shows the supposed probability that a guest will be able to connect to the owner's Wi-Fi in graph form. Connecting to a new Wi-Fi network is a fairly simple operation that most people can perform, typically only requiring selecting the correct network name on a settings screen, then entering a password.
The graph starts with tech-illiterate people who don't even know how to control their Wi-Fi connection ("can't find wifi settings"). This group has slightly lower than normal probability of connecting successfully, since they would not know what to do if left alone. However, they still have a reasonable chance to connect as long as someone is available to help them. Once the initial setup is done, they can continue using the connection without any technical knowledge or intervention.
The average case in the middle of the graph represents typical users who simply wish to connect and gain Internet access ("works fine"). This group of users have enough knowledge to be able to connect and are then satisfied with the connection just working. Since networking devices use a standard protocol to communicate behind the scenes, users typically will not experience any issues.
Finally, the large drop in the graph on the right-hand side is explained by "something involving the word 'firmware'". Firmware is programming which operates a device at the lowest level, typically stored in a ROM or an EEPROM/flash. Both Wi-Fi routers and guest's devices (smartphones, tablets, computers) have firmware. Modifying the firmware can have certain benefits, for example to gain features that aren't included in the base product. Also, especially for newly adopted wireless standards (such as, most recently, IEEE 802.11ac ), incompatible interpretations of the standard may prevent devices from different manufacturers from communicating reliably or at full speed, requiring firmware changes to patch the issues. However, working with firmware requires a great deal of technical knowledge, and can be quite risky for people without experience. Not all custom firmware will interoperate correctly with all devices. Technical issues with custom firmware can also be harder to fix due to lack of support from the device manufacturer. In the worst case, installing the wrong firmware, or any errors or glitches in the process, can even leave devices bricked . It's likely that the sharp dropoff in the graph is caused by inexperienced users who know "just enough" to want to modify their firmware, but don't know how to deal with the multitude of issues that can arise. Particularly for users whose connection was already working fine but nevertheless want to experiment with new firmware, their changes often end up worsening their chances of connecting.
The title text indicates that the curve recovers once users are more experienced, and can consistently install firmware correctly to get a working connection. In such case, the users are able to enjoy better connections through their firmware changes while avoiding their pitfalls. These experienced users are often able to diagnose and fix connection issues through the appropriate use of firmware, making their chances of connecting even better than the average user.
Randall has previously used the title text to add extra info that would not fit in the main graph.  This has happened in 388: Fuck Grapefruit , 1242: Scary Names , 2466: In Your Classroom and 1501: Mysteries . The first three have extra data points mentioned there because they are far off the chart, whereas the last has a point whose description would be too long to fit on the chart. All these other graphs are scatter plots, as opposed to this comic being a line-graph.
Computer issues have previously appeared in several xkcd comics, notably 456: Cautionary , where WiFi problems specifically are mentioned in the title text.
The apparent paradox of people knowing more about a subject also having more problems with it is also explored in 1760: TV Problems .
[A line graph with a curve that starts just right of the Y-axis above the middle of the axis. Then it increases slightly and stays almost stable on a long flat plateau before it falls off fast towards the right.  Each axis ends in an arrow and has a label to the left of the Y-axis and below the x-axis. Over the curve there are three labels, pointing with one arrow to the two rising and falling parts, and three arrows to the center label above the plateau.] Y-axis: Probability houseguest will be able to connect to WiFi X-axis: Houseguest tech-savviness Left label: Can't find wifi settings Center label: Works fine Right label: Something involving the word "firmware"


Trash

Explanation:
Black Hat is, once again, thoroughly confusing Cueball (another example of this is 908: The Cloud ). This time, when inquired about a chute protruding from his wardrobe, Black Hat explains that it is a garbage chute into another dimension. Apparently these kinds of portals appear on about half of all the furniture that Black Hat buys, and he is somewhat annoyed about it. (This sounds more like something Beret Guy would encounter, although he would have reacted very differently than Black Hat.) It would be interesting to know whether all the portals lead into the same alternative world/dimension, but it seems Black Hat is not interested in visiting these worlds, instead just being annoyed about his broken furniture. (Given Black Hat's personality, this may well be a practical joke meant to mess with Cueball's head rather than an actual portal to another dimension.)
Cueball quickly realizes this is a reference to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , the first published book in The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis . In the books, the child characters use different portals to get into the alternative dimension/world of Narnia . The children first find a portal inside an old wardrobe, and use it at least three times to travel into Narnia. Black Hat confirms his trash chute indeed leads to Narnia and explains how this is a great time-saver for him, as he can easily get rid of his trash. The Narnia books are for children and Narnia is a magical world, so Cueball is appalled to learn that Black Hat dumps his trash there.
A discussion of problems with this comic vs. Narnia chronology is discussed in the trivia section .
The "huge cat" he refers to is Aslan , a magical lion in Narnia that represents God. In his lion form he sometimes walks around and watches over Narnia, but not all the time. It is revealed in the last book that he is also the guardian of the other worlds, where he has different names and takes on different appearances, so he is actually a representation of a benevolent God in many forms.
Aslan, or any other large cat or inhabitants of such a different world, would probably be really upset that someone is throwing their trash there [ citation needed ] . He would probably try to stop this by any means necessary, including coming up through a trash chute into another dimension. But because lions are a type of cat (feline), apparently Aslan can be repelled with an ordinary spray bottle. The joke is that this is a technique used to tame small house cats; it would be unlikely to work on a lion, especially if the lion was really a deity [ citation needed ] .
In the title text, the fact that time passes much faster in Narnia than on Earth is mentioned. (Time does not pass at a constant rate compared to Earth time.) This could also be the case even if the portal in Black Hat's wardrobe accessed a different world than Narnia. So everything that is actually pushed to the other side of the portal would be disposed of very efficiently, as the trash could completely decompose within just a few Earth minutes. This would then explain how Black Hat can keep pushing more stuff into the other world: anything sent through the portal will decompose and vanish before he comes with his next load of trash.
The title text mention of Yucca Mountain is a reference to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository , a partially-built nuclear waste repository that has been defunded at the present time. Black Hat wants to contact those that wish to make such a repository and let them dispose of their radioactive waste through his "magical" portal, likely to make a profit for himself. If throwing trash into Narnia is terrible, radioactive waste would be far worse [ citation needed ] . Of course in Earth time radioactive materials would soon decay back to background levels of radiation. This is thus another jab at all the world's environmental problems, as is also done with all the comics about climate change . This comic could be a take on humans dumping waste in the "endless" oceans, more specifically ocean disposal of radioactive waste . This was done in the past but is now banned, as Earth's oceans are not endless [ citation needed ] .
The title text copies the idea behind the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic from October 15 2014 . The button at the bottom of that comic shows a sad Mr. Tumnus , a faun Lucy meets on her first visit to Narnia, rather than an angry Aslan as suggested in this comic.
The portal through the wardrobe to Narnia was previously featured in 665: Prudence , 969: Delta-P and 821: Five-Minute Comics: Part 3 . In the latter, the different passage of time was also mentioned.
[Cueball looking at garbage chute attached to wardrobe. Black Hat answers him from off panel.] Cueball: What's this thing on your wardrobe? Black Hat (off-panel): Garbage chute.
[In a frame-less panel Cueball has turned away from the wardrobe (now off-panel) and he walks towards Black Hat.] Cueball: Into a wardrobe? Black hat: There's some sort of portal to a magical land in there. Half the furniture I get has them-it's kinda a pain.
[Cueball stops walking closer to Black Hat.] Cueball: You dump your trash in Narnia ? Black Hat: Yeah, it's a real time-saver. Black Hat: There's a huge cat in there, but I have a spray bottle I use when he tries to come up through the chute.


Voice Commands

Explanation:
In this comic Cueball has shown Ponytail something relevant to her on his smartphone and she asks if he can send it to her. He agrees but then says something completely incomprehensible to Ponytail, but obviously his phone understands and sends the message with a beep.
The caption explains that he was speaking as though he was using a QWERTY keyboard layout and writing as it was a Dvorak Simplified Keyboard . In other words, Cueball is saying keys on a Dvorak keyboard and the phone is receiving the spaces on a QWERTY keyboard that each of Cueball's Dvorak letters uses. Cueball can be sure that nobody else will be able to use voice commands on his phone.
The sentence Cueball tells his phone translates to "Okay Google send a text" - he says it as if he were typing the sentence on a Dvorak layout with the keyboard set to a QWERTY layout. How such words would be pronounced is a mystery, as the letters in the words are merely substituted with others with no regard to phonetics; without standardized pronunciations, a speech-to-text program would be useless. To add to the confusion, one of the words in Cueball's sentence includes a semi-colon as one of its letters despite the fact that semi-colons are punctuation rather than phonemes, which only complicates the pronunciation further.
The title text is a reference to the fact that many users of Dvorak keyboards claim they may be hard to learn, but they are more movement efficient and put less stress on your fingers due to less movement. This makes little sense in the scenario set up by the comic, as speaking gibberish using oddly placed vowels would be equally difficult, if not in fact harder, on the vocal cords. [ citation needed ]
[Ponytail is looking at Cueball facing her direction, and he looks down at the smartphone he is holding in his hand.] Ponytail: Can you text it to me? Cueball: Sure! Cueball: Svat ussupd ;dlh a kdbk Ponytail: ...What? Phone: *Beep*
[Caption under the panel:] Setting my phone's speech recognition to Dvorak was a pain at first, but it's more efficient in the long run.


Barge

Explanation:
This is another one of the " My Hobby " series, where Randall tells about a strange hobby. This one is depicted with three drawings illustrating the core concept, and explained in details in the caption.
The launch company SpaceX has developed a reusable rocket system, where the first rocket stage is capable of landing back on either the launch pad or an autonomous spaceport drone ship after launch (See this video displaying both types of landing, from when the sea landing was successful the first time). The landing pads and ships are decorated with a "X" symbol from the SpaceX logo, with the center of the X being the desired landing spot. [ citation needed ]
Randall imagines creating a similar-looking barge and placing it near the intended landing site, except his barge's platform would be hollow in the middle with only a sheet of paper supporting the part where the rocket would land. Since the paper is painted to look just like the real landing platform, the goal of this setup is presumably to trick a returning first stage rocket into falling into the sea. This is the same concept as the old trapping pit . If a rocket attempts to land on Randall's barge, it will quickly burn through the paper and fall through the hole.
There are several reasons why this setup would not work in real life.  First, the rocket actually navigates to the landing site using GPS coordinates shared with the real barge.  It does not use cameras to identify its landing site and will not recognize another barge based solely on a painted logo.  Also, a wide area around the rocket's flight path would be restricted around the launch window due to safety concerns.  Vessels that are not part of the official launch plan would not be allowed in the area.  Even if the fake barge manages to enter the area and does not get removed by authorities, at most it will cause the launch to be canceled for the day.
This "my hobby" is probably the most destructive one so far, as it would result in the total loss of the first stage containing nine space rocket engines. The costs associated with buying and remodeling a barge would also likely make this the most expensive hobby, even disregarding the costs to others, though it could potentially be reused if it did not get destroyed by the falling rocket. This hobby seems more appropriate for Black Hat , considering that he is a real classhole , and goes to show that Black Hat is as much part of Randall's personality as Cueball .
The title text plays on the incredible difficulty of landing a rocket on a barge.  Reusing rockets like this is a feat that has only recently become possible, some 60 years after the launch of the first satellite Sputnik 1 .  SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk , was the first (and so far only) organization to do so successfully. Blue Origin is also currently testing reusable rockets and achieved landing their first stage before SpaceX, albeit only on land and only with a sub-orbital rocket .
Thus Randall imagines an even more implausible idea of turning the scenario upside down and getting a barge to land on one of Elon Musk's rockets. That would be a spectacular feat of engineering, and the challenges it presents as well as its inherent irony appear to satisfy Randall so much that he would make it into one of his life goals. Launching a barge in the first place would be tremendously difficult - they are big, heavy and not very aerodynamic . Maneuvering it through the air precisely enough to come down on top of a rocket would be difficult as well.  The barge (and probably the rocket) would have to be redesigned if the goal is a soft landing, otherwise the falling barge would certainly destroy the rocket and possibly itself.
This comic was published on the week following SpaceX's Iridium 1 mission , where the first stage of the rocket which delivered 10 satellites into orbit successfully landed on a barge near California. This was filmed from the returning stage 1 and also from further away .  More details of the launch are available here .  It marked the seventh time SpaceX successfully landed and recovered its booster on a commercial mission.
[There is one panel in this comic with the main drawing at the bottom. Two smaller drawings are inserted above this drawing to explain the idea.]
[The first insert shows a barge with no center and a large piece of paper with the SpaceX logo above the barge.]
[The second insert shows the paper stretched over the hole.]
[The main drawing at the bottom shows a cross-section of the barge in water, showing there is only water below the paper. Above the paper the large first stage, without the top part with the payload, of a reusable rocket is attempting to land on the paper on the SpaceX logo (not visible in this view). It is still so high above the fake barge that the exhaust fire below the rocket is nowhere near the paper.]
[Caption below the panels:] My hobby: Hollowing out the center of a barge, stretching paper over the hole painted with the SpaceX logo, and leaving it floating offshore near launch sites.