gnumanth/xkcd-functiongemma
Text Generation • Updated • 1
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1 | Barrel - Part 1 | Barrel - Part 1 | https://www.xkcd.com/1 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1:_Barrel_-_Part_1 | [A boy sits in a barrel which is floating in an ocean.] Boy: i wonder where i'll float next?
[A smaller frame with a zoom out of the boy in the barrel seen from afar. The barrel drifts into the distance. Nothing else can be seen.]
| The comic shows a young boy floating in a barrel in an ocean that doesn't have a visible end. It comments on the unlikely optimism and perhaps naïveté people sometimes display. The boy is completely lost and seems hopelessly alone, without any plan or control of the situation. Yet, rather than afraid or worried, he is ... | |
2 | Petit Trees (sketch) | Petit Trees (sketch) | https://www.xkcd.com/2 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2:_Petit_Trees_(sketch) | [Two trees are growing on opposite sides of a sphere.]
| This comic does not present a particular point; it is just a picture drawn by Randall .
The Little Prince (in French Le Petit Prince) is a novella written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1943, about the titular Little Prince, who lives on an asteroid and visits other inhabited asteroids and eventually the Earth. The boo... | |
3 | Island (sketch) | Island (sketch) | https://www.xkcd.com/3 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3:_Island_(sketch) | [A color sketch of an island.]
| This comic does not present a particular point; it is just a picture drawn by Randall .
The title text may be a play on the classical "Hello, world!" program, traditionally a first program when learning a new programming language.
[A color sketch of an island.]
| |
4 | Landscape (sketch) | Landscape (sketch) | https://www.xkcd.com/4 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/4:_Landscape_(sketch) | [A sketch of a landscape with sun on the horizon.] [There is text from the checkered paper at the top:] From Page No.__
| This comic does not present a particular point; it is just a picture drawn by Randall.
There is a joke in the title text that a river, made of water, is flowing through the ocean, which is also made of water.
It is also worth noting that the sketch, when flipped vertically, maintains the appearance of having the sea on... | |
5 | Blown apart | Blown apart | https://www.xkcd.com/5 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/5:_Blown_apart | [A black number 70 sees a red package. This small panel is partly overlaid on the next larger panel, which is shifted down.] 70 70: hey, a package!
[The package explodes in a cloud of brown smoke. This panel is both behind the first in the top left corner, and below the last panel, which has been laid on top of that co... | This comic is a mathematical and technical joke involving prime numbers and primary colors.
In the comic, an anthropomorphic black-colored number 70 sees a package, but it turns out to be a letter bomb that explodes when opened. The result is pieces of the number scattered about. The specific pieces are a red-colored... | |
6 | Irony | Irony | https://www.xkcd.com/6 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/6:_Irony | [A panel only with text. The last text is written below a line in all capital letters.] When self-reference, irony, and meta-humor go too far A CAUTIONARY TALE
[Cueball talks to to his Cueball-like friend.] Cueball: This statement wouldn't be funny if not for irony!
[Cueball laughs at his own joke in front of his frien... | It must be part of the human condition that causes us to think that odd statements are sometimes more humorous than those supposed to be funny. Cueball makes a true statement, that his statement is not very funny. However, because he invoked irony and thus makes it self-referential, the sentence is now funny! The other... | |
7 | Girl sleeping (Sketch -- 11th grade Spanish class) | Girl sleeping (Sketch -- 11th grade Spanish class) | https://www.xkcd.com/7 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/7:_Girl_sleeping_(Sketch_--_11th_grade_Spanish_class) | [Girl sleeping on her side, facing away from view.]
| This comic does not present a particular point; it is just a picture drawn by Randall. It is just what the title says - a sketch of a girl sleeping drawn during a Spanish class.
According to the title text, she is also on the floor.
[Girl sleeping on her side, facing away from view.]
| |
8 | Red spiders | Red spiders | https://www.xkcd.com/8 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/8:_Red_spiders | [Many six-legged red spiders standing on and hanging from cuboids. The cuboids hang in the air with no visible means of support. Some of the spiders have made a bridge out of themselves.]
| The early comics often feature a style different to what would become the signature xkcd stick-figure style. This comic is the first in an arc of comics, spaced out over 3 years (so far), in which Red Spiders are seen attacking humans. Its objective is not to be funny, philosophical, or scientifically interesting; it j... | |
9 | Serenity is coming out tomorrow | Serenity is coming out tomorrow | https://www.xkcd.com/9 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/9:_Serenity_is_coming_out_tomorrow | [Several stick figures stand side by side in a lineup. A forlorn male in a coat, a male with combed hair, a male with spiky hair and arms outstretched enthusiastically, a female with long hair and cornrows, a shorter female with stringy hair falling over her face, an enthusiastic female with arms raised in celebration ... | This comic is about the release of the movie Serenity , which was the followup to Joss Whedon 's TV show, Firefly , which was cancelled by Fox after only one season. Plus, three episodes were not shown on Fox but debuted on Sci Fi Channel in the UK. The show was followed by a devoted number of fans who were outraged by... | |
10 | Pi Equals | Pi Equals | https://www.xkcd.com/10 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/10:_Pi_Equals | [A huge π to the left, then a large equal-to sign, and then five rows of text.] π = 3.14159265 3589793help imtrappedin auniversefac tory7108914... | There are two possible references here. One is from the book Contact by Carl Sagan, where the existence of God was shown in the last chapter to be encoded in the digits of pi . The other is an old joke of a fortune cookie with a fortune that reads, "Help! I'm trapped in a fortune cookie factory!" Similar jokes are ofte... | |
11 | Barrel - Part 2 | Barrel - Part 2 | https://www.xkcd.com/11 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/11:_Barrel_-_Part_2 | [A boy sits in a barrel which is floating in an ocean.] Boy: none of the places i floated had mommies.
| Like in the previous comic in the Barrel series, the boy is floating in the ocean in a barrel. The previous comic made a point about the uncertainty of life; here, the boy's lament at not finding a mother is pure sentimentality, as accentuated by the title text.
According to Freud, the first stage of psycho-sexual deve... | |
12 | Poisson | Poisson | https://www.xkcd.com/12 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/12:_Poisson | [Cueball is talking to Black Hat. Cueball has his mouth wide open and has both of his arms up.] Cueball: I'm a poisson distribution!
[Same scene, except Cueball has only one arm up.] Cueball: Still a Poisson distribution! Black Hat: what the hell, man. Why do you keep saying that?
[Cueball's face is gone, and he is not... | Cueball expresses himself as a Poisson distribution .
A Poisson distribution is a distribution that shows the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time or space. The X axis typically represents the "number of events" while the Y axis is a decimal representing the probability (i.e. 0.... | |
13 | Canyon | Canyon | https://www.xkcd.com/13 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/13:_Canyon | [Two guys, both Cueball-like, are standing at a cliff's edge.] Friend: What time is it?
[Cueball looks at his watch in silence.]
[Cueball looks up.] Cueball: Now.
[The full scene is shown: the two men (barely visible) are standing at the lip of a huge canyon in a rocky, barren landscape. A pock-marked moon and a ringed... | This is one of the early comics that explores a theme xkcd returns to often: the wonder around us, if we would just look.
Cueball and his friend (who also looks like Cueball) are having a discussion. After the friend asks Cueball what the time is, Cueball simply states that it is "now." Then there is a beat panel showi... | |
14 | Copyright | Copyright | https://www.xkcd.com/14 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/14:_Copyright | [A colored drawing of a hilly, grassy landscape. Cueball is leaning against a tree.] Cueball: Sometimes I just can't get outraged over copyright law
| Following the copyright wars can be tiring and irritating, but faced with the beauty of nature, the importance of such matters withers away.
Copyright is a monopoly granted by governments to writers, artists, performers, or corporations to control the distribution, copying, and performance of their creative expression ... | |
15 | Just Alerting You | Just Alerting You | https://www.xkcd.com/15 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/15:_Just_Alerting_You | [A man is standing on top of a green dinosaur and holding reins to the dinosaur's head.] Man: Before you talk to me, I should warn you: I am kind of strange
"I bet she's cool. I mean, she has a dinosaur! I'm gonna update this MWF for a while and see how that works. "
| Here, a man is seen riding on a Brontosaurus ? (This is according to the official transcript on xkcd, including the questionmark.) Later Randall would probably have called it an Apatosaurus , see the Category:Apatosaurus .
The joke here is that this person feels the need to point out that they are "kind of strange," e... | |
16 | Monty Python -- Enough | Monty Python -- Enough | https://www.xkcd.com/16 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/16:_Monty_Python_--_Enough | [The comic is drawn on blue-ruled graph paper.] [A Cueball with raised hands talks to two other Cueball-like characters and one Megan.] Cueball: We are the Knights who say... Ni!! Cueballs and Megan: hahaha
[There is only text in the second panel] Does anyone else find it funny that decades later, people are still quot... | This comic refers to the classic British sketch comedy group Monty Python , active primarily during the 1970s and early 1980s but also partly reunified in 2014 , whose humor style was frequently based on surreal jokes that subverted sense and logic. Their sketches are so popular that, as noted in the comic, many fans c... | |
17 | What If | What If | https://www.xkcd.com/17 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/17:_What_If | [A large black circle (drawn on grid paper) with white bubbles inside it, filled with hearts, question marks, and stick figure couples. The hearts are colored red.] [Bottom left circle - stick figure couple with a heart] [Top right circle - with couple:] what if this isn't everything it should be? [Two circles left of ... | This comic features a man and a woman in a romantic setting, surrounded by a fractal combination of love and doubts; an arrangement based on the Apollonian gasket construction. Three circles are drawn tangent to each other, then additional circles are added that are tangent to three existing circles (without overlappin... | |
18 | Snapple | Snapple | https://www.xkcd.com/18 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/18:_Snapple | [Above the frame:] This one is entirely James' fault.
[Two Cueball-like guys are standing and talking.] Cueball: Here, take a bite of this Snapple. Friend: food!
[Cueball's friend takes a bite.] Friend: Ow! What is this? Clink
[The panel switches to Cueball.] Cueball: It's an apple infused with tin.
[Beat panel. A wid... | Cueball hands another Cueball-like guy an apple calling it a snapple. When the guy bites into it, his teeth go clink against the apple's metal surface; Cueball has infused the apple with tin.
The fourth panel is a silent wide shot, perhaps suggesting the joke was met with silence as a weak joke . As a meta-joke, the fi... | |
19 | George Clinton | George Clinton | https://www.xkcd.com/19 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/19:_George_Clinton | [George Clinton uses a baton to point to the bottom of two equations on a blackboard. There is one more equation and a diagram on another blackboard to the right, which is cut off. There is text above:] I once tried to start the urban legend that George Clinton has a B.A. in mathematics
[On the left blackboard there ar... | George Clinton is an American musician most famous for his funk music and wild hair style.
His recorded music features themes of space, sci-fi, technology, and futurism. An example of his work most appropriate to this comic is the song "Mathematics" from the 1996 album T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. (The awesome power of a fully ope... | |
20 | Ferret | Ferret | https://www.xkcd.com/20 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/20:_Ferret | [A color drawing of a ferret with airplane wings and tail on it.]
[Cueball and his Cueball-like friend (to the left) are talking.] Friend: Why on earth did you make those wings? You don't seriously think they could let your ferret fly, right? Cueball: I... of course not.
[They continue to talk.] Cueball: That would be ... | Cueball 's (Cueball-like) friend makes fun of his imagination that involves a flying ferret, and then suggests to go play video games instead. This shows the irony of his definition of "imagination." He makes fun of Cueball's creative fantasy while instead opting for a mass-produced fantasy.
The fact that Cueball lies... | |
21 | Kepler | Kepler | https://www.xkcd.com/21 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/21:_Kepler | [Two Cueball-like guys stand in an aisle in a store.] Cueball: Nice store. How do you keep the floors so clean? Store manager: Oh, we hired this dude named Kepler, he's really good. Hard worker. Doesn't mind the monotony. Sweeps out the same area every night.
| A Cueball-like guy asks Cueball , the store manager, how they keep the store so clean, and he is told that they have hired Kepler, a hard worker who doesn't mind the monotony and sweeps out the same area every night.
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer, best known for his laws of plan... | |
22 | Barrel - Part 3 | Barrel - Part 3 | https://www.xkcd.com/22 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/22:_Barrel_-_Part_3 | [A large and deep vortex is in the center; spinning water covers the whole panel. A boy in a floating barrel is near the edge, apparently about to be sucked in.] Boy: wow!
| In the first two comics in the Barrel series, the boy is floating in the ocean in a barrel, making fairly innocent points about life's uncertainty. In this comic, the view has zoomed out considerably, and the boy is seen to be on the edge of a gigantic whirlpool . Thus, there is now a palpably heightened sense of dange... | |
23 | T-shirts | T-shirts | https://www.xkcd.com/23 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/23:_T-shirts | [A collection of phrases on T-shirts. The first and the last on actual black T-shirts worn by the same person, whose facial expression is more sad on the last one.] I see dumb people As a matter of fact the world does revolve around me I can only please one person per day / today is not your day. You know what your pro... | This comic satirizes the plethora of "snarky" phrase T-shirts that exist today. In the top-left, the character wears a typical (and real) snark shirt, "I see dumb people" (suggesting that the wearer thinks everyone else is dumb, while being a parody of the phrase "I see dead people" from the movie The Sixth Sense ). Ot... | |
24 | Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey | Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey | https://www.xkcd.com/24 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/24:_Godel,_Escher,_Kurt_Halsey | Drawn during an unending NASA lecture [Two people are talking, one in a hat.] Cueball: it's just so hard to compare kids now with kids in the past. you can't help but to belong to one group or the other.
Cueball: and of course every generation seems awful to the one before it. look at quotes from throughout history.
Ha... | At the time xkcd was created, Randall was working on robotics at NASA 's Langley Center. This drawing was apparently made during that period, while attending a talk that he didn't like.
The name of the comic is a portmanteau-like play on the following:
The comic is drawn in the form of a storyboard and is clearly inten... | |
25 | Barrel - Part 4 | Barrel - Part 4 | https://www.xkcd.com/25 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/25:_Barrel_-_Part_4 | [The barrel is shown on a grid paper background, floating sideways and empty in a choppy sea.]
Barrel series By the way, here are all the barrel comics on a single (easily linked) page: http://www.xkcd.com/barrel.html [This is an archived version of the page. The original link is dead. This text is not included in the ... | In the first three comics of the series, the character explored the ocean in a barrel and then encountered a whirlpool, all with a reaction of innocent wonder. Here, the empty barrel floating adrift, plus the title text and a previous announcement by Randall that this would be the conclusion of barrel boy's story, impl... | |
26 | Fourier | Fourier | https://www.xkcd.com/26 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/26:_Fourier | [Cueball talks on phone. A grotesque-looking cat with many sharp vertical points looks on.] Cueball: Hi, Dr. Elizabeth? Yeah, uh ... I accidentally took the Fourier transform of my cat... Cat: Meow!
| A Fourier transform is a mathematical function transformation often used in physics and engineering.
The theory is that any line graph can be represented as the sum of a bunch of sine waves of different frequencies and amplitudes. (The most obvious application is in analyzing a sound recording in terms of the different... | |
27 | Meat Cereals | Meat Cereals | https://www.xkcd.com/27 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/27:_Meat_Cereals | [A collection of fictional meat based cereals in bright colors with nice pictures on them.] Pork Loops Mice Krispies Hammios Frosted Bacon Flakes Scrapple Jacks Hey, these don't taste like Scrapple! Honey Bunches of Goats
| Randall parodies several real-world breakfast cereals (which typically consist solely of grains and sweet flavorings) by creating versions that contain meat (animal products). The cereals that appear to be parodied (clockwise from top-left) include Froot Loops, Rice Krispies, Honey Bunches of Oats, Apple Jacks, Frosted... | |
28 | Elefino | Elefino | https://www.xkcd.com/28 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/28:_Elefino | Q: What do you get when you cross an Elephant with a Rhino? [Picture of elephant, mathematical addition symbol, picture of rhino, equals sign, large question mark.] A: I haven't a goddamn clue.
Found it. Pepe and Seymour Elifino ... Totally worth the 🐇 hole. Iggynelix ( talk ) 15:45, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
| The basis for this fairly simple xkcd comic is the subject riddle, which is properly answered, as given in the title text: "Hell if I know." When spoken, this "correct" answer sounds like "elephino" – a portmanteau of " eleph ant" and "rh ino ." This makes it again one of the early comics where Randall explains the com... | |
29 | Hitler | Hitler | https://www.xkcd.com/29 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/29:_Hitler | [Black Hat and Cueball are talking together in the same position in all four panels.] Cueball: Learning about the Holocaust has really shaken my belief in God.
Black Hat: You know, as a young man, Hitler was rejected from art school. Cueball: Yeah... shame he didn't get in.
Black Hat: Well, have you seen any of his pai... | Cueball speaks to an early version of Black Hat (with more of a top hat than his later "boater" hat style) about the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler . Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany beginning in 1933 and starting World War II in 1939 by attacking Poland. During that war, the Germans (under Hitler's leadership) killed... | |
30 | Donner | Donner | https://www.xkcd.com/30 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/30:_Donner | [Three people stand outside a restaurant; Megan, a man with some hair and another shorter person, probably a woman. There is a sign above the door which says "Joe's" (presumably the name of the restaurant) and a menu next to it. Outside the door, there is a maître d' with a cap behind a lectern. There is a sign on the ... | The title text explains to the reader that the Donner party was a group of pioneers who set out west along a new route that was supposed to be easier to travel, but ultimately proved slow and treacherous. They became trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains and many died. Low on food, many of the pioneers resorted to can... | |
31 | Barrel - Part 5 | Barrel - Part 5 | https://www.xkcd.com/31 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/31:_Barrel_-_Part_5 | [A boy is grasping on to a piece of driftwood in an ocean.]
[A zoomed out view of the boy still grasping on to a piece of driftwood in the ocean.]
[A ferret with some airplane wings and an airplane tail flies above the ocean.]
[A shot of the ocean, now empty.]
[The flying ferret is carrying the boy to safety.]
[The fer... | This gives a happy ending to the Barrel series . The flying ferret is from 20: Ferret . The humor is derived from the juxtaposition of two unlike elements - in this case, the contemplative and even dark nature of the Barrel series being resolved through the timely intervention of a comical flying mammal.
Said mammal co... | |
32 | Pillar | Pillar | https://www.xkcd.com/32 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/32:_Pillar | [At the top of the panel is a black frame with the following text:] This one is mostly by my little brother, Doug.
[A Cueball-like guy stands on a the top of a tall pole and talks to his Cueball-like friend on the ground. The drawing is repeated three time in the same panel, once for each comment by the two guys.] Pole... | Two Cueball -like guys ponder the unanswerable philosophical question of whether all people observe the universe the same, or whether, for example, what one person sees as "red" might be what another see as "green". They muse that no one really knows how anyone else sees the world.
The misdirection and punchline of the... | |
33 | Self-reference | Self-reference | https://www.xkcd.com/33 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/33:_Self-reference | [Cueball is standing alone.] Cueball: I promise to never again squeeze humor out of self-reference.
[Beat panel.]
[Cueball is standing alone.] Cueball: God dammit. | Self-reference is a situation where something (a comic, a drawing, a musical work, a novel, a mathematical theorem) refers to itself in some manner. This can be a powerful technique in art, music, mathematics, and computer science (it is the basis of recursion).
In this comic, Cueball promises not to use self-reference... | |
34 | Flowers | Flowers | https://www.xkcd.com/34 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/34:_Flowers | [A sketch of flowers, drawn in green, red, and yellow on a black background.]
"Original drawing is pencil on graph paper . Bonus points if you can identify the flowers. 'cause I sure can't."
| This is a drawing of flowers that Randall made. It seems the flowers are based on his imagination, rather than being a real species - see the original quote in the trivia section.
The title text explains that Randall originally drew the flowers in pencil on normal paper; he did not paint them. Instead, he used the inve... | |
35 | Sheep | Sheep | https://www.xkcd.com/35 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/35:_Sheep | [Caption in a black frame above the image written in normal letters not all caps:] Another from my high-school notebooks. [A sheep and a green saguaro cactus in a brown pot are linked by an arcing yellow electricity bolt.]
In the comment to the original LiveJournal post there was a user called Scott who posted this ori... | Due to Randall's vacation, he picked out comics from his old high-school notebooks. This is the second in a row. It was also released a day too late.
It is a very weird drawing, especially with the title text proclaiming that it may be the sheep that is zapping the cactus. The comic 520: Cuttlefish may be a reference t... | |
36 | Scientists | Scientists | https://www.xkcd.com/36 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/36:_Scientists | [Cueball is staring at an empty box on the floor.] Cueball: In what scientists are calling "pretty gay", I can't find my shoes.
| This comic plays on the type of statement that news reports often use: "in what [group of experts] are calling '[quote]'," to add more weight and credibility to their stories. In this case, Cueball is using the phrase to attempt to add gravitas to the (relatively mundane) fact that his shoes are missing and he thinks i... | |
37 | Hyphen | Hyphen | https://www.xkcd.com/37 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/37:_Hyphen | [Cueball (on the left) is talking to his Cueball-like friend (on the right) about a car (left to both of them) that resembles a Volkswagen Beetle. Above the drawing is a statement:] My hobby: whenever anyone calls something an [adjective]-ass [noun], I mentally move the hyphen one word to the right.
Cueball: Man, that'... | This is the first " My Hobby " comic in xkcd . In these comics, Randall suggests an obscure activity or pastime he enjoys that he declares as his "hobby." In the premiere "My Hobby" comic, Randall's hobby is mentally re-interpreting what people mean when they say "[adjective]-ass [noun]" by moving the hyphen to after t... | |
38 | Apple Jacks | Apple Jacks | https://www.xkcd.com/38 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/38:_Apple_Jacks | [Cueball is standing holding a bowl in his hand. His son is sitting on the floor playing video games.] Cueball: Hey, these don't taste like apples! Son: Fuck off, Dad.
| Apple Jacks is a breakfast cereal produced by Kellogg's . As the title text begins to explain, there was an ad campaign for the cereal in the 1990s that focused on someone (usually someone in authority like a parent) pointing out that Apple Jacks doesn't taste like apples, and one or more kids pointing out that it does... | |
39 | Bowl | Bowl | https://www.xkcd.com/39 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/39:_Bowl | [A boy is glaring at a model sailing ship floating in a bowl of water.] Boy: Sooner or later, my friend, one of us will run out of time.
"This is not the barrel boy. Current Mood: Final Exam-y "
Announcement "What with winter break starting and the like, I'll probably be going off my regular update schedule. I'll try t... | The comic roughly parodies a situation in which two characters are seeing who can wait longer to get the result they want. However, in the comic, the model sailing ship is not alive and doesn't experience time (except perhaps if it absorbs water and falls apart, or beaches once the water in the bowl evaporates). The co... | |
40 | Light | Light | https://www.xkcd.com/40 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/40:_Light | [A crowd of figures stand around in the dark. A Megan is illuminated by a beam of light.] In a dark and confusing world, you burn brightly I never feel lost
| Lighthouses were built on coasts to give ships a point of reference where land was, so that they could find where they were going, and to know where they should avoid during a storm. Megan fills this role for Cueball . She is his lighthouse to know where he can be safe.
This also has a romantic notion, as Megan is ligh... | |
41 | Old Drawing | Old Drawing | https://www.xkcd.com/41 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/41:_Old_Drawing | [A tree holding a chainsaw over a recently cut-down tree. The first text is in a frame at the top of the panel.] I found this in one of my high-school notebooks. I think I drew it just to take revenge on people snooping through my stuff. Tree stump: Well, you stumped me...
| This comic plays off the pun between stumped , meaning confused or at a loss, and a stump , which is the remnants of a tree that has been cut down.
Anyone snooping into his journal would be punished by such a terrible pun. The pun is so terrible that even Randall does not want to talk about it, as he mentioned in the t... | |
42 | Geico | Geico | https://www.xkcd.com/42 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/42:_Geico | [Cueball holding a golf club.] Cueball: I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by threatening my agent with a golf club.
| This comic references a long-running ad campaign for Geico insurance in which a character (different in each commercial) lists a series of horrible events or news, but then caps it off with "but I've got good news: I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico" – news that may be good, but is ... | |
43 | Red Spiders 2 | Red Spiders 2 | https://www.xkcd.com/43 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/43:_Red_Spiders_2 | [Nine red spiders, with round appendages at the end of each of their six legs, are seen navigating an environment of blocks and other geometric constructions. The second-from-the-top spider appears to be holding a block down for the spider just below to climb on to help it up, or they might be lifting the block togethe... | This is the second published comic in the red spiders story arc, published just over 2 months after the first one . Like its predecessor, it is more of a sketch than a comic. The titular spiders appear to be ascending —or possibly building— a structure, probably to get into the window at the top of the picture. Two spi... | |
44 | Love | Love | https://www.xkcd.com/44 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/44:_Love | [Cueball and Megan stand facing one another.] Cueball: I love you! Megan: I love you!
[Same scene as before.] Cueball: I love you more! Megan: Yeah.
[Beat panel.]
| This comic expresses the view of a love that is unbalanced and unequal. And how one form of love can be painful when closely examined.
It is customary for people in a romantic relationship, when one makes a declaration of love or affection, for the other to make a matching declaration. However, instead of continuing Cu... | |
45 | Schrodinger | Schrodinger | https://www.xkcd.com/45 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/45:_Schrodinger | [Black Hat and Cueball are standing next to each other. Above them the text is written in a box with shades around it.] Schrödinger's Comic
[Black Hat and Cueball are still standing next to each other, but Cueball has lifted his arms above his head. The text is again written in a box with shades around it.] The last pa... | This comic is a joke creating a humorously false synthesis, combining the principles of quantum superposition and the effects of reading a comic one panel at a time.
Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment that illuminates the notion that a particle only resolves itself to its state upon observation, and until such o... | |
46 | Secrets | Secrets | https://www.xkcd.com/46 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/46:_Secrets | [Drawing of a lonely girl staring down with almost closed eyes. The first line of text stands next to her to the left. The last part bottom, right.] I just want you to share in my secrets and not run away
Kurt Halsey was also referenced in 24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey .
| This comic addresses the issue of commitment-phobic partners who get into relationships but get cold feet when it starts to get serious. The girl wants someone who can see every part of who she is and still love her.
In the title text, Randall mentions that he is a big fan of Kurt Halsey , a comic artist from Oregon. H... | |
47 | Counter-Red Spiders | Counter-Red Spiders | https://www.xkcd.com/47 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/47:_Counter-Red_Spiders | [A stack of stick figures, standing on each others shoulders, extends from the bottom of the frame to the top. Cuboids hang in the air.] The counter-red-spider offensive begins...
| In previous comics, red spiders are seen navigating similar landscapes. Here, humanoid stick figures are standing on top of each other to reach some place above the top of the comic, in a similar manner to how the red spiders navigate. These stick figures must be extremely light, or gravity must be really weak there, b... | |
48 | Found | Found | https://www.xkcd.com/48 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/48:_Found | [Cueball and Megan are standing on a white hill (presumably snow) with a grey sky covered with thick streaks of white, and small pink dots. All letters are written in lower case.] we are just two people who found each other
| Cueball and Megan are standing together in the middle of a simple maze. As indicated by the words in the comic, they have simply found each other, implying that there is no relationship between them other than running into each other.
As indicated in the title text, there is nothing else to say about how they met.
[Cue... | |
49 | Want | Want | https://www.xkcd.com/49 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/49:_Want | [Cueball is standing talking in the same position in all four panels. In the second panel, Cueball seems to have hair.] Cueball: I want to be brave enough to tell you how I feel.
Cueball: I want to say "I love you" before I hang up the phone for once.
Cueball: I want to drive all night with you, listening to mix tapes,... | Cueball is making an honest profession of his feelings. This is often held up as a valuable thing in cementing a relationship. In the first three panels, he makes the kind of cliched poetic, romantic statements that would typically be expected. In the last panel, however, he undercuts all of this by crassly revealing t... | |
50 | Penny Arcade | Penny Arcade | https://www.xkcd.com/50 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/50:_Penny_Arcade | [A color drawing of Tycho, a man with wild brown hair in blue and cyan colored shirt. He has a big open mouth and holds one arm up while the other may be in his (unseen) pocket. He has two speech bubbles,] Tycho: You know what? If you've never played the 1995 SNES RPG " Seiken Densetsu ", don't even bother reading toda... | Penny Arcade is a popular web comic that focuses on video game culture. The character above is Tycho Brahe, one of the two main characters of Penny Arcade (the other being Jonathan "Gabe" Gabriel). Penny Arcade has a reputation for making obscure references to video games without explaining, expecting the reader to be ... | |
51 | Malaria | Malaria | https://www.xkcd.com/51 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/51:_Malaria | [Four Cueball-like children wearing party hats, a discarded balloon is lying to the right. There is text above:] We had a malaria party [And there is text below:] but it turned out not to be very much fun.
| This comic humorously considers pox parties as a means of preventing malaria. In these "parties," adults bring their children to deliberately expose them to a communicable disease to promote immunity . This is commonly done for a childhood disease like chickenpox and measles instead of vaccination.
In this comic, we se... | |
52 | Secret Worlds | Secret Worlds | https://www.xkcd.com/52 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/52:_Secret_Worlds | [A multitude of circles connected with several lines. Most of them are rather small and colored red, yellow, green and blue. Nine of them are white, six of these are larger than all the other circles, but one is the same size as the largest colored (green) circle, and the two smallest are smaller than a few of the colo... | The quote written in the large white bubbles comes from The Sandman , a comic book series about dreams. Neil Gaiman is a science fiction and fantasy author who came to fame for writing The Sandman.
The interconnected bubbles represent the secret worlds of different people and how they are connected. They may have the s... | |
53 | Hobby | Hobby | https://www.xkcd.com/53 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/53:_Hobby | [A person with hair lies on the ground in a pool of red blood. At the top of the panel there is a caption. Then a text. And above the person there is a score with small lines around to indicate that it has just appeared over the body.] My hobby: When the police bust drug hideouts, I sneak in and hide. Then I jump out a... | This is the second in the " My Hobby " series of xkcd comics.
This comic humorously compares the rules of light gun cabinet arcade video games with real life.
Randall suggests that his hobby is going to drug busts with the expressed purpose of getting shot as an innocent bystander, thereby causing the police to lose 10... | |
54 | Science | Science | https://www.xkcd.com/54 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/54:_Science | [A graph with a curve that begins at zero, then peaks at a given frequency, indicated via a thin vertical line, and then fades down towards zero. It is possible to see the data points, which fit the curve perfectly. The y-axis is labelled. Along the x-axis, the zero point and the frequency where the peak has its maximu... | The solid line represents the theoretical radiation for a blackbody at 2.73 K according to Planck's Law (derived as early as 1900 by Max Planck ). The formula, almost as written in the graph, can be found here . The only changes are that on Wikipedia, the frequency f is represented by the Greek letter ν (nu) and the te... | |
55 | Useless | Useless | https://www.xkcd.com/55 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/55:_Useless | [Different mathematical equations, all with a heart on left side, and all ending up with question marks.] √♥ = ? cos ♥ = ? d/dx ♥ = ? [1 0]♥ = ? [0 1] F{♥} = 1/√2π ∫ ∞ -∞ f(t)e it♥ dt = ? [Caption below:] My normal approach is useless here.
| Randall is attempting to apply mathematics to the concept of love to no avail. Specifically, he is attempting his "normal approach", which is a term used in mathematics for the method one typically uses to solve a certain type of problem. However, as love is not a well-defined mathematical entity, his normal approach i... | |
56 | The Cure | The Cure | https://www.xkcd.com/56 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/56:_The_Cure | [A charcoal drawing of Robert Smith's head and face.] [Caption below:] Robert Smith should do a cover of Coldplay's Clocks, so when he sings "Am I part of the cure or am I part of the disease?" we can say, "Ooh, we know this one!"
| The "real face" is that of Robert Smith , best known as the singer of the musical group The Cure , hence the title.
The joke in this comic is very simple: When Robert would sing the above lines of Coldplay 's song " Clocks ", fans of his music would know the answer: he's part of The Cure.
In the title text, Randall not... | |
57 | Wait For Me | Wait For Me | https://www.xkcd.com/57 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/57:_Wait_For_Me | [Cueball and Megan stand facing one another.] Megan: Why didn't you wait for me? Cueball: I thought you were gone forever!
[Megan throws out her arms, and Cueball is looking down.] Megan: I said I'd be back in a minute! Cueball: The... the seconds went fast at first, but then they started to drag on. Cueball: She was t... | This comic juxtaposes a familiar exchange with a surreal outcome.
Megan is returning after a short absence. Cueball reacts as if she had been gone for years, and admits to having an affair while waiting.
In this comic, a familiar exchange occurs where one person asks the other why they did not wait. The humor lies in t... | |
58 | Why Do You Love Me? | Why Do You Love Me? | https://www.xkcd.com/58 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/58:_Why_Do_You_Love_Me%3F | [Cueball and Megan are having a conversation. The same scene is shown for all panels.] Cueball: Why do you love me? Megan: I don't know; my heart never gave me a choice.
Cueball: Aww.
[Beat panel.]
Megan: I wish it had.
| Cueball asks "Why do you love me?" to Megan , a fairly common question that couples ask each other. She responds by saying, "My heart never gave me a choice," a seemingly very sentimental, romantic answer. However, after a beat panel , she effectively kills the romance of the moment by adding, "I wish it had," indicati... | |
59 | Graduation | Graduation | https://www.xkcd.com/59 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/59:_Graduation | [Megan and Blondie are talking.] Blondie: What do you want to do when you graduate?
[Same scene as before.] Megan: I want to become a lighthouse operator. Blondie: Oh? Megan: Yeah.
[Cut to scene of lighthouse with text overlaid.] Megan: Lighthouses are built on interesting pieces of coast, so I'll have an interesting p... | Megan and a young Blondie (in her first appearance) discuss their plans for life after college.
Megan has taken the increasingly unusual choice of pursuing a career as a lighthouse operator , a path that has become increasingly less traveled, as lighthouses have become ever more automated and supplanted by other soluti... | |
60 | Super Bowl | Super Bowl | https://www.xkcd.com/60 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/60:_Super_Bowl | [A green car with text above and next to it.] My hobby: While everyone is watching the Super Bowl, feeling smugly superior because they're "Only watching for the ads," I steal cars.
In a distant future (2015), Randall (or Cueball ) spends his time differently during the Super Bowl - see 1480: Super Bowl . (This was the... | The third in the " My Hobby " series. The Super Bowl is the championship American football game of the National Football League , which is usually played each February, and the final game of the 2006 season, Super Bowl XL , was played on the evening of 2006-02-05, the day before this comic was released.
As the game is ... | |
61 | Stacey's Dad | Stacey's Dad | https://www.xkcd.com/61 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/61:_Stacey%27s_Dad | [A hairy man.] Man: Look, I know you think that since I walked out she could use a guy like you. But trust me. That woman has got a lot going on, and you want none of it. Man: Get out while you still can.
[Printed across the bottom of the panel.] Stacey's dad.
| This comic refers to the song " Stacy's Mom " by Fountains of Wayne (See the music video on YouTube). As the background singers repeatedly say, "Stacy's mom has got it goin' on." Although Randall has used the wrong spelling of 'Stacy'.
The song is from the perspective of a young teenage boy who has a crush on his best ... | |
62 | Valentine - Karnaugh | Valentine - Karnaugh | https://www.xkcd.com/62 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/62:_Valentine_-_Karnaugh | [Squiggly heart design.] You make me feel so much it all runs together I wish I could tell you [Crisscrossing heart design. Cueball and Megan on opposite sides of big heart.] So few words for so many feelings crisscrossing my heart [Heart matrix design.] A matrix of desire Tangled relations I can't simplify [Karnaugh m... | A Karnaugh map is a Boolean algebra tool that is used to simplify expressions. The final picture, the one that looks like a crossword puzzle, is similar to the way that a Karnaugh map is used on a Boolean truth table, to identify areas that can be simplified. This PDF document shows how the process is used to simplify ... | |
63 | Valentine - Heart | Valentine - Heart | https://www.xkcd.com/63 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/63:_Valentine_-_Heart | [A Valentine's Day heart bordered with wavy red lace-like pattern with text:]
| The comic shows a Valentines card that starts off nicely, but then " escalates quickly " becoming very unromantic although probably very honest, that the only purpose of this card is getting the receiver into bed. It says that if this is not the case, if she (or he) doesn't want to go naked after receiving this card, t... | |
64 | Solar Plexus | Solar Plexus | https://www.xkcd.com/64 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/64:_Solar_Plexus | [Black Hat and Cueball are talking to each other.] Black Hat: Asolarplexussayswhat? Cueball: What?
[Beat panel.]
[Beat panel.]
[Black Hat punches Cueball in the solar plexus.]
| The solar plexus is a network of interconnecting nerves that is centered in the area of the abdomen near the stomach. A blow to this area is painful and the cause of the feeling called "getting the wind knocked out of you" and is prevalent in media.
The trick "An[incomprehensible mumble]sayswhat" is a juvenile taunt th... | |
65 | Banter | Banter | https://www.xkcd.com/65 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/65:_Banter | [Two Cueball like characters have a discussion. They are drawn the same in all eight panels.] Guy: Man, she's hot Friend: Whatever, you are so gay.
Guy: C'mon, everyone knows you're the gay one. Friend: Hey, your mom's pretty masculine, but sleeping with her doesn't make me gay.
Guy: Fag. Friend: Ass pirate. Guy: Fudge... | Two guys are trash-talking each other with homophobic comments and your mom jokes . It goes somewhat astray and becomes awkward when the first guy makes a pass at the second guy and is rejected.
Part of the element of the humor in this comic stems from a common assertion that the most-homophobic of men are the most lik... | |
66 | Abusive Astronomy | Abusive Astronomy | https://www.xkcd.com/66 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/66:_Abusive_Astronomy | Identifying star clusters: [Image of a star cluster.] This is the Pleiades , asshole.
Orion's Belt: [Image of Orion's Belt.] Only a moron couldn't find it.
This is the Big Dipper : [Image of the Big Dipper.] What the hell is wrong with you?
As noted in the title text, the drawing for this comic was originally done in p... | An asterism is a pattern of stars that forms some sort of perceived shape in the night sky. Some of these are patterns used to name regions of the sky, as constellations. Modern astronomy organizes the sky into 88 constellations, but different cultures saw different patterns in the same night sky, going back at least a... | |
67 | Nerd Girls | Nerd Girls | https://www.xkcd.com/67 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/67:_Nerd_Girls | [Girl with shoulder length brown hair and glasses, wearing a shirt which says "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons".] Girl: At least, thanks to your constant fawning, we have an excuse for our social ineptness. What's yours ?
| The stereotypical nerd is socially inept and has an obsession with a non-mainstream hobby such as Dungeons and Dragons . Nerd males are also typically represented as treating all women (including female nerds) with reverence and awkward fawning due to their supposed inexperience and lack of female company in comparison... | |
68 | Five Thirty | Five Thirty | https://www.xkcd.com/68 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/68:_Five_Thirty | Comics from 5:30 AM [A succession of unrelated and completely random panels.]
Cueball: It's 80's night at the club. Wanna go?
Friend: There is no Tuesday. Cueball: Jack the Ripper or Jack Black?
[Cueball in this panel is holding a glinting sword.] Friend: You crashed my helicopter! Cueball: Verily!
[A small figure is t... | At 5:30 AM, one's sleep-deprived or prematurely-roused mind sometimes comes up with things that seem like nonsense later.
None of the twelve panels in this comic seem to have any correlation with one another, each one being its own "story," and none of them really make any sense. It is unknown whether Randall really wr... | |
69 | Pillow Talk | Pillow Talk | https://www.xkcd.com/69 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/69:_Pillow_Talk | Cueball: Staring at the ceiling, she asked me what I was thinking about. Cueball: I should have made something up. Cueball: The Bellman-Ford algorithm makes terrible pillow talk.
| The Bellman-Ford algorithm is an algorithm that calculates the shortest path(s) through a weighted digraph or collection of connected nodes or vertices. The "Wexler" in the title text refers to Wexler's algorithm, which is used to deal with the inverse problem of electrical impedance tomography , or simply stated: the ... | |
70 | Guitar Hero | Guitar Hero | https://www.xkcd.com/70 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/70:_Guitar_Hero | [On a stage, Megan is in the background as a singer holding a microphone. In the center is Hairy with an electric guitar. The catwalk has bumps to resemble the tracks of Guitar Hero.] [Caption above the stage]: When I'm in a rock band, I'm gonna do a cool, mellow song. Then in the middle I'll stop, announce "this part ... | Guitar Hero is a series of video games (originally a single game) distributed by Activision . In the game, players simulate playing the guitar on famous guitar songs using a plastic guitar-shaped controller with five color-coded buttons on the neck representing guitar frets and a rocker bar on the body simulating a str... | |
71 | In the Trees | In the Trees | https://www.xkcd.com/71 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/71:_In_the_Trees | [Cueball is standing in a forest.] Cueball: We made it so far together but then I lost you in the trees.
[A closer view of Cueball.] Cueball: Finally.
| This comic focuses on dark humor. In the first panel, the viewer is led to believe that it is a comic lamenting on the loss of love, as it states, "We made it so far together, but then I lost you in the trees." However, when we read the second panel ("Finally"), it becomes clear that the joke is that the loss of this "... | |
72 | Classhole | Classhole | https://www.xkcd.com/72 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/72:_Classhole | Cueball: How did you spend your morning? Black Hat: Feeding rocks to children in the park.
Cueball: Your sociopathic abuse of random strangers staggers me. Black Hat: I aspire to have more creativity than the common asshole.
Black Hat: I'm more of a classy asshole -- A class-hole, if you will. For example, I like pokin... | The subject of this comic is Black Hat himself. He admits to being an asshole, a profanity that describes someone who does things that antagonize, irritate, or anger others (either intentionally or incidentally). While a common example might be someone who weaves in and out of traffic, or someone who parks across two p... | |
73 | Zeppelin | Zeppelin | https://www.xkcd.com/73 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/73:_Zeppelin | Cueball: What time is it? [Picture of a Zeppelin style watch, indicating the time about 12:13 o'clock.] [Cueballs look up at the sky.] [A huge Zeppelin is visible in the sky.]
| A Zeppelin is a type of rigid dirigible aircraft, used in the early part of the 20th century for commercial airline traffic. They were well known for being the most luxurious, comfortable air travel of the time. The Hindenburg disaster, as well as World War II, led to the end of their use as commercial airliners. Also ... | |
74 | Su Doku | Su Doku | https://www.xkcd.com/74 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/74:_Su_Doku | [A square divided into 2×2 squares, the top-right one has an 1 in it, the bottom-right one has a 0, the two left ones are empty.] Binary Su Doku
| Su Doku (Japanese for "single number," and now usually written as "sudoku") is a type of number puzzle, in which the player must place digits in a matrix field in the correct arrangement, such that they do not repeat within given domains. The most common arrangement is a 9×9 grid subdivided into nine 3×3 grids, into wh... | |
75 | Curse Levels | Curse Levels | https://www.xkcd.com/75 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/75:_Curse_Levels | My hobby: mixing curse levels Cueball: What a gosh-darned cunt.
| In this fourth " My Hobby " strip, the hobby is mixing curse levels. Curse words (aka: swear words/profanities) are disrespectful words that are typically impolite to use in public. As noted in the strip, there are "levels" of curse words ranging from those "mild" words that are more acceptable to use, to those "severe... | |
76 | Familiar | Familiar | https://www.xkcd.com/76 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/76:_Familiar | [Hairy and Megan are talking] Megan: I worry that I'm just with you because it's familiar. Of course no one else compares. I've known you for so long that I'd have to spend years with someone to build up this kind of connection and I daren't let you go of you long enough to let that happen. Megan: But I guess this is r... | Megan tells her boyfriend ( Hairy ) her reservations about their relationship: she's happy with him, she thinks he doesn't compare to anyone else, and they have a strong connection built up over the course of years, but she's worried that all this is just because they've been dating so long that she hasn't had the oppo... | |
77 | Bored with the Internet | Bored with the Internet | https://www.xkcd.com/77 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/77:_Bored_with_the_Internet | [Black Hat and Not-Hairy are talking in a room with a computer on.] Not-Hairy: I feel like I'm wasting my life on the internet. Let's walk around the world. Black Hat: Sounds good. [The two men are shown walking through trees.] [The two men are shown walking on flat stretch, with mountains in the distance.] [The two me... | A character who has hair (not to be confused with Hairy ) suggests to Black Hat that he is wasting his life on the Internet, and they should go explore the world. They appear to walk a great distance, through what appears to be a swamp or perhaps a forest in winter, across a plain, and down to a river valley. Despite t... | |
78 | Garfield | Garfield | https://www.xkcd.com/78 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/78:_Garfield | I want to see something unexpected in comics. Just one strip could make up for it all. [Garfield is standing on hind legs facing and looking directly at the camera. But is off-center in the frame, about 1/3 from the left, rotated very slightly clockwise.] [Zoom in on Garfield, still to the left, now rotated slightly co... | The newspaper comic strip Garfield , which features an orange cat as the main character, has increasingly been known for repetitive, quality-lacking strips. In the past, this was because the creator, Jim Davis , prefers to explore the same subjects he is comfortable with but in different ways — or from a less charitabl... |
End of preview. Expand in Data Studio
Dataset Card for "XKCD"
Dataset Summary
XKCD is an export of all XKCD comics with their transcript and explanation scrapped from https://explainxkcd.com.
Dataset Structure
Data Instances
id:1title:Barrel - Part 1image_title:Barrel - Part 1url:https://www.xkcd.com/1image_url:https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/barrel_cropped_(1).jpgexplained_url:https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1:_Barrel_-_Part_1transcript:[A boy sits in a barrel which is floating in an ocean.] Boy: i wonder where i'll float next? [A smaller frame with a zoom out of the boy in the barrel seen from afar. The barrel drifts into the distance. Nothing else can be seen.]explanation:The comic shows a young boy floating in a barrel in an ocean that doesn't have a visible end. It comments on the unlikely optimism and perhaps naïveté people sometimes display. The boy is completely lost and seems hopelessly alone, without any plan or control of the situation. Yet, rather than afraid or worried, he is instead quietly curious: "I wonder where I'll float next?" Although not necessarily the situation in this comic, this is a behavior people often exhibit when there is nothing they can do about a problematic situation for a long time; they may have given up hope or developed a cavalier attitude as a coping mechanism. The title text expands on the philosophical content, with the boy representing the average human being: wandering through life with no real plan, quietly optimistic, always opportunistic and clueless as to what the future may hold. The isolation of the boy may also represent the way in which we often feel lost through life, never knowing quite where we are, believing that there is no one to whom to turn. This comic could also reflect on Randall's feelings towards creating xkcd in the first place; unsure of what direction the web comic would turn towards, but hopeful that it would eventually become the popular web comic that we know today. This is the first in a six-part series of comics whose parts were randomly published during the first several dozen strips. The series features a character that is not consistent with what would quickly become the xkcd stick figure style. The character is in a barrel. In 1110: Click and Drag there is a reference to this comic at 1 North, 48 East . After Randall released the full The Boy and his Barrel story on xkcd, it has been clear that the original Ferret story should also be included as part of the barrel series. The full series can be found here . They are listed below in the order Randall chose for the short story above:
Data Fields
idtitleurl: xkcd.com URLimage_urlexplained_url: explainxkcd.com URLtranscript: english text transcript of the comicexplanation: english explanation of the comic
Dataset Creation
The dataset was scrapped from both explainxkcd.com and xkcd.com.
The dataset is therefore licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license for
the transcript and explanation fields, while the image itself is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license.
See the Copyrights page from explainxkcd.com for more explanations.
Update
You can update the dataset by using the scrapper.py script.
First install the dependencies:
pip install aiolimiter aiohttp beautifulsoup4 pandas
Then run the script:
python scrapper.py
Considerations for Using the Data
As the data was scrapped, it is entirely possible that some fields are missing part of the original data.
Additional Information
Licensing Information
The dataset is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license for
the transcript and explanation fields, while the images are licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license.
Contributions
Thanks to @OlivierDehaene for adding this dataset.
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2,630
Models trained or fine-tuned on olivierdehaene/xkcd