Walmart

Explanation:
This comic satirizes the way in which large social networks, such as Facebook (and at the time of this comics posting Google+ ), attempt to aggregate all aspects of the user's online social presence. Earlier social networks had more granular focuses; e.g. MySpace originated with a music focus, and even earlier various bulletin board systems were centered around specific topics. By contrast, many social media companies attempt to encapsulate the variety of aspects of their users' online lives, thereby aggregating their personal, professional, and private lives in a way that was previously unlikely to occur.
The first comparison to Walmart , a large multi-national "big box" retailer that sells everything from gardening supplies to televisions to groceries, is apt because Walmart, too, is attempting to aggregate various aspects of your life into a single location - but rather than aggregating your social media presence, it's attempting to aggregate your shopping habits.
The punch line of the joke is that social interactions at Walmart are awkward, contrived, and frequently undesired — just as they can grow to become in a social network that is insufficiently focused or too bloated. People communicate differently with different groups of people, and if they are attempting to connect with friends, they are unlikely to want their grandparents present. Similarly, if a person is attempting to buy groceries, they may not be interested in extended small talk with acquaintances with whom they may not share much in common (perhaps the fact that they both shop at Walmart is the biggest similarity they share).
The title text elaborates on this idea by sarcastically implying that he wants all his older relatives to hang out where he hung out in college, likely causing extreme awkwardness.
[Caption above the panel:] When a network tries to become everyone's one-stop hub, the Walmart of social interaction... [Cueball and Hairy standing in a supermarket, Cueball holding groceries under his arm, Hairy with a cart.] Cueball: Oh, uh, hi! Funny running into you here. Hairy: Oh, hey! Yeah! How've you been? [Caption below the panel:] ...it inevitably becomes the Walmart of social interaction.


Cold

Explanation:
In this comic, Cueball (wearing a white knit cap with a pom-pom) and Cueball's friend (wearing a black knit cap) are walking outside in sub 0 °F (-17.8 °C). White Knit Cap Guy complains about the brutal cold and as a result questions whether global warming is real. Black Knit Cap Guy explains that this kind of weather used to happen all the time back before the year 2000, showing that global warming is, in fact, very real.
This is illustrated in panel two by a graph showing the number of days with sub 0 °F as a function of year from 1970 to 2013 in the city of St. Louis , (where we learn that Cueball is from). It shows that these days used to be rather common between 1970 and 1999, only to be completely absent for the next 14 years until and including 2013. A source link for this graph is provided (though as of June 2014, the link is dead - see Trivia below).
Cueball's friend uses this graph to explain that not a single day like this has happened since 2000, until here in 2014 where a polar vortex pushed the temperature down below zero again for two days. Since this weather is now unusual and infrequently experienced, people in St. Louis perceive it as being very cold because they have since adapted and are now unused to this sort of temperature, even though this was a common temperature to reach in past decades. This is further demonstrated when Cueball remarks that it's "too cold". Subzero Fahrenheit temperatures are very cold to be out in. See for instance the first panel of 526: Converting to Metric .
In the last panel, in a future St. Louis, a Cueball discovers a thin sheet of ice, suggesting the temperature has fallen just below 32 °F (0 °C), the freezing point of water. The suggestion here is that the environment has warmed to such an extent that temperatures below 32 degrees F are very unusual, and the future Cueball repeats the same short-term fallacy that such "extreme cold" disproves global warming. Someone off-panel, presumably another Black Knit Cap Guy, sighs as the cycle continues.
The comic reacts to a simplified view of global warming by amateurs, including media, who fail to understand (or choose to ignore) the difference between climate and weather . Short, random weather fluctuations like the polar vortex are taken as examples or counter-examples of climate change and global warming. To understand climate change, one must look at global (not local) and long-term (not short-term) temperature trends.
Debates on the theory of global warming/climate change often center on whether the current warming trend is primarily caused by humans or is a natural change, as has happened in the past. Within the scientific community, there is an overwhelming consensus that the current trend is anthropogenic (i.e. man-made), but many in the general public (including many politicians) are hesitant to accept this. There is clearly no doubt about where Randall stands on this debate, as many of his comics and blog posts continue to plead for humanity to do something about the man-made global warming trend - especially in comic 1379: 4.5 Degrees .
The title text suggests that gathering data about global warming is time-consuming and is the kind of stuff only a real nerd would do. Most people would rather hang out with friends, or at least spend their time with some more fun nerd activity. Randall has been known to use the title text to poke fun at himself over how much time he has spent researching topics and more generally how geeky his interests tend to be. Although the title text tries to deny this geeky behavior, he cannot help himself at the end by mentioning another interesting climate subject: Snowfall records .
Climate change, especially global warming, is a recurring theme in xkcd.
[It's cold, two Guys wearing knit caps (one knit cap is white the other black) are walking outside and the White Knit Cap Guy is shivering.] White Knit Cap Guy: It is brutal out. So much for global warming, huh? Black Knit Cap Guy: *sigh* This used to happen all the time. White Knit Cap Guy: What?
[A dot plot showing number of days with lows below zero Fahrenheit by year since 1970.] Black Knit Cap Guy (off-screen): You're from St. Louis, right? Black Knit Cap Guy (off-screen): On average, it used to get below 0 °F there a handful of days per year. Black Knit Cap Guy (off-screen): But you haven't had a day like that since the nineties. [Above the dot plot to the left is a label in a black frame:] Days with lows < 0°F [Below the dot plot are written the years:] 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 [Below again is written in small letters:] Source: rcc-acis.org/climatecentral
[Black Knit Cap Guy has stopped walking.] Black Knit Cap Guy: Then, in 2014, when the first polar vortex hit, it dipped below zero for two days. Black Knit Cap Guy: And everyone freaked out
[They continue walking.] Black Knit Cap Guy: because what used to be normal Black Knit Cap Guy: now feels too cold. White Knit Cap Guy: It is too cold!
[Above the last panel is written in a black frame:] The Future: [Cueball is pointing at a patch of ice.] Cueball: Look at this— ice! In St. Louis! So much for global warming. Person off-screen: *sigh*
Note that this is not the same data set as mentioned in xkcd as this is regarding freezing days and not subzero days!
With the full excel dataset of the number of freezing days (i.e. below 32 °F) as obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 's homepage NOAA you get the following plot:

From the same dataset excel dataset we can also get the number of sub-zero days i.e. below 0 °F (which are those mentioned in the XKCD strip) - plotting those and you get the following plot:
Note that this IS the same data set as mentioned in XKCD. This is subzero days!

While there were a number of very cold years with outliers in the 1970s - then the clear overall trend is still that there are fewer days with cold weather over the years.
So while weather is different every year (which is also illustrated by the outliers) the climate is defined by the long term trend - which is the point of this cartoon.


Winter

Explanation:
Beret Guy and Cueball are walking. Beret Guy is making several remarks about the situation. The air is cold, the puddles have frozen, he has mittens, the sunlight is warm, and the birds are chirping in the trees. When making these observations, however, he does not use the conventional terms. Instead he uses word compounds, similar to " Up Goer Five ". When Cueball brings up Beret Guy's odd vocabulary, he retorts by declaring that the name does not matter, as long as the things themselves are what they should be. This is the same concept that is communicated in the line from the Shakespearean play, "Romeo and Juliet": "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ." The concept is similar to that discussed by Richard Feynman as the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
In the title text Beret Guy continues to use playful language and offers affectionate encouragement: "stay warm, little flappers", demonstrating that his intentions are kind, not obfuscatory. Additionally, it is an indirect salutation from Randall Munroe to the readers, acknowledging the remarkably cold temperatures North America was experiencing at the time.
Strange synonyms are also found in 919: Tween Bromance and 2352: Synonym Date .
[Cueball and Beret Guy, Cueball in a winter hat and Beret Guy in a beret, are walking through snow and across a patch of ice.] Beret Guy: The sky is cold and the floor water is too hard to drink.
[Beret Guy looks upwards.] Beret Guy: But I have my handcoats and the spacelight is warm.
[Beret Guy and Cueball continue on through woods; there are musical notes coming from the trees.]
Beret Guy: Listen—the flappy planes are beeping in the stick towers.
[Cueball pauses.] Cueball: Those are all the wrong words for those things. [Beret Guy replies from off panel.] Beret Guy: Maybe—but the things themselves are all right. So who cares?
[Cueball continues walking, with sunlight and musical notes above.]


Protocol

Explanation:
Alice, Bob, and Eve are role names traditionally used in describing cryptographic protocols. Rather than talking about "Person A", "Person B", "Person C", names beginning with each letter are used instead, and giving them different genders let pronouns be used to shorten discussions. For example: "Person A sends Person B a message encoded with Person B's public key" is much easier to parse when written as "Alice sends Bob a message encoded with his public key." Eve is short for "eavesdropper" - a person trying to find out what's being said in the conversations between the other people. The classic situation involves Alice wanting to send a secret message to Bob, while Eve (the eavesdropper), attempts to read the message, ideally without Alice or Bob ever finding out. Additional participants such as Carol (Person C) can be added if necessary. The list of names has become very standardised over time as described at Alice and Bob .
The joke here is that any computer scientist, hearing the names used, will think that they are listening to a cryptography problem. By changing the names in a story to these role names, you can induce them to listen carefully to boring stories. The fewer the interesting details, the more it sounds like a general problem, so very boring stories are actually the easiest.
The title text shows a more radical approach to the problem, for people who do not feel comfortable about lying. In this approach, you only make friends with people who have the appropriate names already.
The comic title also can be interpreted in two ways. First, the computer scientist thinks the conversation is about an encryption protocol. Second, the way the conversation is carried resembles a protocol used by many data communication systems, where one side sends data while the other sends back an acknowledgement upon receiving the data. In this case, the data are the lines of the boring story.
In comic 177: Alice and Bob these names are used in the same context. Instead of Alice and Bob being perfectly innocent people who just want to communicate in private, Bob is actually having an affair with Alice. Eve —his former partner— cracked the encryption to see what the message contained. Thus, this comic seems to continue the Alice/Bob romance, jealous-Eve plot, with Eve apparently confronting Alice over her text message to Bob.
[Cueball is telling a story to a Computer Scientist who is seated at his desk.] Cueball: Alice sends a message to Bob saying to meet her somewhere. Computer Scientist: Uh huh. Cueball: But Eve sees it, too, and goes to the place. Computer Scientist: With you so far. Cueball: Bob is delayed, and Alice and Eve meet. Computer Scientist: Yeah? CAPTION: I've discovered a way to get computer scientists to listen to any boring story.


Weather

Explanation:
Social norm accepts casual small-talk as an ice breaker for interaction — usually it is always safe to talk about the weather without hitting any disagreements as there are rarely any personal viewpoints about the weather — in contrast small-talk is never about political subjects or similar where chances are that there are strong personal viewpoints.
In this strip Cueball is described a "weather geek", enjoying subjects such as meteorology and weather forecasting . When Hairy makes a comment about the weather, Cueball launches into a detailed technical discussion, not realizing Hairy is simply trying to engage in small-talk. Only weather geeks would have this problem, but this topic is a common opening for a conversation in casual small-talk. Cueball switches to small-talk once he realizes that Hairy is confused and didn't expect this level of technical information.
As to the jargon:
The title text clarifies the problem weather nuts like Cueball here have: Unlike other geeky pursuits (like, say, the Derinkuyu Underground Cities , one of the most well-known archaeological sites in Turkey ) weather is a fairly common small talk subject. As a result, weather geeks have to be constantly vigilant so as not to launch into technical monologues.
[Cueball and Hairy are talking.] Hairy: So, how 'bout this weather? Cueball: I know, right? The whole jet stream layer is nuts! Hairy: Um, sure... Cueball: The 18z GFS forecasts 960mb by Tuesday. Think it'll verify? Hairy: What? Cueball: ...Right. Sorry. Uh, yeah! Weather sure has been crazy.
[Caption below the panel:] Weather geeks have it tough.


Rejection

Explanation:
In popular culture women are sometimes said to not be interested in nice guys , as in common interpretations of the phrase nice guys finish last which originally belongs to baseball.
The Cueball -like guy on the left in this picture is presumably frustrated and complaining because he has been rejected by a woman, and thinks it's because he's the "nice guy" type. Cueball's sarcastic interjection implies that saying that women don't want nice guys and presuming to know what women "really want" is actually showing a rejection of that woman's agency, which might be the real reason she rejected him. It fits with one of the negative connotations of "nice guy": one who does not express his true feelings and/or is passive-aggressive .
The title text continues the "conversation", with Cueball implying that he believes that the first guy is bad at taking hints. He offers a "crash course" in hint taking by clarifying outright that he is trying to end the conversation while the first guy continues to follow him.
Though this guy might indeed be a jerk, there are also many other reasons why a woman might reject a guy who isn't a jerk.
The concept of the self-identifying "nice guy" who actually may have less than admirable motives is also explored in 513: Friends . See also the concept of "negging" as used in 1027: Pickup Artist : you belittle chicks to undermine their self-confidence so they'll be more vulnerable and seek your approval .
[Cueball is walking, and a Cueball-like guy follows him.] Guy: Women say they want nice guys, but what they really want are— Cueball: —Guys who respond to rejection by belittling their judgment and self-awareness? Cueball: If so, don't worry — you'll be fine.


Sharks

Explanation:
This comic is a joke about the use of sharks in action movies. In these movies, sharks are often used to guard locations and dispense capital punishment. Since the idea of a guard shark is not practical, this comic suggests that villains raise sharks to help with declining shark populations in the oceans.
In this comic Cueball is an evil villain who rules over a "Doom Island." In addition to commanding minions and detaining prisoners, he keeps sharks to threaten prisoners. When a prisoner escapes the island, he orders his minions to "release the sharks." However, the sharks do not hunt the prisoner, but merely swim away. The comic jokes that Cueball is using fugitives as a pretense to help with declining shark populations, and that Doom Island is just a front for a marine biology center. Cueball maintains the whole "guard sharks" idea as a cover-up, so that his minions do not catch on to the real mission.
The title text plays on the idea that Cueball can't be openly concerned with his sharks' welfare without his minions catching on. He claims to be inspecting the shark cages. As a shark cage is normally used to provide protection for divers wishing to observe sharks up-close, they would not work well as cages to hold prisoners (which is their stated purpose). The comic implies that when he is "inspecting the cages" he is really performing a scientific study on the sharks, or simply observing them because he loves them.
Because a real villainous lair would have no use for shark cages, it follows that Cueball owns them solely for the purpose of gratifying his interest in his sharks, thus forcing him to keep up the pretense of the cages being of some help in preventing prisoners from escaping.
The shark issue is also one of the items on the chart of 1331: Frequency .
"Doom Island" is most likely meant to be a generic name for the villain's lair (a trope dating back to at least the first James Bond film, Dr. No ); however, a real island of this name exists in Indonesia.
In action movie trope from the '70s and '80s, evil villains use sharks to kill off enemies. Some examples are:
And in the James Bond series:
[Cueball is sitting on a throne, talking to a minion who's not shown in the panel.] Minion: The prisoner escaped and is swimming toward the mainland! Cueball: Release the sharks. Minion: Yes, sir.
Minion: The sharks are swimming away. Cueball: They're escaping, too? Send sharks after them!
Minion: Now those sharks are swimming away. Cueball: More sharks. Minion: ...Sir, what's going on? Cueball: Prisoners, of course! Can't let 'em escape!
Minion: Sir, are you trying to turn Doom Island into a marine biology center? Cueball: Shark populations are in decline– Cueball: *ahem* Cueball: I mean, the world must fear us! Minion: Right...


Mobile Marketing

Explanation:
Black Hat was hired by the Cable News Network ( CNN ) to increase its popularity, presumably long-term. However, all he did was text one million people implying that a huge, unbelievable event was happening. While this technically did increase viewers of CNN, this was most likely only for a few minutes before the viewers realized nothing had happened. Because of this, Black Hat did very little to help CNN.
It is possible that this is the finale of a long career Black Hat has had in marketing, beginning in 125: Marketing Interview .
The title text is spoken by the offscreen character who, after saying that division of CNN was firing Black Hat, told him that the online headline writing department wanted to hire him. This is because the message Black Hat texted to the million phone numbers is very similar to link bait , which are headlines or titles that, like the text message, promise highly interesting articles without being very detailed as to their nature. Thus, perhaps online, Black Hat could bring clicks up long term through this unscrupulous practice, as opposed to mass unsolicited texts. The practice of link bait has also been mentioned in 1283: Headlines .
[Black Hat sits at a desk. A voice speaks from off panel, in front of Black Hat.] Off panel: CNN hired you to improve viewership.
[Black Hat continues to sit at the desk.] Black Hat: ...yes, and?
[Next panel, conversation continues.] Off panel: You texted "Holy crap, turn on the news" to a million random phone numbers? Black Hat: It sure did work. Off panel: Not what we meant!


Update

Explanation:
When developers responsible for fixing errors on a specific operating system release a patch, the operating system often ask users to restart the computer after installing. This is often done by popup window shown to the user where they can choose to restart immediately or choose to be reminded later.
Many messages from these popups emphasize the importance of installing the updates, but Cueball is just annoyed about this. Sometimes, these issues are minor and do not affect most computers using the operating system. Often other programs, not part of the operating system, ask for a reboot because the updated routine only runs after the next reboot. Regardless, reboots can take a long time — a typical user doesn't like this. The user can choose to be reminded later multiple times. Because rebooting a computer takes a significant amount of time and closes any programs running, a user may delay the update repeatedly to avoid interrupting what they were doing at the time.
The comic is making two jokes simultaneously: the core comic jokes that reboots are so tedious and disruptive it would actually be preferable for a laptop to burst into flame than to go through one, while the title text suggests that the real problem is that humans are so incapable of delayed gratification and/or risk evaluation they would rather risk bodily harm than suffer a minor inconvenience.
The joke uses an "exploding laptop battery" as an exaggeration for comedic effect. Most software doesn't affect hardware issues like burning laptop batteries . [ citation needed ] However, low-level software, such as the kernel or drivers , might cause hardware to misbehave.
The title text reflects the fact that the average user will have multiple applications open and a reboot would require closing them. They would then have to open all their applications again after the computer has restarted. This can also refer to a browser application having multiple tabs open. This is becoming less of an issue because browsers have an option to restart the last session again after being closed, as would happen with a reboot, but many users still don't trust it to work properly.
[Cueball sits at a desk. A message is being displayed on Cueball's laptop screen.] Urgent : Critical update available!
[The message continues.] Details : Fixes an issue that was causing random laptop electrical fires.
(This update will require restarting your computer.) [Cueball clicks on Remind me later .] click


Standing

Explanation:
Standing desks are a current fad in modern tech companies. Supposedly more ergonomic and comfortable than sitting all day, they can be combined with treadmills or stationary bicycles to enable exercise to be taken while working. Cueball tells Megan that standing desks are inferior to his solution, strapping his laptop to a deer. The deer constantly runs away from Cueball , forcing him to chase and get exercise (and probably get kicked if he catches up). Additionally, by mentioning the common line of "humans weren't meant to sit all day", he is saying that his deer-based solution is much more similar to the task that humans evolved to do, namely hunting and gathering . Humans are in fact one of the few species built for exhaustion hunting (exactly what it sounds like), and are able to chase a prey for more than four hours in ideal conditions. This is also why one's legs feel sore when standing for extended periods but not while moving, as the valves in one's veins only work when one's legs are moving.
The title text takes this a step further, saying that the deer was surprisingly ergonomic, apart from the kicks — which would, presumably, be quite debilitating. The ergonomics could be due to the soft, warm nature of the flesh compared to typical cold, hard tables.
[Cueball is running after a deer with a laptop strapped to its back, while Megan looks on.] Cueball: Humans aren't built to sit all day. This is much healthier.
[Caption below the panel] My Hobby: One-upping the standing desk people


Kola Borehole

Explanation:
The Kola Superdeep Borehole is the result of a scientific drilling project by the Soviet Union in what is now north-western Russia that began in 1970 and continued through 1992. It was an attempt to drill as far into the Earth as possible. The deepest hole reached 12,262 metres (40,230 ft). It remains the deepest artificial point on earth .
Megan mentions the well to Hell hoax that the drilling hit a super-hot cavern which is disproved at www.snopes.com: "The Well to Hell" . Although super-hot temperature was the reason the project was abandoned, no chamber or voices were discovered. As Megan notes, the hoax plays on the popular notion that Hell is literally a physical place below us — therefore by definition, towards the centre of the Earth — whereas Heaven is above us; often depicted in the clouds.
Megan suggests that the miners therefore sealed the hole to "seal in" Hell. There is no mention in the Wikipedia article about the hole being sealed; however there is a picture with the caption "The borehole itself (welded shut)". If "sealing the hole" is considered to mean filling the entire hole up with concrete or some other material, then given the potential for future scientific data, the 22 years spent drilling and the cost of sealing the hole, this would not seem to be a reasonable thing to do.
Black Hat suggests that if the Hoax were true and the miners did believe they'd drilled into Hell, a better alternative to sealing the hole would have been to dig a canal to the ocean, thereby allowing water to flow into the hole and into Hell. As all of Hell is depicted as below the surface of the Earth, and characterized by fire, brimstone, and extreme heat, this would entirely fill Hell with water, drastically altering it. (Depending on the volume of Hell, this could have significant effects on the global sea level and the atmosphere.)
Megan never thought of that possibility and compliments Black Hat's ingenuity by suggesting that if there were ever a real conflict with Hell, she would want to be "on his side", given his clever suggestion on how to destroy Hell. He responds by suggesting that Megan is "nice" and therefore probably won't be on his side. This suggests Black Hat considers himself evil and thinks he would be fighting for Hell or maybe on behalf of those consigned there, rather than against it. Alternatively, he thinks he is worse than the devil and that Megan would be on the "nicer" side.
The title text parodies a nondescript news report of a person's death. In this case it is about Lucifer being killed by Black Hat carrying out his plan to flood Hell. However, the report is written in a non-descript way that ignores the presumed sensationalism of the story (i.e., that Hell exists and has been flooded). It is notable that "Lucifer" is often used in modern times to refer to Satan and both are used to refer to the "leader" or "keeper" of Hell, although the Bible never directly identifies them as the same entity, and he/they are never tied directly to Hell anywhere in the Bible. Much of the modern image of Hell is derived from Dante's " Inferno " along with a variety of additional details which have been added and changed throughout the years. The reference to sharks is a reference to 1326: Sharks that was released a week before.
[Megan and Black Hat are sitting in front of their laptops.] Megan: Ever hear of the Kola Borehole? Black Hat: No—what's that? Megan: A Soviet project to drill deep into the Earth's crust.
Megan: There's a hoax report claiming that their drill broke through into a superhot cavern, and when they lowered a microphone into the hole, they heard tormented screaming. People say that's why the miners sealed the well and abandoned the project.
Black Hat: Why would anyone believe that story? Megan: I guess some people think Hell is literally an underground place.
Black Hat: No - I mean, why would the miners seal the opening? Why not just dig a canal connecting it to the ocean? Unless they like Hell.
Megan: ...If there's ever a war between Earth and Hell, I hope I'm on your side. Black Hat: You seem nice; you probably won't be.


Frequency

Explanation:
This comic shows a number of common events, arranged in a grid. Each of the events flashes with its average frequency.
For example, statistically a child is born somewhere on the world approximately every 0.24 seconds, or four times per second. Therefore, the tile "One birth" blinks about 4 times per second.
The title text refers to the Pitch drop experiment which measures the flow of a piece of pitch over many years. At room temperature, tar pitch flows at a very slow rate, taking several years to form a single drop. The title text jokes that Randall tried to include a tile that flashes about once every ten years , but the tiles are all animated GIFs and while the file format supports animations of any length, the resulting file would be too big (at least 10 megabytes).
A thorough analysis of the frequencies present in this comic and how they relate to the underlying technology (the GIF format) was published as Reverse Engineering xkcd's 'Frequency' .
The table below lists all the events and their duration / frequency. Some events make reference to other comics.
[Repetitive events are written in grey and arranged in a grid. Each statement pulses to black and then returns to grey at an interval characteristic of the named event.]


Slippery Slope

Explanation:
" Slippery slope " argumentation is an informal fallacy that takes the form of "if A happens, then B will follow as a minor but expected consequence. B will lead on to C, C leads onto D, and so on. Each consequence gets progressively worse until an undesirable situation is reached." A slippery slope argument proposes that A should not be allowed, because if it is, then the resulting chain of consequences will inevitably lead to the undesirable situation.
For example, someone who is trying to avoid washing the dishes might try to justify themselves as follows: "if I wash the dishes tonight, then tomorrow night, I might be asked to do the dishes and also to wipe down the kitchen counters. If I do that, then pretty soon I'll also be asked to mop the kitchen floor. If I have to mop the kitchen floor, eventually I'll be asked to mop ALL the floors of the house, and eventually this will extend to washing the windows and taking out the trash and doing laundry, and I'll be doing EVERYTHING around here and NEVER get any time to myself. Therefore, I will not wash the dishes tonight, so I can still have enough time for myself."
What makes the chain of reasoning fallacious is that there is nothing about the task of "washing the dishes" that in any way implies the additional responsibilities that this person imagines (such as wiping down counters or mopping floors). The slippery slope fallacy manifests when there is no cogent basis for believing that the proposed chain of events is likely to follow, especially when the proposed course of action has a clear extent and limitation which would adequately prevent the "slope" from being "slipped down." In the above example: there is an implied extent and limitation to the defined task of "washing the dishes" - namely, the task would be complete when the household dishes have been washed. Additional household chores, like wiping down counters, would be negotiated seperately with other members of the household.
It is worth noting that a fallacy has NOT been committed if there is a reasonable basis for the concern. For example, the reluctant dishwasher might live with an abuser who will foreseeably intimidate them into taking on an unreasonable share of household chores, on the faulty basis that "if you're willing to do the dishes, surely you must also be willing to wipe down the counters..." In such a scenario, "wash the dishes" may carry an encoded message of "do what you're told," in a form that appears reasonable on its surface. Thus, in assessing whether or not a slippery slope fallacy has been committed, it is important to take ALL the relevant factors into consideration, and not merely the explicitly articulated ones.
In the comic, White Hat uses a slippery slope argument to Cueball to justify being inconsiderate to people. He argues that if he expends minor effort being considerate to one person, he will be expected to be considerate to everyone he meets, which - he wishes to argue - is an undesirable situation. Thus, he justifies being inconsiderate as a form of avoiding the slippery slope.
This idea is extended in the title text, where he continues extrapolating the train of thought to conclude that minutes of time would be "wasted". Rather than condemning the slippery slope fallacy per se, Randall 's point here seems to be more that White Hat's priorities are callous to the point of sociopathy. All people desire to be treated with consideration and respect, and taking a few seconds to acknowledge another's feelings is (for most well-meaning people) a small price to pay for improving that person's day, or at least not making it any worse than it needs to be. As such, these seconds would not be "wasted" at all, but would be actively making the world a friendlier place. White Hat's hyperfixation on not wasting time appears ludicrous given how much good feeling he could contribute to the world for so little of his own time. (White Hat also appears to be discounting the possibility that being considerate towards others will encourage reciprocity, which could result in SAVING him time since they will be more willing to help him out should he ever find himself in need.)
[White Hat talking to Cueball.] White Hat: Yeah, but if I'm considerate toward one person about one thing, what's next? White Hat: Being nice to other people about other things? White Hat: Where does it end?


First Date

Explanation:
TPP, or Twitch Plays Pokémon , was the first of a creative and radical new variant of streaming gameplay videos created in early 2014 — a few days before this comic was released.
Some consumers enjoyed watching video games being played by other people (usually 'popular' gamers known for entertaining gameplay), thus streaming sites dedicated to streaming gameplay were created. Twitch.tv was one such site.
Whereas traditional video game streams involved the channel broadcaster or another personality playing the game, the channel "Twitch Plays Pokémon" recorded a bot playing an emulated game of Pokémon Red for Game Boy . The game inputs given by the bot were based on players' messages in the video stream itself. Thus, the watchers of the stream were playing the game themselves using chat "commands." The Pokémon character behaved incredibly erratically, frequently getting "stuck against simple obstacles" (as mentioned in the title-text) and moving about in a strange manner ("Why are you up there?"/"Bye...Okay, coming back now").
Despite this, the character advanced surprisingly far in games. They have beaten the Elite Four and Champion of generations I , II , III , IV , and V , and VI .
Twitch Plays Pokémon has also completed various ROM hacks and Spin-off titles, establishing a seasonal format with multiple games each season. You can see the state of the player characters' Pokémon and inventory at game end in this Bulbapedia article .
TPP surged in popularity rapidly since its inception, reaching 80,000 channel viewers within five days. Derivative channels (such as 'TwitchPlayers') soon arose, turning "Twitch Plays..." into an idea rather than a single channel; that of crowdsourcing a task, such as controlling a single person (as in the Pokémon games) for erratic and often hilarious results. The stream, which is still active as of this writing, has reached memetic status .
In the above comic, Cueball and Megan are on a date. However, Megan is behaving very erratically. Cueball determines that Megan is being "controlled by Twitch," as her behavior matches well with that of the TPP protagonist (whose name, canonically, is Red ).
Megan loudly declares at one point that she is "SAVING" her 'game progress', referencing the incessant saving in TPP via random button presses. The random ten-letter string she says is reminiscent of the nicknames that all of TPP's Pokémon end up with as the players move haphazardly across the game's keyboard.
Her fascination with the "cool spiral" is an allusion to TPP players' fascination with the Helix Fossil , an in-game item. As user input often leads to checking of the in-game backpack followed by erratic commands to handle the items within, it was common for various valuable items to be haphazardly thrown away. However, as the Helix Fossil was a key item , it could not be tossed. It was also the first item in the Bag due to this, leading to the players' continuously selecting it whenever accessing their Bag, eventually causing them to somewhat jokingly regard it as an object of religious reverence.
The title text, as explained above, simply is a light-hearted joke from Randall , empathizing with TPP as he has also spent real-life days stuck against simple obstacles, and is surprised by how far he has gotten in life despite this fact.
[Cueball and Megan sit at an intimate dinner table. They have plates and glasses of wine in front of them.] Cueball: So, did you grow up around here? Megan: I love you. Cueball: ... huh? Megan: Waiter! One of everything on the menu.
[Megan stands up. Standing on her chair, holding a plate.] Cueball: Why are you up there? Megan: I'm stuck. Megan: This plate looks delicious. Megan: Aaaoogaoag.
[Megan has put the plate down and walked off-panel.] Megan: Bye. Megan: OK. Coming back now.
[Megan is crouched on her chair, holding a spiral.] Cueball: You're being controlled by Twitch, aren't you? Megan: Check out this cool spiral! Cueball: It's— Megan: SAVING.


Second

Explanation:
Google is a popular search engine. Google's searching algorithms are widely regarded as the most accurate and useful. If your search terms were sufficiently detailed, you will be able to find what you were looking for on the first page. Having to view the second page indicates your search terms were too vague or the answer to your query doesn't exist. When the search results typically number in the tens of millions (or more; in fact, more popular search results are in the billions), only the very first results are mapping to the real idea of the user. The second page is not helpful for the issue.
Cueball , after failing to find his query in the first page of results, takes a curious peek at the second page. This is represented by a not-at-all subtle metaphor in which Cueball is about to wander into a sun-baked desert. According to the title text, he finds one vaguely relevant webpage, but it's over 14 years old.
The title text refers to webrings . Webrings consist of multiple websites that are connected together, usually with a common theme. They connect from one website to the next, eventually leading back to the starting site. They were popular in the 1990s as a way of boosting your search ranking, but newer algorithms in Google and other search engines are now detecting and penalizing web sites for such tactics. Webrings were also used in pre-google days to make it easy to find websites sharing a common theme, but since one site going down broke the ring, they were very inefficient. Seeing a webring means a site has not been updated since the mid 90s.
[Cueball in a desert standing before a rock.] Rock: Greetings, stranger. Rock: Whatever quest drives you, abandon it. Rock: You shall find no answers in these desolate wastes. Cueball: I knew I wouldn't. Cueball: I guess I... just had to see.
I hate feeling desperate enough to visit the second page of Google results.


Now

Explanation:
The picture is divided in 24 segments representing the 24 hours of the day. At noon and at midnight the break between segments is indicated by the tip of a dark grey triangle.
The picture rotates by 3.75 degrees every 15 minutes, as does the Earth, so that it is constantly up to date in showing which regions are currently at which times of day. The picture change seems to happen half-way through a 15-minute time increment (that is, at 7½, 22½, 37½, and 52½ minutes after each hour), so that the picture is always correct for the nearest multiple of 15 minutes.
The map projection of the earth in the middle of the picture shows an azimuthal equidistant projection with the South Pole in the center. This is unusual, as the projection typically puts the north pole in the center, but necessary in order for it to rotate clockwise. Randall was playing on projections before in 977: Map Projections .
The list of cities and countries doesn't match the map exactly - notice how the continent of Australia is shifted counterclockwise of the words "most Australian cities". This is because the map is centered relative to the time zones and the local variations therein. The map shows the configuration of time zones with respect to daylight saving time (also known as summer time) at the time of the comic's initial release (February 2014); it was being observed in parts of Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and other countries not named in this comic. If the map were to stay accurate through the year, the location of place names would have to move over the next few months as parts of the southern hemisphere went off DST and parts of the northern hemisphere went onto it; however, the map failed to change on the morning of March 9 as it should have (to recognize the start of DST in North America).
In many countries " business hours " are considered to be from 9 am to 5 pm. With some exceptions, including emergencies, it is generally considered rude to place a telephone call to someone's residence during the hours when most people are asleep; Randall portrays this time period as extending from 10 pm to 8 am.  This may be a reference to the 10 pm "cutoff" time discussed in an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
"Rude to Call" was also the name used by a G-mail experimental opt-in feature in 2009 which added a crossed out phone symbol next to the sender if it was night in the sender's time zone when the reader loaded the email on their screen.
On midnight at UTC we can see this situation:
UK, Portugal West Africa
Most of central Europe Nigeria, and many more countries belonging to the West Africa Time zone
Eastern Europe, many countries like Bulgaria, Romania or Greece The Levant Egypt
Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Somalia, and more Kaliningrad and Belarus Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and more. Iran is at Iran Standard Time , using an offset of UTC+03:30
Moscow Time United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, and more Afghanistan is at Time in Afghanistan , using an offset of UTC+04:30 Iran is at Iran Standard Time , using an offset of UTC+03:30
Pakistan, Western Australia, Maldives and some France former colonies. Afghanistan is at Time in Afghanistan , using an offset of UTC+04:30 India and Sri Lanka using UTC+05:30 Nepal is using a much more odd offset at UTC+05:45
Bangladesh, Bhutan... UK British Indian Ocean Territory Russia at Yekaterinburg Time , also Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan China only use one time zone (+08:00) but Xinjiang and Tibet unofficially use +06:00 India and Sri Lanka using UTC+05:30 Nepal is using a much more odd offset at UTC+05:45
South-east Asia like Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and more Christmas Island belonging to Australia Russia is also using the Omsk Time
Western Australia China uses only one time zone while the country spans about five. Singapore Philippines Perth
Japan The Koreas
Brisbane and the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria US: Guam and Northern Mariana Islands
Micronesia, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu Russia Vladivostok Time
Kamchatka (a Russian peninsula at the east Siberia), Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Tuvalu and more
New Zealand, Kiribati, Tonga
Hawaii, Samoa French Polynesia, Cook Islands, and more Line Islands, belonging to Kiribati
Alaska (some islands of Alaska is at -10:00 and a few city's are at -08:00) French Polynesia
US West Coast Canada or (British Columbia and Yukon) Mexico (Baja California)
US: Denver, and much more Canada: Alberta (Calgary, Edmonton), British Columbia, more
Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua and more US: Chicago, Texas except of some most westernmost counties, and many more
Eastern Canada like Ontario or Quebec US East Coast including New York and Florida. But also Cuba, Haiti, Panama and much more countries
Canadian Maritimes: New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia. (Newfoundland uses UTC-03:30 ) Chile Greenland Most of the Caribbean Islands.
Coastal Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, French Guiana, the UK Falkland Islands, and more
UK: South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Brazil: Fernando de Noronha
Cape Verde Azores (part of Portugal)
When first posted, the picture was exactly 12 hours off. Somewhere around 5:10 UTC, this was fixed.  The original version also included a listing for Inland Brazil; this could have created a conflict with US East Coast when Daylight-Saving Time begins in the US, and it has been removed.
The names used for the image files refer not to UTC (Universal Time) as one might expect but rather to the time exactly 12 hours off of that. The name of the image file linked from the page matched Universal Time during the first few hours, but the file-naming scheme did not change when the comic was corrected.
[The comic is a moving circle with a static outer ring.]
[The outermost part of the static ring is divided in 22 segments representing the 24 hours of the day. The Noon (11 AM - 1 PM) and Midnight (11 PM - 1 AM) segments cover two hours which are not segmented. The ring is divided so it is yellow from 6 AM to 6 PM and dark grey on the other half.] Noon - 6 PM - Midnight - 6 AM
[The innermost part of the static ring is light grey and divided in two sections that cower from 9 AM to 5 PM and from 10 PM to 8 AM respectively. They  contain descriptions of the time intervals.] Business hours (9-5) Rude to call
[The rest of the image consist of a rotating part.]
[On the innermost part of the circle is the Earth as seen from the south pole. Each continent has a different color. The colors are Europe: Red Africa: Cyan Asia: Green Oceania: Purple North America: Blue-violet South America: Olive green Antarctica (The south pole): Light grey
[Two segmented rings circle the map - these give the names of the continents (not the Antactica) and the color of the ring match the color of the continent on the map. Each segment cover the part of the map with the given continent. The one with Europe is merged with the one for Asia - and the color also merges from red to green along Turkey and Russia where the transition from Europe to Asia occurs.]
[On the inner ring are the names of the following continents (white text on a segment with the color of the continent)] Africa Oceania South America
[On the second of these rings are the names of the following continents (white text on a segment with the color of the continent)] Europe Asia North America
[On the outermost ring of the moving circle are written names of regions, countries and cities of the Earth over the part of the map in which time zone they belong. All the text is color coded to match the color of the continent they belong to as given on the central map. The text is written in four lines. Below the names are sorted by color and reading from left to right first - and only sorting top to bottom if needed.]
[Europe - Red text:] UK - Most of Europe - Eastern Europe
[Africa - Cyan text:] West Africa - Nigeria - Egypt - East Africa
[Asia - Green text:] The Levant - Iraq - Iran - Moscow - Afghanistan - Pakistan - India - Southeast Asia - Java - China - Singapore - Philippines - Japan - The Koreas - Kamchatka
[Oceania - Purple text:] Perth - Brisbane - Most Australian cities - New Zealand
[North America - Blue-violet text:] Alaska - US West Coast - Denver - Mexico - Chicago - Texas - Eastern Canada - US East coast - Canadian Maritimes
[South America - Olive green text:] Coastal Brazil
There are currently several implementations of the Now comic available for several different platforms:
A script that automatically updates the wallpaper for the current time.
A bash script that automatically updates the wallpaper for the current time, written for a Debian system running i3. May work well for other linux distributions as well.
An Android widget version of the comic.
A web-based implementation which also displays time zones. (Not working on 02017-08-16)
A draggable implementation (click&drag - left and right) (Not working on 02017-08-16)
An offline version of the comic made using C++ and SFML.


Transformers

Explanation:
The comic is a parody of Transformers , a fictional group of robots that can transform into vehicles. Transformers typically are able to transform instantaneously, often mid-stride, by manipulating and rearranging their mechanical parts. In this comic, however, Randall has the Transformers "transform" in the same manner that caterpillars "transform" via metamorphosis into butterflies or moths.
The first two panels show action scenes that would be appropriate for a Transformers comic. However, the third panel shows the Transformers climbing a tree, and in the final scene they wrap silk around themselves, apparently forming a cocoon or chrysalis.
The title text furthers this parallel, describing a newly transformed helicopter — presumably the post-metamorphosis state of one of the Transformers in the panels — in a manner that would be more appropriate for a freshly-emerged butterfly or moth.
This xkcd comic is one of the few ones not showing just simple stick figures .
[Two "Transformer"-esque robots are visible.] First Robot: Transform! [Both robots run to the right.] [Each robot reaches a tree and begins to climb it.] [The camera focuses on the nearer of the two robots, which is placing itself into a chrysalis hanging from the tree branch.]


Hack

Explanation:
This comic is an imagined project to re-position the ISEE-3/ICE probe, and a parody of the 1995 movie Hackers . The first row (four panels) explain the history of the probe, and the true story about how the probe was coming back into signal range and seemed capable of being controlled. NASA declined to attempt to regain control of the probe, but a group of enthusiasts assembles the equipment and attempts to re-purpose the probe.
The following two rows (eight panels) set up a fictional scenario: the enthusiasts have been locked out of the system, the probe is being controlled by someone else, and the message "Mess with the best, die like the rest" is communicated from the probe. This is a catch phrase of the protagonist, Crash, from Hackers .
The final row is a reference to the ending of the movie, where Crash romances Burn, his romantic interest, in a rooftop pool. In the movie, while Crash and Burn swim in a rooftop pool, several buildings light up with the words "CRASH AND BURN". This was at the end of a contest and is Crash's latest hack and romantic gesture which he indicates by saying 'Beat that!'. In the comic the transmitter being used to communicate with ISEE-3 was hacked by Burn to make the probe burn up over Crash and Burn swimming in the pool providing a "shooting star" for romantic effect.
The comic number is 1337, which stands for "leet", short for "elite hacker" and "leetspeek" in leetspeak . Leetspeak is a form of symbolic writing that substitutes various numbers and ASCII symbols for letters. It originates from the hacker subculture, where words were converted to leetspeek e.g. to avoid filters and triggers on chat rooms. "1337" for "leet" can most likely be explained as calculator spelling .
The title text "Hack the stars" is also an allusion to Hackers , where the phrase "Hack the planet!" is used on multiple occasions.
This project since became reality , as Randall noted in a blag post . See details below .
[A black image shows an image of the ISEE-3/ICE spacecraft in white. Text is written in white above it] The ISEE-3/ICE probe was launched in 1978. Its mission ended in 1997 and it was sent a shutdown signal.
[The text continues, black on white, without a frame around it, between the first frame and the next.] In 2008, we learned-to our surprise-that the probe didn't shut down. It's still running and it has plenty of fuel. ...and in 2014, its orbit brings it near earth.
[Megan holding up one hand and Ponytail are talking to each other.] Megan: We could send it on a new mission... Megan: Except we no longer have the equipment to send commands to it. Ponytail: Can't we—
[Zoom in on Megan's head and torso as she looks towards Ponytail off-panel to the right.] Megan: NASA won't rebuild it. "Too Expensive" Ponytail (off-panel): Seriously? Megan: I know, right? Megan: So the internet found the specs Megan: And we went to work.
[Megan and Ponytail are walking towards right, between Hairbun facing left and Cueball (with head phones) facing right. They are sitting at desks working on their laptops. Megan speaks, as indicated both by the story line and by her hand which is lifted up, but there is not speech line from her to the text.] Megan: We've convinced them to give us time on the Madrid DSN transmitter and hacked the maser to support the uplink. Megan: And today's the big day.
[Zoom in on Cueball's head and torso, he holds a hand up to his speaker on his head phones and watches his lit screen (as indicated by lines emanating from it).] Cueball: Transmitting... Cueball: We have a signal! Cueball: We have control!
[Zoom in on Megan's head and torso. She has turned away from Cueball to the right towards Hairbun.] Megan: OK, transmit the new comet rendezvous maneuver sequen— Cueball (off panel): What the hell? Megan: What?
[Same setting as when Megan and Ponytail entered the control-room, but Ponytail just stands there and Megan puts a hand out towards Cueball.] Cueball: My console went dead! Hairbun: Mine too! Megan: What's happening?!
[Another zoom in on Cueball's head and torso and glowing screen. He has both hands down.] Cueball: There's a new signal going out over the transmitter! Megan (off panel): A bug? Cueball: Someone else is in the system!
[Zoom in on Hairbun's head and torso. She is also working on her laptop, with the glowing screen visible.] Hairbun: Kill the connection! Cueball (off panel): I can't find it! Hairbun: They're firing the probe's engines! Cueball (off panel): No!!
[Back to a zoom in on Cueball. He points at his screen.] Megan (off panel): Who's doing this?? Stop them! Hairbun (off panel): I'm trying! Cueball: Look! My screen!
[Same setting as when Megan and Ponytail entered the control-room, but Ponytail has a hand to her mouth and she and Megan stand close to Cueball who has taken his hands off the keyboard. The text on Cueball's laptop screen is shown above the setting, indicated with zigzag lines:] M-E-S-S-W-I-T-H- T-H-E-B-E-S-T
D-I-E-L-I-K-E- T-H-E-R-E-S-T
[The last four panels is outside night scenes with a black sky above. In the first of these a woman (Burn) with long hair (Megan like) and a hairy man (Crash) is seen in a swimming pool with blue water.]
[A zoom out reveals that the pool is on top of a skyscraper in a vertically developed, downtown setting with lots of light in all the skyscrapers, one of which is even taller than the one with the pool. From the top of the central skyscraper speech lines come which indicate that the two from the pool is up there speaking, and we get their names from this panel.] Burn: Crash? Crash: Yeah, Burn?
[Same setting but only one speech line.] Burn: Make a wish.
[The last panel shows the same setting, but with the spacecraft streaking across the sky as it enters the Earths atmosphere and burns up in a way that is indistinguishable from a meteoroid.]
The ISEE-3/ICE probe was launched in August 12, 1978 and tasked to study Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind. Before completing its original mission the probe was repurposed on June 10, 1982 to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere. By flying through the comet Giacobini-Zinner 's tail, it became the first probe to do so. This put ISEE-3 in a heliocentric orbit . Its trajectory will bring it close to Earth on August 2014.
The Deep Space Network (DSN) detected the probe again in 2008 because NASA mistakenly left its transmitters on. However, the probe was only transmitting the carrier signal at that time. A status check of the spacecraft has revealed that many of its instruments are still working and that it contains plenty of fuel. [1]
It was reported that the hardware to communicate with ISEE-3/ICE had been decommissioned. The Madrid DSS complex still has the special filter required to communicate with the ICE satellite, but because of frequency conflicts S-band uplink is not supported. [2]
On March 1 and 2, 2014 radio amateurs were able to detect the beacon signal from the retired NASA deep space probe ICE (International Cometary Explorer) using the 20 m radio telescope at the Bochum Observatory (Germany). [3]
After this comic was published, it was established that an 18-meter satellite dish at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory does still have the right hardware.
See Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives for the coverage of this amazing project.


Land Mammals

Explanation:
This comic shows the total weight of mankind and all other land mammals . Only a few centuries ago, humans , their pets and livestock came to make up a great proportion of the earth's land mammal biomass . Note that only land-dwelling mammals are taken into account, so for instance whales and sea cows will not be included. (Whether this only covers animals that cannot live on land or any marine mammals like for instance seals and walrus , is not clear).
The design of the blocks loosely resembles a cell . This could be a reference to how these animals support humans, analogous to a cell supporting a central nucleus. If so, it seems that all the animals in this diagram, wild or domestic , in some way support human activity.
The title text states that bacteria outweigh us thousands to one, without counting the several pounds of bacteria in our body that are considered part of our own weight (like Gut flora ). The aforementioned cell could also be a bacterium, making it a possible reference to the title text, since 1256 blocks have been used to sketch the "cell", and bacteria outweigh us by about this factor.
This comic may be a nerd snipe from Randall , challenging his readers to figure out the missing parts.
Randall also discusses animal biomass in Fairy Demographics in which he compares the biomass of "fairies" to humans, horses, and humpback whales.
According to the diagram, there are 358 million tons of humans, 864 million tons of pets and livestock, of which 520 million tons comes from cattle , and 34 million tons of wild animals; for a total of 1.256 billion tons.
The number of blocks represents the weight of the group in millions of tons = billions of kg. Note that some entries have the same number of blocks, and thus have the same rank.
Cattle, in aggregate, are much heavier than the human population. Humans outweigh both sheep and pigs put together. This may be a surprise for people in the countries that produce the majority of meat from such animals, because here these animals outweigh the population. But there are many parts of the world where especially pigs are not eaten, and it is not every where that sheep is in great demand. And especially in the some of the most populations dense regions in the Third World meat is not something you can afford to eat on a regular basis.
There are 13 distinct blocks of pets and live stock; only the top 5 are labeled - in order of weight they are: Cattle, Sheep, Pigs, Goats and Horses . Cattle, in aggregate, are much heavier than the human population, which has been inserted in the table for comparison:
There are 8 distinct blocks of wild animal ( elephants and 7 others). The elephant is the only type of wild animal to be singled out in the comic. This may possibly be due to elephants being the largest land mammal. And yes, the world's heaviest land animal only takes up one square. Also interesting is that the largest group of wild animals only comes in on a tied 8 place in the ranking (which is shared between the two tables).
The comic references the book The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change by Vaclav Smil as the source for most of the data. A few other sources have also been used, but were not referenced.
On page 186 of Smil's book, there is a bar chart with the following values:
Note that all labelled non-human animals are in this table. It seems that this table was the source of most of the data in the comic.  Only land dwelling mammals are taken into account. Whales, wild vertebrates, and domesticated vertebrates are not included in the comic.
These are guesses about the identity of the unlabeled animals
[Caption at the top of this chart:] Earth's Land Mammals by Weight
[Below the caption is a light gray block with a label (in light gray as well) to indicating the value of each block:] = 1,000,000 tons
[Below this there is a row with three blocks each in a different color, dark and light gray and green, each block is labeled to the right:] Humans Our pets and livestock Wild animals
[The rest of the comic consist of a chart with different groups made up of these individually and differently colored blocks, each grouping representing the weight of a different mammals, except the center part, the only one with dark gray block, which represent humans. The largest group to the left is the only one larger than the humans group in the center. There are 22 groups in total, 1 human group with 358 dark gray block, 13 groups of light gray with a total of 864 blocks and 8 green groups with a total of 34 blocks for a total of 256 blocks. Both the light gray and the green groups are spread out on all sides of the human center group. Only difference is that all the green are on the very outside, whereas some of the smaller light gray groups are close to the core, far from the outside. The five largest groups of light gray blocks are labeled, as well as the smallest group consisting only of a single green block. All the labels has a line pointing to the relevant group and all of them are on the outside of the entire block. Going clockwise from the top left the labels are:] Cattle Pigs Goats Sheep Horses Elephants
[At the bottom right of the comic is the following gray text with a reference:] Data from Vaclav Smil's The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change , plus a few other sources.


When You Assume

Explanation:
Prior to the events in this comic, Cueball has evidently told Megan that he made an assumption about something. Megan starts to respond with a takeoff on the modern proverb: "When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me." This proverb plays on the fact that the word "assume" may be broken down into the letters "ass", "u", and "me", and is intended to suggest that one should not make assumptions because they may turn out to be wrong and make those involved appear foolish.
However, when Megan evokes the proverb in the modified form "You know what happens when you assume", Cueball astutely points out that her phrasing itself is hypocritical in that it makes the assumption that he knows what happens when you assume. Megan stops to ponder Cueball's point, to which Cueball responds " Check and Mate ": a common phrase originating from chess — suggesting triumph or having successfully countered another person's argument to which there can be no retort. However, this would not make sense unless Cueball knows that assuming is bad, and he states in the comic that he does not know what happens when someone assumes. While Megan's tone of voice implies that when someone assumes, something bad happens, she does not state this explicitly, so Cueball would have had to assume that Megan was referring to something bad. However, Megan does not point this out, likely because she is too distracted by her own shame to notice that Cueball was also making an assumption.
Cueball's response demonstrates that, in life, we make assumptions almost every time we speak. This only tends to be problematic in the few instances where the assumption is wrong.
The title text is a play on the original "assume" pun, breaking down the word "assert", into "ass" and "ert", with "ERT" being an acronym for " Emergency Response Team ".
This comic follows a pattern similar to 1657: Insanity .
[Megan, standing left holding a hand up with the palm up while facing Cueball to the right.] Megan: You assumed? Megan: You know what happens when you assume- Cueball: I don't. Yet you're confidently asserting that I do. Megan: ...Oh. Hm. Cueball: Check and mate.


Unique Date

Explanation:
In this comic Cueball is excited about the current date and he states this date (the date the comic was released) as 2014-03-10, with the year first, then the month, then the day of the month. This follows the international standard as defined in the ISO 8601 standard. He then continues to point out, to Megan and another Cueball that this date will never happen again.
The Gregorian calendar is the current way to count time in years, months and days. Since time moves only forward, [ citation needed ] dates will never repeat. Every date is thus equally unique, even when the digits aren't in a pattern.
Many people do, however, make a big deal about dates when the digits follow an interesting pattern, such as 2000-01-01 or 2012-12-12. They might plan special events on these "unique" days. For instance, 2007-07-07 was considered a "lucky" day and had a record number of weddings. This is because humans, in general, are superstitious [ citation needed ] and like (and recognize) patterns in everyday life, also including patterns in the numbers used for stating dates. But this does not make these dates more unique than any other dates.
Nevertheless, Cueball has made it into his hobby to point this daily uniqueness out, and having to listen to him, stating this fact every day, would be incredibly annoying to his friends.
The title text refers to the Long Now Foundation , who uses five-digit years (e.g. this comic's date would be written "02014-03-10"). This is an effort to encourage people to think in terms of long-term benefits, rather than only the coming years or decades. The Y2K problem was due to using only two digits to store the year, which would have made dates ambiguous when it rolled from 99 back to 00. Similarly, the Maya calendar had a repeating cycle of 52 years, and even their "long count" rolled over after 7885 years. As we currently use four-digit years this may cause a Y10K problem .
The Long Now Foundation designs a 10,000-year clock that should be able to run for this long — and in principle, it could display every date up to 9999-12-31. 8000 years from the date of the comic would be 10014 AD  — Randall jokes that by switching to 5-digit years, we'd prove the Long Now Foundation correct, although of course by this point there would be no other way to show years except by rebooting the calendar.
A previous comic on date formats was 1179: ISO 8601 .  Randall addresses date formatting confusion again in the title text of 1467: Email .
[Cueball speaking to Megan and another Cueball-like guy.] Cueball: Whoa, it's 2014-03-10! Cueball: Under our system, that date will never happen again!! [Caption below the frame:] My Hobby: Pointing this out every day.


Types of Editors

Explanation:
WYSIWYG , pronounced, "wizzy-wig" IPA /ˈwɪziˌwɪg/, is an acronym that stands for "What you see is what you get". In regards to computers, it refers to text editors in which the user can see exactly what will be published as they are typing it. The comic compares various types of editors, each one a play-on-words on WYSIWYG.
The title text is a fictitious command, meta -x machineofdeath-mode, to the highly extensible Emacs text editor. Emacs operates in various "modes", which are customizations for specific purposes. Placing Emacs into "Machine of Death" mode would turn it into a WYSIHYD editor. (For another fictitious emacs command see 378: Real Programmers ). See below for why this was used.
This is a reference to " Machine of Death ". This book from 2010 is a collection of short stories edited by amongst other Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics ) mentioned here since the idea was based on one of his comics . Since Randall Munroe wrote one of the stories the reference is very likely, and would be Randall's first book promotion in xkcd, but not the last. All the stories are based around a device, the "Machine of Death", that can predict, with 100% accuracy though generally with extreme ambiguity, how people die from a drop of their blood. In many of the stories very unusual deaths are predicted, often in a very literal way, but not so you know when or where you will die. From the official home page the entire book can be downloaded for free as a PDF file . (Randall's story begins on page 421 - or page 218 of the two sided PDF file. It is simply called "?"). In 1525: Emojic 8 Ball the default question is How will I die? and can then be answered by an Emojic 8 Ball , which would make it a type of Machine of Death.
[There are four panels, each with different headings and explanations of the headings above the panels.]
[The first three panels shows two titled text boxes, one above the other, with text inside. This text is formated with both small and capital letters as opposed to all capital letters in the rest of the comic.]
[Heading panel 1:] WYSIWYG What you see is what you get
[Panel 1.] What you see: Hi What you get: Hi
[Heading panel 2:] WYSINWYG What you see is not what you get
[Panel 2.] What you see: Hi What you get: Hi
[Heading panel 3:] WYSITUTWYG What you see is totally unrelated to what you get
[Panel 3.] What you see: Hi What you get: The HORSE is a noble animal.
[The fourth panel shows two titled text areas, the top is a black rectangle with white text in a very large font, and the bottom text area is not outlined with a border.]
[Heading panel 4:] WYSIHYD What you see is how you die
[Panel 4.] What you see: EATEN BY WOLVES What you get: Eaten by wolves


Ancient Stars

Explanation:
Cueball makes the common observation that many of the visible stars in the sky are so distant that it takes thousands of years for light from that star to reach Earth. However, the brightest star Sirius is one of the nearest at a mere 8.6 light-years distance. In other words, the light that was arriving from Sirius in March 2014, when the comic was posted, was emitted some time around August 2005. The previous US president, George W. Bush , was in office from 2001 to 2009 and Megan notes that this isn't a terribly impressive observation.
The title text references the fact that most normal people have a hard time imagining the large scale of astronomical numbers. For example, the distance between astronomical bodies or the size of the Sun are hard to imagine; they typically underestimate them by many orders of magnitude and think they are much smaller than they actually are. See Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale
In this case, however, people instead overestimate both the number of visible stars and their distance by quite a bit. It's frequently cited that about 5,000 to 10,000 stars are visible in the sky by the naked eye. The Bright Star Catalogue is a star catalogue that lists all stars of apparent magnitude 6.5 or brighter, which is roughly every star visible to the naked eye from Earth. The catalog contains 9,110 objects, of which 9,096 are stars, ten are novae or supernovae , and four objects outside of our Milky Way (two globular clusters and two open clusters ). To see most of these you need good eyes and a very dark night, and at any point you will only be able to see fewer than half of these as the rest are blocked by the Earth.
This list shows the 91 brightest stars . Of these 59 are more than 100 light years away and only 6 are more than 1,000 light years away. The farthest on this list, Aludra , is "only" 3,200 light years away. Our entire Milky Way contains up to 400 billion (400x10⁹) stars and has a diameter of 100,000 light years.
There are visible objects much farther away, like the Andromeda Galaxy which is 2.5 million light years away and made up of billions of stars. And a gamma ray burst GRB 080319B would have been briefly visible to the naked eye, despite being 7.5 billion light years distant.
See also 1212: Interstellar Memes , 1644: Stargazing .
All of the panels of this comic are white-on-black.
[Megan and Cueball stand facing each other, looking up at the sky.] Cueball: Just think - the light from that star was emitted thousands of years ago. It could be long gone.
[Cueball looks at Megan, who is still looking up.] Megan: That's Sirius. It's eight light-years away.
[Cueball looks up again.] Cueball: Oh.
[Both look at one another.] Cueball: Just think - the light from that star was emitted in the previous presidential administration. Megan: Hmm, doesn't pack quite the punch.


Manuals

Explanation:
The chart shows the quality of tools regarding their manual:
The title text refers to sudoers , a config file for the unix command sudo . sudo allows users to run a program with elevated permissions, as referenced in 149: Sandwich . Man pages are collections of manuals for different tools, commands, files, and functions on Unix-like systems which can be viewed with the tool man . You can type man man in a terminal to get the manpage for the manual program. See for instance also the comic 912: Manual Override .
The sudoers file specifies which users have sudo access, and which commands they are allowed to run as other users (typically root). The syntax of the file is very complex, and the manpage uses the Extended Backus–Naur Form (or EBNF) to describe the syntax. The sudoers man page starts off with an explanation of EBNF's grammar, which they reference throughout the rest of the man page in describing the syntax of the sudoers file. The sudoers man page is very long, clocking in at 1504 lines. In contrast, the manpages man page only has 566 lines. The number of lines may differ between some distributions and versions.
The title text also notes that the manual's assurance, "don't despair" because "the definitions below are annotated", fails to be reassuring, and instead merely emphasizes the length and complexity of the document to read.
[A horizontal line has four points labeled on it, with the second point from the left marked with a dashed vertical line dividing the horizontal line into two parts.] [An arrow labeled "Solve problems" points left from the vertical line.] [An arrow labeled "Create problems" points right from the vertical line.] [The points are labeled, from left to right, "Tools that don't need a manual", "Tools that need a manual", "Tools that need a manual but don't have one", and "Tools whose manual starts with 'how to read this manual'".]


Digits

Explanation:
2048 is a popular browser-based game in which players must move tiles in a 4 by 4 grid with numbers on them. When two tiles of the same number touch they can be merged into one tile with a value of the two tiles combined. So when two 4-tiles touch and are merged they form one 8-tile. The player can move the tiles by pressing an arrow key (or swiping in a direction on the mobile version), which will move all the tiles in that direction. Every time the player makes such a move another tile will appear on a random cell. The goal of the game is to get a tile with the number 2048.
In the comic the room number can be seen as 4 tiles with the values 8, 2, 2 and 4. If these occur in the game the player can merge the two 2-tiles into one 4-tile. This will then cause two 4-tiles to lie next to each other, so these can be merged into one 8-tile. Finally, the two 8-tiles can be merged into one 16-tile.

This can be done in the opposite direction as well.
The title text refers to Tetris effect , which takes its name from the game Tetris . People who play Tetris for extended periods tend to imagine real-life objects (like skylines) as Tetris landscapes and pieces. Randall , as many others , apparently got hooked on Tetris so much when it came out that, for 20 years, he would look at city skylines and see Tetris-like patterns in it. Similarly, he has now been hooked onto 2048 and notices number patterns that would be desirable to obtain during the game.
[A guy is walking and Cueball is following him.] Guy: The talk is in room 8224. Cueball: Ooh, nice. Guy: What? Cueball: ...Sorry. Nothing.
Great, now I'll spend the rest of my life noticing numbers that would make good 2048 combos.


Answers

Explanation:
Cueball claims that humans are driven by their curiosity, which is never-ending. Megan responds by noting that everyone spends approximately eight hours per day in an unconscious state of sleep , but no one has yet pinned down the biological purpose of sleep. Despite this obvious mystery, most people aren't "losing sleep over it." This implies that Cueball's observed curiosity has a perceptible and proximate limit.
This is not to suggest that scientists aren't researching sleep; scientists frequently conduct sleep studies — we just haven't found any satisfactory answers yet. Some popular hypotheses are to allow the brain a period to consolidate memories and to give the body a chance to repair itself.
The title text quotes William Dement : people sleep "because we get sleepy." ( Secrets of sleep ). This of course is dodging the underlying issue. That this non-explanation is the best answer that a leading sleep researcher can provide, shows how little anyone knows about the subject. This may be an oblique reference to the dormitive principle of the French playwright Molière, who created a satirical character who claimed to have discovered the answer to a popular question: The reason opium makes someone sleepy, said the character, a doctor, was that it contained a "dormitive principle" (i.e., something that makes someone sleepy).
In 203: Hallucinations , Randall expressed similar surprise at the lack of interest in the nature of sleep.
The phrase "and nobody knows why" is commonly appended to urban legends, as in A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why . The implication is that something mysterious is going on and scientists are puzzled. 1186: Bumblebees is another "nobody knows why" example.
[Cueball and Megan are talking.] Cueball: Humans are defined by our curiosity, our hunger for answers. Megan: We all spend a third of our lives lying down with our eyes closed and NOBODY KNOWS WHY. Cueball: Touché.


Career

Explanation:
Cueball is presumably asked to answer the typical career counselor question: What is your dream job? Rather than going with the more common answers that are designed to increase the chances of landing that particular job, Cueball talks about unrealistic jobs that are whimsical, and so well compensated that a little over one hour on the clock would provide enough wealth for a luxurious retirement; of course, you can have such a job only in your dreams. He makes jobs out of tasks that people do when they are bored, whether the tasks needed to be done or not. Therefore, if he did not get the job he probably would have done them at some point anyway.
Peeling lint off dryer traps can relieve boredom, but it gets tedious soon, so Cueball wants to do that only for 5 minutes, followed by an hour of holding the handle of a lightsaber against things and switching it on. The energy emitted by this fictional weapon will probably burn, melt or cut the object it is touching as demonstrated in a scene from Star Wars Episode I , where Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn uses his lightsaber to cut through a wall. Later, Star Wars: The Last Jedi turned out to demonstrate a lightsaber being placed against something before being switched on-- on the head of a Praetorian Guard. Obviously, it would be impossible to find a job like this, let alone one with a salary allowing one to retire to a life of luxury. [ citation needed ] However, Cueball thinks he will not only be paid to do it, he will be paid enough to retire to a life of luxury .
The title text is poking fun at Hollywood films, particularly stories about violent professions (like mobsters, hitmen, detective or spies) where the hero is retired, but some unforeseen circumstance has forced them out of retirement to do " one last job ." Usually in these films, the jobs are overtly, improbably dangerous, often with the suggestion that they may lose their lives doing it, but the reward for doing the job (saving the world, a ton of cash, an unresolved debt) is just too great to refuse. However, in this comic the joke is that his "one last job" is also a mildly amusing task designed to relieve boredom.
An alternative explanation may be that these activities are very sensationally unique and satisfying for certain types of people, such as those with autism, and that this dream job is simply getting paid absurd amounts of money for something they wanted to do anyway.
[Cueball stands facing a desk, behind which another person is sitting in a desk chair.] Cueball: It would start with five minutes of peeling lint from dryer traps, Cueball: followed by an hour of pressing a lightsaber handle against things and switching it on. Cueball: Then I'd retire to a life of luxury.
When people ask me to describe my dream job, I'm never sure how realistic to be.


t Distribution

Explanation:
The Student's t-distribution is a class of probability distribution used in statistics to model small sample sizes. "Student" was the pseudonym of William Sealy Gosset , an employee of Guinness Brewery who discovered it.
A Student's t distribution is similar to a normal symmetric bell curve distribution, but has "fatter tails"; thus, the one shown in the comic is roughly the right shape.  A "Teacher's" t-distribution is a joke (pun) made up by Randall.
The comic is a play on the name "Student", the pseudonym of the creator, versus the "Teacher". The idea is that a "teacher's" distribution would be more complex, and that it would be used for fitting data when the student's distribution wasn't sophisticated enough. Of course, in actuality, such a complex distribution as the one shown in the comic would have many parameters, and in practice would probably lead to overfitting and/or bias. Thus, the comic (and the title text) can be seen as making fun of the idea that more complex is always better, or perhaps of the idea that a statistician's job is to use more and more sophisticated tools to force the data to yield a "publishable" result, rather than to use the simplest appropriate tool and let the chips fall where they may.
Cueball tries to "fit" a distribution to the data on the paper. This is the usual jargon for when a statistician is trying to model their data as coming from some underlying probability distribution, and the comic makes a pun with the physical meaning of "fit". In the second panel, Cueball decides that the Student's T distribution does not fit his data well (the data failed the Student t-test), and decides to pull out the more complex Teachers t-distribution instead (the teachers t-test - which the data is not allowed to continue to fail). Note that "test" is what statisticians do to data to see if it fits some distribution, but it is also another word for "examination."
The Students t distribution relates the average of a small sample to the "true" population average, under the assumptions, unobjectionable in many contexts, that there is such a "true" value, and that the samples are independent and normally distributed with equal variance. As such, unless the data on Cueball's paper contain many small groups which radically violate these assumptions somehow, there is no way Cueball's data could falsify the t distribution. In particular, a single number (for the average of one group) or a small set of numbers (for the averages of several numbers) will never make a nice smooth curve, but an average statistician would see that as normal statistical noise that would even out over time, not as a reason to prefer a complex, spiky curve such as the supposed "teacher's" distribution. But of course, Cueball's access to a secret, cooler-looking distribution makes them more badass than a mere average statistician... or does it?
Ironically, the Teacher's T Distribution shows equal variance, itself proving the appropriateness of the Student's T Distribution.
The title text plays on the word "test". The first part of the sentence refers to a potential "Teacher t-test" which would be used in a statistical context to test for the significance of some observation, as opposed to the real "Student's t-test" which is used to determine if two sets of data differ by a statistically significant amount. On the other hand, the second part of the sentence refers to the possibility for students to take tests (or exams) until they pass - or to teachers who forces students to take the test again and again until they pass. The resulting sentence may refer to statistical fallacy, or the (conscious or unconscious) action of manipulating observations or misconducting experiments to give statistical significance to a false fact.
[A physical bell-curve-shaped object labeled "Student's t distribution" is resting on a table. Cueball is working with it and a piece of paper.] Cueball: hmm [Cueball looks at the piece of paper.] Cueball: ...nope. [Cueball picks up the object and begins to walk off the panel with it.] [Cueball comes back onto the panel, now carrying an object shaped like a much more complex curve, with many symmetric spikes and dips, labeled "Teacher's t distribution".]


Before the Internet

Explanation:
A young Ponytail asks Megan what life was like before the Internet. The girl obviously was born after the Internet was invented. Megan responds that life was very boring without computers or mobile phones. This comic appears to be a parody of the common complaint — often done by elder people — that life was better and more fulfilling in the "good old days", in that there weren't so many distractions and people could actually get things done that were meaningful. The ages switch roles with the younger character being prepared to believe that life was more fulfilling before technology, and the elder rejecting the proposition.
To Megan, even a more fulfilling and engaging life "wasn't worth" the price of what it meant to be bored in the days before smartphones and computers that could go online. Even though the ponytail girl says that she still experiences boredom in spite of having advanced technology to occupy her, Megan assures her that her version of boredom is nothing like what those in the pre-Internet days had to endure. Again, this is a reversal of the typical exchange in which a young person tries to insist that they still have social contact/get out and about/do worthwhile things in their spare time, and the elder person responds, "Not like we did."
The title text continues in this vein as Megan talks about what people in her day resorted to doing when they were bored, for lack of anything better to do: they watched daytime TV . Daytime television consisted mainly of soap operas, talk shows, game shows, infomercials and children's programming and is notorious for being, in Megan's words, "soul-crushing". To round off the comparison, Megan uses a modern-day metaphor to express her extreme distaste for daytime television, saying that she would rather "eat an iPad" than go through that again. In other words, modern-day gadgets are so much better that she'd still have more fun if she were eating them than if she had to go without them. Alternatively, it could be to emphasize how unpleasant daytime TV is; eating an iPad would likely be unpleasant (e.g. it is too large to easily be swallowed whole and too hard to easily be bitten into parts), and it could poison her or give her an internal electrical or battery fire. Saying that she would rather eat an iPad would also be a powerful statement because Megan would not be able to watch movies, play games, read the news, etc… on that iPad after eating it (although she could just buy another iPad—at least if she survives the battery of the iPad that she ate leaking and/or exploding and other hazards associated with eating an iPad).
Megan might just be responding with the opposite of what she's expected to say in this dialogue in order to mess with the younger girl. In reality, life was neither likely to be noticeably more fulfilling or noticeably more boring without technology: it was just life. People are equally capable of wasting their time and of doing worthwhile things regardless of what age they live in, and those who wax nostalgic about an older, better time are liable to forget that. This recalls the Hedonic treadmill theory which states that people will always be at roughly the same level of happiness regardless of positive or negative events or technological advances in civilization.
[Young girl talking to Megan, both holding smartphones.] Girl: Do you remember before the internet? Megan: Oh yeah, totally. Girl: what was it like? Megan: Not having a phone or computer to distract you? Girl: Yeah. Megan: It was SO. BORING. All the time. I just sat there. It was the worst. Girl: But wasn't it, like, more fulfilling? Engaging? Megan: Wasn't worth it. Girl: I still get bored. Megan: Not like we did.


Shouldn't Be Hard

Explanation:
This comic refers to a sentiment sometimes expressed by computer users that "what I'm trying to do is really simple — it shouldn't be hard."  The statement demonstrates an assumption that because the desired action is conceptually simple, it must therefore be simple to implement. There is a logic to this line of thinking, but in reality, as the off-screen character notes, a computer is a very complicated set of components which effectively can't do anything (simple or complex) until someone has programmed the functionality into it. Even more abstractly, a random silicon crystal can't do anything at all until someone has applied a complex industrial process to it that allows it to read and execute computer code in the first place.
In terms of a user-interface, the "simplicity" of executing a given task may be more a function of the perceived utility and frequency-of-use of that function, and less a function of its conceptual "simplicity". For example, changing the colour of the font in a word processor is often simpler than changing the colour of the background/page, even though changing colours of two parts of the document would appear equally "simple" in concept. The different implementation is a design choice by the programmer most likely on the basis that the intended user is considered more likely to want to change the font colour than to change the page colour.
This sentiment equally applies to computer programmers: most commonly when they are just beginning to learn a new computer language. Sometimes because of difficulties with the syntax rules of the language or similar problems, a programmer may spend a long time trying to get the computer to do a simple action, such as display a message on the screen, or ask the user for a number. This is also true when a programmer is working in a language which doesn't have an easy way to do something that might be simple in another language. And in computer science, it may often be very hard to differentiate the almost impossible from the easy , especially when compared to what humans can and can't do easily.
The off-screen character points out that computers were "just carefully organized sand". Modern computer chips are made largely of silicon crystals, chemically a part of silicon dioxide crystals that compose the majority of sand. The character puts Cueball's goal in perspective by pointing out the large amount of complexity required to make, what is essentially sand, do even the simplest of computational tasks.
The punchline of the comic is that, after considering these words of wisdom for a panel, instead of the anticipated response of Cueball coming to the realization that the off-screen character is right, and working even harder to solve his problem, Cueball instead succumbs to his annoyance and sets out to destroy his computer (which he characterizes as turning it " back into sand"). The off-screen character helpfully offers to get a blowtorch so that Cueball can melt the computer down into simple compounds and elements.
The title text sees Cueball again frustrated with a task he considers "simple" (destroying the computer). Cueball appears to be oblivious to the irony in his statement that he is having trouble destroying something with household tools that required very large machines and an industrial process to create. This might be compared to trying to undo a steel weld by lighting a wooden match and trying to melt the weld with it. This points out the irony that destroying the processor is even harder to do than the task from the first picture.
The melting point of silicon is 1,414 °C. Although a typical butane blowtorch that might be found in a kitchen has a maximum temperature of 1,430 °C, that temperature is at a very small point and rapidly cools. Hence it is unlikely that you could focus sufficient heat with a kitchen appliance blowtorch to actually melt silicon.
The apparently simple task Cueball is trying to complete may express Randall's frustration in the creation of the crowd-sourced comic 1350: Lorenz , which was launched the next day and initially contained a large number of bugs.
[Cueball is typing on a laptop.] Cueball: What I'm trying to do is really simple. Cueball: It shouldn't be hard.
Offscreen: All computers are just carefully organized sand. Everything is hard until someone makes it easy.
[Cueball sits back and pauses.]
[Cueball picks up and examines the laptop.] Cueball: Maybe I should turn this one back into sand. Offscreen: I'll find a blowtorch.