Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

July 11, 2017

Like XKCD but don’t get the jokes?

Filed under: Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 11:38 PM

Do you like the XKCD Comics, but don’t always get the jokes? Or do you have someone in your life that keeps quoting it but you can’t make heads or tails of it? If so then you should check out ExplainXKCD.com, a website dedicated to explaining the XKCD Comics. e.g. Lets take the following comic from July 3rd 2017:

The site explains it as follows:

In the United States, the 4th of July is celebrated as Independence Day. This comic claims to show the timeline of different activities that are used to celebrate the holiday. One common activity is to watch fireworks displays. With the rise of personal drones there have been several videos of fireworks from drones, including flying the drones through the middle of the display. The comic then purports that starting in the year it was published (2017), fireworks and drones will be at some sort of war with each other, starting with drone pilots leading their drones into the path of the rising fireworks before they explode, leading to fireworks technicians intentionally trying to strike down drones. In 2019, Randall posits that the drones will be weaponized with fireworks and competitions will be held to shoot down your opponents’ drone. This wanton destruction of drones leads them to turn against their pilots and humanity in 2020 (after gaining sentience, presumably by their AI evolving through the competition), and then in 2021, they will be celebrating their Independence Day from the humans.

The title text refers to another popular 4th of July activity in the United States: Barbecues with fare such as hot dogs and hamburgers. But since the drones don’t have mouths or a digestive tract, they simply make a mess by using their rotors as a blender.

Check it out if you have some time to kill. Its a fun and distracting read.

– Suramya

2 Comments »

  1. Linking to XKCD is almost as bad as linking to TV Tropes. Note: I did not provide a link to TV Tropes.

    Discovered your site via a link to your Baen CD Mirror. Was getting a bit worried, as going through the site, nothing had been updated since 2011, not a good sign, although someone was paying the hosting fees, as it was still active. But then I clicked on your blog, and saw it was quite recent. So I no longer need to worry about what has happened with you, you just haven’t done anything with the rest of your site. Interests change, other things become more important. Sometimes, you get a life; it looks like you did.

    The trip to Lakshadweep you went on recently, it looks like you had a good time; good looking group of friends. Much more important than working on a website, in my mind. Keep doing this, as long as you can. It’s a beautiful world out there. The website will still be there when you are retired, and no longer up to activities so challenging.

    Trust me on that last.

    Yours,

    John Mead
    Tacoma, WA USA

    Comment by John R Mead — October 12, 2017 @ 5:27 AM

  2. > Linking to XKCD is almost as bad as linking to TV Tropes. Note: I did not provide a link to TV Tropes.

    Ha ha… Different people with different tastes is what make life interesting. I love XKCD because of the humor but I get that that brand/style of humor might not be everyone’s cup of tea. In fact I actually had to search for TV Tropes to figure out what it was about. Its not my cup of tea but I am sure there are others out there that love it.

    Thanks for posting and the concern. Life has been good and unfortunately a bit hectic so I had to ignore the website for a while. Although I didn’t realize that it hadn’t been updated since 2011 (SIX Years!!!) so once I am back from this next trip I am going to block some time to update the site pronto.

    Take care.

    – Suramya

    Comment by Suramya — October 12, 2017 @ 8:32 PM

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