This might be the saddest xkcd so far.
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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I can't think of any other ones that are sad. Maybe I missed them?
The ones about cancer were pretty sad, but some were hopeful too.
The Trump administration just yesterday stopped a long running data gathering effort to study women's medical needs as they age. Decades of valuable information, blood samples interviews etc.
Fuck women right? Grab them by the pussy!
But not my daughter or my sister or my nieces or my mom. My sister in law might be interested though and her friend too, but that's a whole nother story.
Ah, back to the good ol this medication might be more harmful to women and we don't know because we only use middle aged white men for the studies!
Studies? No, we don't do studies here anymore. Now we just declare things. If you just declare something enough then it becomes true.
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Those had me nail biting over the scale of months/years. That first cancer one where they were holding each other with no reference frame was rough. 800 frames of sarcasm and wit and all of a sudden.... BOOM
He explained it like 6 months later, but stayed pretty quiet, then the two years (1141) was kinda optimistic, then 7 (1928) was kinda a breath of relief, 10 years (2386) was refreshing, now I'm quietly waiting to see 15.
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There's always the Opportunity rover one.
And likely one of the most topical, so extra sad.
Fuck yeah, Randall!
I hope the neo-Schutzstaffel (that is, ICE) doesn’t come for Randall now, but I respect the fuck out of him for using his platform and popularity this way.
Is it the first 'political' one? (Not that this should be!)
I can't remember many that reminded me it was a US based (I assume) comic.
Hopefully he's got his barrel ready.
If you click on the comic on the site, it goes to the YouTube video of her being grabbed.
I went looking for the alt text because, well, I love the Easter-egg nature of the alt text he provides. Got chills as soon as I realized what he’d done.
So much respect for him.
I did the same, pressed on it for the text, got sent straight to the video, and swore under my breath in admiration. In the current climate what he's done isn't risk free, despite the fact it a) should be, and b) shouldn't be needed in the first place.
Nothing but respect for people calling out the crimes of thus administration, and when it's someone with an unrelated platform and an audience, so much the better.
The alt text: Rümeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street in my town one month ago.
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I get there s an XKCD for everything but this is next level.
I imagine there will be fuss over this, “politics” in XKCD, as if (with the author being an academic) a PhD student getting grabbed off the street in your town against the state’s wishes for something she published somehow isn’t relevant.
People bitching about politics are bad faith Nazis trying to appeal to ignorant folk who don't know no better. Belittle them. Bash them. Tell them to go fuck themselves
Those people are strangely quiet when it's a conservative-leaning meme, so I've learned to, as you say, tell them to get bent.
I can think of no better situation for the phrase "fuck you and the horse you rode in on"
There might not be. The only people that read xkcd are those that can understand it, so there could be a cutoff where you just arent gonna get the other side of the “politics”
The only people that read xkcd are those that can understand it
If that was true, there’d be no need for ExplainXKCD.com.
And even then on some of the more physics-y ones I just give Randall the benefit of the doubt that it’s funny.
I think there's a difference between being able to understand and having all the information to understand. Randall has a very wide range of topics that he makes comics on and most readers won't know enough about every topic to get every joke, even though he does his best to simplify it for a broad audience. That's the reason ExplainXKCD exists. But his audience is generally nerds, people who like learning new information, which is also what Explain caters to. So it is both true that his audience can (and are willing to) understand and that Explain helps them understand. (I also think that nerds love explaining stuff, so it makes sense that the main fandom website is ExplainXKCD, even if there were no demand for explanations.)
XKCD covers so many subjects, its hard to understand all of them
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Maybe.
It’s fairly popular in tech circles where there’s a large intersection with MAGA, or at least a more “keep politics out of my programming” attitude predating that.
It's awesome to see people stepping up like this! Our current situation is NOT normal.
Holy shit this is crazy.
And major news outlets aren't covering this due to the billionaire class owning mass media.
That and the fear that Trump will disappear them next.
I have to believe that this factor is equally to blame
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This might be the most directly political XKCD I've seen. Go Randal!
Randall's done several about climate change, more back when climate change denial was more widespread
https://xkcd.com/1321/ Cold https://xkcd.com/1379/ 4.5 Degrees https://xkcd.com/1732/ Earth Temperature Timeline https://xkcd.com/2500/ Global Temperature Over My Lifetime
Or just check the tag for "politics" on explainXKCD. Randall's endorsed political candidates before as well as generally shown a general libertarian and later left-leaning bent
Oh also this one relatively recently was pretty fun
https://xkcd.com/2515/ Vaccine Research
Yeah but saying climate change is real and vaccines work should not be a political statement, it's just reality and science.
Making a comic about a person hopes and dreams being truncated by being kidnapped by the government, now that's a statement.
Saying people shouldn't get kidnapped shouldn't be a political statement either but here we are.
Based
Before the Judge has time to intervene is now optional.
*before the judge is arrested
fuck if I watched this without knowing the context, I would have thought they are kidnapping her. What the fuck is this?
It looks like a kidnapping because that's what it is. They've not charged her with a crime to my knowledge. Demonstrates how easy it is for people to disappear. They had her from all angles, cuffed and gone in under a minute.
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Fascism. I used to think the word was just a silly term the privileged South Park goths accuse everybody of being. Of course I knew it existed in places like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, but not here. Not in the "Land of the Free".
But that was in the Before Times. Fascism is real, it's terrifying, it's disgusting, and it's here now. So we have to fight it. Together.
I think it can be also seen as a fairly pointed reference to this, which happened only a few days ago. It was a stupid and careless error on the part of the scientist in terms of running afoul of bureaucracy, but the consequences here are WILDLY out of proportion - especially if you take into account the incredible positive effect her research could have.
I hope the authors skin is white
That Canadian woman was arrested and held for 2 weeks. That won't protect you, and it won't protect me.
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