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See the original image at shortminds.com —

Explaining Greatness: xkcd

shortminds.com — For those of us who believe that xkcd is the answer to life, the universe, and everything

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  • macweirdo42, on 08/19/2008, -3/+86I just shat bricks.
  • fudged71, on 08/19/2008, -0/+42digg is the mirror for this one, ladies and gents. All that is unclear from the above thumbnail is the speech bubble saying "ooooh." But, if you are picky, here is a tinypic version [ironically, larger]: http://i38.tinypic.com/ay2346.jpg
    • Cloud7654, on 08/20/2008, -0/+7Not as ironic as Digg, something which takes down sites and always needs a mirror, becoming the mirror itself.
  • merlin484, on 08/19/2008, -0/+13pan galactic gargle blaster, anyone?
    • fasda, on 08/20/2008, -0/+4I'll have three
    • WoollyMittens, on 08/20/2008, -0/+4I feel like I got hit by a slice of lemon, wrapped around a gold brick.
  • FiP0, on 08/19/2008, -0/+12Ooooooh.
  • mufffin, on 08/19/2008, -16/+3Stolen from reddit.
    • fudged71, on 08/19/2008, -3/+22Yes, thank you for pointing that out, and sorry for not mentioning that sooner! I have recently, in the past week or so, started browsing Reddit, and found this comic there. Good content is good content, no matter where it is from. I did, however, submit the actual comic page on his site, which gives more information about this panel, rather than post the image, which was linked to on Reddit. I also provided the readers with a mirror, three parent comments above this, and I even made an effort to contact the comic's author-illustrator. I put in this extra effort, because it can sometimes be hard to determine whether or not the comic is to their liking just by clicking forwards and backwards (although, I honestly have not found an unfunny panel within the few weeks back that I browsed). And so, without further ado, here are some of his panels that have received attention before, from the man himself:

      "Explaining Greatness has by far been the most popular:
      http://shortminds.com/2008/08/11/explaining-greatn ...

      Hey Cat Lady got a few votes on Reddit:
      http://shortminds.com/2008/08/04/hey-cat-lady/

      The ancient proverbs comic got quite a few reddit votes and got stumbled:
      http://shortminds.com/2008/07/18/ancient-proverbs/

      Someone said they printed out the Be Nice To Your IT Guy comic and it has gotten a few comments:
      http://shortminds.com/2008/07/09/be-nice-to-your-i ...

      and microscopic religion has been re-posted on an evolution blog:
      http://shortminds.com/2008/08/13/microscopic-relig ...

      Thanks for any and all efforts. My comic has never had much luck with Digg.
      -Nathan"

      Also, this was a helpful comment on Reddit (seriously, it is just another site, everyone's input towards a topic, across the internet, is a step in discussion, which can lead to very interesting results, such as this one from Bjartr):
      "At the talk Randall Munroe (author of xkcd) gave at Google a little while back he explained that 'xkcd' was an online handle he had developed based on a set of rules and then randomly generating sets of letters that conformed to them. A few of the rules were
      * Can't must be an initialism not an acronym (unpronounceable)
      * Can't contain similar characters [i,l,1,0,o, etc]
      youtube vid of the talk
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24
      It's an hour long, but worth the watch if you haven't seen it. Randall explains the origin of 'XKCD' at 44:30
      I wonder if one of the rules was that the sum of the position of the letters in the alphabet had to be 42..."
      • mufffin, on 08/20/2008, -0/+7Tom, you're trying too hard.
      • fudged71, on 08/20/2008, -3/+9ah, but you see, it is all part of the "bigger picture," where people actually care about the things that they submit. I am not an industrialized machine that spits out links. When I happen to find something interesting, I try my best to share it with the world. I am not a link factory. There ARE some people out there who actually put effort into submissions, and don't make front page. Casualties of 'the system', some might say. One way or another, the front page has a higher '***** submission' percentage than a couple months ago, never mind years ago.
      • Elliottx, on 08/20/2008, -0/+6You've earned my respect fudged.
      • fudged71, on 08/20/2008, -2/+5Dude, you better!
        But just hold on a second. I think the heavens are talking to me
        http://i33.tinypic.com/2jb89dv.jpg

        mirror http://d4.myfreefilehosting.com/d2/screenshot.bmp
      • baithe, on 08/20/2008, -0/+3Ah, fudged, I see you too enjoy the tentacle porn.
      • EmitStop, on 08/20/2008, -0/+6fudged just won 42 internets.
      • zachimal, on 08/20/2008, -0/+4***** & Growing Up In The Universe? Nice choices fudged.
    • solld3th, on 08/20/2008, -2/+4well reddit sucks
      • fudged71, on 08/20/2008, -3/+2I highly doubt you have been there long enough to comprehend what was going on. Commenting there is incredibly epic
  • jaybol, on 08/20/2008, -0/+38I nominate fudged71 for The Most Caring Submitter Award. wow, i read everything you wrote...it is great to get some lengthy comments like yours that link out to more information on the same topic
    • fudged71, on 08/20/2008, -0/+13Digg is broken for several reasons. If anyone is interested in fixing it, contact share.quality.content[at]gmail.com for more information. A friend of mine set it up, and you may want to check it out.
      • fudged71, on 08/20/2008, -0/+5by fixing, I mean promoting quality content, obviously
        not coding *****
      • jakash, on 08/20/2008, -1/+5No offence, fudged71, we appreciate your effort and all that, but you adding 127 friends is a large part of the problem, and why Digg is broken.
      • wallryan, on 08/20/2008, -0/+1yeah i hate that *****.... i always have like 15 shouts from people i dont know and 6 new "fans" every day.
  • Elliottx, on 08/20/2008, -12/+5What's the deal with this 42 business? I saw a motivational poster of it earlier ...where did it originate from?

    I can ponder a guess though...
  • fudged71, on 08/20/2008, -0/+15Above, mufflin mentioned that I found this on Reddit. I find Digg to be much more fanatic over xkcd, and they/we promote it often, so I thought digg would really like this submission :)

    Also, no hard feelings, but I found these two today. Apparently, Randall reads a lot of Reddit comments, and actually uses some of them in his comics! I have successfully suggested topics for him to include in his comic a couple times, but it is really cool to see that he actually goes out and finds topics on social news sites. Digg comments aren't interesting enough, though, and I wouldn't blame him. Cool to look at the conversations, though :)
    http://www.reddit.com/comments/6w0ev/state_of_ohio ...
    and http://www.reddit.com/comments/6vpe7/my_opponent_h ...
    • Kokichi, on 08/20/2008, -2/+1Wow, he totally did rip off that first comment. I respect xkcd a little less now =(

      Though I totally have said that I sometimes hear Morgan Freeman's voice while reading. He could have come up with that one on his own, but since the first one seems so blatant, that one might have been as well.
  • cheesenuggets1, on 08/20/2008, -1/+11*pushes aside physics book*

    I now have no more to give to the world.
  • RoboCafaz, on 08/20/2008, -9/+5Kiss a more popular web comic's ass: surefire way to be popular.
  • scabbers, on 08/20/2008, -1/+4***** off into the firey centre of the sun you lickspittle! Toady! Sycophant!
  • terracottapai, on 08/20/2008, -1/+5Hey maybe this will knock the XKCD hate down a peg.
    At least until the next submission war.
  • lamiaconfitor, on 08/20/2008, -6/+1Dont tell me it took that many to correlate The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy with Numerology... and now XKCD? There are allot of idiots thinking they are smart right now.
  • peaceninja, on 08/20/2008, -0/+9so if i start the YJCD comic will that have roaring success?
  • txtphile, on 08/20/2008, -0/+1The "guy at work." Riiiiight.
  • TheWebSwinger, on 08/20/2008, -0/+2I actually saw this on stumble a few days ago and I was like "It's about XKCD? Digg will love this."

    ...dear god will someone explain it to me?
    • Croaton, on 08/20/2008, -3/+3Replace each letter with the corresponding number for its place in the alphabet... add them upp and you get 42.

      42 is the answer for life, the universe and everything according to the computer Deep Thought in Arthur C. Clarks book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
      • cgrin, on 08/20/2008, -0/+10Douglas Adams?
      • Sponky, on 08/20/2008, -2/+1You've just ruined a perfectly good misinformation set up that would have had many people pointing and laughing at TheWebSwinger irl. Killjoy.
      • fudged71, on 08/20/2008, -2/+2@sponky your opinion is valuable to us

        see what I did there?
      • Sponky, on 08/20/2008, -1/+1No, I'm blind and using a text to speech engine.
      • fudged71, on 08/20/2008, -3/+2Is that the same software that is making all of your posts that gay purple floral pattern? I thought you were just being trendy, and/or gay. The color of your username isn't helping much either. From your photo, I actually thought you were a transvestite the first time I saw it! For a blind guy, you have a hilariously gay sense of style.
      • hatchetj, on 08/20/2008, -1/+0 42 is the answer to the 'ultimate question of life the universe and everything'.
        "life the universe and everything" is not a question, and doesn't require an answer.

        The question should be calculated sometime *hopefully* before existence is eliminated, trusting the replacement computer for the task doesn't get contaminated, or blown up to make way for an intergalactic hyperspace bypass.
  • arapro, on 08/20/2008, -2/+1JAJAJA !
    Geekeness Rocks !
  • diggit08, on 08/20/2008, -3/+2Mirror: http://www.demotivate.info/2008/08/20/explaining-g ...
  • c89a, on 08/20/2008, -0/+2thanks for all the fish
  • jynweythek, on 09/17/2008, -0/+2this blew my mind
  • Darkaged, on 08/20/2008, -2/+2HOLY *****!
    Isn't Fudged71 the guy that originated the newest, hottest meme?
    • fudged71, on 08/20/2008, -2/+1"where's waldo"?
      seriously. nobody cares.
      p.s. trolled hard if you believed me
  • Kasot, on 08/20/2008, -1/+1Gief mirror!
  • squeee, on 08/20/2008, -0/+2614 concurrent connections and my host blocked my port. Still waiting for a response. Thanks to everyone who posted mirrors, use them for the foreseeable future.
  • Narcolepticon, on 08/20/2008, -5/+0A comic even less funny than your average xkcd/penny arcade... never thought I'd see the day.

    And yes, I do get it.
  •  

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