Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit. Randall Munroe More Quotes by Randall Munroe More Quotes From Randall Munroe What people don't appreciate, when they picture Terminator-style automatons striding triumphantly across a mountain of human skulls, is how hard it is to keep your footing on something as unstable as a mountain of human skulls. Most humans probably couldn't manage it, and they've had a lifetime of practice at walking without falling over. Randall Munroe skulls practice fall There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go. Randall Munroe adventure interesting thinking When designing an interface, imagine that your program is all that stands between the user and hot, sweaty, tangled-bedsheets-fingertips-digging-into-the-back sex. Randall Munroe tangled design sex You don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process. Randall Munroe hard process trying Space is about 100 kilometers away. That’s far away—I wouldn’t want to climb a ladder to get there—but it isn’t that far away. If you’re in Sacramento, Seattle, Canberra, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Beijing, central Japan, central Sri Lanka, or Portland, space is closer than the sea. Randall Munroe sri-lanka japan sea 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. Randall Munroe want facts world The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it. Randall Munroe audience internet writing I don't have hard numbers about this, but the impression I get is that the amount of eyeballs you get from being on the humor shelf at Barnes & Noble - it is almost insignificant. Randall Munroe shelves noble numbers I used to work at NASA in Virginia. It was nothing glamorous; I was just tasked with making code compile for obscure projects, and I wasn't very good at it. Now I spend most of my time drawing pictures and looking at funny things on the Internet, which in retrospect is largely what I did at my old job, too. Randall Munroe old-job virginia jobs Once I got married, I started working from an office. I found that having somewhere to go that isn't my house is mentally helpful: 'This is the place where I answer email and write blog posts,' and 'over there is the place where I do the dishes. Randall Munroe office house writing One of the things I've learned with doing 'xkcd' is that you sort of give people, 'Here's the thing, and here's the button you can press to get another thing.' Sometimes that can be more easy to digest than, 'Here's a long page of things. Randall Munroe giving long people The explosion would be just the right size to maximize the amount of paperwork your lab would face. If the explosion were smaller, you could potentially cover it up. If it were larger, there would be no one left in the city to submit paperwork to. Randall Munroe labs cities faces The universe is probably littered with one-planet graves Randall Munroe graves planets universe 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. Randall Munroe twenties writing beach I read comics and I did science, and never really put them together until I accidentally found myself in the middle of one. Randall Munroe middle found together I think the really cool and compelling thing about math and physics is that it opens up entry to all these hypotheticals - or at least, it gives you the language to talk about them. But at the same time, if a scenario is completely disconnected from reality, it's not all that interesting. Randall Munroe math reality thinking The scholarly authorities on freezing to death seem to be, unsurprisingly, Canadians. Randall Munroe scholarly authority seems I think that putting merchandising into the hands of the artist themselves is one of the best things for the artist. Randall Munroe best think artist hands It's amazing what's buried in old, poorly digitized PDFs hosted on some random professor's website. Randall Munroe random old amazing website I'm sad that my childhood came just slightly before the lithium-ion-battery boom, because I would've killed for the cheap radio-controlled helicopters they have now. Randall Munroe just now childhood sad
