Gonna get the major issue out of the way first with this one: I don't get it because I don't know a lot about chemistry.
Now, whenever I make this criticism, an XKCD fan* will crawl out of the woodwork and yell at me for just being too stupid to understand the joke. To attempt to quote a comment by memory: "You don't get it... therefore it sucks?"
Look, I'm a pretty well educated guy, I've taken chemistry classes. I know the capital of Germany, I know all the French kings. And I too have jokes that completely baffle anyone I tell them to, because to get them you need to know the leaders of the U.S.S.R. or the history of Bionicle's development process. And when I noticed that no one was laughing at my hilarious "...and Putin is just Makuta in disguise again!" punchline, I stopped telling them unless I knew the person would get it.
It doesn't bother me that XKCD tries to be high level comedy, it bothers me that XKCD will switch between attempting to be high level and being Lowest Common Denominator trash.
More irritating is that this is just a pun on the multiple meanings of the word "reduce", which I'm absolutely positive could have been done without limiting the audience.
A last thought: Is this really something Black Hat would do? Is this menacing: Telling bad puns?
*I'm not trying to generalize XKCD fans here, the majority of comments I've gotten from XKCD fans have been well thought out and gave me valid criticisms that helped me improve my content. I have also gotten some incredibly stupid comments from XKCD fans, which are almost always funnier than the comics they're attempting to defend.
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