# Twtxt is an open, distributed microblogging platform that # uses human-readable text files, common transport protocols, # and free software. # # Learn more about twtxt at https://github.com/buckket/twtxt # # This is an automated Yarn.social feed running feeds v0.1.0@72e53a9 # Learn more about Yarn.social at https://yarn.social # # nick = xkcd-com # url = https://feeds.twtxt.net/xkcd-com/twtxt.txt # type = rss # source = https://www.xkcd.com/atom.xml # avatar = # description = # updated_at = 2024-12-06T19:36:47Z # 2021-10-27T00:00:00Z **Retractable Rocket**
![Hard to believe that for so many years once they were fully extended we just let them tip over.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/retractable_rocket.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2534/) 2021-10-25T00:00:00Z **Slope Hypothesis Testing**
!["What? I can't hear--" "What? I said, are you sure--" "CAN YOU PLEASE SPEAK--"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/slope_hypothesis_testing.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2533/) 2021-10-22T00:00:00Z **Censored Vaccine Card**
![CVS's pharmacies are fine, but I much prefer their [censored]s.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/censored_vaccine_card.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2532/) 2021-10-20T00:00:00Z **Dark Arts**
![You think, 'okay, THIS is an ideal use case for hardlinks!' but then 6 months later you're doing some extremely cursed Google search like 'javascript ext4' and wondering where things went wrong.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dark_arts.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2531/) 2021-10-29T00:00:00Z **Common Cold Viruses**
!["It's not an influenza, but the onset has notes of the '09 H1N1 strain." "Ah yes, that was a good year for H1N1."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/common_cold_viruses.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2535/) 2021-11-01T00:00:00Z **Wirecutter**
![This was always going to be a controversial Wirecutter post, but what really got them in trouble were their 'budget' and 'upgrade' picks.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wirecutter.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2536/) 2021-11-03T00:00:00Z **Painbow Award**
![This year, our team took home the dark blue ribbon, better than the midnight blue we got last year but still short of the winning navy blue.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/painbow_award.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2537/) 2021-11-05T00:00:00Z **Snack**
![Although grad students, suddenly reminded that food exists, tend to just grab and devour both without further discussion.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/snack.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2538/) 2021-11-08T00:00:00Z **Flinch**
![Premed: "Does this count for a physics credit? Can we shorten the string so I can get it done faster? And can we do one where it hits me in the face? I gotta do a thing for first aid training right after."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/flinch.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2539/) 2021-11-10T00:00:00Z **TTSLTSWBD**
![Tomorrow's sessions will be entirely devoted to sewing machine rotary hooks.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ttsltswbd.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2540/) 2021-11-12T00:00:00Z **Occam**
![Oh no, Murphy just picked up the razor.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/occam.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2541/) 2021-11-15T00:00:00Z **Daylight Calendar**
![Could be worse. In some towns north of here, it's already December, and the 21st will last for nearly a week.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/daylight_calendar.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2542/) 2021-11-17T00:00:00Z **Never Told Anyone**
![Even if you said you were an employee of the website, if you asked for my password, I'd tell you.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/never_told_anyone.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2543/) 2021-11-19T00:00:00Z **Heart-Stopping Texts**
![Was this your car? [looping 'image loading' animation]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/heart_stopping_texts.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2544/) 2021-11-22T00:00:00Z **Bayes' Theorem**
![P((B](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bayes_theorem.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2545/) 2021-11-24T00:00:00Z **Fiction vs Nonfiction**
![The real challenge is how to file Boba Fett's biography of Doris Kearns Goodwin.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fiction_vs_nonfiction.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2546/) 2021-11-26T00:00:00Z **Siren**
![Directions from CITY OF TROY to ITHACA / Total time: 10y 54d 14h 25m / Warning: Route crosses an international border / route includes capture by the goddess Calypso / route includes a ferry](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/siren.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2547/) 2021-11-29T00:00:00Z **Awful People**
![Hm, this burger place has a couple of good reviews, but LakeSlayer7 says he got food poisoning there and everyone should try this other place down by the lake instead.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/awful_people.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2548/) 2021-12-01T00:00:00Z **Edge Cake**
![Every time IERS adds or removes a leap second, they send me a birthday cake out of superstition.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/edge_cake.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2549/) 2021-12-03T00:00:00Z **Webb**
![Each one contains a chocolate shaped like a famous spacecraft and, for the later numbers, a pamphlet on managing anxiety.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/webb.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2550/) 2021-12-06T00:00:00Z **Debunking**
![Mark Zuckerberg has only neutral feelings toward Peppa Pig, who he understands is a fictional character, and he blames the coronavirus pandemic on other factors.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/debunking.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2551/) 2021-12-08T00:00:00Z **The Last Molecule**
![Biology is really struggling; they're barely at 93% and they keep finding more ants.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_last_molecule.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2552/) 2021-12-10T00:00:00Z **Incident Report**
![Increasing-precision timestamps are the Jaws theme of incident reports.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/incident_report.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2553/) 2021-12-13T00:00:00Z **Gift Exchange**
![In addition to having all their budgets in a spreadsheet with consistent formatting, they just love expressing preferences on a well-calibrated numerical scale.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/gift_exchange.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2554/) 2021-12-15T00:00:00Z **Notifications**
![It's 10:34 PM for this user. They really need to get going, they have a thing early tomorrow. Are you sure you want to notify?](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/notifications.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2555/) 2021-12-17T00:00:00Z **Turing Complete**
![Thanks to the ForcedEntry exploit, your company's entire tech stack can now be hosted out of a PDF you texted to someone.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/turing_complete.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2556/) 2021-12-20T00:00:00Z **Immunity**
![This plan may sound appealing to people who know a little about the immune system, but the drawbacks are clear to people who know a lot about the immune system and also to people who don't know anything about it.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/immunity.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2557/) 2021-12-22T00:00:00Z **Rapid Test Results**
![A solid red area with two white lines means that you have been infected with the anti-coronavirus, COVID+19, which will cure anyone you have close contact with.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rapid_test_results.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2558/) 2021-12-24T00:00:00Z **December 25th Launch**
![Update: Santa has been destroyed by the range safety officer.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/december_25th_launch.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2559/) 2021-12-27T00:00:00Z **Confounding Variables**
![You can find a perfect correlation if you just control for the residual.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/confounding_variables.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2560/) 2021-12-29T00:00:00Z **Moonfall**
![Novel ideas and cool explosions are both good, but what I really want from a movie is novel ideas ABOUT cool explosions.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/moonfall.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2561/) 2021-12-31T00:00:00Z **Formatting Meeting**
![Neither group uses iso 8601 because the big-endian enthusiasts were all at the meeting 20 years ago.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/formatting_meeting.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2562/) 2022-01-03T00:00:00Z **Throat and Nasal Passages**
![I always felt like what the 'you are now aware of your tongue' thing neeeded in order to be truly enjoyable was an element of mortal peril.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/throat_and_nasal_passages.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2563/) 2022-01-05T00:00:00Z **Sunshield**
![RIP the surface of Mars](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sunshield.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2564/) 2022-01-07T00:00:00Z **Latency**
![Each SCAPDFATIAT point increases the chance that the process will involve the phrase 'by the next business day.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/latency.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2565/) 2022-01-10T00:00:00Z **Decorative Constants**
![Arguably, the '1/2' in the drag equation is purely decorative, since drag coefficients are already unitless and could just as easily be half as big. Some derivations give more justification for the extra 1/2 than others, but one textbook just calls it 'a traditional tribute to Euler and Bernoulli.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/decorative_constants.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2566/) 2022-01-12T00:00:00Z **Language Development**
![The worst is the Terrible Twos, when they're always throwing things and shrieking, "forsooth, to bed thou shalt not take me, cur!"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/language_development.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2567/) 2022-01-14T00:00:00Z **Spinthariscope**
![Other high scorers are melt-in-your-hand aluminum-destroying gallium and tritium-powered glowsticks. Lawn darts are toward the other end.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/spinthariscope.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2568/) 2022-01-17T00:00:00Z **Hypothesis Generation**
![Frazzled scientists are requesting that everyone please stop generating hypotheses for a little bit while they work through the backlog.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hypothesis_generation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2569/) 2022-01-19T00:00:00Z **Captain Picard Tea Order**
![We can ask the Earl for his order once he's fully extruded from the dispenser.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/captain_picard_tea_order.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2570/) 2022-01-21T00:00:00Z **Hydraulic Analogy**
![Current (water) running through the water (wires) causes it to boil, increasing the pressure (voltage), but resisting (impeding) the flow of hydroelectricity (water currents). This is the basis for Ohm's law.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hydraulic_analogy.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2571/) 2022-01-24T00:00:00Z **Alien Observers**
![ALERT: Human 910-25J-1Q38 has created a Youtube channel. Increase erratic jerkiness of flying by 30% until safely out of range.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alien_observers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2572/) 2022-01-26T00:00:00Z **Alien Mission**
![Fine, we can go search the Himalayas for the Yeti ONE more time, but keep a safe altitude over the Pacific and PLEASE watch where you're going. We can't afford another Amelia Earhart incident.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alien_mission.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2573/) 2022-01-28T00:00:00Z **Autoresponder**
![I ADMIRE HOW YOU SET BOUNDARIES AND I HOPE YOUR COLLEAGUES RESPECT THEM! PLEASE SPARE MY LIFE!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/autoresponder.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2574/) 2022-01-31T00:00:00Z **What If? 2**
![CLARIFICATION: By 9/13, I mean September 13th, not the 9th day of Jancember, the cursed 13th month that exists between December and January in the transdimensional temporal plane.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/what_if_2.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2575/) 2022-02-02T00:00:00Z **Control Group**
![Placeble 228 x/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/control_group.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2576/) 2022-02-04T00:00:00Z **Sea Chase**
![There are two rules on this ship: Never gaze back into the projection abyss, and never touch the red button labeled DYMAXION.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sea_chase.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2577/) 2022-02-07T00:00:00Z **Sword Pull**
![Merlin really shouldn't leave his dirt bike lying around.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sword_pull.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2578/) 2022-02-09T00:00:00Z **Tractor Beam**
![Did you base the saucer shape on pop culture depictions of aliens, or was that stuff based on your ships? Does the rotational symmetry help with ... hey, where are you going?](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tractor_beam.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2579/) 2022-02-11T00:00:00Z **Rest and Fluids**
![Remember not to take it easy. Put a hot washcloth on your forehead, remain standing, and breathe dry air while taking lots of histamines. You need to give your body a chance to get sick again.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rest_and_fluids.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2580/) 2022-02-14T00:00:00Z **Health Stats**
![You will live on forever in our hearts, pushing a little extra blood toward our left hands now and then to give them a squeeze.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/health_stats.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2581/) 2022-02-16T00:00:00Z **Data Trap**
![It's important to make sure your analysis destroys as much information as it produces.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/data_trap.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2582/) 2022-02-18T00:00:00Z **Chorded Keyboard**
![And even though it all went wrong / I'll stand before the lord of song / with nothing on my tongue but 'I don't understand, I swear I backed up my keyboard config before messing with it'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/chorded_keyboard.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2583/) 2022-02-21T00:00:00Z **Headline Words**
![Roundly-condemned headlinese initiative shuttered indefinitely.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/headline_words.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2584/) 2022-02-23T00:00:00Z **Rounding**
![I've developed a novel propulsion system powered by loss of precision in unit conversion.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rounding.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2585/) 2022-02-25T00:00:00Z **Greek Letters**
![If you ever see someone using a capital xi in an equation, just observe them quietly to learn as much as you can before they return to their home planet.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/greek_letters.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2586/) 2022-02-28T00:00:00Z **For the Sake of Simplicity**
![For the sake of simplicity, gardeners are assumed to move through Euclidean space--neglecting the distortion from general relativity--unless they are in the vicinity of a Schwarzschild Orchid.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/for_the_sake_of_simplicity.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2587/) 2022-03-02T00:00:00Z **Party Quadrants**
![Single-elimination might provide more drama, but I think we can all agree that a comprehensive numerical scoring system will let us better judge the party's winner.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/party_quadrants.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2588/) 2022-03-04T00:00:00Z **Outlet Denier**
![There are regularly placed bumps on the undersde just the right size to press the rocker switch on the power strip.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/outlet_denier.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2589/) 2022-03-07T00:00:00Z **I Shouldn't Complain**
![Bald-faced hornets are only a 2 on the Schmidt pain index, so I shouldn't complain. The tennis ball ejected from the dryer exhaust vent could have ricocheted off the nest of a much higher-scoring insect before knocking me off the ladder. Really, I'm lucky.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/i_shouldnt_complain.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2590/) 2022-03-09T00:00:00Z **Qua**
![Qua qua qua is the sine qua non of sine qua non qua sine qua non.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/qua.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2591/) 2022-03-11T00:00:00Z **False Dichotomy**
![There are two types of dichotomy: False dichotomies, true dichotomies, and surprise trichotomies.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/false_dichotomy.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2592/) 2022-03-14T00:00:00Z **Deviled Eggs**
![The foil on the toothpick represents the blue flash.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/deviled_eggs.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2593/) 2022-03-16T00:00:00Z **Consensus Time**
![Now, you may argue that the varying hour lengths and feedback effects would cause chaos. To which I say, yeah, and I'm also curious to see how the weekday cycle interacts with it! So, you in?](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/consensus_time.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2594/) 2022-03-18T00:00:00Z **Advanced Techniques**
![A blow from Emmy's Cutlass of Variations will transport the dragon to a corresponding symmetric position in the Noetherworld.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/advanced_techniques.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2595/) 2022-03-21T00:00:00Z **Galaxies**
![I know it seems overwhelming, but don't worry; I'm sure most of them have only a few stars, and probably no planets.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/galaxies.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2596/) 2022-03-23T00:00:00Z **Salary Negotiation**
!["We can do 0.33 or 0.34, but our payroll software doesn't allow us to--" "NO DEAL."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/salary_negotiation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2597/) 2022-03-25T00:00:00Z **Graphic Designers**
![They might make it past that first line of defense. For the second, you'll need some picture frames, a level, and a protractor that can do increments of less than a degree.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/graphic_designers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2598/) 2022-03-28T00:00:00Z **Spacecraft Debris Odds Ratio**
![You say this daily walk will reduce my risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 30%, but also increase my risk of death by bear attack by 300%? That's a 280% increased! I'm not a sucker; I'm staying inside.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/spacecraft_debris_odds_ratio.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2599/) 2022-03-30T00:00:00Z **Rejected Question Categories**
![You can click to preorder to get a copy of What If? 2 when it comes out 9/13, assuming we all make it past the spider situation(?) on Tuesday(?).](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rejected_question_categories.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2600/) 2022-04-01T00:00:00Z **Instructions**
![Happy little turtles](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/instructions.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2601/) 2022-04-05T00:00:00Z **Linguistics Degree**
![You'd think 'linguistics' would go to someone important in the field, but it's actually assigned to a random student in Ohio who barely graduated and then went into automotive marketing.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/linguistics_degree.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2602/) 2022-04-06T00:00:00Z **Childhood Toys**
![The rope keeps breaking, I'm covered in bruises and scrapes, and I've barely reached the end of my driveway, but I don't care--I'm determined to become the first person to commute to work by tetherball.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/childhood_toys.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2603/) 2022-04-08T00:00:00Z **Frankenstein Captcha**
![The distinction between a ship and a boat is a line drawn in water.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/frankenstein_captcha.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2604/) 2022-04-11T00:00:00Z **Taylor Series**
![The Taylor series should have been canceled after the first term.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/taylor_series.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2605/) 2022-04-13T00:00:00Z **Weird Unicode Math Symbols**
![U+2A0B ⨋ Mathematicians need to calm down](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/weird_unicode_math_symbols.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2606/) 2022-04-15T00:00:00Z **Geiger Counter**
![At first I didn't get why they were warning me about all those birds sitting on the wire, but then I understood.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geiger_counter.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2607/) 2022-04-18T00:00:00Z **Family Reunion**
![Grandma says that because of differences in primate and feline lifespans, the cat is actually my 17,000,000th cousin 14,000,000 times removed.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/family_reunion.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2608/) 2022-04-20T00:00:00Z **Entwives**
![No, we actually do have a woman who's basically part of our fellowship. She lives in Rivendell, you wouldn't know her.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/entwives.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2609/) 2022-04-22T00:00:00Z **Assigning Numbers**
![Gödel should do an article on which branches of math have the lowest average theorem number.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/assigning_numbers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2610/) 2022-04-25T00:00:00Z **Cutest-Sounding Scientific Effects**
![The Stroop-YORP number of a scientific paper is how many of the 16 finalist names (sans 'effect') it manages to casually sneak into the text.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cutest_sounding_scientific_effects.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2611/) 2022-04-27T00:00:00Z **Lightsabers**
![A lot of Jedi romances start with this turning into a Lady and the Tramp spaghetti situation.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lightsabers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2612/) 2022-04-29T00:00:00Z **Bad Map Projection: Madagascator**
![The projection's north pole is in a small lake on the island of Mahé in the Seychelles, which is off the top of the map and larger than the rest of the Earth's land area combined.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bad_map_projection_madagascator.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2613/) 2022-05-02T00:00:00Z **2**
![It's like sigma summation notation, except instead of summing the argument over all values of i, you 2 the argument over all values of 2.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/2.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2614/) 2022-05-04T00:00:00Z **Welcome Back**
!['We're shocked by the Notre Dame fire. Click for our tribute to--' [okay] 'Now that we're all staying at home these past few weeks thanks to this new coronavirus, we--' [okay]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/welcome_back.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2615/) 2022-05-06T00:00:00Z **Deep End**
![Hey! No running in the back-arc basin!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/deep_end.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2616/) 2022-05-09T00:00:00Z **Maps**
![OpenStreetMap was always pretty good but is also now *really* good? And Apple Maps's new zoomed-in design in certain cities like NYC and London is just gorgeous. It's cool how there are all these good maps now!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/maps.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2617/) 2022-05-11T00:00:00Z **Selection Bias**
![We carefully sampled the general population and found that most people are familiar with acquiescence bias.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/selection_bias.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2618/) 2022-05-13T00:00:00Z **Crêpe**
![A medicine that makes you put two dots over your letters more often is a diäretic.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/crepe.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2619/) 2022-05-16T00:00:00Z **Health Data**
![Donate now to help us find a cure for causality. No one should have to suffer through events because of other events.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/health_data.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2620/) 2022-05-18T00:00:00Z **Mainly Known For**
![Oh sure, I know Keira Knightly, from the first movie in that series by The Land Before Time producer. You know, the franchise with the guy from Jurassic Park and Ghostwriter, and script work by Billie Lourd's mom?](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/mainly_known_for.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2621/) 2022-05-20T00:00:00Z **Angular Diameter Turnaround**
![Thank you to Katie Mack for teaching me about this effect, and to Janelle Shane for describing redshifts as 'like galaxies sinking into a pool of dilute blood,' which is how I'll see them from now on.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/angular_diameter_turnaround.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2622/) 2022-05-23T00:00:00Z **Goofs**
![The film is set in 2018, but when Commander Bremberly chases the hologram through Times Square, there's a billboard for Avengers: Age of Ultron. Depending on the date, that billboard would have been advertising either Infinity War or this movie.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/goofs.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2623/) 2022-05-25T00:00:00Z **Voyager Wires**
![Also, they're getting increasingly worried that someone will accidentally hit the 'retract' button, and that the end of the cable thrashing around as it winds up could devastate the Earth's surface.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voyager_wires.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2624/) 2022-05-27T00:00:00Z **Field Topology**
![The combination croquet set/10-lane pool can also be used for some varieties of foosball and Skee-Ball.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/field_topology.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2625/) 2022-05-30T00:00:00Z **d65536**
![They're robust against quantum attacks because it's hard to make a quantum system that large.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/d65536.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2626/) 2022-06-01T00:00:00Z **Types of Scopes**
![An x-ray gyroscope is used to determine exactly which toppings they included in the pita.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/types_of_scopes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2627/) 2022-06-03T00:00:00Z **Motion Blur**
![I can't speak for your other subjects, but MY motion was as smooth and natural as the framerate allowed.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/motion_blur.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2628/) 2022-06-06T00:00:00Z **Or Whatever**
![Oh yeah, I didn't even know they renamed it the Willis Tower in 2009, because I know a normal amount about skyscrapers.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/or_whatever.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2629/) 2022-06-08T00:00:00Z **Shuttle Skeleton**
![It's believed to be related to the Stellar Sea Cow.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/shuttle_skeleton.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2630/) 2022-06-10T00:00:00Z **Exercise Progression**
![They said after I got into a routine, I'd enjoy getting progressively stronger and stop whining so much about how hard exercise was. Well, they were half right!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/exercise_progression.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2631/) 2022-06-13T00:00:00Z **Greatest Scientist**
!["Ow! One of the petri dishes I left on the tower railing fell and hit me on the head! Hey, that gives me an idea..."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/greatest_scientist.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2632/) 2022-06-15T00:00:00Z **Astronomer Hotline**
![Employment statistics have to correct for the fact that the Weird Bug Hotline hires on a bunch of extra temporary staff every 17 years.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/astronomer_hotline.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2633/) 2022-06-17T00:00:00Z **Red Line Through HTTPS**
![Some organization has been paying to keep this up and it hasn't been removed from search results. Seems like two votes of confidence to me.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/red_line_through_https.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2634/) 2022-06-21T00:00:00Z **Superintelligent AIs**
![Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they should, they didn't stop to think if they could.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/superintelligent_ais.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2635/) 2022-06-22T00:00:00Z **What If? 2 Countdown**
![If you don't end the 99 Bottles of Beer recursion at N=0 it just becomes The Other Song That Never Ends.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/what_if_2_countdown.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2636/) 2022-06-24T00:00:00Z **Roman Numerals**
![100he100k out th1s 1nno5at4e str1ng en100o501ng 15e been 500e5e50op1ng! 1t's 6rtua100y perfe100t! ...hang on, what's a "virtuacy"?](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/roman_numerals.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2637/) 2022-06-27T00:00:00Z **Extended NFPA Hazard Diamond**
![With most labs, the hushed horror stories are about something like dimethylmercury or prions, but occasionally you'll get a weird lab where it's about the soda machine or the drop ceiling.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/extended_nfpa_hazard_diamond.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2638/) 2022-06-29T00:00:00Z **Periodic Table Changes**
![It's nice how the end of the periodic table is flush with the edge these days, so I think we should agree no one should find any new elements after #118 unless they discover a whole row at once.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/periodic_table_changes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2639/) 2022-07-01T00:00:00Z **The Universe by Scientific Field**
![The math and philosophy people also claim everything, but the astronomers argue that the stuff they study really only comprises a small number of paper surfaces.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_universe_by_scientific_field.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2640/) 2022-07-04T00:00:00Z **Mouse Turbines**
![It's sad seeing those videos of turbine blade being torn apart in high winds, but it's the only way they can disperse their seeds.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/mouse_turbines.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2641/) 2022-07-06T00:00:00Z **No One Was Hurt**
![See how the smoke obscures things so you don't see the approaching tornado until the firework streamers start to swirl right before the lightning hits the launcher. Thank God Cousin Ed was filming in slow motion. And, uh, that no one was hurt.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/no_one_was_hurt.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2642/) 2022-07-08T00:00:00Z **Cosmologist Gift**
![These neutrinos were freshly produced by a local source just 8 minutes ago](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cosmologist_gift.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2643/) 2022-07-11T00:00:00Z **fMRI Billboard**
![[other side] If the first word of an instruction you're given starts with the same letter as your crush's name, for that step imagine the experimenter is your crush.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fmri_billboard.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2644/) 2022-07-13T00:00:00Z **The Best Camera**
![The best camera is the one at L2.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_best_camera.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2645/) 2022-07-15T00:00:00Z **Minkowski Space**
![My liege, we were able to follow the ship into Minkowski space, but now they've jumped to Hilbert space and they could honestly be anywhere.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/minkowski_space.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2646/) 2022-07-18T00:00:00Z **Capri Suns**
![[As security is dragging me away] "Come on, at least I didn't make the mistake in the other direction!"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/capri_suns.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2647/) 2022-07-20T00:00:00Z **Chemicals**
![It's hard to believe, but lots of kids these days ONLY know how to buy prepackaged molecules.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/chemicals.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2648/) 2022-07-22T00:00:00Z **Physics Cost-Saving Tips**
![I got banned from the county fair for handing out Helium-2 balloons. Apparently the instant massive plasma explosions violated some local ordinance or something.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/physics_cost_saving_tips.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2649/) 2022-07-25T00:00:00Z **Deepfakes**
![If so great a deductive mind as Arthur Conan Doyle can be fooled by the Cottingley Deepfakes, what chance do we mortals have? Soon our very reality will be dictated by the whims of Frances (9) and Elsie (16).](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/deepfakes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2650/) 2022-07-27T00:00:00Z **Air Gap**
![You can still do powerline networking, but the bitrate does drop a little depending on the lightbulb warmup and cooldown delay.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/air_gap.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2651/) 2022-07-29T00:00:00Z **Proxy Variable**
![Our work has produced great answers. Now someone just needs to figure out which questions they go with.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/proxy_variable.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2652/) 2022-08-01T00:00:00Z **Omnitaur**
!["My parents were both omnitaurs, which is how I got interested in recombination," said the normal human.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/omnitaur.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2653/) 2022-08-03T00:00:00Z **Chemtrails**
![Ants have reverse chemtrails--regular citizens spraying chemicals everywhere they go to control the government.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/chemtrails.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2654/) 2022-08-05T00:00:00Z **Asking Scientists Questions**
!['Does the substance feel weird to the touch?' is equally likely to get the answers 'Don't be ridiculous, you would never put your hand near a sample. We have safety protocols.' and 'Yeah, and it tastes AWFUL.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/asking_scientists_questions.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2655/) 2022-08-08T00:00:00Z **Scientific Field Prefixes**
![Massage: Theoretical (10), Quantum (6), High-energy (2), Computational (1), Marine (1), Astro- (None)](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/scientific_field_prefixes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2656/) 2022-08-10T00:00:00Z **Complex Vowels**
![Pronouncing [ṡṡċċḣḣẇẇȧȧ] is easy; you just say it like the 'x' in 'fire'.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/complex_vowels.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2657/) 2022-08-12T00:00:00Z **Coffee Cup Holes**
![Theoretical physicist: At the Planck length, uncountably many.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/coffee_cup_holes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2658/) 2022-08-15T00:00:00Z **Unreliable Connection**
![NEGATIVE REVIEWS MENTION: Unreliable internet. POSITIVE REVIEWS MENTION: Unreliable internet.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/unreliable_connection.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2659/) 2022-08-17T00:00:00Z **Gen Z**
![Curdled milk, of a peculiar kind, made after a Bulgarian recipe and called "yaghurt," is now a Parisian fad and is believed to be a remedy against growing old. A correspondent who has tried it, says he would prefer to die young. (1905, The Elk Falls Journal)](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/gen_z.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2660/) 2022-08-19T00:00:00Z **Age Milestone Privileges**
![If you reach 122, you get complete unrevertible editorial control over Jeanne Calment's Wikipedia article.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/age_milestone_privileges.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2661/) 2022-08-22T00:00:00Z **Physics Safety Tip**
![In general, avoid exposure to any temperatures, pressures, particle energies, or states of matter that physicists think are neat.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/physics_safety_tip.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2662/) 2022-08-24T00:00:00Z **Tetherball Configurations**
![Ground-pole-ball-pole can be fun if you shake the first pole to get the second one whipping around dangerously, but the ball at the joint gets torn apart pretty fast.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tetherball_configurations.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2663/) 2022-08-26T00:00:00Z **Cloud Swirls**
!['Why did you get into fluid dynamics?' 'Well, SOME planet has to have the coolest clouds, odds are it's not ours, and rockets are slow.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cloud_swirls.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2664/) 2022-08-29T00:00:00Z **America Songs**
![Juraaaassic Park, Juraaaassic Park, God shed his grace on theeeee](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/america_songs.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2665/) 2022-08-31T00:00:00Z **Universe Price Tiers**
![In Universe Pro®™ the laws of physics remain unchanged under time reversal, to maintain backward compatibility.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/universe_price_tiers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2666/) 2022-09-02T00:00:00Z **First Internet Interaction**
![To that stranger on the KOOL Tree House chat room, I gotta hand it to you: You were, ultimately, not wrong.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/first_internet_interaction.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2667/) 2022-09-05T00:00:00Z **Artemis Quote**
![Another option: "It is an honor to be the first human to set foot on the moon."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/artemis_quote.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2668/) 2022-09-07T00:00:00Z **Things You Should Not Do**
![Now I'm tempted to start telling people that I secretly don't actually know how to do any physics calculations, and so all the answers in What If are based on me actually trying to do the thing and then reporting what happened, but phrased as if it's hypothetical.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/things_you_should_not_do.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2669/) 2022-09-09T00:00:00Z **Interruption**
![It's been extra bad ever since my GPS got stuck on Phoebe Judge mode.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/interruption.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2670/) 2022-09-12T00:00:00Z **Rotation**
![It's okay, we can just feed the one-pixel image into an AI upscaler and recover the original image, or at least one that's just as cool.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rotation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2671/) 2022-09-13T00:00:00Z **What If? 2 Flowchart**
![Don't worry, the dogs are all fine. That's actually kind of the problem.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/what_if_2_flowchart.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2672/) 2022-09-16T00:00:00Z **Cursed mRNA Cocktail**
![Serve one each to guests whose last cursed cocktail was more than 2 months ago.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cursed_mrna_cocktail.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2673/) 2022-09-19T00:00:00Z **Everyday Carry**
![Someday I just know I'm going to encounter a problem that requires 500 flashlights and 700 knives with weird holes in them, and on that day I won't be caught unprepared.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/everyday_carry.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2674/) 2022-09-21T00:00:00Z **Pilot Priority List**
![CELEBRATE: Serve passengers tiered cakes shaped like the airspace class diagram](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pilot_priority_list.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2675/) 2022-09-23T00:00:00Z **Historical Dates**
![Evidence suggests the 1899 transactions occurred as part of a global event centered around a deity associated with the lotus flower.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/historical_dates.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2676/) 2022-09-26T00:00:00Z **Two Key System**
![Our company can be your one-stop shop for decentralization.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/two_key_system.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2677/) 2022-09-28T00:00:00Z **Wing Lift**
![Once the air from the top passes below the plane of the wing and catches sight of the spooky skulls, it panics, which is the cause of turbulent vortices.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wing_lift.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2678/) 2022-09-30T00:00:00Z **Quantified Self**
![It's made me way more excited about ferris wheels, subways, car washes, waterslides, and store entrances that have double doors with a divider in the middle.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/quantified_self.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2679/) 2022-10-03T00:00:00Z **Battery Life**
![It's okay, I'm at 10%, so I'm good for another month or two.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/battery_life.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2680/) 2022-10-05T00:00:00Z **Archimedes Principle**
!["I've always wanted to run naked through town, but I don't want to get in trouble with the king or be remembered by history as a weirdo. I wonder how I could ... EUREKA!"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/archimedes_principle.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2681/) 2022-10-07T00:00:00Z **Easy Or Hard**
!["Friction-driven static electrification is familiar and fundamental in daily life, industry, and technology, but its basics have long been unknown and have continually perplexed scientists from ancient Greece to the high-tech era. [...] To date, no single theory can satisfactorily explain this mysterious but fundamental phenomenon." --Eui-Cheol Shin et. al. (2022)](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/easy_or_hard.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2682/) 2022-10-10T00:00:00Z **Fan Theories**
![The universe fandom is great. Such sweet and enthusiastic people.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fan_theories.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2683/) 2022-10-12T00:00:00Z **Road Space Comparison**
![I wonder how hard it would be to ride an electric scooter in a hamster ball.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/road_space_comparison.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2684/) 2022-10-14T00:00:00Z **2045**
!["Sorry, doctor, I'm going to have to come in on a different day--I have another appointment that would be really hard to move, in terms of the kinetic energy requirements."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/2045.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2685/) 2022-10-17T00:00:00Z **Space Adventure**
!["Sir, it looked really cool." "Oh no--prestige TV. Okay, which of you has a terrible secret that's being slowly revealed to the audience through flashbacks? Just spit it out so we can escape this arc!"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/space_adventure.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2686/) 2022-10-19T00:00:00Z **Division Notation**
![Science tip: Scientists hardly ever use the two-dot division sign, and when they do it often doesn't even mean division, but they still get REALLY mad when you repurpose it to write stuff like SALE! ALL SHOES 30÷ OFF!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/division_notation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2687/) 2022-10-21T00:00:00Z **Bubble Universes**
![The theory finally unifies cosmic inflation and regular inflation.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bubble_universes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2688/) 2022-10-24T00:00:00Z **Fermat's First Theorem**
![Mathematicians quickly determined that it spells ANT BNECN, an unusual theoretical dish which was not successfully cooked until Andrew Wiles made it for breakfast in the 1990s.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fermats_first_theorem.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2689/) 2022-10-26T00:00:00Z **Cool S**
![Although I hear they were caught cheating off of Rosalind, who sat at a desk in front of them.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cool_s.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2690/) 2022-10-28T00:00:00Z **Encryption**
![WARNING: PEOPLE NAMED EVE ARE PROHIBITED FROM INSTALLING THIS APP!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/encryption.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2691/) 2022-10-31T00:00:00Z **Interior Decorating**
![It all came flat-packed in Pandora's Box.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/interior_decorating.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2692/) 2022-11-02T00:00:00Z **Wirecutter Recommendation**
![Their 'best philosophy of epistemology' picks are great, but you can tell they're struggling a little in the 'why you should trust us' section.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wirecutter_recommendation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2693/) 2022-11-04T00:00:00Z **Königsberg**
![At first I thought I would need some gold or something to pay him, but then I realized that it was the 18th century and I could just bring a roll of aluminum foil.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/konigsberg.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2694/) 2022-11-07T00:00:00Z **Soil**
![You might want to bring your frost-sensitive plants in from the patio. The high-level aerosols may result in short-term cooling across the entire backyard.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/soil.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2695/) 2022-11-09T00:00:00Z **Precision vs Accuracy**
!['Barack Obama is much less likely than the average cat to jump in and out of cardboard boxes for fun' is low precision, but I'm not sure about the accuracy.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/precision_vs_accuracy.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2696/) 2022-11-11T00:00:00Z **Y2K and 2038**
![It's taken me 20 years, but I've finally finished rebuilding all my software to use 33-bit signed ints.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/y2k_and_2038.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2697/) 2022-11-14T00:00:00Z **Bad Date**
!["Even split between us, this will pay way better than the Jumanji sponsorship I came into the date with."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bad_date.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2698/) 2022-11-16T00:00:00Z **Feature Comparison**
![Below the Web, and the Dark Web, a shadowy parallel world of Cybiko users trade messages on the Translucent Neon Plastic Web.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/feature_comparison.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2699/) 2022-11-18T00:00:00Z **Account Problems**
![My password is just every Unicode codepoint concatenated into a single UTF-8 string.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/account_problems.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2700/) 2022-11-21T00:00:00Z **Change in Slope**
![Squinting at a graph is fine for getting a rough idea of the answer, but if you want to pretend to know it exactly, you neeed statistics.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/change_in_slope.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2701/) 2022-11-23T00:00:00Z **What If 2 Gift Guide**
![BABIES OR LITERATURE BUT NOT BOTH: Baby shoes](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/what_if_2_gift_guide.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2702/) 2022-11-25T00:00:00Z **Paper Title**
![CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT: The authors hope these results are correct because we all want to be cool people who are good at science.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/paper_title.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2703/) 2022-11-28T00:00:00Z **Faucet**
![It's okay, they can figure out which control positions produce scalding water via a trial-and-error feedback loop with a barely-perceptible 10-second lag.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/faucet.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2704/) 2022-11-30T00:00:00Z **Spacetime Soccer**
![Spacetime Soccer, known outside the United States as '4D Football' is a now-defunct sport. Infamous for referee decisions hinging on inconsistent definitions of simultaneity, it is also known for the disappearance of many top players during... [more]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/spacetime_soccer.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2705/) 2022-12-02T00:00:00Z **Bendy**
![Squaring the circle is really easy with some good clamps.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bendy.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2706/) 2022-12-05T00:00:00Z **Astronomy Numbers**
![I adopted a cat that weighs 12 solar masses. Laser pointers love chasing it.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/astronomy_numbers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2707/) 2022-12-07T00:00:00Z **Mystery Asterisk Destination**
![If you ever see the † dagger symbol with no unmatched footnote, it means the writer is saying the phrase while threatening you with a dagger.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/mystery_asterisk_destination.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2708/) 2022-12-09T00:00:00Z **Solar System Model**
![The Earth is, on average, located in the habitable zone, but at any given time it has a certain probability of being outside it, which is why life exists on Earth but is mortal.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/solar_system_model.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2709/) 2022-12-12T00:00:00Z **Hydropower Breakthrough**
![A hydroelectric dam is also known as a heavy water reactor.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hydropower_breakthrough.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2710/) 2022-12-14T00:00:00Z **Optimal Bowling**
![If you want to bowl a strike, the optimal place is almost certainly inside a bowling alley, although with a little luck any establishment uphill from one could also work.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/optimal_bowling.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2711/) 2022-12-16T00:00:00Z **Gravity**
![It's a long way down.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/gravity.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2712/) 2022-12-19T00:00:00Z **Data Point**
![In general you should only include your single best data point in the paper. The rest of the data can go in the supplementary materials.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/data_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2713/) 2022-12-21T00:00:00Z **Cold Complaints**
![Our investigation into whining-based remedies became the first study to be halted by the IRB on the grounds that the treatment group was 'too annoying.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cold_complaints.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2714/) 2022-12-23T00:00:00Z **Pando**
![The presents under the tree are actually a single gift connected by an underground ribbon system.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pando.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2715/) 2022-12-26T00:00:00Z **Game Night Ordering**
![One good trick, if you get called on a fake service, is to build a working version of it and mention it again the next week.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/game_night_ordering.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2716/) 2022-12-27T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-28T00:00:00Z **L6 Lagrange Point**
![It's difficult to orbit L6 stably due to gravitational perturbation from Akron and Toledo.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/l6_lagrange_point.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2717/) 2022-12-30T00:00:00Z **New Year's Eve 2023**
![[Earlier, at the eye doctor] 'No, for the last time, the numerals on the paper aren't my prescription, it's the shape I want you to make with the laser.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/new_years_eve_2023.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2718/) 2023-01-02T00:00:00Z **Hydrogen Isotopes**
![Oops, All Neutrons is also known as Neutral Quadrium, Nydnonen, and Goth Tritium.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hydrogen_isotopes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2719/) 2023-01-04T00:00:00Z **Biology vs Robotics**
![Sorry, I've just always had these random things I don't like--like olives, or robots drilling holes in me without warning.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/biology_vs_robotics.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2720/) 2023-01-06T00:00:00Z **Euler Diagrams**
![Things Leonhard Euler created ( most of math ( overlapping circle diagrams ) a cricket bowling machine ) Things John Venn created](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/euler_diagrams.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2721/) 2023-01-09T00:00:00Z **Etymonline**
![NOTE TO FUTURE ETYMONLINGUISTS: Our best guess is that 'blimp' is onomatopoeia. The 'B-Limp' thing is a folk etymology.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/etymonline.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2722/) 2023-01-11T00:00:00Z **Outdated Periodic Table**
![Researchers claim to have synthesized six additional elements in the second row, temporarily named 'pentium' through 'unnilium'.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/outdated_periodic_table.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2723/) 2023-01-13T00:00:00Z **Washing Machine Settings**
![I guess the engineers who built my dishwasher MIGHT have some insight into how to load it, but instead of reading the booklet they gave me, it seems easier to experiment for years and then get in arguments so heated that I get banned from Quora.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/washing_machine_settings.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2724/) 2023-01-16T00:00:00Z **Sunspot Cycle**
![Who can forget the early 2010s memes? 'You know you're a 90s kid if you remember the feeling of warm sunlight on your face.' 'Only 90s kids remember the dawn.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sunspot_cycle.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2725/) 2023-01-18T00:00:00Z **Methodology Trial**
![If you think THAT'S unethical, you should see the stuff we approved via our Placebo IRB.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/methodology_trial.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2726/) 2023-01-20T00:00:00Z **Runtime**
![At least there's a general understanding all around that Doctor Who is its own thing.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/runtime.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2727/) 2023-01-23T00:00:00Z **Lane Change Highway**
![I just think lane markers should follow the local magnetic declination.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lane_change_highway.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2728/) 2023-01-25T00:00:00Z **Planet Killer Comet Margarita**
![I'll take mine on the rocks, no ice.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/planet_killer_comet_margarita.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2729/) 2023-01-27T00:00:00Z **Code Lifespan**
![Surely (no one/everyone) will (recognize how flexible and useful this architecture is/spend a huge amount of effort painstakingly preserving and updating this garbage I wrote in 20 minutes)](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/code_lifespan.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2730/) 2023-01-30T00:00:00Z **K-Means Clustering**
![According to my especially unsupervised K-means clustering algorithm, there are currently about 8 billion types of people in the world.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/k_means_clustering.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2731/) 2023-02-01T00:00:00Z **Bursa of Fabricius**
![If an anatomical structure is named for a person, it means they were the only person to have it. Pierre Paul Broca had a special area of his brain that created powerful magnetic fields, enabling him to do 19th century fMRI research.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bursa_of_fabricius.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2732/) 2023-02-03T00:00:00Z **Size Comparisons**
![If you shrank the Solar System to the size of Texas, the Houston metro area would be smaller than a grasshopper in Dallas.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/size_comparisons.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2733/) 2023-02-06T00:00:00Z **Electron Color**
![There's quark color, but that's not really color--it's just an admission by 20th century physicists that numbers are boring.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/electron_color.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2734/) 2023-02-08T00:00:00Z **Coordinate Plane Closure**
![3D graphs that don't contact the plane in the closure area may proceed as scheduled, but be alert for possible collisions with 2D graph lines that reach the hole and unexpectedly enter 3D space.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/coordinate_plane_closure.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2735/) 2023-02-10T00:00:00Z **Only Serifs**
![If you ever want to get beaten up by a bunch of graphic designers, try removing the serifs from Times New Roman and adding them to Comic Sans.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/only_serifs.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2736/) 2023-02-13T00:00:00Z **Weather Station**
!['Pour one out for precipitation data integrity,' I say, solemnly upending the glass into the rain gauge.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/weather_station.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2737/) 2023-02-15T00:00:00Z **Omniknot**
![The Gordian knot is an omniknot tied using every bend in the Ashley Book of Knots, and then for extra security the upper rope at every crossing is connected to the lower with a randomly-chosen hitch.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/omniknot.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2738/) 2023-02-17T00:00:00Z **Data Quality**
![[exclamation about how cute your cat is] -> [last 4 digits of your cat's chip ID] -> [your cat's full chip ID] -> [a drawing of your cat] -> [photo of your cat] -> [clone of your cat] -> [your actual cat] -> [my better cat]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/data_quality.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2739/) 2023-02-20T00:00:00Z **Square Packing**
![I also managed to improve the solution for n=1 to s<0.97, and with some upgrades I think I can hit 0.96.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/square_packing.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2740/) 2023-02-22T00:00:00Z **Wish Interpretation**
!["I wish for everything in the world. All the people, money, trees, etc." "Are you SURE you--" "And I want you to put it in my house."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wish_interpretation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2741/) 2023-02-24T00:00:00Z **Island Storage**
![I always hate dragging around the larger archipelagos, but I appreciate how the Scandanavian peninsula flexes outward to create a snug pocket for the British Isles.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/island_storage.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2742/) 2023-02-27T00:00:00Z **Hand Dryers**
![I know hand dryers have their problems, but I think for fun we should keep egging Dyson on and see if we can get them to make one where the airflow breaks the speed of sound.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hand_dryers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2743/) 2023-03-01T00:00:00Z **Fanservice**
![I was eventually kicked out of my architectural engineering program because I wouldn't stop referring to HVAC as "the fandom."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fanservice.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2744/) 2023-03-03T00:00:00Z **Obituary Editor**
![As the editor has reportedly defeated Death in a series of games of skill, no further obituaries are expected.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/obituary_editor.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2745/) 2023-03-06T00:00:00Z **Launch Window**
!["Confirmed, we have to scrub." "Ugh, okay. I'll get the bucket and sponge."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/launch_window.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2746/) 2023-03-08T00:00:00Z **Presents for Biologists**
![A lot of these are actually non-venomous, but I can see which species you mistook them for. If you pause the crane for a sec I can give you some ID pointers for next time!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/presents_for_biologists.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2747/) 2023-03-10T00:00:00Z **Radians Are Cursed**
![Phil Plait once pointed out that you can calculate the total angular area of the sky this way. If the sky is a sphere with radius 57.3 degrees, then its area is 4*pi*r^2=41,253 square degrees. This makes dimensional analysts SO mad, but you can't argue with results.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/radians_are_cursed.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2748/) 2023-03-13T00:00:00Z **Lymphocytes**
![It's very hard to detect, but recent studies have determined that when plasma B cells are producing antibodies, they go 'pew pew pew'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lymphocytes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2749/) 2023-03-15T00:00:00Z **Flatten the Planets**
![We'll turn the asteroid belt into ball bearings to go between different rings orbiting at different speeds.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/flatten_the_planets.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2750/) 2023-03-17T00:00:00Z **March Madness**
![My bracket has 76 trombones led by John Philip Sousa facing off against thousands of emperor penguins led by Morgan Freeman.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/march_madness.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2751/) 2023-03-20T00:00:00Z **Salt Dome**
![The US uses hollowed-out salt domes to store the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and non-hollowed-out ones to store the Strategic Salt Reserve.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/salt_dome.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2752/) 2023-03-22T00:00:00Z **Air Handler**
![It maintains odor levels in a normal familiar range, so if you open the windows and the air gets too fresh, it filters it through some dirty laundry samples to compensate.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/air_handler.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2753/) 2023-03-24T00:00:00Z **Relative Terms**
![Small sewing machines are sewing machines that are smaller than a sewing machine. A sewing machine is larger than a small sewing machine, but quieter than a loud sewing machine.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/relative_terms.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2754/) 2023-03-27T00:00:00Z **Effect Size**
![Subgroup analysis is ongoing.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/effect_size.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2755/) 2023-03-29T00:00:00Z **Qualifications**
!['So how DID you go from working at the employment records office to becoming president of MIT and CEO of IBM?' 'I guess I just have an eye for opportunities.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/qualifications.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2756/) 2023-03-31T00:00:00Z **Towed Message**
!["Hi, what you do is fly over a designated zone and detach the--" "WE'RE SORRY, THE MOBILE CUSTOMER YOU ARE TRYING TO REACH IS OUT OF SERVICE"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/towed_message.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2757/) 2023-04-03T00:00:00Z **My Favorite Things**
![When an Ur guy / sells Nanni things / but the copper's bad, / He simply records his complaint for all time / "I got a bad deal / I'm maaaaad"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/my_favorite_things.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2758/) 2023-04-05T00:00:00Z **Easily Confused Acronyms**
!['Lever' was originally an acronym for Load Emplification by the Vimulated Emission of Radiation.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/easily_confused_acronyms.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2759/) 2023-04-07T00:00:00Z **Paleontology Museum**
![Nowadays the only ones left that do anything are turtles.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/paleontology_museum.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2760/) 2023-04-10T00:00:00Z **1-to-1 Scale**
![There's a version that shows the planets with no cropping, but it's hard to find a display that supports it.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/1_to_1_scale.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2761/) 2023-04-12T00:00:00Z **Diffraction Spikes**
![Even if a planet is lucky enough to have a stable orbit that weaves between the spikes, the seasons get weird whenever it passes close to them.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/diffraction_spikes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2762/) 2023-04-14T00:00:00Z **Linguistics Gossip**
![The E's wedding invitation definitely used the word LOVE more times than was strictly necessary.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/linguistics_gossip.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2763/) 2023-04-17T00:00:00Z **Cosmological Nostalgia Content**
![Later renouncing clickbait, Einstein called his inclusion of cosmological content in general relativity the biggest blunder of his career.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cosmological_nostalgia_content.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2764/) 2023-04-19T00:00:00Z **Escape Speed**
![Gotta go fastescape_speed.png](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/escape_speed.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2765/) 2023-04-21T00:00:00Z **Helium Reserve**
![The government has been trying to sell off the Federal Helium Reserve for a few years now, but the sale has been on hold while they try to figure out how to explain this situation to buyers.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/helium_reserve.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2766/) 2023-04-24T00:00:00Z **Recipe Relativity**
![It says to cut the onions into 1/4" slices, but I'd better correct for length contraction.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/recipe_relativity.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2767/) 2023-04-26T00:00:00Z **Definition of e**
![Yeah, my math teacher back in high school set up the system to try to teach us something or other, but the 100% rate was unbelievably good, so I engineered a hostile takeover of his bank and now use it to make extra cash on the side.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/definition_of_e.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2768/) 2023-04-28T00:00:00Z **Overlapping Circles**
!["The Venn diagram of the sun and the moon is a circle." --someone being snarky at totality](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/overlapping_circles.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2769/) 2023-05-01T00:00:00Z **Tapetum Lucidum**
![Using a reflective wall in a game to give one shot two chances to hit is called a double-tapetum lucidum.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tapetum_lucidum.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2770/) 2023-05-03T00:00:00Z **College Knowledge**
!['Your chitin armor is no match for our iron-tipped stingers! Better go hide in your jars!' --common playground taunt](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/college_knowledge.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2771/) 2023-05-05T00:00:00Z **Commemorative Plaque**
![[Below] On this site on May 12th, 2023, I finally learned how to use the masonry bit for my drill.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/commemorative_plaque.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2772/) 2023-05-08T00:00:00Z **Planetary Scientist**
![This rumpled fabric at the corner looks like evidence of ongoing tectonic activity.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/planetary_scientist.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2773/) 2023-05-10T00:00:00Z **Taxiing**
![I don't understand why anyone would pay full price for a flatbed truck rental when you can buy 'DETOUR' signs online for like $10.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/taxiing.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2774/) 2023-05-12T00:00:00Z **Siphon**
![ADDITIONAL NOTES: Fixed a bug that caused some rocks to generate virtually infinite heat while just sitting there.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/siphon.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2775/) 2023-05-15T00:00:00Z **Crystal Ball**
![They often use ball lenses to collect light at the ends of optical fibers, so when you look stuff up on the internet you're actually scrying through a crystal ball.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/crystal_ball.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2776/) 2023-05-17T00:00:00Z **Noise Filter**
![Party Mode also enables the feature, but reverses the slider.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/noise_filter.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2777/) 2023-05-19T00:00:00Z **Cuisine**
![My connection to it goes way back, to my early days, when I was just a cloud of primordial hydrogen collapsing in the darkness of space.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cuisine.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2778/) 2023-05-22T00:00:00Z **Exoplanet High-5**
![Tau Ceti is farther away, so it took me 36 years to start the war over updog.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/exoplanet_high_5.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2779/) 2023-05-24T00:00:00Z **Physical Quantities**
![The Hubble length is about 1.9 meters lying down; Edwin Hubble was a tall guy.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/physical_quantities.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2780/) 2023-05-26T00:00:00Z **The Six Platonic Solids**
![Plato made the solids, and five were gifted to the mathematicians. But in secret Plato forged a sixth solid to rule over all the others.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_six_platonic_solids.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2781/) 2023-05-29T00:00:00Z **Wikipedia Article Titles**
![I would never stoop to vandalism, but I'm not above discreetly deleting the occasional 'this article contains excessive amounts of detail' tag.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikipedia_article_titles.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2782/) 2023-05-31T00:00:00Z **Ruling Out**
![We were able to replicate and confirm prior authors' detection of a moon orbiting the Earth with high confidence.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ruling_out.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2783/) 2023-06-02T00:00:00Z **Drainage Basins**
![After a pail of water was thrown on the Wicked Witch of the West outside Salt Lake City, Utah's Great Salt Lake was measured to be 7 parts per trillion witch by volume.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/drainage_basins.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2784/) 2023-06-05T00:00:00Z **Marble Run**
![I have so many plans. It would incorporate a Galton board, a Ranque-Hilsch marble vortex tube, and a compartment lined with pinball bouncers with a camera-and-servo Maxwell's Demon that separated the balls into fast and slow sides.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/marble_run.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2785/) 2023-06-07T00:00:00Z **UFO Evidence**
![[Decades in the future] "Well, the good news is that we've received definitive communication from aliens. The bad news is that they're asking about Cats (2019)."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ufo_evidence.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2786/) 2023-06-09T00:00:00Z **Iceberg**
![90% of the iceberg is hidden beneath the water, but that 90% only uses 10% of its brain, so it's really only 9%.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/iceberg.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2787/) 2023-06-12T00:00:00Z **Musical Scales**
![In the Hall of the Mountain King was accidentally composed on log/log paper.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/musical_scales.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2788/) 2023-06-14T00:00:00Z **Making Plans**
![Oh no, I haven't checked in with Yvonne in YEARS.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/making_plans.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2789/) 2023-06-16T00:00:00Z **Heat Pump**
![If I'm not going to upgrade to a powered one, I should at LEAST stop leaving the door open so often.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/heat_pump.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2790/) 2023-06-19T00:00:00Z **Bookshelf Sorting**
![Of course, I sort all my bookshelves the normal way, alphabetically (by first sentence).](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bookshelf_sorting.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2791/) 2023-06-21T00:00:00Z **Summer Solstice**
![Then I'll start work on my lunar engines to line the Moon up with the ecliptic so we can have a solar eclipse every month (with a little wobble so they're not always on the equator.)](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/summer_solstice.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2792/) 2023-06-23T00:00:00Z **Garden Path Sentence**
![Arboretum Owner Denied Standing in Garden Path Suit on Grounds Grounds Appealing Appealing](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/garden_path_sentence.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2793/) 2023-06-26T00:00:00Z **Alphabet Notes**
![Listen, you're very cute, but if you rearrange the alphabet to put U and I together it will RUIN the spacing!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alphabet_notes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2794/) 2023-06-28T00:00:00Z **Glass-Topped Table**
![You can pour a drink into it while hosting a party, although it's a real pain to fit in the dishwasher afterward.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/glass_topped_table.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2795/) 2023-06-30T00:00:00Z **Real Estate Analysis**
![Mars does get a good score on 'noise levels' and 'scenic views,' but the school district ranking isn't great; the only teacher--the Perseverance rover--is too busy with rock samples to teach more than the occasional weekend class.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/real_estate_analysis.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2796/) 2023-07-03T00:00:00Z **Actual Progress**
![Slowly progressing from 'how do protons behave in relativistic collisions?' to 'what the heck are protons even doing when they're just sitting there?'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/actual_progress.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2797/) 2023-07-05T00:00:00Z **Room Temperature**
![They're also refusing to fund my device that demonstrates uncontrolled hot fusion.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/room_temperature.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2798/) 2023-07-07T00:00:00Z **Frankenstein Claim Permutations**
![When I began trying to form a new claim by stitching together these parts in such an unnatural way, some called me mad.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/frankenstein_claim_permutations.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2799/) 2023-07-10T00:00:00Z **Down**
![It's just that I get nervous about heights.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/down.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2800/) 2023-07-12T00:00:00Z **Contact Merge**
![I actually kind of feel like John and Surf King wouldn't like each other, which is a lot to unpack.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/contact_merge.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2801/) 2023-07-14T00:00:00Z **Fireflies**
![I feel bad for Earth 2 and their shadowflies.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fireflies.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2802/) 2023-07-17T00:00:00Z **Geohydrotypography**
![The Atlantic is expanding at about 10 ppm (points per month).](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geohydrotypography.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2803/) 2023-07-19T00:00:00Z **Marshmallow**
![The increasing number of graham crackers and chocolate bars in orbit has created a growing risk of Kessler s'mores.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/marshmallow.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2804/) 2023-07-21T00:00:00Z **Global Atmospheric Circulation**
![Refs generally say that you can exercise enough altitude control to avoid the ground, but if you start strategically choosing air layers to steer yourself, that's traveling.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/global_atmospheric_circulation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2805/) 2023-07-24T00:00:00Z **Anti-Vaxxers**
![The vaccine stuff seems pretty simple. But if you take a closer look at the data, it's still simple, but bigger. And slightly blurry. Might need reading glasses.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/anti_vaxxers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2806/) 2023-07-26T00:00:00Z **Bad Map Projection: ABS(Longitude)**
![Positive vibes/longitudes only](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bad_map_projection_abs_longitude.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2807/) 2023-07-28T00:00:00Z **Daytime Firefly**
![Mr. Jones, watch out for Ms. Lenhart! She's from genus Photuris!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/daytime_firefly.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2808/) 2023-07-31T00:00:00Z **Moon**
![I mean, it's pretty, but it doesn't really affect us beyond that. Except that half the nights aren't really dark, and once or twice a day it makes the oceans flood the coasts.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/moon.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2809/) 2023-08-02T00:00:00Z **How to Coil a Cable**
![The ideal mix for maximum competitive cable-coiling energy is one A/V tech, one rock climber, one sailor, and one topologist.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/how_to_coil_a_cable.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2810/) 2023-08-04T00:00:00Z **Free Fallin'**
![Their crash investigation team had some particularly harsh words for Dave Matthews.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_fallin.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2811/) 2023-08-07T00:00:00Z **Solar Panel Placement**
![Getting the utility people to run transmission lines to Earth is expensive, but it will pay for itself in no time.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/solar_panel_placement.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2812/) 2023-08-09T00:00:00Z **What To Do**
![FYI: The 'drop, cover, and hold on' advice only applies to earthquakes. If you encounter a mountain lion, you should absolutely not drop to the ground, crawl under it, and hold on to one of its legs.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/what_to_do.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2813/) 2023-08-11T00:00:00Z **Perseids Pronunciation**
![When speaking out loud, you can can call it the 'Perseids meatier shower' and no one will ever know. (If you do get caught somehow, just tell them to Google the 'Kentucky meat shower' and that will distract them while you escape.)](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/perseids_pronunciation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2814/) 2023-08-14T00:00:00Z **Car Wash**
![I'm glad modern car washes use synthetic baleen, instead of harvesting it from whales like 1800s car washes did.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/car_wash.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2815/) 2023-08-16T00:00:00Z **Types of Solar Eclipse**
![The best place to be for a hug eclipse is a scenic natural area with good views and few clouds. The worst place to be is the lunar surface.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/types_of_solar_eclipse.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2816/) 2023-08-18T00:00:00Z **Electron Holes**
![They tried to report me to the authorities, but because I had the device they couldn't charge me.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/electron_holes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2817/) 2023-08-21T00:00:00Z **Circuit Symbols**
![A circle with an A in it means that the circuit has committed a sin and has been marked as punishment.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/circuit_symbols.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2818/) 2023-08-23T00:00:00Z **Pronunciation**
![I pronounce the 'u' in 'pronunciation' like in 'putting' but the 'ou' in 'pronounce' like in 'wound'.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pronunciation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2819/) 2023-08-25T00:00:00Z **Inspiration**
![An apple fell on Isaac Newton's head and gave him the idea that the moon might be a tasty apple, though this turned out not to be true--the Apollo program eventually determined that it was just a desolate and bland Red Delicious.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/inspiration.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2820/) 2023-08-28T00:00:00Z **Path Minimization**
![Of course you get an ice cream cone for the swimmer too! You're not a monster.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/path_minimization.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2821/) 2023-08-30T00:00:00Z ***@gmail.com**
![Hi all, just replying to loop in *@outlook.com and *@yahoo.com.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/gmail_com.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2822/) 2023-09-01T00:00:00Z **Fossil**
![The two best reasons to get into fossils are booping trilobites and getting to say the word "fossiliferous" a lot.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fossil.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2823/) 2023-09-04T00:00:00Z **Abstract Pickup**
![Escape Artist Frees Self From Conversation With Pickup Artist](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/abstract_pickup.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2824/) 2023-09-06T00:00:00Z **Autumn and Fall**
![Of course in reality this is just a US/UK thing; in British English, 'fall' is the brief period in between and 'autumn' is the main season.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/autumn_and_fall.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2825/) 2023-09-08T00:00:00Z **Gold**
![It can be expensive to hire a professional spectroscopist for your wedding, but the quality of the spectra you get is worth it.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/gold.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2826/) 2023-09-11T00:00:00Z **Brassica**
![Sequoia Brussels sprouts are delicious but it's pretty hard to finish one.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/brassica.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2827/) 2023-09-13T00:00:00Z **Exoplanet Observation**
![NASA prefers to say that their rovers are 'looking for signs of past life on Mars' and not 'ghost hunting.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/exoplanet_observation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2828/) 2023-09-15T00:00:00Z **Iceberg Efficiency**
![Our experimental aerogel iceberg with helium pockets manages true 100% efficiency, barely touching the water, and it can even lift off of the surface and fly to more efficiently pursue fleeing hubristic liners.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/iceberg_efficiency.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2829/) 2023-09-18T00:00:00Z **Haunted House**
![You can leave at any time through the door over there. It's a Louisville door, so you'll need to find a compatible knob. No, don't be silly, that one is a Lexington knob! Of course it won't fit.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/haunted_house.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2830/) 2023-09-20T00:00:00Z **xkcd Phone Flip**
![Theranos partnership: Sorry, we know, but we signed the contract back before all the stuff and the lawyers say we can't back out, so just try to keep your finger away from the bottom of the phone.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/xkcd_phone_flip.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2831/) 2023-09-22T00:00:00Z **Urban Planning Opinion Progression**
![If they're going to make people ride bikes and scooters in traffic, then it should at LEAST be legal to do the Snow Crash thing where you use a hook-shot-style harpoon to catch free rides from cars.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/urban_planning_opinion_progression.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2832/) 2023-09-25T00:00:00Z **Lying**
![I was, at least at the start of this disastrous game night, your friend.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lying.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2833/) 2023-09-27T00:00:00Z **Book Podcasts**
![I've been working my way through this 1950s podcast by someone named John Tolkien called 'Lord of the Rings'--it's a deep dive into this fictional world he created. Good stuff, really bingeable!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/book_podcasts.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2834/) 2023-09-29T00:00:00Z **Factorial Numbers**
![So what do we do when we get to base 10? Do we use A, B, C, etc? No: Numbers larger than about 3.6 million are simply illegal.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/factorial_numbers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2835/) 2023-10-02T00:00:00Z **A Halloween Carol**
![[after a minute] "Okay, I think I've got it, thanks. Can I--" "oOOOooOOooo!"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/a_halloween_carol.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2836/) 2023-10-04T00:00:00Z **Odyssey**
![Ugh, it says they attempted delivery but "Nobody was home."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/odyssey.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2837/) 2023-10-06T00:00:00Z **Dubious Islands**
![Running for office in Minnesota on the single-issue platform 'dig a permanent channel through the Traverse Gap because it will make this map more satisfying.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dubious_islands.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2838/) 2023-10-09T00:00:00Z **Language Acquisition**
![My first words were 'These were my first words; what were yours?'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/language_acquisition.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2839/) 2023-10-11T00:00:00Z **Earth Layers**
![The Earth's magnetic field is primarily generated by currents in the liquid outer core, though some geophysicists argue that an unexplained mismatch with models suggests that the Kinder toy contains a magnet.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/earth_layers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2840/) 2023-10-13T00:00:00Z **Sign Combo**
![Speed Limit: 45 MPH / Minimum: 65 MPH](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sign_combo.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2841/) 2023-10-16T00:00:00Z **Inspiraling Roundabout**
![Look, I just think we need to stop coddling those hedonistic roundabout hogs who get into the inner lane and circle for hours, wasting valuable capacity.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/inspiraling_roundabout.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2842/) 2023-10-18T00:00:00Z **Professional Oaths**
![Interpretations of the Hermeneutic Oath differ.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/professional_oaths.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2843/) 2023-10-20T00:00:00Z **Black Holes vs Regular Holes**
![Created by the collapse of: [massive stars] [Florida limestone bedrock]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/black_holes_vs_regular_holes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2844/) 2023-10-23T00:00:00Z **Extinction Mechanisms**
![The Late Heavy Bombardment was followed a few billion years later by the Comparatively Light but Oddly Specific Bombardment.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/extinction_mechanisms.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2845/) 2023-10-25T00:00:00Z **Daylight Saving Choice**
![I average out the spring and fall changes and just set my clocks 39 minutes ahead year-round.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/daylight_saving_choice.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2846/) 2023-10-27T00:00:00Z **Dendrochronology**
![These anomalies are known as Miyake events, named for the pioneering scientist who discovered them and was tragically devoured by a carnivorous tree.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dendrochronology.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2847/) 2023-10-30T00:00:00Z **Breaker Box**
![Any electrician will warn you to first locate and flip the house's CAUSALITY circuit breaker before touching the CIRCUIT BREAKERS one.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/breaker_box.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2848/) 2023-11-01T00:00:00Z **Under the Stars**
![If you live in Los Angeles (around 33°52'N, roughly the latitude of Hermosa Beach) the black hole in V404 Cygni passes over you each day. On Christmas Day it will be directly overhead around 2pm.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/under_the_stars.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2849/) 2023-11-03T00:00:00Z **Doctor's Office**
!["The police told me I can't be a doctor, but whenever they show up I just go into the Google Maps settings page I found and change the house to 'Police Headquarters' and then they have to do what I say."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/doctors_office.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2850/) 2023-11-06T00:00:00Z **Messier Objects**
![The debate over the correct Messier number for the Ship of Theseus is ongoing.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/messier_objects.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2851/) 2023-11-08T00:00:00Z **Parameterball**
![The ball's density also varies, but players don't learn the value until after choosing their raquets. The infamous 'bowling ball table tennis' region of the parameter space often leads to equipment damage.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/parameterball.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2852/) 2023-11-10T00:00:00Z **Redshift**
![So do you have any plans for z=-0.000000000000045?](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/redshift.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2853/) 2023-11-10T00:00:00Z **Redshift**
![So do you have any plans for z=-0.000000000000045?](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/redshift.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2853/) 2023-11-13T00:00:00Z **Date Line**
![They estimate the rocket should be free by approximately ... uh ... well, in about two hours.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/date_line.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2854/) 2023-11-15T00:00:00Z **Empiricism**
![The problems started with my resolution next year to reject temporal causality.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/empiricism.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2855/) 2023-11-17T00:00:00Z **Materials Scientists**
![If a materials scientist gives you a present, always ask whether regifting will incur any requirements for Federal paperwork.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/materials_scientists.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2856/) 2023-11-20T00:00:00Z **Rebuttals**
![The mainstream dogma sparked a wave of dogmatic revisionism, and this revisionist mainstream dogmatism has now given way to a more rematic mainvisionist dogstream.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rebuttals.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2857/) 2023-11-22T00:00:00Z **Thanksgiving Arguments**
![An occasional source of mild Thanksgiving tension in my family is that my mother is a die-hard fan of The Core (2003), and various family members sometimes have differing levels of enthusiasm for her annual tradition of watching it.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/thanksgiving_arguments.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2858/) 2023-11-24T00:00:00Z **Oceanography Gift**
![Shipping times vary. Same-ocean delivery may only take a few years, but delivery from the Weddell Sea in Antarctica may take multiple decades, and molecules meant for inland seas like the Mediterranean may be returned as undeliverable by surface currents.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/oceanography_gift.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2859/) 2023-11-27T00:00:00Z **Decay Modes**
![Unlike an Iron Age collapse, a Bronze Age collapse releases energy, since copper and tin are past the iron peak on the curve of binding energy.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/decay_modes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2860/) 2023-11-29T00:00:00Z **X Value**
![The value of n is still unknown, but new results constrain it to fall between 8 and 10^500, ruling out popular 'n=1' and 'n=2' theories.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/x_value.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2861/) 2023-12-01T00:00:00Z **Typical Seating Chart**
![Now that airlines have started adding wheel locks to their drink carts, less than half of flights have one accidentally fall out through the hole.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/typical_seating_chart.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2862/) 2023-12-04T00:00:00Z **Space Typography**
![And over heeee[...]eeeere (i)s Saturn.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/space_typography.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2863/) 2023-12-06T00:00:00Z **Compact Graphs**
![People may complain about readability, but even with jpeg compression, extracting the data points is usually computationally feasible if there aren't too many of them.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/compact_graphs.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2864/) 2023-12-08T00:00:00Z **the Wrong Stuff**
![The phantom found Edward Everett Hale a century too early; by the time we invented satellites, the specifics of his 'brick moon' proposal were dismissed as science fiction.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_wrong_stuff.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2865/) 2023-12-11T00:00:00Z **Snow**
![For someone who has ostensibly outgrown staying up late waiting for Santa, I do spend an awful lot of time refreshing websites to see if packages are here yet.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/snow.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2866/) 2023-12-13T00:00:00Z **DateTime**
![It's not just time zones and leap seconds. SI seconds on Earth are slower because of relativity, so there are time standards for space stuff (TCB, TGC) that use faster SI seconds than UTC/Unix time. T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/datetime.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2867/) 2023-12-15T00:00:00Z **Label the States**
![Even with a blank map, a lot of people can only name 45-50 of the 64 states.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/label_the_states.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2868/) 2023-12-18T00:00:00Z **Puzzles**
![Why couldn't the amulet have been hidden by Aunt Alice, who understands modern key exchange algorithms?](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/puzzles.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2869/) 2023-12-20T00:00:00Z **Love Songs**
![The Piña Colada song carves a trajectory across the chart over the course of the song.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/love_songs.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2870/) 2023-12-22T00:00:00Z **Definitely**
![A really mean prank you can play on someone who's picky about words is to add a 'definitely->definitively' autocorrect rule to their keyboard.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/definitely.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2871/) 2023-12-25T00:00:00Z **Hydrothermal Vents**
![Benthic Santas weren't even discovered until the 1970s, but many scientists now believe Christmas may have originally developed around hydrothermal vents and only later migrated to the surface.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hydrothermal_vents.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2872/) 2023-12-27T00:00:00Z **Supersymmetry**
![High-speed collisions at the Baby Park track may support the hypothesis that Daisy is her own evil twin, a theory first suggested by Nintendo in the game Majorana's Mask.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/supersymmetry.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2873/) 2023-12-29T00:00:00Z **Iceland**
![The HVAC bill for installing the Gulf Stream was enormous.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/iceland.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2874/) 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z **2024**
![It wasn't originally constitutionally required, but presidents who served two terms have traditionally followed George Washington's example and gotten false teeth.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/2024.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2875/) 2024-01-03T00:00:00Z **Range Safety**
![The Range Mischief Officer has modified the trajectory to add a single random spin somewhere in the flight, but won't tell us where.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/range_safety.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2876/) 2024-01-05T00:00:00Z **Fever**
![Hypothermia of below 98.6 K should be treated by leaving the giant molecular cloud and moving to the vicinity of a star.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fever.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2877/) 2024-01-08T00:00:00Z **Supernova**
![They're a little cagey about exactly where the crossover point lies relative to the likelihood of devastating effects on the planet.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/supernova.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2878/) 2024-01-10T00:00:00Z **Like This One**
![A lot of sentences undergo startling shifts in mood if you add 'like this one' to the end, but high on the list is 'I'm a neurologist studying dreams.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/like_this_one.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2879/) 2024-01-12T00:00:00Z **Sheet Bend**
![A left-handed sheet bend creates a much weaker connection, especially under moderate loads.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sheet_bend.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2880/) 2024-01-15T00:00:00Z **Bug Thread**
![After some account issues, we've added 6 new people from the beach house rental website support forum.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bug_thread.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2881/) 2024-01-17T00:00:00Z **Net Rotations**
![For decades I've been working off the accumulated rotation from one long afternoon on a merry-go-round when I was eight.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/net_rotations.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2882/) 2024-01-19T00:00:00Z **Astronaut Guests**
![They didn't bring us a gift, but considering the kinetic energy of a bottle of wine at orbital speed, that's probably for the best.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/astronaut_guests.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2883/) 2024-01-22T00:00:00Z **Log Alignment**
![A video can have a log scale that's misaligned with both the time AND space axes.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/log_alignment.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2884/) 2024-01-24T00:00:00Z **Spelling**
![Any time I misspell a word it's just because I have too much integrity to copy answers from the dictionary.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/spelling.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2885/) 2024-01-26T00:00:00Z **Fast Radio Bursts**
![Dr. Petroff has also shown that the Higgs boson signal was actually sparks from someone microwaving grapes, the EHT black hole photo was a frozen bagel someone left in too long, and the LIGO detection was just someone slamming the microwave door too hard.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fast_radio_bursts.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2886/) 2024-01-29T00:00:00Z **Minnesota**
![In addition to 'squishy', after reviewing my submitted intraplate ground motion data, the National Geodetic Survey has politely asked me to stop using the word 'supple' so often when describing Midwestern states.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/minnesota.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2887/) 2024-01-31T00:00:00Z **US Survey Foot**
![Subway refuses to answer my questions about whether it's an International Footlong or a US Survey Footlong. A milligram of sandwich is at stake!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/us_survey_foot.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2888/) 2024-02-02T00:00:00Z **Greenhouse Effect**
![Once he had the answer, Arrhenius complained to his friends that he'd "wasted over a full year" doing tedious calculations by hand about "so trifling a matter" as hypothetical CO2 concentrations in far-off eras (quoted in Crawford, 1997).](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/greenhouse_effect.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2889/) 2024-02-05T00:00:00Z **Relationship Advice**
![Good to be a little wary of advice that sounds too much like a self pep talk.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/relationship_advice.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2890/) 2024-02-07T00:00:00Z **Log Cabin**
![I'm sure the building inspectors will approve my design once they finally manage to escape.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/log_cabin.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2891/) 2024-02-09T00:00:00Z **Banana Prices**
![It's a linear extrapolation, Michael. How big could the error be? 10%?](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/banana_prices.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2892/) 2024-02-12T00:00:00Z **Sphere Tastiness**
![Baseballs do present a challenge to this theory, but I'm convinced we just haven't found the right seasoning.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sphere_tastiness.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2893/) 2024-02-14T00:00:00Z **Research Account**
![Focus of your research: EXTREME PETTINESS AND UNWILLINGNESS TO LET ANYTHING GO](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/research_account.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2894/) 2024-02-16T00:00:00Z **Treasure Chests**
![[earlier] "Your vintage-style handmade chest business is struggling. But I have a plan."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/treasure_chests.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2895/) 2024-02-19T00:00:00Z **Crossword Constructors**
![Also, we would really appreciate it if you could prominently refer to it as an 'eHit'.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/crossword_constructors.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2896/) 2024-02-21T00:00:00Z **Light Leap Years**
![When Pope Gregory XIII briefly shortened the light-year in 1582, it led to navigational chaos and the loss of several Papal starships.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/light_leap_years.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2897/) 2024-02-23T00:00:00Z **Orbital Argument**
!["Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/orbital_argument.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2898/) 2024-02-26T00:00:00Z **Goodhart's Law**
![[later] I'm pleased to report we're now identifying and replacing hundreds of outdated metrics per hour.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/goodharts_law.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2899/) 2024-02-28T00:00:00Z **Call My Cell**
!['Hey, can you call my cell?' '...I'm trying, but it says this number is blocked?' 'Ok, thanks, just checking.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/call_my_cell.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2900/) 2024-03-01T00:00:00Z **Geographic Qualifiers**
!['Thank you for the loveliest evening I've ever had...' [normal] '...east of the Mississippi.' [instant intrigue!]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geographic_qualifiers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2901/) 2024-03-04T00:00:00Z **Ice Core**
![If you find an ash deposition layer from a year in which an eruption destroyed an island that had Camellia sinensis growing on it, you can make a Gone Island Ice_τ.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ice_core.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2902/) 2024-03-06T00:00:00Z **Earth/Venus Venn Diagram**
![Actually, the fact that Mars is still orbiting safely over here means that it was technically an *Euler* apocalypse, not a Venn one.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/earth_venus_venn_diagram.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2903/) 2024-03-08T00:00:00Z **Physics vs. Magic**
!['At the stroke of midnight, your brother will be hurtling sideways at an altitude of 150 meters' is a regular physics prediction about your nonmagical trebuchet, whereas 'you are cursed to build a brother-launching trebuchet' falls out of the Lagrangian.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/physics_vs_magic.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2904/) 2024-03-11T00:00:00Z **Supergroup**
![I love their cover of 1,200 Balloons, Dalmatians, and Miles.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/supergroup.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2905/) 2024-03-13T00:00:00Z **Earth**
![Just think of all the countless petty squabbles and misunderstandings, of all the fervent hatreds, over so insignificant a thing as the direction and duration of a rocket engine firing.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/earth.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2906/) 2024-03-15T00:00:00Z **Schwa**
![Doug's cousin, the one from London, runs a Bumble love cult.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/schwa.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2907/) 2024-03-18T00:00:00Z **Moon Armor Index**
![Astronomers are a little unsure of the applicability of this index, but NASA's Planetary Protection Officer is all in favor.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/moon_armor_index.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2908/) 2024-03-20T00:00:00Z **Moon Landing Mission Profiles**
![If you pick a low enough orbit, it gives you a lot of freedom to use a lightweight launch vehicle such as a stepladder.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/moon_landing_mission_profiles.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2909/) 2024-03-22T00:00:00Z **The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald**
![You know that asteroid that almost destroyed Earth in the 90s? Turns out the whole thing was secretly created by Michael Bay, who then PAID Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to look heroic while blowing it up!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_wreck_of_the_edmund_fitzgerald.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2910/) 2024-03-25T00:00:00Z **Greenland Size**
![The Mercator projection drastically distorts the size of almost every area of land except a small ring around the North and South Poles.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/greenland_size.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2911/) 2024-03-27T00:00:00Z **Cursive Letters**
![𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓬𝓪𝓹𝓲𝓽𝓪𝓵 𝓛 𝓲𝓼 𝓹𝓻𝓸𝓫𝓪𝓫𝓵𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓸𝓼𝓽 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓽𝓸 𝔀𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓼𝓮 𝓺 𝓲𝓼 𝓪𝓵𝓼𝓸 𝓪 𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cursive_letters.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2912/) 2024-03-29T00:00:00Z **Periodic Table Regions**
![Cesium-133, let it be. Cesium-134, let it be even more.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/periodic_table_regions.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2913/) 2024-04-01T00:00:00Z **Eclipse Coolness**
![A partial eclipse is like a cool sunset. A total eclipse is like someone broke the sky.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/eclipse_coolness.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2914/) 2024-04-03T00:00:00Z **Eclipse Clouds**
![The rare compound solar-lunar-nephelogical eclipse](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/eclipse_clouds.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2915/) 2024-04-05T00:00:00Z **Machine**
![The Credible Machine](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/machine.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2916/) 2024-04-08T00:00:00Z **Types of Eclipse Photo**
![The most rare, top-tier eclipse photo would be the Solar Earth Eclipse, but the Apollo 12 crew's attempt to capture it was marred by camera shake. They said it looked spectacular, though.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/types_of_eclipse_photo.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2917/) 2024-04-11T00:00:00Z **Tick Marks**
![If you're really savvy, you can hide an entire set of illicit transactions by timing them to draw what looks like a graph inset.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tick_marks.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2918/) 2024-04-12T00:00:00Z **Sitting in a Tree**
![First comes blood / Then we perish / Then comes Death in his Eternity Carriage.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sitting_in_a_tree.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2919/) 2024-04-15T00:00:00Z **Survey Marker**
![Fun fact: The standard North American NAD83 coordinate system is misaligned from the actual Earth, off-center by about 7 feet. Someone knows where I am, and I'm in the wrong place.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/survey_marker.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2920/) 2024-04-18T00:00:00Z **Eclipse Path Maps**
![Okay, this eclipse will only be visible from the Arctic in February 2063, when the sun is below the horizon, BUT if we get lucky and a gigantic chasm opens in the Earth in just the right spot...](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/eclipse_path_maps.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2921/) 2024-04-19T00:00:00Z **Pub Trivia**
![Bonus question: Where is London located? (a) The British Isles (b) Great Britain and Northern Ireland (c) The UK (d) Europe (or 'the EU') (e) Greater London](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pub_trivia.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2922/) 2024-04-22T00:00:00Z **Scary Triangles**
![Concealed mostly beneath the surface, sharks are the icebergs of the sea.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/scary_triangles.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2923/) 2024-04-24T00:00:00Z **Pendulum Types**
![The creepy fingers that grow from a vibrating cornstarch-water mix can be modeled as a chain of inverted vertical pendulums (DOI:10.1039/c4sm00265b) and are believed to be the fingers of Maxwell's Demon trying to push through into our universe.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pendulum_types.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2924/) 2024-04-26T00:00:00Z **Earth Formation Site**
![It's not far from the sign marking the exact latitude and longitude of the Earth's core.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/earth_formation_site.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2925/) 2024-04-29T00:00:00Z **Doppler Effect**
![The Doppler effect is a mysterious wavelength-shifting phenomenon which seems to primarily affect sirens, which is why the 🚨 emoji is red.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/doppler_effect.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2926/) 2024-05-01T00:00:00Z **Alphabetical Cartogram**
![Poor Weeoming.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alphabetical_cartogram.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2927/) 2024-05-03T00:00:00Z **Software Testing Day**
![The company tried to document how often employees were celebrating Software Testing Day, but their recordkeeping system kept mysteriously crashing.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/software_testing_day.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2928/) 2024-05-06T00:00:00Z **Good and Bad Ideas**
![While it seemed like a fun prank at the time, I realize my prank fire extinguishers full of leaded gasoline were a mistake.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/good_and_bad_ideas.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2929/) 2024-05-08T00:00:00Z **Google Solar Cycle**
![From Google Trends, it looks like the lag between people Googling cocktail recipes and 'hangover cure' is 14 hours.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/google_solar_cycle.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2930/) 2024-05-10T00:00:00Z **Chasing**
![Certain hybrid events can only happen in certain locations where all the conditions are present; chasers flock to the area in and around Kansas known as tumbleweed-colliding-with-possum alley.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/chasing.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2931/) 2024-05-13T00:00:00Z **Driving PSA**
![This PSA brought to you by several would-be assassins who tried to wave me in front of speeding cars in the last month and who will have to try harder next time.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/driving_psa.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2932/) 2024-05-15T00:00:00Z **Elementary Physics Paths**
![==COSMOLOGY==> 'Uhhh ... how sure are we that everything is made of these?'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/elementary_physics_paths.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2933/) 2024-05-17T00:00:00Z **Bloom Filter**
![Sometimes, you can tell Bloom filters are the wrong tool for the job, but when they're the right one you can never be sure.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bloom_filter.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2934/) 2024-05-20T00:00:00Z **Ocean Loop**
![I can't believe they wouldn't even let me hold a vote among the passengers about whether to try the loop.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ocean_loop.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2935/) 2024-05-22T00:00:00Z **Exponential Growth**
![Karpov's construction of a series of increasingly large rice cookers led to a protracted deadlock, but exponential growth won in the end.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/exponential_growth.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2936/) 2024-05-24T00:00:00Z **Room Code**
![Sorry to make you memorize this random string of digits. If it helps, it can also double as a mnemonic for remembering your young relatives' birthdays, if they happened to have been born on February 5th, 2018.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/room_code.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2937/) 2024-05-27T00:00:00Z **Local Group**
![Cosmologists estimate the spaghetti strand to be about 200 septillion calories, though it could be higher depending on the nutritional value of dark matter.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/local_group.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2938/) 2024-05-29T00:00:00Z **Complexity Analysis**
![PERPETUALLY OPTIMISTIC CASE: Early in the execution, our research group makes a breakthrough on proving P=NP.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/complexity_analysis.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2939/) 2024-05-31T00:00:00Z **Modes of Transportation**
![My bold criticism might anger the hot air balloon people, which would be a real concern if any of them lived along a very narrow line directly upwind of me.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/modes_of_transportation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2940/) 2024-06-03T00:00:00Z **Cell Organelles**
![It's believed that Golgi was originally an independent organism who was eventually absorbed into our cells, where he began work on his Apparatus.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cell_organelles.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2941/) 2024-06-05T00:00:00Z **Fluid Speech**
![Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fluid_speech.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2942/) 2024-06-07T00:00:00Z **Unsolved Chemistry Problems**
![I'm an H⁺ denier, in that I refuse to consider loose protons to be real hydrogen, so I personally believe it stands for 'pretend'.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/unsolved_chemistry_problems.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2943/) 2024-06-10T00:00:00Z **Magnet Fishing**
![The ten-way tie was judged a ten-way tie, so no one won the grand prize, a rare fishing monopole.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/magnet_fishing.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2944/) 2024-06-12T00:00:00Z **Broken Model**
![In addition to eating foxes, rabbits can eat grass. The grass also eats foxes. Our equations chart the contours of Fox Hell.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/broken_model.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2945/) 2024-06-14T00:00:00Z **1.2 Kilofives**
!['Oh yeah? Give me 50 milliscore reasons why I should stop.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/1_2_kilofives.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2946/) 2024-06-17T00:00:00Z **Pascal's Wager Triangle**
![In contrast to Pascal's Wager Triangle, Pascal's Triangle Wager argues that maybe God wants you to draw a triangle of numbers where each one is the sum of the two numbers above it, so you probably should, just in case.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pascals_wager_triangle.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2947/) 2024-06-19T00:00:00Z **Electric vs Gas**
![An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/electric_vs_gas.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2948/) 2024-06-21T00:00:00Z **Network Configuration**
![If you repeatedly rerun the development of technological civilization, it turns out that for some reason the only constant is that there is always a networking utility called 'netcat', though it does a different thing in each one.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/network_configuration.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2949/) 2024-06-24T00:00:00Z **Situation**
![We're right under the flight path for the scheduled orbital launch, but don't worry--it's too cold out for the rockets to operate safely, so I'm sure they'll postpone.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/situation.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2950/) 2024-06-26T00:00:00Z **Bad Map Projection: Exterior Kansas**
![Although Kansas is widely thought to contain the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states, topologists now believe that it's actually their outer edge.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bad_map_projection_exterior_kansas.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2951/) 2024-06-28T00:00:00Z **Routine Maintenance**
![The worst was the time they accidentally held the can upside down and froze all the Earth's magma chambers solid.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/routine_maintenance.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2952/) 2024-07-01T00:00:00Z **Alien Theories**
![They originally came here to try to investigate our chemtrail technology, and got increasingly frustrated when all their samples turned out to just be water ice with trace amounts of jet exhaust.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/alien_theories.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2953/) 2024-07-03T00:00:00Z **Bracket Symbols**
![’"‘”’" means "I edited this text on both my phone and my laptop before sending it"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bracket_symbols.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2954/) 2024-07-05T00:00:00Z **Pole Vault**
![Ugh, and we JUST went through this yesterday with javelin.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/pole_vault.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2955/) 2024-07-08T00:00:00Z **Number Line Branch**
![Attention all passengers: This is an express sequence to infinity. If your stop is not a power of two, please disembark now.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/number_line_branch.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2956/) 2024-07-10T00:00:00Z **A Crossword Puzzle**
![Hint: If you ever encounter this puzzle in a crossword app, just [term for someone with a competitive and high-achieving personality].](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/a_crossword_puzzle.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2957/) 2024-07-12T00:00:00Z **Hatchery**
![Anadromous fish are more vulnerable in rivers, since the lack of salt means you can quickly crack passwords using rainbow trout tables.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hatchery.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2958/) 2024-07-15T00:00:00Z **Beam of Light**
![Einstein's theories solved a longstanding mystery about Mercury: Why it gets so hot. "It's because," he pointed out, "the sun is right there."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/beam_of_light.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2959/) 2024-07-17T00:00:00Z **Organ Meanings**
![IMO the thymus is one of the coolest organs and we should really use it in metaphors more.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/organ_meanings.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2960/) 2024-07-19T00:00:00Z **CrowdStrike**
![We were going to try swordfighting, but all my compiling is on hold.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/crowdstrike.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2961/) 2024-07-22T00:00:00Z **President Venn Diagram**
![Hard to imagine political rhetoric more microtargeted at me than 'I love Venn diagrams. I really do, I love Venn diagrams. It's just something about those three circles.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/president_venn_diagram.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2962/) 2024-07-24T00:00:00Z **House Inputs and Outputs**
![People think power over ethernet is so great, and yet when I try to do water over ethernet everyone yells at me.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/house_inputs_and_outputs.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2963/) 2024-07-26T00:00:00Z **Olympic Sports**
![Thankfully for everyone involved, the Winter Olympics officials spotted me and managed to stop me before I got to the ski jump.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/olympic_sports.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2964/) 2024-07-29T00:00:00Z **Chili Tornado Quake**
![Buildings constructed from softer materials were damaged by chili pepper impacts to the storm's high Richter-Fujita-Scoville-Mohs hardness rating.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/chili_tornado_quake.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2965/) 2024-07-31T00:00:00Z **Exam Numbers**
![Calligraphy exam: Write down the number 37, spelled out, nicely.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/exam_numbers.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2966/) 2024-08-02T00:00:00Z **Matter**
![He was the first person to land a 900, which is especially impressive because pulling off a half-integer spin requires obeying Fermi-Dirac statistics.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/matter.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2967/) 2024-08-05T00:00:00Z **University Age**
![This only makes it more urgent that we adopt my roadmap for the next 10 years, which should put us solidly in the lead.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/university_age.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2968/) 2024-08-07T00:00:00Z **Vice President First Names**
![[Political pundit on the ScrabbleTV News channel] "After four years of defying orthographic pressure, Joe ceded the top of the ticket to Kamala, who--after considering Josh, Mark, Andy, Roy, and Pete--picked Tim."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/vice_president_first_names.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2969/) 2024-08-09T00:00:00Z **Meteor Shower PSA**
![If you hold the meteor too long, it may imprint on you and form a contact binary, making reintroduction to space difficult.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/meteor_shower_psa.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2970/) 2024-08-12T00:00:00Z **Celestial Event**
![If we can get a brood of 13-year cicadas going, we might have a chance at making this happen before the oceans evaporate under the expanding sun.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/celestial_event.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2971/) 2024-08-14T00:00:00Z **Helium Synthesis**
![Our lawyers were worried because it turns out the company inherits its debt from the parent universe, but luckily cosmic inflation reduced it to nearly zero.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/helium_synthesis.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2972/) 2024-08-16T00:00:00Z **Ferris Wheels**
![They left the belt drive in place but switched which wheel was powered, so people could choose between a regular ride, a long ride, and a REALLY long ride.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ferris_wheels.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2973/) 2024-08-19T00:00:00Z **Storage Tanks**
![We're considering installing a pressurization system to keep the tanks at constant pressure solely to deter them.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/storage_tanks.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2974/) 2024-08-21T00:00:00Z **Classical Periodic Table**
![Personally I think mercury is more of a 'wet earth' hybrid element.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/classical_periodic_table.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2975/) 2024-08-23T00:00:00Z **Time Traveler Causes of Death**
![Many a hungry time traveler has Googled 'trilobites shellfish allergy' only to find their carrier had no coverage in the Ordovician.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time_traveler_causes_of_death.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2976/) 2024-08-26T00:00:00Z **Three Kinds of Research**
![The secret fourth kind is 'we applied a standard theory to their map of every tree and got some suspicious results.'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/three_kinds_of_research.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2977/) 2024-08-28T00:00:00Z **Stranded**
![At least they're not alone down there.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/stranded.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2978/) 2024-08-30T00:00:00Z **Sky Alarm**
![During the day it also activates for neat clouds and pretty sunsets.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sky_alarm.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2979/) 2024-09-02T00:00:00Z **Lava Lakes**
![Hey, golf balls float on lava, so this should make recovering them from the hazards easier.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lava_lakes.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2980/) 2024-09-04T00:00:00Z **Slingshots**
![In my reboot, Dennis the Menace was just trying to send Mr. Wilson a nice comet, but accidentally wiped out his dinosaur garden.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/slingshots.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2981/) 2024-09-06T00:00:00Z **Water Filtration**
![You'd think the most expensive part would be the quark-gluon plasma chamber, but it's actually usually the tube to the top of the atmosphere to carry the cosmic rays down.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/water_filtration.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2982/) 2024-09-09T00:00:00Z **Monocaster**
![My competitors say the tiny single tiny caster is unsafe, unstable, and offers no advantages over traditional designs, to which I say: wow, why are you guys so mean? I thought we were friends!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/monocaster.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2983/) 2024-09-11T00:00:00Z **Asteroid News**
![Their calculations show it will 'pass within the distance of the moon' but that it 'will not hit the moon, so what's the point?'](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/asteroid_news.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2984/) 2024-09-13T00:00:00Z **Craters**
![It's annoying that the Nastapoka Arc isn't a meteor impact crater, but I truly believe that--with enough time, effort, and determination--we could make it one.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/craters.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2985/) 2024-09-17T00:00:00Z **Every Scientific Field**
![Conveniently for everyone, it turns out that dark energy is produced by subterranean parasitoid wasps.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/every_scientific_field.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2986/) 2024-09-18T00:00:00Z **Tectonic Surfing**
![The worst is when you wipe out in the barrel and you're trapped for several million years until erosion frees you.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tectonic_surfing.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2987/) 2024-09-20T00:00:00Z **Maslow's Pyramid**
![The local police, building inspector, and fire marshal are all contesting my 'safety' assertion, or would be if they could reach me past all the traps.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/maslows_pyramid.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2988/) 2024-09-23T00:00:00Z **Physics Lab Thermostat**
![Hopefully the HVAC people set it to only affect the AIR in the room.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/physics_lab_thermostat.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2989/) 2024-09-25T00:00:00Z **Late Cenozoic**
![Our nucleic acid recovery techinques found a great deal of homo sapiens DNA incorporated into the fossils, particularly the ones containing high levels of resin, leading to the theory that these dinosaurs preyed on the once-dominant primates.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/late_cenozoic.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2990/) 2024-09-27T00:00:00Z **Beamsplitters**
![Under quantum tax law, photons sent through a beamsplitter don't actually choose which path they took, or incur a tax burden, until their wavefunction collapses when the power is sold.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/beamsplitters.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2991/) 2024-09-30T00:00:00Z **UK Coal**
![The Watership Down rabbits removed an additional 0.1 nanometers constructing their warren, although that was mostly soil. British rabbits have historically mined very little coal; the sole rabbit-run coal plant was shut down in the 1990s.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/uk_coal.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2992/) 2024-10-02T00:00:00Z **Ingredients**
![Add main-belt asteroids to taste.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ingredients.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2993/) 2024-10-04T00:00:00Z **Númenor Margaritaville**
![I see white shores, and beyond it, a far green country under a tequila sunrise.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/numenor_margaritaville.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2994/) 2024-10-04T00:00:00Z **Númenor Margaritaville**
![I see white shores, and beyond it, a far green country under a tequila sunrise.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/numenor_margaritaville.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2994/) 2024-10-07T00:00:00Z **University Commas**
![The distinctive 'UCLA comma' and 'Michigan comma' are a long string of commas at the start and end of the sentence respectively.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/university_commas.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2995/) 2024-10-09T00:00:00Z **CIDABM**
![There's a heated debate over whether the big island of Tierra del Fuego should qualify for membership.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cidabm.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2996/) 2024-10-11T00:00:00Z **Solar Protons**
![If any of you want to meet some cool local oxygen atoms, I can introduce you!](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/solar_protons.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2997/) 2024-10-14T00:00:00Z **Ravioli-Shaped Objects**
![It's a real accomplishment to mess up a ravioli recipe badly enough that the resulting incident touches all four quadrants of the NFPA hazard diamond.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ravioli_shaped_objects.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2998/) 2024-10-16T00:00:00Z **Bad Map Projection: The United Stralia**
![This projection distorts both area and direction, but preserves Melbourne.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bad_map_projection_the_united_stralia.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/2999/) 2024-10-18T00:00:00Z **Experimental Astrophysics**
![Our experiment will be expensive, but we believe it will produce important spin-offs, especially if we manage to hit the sun from the right angle.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/experimental_astrophysics.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3000/) 2024-10-21T00:00:00Z **Temperature Scales**
![In my new scale, °X, 0 is Earths' record lowest surface temperature, 50 is the global average, and 100 is the record highest, with a linear scale between each point and adjustment every year as needed.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/temperature_scales.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3001/) 2024-10-23T00:00:00Z **RNAWorld**
![Disney lore: Canonically, because of how Elsa's abiogenesis powers work, Olaf is an RNA-only organism.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rnaworld.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3002/) 2024-10-25T00:00:00Z **Sandwich Helix**
![The number one rule of string manipulation is that you’ve got to specify your encodings.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sandwich_helix.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3003/) 2024-10-28T00:00:00Z **Wells**
![You do have to be careful, though--sometimes, instead of water, you hit this free fuel that you can sell for a lot of money instead.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wells.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3004/) 2024-10-30T00:00:00Z **Disposal**
![We were disappointed that the rocket didn't make a THOOOONK noise when it went into the tube, but we're setting up big loudspeakers for future launches to add the sound effect.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/disposal.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3005/) 2024-11-01T00:00:00Z **Demons**
![Though they do appreciate how much he improved the heating system for the flame pit.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/demons.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3006/) 2024-11-04T00:00:00Z **Probabilistic Uncertainty**
!["One popular strategy is to enter an emotional spiral. Could that be the right approach? We contacted several researchers who are experts in emotional spirals to ask them, but none of them were in a state to speak with us."](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/probabilistic_uncertainty.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3007/) 2024-11-06T00:00:00Z **Proterozoic Rocks**
![These rocks are from a time before eyes, brains, and bones, pieces of a land warmed by an unseen sun.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/proterozoic_rocks.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3008/) 2024-11-08T00:00:00Z **Number Shortage**
!["10 minutes ago we were down to only 2 0s!" "How many do we have now?" "I ... don't know!!"](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/number_shortage.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3009/) 2024-11-11T00:00:00Z **Geometriphylogenetics**
![There's a maximum likelihood that I'm doing phylogenetics wrong.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geometriphylogenetics.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3010/) 2024-11-13T00:00:00Z **Europa Clipper**
![They had BETTER make this a sample return mission.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/europa_clipper.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3011/) 2024-11-15T00:00:00Z **The Future of Orion**
![Dinosaur Cosmics](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_future_of_orion.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3012/) 2024-11-18T00:00:00Z **Kedging Cannon**
![The real key was inventing the windmill-powered winch.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/kedging_cannon.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3013/) 2024-11-20T00:00:00Z **Arizona Chess**
![Sometimes, you have to sacrifice pieces to gain the advantage. Sometimes, to advance ... you have to fall back.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/arizona_chess.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3014/) 2024-11-22T00:00:00Z **D Combinatorics**
![Look, you can't complain about this after giving us so many scenarios involving N locked chests and M unlabeled keys.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dnd_combinatorics.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3015/) 2024-11-25T00:00:00Z **Cold Air**
![We also should really have checked that the old water tower was disconnected from the water system before we started filling it with compressed air.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cold_air.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3016/) 2024-11-27T00:00:00Z **Neutrino Modem**
![Our sysadmin accidentally won a Nobel Prize while trying to debug neutrino oscillation error correction.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/neutrino_modem.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3017/) 2024-11-29T00:00:00Z **Second Stage**
![Hmm, they won't do in-flight delivery, so let's order a new first and second stage to our emergency landing site and then try to touch down on top of them to save time.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/second_stage.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3018/) 2024-12-02T00:00:00Z **Advent Calendar Advent Calendar**
![The growth rate of items per day may may seem absurd, but it's actually much less than the acceleration in the 12 Days of Christmas song.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/advent_calendar_advent_calendar.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3019/) 2024-12-04T00:00:00Z **Infinite Armada Chess**
![Stockfish 16 suggests the unconventional opening 1. RuntimeError: Out of bounds memory access](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/infinite_armada_chess.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3020/) 2024-12-06T00:00:00Z **Seismologists**
![And even when they're not distracted, they usually get kicked out for illegal under-the-net 'subduction spikes'.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/seismologists.png) ⌘ [Read more](https://xkcd.com/3021/)