Communication
by Jeff
Image text: Anyone who says that they're great at communicating but 'people are bad at listening' is confused about how communication works.
In this comic, White Hat tries to communicate to two other people that their is a hole in their path. Meanwhile, Megan is attempting to tell White Hat the same thing about the path in the other direction. Both head off into different directions, not knowing that their is a hole in the ground ahead of them because it was not properly communicated to them. They only knew that there was a hole behind them because that is what they observed personally. The holes are hilariously only about one person deep and I'm not sure why they didn't see them when they came upon them. However, either way, they fell into the holes, when the other person was trying to warn them that the hole was there.
In the last row, Beret Guy sees the hole and after he is not successful telling another person about it, he just takes him by the hand to show him the hole. Once that happens, they have exactly the same idea.
If you are not familiar with it, the symbol of the triangle with the exclamation mark in it is a widely used symbol that means "warning".
MTV Generation
by Jeff
Image text: If you identified with the kids from The Breakfast Club when it came out, you're now much closer to the age of Principal Vernon.
This one is pretty straightfoward, so let's just do some definitions.
MTV is Music Television, it is a TV channel is the US and elsewhere that when it started in the 1980s used to show music videos. Now it only shows crappy reality TV.
The Breakfast Club is an iconic movie from 1985 in which 5 very different teenagers spend a Saturday detention together at the school. Principal Vernon was obviously, the principal in the movie and was the overseer of the detention.
This comic is one of the rare appearances of the White Hat character, who is seen much less than the Black Hat character.
Connoisseur
by Jeff
Image text: Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.
This comic is a very funny one and needs very little explanation. Joe Biden is the current Vice President of the USA. The comic is saying that experiencing anything for a long period of time would make anyone a snobby connoisseur, even pictures of the Vice President eating a sandwich.
Sickness
by Jeff
Image text: At least, with p<0.05 confidence.
This one is pretty self explanatory and is a reference to the real-life sickness the affecting the family of the xkcd's writer/artist Randall Munroe. Even though Cueball, who we are expected to believe is a Munroe himself, is affected by the family illness, he still is a strong believer in science.
This comic brings back a character not often seen, White Hat.
Bad Ex
by Jeff
Image text: Since the goatee, glasses, and Seltzer & Friedberg DVD collection didn't tip you off, there will be a $20 negligence charge for this service.
In the image text, Seltzer & Friedberg refers to Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer who are writers and film-makers who have created such terrible movies such as: Scary Movie, Date Movie, Meet the Spartans and all the other films that look and sound just like those. They have never received over 10% on Rotten Tomatoes and are universally reviled by film critics.
The rarely seen character "White Hat" appears in this comic as the shoulder to lean on for Cueball.