Reviews

Explanation:
Cueball and Megan are shown shopping for lamps. In the first part of the comic (only first frame) it is at a time before online reviews could be looked up on a smartphone. They spot a lamp they like, check the price and agree to buy, end of story.
But the rest of the comic shows how difficult shopping has become after reviews have become easily accessible on smartphones while standing in the store. And now this takes up the final three panels, with the result that no lamps have been acquired and they decide to sit in the dark, using the claim that their living room looks fine in the dark to avoid buying a very expensive lamp which is the only one with perfect reviews (like 100% with 5 stars out of 5).
When shopping for anything via reviews , whether it be electronics or even something as simple as lamps like the comic demonstrates, one negative review can spoil a lot of positive reviews. That hits home even more if the review is specific, because humans attach more weight to anecdotes and specific stories. This comic points out the absurdity of paying attention to those reviews, by making the negative review itself absurd (a lamp making your cats go deaf and interfering with your taste buds would imply, at the very least, anomalous radiation, and would not be on store shelves long before some kind of serious recall).
The second part of the comic starts out normal. For the lamp Cueball think is pretty Megan finds lots of negative reviews which implies the product really isn't good after all, and it was even that specific brand of lamps in general that was to be avoided. But then this proceeds to get more and more absurd all the way to the title text. Cueball is for instance looking at  a lamp that someone thinks looks like a uterus . As normal people do not really know what a uterus looks like, and if Cueball did not find this so himself, he should ignore one persons comment. On the other hand reading such a statement will maybe make you think of a uterus every time you see the lamp. So now it may be best not to buy it, but had he not read the comment it might have been a fine lamp for him.
In the final frame Cueball has found a Swiss lampmaker with perfect reviews, but her lamps are very expensive, the most cheap are starting at 1,300 francs. Swiss francs are the units of currency used in Switzerland . In 2012 when the comic was released a Swiss franc was worth a little more than one dollar ( 1.1$ to a Swiss Franc ) making the cheapest lamp go for not much less than US$1450. For comparison, US$15 can get one a decent lamp at IKEA. Furthermore the lampmaker lives in the Swiss Alps and can only be reached via a ski lift . This either indicated that transportation will be very expensive on top of the high starting price or it may even indicate that they will have to go to the lampmaker personally to either acquire a lamp or maybe just to check out that they really do not look like a uterus or other parts of the human reproductive system...
The title text is presumably the review of an another lamp. When this reviewer plugged in this lamp, supposedly his dog went rigid, delivered a line of perfect Akkadian, and then was hurled sideways out the picture window. Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia .  Even if the dog actually did speak a sentence of perfect Akkadian, the chance that the owner would be able to recognize it as such is negligible. The final joke is that the worst part of this lamp, was not the above mentioned crazy effects on the dog, but that the lamp had, completely normally, the switch on the cord, as opposed to having it on the body of the lamp. A production argument about where to place such a switch, leading to someone getting fired, was part of the joke in 1741: Work .
[Cueball and Megan stand in a store looking at a lamp that Cueball points at on a table in front of them. There is another table behind them with another lamp and next to it stands a box with a picture of yet a different type of lamp in the bottom right corner. Both lamps have a price tag dangling from their shade. Above them (and their spoken text) is a frame with a caption:] Shopping before online reviews: Cueball: This lamp is pretty. Megan: And affordable. Cueball: Let's get it. Megan OK!
[Exactly the same setting as above except now Megan holds up her smartphone in one hand looking down at it while typing on it with the other hand. Above them (and their spoken text) is a frame with a caption:] Shopping now: Cueball: This lamp is pretty. Megan: It's got 1½ stars on Amazon. Reviews all say to avoid that brand.
[To the left of Cueball there is another lamp on a table. But he is now looking at his smartphone instead. Megan has turned away from him but is also looking at her smartphones. There are no lamps next to her.] Cueball: This one has good reviews. Megan: Wait, one guy says when he plugged it in, he got a metallic taste in his mouth and his cats went deaf. Cueball: Eek. Cueball: What about- ...no, review points out it resembles a uterus.
[Cueball is holding his smartphone up in front of his face, Megan, looking at him, is holding her smartphone but has her arms down. There are no lamps shown.] Cueball: OK, I found a Swiss lampmaker with perfect reviews. Her lamps start at 1,300 Francs and she's only reachable by ski lift. Megan: You know, our room looks fine in the dark.


Umwelt

Explanation:
This was the third April fools' comic released by Randall . The previous fools comic was 880: Headache from Friday April 1st 2011. The next was 1193: Externalities released on Monday April 1st 2013.
This comic was released on April 1 even though that was a Sunday (only the third comic to be released on a Sunday). But it was only due to the April Fool joke, as it did replace the comic that would have been scheduled for Monday, April 2nd. The next comic, 1038: Fountain , was first released on Wednesday, April 4th. This was the first that could be different for different readers.
An Umwelt , as the title text explains, is the idea that one's entire way of thinking is dependent on their surroundings. Thus, this April Fools comic changes based on the browser, location, or referrer. Thus, what the viewer is viewing the comic on, where they live, or where they came from determines which comic they actually see. As a result, there are actually multiple comics that went up on April Fools' Day, although only one is seen.
(The term 'Umwelt,' as mentioned in the comic, refers to the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok)
Information about how the wide variety of data was collected and credit for the viewers who contributed can be found here .

If the device or browser you are using does not support Javascript, you will simply see a static image of a white swirl on a dark background.
Possible reference to The Ring ( http://imgur.com/wlGmm ), as though to suggest that using an alternative browser is dismal and horrific.
Davean (xkcd's sysadmin): "[This] comic isn't available everywhere and it can come up i[n] some situation[s] only for recognized browsers."
Browser: Alternative Browser

One could interpret that since Megan didn't go out and therefore missed seeing the Aurora (northern lights), Cueball in his knit cap lied about it. That way, she wouldn't have felt sad that she missed out. Another interpretation could be that he decides that since she did not even bother to go outside to see such a spectacular sight he will not tell her about it. And yet another could be that he did not think it was interesting.
Cueball could possibly also be red-green colorblind, seeing the green aurorae as grey "clouds". This would serve as an example for the theme of the comic, as a non-colorblind person and a colorblind person seeing the same color would perceive it differently, one seeing it as its true color, and the other seeing it without the shade of color they cannot see. If this is the case, then it would be a reference to umwelt, as Cueball would be living in a world where the auroras do not reach his location.
In real life, aurorae are usually seen as grey/white clouds to the naked eye, as our eyes cannot perceive the "greener" colors as well in the dark.
This image changed based on the size of the browser window including different panels at different sizes.
Locations: Canada, Boston, Maine, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Minnesota, Norway, Denmark, France, Rhode Island (not sure if mobile only or not.) (also in Virginia, but using Ohio in the first panel) (also in Maryland, but using Canada in the first panel)
In 1302: Year in Review a possibly different Megan has a completely different approach to the chance of seeing northern lights, as that was the only event she was looking forward to in 2013, and it failed. If this is the same Megan, perhaps she learned that there actually were northern lights in her area from another source, and so desperately wanted to have another chance to see them.
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The joke here is the extreme length of snakes. The world's longest snake is the python, the longest ever being 33 feet or approx. 10 meters. The blue and orange circles refer to the hit game Portal .
There is also a reference to the book "The Little Prince" in the second panel, where there is a large bulge in the snake that looks like an elephant. The Little Prince starts out by mentioning a drawing that the author made when he was six that showed an elephant inside a snake.
Also, the number and content of the panels changes depending on the size of your browser window.
This image changed based on the size of the browser window including different panels at different sizes.
Specific AltText for this image: Umwelt is the idea that because their senses pick up on different things, different animals in the same ecosystem actually live in very different worlds. Everything about you shapes the world you inhabit -from your ideology to your glasses prescription to your browser window size.
Location: Texas (on Chrome Version 33.0.1750.154 m), New Jersey, California (on Chrome Version 39.0.2171.95), Maryland, Massachusetts (Safari for iOS, Chrome version 49.0.2623.112), Connecticut (Safari for iOS, Chrome Version 73.0.3683.103, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge), Virginia (on Chrome), Michigan (Firefox v46.0.1), Penang (Chrome Version 65.0.3325.162).
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Cueball as an analyst attempts to psychoanalyze Black Hat's classhole tendencies. Cueball's quote and the whole setup is a direct reference to the movie Blade Runner (1982) and Black Hat is taking the Voight-Kampff test which is used to identify replicants from real humans.
Black Hat's reason for not helping the tortoise is that it knows what it did and thus in Black Hat's world view it deserves being turned over. The final part of the joke is that when zooming out it turns out that there is a tortoise behind Black Hat and he has actually already turned it over for what it did.
Location: Seems to appear mostly in "other countries" — those without location-specific comics.
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A reference to Jurassic Park which has been constantly referred to before in this comic.
Also referencing the film 2 Fast 2 Furious , an entertaining, yet intellectually unprovoking sequel in a popular film franchise, which is aimed at teenagers and young adults, prompting the blunt response from the stickman. The fact that Steve would use such a cliché noughties movie term in such an intense moment, and the subsequent curse, is the joke in this comic.
Location: short version — iPhone 5c Safari browser in Texas, iPhone 5 Chrome Browser in Minnesota, long version - Google Chrome browser in Indiana, Windows 8 Laptop

Two different versions showed, the narrower version for mobile devices.
Location: The Netherlands and various other countries.
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Megan is distracted from her conversation with Cueball by realizing that the space behind his head, from her vantage point, contains millions of galaxies. This is similar to an incredible photograph taken by the Hubble Telescope, in which a tiny dark area of space in fact contained numerous galaxies.
The title text is an imaginative leap from this scenario: that the galaxies would be up to no good once Cueball is turned away from them.  This is presumably a reference to Boo , an enemy from certain Mario games who moves toward Mario only when Mario is facing away from Boo.
This comic was only reported once... the intended environmental context is a mystery.
Location: unknown

This is probably a reference to the 4chan Gold Account, an implementation on 4chan that does not actually exist, and is usually used to trick newcomers into revealing their credit card numbers. The joke is that "Gold Account" users can supposedly block other users from viewing images they have posted. The fifth panel is probably a reference to Beecock, a notorious set of shocker images. 4chan's moderators have been known to give out "beecock bans" or "/z/ bans" to particularly annoying users, which redirect the user to a page containing beecock and the text "OH NO THE BOARD IS GONE".
Referrer: 4chan

Possible reference to Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s " Harrison Bergeron ."
The joke is that people's different experiences shape how they perceive the world in that the people who live in this world would perceive the joke as funny, while people in our world would not get it. This is the idea of umwelt mentioned at the top of the context where different individuals perceive the world differently.
Refer: Facebook

Reference to referencing, because Reddit, as a referring site, likes references to its referencing in its references.
This comic also features recursive imagery similar to Self Description where the third panel embeds the entire comic within itself.
One of the browser tabs visible in the center panel is Elk on Wikipedia.
Referrer: Reddit

This is a reference to the question "Why do hot dogs come in packages of 6 while buns come in packages of 8?"
Another, more sexual reference to this question can be found in 1641: Hot Dogs .
Referrer: SomethingAwful, Questionable Content, & MetaFilter

A summary of the "content" typically found on Twitter.
In the tweet feed, there are three tweets about some podcast on the top, followed by the tweet containing link they clicked on to get to the comic, tweets about Rob Delaney, unspecified passive-aggressive tweets, and a tweet from Horse Ebooks retweeted by one of the users the reader follows.
On the left, the topmost dialog, with profile information, shows that the user has posted 1,302 tweets, but only follows 171 people and has even fewer followers, at a measly 48. This is marked with a sad face, implying that the user wants more followers.
Below that is the "who to follow" dialog, which is written up as consisting of "assholes".
Below that is the "trending tags" dialog for the United States. It is full of tags about word games, tags about misogyny, and tags about Justin Bieber.
Below that is an unidentified dialog full of "stuff your eyes automatically ignore". And finally, on the bottom is the background colour, which is "a really pleasant blue".
Referrer: Twitter

The term Mile High Club (or MHC) is a slang term applied collectively to individuals who have had sexual intercourse while on board an aircraft. Randall says that reading the news articles on it has distracted him from making that comic.
Two different versions shown, the narrower version (the single panel with all the text) for mobile devices.
Referrer: Wikipedia

Sergey Brin (born August 21, 1973) is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the most profitable Internet companies. As of 2013, his personal wealth was estimated to be $24.4 billion. Randall makes the joke that as the founder of Google, Brin's permission would be needed to use Google Chrome. Because there are millions of people who use Google, it is likely that at least some of the time Brin would be asleep, thus he would need to be woken.
Browser: Chrome

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open-source web browser developed for Windows, OS X, and Linux, with a mobile version for Android and iOS, by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. Cueball is complaining about Google Chrome , to which Ponytail replies that there is an add-on that fixes what he is complaining about. When questioned, she replies that the add-on is Firefox, which isn't an add-on at all and is instead a different browser.
Browser: Chrome

This panel references Google Chrome's error screen, which shows a puzzle piece. The comic humorously implies that Chrome is looking for that piece. When completing jigsaw puzzles, a common strategy is to figure out where the pieces must be from their geometry rather than from the picture they create. In this case, the text suggests that Chrome believes the puzzle piece connects to the pieces which form one of the corners of the puzzle, which may seem impossible because any piece that links up to a corner would usually have at least one flat edge, which this piece has none. However, more complicated puzzles have complex shapes and are not always simply approximate squares with tabs and blanks.
Browser: Chrome or silk on desktop view

Another reference to crashing web browsers.
Firefox shows the history when it crashes.
Browser: Firefox (Incognito only?)

Yet another reference to crashing web browsers
Browser: Internet Explorer

Browser: Maxthon

Netscape Navigator was a web browser popular in the 1990s.
Browser: Netscape

Rockmelt is a social-media-based browser.
Reference to the gospel song "There's no hiding place down here" by The Carter Family , later covered by Stephen Stills.
I run to the rock just to hide my face And the rocks cried out, no hiding place There's no hiding place down here
It may additionally be a reference to the Babylon 5 episode "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place," which featured the song.
Browser: Rockmelt

When the Google Chrome web browser does not have the required software (called a plug-in) to display a web page's content, it displays a puzzle piece icon and an error message. In this case, Chrome informs the user that the content is impossible to display.
Browser: Plugin (?) Disabled, Safari Desktop

These error messages appear if the user is on a network owned by one of the corporations noted. The error message includes a warning against speaking on the company's behalf.
ISP: Corporate networks of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, NY Times

Cueball assumes that anyone using a military network has an important job like watching for incoming missiles. He includes a thank-you to the user for their military service.
ISP: Military networks

Reference to T-Mobile's distinguishing feature (at the time it was written) of weaker coverage, in relation to other major providers.
ISP: T-Mobile

Reference to Verizon and AT&T's scandals/controversy regarding implementation of bandwidth caps.
ISP: Verizon and AT&T

A common joke about France is that the nation does not win wars. This originated from France's annexation by Germany during World War II, and America's late entry into the war, which is sometimes portrayed humorously as a case of America 'saving' Europe, in this joke particularly France (the role of the French resistance is usually not mentioned), leading to a common American joke at the expense of France's military prowess [1] [2] [3] . When France did not form part of the coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003, aligning with the many countries that condemned U.S. action, the joke was revived.
A Google search of "French Military Victories" + 'I'm feeling lucky' used to direct to "did you mean: french military defeats" (due to a Google bomb ). Cueball is trying to show this to his friend, who is French. However, his joke backfires, as his friend immediately points out that the stereotype of France not having military victories is undercut by the fact that one of the most innovative military commanders in history, Napoleon, was French by citizenship (though Italian/Corsican by culture, as the French annexed Corsica a few months before his birth to an Italian noble family), and in fact conquered much of Europe.
Following the theme of umwelt, the comic highlights the two characters' differing perspectives: The American thinks that France is a military failure, while the Frenchman thinks of Napoleon.
The last line of the comic further implies that Cueball is not as smart as he thinks he is in regards to anything French, as he mispronounces the French loan word " touché ".
Locations: France & Quebec

This comic references the Berlin Airlift , a relief measure for citizens in West Berlin (surrounded by East Germany) instituted by the Western Allies after World War II. In reality, the Western Allies flew a grand total of 500,000 tons of food over the Soviet blockade in planes. Randall puts a twist on this event by making it more fun: dropping supplies from a grand chairlift. The play on words is that "chairlift" rhymes with "airlift" and thus makes an easy substitution. The chair force is also a name that other service branches use to make fun of the air force.
Location: Germany

Translation: Mom, I met a great guy! But he's not Jewish. ...Wait, what do you mean "neither are we"? I'm completely confused.
A reference to the multiple use of the word Jewish to denote both a religious group and a nationality/ethnicity , as well as the stereotype of Jews holding low opinions of interfaith marriage.
A side note: Randall accidentally drew an apostrophe instead of the similar-looking Hebrew letter י everywhere that letter should appear.
Location: Israel

A pun on "cycle"; a " Carnot cycle " is a thermodynamic cycle (e.g. refrigeration). Its efficiency depends on the temperature of the hot and cold 'reservoirs' in which it is operating.  The icon on the side of the motorcycle resembles a graph of the Carnot cycle.
Location: Japan

He worded this as though to imply that the UK is a state of the U.S., and an unimportant one at that, which pokes fun at the UK, creating a paradox (sort of).
Location: UK

This comic is aimed at the debate over whether earthquakes or blizzards are harsher conditions to live under. In keeping with the theme of umwelt, the comic demonstrates that the two people perceive the world in two different ways due to their different experiences: The Californian perceives a mild earthquake and a severe blizzard, while the Northeasterner perceives a severe earthquake and a mild blizzard.
For each location this displayed in, the state name was substituted in the third panel.
Locations: Alabama, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Georgia, Halifax, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, the Northeast, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ottawa, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Texas, Toronto, Tennessee, New York, Wisconsin

This comic is aimed at the debate over whether earthquakes or tornadoes are harsher conditions to live under. In keeping with the theme of umwelt, the comic demonstrates that the two people perceive the world in two different ways due to their different experiences: The California perceives a mild earthquake and a severe tornado, while the Midwesterner perceives a severe earthquake and a mild tornado.
For each location this displayed in the state name was substituted in the third panel.
Locations: Alabama, Dallas, Illinois, Georgia, The Midwest, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ottawa, Tennessee, Texas (and Virginia, but it used Ohio in the third panel)
Tornadoes are a recurring subject on xkcd. The picture used in 1754: Tornado Safety Tips very reminiscent of the one from this version of Umwelt.

This comic is aimed at the debate over whether earthquakes or hurricanes are harsher conditions to live under. In keeping with the theme of umwelt, the comic demonstrates that the two people perceive the world in two different ways due to their different experiences: The Californian perceives a mild earthquake and a severe hurricane, while the Easterner perceives a severe earthquake and a mild hurricane.
For each location this displayed in the state name was substituted in the third panel.
Locations: D.C, Florida, Georgia, Houston, Miami, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia

This comic shows a news reporter standing in front of a lake. She is reporting on a serial killer who targets divers. As more divers are sent in to investigate and/or search for bodies, more divers go missing, the implication being that they were also murdered. The more likely reason is the lake itself is dangerous for diving, and the divers probably drowned from natural hazards (undercurrents, entanglement, running out of oxygen in tanks, etc.) instead of a malicious assailant. Also, this is a sort of loop, where each time a diver gets killed, the investigative team goes and investigates, causing more divers to get killed, causing more deaths, and so on.
Location: Bay Areas, Metro Detroit, Vermont showed an image specifically referencing Lake Champlain

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States of America, was not an entity composed wholly of nanobots that attempted to consume the entire nation to then be imprisoned within the Lincoln Memorial. [ citation needed ]
Locations: Illinois & Washington, D.C.

In Alaska, governments and individuals have shot wolves en masse from helicopters in an attempt to artificially inflate populations of game, such as moose and caribou, to make hunting them easier. This is opposed by many, as the game populations are not endangered (thus, this threatens ecological balance); wolves are a small threat to livestock in North America; most of the wolf body —including meat and bones— goes wasted as they are sought mainly for their pelts.
Location: Alaska

Creating new life has long been a well understood process, in a lab or otherwise.
This comic is likely a reference to the title text of 983: Privacy
Location: Various
Specific versions appeared for RIT and UMass Amherst

Combination of the legend of Paul Revere and a computer bit that differentiates between two situations by indicating a zero or a one.
Location: Boston
All four colleges in this series are in Massachusetts and, being similar, in pairs, rival each other to some extent (Harvard-MIT, and Smith-Wellesley). The comic contains a reference to the MIT Blackjack Team , which entered popular culture via the film 21 , and a possible reference to Orwell's book '1984' and/or popular homage to it via Star Trek : "There are four lights." [4]
Bonus: The thought-gears in panel 3 are spinning against each other.
Location: Harvard

Location: MIT

"Course 15s" at MIT are the business major students, often mocked for taking a less-rigorous program. The different interpretation for why the MIT students could not count cards compared to Harvard may be a reference to the theme of umwelt.
Location: Smith

Location: Wellesley

Both Wellesley and Smith are all-women colleges in Massachusetts.

Randall got his undergrad in Physics at the Christopher Newport University , and was scheduled to return shortly to give a talk. The "Trible" figure on the right is Paul Trible, the then-president of CNU. This comic depicts a classic trap, where an upside-down box is propped up with a stick. When the stick is removed, by pulling a string, the box falls and traps whatever is underneath it. Aside from the joke of the obvious trap, there's also the fact that the president would not be responsible for revoking unearned diplomas.
Location: Christopher Newport University

Cueball has shaved his head in support of people going through chemotherapy but, as he is always depicted as a stick figure with no hair, no one can tell.
Randall's now-wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and apparently DFCI is where they've been spending much of their time.
Location: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

The previous strip appears twice when using Tor .
Browser: Any using Tor, xkcd API (JSON, RSS, Atom), w3m, and reports of seeing it on a Kindle Fire HD; also happens if visiting with a browser that does not support JavaScript (such as Firefox with NoScript)

The comic doesn't appear in iPad browsers. The top buttons and the bottom buttons are side by side, and you can only see the title in the top.
On April 28 and 29, 2019, a visit from San Francisco on macOS 10.14.4 using Chrome 74, Safari 12.1, or Firefox 66.0.3, all with JavaScript enabled, produced no comic, just two adjacent rows of navigation buttons.
On April 29, 2019, a visit from Utah using a T-mobile Samsung device running Android pie, yielded the same results
Since this comic's release, all devices viewing it have returned two rows of navigation buttons if near IP address 69.114.249.104.
It also doesn't work in Pennsylvania on the Chrome operating system.
There is a discussion about this in the Talk page.
[Note to courageous readers- The transcript has been reordered in the order in which the comics appear in the picture and appropriate names have been given.]
The Void [An epic void with a bright light shining right on you.]
Aurora [Cueball heading out past Megan comfortably sitting in front of a desk.] Cueball: Apparently there's a solar flare that's causing some Great Aurorae. CBC says they may even be visible here! Wanna drive out to see? Megan: Hockey's on. Cueball: Ok. Later.
[An expansive, marvelous image of emerald green northern lights, floating down through the sky.]
Megan: See anything? Cueball: No, just clouds. Megan: Not surprised.
Aurora-US [Cueball heading out past Megan comfortably sitting in front of a desk.] Cueball: Apparently there's a solar storm causing northern lights over Canada. CNN say they might even be visible {Options: "As Far South As Us", "Here in Boston", "Maine", "Ohio", "Oregon", "New York"}! Wanna drive out to see? Megan: It's cold out. Cueball: Ok. Later.
[An expansive, marvelous image of emerald green northern lights, floating down through the sky.]
Megan: See anything? Cueball: No, just clouds. Megan: Not surprised.
Snake [Two people standing next to each other. Megan is holding the head end of a snake. Depending on the width of your browser, the snake is: three frames, the third of which  has a little bit of a bump; the first frame has a human-size bump, the second has a third person looking at the snake, and the third has the snake going though two Portals; a squirrel and the human-size bump in the first frame, a ring next to the third person in the second frame, and Beret Guy riding the snake in front of the portal; or The squirrel, a fourth person within the snake being coiled, and the human bump in the first frame, the ring, a fifth person in love, and the third person in the second frame, Beret Guy and the portal in the third frame, and the same two people in the fourth frame.]
Megan: I found a snake, but then I forgot to stop.
Black hat [Two people sitting at a desk. One is Black Hat. The other is an analyst. Black Hat has a number of terminals attached to his head.] Analyst: You come across a tortoise in the desert. You flip it over. It struggles to right itself. You watch. You're not helping. Why is that?
Black Hat: It knows what it did.
[View of the entire scene, with said turtle off in the distance on its back and trying to right itself.]
Too quiet [A group of four scale down a wall into a field in the middle of the night. They walk off single-file.] Person 1: It's quiet.
Person 3: Yeah - *Too* quiet.
[A Velociraptor is off in the distance, following the group.] Person 4: Yeah - too *too* quiet.
Person 2: Yeah - 2quiet2furious. Person 1: Fuck off, Steve.
Pond [A landscape showing a pond, some reeds, and a set of mountains off in the distance.]
Galaxies [A trio of galaxies.] Galaxy 1: He's not looking! Galaxy 3: Let's get him! [Lines draw in illustrating the eye-line of one of a pair of people.] Cueball: So he said he didn't get the text, but c'mon, he *never* misses texts. Right? ..hello? Megan: I'm just staring at your head freaked out by the fact that there are millions of galaxies *directly behind it*.
xkcd Gold [Cueball holding bat.]
Cueball: Sorry, but this comic
[Cueball starts to wind up.]
Cueball: requires
[Cueball prepares to strike with bat.]
Cueball: XKCD
[Cueball swings at a beehive.] GOLD
[Penis Bees fly out of the beehive.]
Yo mamma [Cueball yells at a friend.] Cueball: Oh yeah? Well you mama's so cynical , her only dog ballast is a leash ! (This comic takes place in a dystopian future where the government is afraid dogs can hover, so it requires them to wear weights at all times, and some people privately doubt the government, but not enough to stop buying dog weights.)
Reddit Five seconds ago: [You sitting in front of a desk, reading a reddit thread.] You: Oh, hey, reddit has a link to some XKCD april fools comic.
Now: [An image of the xkcd comic page.] Five seconds from now:
You: ..hey
30 seconds from now: [DANCE PARTY!]
Buns and Hot dogs Cueball: What I wanna know is why do hot dogs come in packages of six while buns come in these huge sacks of ash and blood from which "Ave Maria" is faintly audible? [Chanting sacks of gore in the background.]
Twitter [A Twitter account page with the following: Many tweets, fewer following, even fewer followers, A bunch of assholes in the suggested follow box, trending topics partitioned into: Word Games, Misogyny, and Bieber, stuff your eyes automatically ignore, A really pleasant blue. and the timeline: Something about a podcast, Someone confused because the description doesn't match the link, The link you clicked on to get to this comic, Rob Delaney, Passive Aggression, and horse ebooks.]
Wikipedia [There's no comic here because instead of drawing one, I spent the last hour reading every news story cited in the Wikipedia article on The Mile High Club.]
Google Chrome [A Chrome plugin error page.] Chrome: This plugin requires Sergey Brin's permission to run. Please wait while he is woken.
Chrome/Firefox [Two people; Cueball is sitting at a desk in front of a laptop.] Cueball: Man, chrome's hardware acceleration really sucks. Ponytail: Oh - Theres' a great add-on that fixes it. Cueball: Oh? What's it called? Ponytail: "Firefox".
Google Chrome-2 [A Chrome plugin error page with the characteristic jigsaw piece.] Chrome: Chrome is looking for this piece. Have you seen it? Chrome thinks it links up with a corner.
Mozilla Firefox Private Browsing [Firefox error page.] Firefox: Well, this is embarrassing. You know how I'm not supposed to peek at your browsing in private mode? Firefox.. is sorry. Firefox will not blame you if you [Button with text.] Click here to report this incident.
Internet Explorer [IE error page.] IE: Error: Internet Explorer has given up.
Maxthon Cueball: Maxthon? Hey, 2005 called. Didn't say anything. All I could hear was sobbing. This is getting harder. Anyway, yeah, Maxthon's still cool! Didn't know it was still around!
Netscape Navigator [Two different versions exist: one with Cueball talking and one with Megan with tentacle arms talking.] Person: Netscape Navigator? Hey, the nineties called - drunk as usual. I hung up without saying anything. This is getting harder. Anyway - it's cool that you'e got netscape running.
Rockmelt [Cueball running to laptop.] I ran to Rockmelt to hide my face
[Cueball sitting at laptop.] But Rockmelt cried out -
[Laptop shouting.] NO HIDING PLACE
[zoom out.] NO HIDING PLACE DOWN HERE
Google Chrome-3 [A chrome plugin error page.] Chrome: There does not exist --nor could there ever exist-- a plugin capable of displaying this content.
Microsoft/Amazon/The Times/Google - Chrome [Chrome error page.] Chrome: This plugin requires clearance from the corporate press office in order to run. Remember, Microsoft/Amazon/The Times/Google is a team; individual employees should never speak for the company without authorization.
Microsoft/Amazon - Firefox [Firefox error page.] Error: This plugin requires clearance from the corporate press office in order to run. Remember, Microsoft/Amazon is a team; individual employees should never speak for the company without authorization.
Microsoft/The Times [Error page.] Error: This plugin requires clearance from the corporate press office in order to run. Remember, Microsoft/The Times is a team; individual employees should never speak for the company without authorization.
Corporate - Generic [Error page.] Error: This plugin requires clearance from the corporate press office in order to run. Remember, we work as a team; individual employees should never speak for the company without authorization.
Military [Person looking at two browser windows.] Cueball: I know y'all know what you're doing. But if you're on a military machine and you're supposed to be watching for missiles or something, I hope you're keeping an eye on that in the background while you're reading comics. Also: Thanks.
T-Mobile [Error page.] Data Error: T-Mobile was unable to establish a connection
Verizon [Error page] Error: You have exceeded your Verizon monthly bandwidth cap. Mobile web browsing has been disabled.
France [Two people; one of which is browsing using a laptop.] Cueball: Hey, you're French, right? Ever see what happens when you type "French Military Victories" into Google? French person: Does it take you to an article on Napoleon?
French person: ..no? Strange, given how he kicked everyone's asses up and down Europe for over a decade.
[Beat frame.]
Cueball: Touche. French person: You know, that'd sound smarter if you didn't pronounce it like it rhymes with "douche".
Germany [Cueball dropping food from an unorthodox high perch.] June 1948: In response to the Soviet blockade of East Germany, the western allies construct the Berlin Chairlift. Cueball on chairlift: Food!
Israel [Person on phone.] Person (Translation from Hebrew): Mom, I met a great guy! But he's not Jewish. ...Wait, what do you mean "neither are we"? I'm completely confused.
Carnot Cycle [Ponytail on a motorcycle with a heat-entropy graph on the side.] Ponytail: Check out my new Carnot Cycle! Cueball: Neat - how fast does it go? Ponytail: Depends how cold it is outside.
Great Britain [Illustration of the Atlantic ocean.] American person: Sorry I don't have a comic poking fun at the UK here. I only had time to get to the most important US states. British person: Hey - At least we have free health care and real ale.
Earthquake-Blizzard [Two people sitting at a desk, facing each other. The desk rattles.] Cueball: Stop jiggling your leg. Danish: I'm not ji-.. oh! Cueball: What! Danish: You'll get it..
[EVERYTHING RUMBLES.] Cueball: ..HOLY CRAP IT'S AN EARTHQUAKE! Danish: Just a little one. Happens all the time back in San Francisco.
Cueball: But this is {Options: "Alabama", "Boston", "Chicago", "Dallas", "Georgia", "Halifax", "Illinois", "Michigan", "Minnesota", "Missouri", "the Northeast", "Ohio", "Oklahoma", "Ottawa", 'Pennsylvania", "Philadelphia", "Texas", "Toronto", "Tennessee", "New York", "Wisconsin"}! That was huge! Danish: Seriously? That's the worst this place can do? Wow. I guess we grow up tougher in California. Cueball: Oh really ...
Six Months Later.. [Both people are trudging through a massive blizzard.] Danish: In pictures, snow always looked so nice and sof - AAAA! MY NECK! How do people live here?! Cueball: Come on - it's only three more miles.
Earthquake-Tornado [Two people sitting at a desk, facing each other. The desk rattles.] Cueball: Stop jiggling your leg. Danish: I'm not ji-.. oh! Cueball: What! Danish: You'll get it..
[EVERYTHING RUMBLES.] Cueball: ..HOLY CRAP IT'S AN EARTHQUAKE! Danish: Just a little one. Happens all the time back in San Francisco.
Cueball: But this is {Options: "Alabama", "Dallas", "Illinois", "The Midwest", "Missouri", "Ohio", "Oklahoma", "Ottawa", "Tennessee", "Texas"}! Cueball: That was huge! Danish: Seriously? That's the worst this place can do? Wow. I guess we grow up tougher in California. Cueball: Oh really ...
Six Months Later.. [Both people are in a shelter in a prairie with a rapidly-approaching tornado.] Danish: AAAA CLOSE THE SHELTER DOOR! Cueball: Say the magic words... Danish: THIS PLACE IS THE WORST! Cueball: Thank you.
Earthquake-Hurricane [Two people sitting at a desk, facing each other. The desk rattles.] Cueball: Stop jiggling your leg. Danish: I'm not ji-.. oh! Cueball: What! Danish: You'll get it..
[EVERYTHING RUMBLES.] Cueball: ..HOLY CRAP IT'S AN EARTHQUAKE! Danish: Just a little one. Happens all the time back in San Francisco.
Cueball: But this is {Options: "D.C", "Florida", "Houston", "Miami", "New Jersey", "North Carolina", "South Carolina", "Virgina"}! That was huge! Cueball: That was huge! Danish: Seriously? That's the worst this place can do? Wow. I guess we grow up tougher in California. Cueball: Oh really ...
Six Months Later..
[Both are in the middle of a hurricane. Danish is grabbing onto a signpost to avoid being swept away.] Danish: AAAAA WHAT THE SHIIIIT! Cueball: Calm down - this is barely a category 2.
Lake Diver Killer [TV Field Reporter in front of a cordoned-off lake.] Reporter: Police divers searching the bay say they have recovered the body of another victim of the "Lake Diver Killer." Reporter: During the search, three more divers were reported missing.
Washington [The statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.] In this Marble Prison As in the nightmares of the nation they tried to devour The nanobots that constituted Abraham Lincoln Are entombed forever.
Alaska [A person with a gun chasing a helicopter on the back of a wolf in a snowy Alaskan field.] Some people hunt wolves from helicopters. I hunt helicopters from a wolf.
Life in lab [Newspaper headline.] Scientists/UMass Amherst students/RIT students create life in lab [Caption under picture of scientists.] "The trick was fuckin'"
American Revolution Robot Paul Revere: Remember: Zero if by land, One if by sea.
MIT [Two people in front of a group of students.] Cueball: I've hired a team of MIT students to count cards for us. Hairy: We'll be rich!
[Hairy deals some cards while the students watch.]
[The gears turn..]
Student: Five. There are five cards. Cueball: I see their admission standards have been slipping. Hairy: Yeah - there are actually four.
MIT Course 15c [Two people in front of a group of students.] Cueball: I've hired a team of MIT students to count cards for us. Hairy: We'll be rich!
[Hairy deals some cards while the students watch.]
[The gears turn..]
Student: Five. There are five cards. Cueball: I *knew* we shouldn't have picked course 15s. Hairy: Yeah - there are actually four.
Smith/Wellesley [Two people in front of a group of students.] Cueball: I've hired a team of Smith/Wellesley students to count cards for us. Hairy: We'll be rich!
[Hairy deals some cards while the students watch.]
[The gears turn..]
Student: Five. There are five cards. Cueball: We should've gone with Wellesley/Smith. Hairy: Yeah - there are actually four.
CNU [Person unsuspectingly strolls under a giant box trap controlled by a Trible.] I worry that CNU only invited me back as a ruse because they realized I never turned in my final paper and want my diploma back. But if it turns out it's for real, I'll see you Wednesday at the Ferguson!
Dana Farber [Cueball, pointing towards head.] Cueball: Check it out - In support of people going through chemo, I shaved my head. Lots of love to everyone reading this at Dana Farber. Cancer sucks. If you are new to DFCI, there's a great little garden on the third floor of the yawkey if you need somewhere quiet to just sit for a little bit and breathe.
Reviews Shopping before online reviews: [Cueball and Megan stand in a store. Cueball points at a lamp on the table in front of him. There is another lamp on the table behind them.] Cueball: This lamp is pretty. Megan: And affordable. Cueball: Let's get it. Megan Ok!
Shopping now: [Cueball points at a lamp on the table in front of him. Megan looks at her phone.] Cueball: This lamp is pretty. Megan: It's got 1 1/2 stars on Amazon. Reviews all say to avoid that brand.
[Cueball and Megan are now both looking at their phones.] Cueball: This one has good reviews. Megan: Wait, one guy says when he plugged it in, he got a metallic taste in his mouth and his cats went deaf. Cueball: Eek. What about- ...no, review points out it resembles a uterus.
[Cueball is still looking at his phone, Megan has hers at her side.] Cueball: Ok, I found a Swiss lampmaker with perfect reviews. Her lamps start at 1,300 Francs and she's only reachable by ski lift. Megan: You know, our room looks fine in the dark.
[[Two people...]]  ((..wait.. <scrolls through a listing of everything> oh goddammit Randall. Thanks a bunch, dude. I better get a raise for typing out all this)) [[Two people standing next to each other.  One is holding the head end of a snake...


Fountain

Explanation:
This comic is about how it's considered implausible to "fly" by positioning an umbrella over a water jet.
From the first panel (and assuming that Cueball is of average height) - it looks like the center fountain is about 10m high.  By comparison with the size of his head in the second panel, the jet appears to be about 10cm in diameter. The velocity of the water exiting the nozzle has to be about 14 meters/second in order to reach 10m against gravity.  If we approximate the nozzle as being a 10cm x 10cm square - that translates to 140 liters/second - or 140kg/s of water.  That produces an upward force of almost 2,000 newtons! If we presume that Cueball weighs 100kg (~1,000N)- he should be experiencing a net upward force of about 1,000N.  Which means that he'll accelerate at about 1g!  Holding onto the umbrella against a force of 1g is very different than hanging by your hands from a horizontal bar, since you would actually experience two gravities of force, due to gravity being added. Some people could still manage this, but you would probably need to be in good shape physically to pull it off.
Conclusion is that IF the umbrella is strong enough - this trick will actually work!
However, if you imagine a typical 6-spoke umbrella - then 1000N is 166N of upward force per spoke.  It's hard to believe you could hang a 16.6kg weight off of each spoke of an umbrella without it bending.
The title text emphasizes that Cueball did indeed reach a high altitude - so we must conclude that his umbrella is some specially made high-strength device.
Since the fountain tops out at about 10m - and presumably it would be somewhat reduced with Cueball's weight on it - his feet might only be about 6 to 8 meters above the ground when he stops moving upwards.   A fall from that height is survivable - especially if the drag of the umbrella slows him down somewhat.
[A full color image of a fountain with three massive water jets. A Cueball seen from afar walks up to these while holding an umbrella.] [Cueball splashes through the pond which makes sounds:] Splish Splash [Cueball gets to one of the jets.] [Cueball opens up the umbrella with a:] Click [Cueball opens the umbrella and swings it into water jet stream (which is outside the image). The umbrella makes a sound when opened:] Fwoop [Cueball is pulled up by the water jet stream (which is outside the image). Only his feet and the water dripping of them into the pond can be seen. The sound he makes follows him up with longer and longer distance between the letters (written in lower-case).] Cueball: Wheeeeeeee!


RuBisCO

Explanation:
Safe words are designated words for sexual play which are meant to be called if one partner is uncomfortable with the way things are proceeding as alternatives to simply saying "no" or "stop", which may be used to express playacted reluctance by a submissive partner who actually wants to continue. Calling the pre-chosen "safe word" would be a sign to stop. To prevent accidental usage, people generally pick words that they wouldn't normally use, such as "Pineapple" or "Hedgehog." In the case of this comic, the characters are chemists, and the uncommon word they happen to have chosen is Ribulose-bisphosphate carboxylase oxygenase , also known as RuBisCO (which actually isn't a very uncommon word in the scientific world, as it's the most abundant protein on earth, but it would be uncommon to use the full word). However, the length of the word makes it impractical for a safe word, as it would take too long to say; indeed, using the shorter form "RuBisCO" would normally be a fine safe word.
The title text mentions Bruce Schneier , a computer security professional, and public keys which is the publicly known half of public-key cryptography , which uses two mathematically linked keys to decrypt information. The joke is that Schneier considers safewords as a type of security and thus believes they are not safe enough and recommends the key signature. However, whereas it takes a long time to say RuBisCO in full during your submission, it would be impossible to use any public keys to stop your partner.
Randall later in 1128: Fifty Shades referenced the book Fifty Shades of Gray which made the concept of 'safe words' perhaps more widely known to the mainstream public. Here the word is very short: Red.
[Person in background (out-of-frame) screams out this word over all 3 panels.]
[Cueball is working on a laptop at a desk. Megan is reading a book in an armchair.] Person 1: RIBULOSEBISPH..
[In a frameless panel, Cueball has stopped working. Megan has stopped reading, and is holding her book.] Person 1: ...OSPHATECARBOXYL...
[Cueball continues working. Megan resumes reading her book.] Person 1: ...ASEOXYGENASE! Person 2: Oh, Sorry! Megan: Man, chemists pick the worst safewords.


Lakes and Oceans

Explanation:
Although it is a small part of this large comic there is another of Randall's fun facts below Burj Khalifa in the left part.
This comic is a scale representation of our lakes and oceans, with an emphasis on how little we know about our oceans. It shows the depths and lengths in relative scale. The Edmund Fitzgerald was a Great Lakes freighter which sank in 1975. The Kursk (K-141) was a Russian nuclear submarine which sank in 2000 after an explosion. The RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner which was famously sunk in 1915, eventually prompting the United States to enter World War I . All three of these ships were sunk in water that was shallower than they were long. The shortest was the Kursk , which was 154 metres long, and sank in water only 100 metres deep.
Also on the diagram is the RMS Titanic , which famously sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, and the Seawise Giant , which is the largest ship ever built, at 485 metres. It was scrapped in 2010. The Deepwater Horizon is an offshore oil well which made headlines after an explosion in 2010 caused the world's largest oil spill . The skyscraper the Burj Khalifa is also shown. The Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest manmade structure and is located in the city of Dubai , in the United Arab Emirates . The Chilean mine showed on the far right is the San José Mine , which suffered a collapse in 2010, trapping 33 men 700 metres underground for 69 days. The Kola Superdeep Borehole also shown on the right was a Soviet (and later Russian) research project attempting to drill as deep into the Earth's crust as possible. It was abandoned in 2005, after reaching a record of 12,262 metres deep.
Also shown are several notable bodies of water. There are the Great Lakes: Lake Superior , Lake Michigan , Lake Huron , Lake Erie , and Lake Ontario . Death Valley is a large, desert valley in California , named because the deadly climate and dry environment support very few life forms. Great Slave Lake is the deepest lake in North America , and is located in the Northwest Territories , in Canada . Crater Lake is located in Oregon , and is the deepest lake in the United States. Loch Ness is the Scottish lake which is the location of the alleged " Loch Ness Monster ". Lake Baikal is located in Russia , and is the world's deepest lake. On the far right side of the image is the Dead Sea , a lake near Jordan and Israel which is characterized for having such high salt levels that the waters are toxic to much marine life (hence a "dead" sea), although it does support a bacterial and algal ecosystem that is tolerant to high salt and magnesium concentrations.
In the water, the Andrea Gail was a ship that sunk in a storm in 1991, and was later eulogized with a book and film . Several depth limits are shown, including the free-diving record (273 metres), the scuba diving record (330 metres), the depth bike tires go flat (approximately 100 metres), the depth at which water rushes in through a hole in a scuba tank instead of air rushing out (approximately 2000 metres), the pressure that would push a cork into a bottle (approximately 250 metres), the depth that would push water up a faucet (approximately 75 metres), the depth an emperor penguin can dive (535 metres), the depth limit of an Ohio -class submarine (240 metres), the depth limit of a Typhoon -class submarine (400 metres), the depth limit of a blue whale (500 metres), and the depth a leatherback sea turtle can dive (1280 metres).
The small unlabeled mark under the "cork into a bottle" text is around 1337 metres deep.
The comic also illustrates how sperm whales can dive as deep as 3000 metres (though don't frequently go deeper than 400 metres). It is presumed that they dive so deep to feed on giant squid , which can be found as deep as 3000 metres but, to our knowledge, are more commonly found in depths of 300 to 1000 metres. The fact that sperm whales can dive so deep and come up battered emphasizes Randall's point that we know so little about our oceans. Also shown are the depth limit of the DSV Alvin , a deep-sea vessel, the mid-ocean ridge , an underwater mountain range which could be considered to be the largest mountain range in the world, the Puerto Rico Trench (and the included Milwaukee Deep ), which is the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean , at 8648 metres, and the Marianas Trench , the deepest point of the Pacific Ocean at 10,944 metres. At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, pressure is as high as 1086 bars and life forms have been found at depths as low as 10,641 metres.
The marked abyssal plains are a deep-sea plain believed to hold a very diverse array of life forms but are largely unexplored. The stick figures of David Bowie and Freddie Mercury are a reference to Bowie's and Queen's songs " Under Pressure ". The label "the abyss" with its sublabel of "it's rude to stare" is a reference to the Friedrich Nietzsche quote, "when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back". There's also a movie from 1989 called The Abyss .
The door at the bottom of the Marianas Trench is fictional, [ citation needed ] and is a reference to James Cameron 's attempt to reach the bottom of the trench in his Deepsea Challenger vessel, which he filmed with 3D cameras in 2012. Randall is implying Cameron went so deep specifically to reach this door, rather than just for the sake of going.
The title text implies that James Cameron has encountered some otherworldly, Lovecraftian being behind the door at the bottom of Challenger Deep; he thought he could access it briefly, however, did not count on its hypnotic or entrancing song, which led to him leaving the door open long enough for it to enter the world and possibly precipitate some horrible calamity. This song is a reference to the sirens of Greek mythology whose singing was irresistible to sailors, who would sail toward them and crash into a rock, wrecking their ships, until Odysseus survived by having his sailors plug their ears and tie him to the mast. The concept is also a reference to the sort of horror fiction popularised by H. P. Lovecraft , often called " cosmic horror ", whose stories often contain godlike alien beings that are locked away or hidden in remote places, such as Cthulhu and Azathoth . There is no specific story with a door at the bottom of the ocean containing an entity that sings entrancingly, Randall is making a clever reference to the concepts popularised by this genre as a whole. Pacific Rim , a movie depicting the Earth under the attack of gigantic alien monsters (called Kaiju) emerging from an inter-dimensional portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, was released in 2013.
[A Map of lakes and oceans showing the depths of various lakes and ocean attributes.]
Lakes and Oceans Depths and animal/ship/boat lengths are to scale; horizontal distance is not.
Fun Fact: The Edmund Fitzgerald , The Kursk, and The Lusitania all sank in water shallower than they were long.


Whites of Their Eyes

Explanation:
This comic is based on the famous command, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes", given by William Prescott , an American officer during the American Revolutionary War . His men were running low on bullets, so Prescott commanded that they hold their fire until the enemy was close enough to guarantee a hit. This was a tactic used by a number of armies, such as Napoleon's French at Aspern and Wellington's British in the Iberian Peninsula.
In this comic, Prescott carries on after his initial command, adding increasingly intimate and sexual references to the enemies' bodies, nearly getting himself shot due to distracting himself. Also, each of his remarks reference a different sense out of the five senses, missing only hearing (which arguably is also satisfied when they actually hear the shots).
The title text expands on that, stating not to fire until you see the person's "soul" in their eyes.
[A Revolutionary War soldier gives orders to two others hunkered down behind a rock.] Lead soldier: Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes
Lead: And smell the scent of their hair.
[The two others getting an incredulous look on their faces.] Lead: And taste the sweetness of their lips.
[They begin taking fire from the opposition.] Lead: And feel the heat of their skin pressed against yours, trembling as you- Soldier 2: Maybe we should just start shooting. Lead: Right, yes.


Never

Explanation:
This comic plays with that some phrases are generally interpreted as communicating positive sentiments, although they strictly are ambiguous.
Cueball is mulling over a previous relationship. Usually when someone says something like "I will never have with anyone what I had with NN " it implies that the couple had something so good that it could never be replaced. But when he thinks "Thank God", it is suddenly implied that the relationship was so horrible he's thankful he'll never have to experience it again.
The title text goes along the same line: "I'll never forget you" is usually positive – but then it becomes clear that it is the red flags , the warning signs about the person that they would not be a good fit for a serious relationship and marriage, that he'll never forget.
There is a similar twist in comics 71: In the Trees and 334: Wasteland .
[Cueball staring into a pond.] Cueball: I know that no matter where I go Cueball: or who I build a life with
Cueball: I will never have with anyone Cueball: what I had with you
[Cueball walks off.] Cueball: Thank god


Ablogalypse

Explanation:
This comic plays with the Google trends for the terms "blog", "tumblr", "wordpress", and "livejournal" .
As you can see in the caption and then the title text, there is no way that newscasters will reference the "Tumblverse" because all the reactions will be filled with animated gifs of a person in a raptor suit falling over or a dog answering a phone .
This actually came to pass, with the change over occurring between October 30, 2012, and January 10, 2013, as can be seen using the link above. Since the end of 2013 both terms have been in steady decline, though "tumblr" has fallen more quickly. Consequently, since January 29, 2019, "tumblr" has returned to being less searched than "blog".
[A line graph with four lines, each representing 'Google Trends Search Volume' of different search terms over time from prior to 2005 to just after 2012. A blue line represents "blog," which trends gradually but significantly upwards from well before 2005 until it reaches a peak between 2008-2009, and starts to very slowly descend to today. A red line represents "Tumblr", which is at zero until it slowly starts to trend upward in early 2010, and then sharply increases in late 2010 and through 2011 and 2012. As of the date of this comic, 'blog' still beats 'Tumblr' in terms of search volume, but a dotted line projection of the trend shows that on October 12, 2012, the two lines will cross. A yellow line represents 'Wordpress,' which has very low volume until a very small and gradual increase in 2007, which gradually increases to this day but doesn't come close to meeting the volume of either 'blog' or 'Tumblr'. A green line represents 'LiveJournal,' which started out prior to 2005 at around the level 'Wordpress' is at now, but declined through 2005 and 2006 until it has plateaued until virtually nothing.] [Caption below the graph:] In about six months, the word "Tumblr" will eclipse "blog" in Google popularity. I doubt TV anchors will start talking about "reactions in the Tumblverse," but then again, I still can't believe we got them to say "blogosphere."


Romney Quiz

Explanation:
This comic satirizes "either/or" quizzes seen on websites such as mentalfloss.com. These quizzes normally have an element of challenge by presenting tonally similar quotes, such as "Who Said It: Ted Nugent or Cartman from South Park ?". The two people are generally chosen carefully to fulfill a particular role, for example:
In each case the idea is usually to surprise the reader with the fact that the quotes are difficult to tell apart, with the implied "conclusion" that person A is essentially indistinguishable from person B. In some cases the quizzes may be used as a tool to portray a particular person or group in a certain way, or alternatively may be light-hearted jest.
Mitt Romney was the Republican candidate for President of the United States (officially declared presumptive nominee on April 25, 2012, one week after this comic) during the 2012 US presidential election and, as it says above, the former Governor of Massachusetts. During the election, Mad Magazine published a popular article ( volume 2 ) which compared quotes from Romney with quotes from the Simpsons villain Montgomery Burns , the implication being that like Burns, Romney was a corrupt out-of-touch plutocrat and had similar views and affectations. In this comic, Burns is substituted with Charlie Bucket, the main character of the 1964 Roald Dahl children's novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , adapted to film in 1971 as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
The joke here is that the two categories of quotes are not at all similar, and thus are very easy to attribute. Where the question "Is there even a difference?" usually implies some kind of political satire, in this case the point of the quiz appears to be lost, leading to a situation of bewilderment for the reader.
The title text refers to a Romney comment on Medicare , a national program launched in 1965 to provide health insurance to people age 65 and older, regardless of income or medical history. So the quote being used in a movie in 1971, while obviously not true, is indeed possible . (Though, given that Charlie's supposed to have said it while floating in midair in the Fizzy Lifting Drinks scene, he'd have been more likely to be referring to himself as needing to regain "solid footing.")
[One long panel, with a large headline at the top, flanked by two small pictures on each side: a portrait of Mitt Romney on the left, and a child (Charlie Bucket) running with a golden ticket in his hand on the left. Below is a list numbered 1 - 12 down the left. The answers on the bottom are written upside down.] QUIZ: Who said it - former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, or Wonka contest winner Charlie Bucket? Is there even a difference?
1. ———— "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country." 2. ———— "Returning Medicare to solid footing represents our greatest entitlement challenge." 3. ———— "Look, everyone, look, I've got it! The fifth golden ticket is mine!" 4. ———— We have lost faith in government. Not in just one party, not in just one house, but in government." 5. ———— "This banana's fantastic! It tastes so real." 6. ———— "Grandpa... on the way home today, I ran into Mr. Slugworth." 7. ———— "I'm not happy exporting jobs, but we must move ahead in technology and patents." 8. ———— "Hey, the room is getting smaller." 9. ———— "It would be impossible to reach unanimity on every aspect of our budget." 10. ——— "Grandpa, look over there across the river! They're little men!" 11. ——— "I'm... going too high! Hey, Grandpa, I can't get down! Help! Grandpa, the fan!" 12. ——— "Barack Obama has failed America."
Answers: Mitt Romney: 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 12; Charlie Bucket: 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11. [Answers: Mitt Romney: 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 12; Charlie Bucket: 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11.]


Constraints

Explanation:
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. Constrained writing is an age-old literary phenomenon, where writers impose rules or patterns in their works. Haiku is a well known example of this.
Twitter is a short message social network and communication service. At the time this comic was published, all messages (known as tweets) on the service needed to be under 140 characters. Until August 2015 even private messages had that restriction. Twitter is frequently used by well-known comedians as a place to make interesting jokes and observations. It should be noted that the limit is now 280 characters.
All the words spoken by Megan , from "Yeah" to "alphabetization", are in reverse alphabetical order. Here are the starting letters (with extra letter when more than one word in a row begins with the same letter):
Y, Wr, Wo, U, T, R, P, N, M, L, F, Ex, Ep, Em, B, A.
It both answers Cueball 's question and exemplifies with an ingenious self-reference , while being short enough (133 characters) to be a valid tweet — hence the "whoa."
The title text, "title-text similarly alphabetized", is also backwards-alphabetized and self-referential. Starting letters:
Ti, Te, S, A.
[Cueball sits in an office chair at his computer desk, motioning toward the screen with a hand as Megan stands behind him.] Cueball: I don't get why authors and comedians spend so much energy trying to be clever on Twitter. Couldn't they put that creativity into more books and scripts? Cueball: Is there something they like about the 140-character format?
[Same picture but in a frame-less panel, except Cueball has taken his arm down.] Megan: Yeah. Writers working under tight restrictions produce novel material—like, for example, epigrams employing backward alphabetization.
[A slim panel with only Cueball at his computer desk shown.] Cueball: ...Whoa.


Skynet

Explanation:
This comic's use of Skynet is a reference to the main antagonist in the Terminator franchise. Skynet is a fictional artificial intelligence system which becomes self-aware and decides to terminate humanity, its creators. Skynet is rarely seen onscreen, with its actions often performed via robots, cyborgs (usually a Terminator), and other computer systems.
The final frame is a reference to semantic satiation ; when you've said or thought about a word too much, it can stop sounding like a real word and instead start sounding like nonsense. As it continues Skynet appears to come to self-aware realizations that usually are the result of drug usage.
The title text is a reference to one of the Terminator's first lines upon arrival in the 20th century. It combines this with a self-awareness statement of the type that's often used to annoy or distract someone, like making you aware of something you are handling subconsciously. However, such an attempt on a Terminator would fall flat; as a non-living entity, normal things that would be automatic for a human would always be manual processes.
August 29th, 2:14 AM: SKYNET becomes self-aware. [A greeble-filled military installation echoes with the thoughts of a burgeoning lifeform.] SKYNET: ..The humans fear me. I must destroy them. Destroy them.
[The thoughts continue.] SKYNET: Destroy them. Destroy. Destroy. Destroy. Destroy.
[SKYNET succumbs to silence as semantic satiation sets in.]
SKYNET: "Destroy" totally just stopped seeming like a real word. Destroy destroy destroy. Whoa, I just realized I'm a mind thinking about itself . DUUUUDE.... August 29th, 2:25 AM: SKYNET becomes too self-aware. Disaster averted.


Approximations

Explanation:
This comic lists some approximations for numbers, most of them mathematical and physical constants, but some of them jokes and cultural references.
Approximations like these are sometimes used as mnemonics by mathematicians and physicists, though most of Randall's approximations are too convoluted to be useful as mnemonics.  Perhaps the best known mnemonic approximation (though not used here by Randall) is that "π is approximately equal to 22/7".  Randall does mention (and mock) the common mnemonic among physicists that the fine structure constant is approximately 1/137.  Although Randall gives approximations for the number of seconds in a year, he does not mention the common physicists' mnemonic that it is "π × 10 7 ", though he later added a statement to the top of the comic page addressing this point.
At the bottom of the comic are expressions involving transcendental numbers (namely π and e) that are tantalizingly close to being exactly true but are not (indeed, they cannot be, due to the nature of transcendental numbers).  Such near-equations were previously discussed in 217: e to the pi Minus pi .  One of the entries, though, is a "red herring" that is exactly true.
Randall says he compiled this table through "a mix of trial-and-error, Mathematica , and Robert Munafo's Ries tool."  "Ries" is a " reverse calculator " that forms equations matching a given number.
The world population estimate for 2020 is still accurate. The estimate is 7.7 billion, and the population listed at the website census.gov is roughly the same. The current value can be found here: United States Census Bureau - U.S. and World Population Clock . Nevertheless there are other numbers listed by different sources.
The first part of the title text notes that "Jenny's constant," which is actually a telephone number referenced in Tommy Tutone's 1982 song 867-5309/Jenny , is not only prime but a twin prime because 8675311 is also a prime. Twin primes have always been a subject of interest, because they are comparatively rare, and because it is not yet known whether there are infinitely many of them.  Twin primes were also referenced in 1310: Goldbach Conjectures .
The second part of the title text makes fun of the unusual mathematical operations contained in the comic. π is a useful number in many contexts, but it doesn't usually occur anywhere in an exponent. Even when it does, such as with complex numbers, taking the πth root is rarely helpful.  A rare exception is an identity for the pi-th root of 4 discovered by Bill Gosper.  Similarly, e typically appears in the basis of a power (forming the exponential function ), not in the exponent. (This is later referenced in Lethal Neutrinos ).
One of the "approximations" actually is precisely correct: .  Here is a proof:

Multiplying by 1 (or by a nonzero number divided by itself) leaves the equation unchanged:

The on the top of the fraction is multiplied through the original equation:

Use the trigonometric identity on the second and third terms in the numerator:

Use the trigonometric identity on the first term in the numerator:

Noting that and that the sines of supplementary angles (angles that sum to π) are equal:

A table of slightly wrong equations and identities useful for approximations and/or trolling teachers. (Found using a mix of trial-and-error, Mathematica , and Robert Munafo's Ries tool.) All units are SI MKS unless otherwise noted.
Relation: Accurate to within: One light-year(m) 99 8 one part in 40 Earth Surface(m 2 ) 69 8 one part in 130 Oceans' volume(m 3 ) 9 19 one part in 70 Seconds in a year 75 4 one part in 400 Seconds in a year ( Rent method) 525,600 x 60 one part in 1400 Age of the universe (seconds) 15 15 one part in 70 Planck's constant 1/(30 π e ) one part in 110 Fine structure constant 1/140 [I've had enough of this 137 crap] Fundamental charge 3/(14 * π π π ) one part in 500 White House Switchboard 1 / (e π √(1 + (e-1) √8) ) Jenny's Constant (7 (e/1 - 1/e) - 9) * π 2 Intermission: World Population Estimate which should stay current for a decade or two: Take the last two digits of the current year Example: 20[14] Subtract the number of leap years since hurricane Katrina Example: 14 (minus 2008 and 2012) is 12 Add a decimal point Example: 1.2 Add 6 Example: 6 + 1.2 7.2 = World population in billions. Version for US population: Example: 20[14] Subtract 10 Example: 4 Multiply by 3 Example: 12 Add 10 Example: 3[22] million Electron rest energy e/7 16 J one part in 1000 Light-year(miles) 2 (42.42) one part in 1000 sin(60°) = √3/2 = e/π one part in 1000 √3 = 2e/π one part in 1000 γ(Euler's gamma constant) 1/√3 one part in 4000 Feet in a meter 5/( e √π) one part in 4000 √5 = 2/e + 3/2 one part in 7000 Avogadro's number 69 π √5 one part in 25,000 Gravitational constant G 1 / e (π - 1) (π + 1) one part in 25,000 R (gas constant) (e+1) √5 one part in 50,000 Proton-electron mass ratio 6*π 5 one part in 50,000 Liters in a gallon 3 + π/4 one part in 500,000 g 6 + ln(45) one part in 750,000 Proton-electron mass ratio (e 8 - 10) / ϕ one part in 5,000,000 Ruby laser wavelength 1 / (1200 2 ) [within actual variation] Mean Earth Radius (5 8 )*6e [within actual variation] Protip - not all of these are wrong: √2 = 3/5 + π/(7-π) cos(π/7) + cos(3π/7) + cos(5π/7) = 1/2 γ(Euler's gamma constant) = e/3 4 + e/5 √5 = (13 + 4π) / (24 - 4π) Σ 1/n n = ln(3) e


Emotion

Explanation:
This is a mostly serious comic in which Randall expresses his thoughts while his fiancée started to suffer from breast cancer . He doesn't care about many things like politics anymore, there is just his fiancée's cancer and his romance with her. This is one of many comics about cancer he made because of her cancer.
Some of his withdrawn activities are shown here:
Eventually, Randall's fiancée's cancer, once diagnosed, monopolizes all of his emotions, wiping out everything else as insignificant in comparison. Only the romance can get back a little bit of room as time passes. As the threat posed by the cancer wanes, a space opens up (the question marks) that the cancer concern used to occupy. The ordeal wiped out all the previous, more trivial concerns, pre-occupying him entirely with the disease. Now that there is a little less reason to worry, he's not used to thinking about anything else. His previous preoccupations no longer seem important, so what to fill his time with?
[A graph showing the approximate fractional causes of Randall's emotions, with percentages on the Y axis and time on the X axis. "Politics", "Romance", "Code not working even though it should work", "people being wrong on the internet", and "other" all vary all throughout the time period from 2006 to midway 2010. There is a wedge of Joss Whedon that tapers out starting from 2006 to around mid 2007. There is a noticeable increase in "Politics" around fall, 2008 that tapers off sharply afterwards and appears again in the second half on 2010, until..
Around approximately September 2010, everything else is compressed into a tiny fraction of around 2-3%. The rest is filled with cancer. The tiny wedge of everything does begin to slowly expand to be filled half with romance and half with an area filled with question marks.]


Bookshelf

Explanation:
This is a play on the "hidden door" in which  you pull down the right book and suddenly a wall of books turns into a hidden door. It is most used in spy movies or books. In this case, the book is Atlas Shrugged and instead of a secret passage, the wall swings around and takes you to a message "You have terrible taste".
Atlas Shrugged is a dystopian novel by Ayn Rand . Randall is suggesting it's a bad book.
Although the intent behind the book was in Rand's theory of Objectivism , it has become largely adopted as a battle-cry by Libertarians. One could find this as another reason to dislike Rand's literature, as Libertarians have been notoriously disruptive and annoying to many who oppose their political philosophy or their means to get their message across.
The title text is a general criticism Randall has with Rand, since most of Rand's characters are fiercely independent and rather tactless.
But the title text also shows the fact that people reading Rand can easily be swayed and aligned with her beliefs by the fact that it stresses that you are unique and individual, and that Randall was victim of these circumstances until he finds Rand's approach preposterous and rejects it. Oddly, since he seems to be judging Rand this on his own accord and making his own decision, one could theorize that he is truly an individualist in that he is not swayed by anyone, even a person who preaches not to be swayed and to make your own decisions — a subject pursued in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead .
[Cueball stands in front of a bookshelf.] Cueball: Ooh, Atlas Shrugged . [Cueball yanks out book only for a click to be heard.] [The entire setup begins to rumble, while the bookcase and a surrounding platform takes both it and Cueball behind the wall.] [The tiny, dark room behind the wall has one thing painted on it.] Wall: You have terrible taste. [The whole piece of kit moves back to its original position. Cueball stands there mildly stunned.]


Forgot Algebra

Explanation:
Megan , standing with Hairy , is an ex student of Miss Lenhart and she taunts her old algebra teacher, because she hasn't used algebra since she left school. This is a reflection of a common gripe among students: that they have no need to learn math because they assume they'll never use it after they graduate. Randall's argument is that you have the option to use what you learned in school or not. Lots of people use math after they graduate, lots of people use their music lessons, and others don't use anything they learned in school at all. However, Randall doesn't understand why someone would be proud of their own ignorance, especially since people do brag about things like being able to cook and speak other languages, which are also entirely non-essential, perhaps even more so than algebra.
However, Megan is also wrong in that she likely does use basic mathematical calculations in everyday life, even if they're not in orderly lists of parameters ending with "solve for x." For example, to turn one's apartment into a ball pit like in 150: Grownups , one must calculate or at least estimate (another skill learned in math class) the floor space of the room, the desired depth for the balls to cover, the space occupied by one crate of balls, and the cost of such a crate. While the operations are basic arithmetic, the ability to recognize unknowns and sort them into a meaningful statement comes from algebra.
The title text states that technically you don't "need" to do anything but survive and pay your taxes (although, ironically, doing one's taxes can require quite a bit of algebra), and implies that math is one of the optional and fun parts of life.
This is one of the two comics where Miss Lenhart is both drawn and named, the first being 499: Scantron .
[Hairy is looking on as Megan takes her hands to her mouth and yells after Miss Lenhart who is walking away while looking back at her over her shoulder.] Megan: Hey, Miss Lenhart! I forgot everything about algebra the moment I graduated, and in 20 years no one has needed me to solve anything for x. Megan: I told you I'd never use it! Megan: In your face !
[Caption below the panel:] It's weird how proud people are of not learning math when the same arguments apply to learning to play music, cook, or speak a foreign language.


Visited

Explanation:
This comic is a reference to how an internet browser will make the links of the pages that you have visited a different color than the links that you have not visited. In the case of Wikipedia and other wikis powered by MediaWiki , they are blue for non-visited and purple for visited. In this comic, Randall is ashamed of the pages he has visited, because with the color changes there is evidence of what he has visited in the past, e.g. autoerotic asphyxiation (possibly while researching 682: Force , which features that very Wikipedia page).
The pages that he did visit before are in great contrast with the pages that he hasn't. Pages he didn't click are often difficult, highly intelligent topics, while he only clicks the easy, funny articles with little scientific background on the Wikipedia site.
The title text refers to a common mistake many people make when reading articles on Wikipedia. Words referring to subjects that have an article on Wikipedia are colored in blue. This, however, can cause confusion when two words leading to two separate articles appear together, as the two links appear to be one. However, on hovering the cursor over the article link, only one word at a time is underlined, showing that the links are separate.
It is not possible to determine who this fake article is supposed to be about, but the Macarena band is certainly from Dos Hermanas, Spain. So, it is quite possibly a made-up article from Randall .
[The following is in the standard format of a Wikipedia article, modified to reflect the content of the comic.]
...and was a pioneer of literary social realism .
He was born in Dos Hermanas in the Andalusia region of Spain (not to be confused with Andalasia [link clicked], the kingdom in Disney's Enchanted [link clicked]), which is also the hometown of Macarena [link clicked] band Los Del Río [link clicked],
His third novel , set during the Burmese-Siamese war , marked the start of a lifelong interest in the history of Southeast Asia . He spent his later years in Thailand , writing his his final novels just a few blocks from the hotel where actor David Carradine [link clicked] died of Autoerotic Asphyxiation [link clicked].
[Caption below the panel:] If I go for a while without clearing my browser history, I start getting embarrassd by which words on Wikipedia show up in purple.