The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space-each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they’ll turn out.
Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize its the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the world?
If ‘other people have experiences incorrectly’ is annoying to you, think how unbearable it must be to have a condescending stranger tell you they hate the way you’re experiencing your life at just the moment you’ve found something you want to remember.
I never trust anyone who’s more excited about success than about doing the thing they want to be successful at.
I think the comic that’s gotten me the most feedback is actually the one about the stoplights. Noticing when the stoplights are in sync, or calculating the length of your strides between floor tiles – normal people notice that kind of stuff, but a certain kind of person will do some calculations.
The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I’ve ever spent a lot of time learning about, and I’ve spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics.
Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there.’
But I’ve never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.
News networks giving a greater voice to viewers because the social web is so popular are like a chef on the Titanic who, seeing the looming iceberg and fleeing customers, figures ice is the future and starts making snow cones.
Sometimes I mistake this for a universe that cares.
Google owns YouTube, and recently, I drew a comic about an idea for a YouTube feature – which they actually took seriously and implemented. So I’m thinking that maybe we’ll have a future where Google is ‘xkcd.’
You don’t use science to show you’re right, you use science to become right.
Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they’re frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.
If at first you don’t succeed, that’s one data point.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make me think I deserved it.
Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.
It’s tempting to just write a comic called ‘Everyone Mail Randall Munroe Twenty Bucks’ – maybe it would work, and I could just close down the ‘xkcd’ store and sit on a beach and draw pictures and make snarky Reddit posts for the rest of my life.
The universe is probably littered with one-planet graves.
I learned very early on in life that not everyone wants to hear every fact in the world, even if you want to tell them everything you’ve ever read.