Toby, Dave & Ian Explain XKCD

Debian, a free and open-source operating system comprised of a large number of software packages and the Linux kernel, is often associated with strict policies around the quality of code it contains.

The Author is making the claim that one could sneak in a package that was dependent on (required) the package “locusts”. Although locusts are small, swarming insects and not comprised of computer code (thus making this scenario impossible), we believe the Author is purposefully using the concept of absurdity in order to cause open-source software people to laugh.

Due to his frustrations with inevitably driving away every woman he dates with his self-feminization and constant pestering, the Author has decided that women are inherently flawed. Based on this revelation he had devised a system wherein his time wont be wasted by women who will not be able to put up with him.

The real tragedy of this system is the affect it would have on the Author himself. Please, if you will, imagine if every woman was given a list of the Author’s violations against common decency before they embark on the downward spiral that is dating him.

The people that have knowledge of the statistic for deaths by lighting strike may be inclined to gain confidence from the relatively low risk rate. What they may not understand is that this rate goes up dramatically for people who are in or around lighting storms, especially if they act irresponsibly (possibly based on the overconfidence gained from their knowledge).

That is the joke that is being made in today’s comic strip.

An observation. The faux “inside jokes” are created by combining wacky, non-related objects into a sentence.

In the largely theoretical world of physics, building a basic model to represent the core of the problem and adding complexity piece-wise is a well-respected and widely used method.

In other fields, it is not.

What the Author is trying to explain in these twelve awkward panels is that while many technologically knowledgeable people can devise plans to collect private information, the vast majority lack the criminal creativity necessary to use that data malevolently.

Because if the last thing he said to them before they died was on the subject of cat vomit, he would feel obligated to be upset about it.

Obsessively thinking about ways you could hypothetically act neurotic and insecure is the major leagues of being white and the Author is their MVP.

Because the LSD would make the control group, which is created to represent normal behavior, act very strange. This would make the experiment much harder on the scientists.

Note: the Author does not actually do this.

In this humorous take on the “two western gun-slingers dramatically pause their dual while a tumbleweed passes between them” cliché, neither opponent draws first and fires on the other - instead, the tumbleweed itself kills both men.

Because I could not stop for Death is a poem by Emily Dickinson. The first frame’s scene and lines are taken from the poem verbatim. In the second frame, the author pushes the “y” button on his imaginary video game controller. Consequently, a female (presumably Emily Dickinson) appears and grabs the surprised hooded character of Death driving the wagon, pulling him from his driver’s seat. Death is surprised by this. Emily then rides off with the wagon, leaving a rattled death sprawled out in the road. It is then revealed that this was all a set up to make a joke about an imaginary version of the popular and violent Grand Theft Auto video game franchise that is based on the era and writings of Emily Dickinson. Instead of controlling the typical thug male main characters of GTA, the author wistfully imagines being able to manipulate a strong female Emily character with his handheld controller.