1843

Wow. Hard to know where to start with this one.

Let's begin by taking it at face value, and say that the answer is probably "less than one", because Star Wars opening crawls are written like summaries, and the first page of any Star Wars novel is going to be pretty easy to distinguish from that style. Did Randall just discover BrOrlandi's intro generator?

But the more you think about this, the worse it gets. What's the payoff here for the prankster? "Hey guys, remember that time I tricked 50 people into reading the first paragraph of Darksaber? That was pretty epic, right?" This is reminiscent of that godawful chin-up bar strip, where the narrator of the comic is the only human being with agency, while everyone else is doomed to react to his genius. It's especially peculiar because Randall himself has made fun of this tendency before.

Finally, I wonder if this actually counts as copyright infringement. That is the first page of The Last Command by Timothy Zahn: Randall cites Zahn by name in the alt text, but doesn't give the name of the book, and since this work is manifestly not criticism, reporting, teaching, research, or parody, it isn't fair use. A lawsuit against Randall Munroe would be the most amusing thing to come out of this strip.

1842

It's cool how after more than ten years, Randall is still this terrible at dialogue. This is a string of terrible riffs on terrible setups. First of all, no one "loves" those eagles that take down drones; it's a thing that is being attempted on what still looks like an experimental basis in France and the Netherlands. This is hardly a widespread phenomenon sweeping the world: it's about on a level with the US Navy submarine-hunting dolphins. Second, it's nothing at all like releasing dogs onto freeways to attack motorcycles. This comic is the stupidest goddamn thing I saw all week, including the other xkcd's.

And to hell with Black Hat Guy; even he's just phoning it in at this point.

1841

GOOMH Randall I too am a self-centered jerk who doesn't care who my friends are! DAE so autistic they walk away from their friends in mid-conversation? Why do the people I know always feel like I care who they are?

The alt text makes this even worse. If that was supposed to be the point of the comic, it might have been a good idea to, I don't know, draw the guy with a Bluetooth earpiece or something. It seems like that was the original idea, since he does seem to have the standard-issue douchebag haircut Randall likes to put on characters we aren't supposed to like. Here's a thought, Randall: maybe if you weren't always being a completely unwarranted dickhead to your friends, you'd get invited to their weddings too!

1840

Worth Of Web estimates the value of xkcd.com at $95 million.

1838

Oh look, a dusty old banality repackaged as insightful commentary by extremely with-it observer of technological progress Randall Munroe. This was an old joke before xkcd even existed:

"To paraphrase provocatively, 'machine learning is statistics minus any checking of models and assumptions'."
-Brian D. Ripley, 2004

Anybody who knows enough about machine learning (anything at all about machine learning) to get this joke ("joke") has already made the same comment.

1839

Yet another comic about how people are different from machines. The third panel here is especially stupid, because Randall was too lazy to bother writing that sentence in a way that is not factually incorrect. The "high-pressure fluids and intricate parts" don't really "kill you" when they stop working; that doesn't even make sense. It would be more accurate to say that the patient is riddled with single points of failure, which would have the added advantage of allowing Randall to pretend he still thinks like an engineer. This one might be a little less grindingly intolerable if the patient pointed out to the doctor that she, too, was basically made from dissolved bread, but that would mean having a male stick-figure correcting a female stick-figure, which is not permitted.

1837

Don't you just hate when you're in your car and the GPS is trying to navigate to Seattle? It's literally worse than a 1-in-6 chance of getting murdered! On the whole, this is an incredibly lame setup for "GPS voices sure are annoying".

On another tack, these are the sort of wacky hijinks we have been trained to associate with the white beret guy, but he's not here. I wonder if Randall had him running the rental agency in an earlier draft JUST KIDDING RANDALL DOESN'T DO MULTIPLE DRAFTS

Bonus points for Randall striking a blow for feminism by having the guy standing around saying nothing while Megan conducts all the business.

1835

Here's what the Google Trends page for these things actually looks like since 2004 (limited to the US, since the worldwide trends looked even less like what the comic is supposed to be showing us):

You can try it yourself! One of the nice things about Google Trends is that it already shows things relative to their peak interest. The interest levels have remained broadly constant over the past 13 years, with "bacon" spiking every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and "pirates" spiking every fall (for that godawful Talk Like A Pirate Day) and spring (for those godawful Pirates of the Caribbean movies). At no point in the last 13 years has "robot monkey" been of noteworthy interest. I have already spent more time on this than Randall did.

1836

There are at least two levels of classical XKCD insufferability here. First is lazy "lulz internet comments sure are dumb amirite". Second, this is what the Okeanos Explorer live feed looks like:

This is what Randall would have you believe he likes to spend his time doing, because he is a Serious Scientist who worked for NASA, and not some kind of I Fucking Love Science-following pleb like the rest of you.