Umwelt
by Jeff
Firefox
Safari / Internet Explorer
Chrome
Image text: Umwelt is the idea that because their senses pick up on different things, different animals in the same ecosystem actually live in very different worlds. Everything about you shapes the world you inhabit--from your ideology to your glasses prescription to your web browser."
The image text does the work for me explaining umwelt. The money part of the text is the last part. This comic is different depending on what web browser you are using. I was able to test Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer. If there are any more out there that are different (Opera, etc). UPDATE: Crap, this is a hard one because the comics change by country, state, city (above, you can see I'm in Philadelphia), browser, network and page you navigated from. Please, if you see something new, report on what you did and how you got it in the comments.
In the Firefox comic, Megan finds a snake, but "forgets to stop". That seems to mean that she forgot to stop finding more and more of a massive snake. A snake so long it goes over a squirrel, you see the part of the body where it ate something huge. It passes another person in the third frame and Beret Guy is riding it in the fourth frame and then it goes through a portal from the gaming series Portal. And given that it doesn't end by the end of the comic strip, it could continue on.
In the Safari comic, Cueball goes out to see the Northern Lights and they are amazing as we see in the middle frame. But Cueball says they are just clouds, because the Northern Lights play off the clouds themselves to downplay the beauty he saw.
The Chrome comic is a commentary on how the East Coasters are panicked by a small earthquake that happens often on the West Coast, but California's aren't tough enough for snow. (Or LA people and their rain traffic jams.)
Networking
by Jeff
Image text: Our company is agile and lean with a focus on the long tail. Ok, our company is actually a polecat I found in my backyard.
Networking in business is the act of expanding your group of contacts in order to help your career down the line. Here, in this comic, Beret Guy meets Connr Clark (surely that must be a typo for "Connor") and Beret Guy is as strange as he usually is. This time he has a business card, which usually contains contact information, but only says "This is my business card". He calls his briefcase or suitcase a "handlebox", which is full of a quarter of a million dollars in cash. Then Beret Guy proceeds to eat Connr's business card. All of these things are not common behavior.
The image text is a pun on three common business buzzwords: agile, lean and long-tail. An agile business is one that can change course quickly based on customer demands and the business environment. A lean business is an efficient one that can provide results for customers without any wasted time, energy or money. Long-tail describes the retailing strategy of selling a large number of unique items with relatively small quantities sold of each – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities. The best example I can think of for long-tail is Netflix, because they have (almost) every movie imaginable, including rare ones that only a few people would be interested in.
And of course, the pun here is an animal that is agile and lean with a long tail is a polecat.
Keyed
by Jeff
Image text: I was sure he was just getting revenge, but then he did the same thing to Carrie Underwood. Then he mailed me a scone. I think I'm giving up dating.
This comic is a take on one of the typical revenge tactics in dating and in life, which is one person "keying" the car of another. To "key" a car is to drag a key across the side of the car, sometimes multiple times, ruining the paint job. Instead, our friend Beret Guy painted a really detailed key on the side of the car in his version of "keying" a car.
The image text is a reference to the song "Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood, which is a revenge song which details (via wikipedia) Carrie Underwood imagining her boyfriend hanging out and flirting with a "bleach-blonde" girl, shooting pool, buying her a drink, dancing, and hoping to "get lucky" with her. In retaliation, she commits several law-breaking actions including vandalizing his customized four-wheel drive vehicle by scratching its side with a key, carving her name into its leather seats, smashing the headlights with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat and slashing all four tires. She hopes that this will make him "think before he cheats" again.
I'm not sure what is up with the scone mailing. It is probably just random. Oh Beret Guy, never change.
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".
Business Plan
by Jeff
Image text : The investor elevator pitch is "Wheeeeeeee! Elevators are fun!"
I'm traveling today, so this one is short (and late) and luckily this one is not too in depth. This one has the art and feel of a very early xkcd comic as well. Beret-guy's "business plan" is to attract gulls with pieces of bread and then trick people into putting their money in his container to purchase them.
The image text is a reference to the American (I think it is American at least) phrase "Elevator pitch", which is also similar to "investor pitch". In this case, this person in the image text is excited to be riding the elevator, which turns out to be their pitch.
Exoplanets
by Jeff
Image text: I'm just worried that we'll all leave and you won't get to come along!
In this comic, our friend Beret run to wake up Cueball with his potentially middle of the night revelation that Humankind is discovering "Exoplanets" or planets that exist outside of our solar system. The indication is that these planets are habitable enough for humans, even if just for a visit.
Then Beret takes it a bit further thinking that one of the countries on Earth could restart Project Orion. As Beret suggests, Project Orion was an early study that pushed for nuclear powered rockets for space travel. However, the one major downside of Project Orion was the fallout zone that the nuclear launch would present on Earth. But a nuclear launch in space on an asteroid or space station would not present those same problems. Then Beret references Stargate:Atlantis when he mentions "City-Ships" as the city-ship Atlantis was the basis for the show. The city-ships on Stargate:Atlantis are about the size of Manhattan.
So, to sum up the comic. Beret is very excited that we can see (with the Hubble telescope and other earth-bound telescopes) and find exoplanets. Then with some advances in space technology we can create nuclear propulsion in space to reach these planets. Have to admit, it is very exciting.
And Cueball would just rather snooze.
The Staple Madness
by submission
Image Text: Staple guns: because duct tape can't make that 'kaCHUNK' noise.
This explanation is written by Harm. Harm is a reader of xkcd and explainxkcd. Harm writes explanations. Harm wrote that sentence mentioning that he writes explanations. Harm didn't write the previous sentence.
This comic is a pure slapstick adventure as Beret finds a staple gun and uses it on everything in sight (including trying to install Debian software onto a laptop). When Megan comes home and asks if he's been using her gun, he denies it. Someone possibly stapled to the ceiling says that he has.
In the source of the comic, the transcript offers an alternate interpretation of the final panal.
God: [[outside of scene, as voice from above]] YES!
The image text makes a reference to duct tape being used for anything and everything, and implies that staple guns can be used as a funner substitute.