A web comic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language.

what-if.xkcd.com
This week: Is there enough energy to move all of humanity off-planet?

Scene: A social network feed with four status updates from four different people. Each one has a reply from the same account, which is called “ContextBot”, underneath.
Close-up face with glasses: The things I put up with…
ContextBot: (His building’s WiFi doesn’t reach the bathroom.)
Male/female couple: You’d think by now I’d have learned never to trust anyone.
ContextBot: (She downloaded a torrent that turned out to be an encrypted .rar and a link to a survey.)
Blonde girl with bangs: I officially give up.
ContextBot: (She hit alt-tab to hide Minecraft at work and accidentally dropped a stack of diamond into lava.)
Spiky hair guy: Sighhhh
ContextBot: (He thought these grapes were seedless.)
Caption

Everyone stopped complaining about Google’s data-gathering when they launched ContextBot, a system which replies to vague, enigmatic social network posts with context from the poster’s life.

Hover text: If you read all vague booking vague tweeting with the assumption that they’re saying everything they can without revealing classified military information, the internet gets way more exciting.

Warning: This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

A web comic of romance,

sarcasm, math, and language.

Panel One: Drawing of a stick figure, seated in a rolley chair at a desk with a laptop. A stick figure with shoulder length dark hair is walking in from the rightt.

Person 1: I, um, messed up my server again.
Person 2: I’ll take a look. You have the *weirdest* tech problems

Panel Two: Person 2 goes to laptop and uses the root prompt.

Person 1, typing: ~# ls

Panel Three: Person 1 and 2 watch the screen. Person 2 has an amazingly incredulous look on their face.

Computer : usr/share/Adobe/doc/example/android_vm/root/sbin/ls.jar:  Error: Device is not responding

Panel Four: Person 2 has turned to stare at Person 1, who is still seated in the rolly chair.

Person 2: What did you *do*!?
Person 1: Maybe the device is busy. Should I try it later?
Person 2: You should shut down this system and wait for the Singularity.

Hover text: Protip: Annoy Ray Kurzweil by always referring to it as the ‘Cybersingularity’.

Warning: This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

A web comic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

This week's queston: What if the glass were really half empty?-Drawing of a stick figure wearing a beret sitting at a table across from another stick figure with shoulder length dark hair. On the table is a glass with water in it up to the halfway point.

Caption

The internet has wound up in kind of a weird place.

Hover text: I liked the idea, suggested by h00k on bash.org, of a Twitter bot that messages prominent politicians to tell them when they’ve unnecessarily used sms-speak abbreviations despite having plenty of characters left.

Warning: This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

A web comic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language.

New: what-if.xkcd.com
This week: How long would humans last in a robot apocalypse?

(BG note: Jumping numerical order for timeliness.)

A web comic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

New: what-if.xkcd.com
This week: How long would humans last in a robot apocalypse?

Panel One: Drawing of two stick figures standing together on a rock-strewn valley floor. The one on the left has shoulder-length dark hair and is wearing a wide-brimmed hat. The one on the right is holding a large piece of paper.

Person 1: Forget the bedding – we were wrong about the whole valley.

Person 2: The spreading is recent.

Panel Two: Closer view. Person 1 has a hand to her chin in a thinking pose.

Person 1: See the friction breccia?

Person 2: Oh – flow cleavage! Deeper in the rift.

Person 1: Deeper.

Panel Three: Person 1 turns to Person 2.

Person 1: This orogeny

Person 2: is driven by a

Person 1: *huge*

Person 2: *thrust* fault

Panel Four:  In a fit of passion, both drop to the ground, out of view. The hat flies up in the air.

Person 2 (off-panel): Mmm.

Caption

Geology: Surprisingly erotic.

Hover text: That’s a gneiss butte.

Warning: This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

A web comic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

New: what-if.xkcd.com
This week: How long would humans last in a robot apocalypse?

Panel One: Drawing of a stick figure looking at a phone screen.

Person 1: I can’t believe you’re so wrong. I’m backed by Snopes, Wikipedia and a half-dozen journals. You’re quoting .net pages with black backgrounds and like 20 fonts each.

Panel Two: A stick figure with short, dark hair is seated at a desk and typing on a laptop.

Person 2: It’s sad how you buy into the official story so unquestioningly. Guess some people prefer to stay asleep.

Panel Three: Same as Panel One.

Person 1: Watch closely – I’m about to win this argument.

Person 2 (from phone): How?

Panel Four: Person 1 is shown to be sitting at the top of a waterslide.

Person 1: By going down a water slide.

Panel Five: This panel is split in two, with Person 2, seated at the desk in the upper part and Person 1 going down the water slide in the bottom.

Person 2: So? what does that prove?

Person 1: Wheeee. . .

Panel Six: Same as Panel Five.

Person 2: You didn’t win the argument!

Person 1: …eeee!   [sploosh]

Hover text:  Really, the comforting side in most conspiracy theory arguments is the one claiming that anyone who’s in power has any plan at all.

Warning: This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).