Comic. [Gravestone for Joseph Paul Overton with list of years underneath. 1960-2003 is in black at the top and crossed out in red. Underneath in red is 1965-2011, crossed out, then 1973-2018, crossed out, then 1982-]

Overton

xkcd.com/3230/

Comic. [Teacher with shoulder-length light hair talking to two students seated at desks.] TEACHER: *Grammar* is one of the most popular ways to structure a language, ahead of rival methods such as *WORDS ORDER WORDS RANDOM WORDS WORDS RANDOM GOOD* and *EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*.

Grammar

xkcd.com/3229/

Comic. [Sign above four people. A person sits at a desk working on a laptop. A person with ponytail is talking to person with white hat. A person with short hair walks away.] SIGN: It has been [-0.00000000000000044] days since our last floating point error

Day Counter

xkcd.com/3228/

4-panel comic. (1) [Two people standing next to house with solar panels on roof. Person 2 has a black hat.] PERSON 1: Wait, you got solar panels? I thought you were against renewables. (2) PERSON 2: Oh, definitely. I hate the environment and want to harm it as much as possible. I’d *love* to have an oil furnace. (3) PERSON 2: But the technology just isn’t there and the cost is too high. I despise solar, but it makes more financial sense in my situation. (4) PERSON 2: But with the money I’m saving, I can buy and burn industrial waste in my yard to try to make up for it. PERSON 1: Ah, yeah, carbon onsets.

Home Solar

xkcd.com/3226/

4-panel comic. (1) [Black panel with white text boxes] TEXT BOX: And God said, "Let there be light," (2) [Sun radiating light.] TEXT BOX: And there was light. (3) [View of bright sun rising over Earth's horizo] (4) TEXT BOX: God saw that light was-- [Chat bubble from Earth] CHAT BUBBLE: Can you add support for dark mode? Open xkcd.com to view toggles for different modes.

CREATION

Happy April Fool's Day!

xkcd.com/3227/

Comic. [Person with a white hat and person with a ponytail face a third person with a poster behind them. The poster shows Earth and space beyond, and in space there is a rectangular banner with different space features on it.] PERSON WITH PONYTAIL: Aren’t you worried these will be disruptive for ground-based astronomy? PERSON 3: No, why? [caption] My new company is being criticized for our satellites that deploy 100-mile-wide banners painted with inaccurate pictures of the night sky.

Satellite Pollution

xkcd.com/3225/

Comic. Scatter plot graph with y-axis “time spent debugging centimeter-wavelength antennas” and x-axis “Nobel prizes awarded as a result” from points 0 and 1. There is a vertical line of dots at the 0 mark that is more spaced out at the top, and these are all labeled “I.T. people troubleshooting WiFi issues.” At the 1 mark is one dot for Penzias & Wilson.] [caption] I just think the other people working in the field deserve at least a *little* recognition.

Centimeter Wavelengths

xkcd.com/3224/

Comic: Timeline of Inflation. [Timeline of age of the universe (seconds) starting at 10^-40 with a block labeled “cosmic”, increasing to 10^20 with a narrow block labeled “regular”]

Inflation Timeline

xkcd.com/3223/

What if you kept digging downward? YouTube video by xkcd's What If?

What if you kept digging downward?

What the latest What If? video in collaboration with @minuteearth.bsky.social!

youtu.be/r7B0MzvwDcA

4-panel comic. (1) [Glowing black dot surrounded by clouds.] DOT: I think I did a good job with this universe. Pressure waves dance through gas clouds. They clump together and then pressure pushes them apart. (2) [Some of the clouds are clumping together.] DOT: Oh weird, that big clump of clouds is staying together. Their gravity is overcoming the pressure and more gas is falling in. (3) [More clouds are sucked in.] DOT: It’s not stopping! The heat is rising but the collapse is only accelerating! I messed up. I messed up *bad*. (4) [The clump has become a shining star.] DOT: NOOOOOOOO!!! My beautiful clouds! Ruined! It’s all ruined!

Star Formation

xkcd.com/3222/

Comic. [Small panel overlaying large panel.] PERSON 1: What’s up with this weird landscape? PERSON 2 with ponytail: Oh, it was caused by… [Large panel is map of the United States with with red overlays denoting landscape phenomena. Mega-floods in the northwest, a plate tectonics speedrun on the west coast, volcanoes next to the west coast, water and time in the southwest, geology in the west, a supervolcano within the west, glaciers in the north, farming in the middle, rivers in the mideast, geology in between rivers and farming, ??? toward the northeast, farming on the east coast, continents colliding next to the east coast, ongoing disputes between limestone and water in the south of Florida, volcanoes in Hawaii, geology in Alaska with volcanoes and glaciers below.]

Landscape Features

xkcd.com/3221/

Comic. [Person 1 talking to person with bun whose hands are fisted and has steam above her head and a person with a white hat who is facepalming.] PERSON 1: I was able to produce artificial gravity by rotating the ship along its longitudinal axis, helping passengers maintain muscle mass on the long-duration voyage! [caption] Well, the cruise line fired me.

Rotational Gravity

xkcd.com/3220/

Comic. Planets and Bright Stars Identification Chart. [Bright glowing dots over black background with labels underneath: Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Sirius, Procyon, Antares, Altair, Betelgeuse, Vega, Polaris]

Planets and Bright Stars

xkcd.com/3219/

Comic.[A gantry straddles the intersection of two tectonic plates, one under water and the other on a mountain. A tether connected to a winch on the gantry making a “click click click” sound is connected to the oceanic crust and is pulling it up, causing it to fold. Two people are standing on the fold next to the hook, looking down toward the space between the subducted crust where a shining object sits.] [caption] PSA: Please stay out of the Pacific Ocean today. Someone lost their wedding ring in a subduction zone and USGS is pulling the plate back up to retrieve it.

Subduction Retrieval

xkcd.com/3218/

Comic. [Person with microphone in front of three people standing behind their own desks with drawers and a round box on top. The boxes of the first and last are shaking with their lids slightly raised.] PERSON WITH MIC: And now, for the final round, you have each been given a skunk with a hangover and chewing gum stuck to its fur. You have 30 minutes. Good luck. [caption] The Home Remedy World Championships

Home Remedies

xkcd.com/3217/

Comic. [Person with shoulder-length hair talking to a second person. She is gesturing at a dinosaur skeleton with a machine mounted on its back.] PERSON 1: Although Bazookasaurus’s distinctive structure was long assumed to be a weapon, vascularization studies show that it was very fragile and could only have been used for display.

Bazookasaurus

xkcd.com/3216/

Comic. [Person with long hair announcing news. There are images of a sun with a smiley face labelled “last week” and a sun with a frowny face labeled “today.”] PERSON: A warning for solar flares and geomagnetic storms has been issued after new images from the solar and heliospheric observatory show that the big smiley face on the sun has turned into a frown.

Solar Warning

xkcd.com/3215/

Comic. [Person 1 talking to a person with shoulder-length hair and a person with a white hat.] PERSON 1: I would never get an electric vehicle. Sure, they sound great, but what do you do if the battery runs out of charge? [caption] I felt pretty silly when someone finally explained tome that EVs are rechargeable.

Electric Vehicles

xkcd.com/3214/

Comic. [Two people looking at a board with apparent formula (3.1.3.1)/(3.1.2.1)] PERSON: Do mammologists think these are hard? I mean, this one just evaluates to 3/2. [caption] Mathematicians encounter dental formulas

Dental Formulas

xkcd.com/3213/

What if you floated upwards 1 ft every second? YouTube video by xkcd's What If?

What if you floated upwards 1 ft every second?

What the latest What If? video in collaboration with
@minuteearth.bsky.social!

youtu.be/oTzW-mTQd5w

4-panel comic: Astronomers asking researchers from different departments to help them identify the “little red dots” in JWST images: (1) Entomologists [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 2 with shoulder-length hair.] PERSON 2: Clover mites. (2) Computer Scientists [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 3 with beanie.] PERSON 3: Stuck pixels. (3) Dermatologists [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 4 with ponytail.] PERSON 4: Cherry angiomas. (4) Graphic designers [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 5 with short hair.] PERSON 5: No, those are vermillion, or maybe jasper. Can I see your color settings?

Little Red Dots

xkcd.com/3212/

Comic. PERSON 1: I got 10,000 amp service and put each outlet on its own 500 amp breaker, so I never have to worry about overloading a circuit again! PERSON 2 with ponytail: Clever. PERSON 1: Oh, that reminds me–Do you know where to buy cords that don’t catch fire?

Amperage

xkcd.com/3211/

4-panel comic. (1) [Person with white hat talking to another person.] PERSON 1 with white hat: As Sherlock Holmes said, When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (2) PERSON 2: What about the possibility that you forgot to eliminate a possibility? Or that you eliminated one incorrectly? Both of those remain, too. (3) PERSON 1: You’re being pedantic. It’s just a general rule for deduction. PERSON 2: But it’s a *bad rule*. (4) PERSON 2: How often have you thought, “I can’t find this thing, and I’ve searched the whole house. The only place I haven’t looked is the car, so it *must* be there.” PERSON 2: ...And then it’s never in the car. PERSON 1: *It’s never in the car!*

Eliminating the Impossible

xkcd.com/3210/

Comic. [Person is sitting at a desk with a laptop, turned toward voice coming from off-panel.] VOICE FROM OFF-PANEL: I got you the ingredients for dinner tonight. Oh, and the plums in the fridge drawer are for my yogurt tomorrow; you should just leave them. Be back later! PERSON’S THOUGHT BUBBLE: Oh no. [caption] Help. It actually happened. I shouldn’t. But how can I not!?

Plums

xkcd.com/3209/

4-panel comic. (1) [Two people in a room with bed and nightstand. One person points at something on ceiling.] PERSON 1 with short hair on top of head: What’s that device? PERSON 2 with ponytail: Part of the supernova early warning system. There hasn’t been a Milky Way supernova in over a century. Astronomers don’t want to miss the next one. (2) [Person 2 sits on bed.] PERSON 2: 20 years ago, we set up a supernova alert system using neutrino detectors. It should give us a few hours’ advance notice. (3) PERSON 2: If it ever goes off, every astronomer on Earth will scramble to point their equipment at the sky. PERSON 1: Oh, Ok. So is that a detector? Or some kind of telescope? (4) PERSON 2 [leaving]: Fireworks launcher. I *refuse* to sleep through a supernova. PERSON 1: I think I’ll spend the night at my place instead.

SNEWS

xkcd.com/3208/

Comic. Bad Map Projection #216: Zero Declination. A cylindrical projection distorted so that up is *magnetic* north. Distorted map with red arrows around the edges pointing different directions.

Bad Map Projection: Zero Declination

xkcd.com/3207/

4-panel comic. (1) [Person 1 unrolls carpet outdoors while Person 2 with short hair pulls cart full of more rolls.] (2) [Continuing uphill.] (3) [After going over a bump that takes them downhill, both people catch carpet roll that’s falling off the cart.] (4) PERSON 2: You’re *sure* we started installing the wall-to-wall carpet on the right side of the wall? PERSON 1: The other end of the room *must* be getting close by now.

Installation

xkcd.com/3206/

What if you made a jetpack using rifles? YouTube video by xkcd's What If?

What if you made a jetpack using rifles?

What the latest What If? video in collaboration with @minuteearth.bsky.social!

youtu.be/IdlQsjq5vKo

Comic. [Person with ponytail pointing to diagram on wall as she talks to two other people, one with short hair.] PERSON 1: The high carbon content of the skeleton indicates that the individual lived less than 12.6 billion years ago, after the first round of stellar nucleosynthesis. [caption] Cosmologist carbon dating

Carbon Dating

xkcd.com/3205/

Comic. [2x2 chart. Top left quadrant: seem like dinosaurs x are dinosaurs. Silhouettes of dinosaurs stegosaurus, triceratops, tyrannosaurus, velociraptor, and long-neck dinosaur. Top right quadrant: seem like dinosaurs x are not dinosaurs. Silhouettes of mosasaur, quetzalcoatlus, dimetrodon, plesiosaur, and pteranodon. Bottom left quadrant: don’t seem like dinosaurs x are dinosaurs. Silhouettes of penguin, egret, ostrich, pigeon, falcon. Bottom right: don’t seem like dinosaurs x are not dinosaurs. Silhouettes of squirrel, stapler, plant, person, and bicycle.]

Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs

xkcd.com/3204/