Thanks for your support!
by Mike
Hey EXKCD fans! I'm Mike, the creator of this here website. And this is Jeff, the powerhouse writer that gets all the content up. We used to have google ads up here to cover our web costs but they banned us because of click bombing and took all our money. We never wanted to ask you, the fans, for money, but I recently had to leave my job and I'm trying to raise some money for some cool new projects. So we're adding a donation button to the site. If you like what we do please feel free to throw a buck or two at us. We'd greatly appreciate it! But no pressure! Just keep enjoying the content.
Happy Friday!
Update: The donate button embedded in the post wasn't working. So you can click on the button in the sidebar over there on the right.
Thanks, Mike & Jeff
Desert Island
by Mike
Image Text: Telescopes and bathyscapes and sonar probes of Scottish lakes, Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse explained with abstract phase-space maps, some x-ray slides, a music score, Minard's Napoleonic war: the most exciting new frontier is charting what's already here.
This comic is making the point that there is a wonderful world waiting to be explored in the ocean. From above it seems so plain, endless, and boring. But underneath the surface lies the most unexplored area on the planet. We know more about the surface of Mars than we know about the ocean floors on our own planet. This comic is a commentary on the need to head below the waves and start exploring.
iPad
by Mike
Image Text: Maybe we're all gonna die, but we're gonna die in *really cool ways*.
Kind of puts iPads in persepective. Monkeys ARE controlling robot arms. But I'm sure soon there will be an app for that.
Asshole
by Mike
Asshole
Image Text: [Shortly thereafter, at a nearby bakery] ::CRASH:: ::RUMBLE:: ::VRRRRRR:: '... I don't know, officer. It just scooped up an entire rack of scones and drove away!'
People are haters.
Static
by Mike
Image Text: I firmly believe that nothing can go wrong on a project if you're wearing one of those wrist things.
This comic is making of the fact that the male geek here thinks the anti-static bracelet will work as a contraceptive technique. Anti-static bracelets are used by computer technicians to prevent an accidental static discharge that can damage sensitive electronic equipment.
UPDATE: From the comments it looks like there's some confusion over who is talking in each panel. In my opinion, the girl is always the speech bubble the originates on top (the ones that have the arrows pointing down) and the guy is the one with the arrows pointing up. They are currently trying to have sex and the guy is wearing an anti-static bracelet (where on his body he's wearing it is unclear). Earlier in the week he was replacing RAM and wearing a condom (again, where on his body is unclear).
Fall Foliage
by Mike
Image Text: And I could replace you with older pictures of you, from back when you looked happy.
The hue of an image is the image's color or shade. The hue adjustment in Photoshop lets you move a slider back and forth to shift the colors of the image. This comic is suggesting that instead of taking the typical American trip to someplace like New Hampshire to see the leaves change colors in autumn, one could take a picture of summer leaves and just play with the hue slider in Photoshop to get a similar appearance. Of course, that wouldn't replicate my favorite part- the smell.
Scary
by Mike
Image Text: I'm teaching every 8-year-old relative to say this, and every 14-year-old to do the same thing with Toy Story. Also, Pokemon hit the US over a decade ago and kids born after Aladdin came out will turn 18 next year.
No hidden meaning here, but this sure is scary. I remember graduating college and seeing a banner welcoming the class of 2010. I was half expecting them to be robots. What's being implied here is that time is moving really quickly and we're getting older faster than we think. Events that seem like they "just happened" have happened long enough ago for a whole other person to come into existence, grow up, and learn to carry on a conversation.
Conversations
by Mike
Image Text: If the dysentery graph looks historically inaccurate it's because I got all my data from Oregon Trail.
Dysentery is a disease that causes fatal diarrhea. Frequently caused by an infectious bacteria, virus, or parasite, this disease was a common way to die in the computer game Oregon Trail. This comic suggests that it is spread more easily while on the toilet and with the rise in laptop sales (and rise in people are "conversing" over the internet while on the toilet) we will see a new rise in cases of dysentery.
UPDATE: "There are three graphs. It doesn’t imply that “we will see a new rise in cases of dysentery.”, it implies more conversations will take place with someone on the toilet due to using a laptop, when in the past it was due to dysentery." - Thanks Dave!
Reverse Polish Sausage
by Mike
Image text: It looks good, but it needs more postfixins.
This comic is based on the Reverse Polish notation proposed for use in mathematics. It's also sometimes known as postfix notation because the operators follow all of it's operands. For example, In normal notation if you wanted to add the numbers 3, 4, and 5 you would write 3 + 4 + 5. Using reverse polish notation it would be written as 3 4 5 +.
Ohm
by Mike
Image text: More generally, with great power comes great dEnergy/dt.
Good old uncle Ohm. In this, not-quite-sure-it-happened-this-way, comic, Ohm's nephew (I'm presuming they both have the last name Ohm) is being given what would later become part of Ohm's law of electricity.
I = V/R
It relates the current I, to the voltage (electrical potential) V and resistance R.
Power is just current multiplied by voltage P = IV. Through substitution with Ohm's law we can see that power is also equal current I squared times resistance R.
The reason old uncle Ohm is stating it this way is probably because he's making a pun on how Peter Parker's (Spiderman's) uncle would relate his own dying words to his nephew many decades later. "With great power comes great responsibility"