![]() My one complaint with the layout is that what used to be the mouseover text (a key component of xkcd's humor, and something that is incidentally missing when reading current comics on a touchscreen device) is wedged kind of randomly in between panels. For the most part I remembered the jokes, although a number of them were refreshers where they weren't ones I had referenced or thought of since reading through xkcd the first time. This contains most of what I consider to be "classic" xkcd, in terms of the comics I remember reading, the comics that I reference outside of obvious xkcd contexts, and the comics I sometimes wear as shirts. Looking at other works to which I've given two stars and my admittedly arbitrary choice to rate books based primarily on my level of enjoyment (except that I will give five stars only to a book that I consider objectively excellent), however, I will decrease the rating to one star. Unfortunately, his behavior has also colored my reaction to the original comics, to the point where two stars were the most I could conceivably give to the book. In short, as Munroe's mask has slipped and the ugliness of his personality has shown through, I have stopped reading XKCD. Hours later, he added, "Zing!" to the mouseover text, in a stealth edit apparently intended to soften his insult. In one particularly egregious example, he made an offensive comic, then doubled down with an offensive mouseover text that stated outright that people who are "not getting a real science degree.have a lot of free time." This statement, particularly in context of the offensive comic, made clear the depth of contempt he has for the "soft" sciences. Munroe, on the other hand, has nothing but sneers for any academic pursuit that is not math or science. I'm an engineer myself, but I highly value the individual study of liberal arts, particularly in terms of what used to be called the classics. Munroe's disdain for the liberal arts has also grown significantly, or perhaps is merely showing more. (I must shamefully admit to having laughed at similarly premised "jokes" in the past.) The complexity has declined to high school level at best, and the jokes are no longer clever but are instead "reference" jokes, by which I mean that they are predicated on Munroe and the reader sharing the same bit of obscure knowledge and being contemptuously amused that other people don't. In addition to the proliferation of "sexkcd" strips, the math/science strips have also declined in quality. I haven't read xkcd for probably close to a year.) If you really want to know, it's #631.) (I say "for enjoyment" because I did continue to read for several more months to watch the train wreck, but eventually, even that amusement paled. (I'm not providing a link because it is extremely NSFW and doesn't have even a vestige of humor to make up for its coarseness. Relationships and sex have always been a theme of XKCD, but strips on this topic have gotten progressively creepier and more disgusting, culminating at last in the infamous "TGI Friday's" strip, the point at which I stopped reading for enjoyment. (I am also a nerd.) However, over the years, the quality of XKCD has significantly degenerated. I used to love XKCD, chiefly for obscure jokes about esoteric topics. The book will no doubt delight XKCD fans. He added a little commentary to a few strips and included some coded messages, which I didn't bother decoding. Munroe selected the best of XKCD from the first 500 or so comics. XKCD: Volume 0 is the first collection of XKCD strips. It features primarily stick figures and typically focuses on "nerdy" topics such as science, math, science fiction, Firefly, and the like. XKCD, for the uninitiated, is a webcomic "drawn" by Randall Munroe.
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