Aquarion Explains Jocelyn Explains Toby, Dave & Ian Explain XKCD
Some things happen.
Other things don’t happen.
Some things should happen
Other things shouldn’t happen.
Sometimes things fall in to more than one category.
Mixing the first two produces quantum physicists.
A man wakes up confused in a room with a laptop. Following a loud, wind-like sound the man loses the ability to speak which causes him to panic even further. We then see him run in-place and fall over. The camera then pans out, revealing two characters on the outside of a chamber that is holding the panicking man. It is then revealed that the man inside the chamber is a physics professor, and the two other characters had put him in a frictionless vacuum to see how he would work.
The joke here is that physics professors very commonly use a “frictionless vacuum” as the environment for problems and experiments given to their students. This is done to greatly simplify the work needed to solve the problem, as one can ignore the forces of friction and air resistance.
It’s also funny that they murdered a person.
The author of this explanation presumably shares some of XKCD guy’s enmity toward physics professors and/or their affection for frictionless vacuums. As such, he is able to recognize that this particular edition of XKCD is unusually funny.
This is entirely correct. Well, apart from the “unusually funny” bit, as I found this one to fall flat. This author believes that this joke is only a small percentage as funny as it would have been had it assumed a perfectly spherical physicist in a frictionless vacuum.
Also, Vacuum is a funny word to type too often.
And that I’m abandoning the passive voice forthwidth, because I’m unable to pull it off without sounding like a dick.
A female is seen giving technical advice to a male who is attempting to decide which of two smart phones, the Apple iPhone or the Motorola Droid, to purchase. After the female finishes describing the high-level differences between the two devices, the male questions the very nature of his predicament. He wonders if and how he can rid his life of consumerism and the constant desire for the latest gadget, allowing more of his time to be spent on productive endeavors.
The male then pauses, and delivers a humorous cliche in the form of a modification on the now famous Apple advertisement line, “There’s an app or that.”
In a surprise twist, the knowledgeable and confident female character then states that both smart phones do, in fact, “have an app for that.” This is funny because that kind of application could not actually exist.
Then, in an even more comical twist, the female corrects her previous statement by revealing that the iPhone version of the app has been rejected. Based on this new information, the male decides to purchase the more geek-friendly Droid - despite his earlier wishes to live free from electronic devices.
This last scene is humorous because of the widely held belief that Apple frequently rejects applications during their approval process, a belief popularized by bloggers whose applications were rejected by Apple.
How do the XKCD Explained guys know all this stuff? Seriously, I’m way out of my league here. All I know about the iPhone is that the network is preposterously inadequate, and I only know that because I have one. All I know about the Droid is that the commercials are really dramatic. I just want my RAZR to have more than two hours worth of battery on it and to no longer be held together by a Fleet Foxes sticker so I can use it again instead. Smart phones suck.
This chronicler believes that the use of the “belief” conceit in the original explaination has now been taken to an illogical level, as the phrase “the widely held belief that Apple frequently rejects applications during their approval process, a belief popularized by bloggers whose applications were rejected by Apple.” contains not only the concept of “belief” in this fabled rejection by apple but the evidence that Apple does, in fact, reject applications from the App Store. The Belief, in this case, would be that Apple’s rejection process appears entirely arbitrary as it is entirely opaque to the developer community, though that isn’t referred to.
Upon the nature of the metaexplaination, this author feels the need to point out that he also has an iPhone, that the Apple bits are fine, though the O2 bits suck goats though fine gauze, and that he will never be able to get a Droid on his phone contract because his network rejected it from the UK market for not being pretty enough.
The author is not joking.
The author does also have opinions on razr phones in specific, having not only had to use one, but also to make sites and stuff work on them, and has come to the conclusion that his opinions on any and all razr phones should not be aired here, as it would violate his self-imposed PG-13 rating for these reviews.
He does approve of the Fleet Foxes sticker, however.
In this Christmas-edition XKCD, the Author adapts the classic Clement Clarke Moore Poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” to reflect upon the common sleep patterns of college students. Many a student coming home from college and used to an extremely late (or perhaps more accurately: early) sleep schedule. This sleep schedule is much lauded by people who learned everything they know about the the so-called “hacker culture” from Eric Raymond essays and the movie “Hackers”.
The strip culminates in a terse exchange between Santa Clause, who is admonishing the man for being up so late. A snappy comeback which firmly states the disconnect between a child’s sleep schedule and an adults serves as a punchline to this unusual long-frame format strip.
Your Curator understands that this strip in particular may be difficult to grasp, as it lacks a traditional comic structure. It is important to remember that for a certain segment of the XKCD target audience, recognition of a phenomena is itself a form of humor, as the sensation of having peers can be a rare and often short-lived sensation for many of those steeped in “hacker culture.” This sensation, coupled with the timing of the strip (released Dec. 24th) can fill the role of the traditional punchline.
The author of this explanation believes that the average XKCD reader is likely to derive humor from identifying themselves with a situation revealed in a particular edition of XKCD. Though this may be true, it is worth noting that the average writer of XKCD Explained Explained (also known as me) is usually upset when she finds (I find) commonality with any of the characters in XKCD, as that indicates that she is (I am) a dorkator. As such, she is (I am) going to bed now, lest it reach 3AM and she turns (I turn) into a stick figure with Asperger’s.
The author of this metaexplaination appears to believe that writing metacommentaries about geek webcomics does not make her a dorkator.
The author of this metametaexplaination just had to look up “dorkator” on Urban Dictionary.
It can be assumed that the Author, while watching a television show by himself, heard the line “the moment my brother died, I felt a searing pain in my heart” and immediately sprung from his bean bag chair to write down the line and a single word: “PHYSICS!” That word was then underlined and circled, thus beginning the creation of another scientific-concept-transposed-into-real-life cartoon.
In the cartoon we see a man describing the grief he felt during his brother’s death to a second man. The second man, a physicist, is then shown giving three possible verbal responses that serves as examples for right, wrong and very wrong answers.
The first response is a simple condolence that one would expect for the given situation. The hilarity begins in the second response, in which the physicist takes the word “moment” into the context of his profession, specifically within the topic of causality (cause and effect). He asks if the pain felt (effect) truly happened in the same moment as the brother’s death (cause), or if there was a delay from the speed of light - the maximum speed at which information can travel according to physics.
The third and most ludicrous response from the physicist has him imagining an experiment involving the killing of the first man’s other siblings in order order to use the instantaneous cause and effect to violate the rules of causality and send signals back in time.
There you have it readers, the Author has managed to turn a man’s death into a homographic pun involving physics and time travel.
The author of this explanation has a curious definition of the word “hilarity.” It appears that his personal definition is something along the lines of: “uninteresting (though slightly horrifying) inside joke.”
NOTE: Based on a sample size of eight people, it’s been my experience that physicists are really awesome people. Therefore, it’s fair to assume that none of them would ever actually say the above-mentioned things, unless they were saying them so someone who was a huge douche. In other words, physicists do not have Asperger’s.
The metaexplaintionist obviously does not understand the inherent hilarity of imposing physics or, more specifically, “PHYSICS!!” upon metaphysical and other non-literal constructs. This is a definition of hilarity that this curator has observed in such disparate geek paths as physicists, chemists, biologists and mathmagicians. Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy fans tend to refer to it as “A new definition of ‘hilarity’ of which I was previously unaware”, thus exposing their tenancy to madlib-quote Douglas Adams at any and all opportunities.
NOTE: Based on a sample size that would get any reputable wikipedia article laughed out of Featured status, it has also been the curator’s experience that whilst nobody without some kind of Asperger’s type condition would recreate the above comic’s conversation, this does not stop them finding the above quite funny.
Also some physicists do have Asperger’s Syndrome.
Also, the increased level of exclamation marks around the above emboldened, italicised, cool-cruise-controlled explaination are deliberate, traditionally used to denote agreement with the said abuse of science.
Also, Kittens.
There’s no good reason for the kittens, and why would there need to be?
A man is playing a video game and asks his friend wearing the Hasidic Jew Hat to give him some assistance, since he is experiencing some difficulty progressing past a certain challenge. But because his friend is “evil” (as denoted by the Black Hasidic Jew Hat), he responds with unhelpful wordplay of the similarity of the word “pointers,” thus earning the ire of the man who is playing video games.
The Man Wearing the Black Hasidic Jew Hat (further referred to as “Black-Hat” for brevity) is playing off the similarity between the word “pointers” as used colloquially to mean “helpful information or guidance” and “pointers”, which refer to a specific construct in low-level computer programming. When programming in C, C++, or Assembly the notion of a “pointer” or the logical address of a value in computer memory is a lesson that is considered both difficult and essential to master as early as possible in one’s programming career. Black-Hat provides several hexadecimal numbers that are a shorthand for numbers that fit into 32-bit memory. The length of these numbers is significant because they closely match the length used by most computer programmers as they learn to program, and thus should be immediately recognizable to anyone who has been introduced to the field.
Thus, “Black-Hat” answers the player’s query with an honest answer that is simultaneously precise and entirely unhelpful. These homographic puns are considered high art in recognition-heavy geek humor.
CURATOR’S NOTE: While the association between Jewish Fashion and Math might seem to suggest a veiled reference to the racial stereotype: “Jews are good at finance and math,” it does not seem to have been the the author’s intent to draw this allusion. As such, the charitable reader should dismiss it as a artistic curiosity and nothing more.
Did you know that there is a high genetic tendency toward Asperger’s syndrome in Ashkenazi Jewish families?
CURATOR’S NOTE:Whilst not a comment on the explainedexplained article, and thus a jump in recursion that is entirely inexcusable, the curator feels the need to mention that the comment upon Jewish millinery is entirely unwarranted, as the original creative author has expressedly stated that the behatted stick figure is a reference to the sociopathic character Aram in Aaron Farber’s long lost webcomic “Men in Hats”. The curator notes that this curators note is in no way constructed purely due to the fact that he cannot think of anything funny to say about Ashkenazi Jewish geeks with Asperger’s syndrome, possibly because there isn’t anything.
The adult asks the child a loaded question about her toys. She responds, as any child would, with a simple answer. The adult then corrects the child and proceeds to wax philosophical about how her toys, and thusly the other objects in our lives, are ultimately just the sum of their parts. He then adds that these parts can be reused upon the disassembling of the object.
The last three panels show the child, presumably at the DMV, looking at her toys and deciding to opt in to the organ donor program. This is humorous because the adult’s lecture has led her to think of her organs as Lego bricks - to be disassembled and reused upon her untimely death.
The author of this explanation has mislabeled this particular edition of XKCD as humorous, when in fact it is really depressing. Also, legos are awesome.
The author of this explanation believes the circle of life is depressing, and is therefore banned from ever watching the lion king again.
They are entirely correct on the subject of Lego, though failed to get the plural correct.
Upon completion of detailed character timelines for three of the most well known geek movies (Asperger syndrome), the author realized that a humorous punch-line was necessary in order to publish these charts as a comic strip. The punch-line comes visually in the form of two more charts appended to the three originals. These extra charts, both much less detailed than the first few, create a humorous and instantly visible contrast when juxtaposed with the fairly complex ones. The joke being told here is that Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Jurassic Park have plots involving many characters who travel between a multitude of locations, while 12 Angry Men has 12 characters who are confined to a single room and Primer’s characters travel through time in a notoriously complex manner. The author has once again gone to great lengths to turn a simple observation into a large comic involving multiple charts. This is how geeks masturbate.
The author of this explanation is probably right about everything, particularly the bit about Asperger’s syndrome. It is worth noting, however, that this is not actually how geeks masturbate. Geeks masturbate just like everyone else does, except that instead of Angelina Jolie they are imagining/looking at pictures of Arwen from Lord of the Rings and/or Princess Leia in the gold bikini. xkcdexplained: Upon completion of detailed character timelines for three of the most well known geek movies (Asperger syndrome), the author realized that a humorous punch-line was necessary in order to publish these charts as a comic strip. The punch-line comes visually in the form of two more charts appended to the three originals. These extra charts, both much less detailed than the first few, create a humorous and instantly visible contrast when juxtaposed with the fairly complex ones. The joke being told here is that Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Jurassic Park have plots involving many characters who travel between a multitude of locations, while 12 Angry Men has 12 characters who are confined to a single room and Primer’s characters travel through time in a notoriously complex manner. The author has once again gone to great lengths to turn a simple observation into a large comic involving multiple charts. This is how geeks masturbate. The author of this explanation is probably right about everything, particularly the bit about Asperger’s syndrome. It is worth noting, however, that this is not actually how geeks masturbate. Geeks masturbate just like everyone else does, except that instead of Angelina Jolie they are imagining/looking at pictures of Arwen from Lord of the Rings and/or Princess Leia in the gold bikini.
The author of this explaination’s explaination makes a correction on the masturbation habits of geeks which assumes that all geeks are sexually interested in women, and fails to take into account the possibility of other geeks who would not masturbate to either Arwen, Leia or, for example, Kaylee.
The author of this explaination’s explaination’s explaination is aware that there comes a point where further recursion is not a good idea, but believes this point is far in the future.
