Powers of One
Personally, I found today’s xkcd to be hilarious, even though I think most people reading this will have no idea what it is referencing.
The comic references Powers of Ten, a short documentary from the 1970’s that starts out with an overhead picture of a couple picnicking, just like in the comic, then zooms out by a power of 10 every ten seconds until you can see the entire universe. It then zooms back in at the same rate all the way to the nucleus of a single atom.
Randal has a way of making incredibly obscure jokes that are hilarious to those who recognize them. This can be seen in one of my favorite comics by him:
Here, he references constructs of an unusual programming language while making a 2001 joke. I laughed a lot. One of my other favorite web comics, Dinosaur Comics actually explains why I found this so incredibly funny:
