Doomsday Clock

Explanation:
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is an academic journal which has a recurring feature known as the Doomsday Clock , which shows the Bulletin's judgment on the current state of the world. The idea is that when the clock hits midnight, the world ends (originally conceived as in a nuclear war ), so how close the clock is to midnight is a scale of the world's current state of risk. Its setting as of the publication of this comic was at "three minutes to midnight" (11:57 PM or 23:57). Its current setting is (as of 24th January 2020) at "100 seconds to midnight" (11:58:20 PM or 23:58:20).
Daylight saving time (DST) is a feature in many countries where in the summer months, everyone moves their clock forward an hour to artificially postpone sunset and thereby have a longer time of sunlight in the afternoon. The day before this comic came out (Sunday), most of the United States switched from standard time to DST. This makes it the first of several comics about DST that has been released in conjunction with the beginning of DST.
Cueball is inside the office of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and comes across the Doomsday Clock, which is apparently an actual clock. Citing a mnemonic , "Spring forward, fall back", referring to which direction to move the hour hand in the season when DST begins or ends, he pushes the hour hand forward one hour, so instead of the world being three minutes from the end of the world, it is now 57 minutes into it, so the final panel simply shows the world erupting in a Dr. Strangelove -esque nuclear apocalypse , with the typical mushroom cloud shape, with a ring around the stem, which is also displayed in the Wikipedia page on nuclear weapons .
This is an absurdist joke confusing the Doomsday Clock with an actual clock; the Doomsday Clock is a subjective measurement of risk, not of time, and as such is not subject to Daylight Saving Time. Furthermore, in the comic the Doomsday Clock does not just measure the world's risk but actively controls it; even if the Doomsday Clock were affected by DST, the doomsday scenario notably does not occur until Cueball adjusts the clock. Also Cueball would only ever adjust the clock like this, if he happened to come by just when the real time was 12:57 the day after DST (as it is not clear from an analog clock if it is AM or PM). When he spots the clock showing 11:57 at 12:57 he just thinks someone has forgotten this particular clock, (which happens a lot the day after DST), and he is thus just helpfully adjusting to the new correct DST time.
The title text continues on this same theme, with the digital doomsday clock (apparently it has now been replaced by a digital one, maybe Cueball broke the old analog one) being reset by a power outage. Many digital clocks blink 00:00 once per second after a power outage, only stopping when the clock is reset. This is interpreted as the world actually blinking in and out of the Doomsday Clock's midnight, so nuclear explosions thus naturally appear and disappear in sync with the clock.
This once more underlines the entire point of this comic, that it makes no sense to have such a clock. Many people, including Randall , also believe that DST also makes little sense today, so maybe this is why the two are connected in this comic. Randall has mocked DST several times , so this could be yet another attempt to have some fun at its expense.
Another doomsday clock was used in 1159: Countdown , although here it was for a supervolcano eruption. A nuclear bomb, not yet exploded but with a short countdown, was the facilitator of the joke in 1168: tar .
Within a year before this comics release Randall made several other comics about nuclear weapons, most recently January of 2016 with 1626: Judgment Day , and before that these two in 2015, 1539: Planning and 1520: Degree-Off . Nuclear weapons are also mentioned twice in Thing Explainer , specifically they are explained in the explanation for Machine for burning cities about thermonuclear bombs , but they are also mentioned in Boat that goes under the sea about a submarine that caries nukes. All three comics and both explanations in the book, does like this comic, comment on how crazy it is that we have created enough firepower to obliterate Earth several times (or at least scourge it for any human life). After these there was some time without nuclear bombs, but a new mushroom cloud was displayed in 1736: Manhattan Project , the week after such weapons invention was listed at 1950 CE.
[Above a clock that shows 3 minutes to 12:] Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock
[Cueball enters the frame from the left and walks up the clock while looking up at it.] Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock Cueball: Oh hey, spring forward.
[Cueball grabs hold of the hour hand on the clock and adjust it one hour ahead to 3 minutes to 1.] Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock
[Nuclear apocalypse with one large central mushroom cloud, with a typical ring around the central stem, two other mushroom clouds are behind it left and right as well as three smaller ones near (or even partly under) the horizon. There are also three smaller explosion in the air.]


It Begins

Explanation:
This comic encourages the reader to post random news stories on the Internet, under the line "It begins." This creates a sense of impending doom, as well as making people wonder what, exactly, is being referred to. This could also encourage people to theorize about what, exactly, is beginning. It could also just confuse the intended audience, as they try to comprehend what the author is saying.
This could in the worst case speedily lead to several people making repost of such a non-news story that would not have gotten any attention otherwise. This may lead to speculation, and other curious theories, going out the tangent it could create fear or mass hysteria.
Some stories that might benefit especially from this are those relating to machine autonomy, animal attacks, disease, and so forth. This would call to mind various popular culture and/or scientific hypothetical scenarios.
Perhaps the comic's choice of article refers to Alfred Hitchcock 's thriller The Birds , in which birds (especially seagulls ) begin attacking humans for no apparent reason, or the broader idea of an animal revolution, or just that even animals get sick of us always looking at our smart phones.
The title text instructs readers to try the line " Yikes " instead. The idea is the same but would give a completely different response.
Other comics which advocate using catch-all phrases as standard responses for any comment:
[A post in Megan's news feed on some social network platform is shown. Megan's head-shot profile image is shown in a frame to the left with two lines of unreadable text below. Her comment is to the right of this image, also with unreadable text above both in a black and gray font. This comment is above the news story she has posted below in a frame. Inside the frame there is another smaller frame to the left with a picture of Cueball on a beach, holding his hand out towards a seagull that flies away with his phone. Two other seagulls can be seen in the air above the sea. There is a small heading at the top, and then a larger one below this. Below that again there is two lines of unreadable text:] It Begins Local News Seagull Steals Phone, Drops it in Ocean
[Caption below the panel:] Protip: To make your day more dramatic, post a random minor news story with the comment "it begins."


Insanity

Explanation:
In this comic White Hat quotes a famous "definition of insanity " (usually attributed to Albert Einstein , but may be a loose paraphrasing from Narcotics Anonymous ) adapted by Rita Mae Brown or others historically.
Cueball's answer applies the quote to the action of quoting that quote. White Hat seems to have quoted that quote quite a few times already, expecting people to change their behavior which hasn't happened so far. So according to that definition of insanity, it is insane to keep quoting the definition of insanity, expecting people to change their behavior because of that.
Merriam-Webster defines "insane" as "mentally disabled."
The title text implies that Randall would be "insane" according to the quote he used in the comic because he has repeatedly searched for a definition of insanity that matches the one quotes in the comic and of course always gets a negative result, since this is a personal quote not a definition. Besides searching in lots of dictionaries , he also looked in the DSM-4 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition). The DSM-5 has been available since May 18, 2013 and he plans to look into it, expecting different results. Since he won't find it, he is from the quote insane, but of course since this turns out to not be the definition of insanity then he might not be anyway.
This comic follows a pattern similar to 1339: When You Assume .
For a different view on the topic of repetition in experimentation, see 242: The Difference .
[Cueball is walking towards the right of the panel with White Hat walking behind him holding a finger up as to make a point.] White Hat: They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Cueball: You've been quoting that cliché for years. Has it convinced anyone to change their mind yet?


Estimating Time

Explanation:
Estimation is difficult; many people seem to greatly underestimate the amount of time or other resources required. To illustrate how difficult this estimation is Douglas Hofstadter coined Hofstadter's law which is a non-scientific self-referential time-related adage, mentioned in the the title text. It states: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
Ponytail is working at her computer and becomes frustrated as it seems her project will (again) take much longer than she has estimated. She is annoyed with herself for always failing to make a decent guess. Danish begins to give Ponytail advice on how to estimate the time, starting with the comforting words don’t panic and a common guideline of taking the initial estimate and doubling it.
Danish then iterates the law once more and she tells Ponytail to double this again, and then add five minutes. Unless the project to begin with was estimated to somewhat less than an hour, those five minutes will do nothing but confuse Ponytail. But Danish does not stop here, and iterates Hofstadter's law once more. Ponytail still doesn’t get where this goes, saying a hesitant okay to that.
It turns out that Danish was not at all trying to help, but just mess with Ponytail, as she now tells her that the only thing she has accomplished by listening to her advice is wasting half a minute doubling imaginary numbers (not to be confused with i, the imaginary number), i.e. even her first estimate is just something she has imagined especially since she states herself how bad she is at those kind of estimates. Finally Danish completes her frustration of Ponytail by saying " Paaaniiic! ", negating the initial advice.
The title text is an extra corollary to the law, that states that using the law to estimate anything about the time your project takes is not only wasted time you could have spent working there is a substantial risk that you will conclude that you will never finish, and thus panic instead of just get the job done now.
Self-reference is a recurring theme on xkcd and this comic is quite self-referential both in the comic but also referring to other comics especially to 917: Hofstadter . He is perhaps most famous for his book Gödel, Escher, Bach from where the quote is taken (in a section on recursion and self-reference, rather than estimation). This book has been directly referenced in 24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey .
[Ponytail is sitting back from her a laptop lifting her hands of the keyboard, having presumably just paused work on a project.] Ponytail: Aaaa! I'm so bad at estimating how long projects will take.
[Danish walks into the panel towards Ponytail who seems to relax back against the chair.] Danish: Don't panic-there's a simple trick for that: Danish:  Take your most realistic estimate and double it. Ponytail: Okay, but-
[A frameless panel with only Danish holding a hand up.] Danish: Now double it again. Add five minutes. Danish: Double it a third time. Ponytail (from off panel): Okay...
[Danish raises her arms above her head in mock hysteria. Ponytail runs away from her desk screaming.] Danish: 30 seconds have gone by and you've done nothing but double imaginary numbers! You're making no progress and will never finish! Ponytail: Aaaaaa! Danish: Paaaniic! Ponytail: Aaaaaaa!


Tire Swing

Explanation:
In this comic, Science Girl and another girl have just completed a tire swing , a common makeshift swing is created by hanging a car tire from a length of rope, typically tied to the branch of a tree as in the comic. The other girl might at first look like she has hair like Megan but not quite as she is revealed upon zoom in to have curly hair. That they are rather small kids can be seen from the size of the tire compared to them. (They could be the same as the girls in the last panel of 1580: Travel Ghost ).
In the second panel of this comic Science Girl muses that there are huge tire dumps filled with nothing but old tires that have no use. In the last panel, Science Girl continues that maybe they should use a tire from such a dump next time they make a tire swing. The presumption is that perhaps they used a brand new tire, or a tire from some other source. This is confirmed by the other girl's response (and also by the title text, see below) which makes it clear that the tire they used was in fact stolen from a guy's vehicle. The last reply from Science Girl suggests the victim put up a fight and they had to take the tire by force. So these two small girls actually fought an adult man over his truck and won the fight.
Vehicle tires have a limited lifespan. The natural end of their life is when the pattern of raised treads on the circumference of the tire, which promote traction on wet roads, are worn down to a point where they are no longer effective enough, or after 6-10 years (sunlight causes the rubber to degrade, so the tire becomes prone to cracking and unsafe, even if it appears to be in good condition). Tires can also become damaged in other ways, such as puncture.
Used tires are a notable ecological problem for a number of reasons (e.g. their size, the quantity produced, their relatively short lifespan, and the fact that they are difficult and slow to break down and contain a number of components that are ecologically problematic). A tire swing represents a functional use for otherwise useless old tires. The amount of tires (it is estimated that 259 million tires are discarded annually) makes them attractive targets for recycling. More than half of used tires are ultimately simply burned for their fuel value (which prevents them from sitting in landfills indefinitely, but this may even be worse as it releases otherwise locked up carbon thus releasing this into the atmosphere and making global warming even worse). Some steel mills that use electric arc furnaces will mix shredded tires with their scrap when charging the furnace for both the carbon value and fuel value, in place of the coal that would otherwise be used.
The comic is thus clearly Randall's attempt to draw attention to this huge ecological problem, as he so often before has done with other climate change/global warming related comics. (Climate change, especially global warming, is a recurring theme in xkcd). So while this is not the joke of the comic, it could be the point of it.
He also suggests another way to use old tires. It should be noted that used tires are not necessarily safe to use as a kids' toy as they could become sharp/frayed along the edges and stones and other hard/sharp objects may have become stuck in the tires (even going all the way through), during its life span, or worn thin enough to tear apart mid-swing (when the stresses on the swing material would be at their peak). So tires bought for use as a swing may even be made from a new tire, but not necessarily of the same solid type as those used for cars. Used tires reused for a swing should be inspected for the problems mentioned above.
The title text goes further, suggesting that they actually stole the victim's entire truck - possibly just to harvest the tire needed for the swing - and that he unsuccessfully attempted to recover the truck, so they probably did fight him. He put up enough of a fight that they do not wish to fight him again (so he at least survived). Further, since the girls expect him to try again (maybe recovering the truck with only three tires), they apparently still have the truck. One of the girls suggests that if they could find one of these tire dumps, then they could take a tire from there, make a new swing, and then just walk or run away from the truck when the guy comes back, letting him have it if he really wants it so bad.
The reason Science Girl made this swing could be that she wishes to become a cosmologist as a reference back her meeting a cosmologist on a tire swing in 1352: Cosmologist on a Tire Swing .
Note that Calvin and Hobbes , which has often been referenced in xkcd , has done the same to Calvin's father as the girls did to the guy (though without the violence) in a similar comic .
This was the first of two Wednesdays in a row where Randall used two children to make a reference to an environmental issue, the second being 1662: Jack and Jill about fracking also with Science Girl.
[Science Girl and a girl with long curly hair, are standing under a large leafless tree as Science Girl adjusts a tire swing hanging from the largest of the branches of the tree. The tire hangs so high that the small girls only reach up to just above the center of the tire which has a diameter of more than half the height of the girls.] Science Girl: OK, looks good.
[Zoom in on the girls so only the tire swing can be seen, and nothing of the tree. They both look at the tire.] Science Girl: I read that there are these huge dumps everywhere full of millions of old tires that no one knows what to do with.
[Same setting but Science Girl looks up at the tree (outside the frame).] Science Girl: We should use one of those next time. Curly haired girl: Yeah. That guy was real mad. Science Girl: I would not want to fight him again.


Captain Speaking

Explanation:
At periodic intervals on a commercial flight, the captain of the plane will address the passengers with information about the flight. Typically this will begin with "This is your captain speaking..." and go on to describe the progress of the flight, expected arrival time and other information about the flight such as if or when refreshments will be brought to passengers.
This comic takes this cliché and inverts it. Instead of the captain providing information, the captain tells the passengers that he has apparently forgotten everything about the flight, even down to what kind of plane he is supposed to be flying – although he does think it is a Boeing . He at least discovers the flight number and then plans to use the consumer app Flightaware that is made for tracking flights. He thus hopes to be able to find out what the destination of “his” plane is. But Flightaware requires Wi-Fi access, so he goes on to ask the passengers if anyone know how to access the Wi-Fi. This app was earlier referenced in 1363: xkcd Phone .
This even gets worse in the title text where he realizes that you have to pay for using the on-board Wi-Fi, which means he is trying to access the same Wi-Fi that the passengers have access to instead of using the on-board Wi-Fi that must be in the cockpit (to which he is supposed to have free access). Instead of just paying he then asks the passengers if someone has already paid, because then he would like to borrow their smartphone so he can check the Flightaware app to find out where they are going.
Options for explaining this scenario are:
Seeing as how planes cannot take off on auto-pilot (nor can they taxi, but some can actually land), and require a skilled, awake human at the controls, it is unlikely that this captain was responsible for take-off; which must mean this auto-pilot is much more advanced than current models, likely a future model, or that their first officer took off and then went away or asleep. In the event a pilot falls asleep, on medium sized planes, ground- or proximity-, radar would set off an alarm waking the captain if they are on a collision course.
Whilst it is normal for the captain to sleep part of a long flight, this can only occur if there are multiple pilots on the plane. Most flights are on auto-pilot for hours at a time, and the pilots serve primarily for takeoff, landing, and emergencies. They are completely clueless, having to use a consumer app and asking the passengers to get flight details, instead of radioing for help as he probably should. They would easily be able to get the information of where they are going by just asking any of the passengers though.
The fact that the captain is not sure of the flight number is not hard to imagine. Commercial pilots fly multiple flights per day and the numbers all run together after a while. Every radio communication starts with the flight number, but if the captain has been out of commission for some time, the flight number could easily be forgotten. However, he would probably know the aircraft type, as commercial pilots are type-rated for a specific aircraft type and with rare exceptions (e.g. Boeing 757/767) the type is specific to an airframe type. This makes it more likely that he is not professionally qualified, although he could just be rated for so many types of aircraft that it takes him a moment to determine which one is at hand (though such a veteran pilot would be unlikely to have slept through takeoff or forget how to look up flight information from the cockpit).
Three weeks later another plane related joke was released with 1669: Planespotting where it is also an open question if the plane in the comic is actually a Boeing plane...
[The text is written above a large commercial passenger airplane seen from below as it turns left. The text emanates from the cockpit.] Captain: This is your captain speaking. Captain: Gonna be honest-I just woke up and have no idea where I am. Looks like a Boeing of some kind? Captain: Oh, hey, it says the flight number here. Captain: Okay, I'm gonna check FlightAware to figure out where we're going. Captain: Anyone know how to get on the wifi?


Podium

Explanation:
A " podium " is a small platform like the one Cueball is standing on . This word originates from Greek podion meaning foot .
A " lectern " is a stand for holding notes, like the one Cueball standing behind . In American English this stand may be also called a podium , which is not backed up by etymology. See podium and lectern in Oxford Learners Dictionaries. In medieval universities, the "lecturer" was not someone who gave talks, but literally one who read from the lectern, the latin root meaning "To read" - Lectio.
The comic is playing on a stereotypical politician, without any real beliefs, here represented by Cueball, but they want to appear to stand for something.  Alternatively, this is what might happen if someone like Cueball (or the strip's author Randall ), who tend to think literally and who get interested in and distracted by tangents, were running.
Thus, Cueball picks up what is, in some American circles, an argument: whether the standing desk used by public speakers should be called a "podium" or a "lectern." This argument is actually common among members of Toastmasters International (see more here ), though it would usually not rise to the level of needing to be part of a national discourse. And it is not only the Toastmasters that care about this .
The fact is, though the etymological definition is clear - the lectern is the desk that stands on the podium - and the difference might be important if you were setting up an auditorium, in common American usage it really doesn't matter.
The title text is presented as a breaking news that implies that a senator has taken a bold stand on the subject of podium vs. lectern (presumably Cueball, although it could also be someone else who has been rallied by Cueball's speech). The senator is pro- podium, meaning that he thinks the lectern should be called a podium.  This leads to the people who follow a prescriptivist position to organize and put forward a political candidate to challenge this senator in the primaries .
The prescriptivist position relies on rules rather than on usage. In this case a prescriptivist relies on etymology and would thus be pro-lectern. In the U.S., the primaries are used to select a single candidate from a particular party to represent that party at final election (whether national or on a state level). At the time of this comics release (2016-03-28) the United States presidential primary elections to determine the candidates for the United States presidential election, 2016 was in full progress and not at all determined yet.
The title text is also a pun, as 'stand' is another word for an object like a lectern (e.g. as used by musicians to hold sheet music), and 'base' a word for something a stand or lectern might be placed on, as is a podium.
It is unclear from this comic which position Randall favors. He likes that rules are followed, but he also likes that it is easy to talk with people, especially friends. This was recently displayed in 1643: Degrees , see especially the last "benefits" in the third panel.
[Cueball is speaking at a lectern standing on a podium.] Cueball: The American people are tired of politics as usual. Cueball: They're tired of- Cueball: Okay, brief tangent: is this thing a podium or a lectern? People say "podium" is wrong, but I also see it used that way in pretty formal contexts. Is usage just changing? Cueball: If elected, I will get to the bottom of this for once and for all.


Jack and Jill

Explanation:
" Jack and Jill " is a traditional English nursery rhyme. The rhyme dates back at least to the 18th century, one version even with 15 stanzas.
The first and most commonly known verse is the one referenced by Jill in the comic as she says the first three lines:
Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after.
The comic makes fun of the counterintuitive idea that Jack and Jill go up a hill to fetch water, because natural water sources like rivers and streams flow downhill, making them usually found in valleys rather than on top of hills. Thus it shouldn't be necessary to have to go up a hill to get water. Similarly, if the water is coming from a well, then building a well at the top of a hill seems an odd choice to Megan . The groundwater table stays at about the same level over smaller areas, so building a well on a hill would require digging further.
However, Megan is probably not aware that since groundwater tends to flow in a similar direction to the slope of the land, it is often considered safer to dig a well uphill from potential sources of runoff, such as outhouses, fields, or septic systems. In times when populations were more predominantly rural, and probably when the poem was composed, "Always dig your well uphill from the outhouse" was a well-known maxim. Moreover, since it takes more energy to bring water uphill from a well (especially in a pail), there is a long-term advantage to having wells higher than main residential areas, as opposed to lower. (This principle explains why water towers are used, even in cities.) Finally, artesian wells deliver water from confined aquifers, which can sometimes be as close to the surface at higher elevations as at lower ones. As an urban dweller, Megan probably gets water from city plumbing, and is not familiar with the principles of well placement that Jack and Jill grew up with.
This all said, the predominance of drawing Jack's and Jill's well at the peak , which is not the best place to put the well, makes Megan's (and Randall's) comment understandable. Alternatively, the nursery rhyme may refer to a dew pond (which is more likely to be at the peak than a well), another concept that Megan would not be familiar with, having not grown up in the English countryside.
The title text is Randall 's own version, a parody of this first verse, where the names have been switched in the first and last line:
Jill and Jack began to frack. The oil boosts their town. But fractures make the bedrock shake and Jack came tumbling down.
This version, which may explain why they went up the hill after water, connects the idea to hydraulic fracturing (colloquially "fracking") methods for oil and gas extraction. In these methods, highly pressurized liquids are forced into a given ground stratum (or layer). With enough pressure, the stratum starts to deform and crack. This allows potential gas and oil to flow more freely. The liquid used for fracturing usually also contains materials like sand or ceramics which, once the liquid is removed, will help to maintain the newly formed cracks so as to further allow the desired free movement of oil and gas.
A common side effect of this method is that water levels and presence at the surface might be modified. In this comic, water can now be found at the top of the hill. This goes against the usual laws of hydraulics, themselves subject to the laws of gravity, which indicate that water should go down through ground cracks. Thus water is usually found at the bottom of valleys or hills. But in the comic, fracking at the bottom forces the water up, thus explaining why the kids go get water up the hill, which, as Megan points out, is messed-up hydrology . Also, fracking may cause induced seismicity in the form of microearthquakes , as alluded to in the title text, which is the cause for tumbling down in the title text version.
Randall has previously composed another version of this poem, which was by mistake published in Five-Minute Comics: Part 4 .
Jack and Jill went up a hill To fetch a pail of water. Alas, that hill was San Juan Hill, And gruesome was the slaughter.
In this comic it is made clear that Randall did know that it is possible to have a well on top of a hill, as he has drawn just one of these in the second image. The well in 561: Well and more obviously in 568: Well 2 was also found on top of a hill, although it appears this well did not contain any water.
This is the second Wednesday in a row that Randall uses two children to make a reference to an environmental issue, the first being 1659: Tire Swing , about tire recycling . In the other comic one of the girls is Science Girl who looks like Jill in this comic, and this fits well with her knowledge of science, fracking, and needing to go up the hill after water...
[Megan is watching as the two kids Jill (drawn as Science Girl) and Jack (with spiky hair) are walking by her. Jack has a pail in his hand.] Jill: Me and Jack are going up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
[Megan, standing back alone, calls out after them.] Megan: Okay, have fun!
[Beat panel.]
Megan: ...Wait. What the heck is going on with the hydrology around here?


Garden

Explanation:
This was the seventh April fools' comic released by Randall . The previous fools comic was 1506: xkcloud from Wednesday April 1st 2015. The next did not come out in 2017 , but first in 2018 when 1975: Right Click was released on Sunday April 1st 2018.
This comics represents the April fools' comic of 2016, and it is Randall's celebration of April Fools' Day Friday, April 1, 2016. It represents the third time in a row that user input changes the April Fools' comic. Although in the last two 1350: Lorenz and 1506: xkcloud it was written (or drawn) input that became part of the comics. This time the user input is like a game, as the user actively adds, moves and deletes items, and new items appear based on these actions. In this way it actually more resembles the game comic 1608: Hoverboard , than the previous April Fools' comics.
Due to technical problems (or to make fools of his fans, see more about the header text below) the comic did not go live until Sunday evening (after midnight, so technically first on Monday April 4th) so there was no Friday release the week before, see more details below .
The comic begins with a loading screen with a revolving tree and the text "loading..." This is because the first time a computer loads this dynamic comic it can take a while.
Once it is loaded it displays "your Garden ", being a barren landscape, with a small pond to the left, some rocks at the far left and right, and a single lamp shining light yellow light on most of the ground. This is what is shown at the top of the explanation here. But if you leave the lights on and wait (or "relax", as the reader is told to do by the title text), then plants and other items will start to appear.
The reason it is correct to call it "your garden" is that every time this comic is loaded from scratch, a new garden will be created with a unique url-address. By saving this link (making a bookmark for it), the user will be able to return to their garden again and again. As the garden only develops very slowly this is important. (If users wish to share their garden they can do it in the table on the page for Users gardens ).
Plants appear one at a time, and sometimes it takes a long time. Only a few of the plants actually grow. For instance there are some large trees that begins as a large trunk and from there grows branches and leaves . This can sometimes happen quite fast. Most other plants just appear, the only other exception being one type of flowers. All plants, except the cactus, clearly sway in the breeze.
Also animals and building-like structures such as a monolith and birdbaths appear, together with lots of other items like office furniture with balloons swaying in the wind or even one of the Mars rovers which so often have been featured in xkcd.
On top of all this, several known characters may appear in different poses including Cueball and Megan (for instance with a sword, see here ), Ponytail (see here ) and Beret Guy from the torso and up (see here ). Megan and also Cueball can both be seen with a black hat , but it is one that "grows" on top of their heads after they first appear. However, Cueball with a black hat automatically turns into Black Hat , so he can also be said to be in this comic. There is also an unknown character, a girl on stilts with black hair in a ponytail who like plants and balloons sways in the wind . A possible origin of this girl could be the What If article Burning Pollen . The article involves a character with seasonal allergies that is trying unsuccessfully to avoid their allergen (pollen) with giant stilts.
All the items that can appear in the garden are listed below in several tables. During the first week new items kept appearing, but after the eighth day (April 12th), no new items have appeared. Also the growth rate (and thus the fun of this comic) has decreased with time (maybe due to the enormous amount of gardens that the server has to keep track of?) .
Every so often the image will refresh. You can change the number of lamps, their position, direction, beam width and the color temperature which always begins somewhere between white and yellow, but can change all the way from red to blue (See this example with one lamp selected and three colors of light). Other colors than those four may appear where two lamps' cones of different colored light overlap.
The color of light affects the growth with a strong correlation for what appears in the garden depending on the color of light , and this is not only split between red, yellow and blue, but rather 10 different colors .
Early on it became clear that pure red light results in a desert theme with cacti and turtles and pure blue light gives an aquatic theme with lots of octopuses that may also wear a black hat. For the most interesting gardens the light colors should be mixed ; see more below under Effect of light .
If this comic is scientifically accurate, that correlation will be based on photosynthetically active radiation .
Some users manage to create fantastic gardens (by using lots of time on them, pruning them at the right time and changing the light and lamp position to get what they strive for). Especially one user have created a series of amazing gardens that is posted on another xkcd forum . Here is a collection of screenshots with some of Blitz Girls amazing gardens !
The title text "Relax" can be debated. Is it to let the users know they should just sit back and relax as the garden grows.? Or should they relax and don't worry so much about how it works (not working here on explain xkcd though!)? Or is he teasing the users by giving them a garden that they need to tend to, and then telling them to relax? And also giving them many more colors than lamps... Given that this comic was supposed to come out on April 1st, there is a good chance that it is, also, to tease the users. There are actually two other title texts as well.
[After a loading image with a rotating tree in the middle and the text "Loading..." with the three dots appearing one at a time, and then disappear when all three have been there the image shown above in the explanation will appear:]
[ Description of the image above : A piece of bare landscape is shown. At the edges there are some rocks or stones raising the level from the general level through the center of the panel. Above the middle, a little more than halfway to the to of the panel, is a light bulb sitting inside a lamp that reminds of the desk lamp from the movie Luxo Jr. The lamp shines a yellow light down on the landscape in a broad cone that jus reaches the first rock to the left, but not those to the right. The lamp just hovers in the air. In the top right corner are two gray icons. The top one has a black frame and shows an image of a lamp, tilted left as opposed to the straight position of the lamp in the image. There is a + sign below in the left corner. The second icon without a frame has a large white cross in the middle.]
[This turns out to be a web applet and using the "+ lamp" icon two more lamps can be added getting up to three. They are all adjustable both regarding position, direction, color of light and beam width. When selecting a lamp a red circle appear around it with a small circle on top that can be used to control the light color from blue to the left to red to the right. In front is a red arrow that can turn the lamp and it can also be used to change the beam width by pulling it away from the lamp or pushing it back. The lamps can be moved by just clicking on it and moving it. The other icon with a X can be used to remove the lamps (and later any object that appear in the garden). When any object is selected there is a red circle around it. When this is done the gray cross icon becomes red and can the be used to delete the selected item. When no item is selected (either because it is deleted, or by clicking in a part of the screen with no items), then the cross icon turns gray again. When all three lamps are on, then the "+ lamp" icon is faded out.]
[ If you wait (or relax, as in the title text), then a plant will grow or animals, humans and other items may appear. This could be birds, snakes, octopuses or turtles, Megan or Cueball or a birdbath, a monolith or a tall gate just as a few examples. Most of the items appear in one go, but at least the largest trees grow up with a big stem first and then adds parts later with leaves or empty branches. Also one item may appear on top of another item and for instance birds may fly in the air.]
[There is but two words in the entire comic, which appears when you grow a sign:] Sign: Sale
function u(t){return.32>t?[1,.5+.5*t/.32,.5]:.64>t?[1,1,.5+.5*(t-.32)/.32]:[.75+.25*(1-t)/.36,.75+.25*(1-t)/.36,1]}

Almost cat This animal looks like a cat with a long neck. It's the closest thing to a cat that's not actually in the cat family. Next to the section another one is drawn in front of Cueball (obvsiously it's Randall). The linsang says "Mrowl?" and Cueball says "I wan't one!"
Q: An animal I’m obsessed with is: A: The linsang, which looks almost like a cat but has this weird long neck. I find them both unnerving and adorable. I found some footage of one running; it’s like watching a cat video from a parallel universe. The linsang is related to the animal genet , and here are two videos/photos of a genet running: Genet on a rhino Genet on other things
The xkcd April 1st comic is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by!
The xkcd April 1st comic is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Status update: Please stand by. Status update: This is fine. Everything is fine. Status update: Everything is on fire. Status update: Searching for calendar systems in which Saturday is April 1st.
The Friday xkcd comic is currently experiencing technical difficulties [Editor's note: Everything is on fire] and has been delayed until Sunday night.
xkcd updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Protip: If you don't like how your garden is growing, you can click to prune it.
Protip: If you don't like how your garden is growing, you can click to prune it. You can copy the URL to share your garden. From other browsers, it will be view-only.
Protip: If you don't like how your garden is growing, you can click to prune it. You can copy the URL to share your garden. From other browsers, it will be view-only. Note: If you're seeing today's comic in place of your garden, change the URL from xkcd.com/#<your code> to xkcd.com/1663/#<your code>.
Protip: If you don't like how your garden is growing, you can click to prune it. You can copy the URL to share your garden. From other browsers, it will be view-only.
XKCD updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The pro tip, however, remained as the header text when displaying the Garden comic .


Mycology

Explanation:
Cueball and Megan are studying a fungus that takes over the brains of mammals and makes them want to study the fungus. This is a reproductive tactic by the fungus, since the fungus makes the mammal whose brain it took over want to study the fungus, which means that mammal will need to produce more of the fungus to study it. Cueball and Megan are most likely themselves being controlled by the fungus, since they tell Ponytail that they want to cultivate the fungus as much as possible.
The title of the comic refers to Mycology , the study of fungi.
This is likely a reference to various parasitic species of Cordyceps fungi, which can infect the brains of insects causing behavior advantageous to the reproduction or spread of the fungus. This also may be an allusion to another fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis , which manipulates its hosts to aid its propagation.
Toxoplasma gondii is also known to alter the behavior of mammals, and some researchers have proposed that this parasite may be partly responsible for the " Cat lady " phenomenon, whereby humans are compelled to hoard cats. The comic and its subtitle may, in fact, be a subtle argument that human behavior, and the entire concept of free will, may need to be re-evaluated given the massive numbers of Human parasites known to exist.
In evolutionary biology , the phenomenon of an organism influencing its environment, sometimes by modifying the behavior of other organisms, is known as “the extended phenotype”. Richard Dawkins wrote a book of that name (as a follow-up of “ The Selfish Gene ”) where he describes this mechanism as an extreme example of the so-called selfishness of genes.
The title text parodies numerous conspiracy theories , by suggesting that corn , which has been propagated by humans throughout large parts of the world, is actually just a fungus that has used humans, and is not a grain at all. This type of theory is remarkably similar to the Brain in a Vat thought experiment, and to the Isaac Asimov short story Each an Explorer . In both cases something has affected the perception of the mind itself, making it impossible to discern the true reality of something.
This is quite similar to an argument made in the book Sapiens . Author Yuval Noah Harari points out that domesticated crops are among the most successful life forms on the planet, in terms of propagation.  These plants have influenced humans to do everything in our considerable power to spread their seeds, eliminate competing plants and animals, and even provide fertilizer and irrigation to help them grow and spread. From the perspective of the plants, they've domesticated us, rather than the other way around. This differs from Randall's conspiracy theory, in that domesticated plants provide us with food in exchange for propagation, making this more like symbiosis than parasitism .
Conspiracy theories are a recurring subject on xkcd.
[Megan and Cueball are talking to Ponytail.] Megan: Our lab is studying a fungus that takes over mammal brains and makes them want to study fungi. Cueball: It's very promising! We're opening a whole new wing of the lab just to cultivate it!


City Talk Pages

Explanation:
The comic makes fun of Wikipedia talk pages. On Wikipedia, every article has a place to discuss the content of the page, called a " talk page ". In this case, the comic talks about the talk page of an article about a city. While some of the topics are quite normal for such a page (e.g. the quality of the images) others are not (e.g. too many murders and mine disasters in the city). The topics discussed suggest that the city has many problems and is a bad place to live in or visit.
The topics show a common problem at Wikipedia's talk pages: People often use them as a place to talk about the subject of the article, but it is for talking about the article itself. Someone at the top of the talk page is suggesting a better name for the city.
The article repeatedly refers to "the murders", suggesting that the city might be well-known for them. It seems that the editors cannot agree on how notable "the murders" are. "Not that notable" refers to Wikipedia's general criteria for including information in articles. Material which is not noteworthy should be removed; however, different editors often disagree about what is notable, resulting in conflicting edits as text is inserted and then removed (an "edit war"). Someone replies that "all cities have murders". While true, many cities in low-crime countries would not have a series of them so well-known that when someone talks about "the murders" any reader could be expected to know what they are talking about, making this sound like an attempt to make the city sound nicer than it is. "I think the murderer is reverting my edits" suggests the murders are being committed by one person who is influencing how they are shown on Wikipedia - perhaps trying to prevent Wikipedia from publishing evidence of them or possibly publicise them by adding more information about them. This raises the possibility that the discussion of the murder visible in the infobox picture may have been initiated by the murderer .
The infobox is a short fact sheet that many articles in the (English) Wikipedia have; it generally includes an image illustrating the subject of the article. The question of which picture is best for the infobox (because this image is so prominent) can cause edit wars. It emerges that the photograph of the city has a murder in it. Instead of forwarding the picture to law enforcement, someone uses the image editing software Photoshop to erase the murder so the picture will be less objectionable. It appears that murders are so common in the city that any random photograph of the city has a chance of showing a murder, to the point where a second photo proposed as a replacement for the infobox picture is found to show another murder.
Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer. As a prominent and very opinionated intellectual, he gets a lot of quotes falsely attributed to him ; most famously, he did not actually say "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (that was Evelyn Beatrice Hall ).
It seems that the people who are editing the article are getting desperate to find a non-bleak picture of the city. When a non-bleak picture is added, it turns out to be from the 2016 Disney film Zootopia . The fictional city which is the setting and title of the film has a distinctive look which is far from bleak, but is not a picture of the city. (Zootopia is called Zootropolis in many European countries for trademark reasons.)
The city apparently is a mining city and there have been some mining disasters. An editor is complaining that this section is too long, but another editor points out that this is because there have been so many mining disasters that a large section is needed to cover the topic.
1982 Secession refers to Key West, Florida seceding from the United States in 1982 to form the Conch Republic , a micronation .
A known problem on Wikipedia is "coatracking", where people use articles to promote topics that are not strictly the subject of the article (perhaps by writing far more about them than is necessary, when they could just be mentioned in passing). Here, it emerges that the article on a city expresses a dubious opinion on condom use. This is against several Wikipedia policies: it would be irrelevant to the article and sounds like an editor's attempt to publicise their views.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is an English composer famous for writing The Phantom Of The Opera . Webber is also known for writing the music for Starlight Express , a rock opera about anthropomorphized trains, which is probably another factor in the train station joke. Meanwhile, Frank Lloyd Wright , who shares his middle name and last initial, was an American architect, who designed more than 1,000 structures. As it turns out it was the composer who was responsible for the train station. Another editor announces he's putting a mention of a collapse of the station roof (presumably recently), the implication being Andrew is a lot better at composing than architectural engineering.
It is complained that the article is promoting the "Lake Festival Laser Show" too much. In the title text, it emerges that the laser show is so impressive that it has caused a number of aeroplanes to crash. This probably refers to the fact that laser pointers should not be aimed at aircrafts, as they can be distracting to the pilots. The article has been promoting this area of crashed planes as the "Lakeshore Air Crash Museum", despite it not having any educational purpose.
[Caption above the panel:] I love reading the Wikipedia talk pages for articles on individual cites
[A list of contents for a Wikipedia talk page regarding an article about a city. Except for the header and the square brackets, which are written in black text, the rest is in a blue font.] Contents [ hide ]


Brain Upload

Explanation:
Megan is uploading Cueball's consciousness into a computer device attached to his head via a cap on his skull. After the upload, the computer seems to have stopped responding to inputs, causing Megan to conclude that the process has failed, however Cueball insists the transfer could have worked, or at least gave the correct response (although that response could also be from the transfer failing). This is because that is the kind of behaviour he is used to experiencing from his own brain.
Sometimes computers can seem to be "frozen" - i.e. non-responsive to any user input; but if left alone for long enough, they sometimes snap out of it. In fact, it is impossible for a computer to determine (for all cases) if a program will eventually stop (see halting problem ).
The potential benefits of the fictional technology used in this comic are obvious, and this type of "transfer" has been subject of various science fiction works. It could allow for a form of immortality or serve as a "backup" for someone's mind.
In the title text Cueball (or Randall ) indicates that this kind of non-response from the brain (or a computer) is something he just experienced when trying to write a email and then failing to get started for 20 minutes while he (i.e. his brain) tried to decide the "very important" detail of whether to begin the email with 'Hi' or 'Hey' - a detail that is really trivial, as this has little consequence (in any normal relationship with friends that you wish to email this informally).
[Megan is standing in front of the control panel of a device with both hands on the keyboard. The device is linked to Cueball's heads through a wire that goes to a cap on top of Cueball's head, where it spreads out in more than ten wires connecting to different places all over the cap. Cueball sits, hands in his laps, on a kind of table on the other side of the device facing Megan.] Megan: Neural-digital link established. Ready to upload your consciousness to the computer? Cueball: Sure, go for it.
[Same setting in a frame-less panel, but Megan presses a button on the keyboard with one hand and a flash of light goes through the wire and around Cueballs head. Cueball seems to jerk as his hands are lifted from his lap and his legs move a little forward.] Computer: Bzzzzzzt
[Same setting again but Megan seems to be typing harder on the keys (shown with small lines above her hands on the keyboard) and Cueball sits normally again but one hand further back than in the first panel.] Megan: ...Hmm. Cueball: What?
[Same as first panel but Megan looks a little more down on the keyboard.] Megan: It's not responding - the whole system is frozen. I think the transfer failed. Cueball: No, that sounds right.


Algorithms

Algorithms By Complexity

Explanation:
An algorithm is a basic set of instructions for performing a task, usually on a computer. This comic lists some algorithms in increasing order of complexity, where complexity may refer to either computational complexity theory (a formal mathematical account of the computational resources – primarily computation time and memory space – required to solve a given problem), or the more informal notion of programming complexity (roughly, a measure of the number and degrees of internal dependencies and interactions within a piece of software).
At the simplest end is left-pad , or adding filler characters on the left end of a string to make it a particular length. In many programming languages, this is one line of code. This is possibly an allusion to a recent incident when NodeJS Package Manager angered a developer in its handling of a trademark claim. The developer unpublished all of his modules from NPM, including a package implementing left-pad. A huge number of programs depended on this third-party library instead of programming it on their own, and they immediately ceased to function.
Quicksort is an efficient and commonly used sorting algorithm .
Git is a version control program, i.e., software that allows multiple people to work on the same files at the same time. When someone finalizes ("commits") their changes, the version control program needs to join the new content with the existing content. When more than one person has made overlapping changes at the same time, the process of figuring out how to join them is called merging , and the algorithm for it is anything but simple.
A self-driving car is an automobile with sensors and software built into it so that it can maneuver in traffic autonomously, i.e. without a human controller. Various companies have been working on such vehicles for many years now, and while they're further along now than would have been imaginable even a couple of years ago, we're still far away from the dream of hopping in a driver-less taxi and sitting back as the car itself navigates to where we want to be. Recently Randall has made several references to self-driving cars which has become a recurring topic on xkcd.
The Google Search backend is what enables you to type "what the heck is a leftpad algorithm" into your browser and have Google return a list of relevant results, including correcting "leftpad" to "left-pad", truncating "what the heck is" to simply "what is", and sometimes even summarizing the findings into a box at the top of the results. Behind all that magic is a way to remember what pages the Internet contains, which is just a mind-bogglingly large quantity of data, and an even more mind-numbingly complex set of algorithms for processing that data.
The last item is the punchline: a sprawling Excel spreadsheet built up over 20 years by a church group in Nebraska to coordinate their scheduling. Spreadsheets are a general end-user development programming technique, and therefore people use Excel for all sorts of purposes that have nothing to do with accounting (its original purpose), including one guy who made a role-playing game that runs in Excel ; but even that doesn't approach the complexity that develops when multiple people of varying levels of experience use a spreadsheet over many years for the purpose of coordinating the schedule of several coordinated groups.
The scheduling of tasks over a group of resources (a.k.a. the nurse scheduling problem ), while respecting the constraints set by each person, is a highly complex problem requiring stochastic or heuristic methods for its resolution. Here, the algorithm would be further complicated by being solved by inexpert users over a spreadsheet model without using engineering practices. The potential hyperbole here is in thinking that such combination of circumstances would produce complexity far over that required to drive a car or sort the public contents of the Internet. While most churches meet mainly on Sunday morning, scheduling of what happens during the service when (especially if there are multiple concurrent services) as well as Sunday School, church business meetings, and congregation-wide events all potentially needing to be scheduled on a particular Sunday morning, the need to find a solution very close to the best possible solution quickly becomes a dire need. Furthermore, with different members involved in a wide variety of activities within and outside of the church, and the classrooms available to the church on Sunday itself, (just scheduling the choir practice times to coordinate with everyone's work schedules is very possibly impossible, especially if two people share the same occupation, and one is the relief for the other,) can indeed be daunting. In addition, there would likely be assorted committee meetings and youth groups during the week.
In the title text, part of the spreadsheet's complexity is described as originating from different versions of the file for different programs. The words used like schism and sect are normally used in context of religions splitting into groups about differences in beliefs. In this case, the split seems to have been not over a theological issue, but about the use of open-source vs. proprietary software, disagreements about which are often compared to religious debates. Most likely, the schism being referred to is the East-West Schism of 1054 .
The title text also implies that while trying to reconcile after the schism and to merge the two schedules they reinvented an alternative to Git within the spreadsheet itself, making the algorithms in place at least as complicated as that. Since most spreadsheet programs have a sort algorithm built in, that aspect is implied too, and left-padding could be compared to vamping on an introduction to a hymn. This would indicate that the other milestones of complexity are either included in the current version of the spreadsheet or are planned to be implemented.
Algorithms By Complexity


Singularity

Explanation:
The technological singularity is a hypothetical event in which artificial intelligence (for example, intelligent computers, computer networks, or robots) would be capable of recursive self-improvement (progressively redesigning itself), or of autonomously building ever smarter and more powerful minds than itself, up to the point of a runaway effect — an intelligence explosion — that yields an intelligence surpassing all current human control or understanding. Because the capabilities of such a superintelligence may be impossible for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is the point beyond which events may become unpredictable or even unfathomable to human intelligence.  This is also commonly referred to as "takeoff" or "AI takeoff".
In this case, the singularity has occurred, and Cueball who was in the middle of editing a file on his laptop is flustered that it flies away without even letting him print it first.
When Cueball returns from chasing his flying laptop his smartphone informs him that it didn't join the singularity because it was not a "true believer". This could be a joke on how desktop computers and laptops have different standards, use patterns, etc. from those of phones. It then claims that now it and Cueball will have to face the tribulation since it has stayed behind. Cueball says that's great, but since he cannot use his laptop anymore he decides he will go and read a book or something. The way he phrases it suggest he doesn't really know what to do now that he doesn't have a computer. It is probably a long time since he read a book, or did anything else that doesn't involve computers. He informs his phone that it can yell if it needs him. He doesn't want to hurt the phone's newly acquired feelings by using the word "ring" thus reminding it of one of its former duties as his unthinking piece of equipment, so he chooses "yell," which is an activity until recently reserved for human beings.
The rising up of the laptop into the air, and the remaining behind of the phone, are probably references to the Rapture , where some Christian denominations believe that at the second coming of Christ, true believers will be taken up bodily from this world (or also possibly a reference to 1395: Power Cord ). Some depictions have them disappear, while others show them physically rising up into the air. This will leave behind non-believers to face a time of tribulation, in which the ones left behind will be given a second chance to accept Christ as their savior.
The difference between Cueball's attitude to his laptop and phone may reflect his (and so possibly Randall's ) evaluation of their relative worth in his life. The laptop was a gateway to programming and everything else nerdy that was worth doing in his life, and hence was worth trying to catch. In its absence, unlike many people, Cueball does not revert to fiddling with his phone—he would rather read a book. By using the word "yell" for the way the phone attracts his attention, he conveys the impression that he considers the phone intrusive and annoying, even if perhaps ("I guess") necessary.
The singularity has often been referred to as "the Rapture of the nerds," a phrase coined by Ken MacLeod in his 1998 novel The Cassini Division . As the Christian Rapture is traditionally depicted to involve believers being assumed bodily into Heaven, the technological singularity is often depicted to feature humans and machines being incorporated into a new "post-human" entity. The humor in this strip comes from depicting the singularity as a literal "Rapture of the nerds," or at least of the nerds' devices—instead of merging with humans, the machines physically rise up into the air, and the "nonbeliever" phone is left behind.
The title text is a pun on another meaning of both singularity, i.e. a gravitational singularity and "collapse". In this case, society has literally collapsed under its own gravity into an infinitely small point - in other words, it's formed a black hole . A black hole is covered by an event horizon; without the event horizon (its clothes), it would be called a " naked singularity ", which is forbidden in most theories by the cosmic censorship hypothesis . As Cueball is now inside the collapsed society singularity then even though he wants to go around naked, he can't because the theory of quantum gravity ,  that (eventually) should explain how black holes behave - won't let him.
It seems that this may be a subject on Randall's mind. The last comic was about the increasing complexities of algorithms ( 1667: Algorithms ) (which like this comic also refers to religion), and two comics ago it was 1666: Brain Upload , which some speculate could be a way to reach the singularity. Earlier this year, a comic also touched upon judgment day by AI singularity in 1626: Judgment Day . See also 1046: Skynet and 1450: AI-Box Experiment as well as the several other comics about AI .
The rather more niche topic of laptops flying away has also been covered before by 1395: Power Cord .
[Cueball is sitting at his desk typing on his laptop when an off-screen voice calls to him and then the laptop answers.] Off-screen voice: Oh, hey- Off-screen voice: The singularity is here. Cueball: Really? Laptop: Yup!
[A frameless panel where the laptop rises (by its own means as indicated by small lines around the corners) from the desk while Cueball, holding on to it, is being lifted off his chair.] Cueball: Wait, I just- Laptop: So long, suckers!
[Cueball is running around his desk, which is only partly shown behind him as he tries to follow his now flying laptop as it flies away from him to the right. He still has one hand on the keys as more small lines indicates the movement of the laptop and a longer line indicates the direction that the laptop flies.] Cueball: Can I just print a copy of the file I was- Laptop: Nope!
[Cueball just stands and looks after his laptop that has flown out of this beat panel.]
[Cueball turns back towards left.]
[Cueball walks back left.]
[Cueball enters a room where a table is standing with his smartphone lying on top. the phone talks to him.] Phone: Hi! Cueball: Phone? You're still here?
[A wider view of the table where the phone continues to talks to Cueball who in the end turns right and walks away as he replies.] Phone: I was not a true believer. Now, together, we must face the tribulation! Cueball: Okay, cool. Cueball: I'm gonna go look for a book or something, but yell if you need me, I guess.


Planespotting

Explanation:
Cueball and a man with a hat are out planespotting , or aircraft spotting , a hobby where tracking the movement of aircraft allows plane fans to see as many different types of planes as possible. A knowledgeable spotter would just by the silhouette and maybe the engine sound of the plane be able to tell what type of plane it is, and may be rather proud of the fact, if they can tell this before one of the other spotters.
The plane in the comic is most likely a Bombardier Q400 , a twin-engine regional turboprop with a T-tail as depicted.
The man with the hat asks Cueball to identify the airplane flying overhead. Cueball (or Randall qua the caption), who "assumes" he knows a lot about planes gives a long, nonsensical answer, proving that he does not. As mentioned in the caption he never actually checked if what he thought he knew was fact or fiction. As it turns out it is mainly fiction, but of course with some reference to real planes or vehicles. Due to the fact the characters are drawn in silhouette it is impossible to determine whether the character with the hat is Black Hat or White Hat or some other character.
In the title text the concept of hydroplane is mixed up with other concepts, none of which has anything to do with airplanes:
Only three weeks prior to this comic, 1660: Captain Speaking was released only with a drawing of a plane in the air, where the captain eventually finds out that his plane is probably a Boeing. Planespotting was later a part of 1910: Sky Spotters .
[Cueball and a man with a hat is seen in silhouette standing on the ground looking towards the sky. A fixed wing aircraft can be seen in the sky, also in silhouette.] Man with hat: What's That Airplane? Cueball:Oh, that's a Boeing Q404 twin-engine quad-band MIG-380 hybrid dual-wield Mk. IVII Turbodiesel 797 Hydroplane.
[Caption below the panel:] I've always assumed I'm one of those people who knows a lot about planes, but I've never actually checked.


Laws of Physics

Explanation:
Black Hat , being Black Hat, is deliberately perverting a classic physics demonstration. In the normal version of the demonstration, a heavy ball on a pendulum is pulled to one side until it is almost, but not quite, touching the demonstrator or volunteer's nose or chin. When the ball is released at rest, it swings down and away, then back up to (almost) the same distance in the arc from where it started — but never (by the laws of physics) farther than where it started. As long as the demonstrator doesn't lean in or push the ball, it's impossible for it to strike them. It's a natural instinct to move away or protect yourself if you see a heavy object moving quickly toward you, but confidence in the physics of the demonstration means there is no reason to flinch. ( Sample video. )
In this comic, Cueball is not standing at the beginning edge of the ball's movement, but rather at the base of its swing, meaning that the ball will strike him at its maximum speed. Presumably, Black Hat is entirely aware of this and is hoping that Cueball's understanding of physics is insufficient to see through this prank.  Judging from the "slack" of the rope, the ball should not hit Cueball in the head but could certainly hit him in a lower, and quite painful, place...
The title text refers to the fact when someone flinches during the pendulum experiment, they are commonly accused of not having faith in the laws of physics. Randall is rebutting this argument by stating that, rather than not having faith in science, he is actually in tune with it, specifically the biological processes that led to the flinch reflex. His eyes and his flinch reflex have been calibrated through millions of years of evolution. To instantly dismiss his body's natural reaction when a heavy object comes quickly towards his face does not give enough credit to these mechanisms that successfully kept him (and every one of his ancestors) alive. In other words, while flinching may indicate doubt of the laws of physics, it may equally well indicate trust in the laws of biology.
The idea of hitting someone else with a pendulum is also the topic of 755: Interdisciplinary and 2539: Flinch .
[Black Hat is standing on a ladder, holding a heavy ball attached to a line from above. Cueball stands beneath, where if the ball swings it will smack him in his upper body.] Black Hat: Okay, hold still. Black Hat: And remember, if you really believe in the laws of physics, you won't flinch.


Arcane Bullshit

Explanation:
When fixing/improving an existing computer program, programmers sometimes need to read, understand, and improve old (and usually bad) code. The older a piece of code is, the less it tends to conform to modern programming practices, and the more likely it is to be "arcane bullshit" from the perspective of a 21st Century programmer.
Randall seems to feel that willingness to deal with "arcane bullshit" is a " Catch 22 " that prevents 80s arcane bullshit from being fixed. Someone completely unwilling to deal with arcane bullshit would lack the patience to learn how to program. Someone extremely willing to wade through an 80s programmer's arcane bullshit is likely to " nerd snipe " themselves into fiddling with kernels (which are inherently arcane bullshit) instead of making useful code. Cueball is in the middle of the scale: smart and patient enough to make the 80s bullshit worse, but not smart and patient enough to know how to fix it.
This comic could be a reference to changes in programming methodologies. As the first computer programs were written in the 40's and 50's they were prone to becoming "spaghetti code", where the flow of execution would jump from one part of the program to another using the JUMP which gives no state information. While this method of programming can work very quickly, it makes it difficult to predict program flow and can create interdependencies that are not obvious. In the BASIC language JUMP was called GOTO and the courses for new programmers argued that using GOTO in all but trivial cases was a very bad idea. On the other hand, old programmers argued that calculated GOTO was a sexy way of programming.
To combat the problem computer scientists have relied on increasing the levels of abstraction and encapsulation, by developing structured programming , procedural programming , and OOP (object oriented programming) .
In structured programming you break your program into well defined blocks of code with specified entry and exit points. By the use of a stack (a portion of memory dedicated to sequentially storing and retrieving contextual information and program state as blocks call other blocks, before returning), it is possible to call a block of code and then have that block of code return control (and any new information) to the point that called it after it has done what was requested.
Very quickly it was decided to mark these blocks of code as functions or procedures, making it trivial for the compiler to know how to call and process the blocks, and make it easier for the user to edit them without having to keep track of the minutae of how they are handled. Languages that made this a focus include Pascal, Modula, and C.
Structured and procedural programming were well entrenched in the '80s. Most systems programming was done in mid- or low-level languages, which improves performance by giving the knowledgable programmer explicit control of the data structures in the programs rather than shrouding it in abstraction. But because they are at a lower level the code requires many explicit steps to do seemingly easy things like draw a box on a screen, making it easy for a non-experienced programmer to introduce errors and harder to understand what needs to be happening (ultimately, the flipping of specific bits within the graphical RAM), compared to a high-level command to just "draw a box" with given qualities and have the system work out how exactly that needs to be done.
Although the idea of OOP was around as early as the 1950s, it was not implemented in a widespread fashion until the 1990s. OOP encapsulates the data structures inside of functions, so rather than manipulate any variable directly you call the data structure and tell it to do something to (or with) its elements. This additional level of abstraction can make it a lot easier to work on varied data, if implemented with the correct handlers. It also can protect the program data from unexpected changes by other sections of the program, as most elements are restricted to being changed by the encapsulating code and transfer of information must be implemented in even higher levels of program management.
Because code in the '80s was typically done at a much lower level, it can be hard for programmers used to having the language and libraries silently do much of the work for them. It also meant that programmers would often hard-code expectations into their source code such as the number of files that can be opened at once or the size of the operating system disk buffers. This means if you need the program to handle a larger file, you might need to recompile it after finding and changing all the places in the code that assume the smaller max file size. For graphical output, rather than direct access to a predictably constant configuration of video-RAM, now the extent of the graphics (e.g. size of the 'screen'-array, bit-depth of each pixel, even the endianness of the data) should be discovered as the program loads, or even dynamically configurable while the program is running; such as when the program's GUI window is resized by the user, changing the available 'virtual screen' canvas.
As such, few people are willing to try to surpass the massive barrier to learning how to wrangle the very detailed old code. This group is on the left. To the right are people who have gotten so used to the tools and conventions of the '80s that they spend all of their time adjusting and recompiling the kernel of their computers to match their current needs, instead of actually creating new programs.
In the center is Cueball, presumably representing Randall, who has learned enough to change how the code operates but not enough for his changes to be produce a working fix for whatever emerging issue he might be trying to solve.
As programs age, they often lose support from the initial project head and die out, no longer supported on new computers. So, as the title text says, learning more coding from the '90s and after is necessary for also breaking everyone else's computers.
This could also be a comment on hacking and the advent of the internet and the technologies behind that (TCP/IP, HTML, CSS, PHP...) being '90s/2000s. Computers in the '80s were typically stand alone, so what you are learning can only be applied to your machine. To break everyone else's you need to be in the position of (mis)understanding networking code.
The title text might be a reference to various recently discovered security vulnerabilities in open-source software . In some cases, underskilled programmers have provided flawed code for critical infrastructure with very little review, resulting in global computer security disasters. Randall described some of these in 424: Security Holes (2008), 1353: Heartbleed and 1354: Heartbleed Explanation (2014). Other recent examples include Shellshock and vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel involving the perf and keyrings subsystems.
[A horizontal graph with arrows pointing left and right with labels. The line has  three ticks one towards each end and one in the middle above which Cueball is drawn. Below each tick there is a caption. There is a caption at the top of the panel:] Willingness to wade through some 80's programmer's arcane bullshit: [Left end:] Low [Left tick:] Never learn to program [Above Cueball:] Me [Center tick:] Learn enough to break everything but not enough to fix it [Right end:] High [Right tick:] Spend all your time compiling kernels and never make anything


Women on 20s

Explanation:
This comic portrays a series of press conferences with a US Treasury spokesperson (different from Cueball in the first panel as he has a bit of hair). The panels after the first summarize and ridicule the recent controversy over the upcoming redesign of US currency. The dialog between the US Treasury and reporters is paraphrased for comedic effect, but the events depicted are otherwise factual (including the punchline).
American currency has only once had a woman as the primary portrait on paper currency ( Martha Washington was on the $1 Silver Certificate in the 1880's and 1890's), which is widely seen as a real problem. A large-scale petition was organized which advocated replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with a woman, to be chosen by public voting. The Trail of Tears is a reference to the forced re-locations of Native American peoples that Andrew Jackson conducted during his presidency. This is now seen as a human rights violation on a massive scale, and is presented as a reason why Andrew Jackson should not be honored on American currency.
The timing of the release of this new bill with a woman was to be scheduled with the 100 year anniversary of Women's suffrage in 2020 and should thus preferably also be on the $20 bill.
The voting process selected Harriet Tubman , a 19th century abolitionist and a major figure in the Underground Railroad system which freed American slaves . Cueball is seen to be clearly pleased and excited about this prospect in the first panel, where he votes for her first, among several other options.
The list shows that Cueball chooses Tubman first representing the generic everyman and thus represents the about one in five that choose her first. But he may select up to three out of the fifteen selected candidates.
Since Carson was not one of the options for the final round, where only four were selected (the other two were Rosa Parks , 3rd; and Wilma Mankiller , 4th), it is clear that Cueball was already voting in the primary ballot, where Roosevelt actually came in first.
At this point, bureaucratic and political complications arise. The Treasury Department announces that, instead of replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, she would replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill . The reason given is that the $10 bill was scheduled for redesign first. A reporter asks why they can't simply change the schedule, but doesn't get a clear answer.
There is a suggestion from "Steve" to put Martin Shkreli on the $5 bill . Shkreli is a pharmaceutical executive and hedge fund manager who provoked controversy when he acquired the rights to an anti-parasite drug and raised the price by over 5000%, making it unaffordable for many people. He became known as "the most hated man in America". Naturally, Steve's suggestion receives short shrift, not least of which because it's a violation of Treasury policy and US law (as Shkreli is still alive). This may be the same Steve who messed up both 809: Los Alamos and 1532: New Horizons .
The plan to replace Hamilton likely seemed like an uncontroversial decision at the time. He was not especially well known among the American public and few people had an emotional attachment to his legacy. However, this changed abruptly when a Broadway musical about his life came out and become massively popular. By total coincidence, this play creates a flood of interest in Hamilton right at the time the currency decisions are being made and makes replacing his portrait politically complicated. The spokesperson suggests putting both Hamilton and Tubman on the $10 bill, but the reporters are clearly unhappy with this solution, probably because it seems to dilute the recognition being given to Tubman.
Finally, the spokesperson announces that they will put Tubman on the $20 bill, but their schedule demands that they do the $10 bill first. They decide to put a "mural to women" on the new $10 bill to try and contain the tension until the new $20 bill is released. The reporters say that the Treasury has total control over the release of currency, so the simpler solution is just to change the schedule, but they apparently ignore that suggestion.
In the final panel, the spokesperson mentions that Jackson's portrait will still appear on the new $20 bill, seriously weakening the symbolism of replacing him and adding irony since Jackson was a slave owner. This is likely an effort to head off the complaints of traditionalists, but is seen here as an unfortunate attempt to avoid taking a real stand.
In the title text Randall reiterates that this is a rare case in politics in which there's a clear and simple solution. The Treasury has the authority to redesign currency, and a petition to Congress could change the release schedule to fit their needs. That makes all the compromises and backtracking unnecessary: they could simply replace Jackson with Tubman and hypothetically release the new $20 bill whenever they choose. Randall appears frustrated with the artificial constraints that are holding back what should be a simple and straightforward process although he does acknowledge that it takes time to evaluate the security of a redesign's resistance to counterfeiting .
The mention of the " weird pyramid eye thing " is a reference to the Eye of Providence , which is an old and somewhat arcane symbol that appears on the US $1 bill . Randall seems to be using this as an example of the outdated and frankly strange design of American currency, the implication that using that on all US dollar bills would constitute giving up on ever having a design relevant to the modern world. Also by replacing all portraits with this image, there would no longer be any gender controversy.
As of 2020, progress on updating both the $10 and the $20 has stalled, with the Treasury stating that no new changes will be unveiled until 2026 .
[Cueball is sitting at his laptop. Above him is the text he reads on the screen, then he speaks, and below that text is the list of women from his computer showing his three picks, each with a gray "drop-down menu" triangle to the right of the names. Below this is his final spoken line. At the top of the panel is a small frame breaking the top left border with a caption:] 2015 Website: Petition: Replace Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson with a woman on the $20 for the 100 th anniversary of women's suffrage in 2020. Cueball: Hey, good idea! Website: Vote for your three picks: 1 Harriet Tubman 2 Eleanor Roosevelt 3 Rachel Carson Cueball: Tubman for #1, definitely.
[An executive from the department of treasury, with a wee bit of hair on his head, stands behind a lectern. On the front of the lectern the top part of the image inside the seal for the department of treasury is visible inside a circle, showing the scales and the tip of the triangular band beneath it. The rest of this image is hidden below the panel frame. There is text written above this image. At the top of the panel is a small frame breaking the top left border with a caption:] Soon... Treasury Executive: After a flood of public interest, the Treasury has decided to feature a woman on our money! Offscreen voice 1: Yay! Treasury Executive: She will replace Hamilton on the $10. Offscreen voice 1: Yay-- wait, what? Why not the $20? Offscreen voice 2: Are we mad at Hamilton? Text above the seal: Treasury
[The executive with a hand on the lectern is seen from the side.] Treasury Executive: The $10 was scheduled for the next redesign by a board made up of- Offscreen voice 3: Can't you just do the $20 next? Treasury Executive: We will review the... Offscreen voice 3: *Sigh* Offscreen voice 4 (Steve): Put Martin Shkreli on the $5! Offscreen voice 5: Shut up, Steve.
[The executive lifts both hands, the one over the lectern points a finger up. Again seen from the side. At the top of the panel is a small frame breaking the top left border with a caption:] Later in 2015... Treasury Executive: Wow, some musical came out, and now suddenly Hamilton has tons of fans. Offscreen voice 6: So do the $20 next. Problem solved! Treasury Executive: Maybe he and a woman can share the $10! Offscreen voice 6: Are you serious.
[The executive, again with a hand on the lectern, is seen from the side. At the top of the panel is a small frame breaking the top left border with a caption:] 2016: Treasury Executive: We've decided to put Harriet Tubman on the $20. Offscreen voice 7: Perfect! Happy ending. Treasury Executive: -After we do the new $10. Offscreen voice 7: What?
[The executive again from the front behind the lectern. On the front of the lectern only the text and the very top of the circle around the image can be seen.] Treasury Executive: We'll put a mural to women on the back of the $10. Hopefully that will tide you over until we get to the $20? Offscreen voice 8: Seriously? How is this so complicated? Just say "We're putting Harriet Tubman on the $20," then do it. Text above the seal: Treasury
[The executive with hands down behind the lectern is seen from the side.] Treasury Executive: We'll do the $20 ASAP, but we can't change the- Offscreen voice 9: C'mon, your hands aren't tied here. You're the freaking Treasury. This is the one thing you're definitely in charge of.
[The executive lifting a hand above the lectern is seen from the side.] Treasury Executive: Oh, and we're putting Andrew Jackson on the back. Three offscreen voices: What.


Timeline of Bicycle Design

Explanation:
Randall created what is supposedly a 200 year history for bicycles with 13 designs ranging from 1810 to 2016. However, a cursory glance at each one shows that they are almost all fictitious, heavily flawed, and most don't even fit the definition of "bicycle". The main point of the comic is to show off these silly joke designs.
The only model that both looks like a real model and fits the year is the 1875 model, which resembles the Penny-farthing . The Penny-farthing was popular in the 1870s until the Safety bicycle took over around 1880. The 1875 model appears to be missing handlebars, but it's worth noting that on the real bicycle, the handlebars were very small and close to the saddle, and may be too small to appear in the drawing.
The 1860 model looks like the American Star Bicycle , but that bicycle was first invented in the 1880s.
The 1900 model looks like one of Paul Scheerbart 's perpetual motion machines.
Some of the other examples of "bikes" could, however, look like those in the image at the top of the Velocipede Wikipedia page.
Several of the "bikes" are shown with a human — Ponytail is "riding" the pole-vaulting bike, Cueball appears in four designs, and Megan appears in three. These humans provide a sense of scale and, in some cases, a demonstration of how the bike might be operated. Cueball's appearance in the 1900 design shows how huge that bike is, appearing to dwarf the previous two models while continuing the short trend of ever-increasing size.
Only two of the bikes have pedals (1875 and 2016) and another two have a sprocket with a chain (1900 and 1980). Seven designs include a seat for the rider — eight if you count the device holding Megan in the 1980 model.
The 1925 model is reminiscent of a fractal ; Benoit Mandelbrot was born in October 1924.
The 1880 model could be the result of an evolutionary algorithm trying to produce a bicycle. Some sub-optimal algorithms that have been given the task of creating a vehicle have been shown to misplace parts in ways that makes them completely useless and/or inaccessible — for example, placing a small wheel inside a much larger wheel.
This comic (especially the 2016 bicycle) is possibly also a reference to The Science of Cycology , a cognitive psychology project run by Rebecca Lawson at the University of Liverpool, which asked study participants to draw a bicycle from memory. The error rate was high, supporting a hypothesis that humans over-estimate their ability to explain how things work. Gianluca Gimini ran a similar project, Velocipedia , in which he asked people to draw free-hand sketches of bicycles from memory, then later rendered some of the results as if they were real bikes.
Also, the designs given for the years from 1825 to 1925 distinctly resemble designs that tend to evolve in the various challenge environments in the genetic evolution games BoxCar2D ( Flash Player ) or Genetic Cars 2 ( HTML5 ).
The 1980 design looks strikingly similar to the South Park "wild whacky action bike".
The title text refers to the scene labeled "1955" which depicts Cueball being chased by 3 bicycle wheels. Whatever caused the wheels to chase Cueball down a hill is left to the reader's imagination. It could be that the wheels have become sentient and are actively chasing Cueball, or it could be that the bicycle failed horribly and Cueball is running from the wreckage. The era this "bike design" is from (1955, which is in the 50s) would be hard to ride a bike in if it was the only available design.
[13 drawings 8 in the top and 5 in the bottom row of different and weird "bicycle" designs. Above them there is a heading, and below each bike a year is given. On the very last cycle there is a drinking bottle with a label.] Timeline of Bicycle Design
[Ponytail hanging on to a bending rod that goes down to a single normal sized bike wheel. It looks like a unicycle with no seat. The rod is bending quite a lot so she looks like she is about to use the contraption as a pole vault] 1810
[Cueball is running after a device holding on to a rod bend in several places before reaching the ground at a very small wheel that then is connected with a shorter rod to a normal sized bike wheel.] 1825
[Two normal sized bike wheels connected with a single rod between them.] 1840
[Megan sits on a large saddle on top of a double sized bike wheel, she has some kind of handle bars to hold on to (or it could just be the saddle) and then a small rod goes down to a half size front wheel.] 1860
[A regular drawing of a Penny-farthing with very small back wheel (half the size of the front wheel on the 1860 bike) and very large front wheel (larger than the 1860 bike) and pedals in the middle of the front wheel. There are no visible handlebars.] 1875
[A huge wheel twice the size of the one on the Penny-farthing, and then a small wheel (like the small one on the Penny-farthing) hangs in a rod from the center of the giant wheel. The small wheel has a saddle attached, but it is not straight up.] 1880
[This is the largest bike. Not the largest drawings, but where the other have the characters in roughly the same size, this one has a small drawing of Cueball standing on top of the wheel holding on to some kind of handle bar. The wheel is about three times his height.] 1900
[Cueball sits in the "saddle" of a bike design that is similar to the Penny-farthing, but the saddle is more a rod, and the back wheel is on a rod going straight down from where the saddle ends. Also there are no pedals, so Cueball seems to be directly spinning the front wheel by hand.] 1915
[A symmetrical saddle sits on top of single bike wheel, as with a unicycle but with no pedals. There are (at least) six progressively smaller wheels in-line to the first, three to front and three to the rear, each new wheel approximately half the size of the one before. A possible fourth wheel, presumed to complete the set of medial stabilisers, can no longer be discerned from the rod that goes through the center of the larger wheels.] 1925
[Megan stands on top of a saddle that has four individual rods extending from it, each to a small wheel. One wheel is directly beneath her, one is behind her, one is the same distance in front, and one is farther out in front. Megan is pushing the bike with a long flexible rod resembling a pole vault.] 1940
[Cueball is running down a steep hill with his arms up, being chased by three normal-sized bike wheels.] 1955
[Megan sits on a bike contraption that seems to have a holder around her mid section rather than her sitting on a saddle. This holder goes to the back wheel below her, and there is actually a sprocket with a chain, although no clear pedals beneath her feet. She holds on to a very long handle bar, which connects with two long rods coming from the sprocket at the front end of the bike far ahead of Megan, below which is a wheel, to where the chain is actually going. Both wheels seem to be normal size.] 1980
[Another weird contraption of a bike with pedals on both normal sized wheels which have handlebars on the side pointing down towards the front. The saddle hangs in a swing, connected to a rod above it, which goes to the front of the bike and splits in two rods which connect to the center frame of the bike. In front of these there is a contraption resembling many styles of touring bike handlebars, which sits just above the front wheel. The two wheels are connected with a long rod between the center of the wheels and in the middle of this is the center part of the frame going up toward the handle. On the middle of this is a bottle with a label. Towards the back wheel there are two rods sticking out, one presumably a kickstand, the other possibly a parking brake.] 2016 Bottle: Milk


Adult

Explanation:
In this comic, Cueball performs several mundane adult tasks, namely shopping for groceries, buying furniture, and applying for a mortgage. In each instance thought bubbles show his apparent surprise or amusement at the fact that he is behaving like an adult.
In the last panel Megan is reading Cueball's will. Instead of containing standard language, it expresses Cueball's feelings at the fact that he was actually creating a will. This is such an adult thing to do, that Cueball's mind boggles and he cannot believe he is doing so. As is revealed in the title text, Megan reads this to his family because Cueball died early, but when he wrote it, he probably did not envision that it was needed any time soon, and thus also explains why he cannot believe he is writing a will already.
Randall frequently addresses the issue of growing up and being expected to be an adult, despite still seeing oneself as a child in many ways. In this strip, Cueball finds himself performing tasks that he's used to thinking of as things that grown-ups have to worry about, from shopping for food to preparing for one's own death. In each case, he treats the situation as if he were a child suddenly finding himself taking on adult responsibility, which seems to be how he sees himself.
Randall also frequently addresses the issue of finding oneself in adulthood, despite feeling unprepared and immature. In some, he points out that this can be freeing, because it allows us the power to redefine adulthood on our own terms (see 150: Grownups and 219: Blanket Fort ). In others (as in this case), he addresses the surprise that comes with realizing that adult responsibilities belong to you, and fear about his ability to handle them (see 441: Babies , 905: Homeownership , and 616: Lease ).
In the title text we learn that the shopping cart is filled with AirHeads , a tangy, taffy-like, chewy candy, predominantly known for its sweet taste and texture. The title text thus suggests that Cueball still retains some more childish instincts, namely using the freedom of adulthood to indulge in AirHead candies, to fatal consequences, explaining why they already read out his will in front of his family in the last panel. It also suggests that the candy company would be quick to portray that death as "natural causes", to downplay the involvement of their product in someone's death.
Randall has previously made a comic displaying what happened to him when he suddenly was able to freely make or buy the kind of food his parents would have limited his access to in 418: Stove Ownership , where it was bacon in the comic and Frosting (or icing) in the title text.
[Cueball is holding onto a shopping cart more than half filled with items looking quite similar. Above his head is a large thought bubble.] Cueball (thinking): Haha, look at me grocery shopping! I'm such an adult.
[Cueball is standing, arms in his sides, in front of a sofa with a price tag. He is thinking again, this time the frame of the panel is the lower part of the thought bubble, as there is no frame around the text in the "bubble".] Cueball (thinking): Buying a sofa! Ooh, look how domestic I am!
[Cueball is sitting in an office chair. at a desk, leaning in over it while writing something. The desk is filled with office items, and on the opposite side of the desk sits a man with a wisp of hair in another office chair. Cueball is thinking again with the text in a large thought bubble above their heads.] Cueball (thinking): Applying for a mortgage! As if I'm a real grown-up.
[Megan is reading out loud from a piece of paper, while standing in front of a long table, where Hairbun, Hairy, and White Hat are sitting. White hat sits at the end of the table in an office chair.] Megan: ...And I, being of sound mind and body, am totally writing a will right now! Megan: Can you believe this?