Flash Gatsby

Explanation:
This comic unfolds over the last few seconds of 2020 and the first few seconds of 2021. Cueball is attempting to do something requiring the overlap of two eras that only abut: creating an "unauthorized" adaptation of The Great Gatsby , using the Adobe Flash plugin platform.
The Great Gatsby is a classic novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. Copyright law in the United States of America, where The Great Gatsby was first published, was retroactively extended several times in the 1990s and early 2000s, causing the copyright on The Great Gatsby to extend until the end of 2020 . In 2021, it finally entered the public domain so that it became legal to make a copy without violating copyright law.
Adobe Flash , formerly known as Shockwave Flash, is a web plugin that was commonly used by many websites in the late 1990s and 2000s. It allowed website creators to add animations, sound, and complex logic to build games, videos, and other interactive experiences. Presumably, the Flash version of the novel is some kind of interactive reader, animated cartoon, or perhaps even a game.
Over the years, Adobe Flash was repeatedly exploited by hackers, incurring heavy costs on Adobe as they tried to update Flash against these attacks after rushing features out before stabilizing them. Newer technologies are now able to provide comparable features with more compatibility, more community involvement, and less risk, so support for Flash is being phased out by most web browsers. Adobe officially ended support for Flash after December 31, 2020.
In line with Adobe's decision, Chrome is blocking Flash in January . This will make entire internet culture histories spanning many years of making and engaging Flash experiences unusable for most people. Therefore, Cueball's Flash version of The Great Gatsby will become legal at the very moment that everyone should stop using it.
In this comic, Cueball suggests that the withdrawal of Flash support occurs after the copyright expiration rather than simultaneously with it. This is most likely because the applicable copyright law in the United States states that the creative work becomes public domain at the end of the year 2020 and Flash gets disabled at the beginning of the year 2021. So it is conceivable (but not practical) that there is one second when the novel is public domain and Flash is still enabled.
By late 2020, Flash Player was already blocked by most browsers, but could still be whitelisted on individual sites. Using old versions of browsers, or workarounds to run blocked extensions, Cueball's Great Gatsby may still be readable after the official Flash End of Life date of January 1, 2021. Even with these workarounds, Flash Player itself will block Flash content from playing on January 12, 2021, making that the final death date for official modern versions of Flash.
After January 12, Flash content may still be accessible through older builds of Flash Player, and through various archival and emulation projects, such as the Internet Archive , Ruffle , BlueMaxima's Flashpoint , and SuperNova .
The title wording has a number of possible meanings to it. It's the 'Gatsby' book via the medium of the electronic Flash format. Because of the briefest of availability (at best, a single moment), it appears and disappears again 'in a flash'. Being 'flash' is a very apt description of the millionaire Gatsby character himself ('Flash the cash' is being ostentatious). And, if the endeavor is not actually as legitimate as hoped, the word has also referred to felonious behaviors and forged copies.
The title text references using excuses for not having read a book considered a classic.  Before the end of 2020, a possible excuse for not trying to read it was it may not have been available in the format a person wanted it (such as via a flash program in this case) and it might have been illegal (copyright violation) to get it in that format.  After 2020, the new excuse to not read it could be a technical one (flash doesn't work/nothing capable of running flash).  Both excuses are quite flimsy; it's apparent the person really just doesn't care to read The Great Gatsby.
[Cueball is sitting at a desk using his laptop.] Off-panel voice: 3... 2... 1... Happy New Year! Cueball: Okay, it’s up! Cueball: Annnnnd ... support was pulled, it’s down again.
[Caption below the panel:] There's only a very short window of time in which I can post my unauthorized Flash® adaptation of The Great Gatsby .


Viral Vector Immunity

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic . This comic is the third of five releases, following 2402: Into My Veins and 2404: First Thing , which reference the new COVID-19 vaccine . It was released on New Years day, without being a New Year comic . This had not happened since 2010.
The comic attempts to explain a virus vector vaccine and one way it can fail, using the story of the Trojan Horse as an analogy. Note that neither the Pfizer/BioNTech nor Moderna vaccines are virus vector vaccines, using lipid nanoparticles for delivery rather than viruses.
A vaccine is a way to familiarize a host's immune system with a pathogen without actually causing the host to fall ill.  There are many types of vaccines that have been developed, all of which are ways to present a significant segment of a pathogen's molecular structure to the host body, so that the immune system recognizes the pathogen and mounts an immune response faster when a real infection happens.
A viral vector is a tool used by molecular biologists to deliver genetic materials into cells.
A viral vector vaccine, also known as a live vector vaccine, uses a modified virus, different from the pathogen being immunized against, as a carrier to deliver a molecular payload into the host body. This modified virus is called the vector because it is the method of delivery of a piece of the pathogen's genetic code.  If the recipient has a strong immune response to the vector itself (i.e., the proteins making up the surface of the vector virus), the immunization may be less effective because the vector virus, and hence its payload of viral genetic material, will be destroyed before they can enter the host's cells.  It is to some degree a dice roll, with regard to whether some recipients will already be immune to a vector.
For example, a modified (to be harmless) cold virus can be used to deliver genetic material (RNA or DNA) of another virus into the patient's cells. The cells are induced to manufacture protein found in the pathogenic protein, which the patient's immune system detects and reacts to. That way the immune system recognizes the pathogenic virus without actually being infected with it, which decreases the time needed to react to a real infection.  Any patients whose immune systems recognize the modified cold virus (the vector), and destroy it rapidly, won't get the full intended benefit of creating a strong immune response to the second virus (the payload inside).
The comic represents this idea with the Trojan horse being the vector, carrying a payload of Greek soldiers into the cell, as represented by the City of Troy. In the original Trojan Horse story, Greek soldiers hid inside a statue of a horse which the Trojans were told was a gift to Athena; the Trojans brought it within their walls (which the Greek army had failed to penetrate in an extended siege), allowing the soldiers in the horse to undermine the city's defenses and let in the rest of their army to take the city. Note: In a viral vector vaccine, the payload inside the vector works to the benefit of the person receiving the vaccine - opposite to the soldiers inside the Trojan horse, who had only malice in mind for the city receiving the "gift" horse.
In the comic the warriors, rather than finding the wooden horse a benign object, recognize the shape of the delivery vehicle (the Trojan horse) as being similar to an animal that trampled one of their own earlier and therefore refuse it entry. An amusing point here is that they are not as such surprised at the arrival of a wooden vehicle at their doorstep, rather that its shape resembling an animal they have found threatening before, which is similar to how simple in its judgements the immune system can be. (In addition, although the warriors suggest pushing the wooden horse into a gorge, there are no gorges very close to Troy, which is situated close to the sea on the Plain of Troy .)
The title text is a further riff on this theme, playing on an advertising campaign for freeze dried coffee.  In the advertisements a narrator would claim to have secretly replaced fresh brewed coffee with that made from freeze dried to see if subjects could tell the difference, the contents of the coffee cup being the payload and the narrator the virus vector.  The test subject's use of a sword relates the situation back to the Trojan scenario of the panel.
[A large wooden horse statue on wheels stands before a city wall, upon which are standing several warriors who are shouting and brandishing spears.] Warrior 1: Look! It's a statue of that horrible animal that trampled Steve! Warrior 2: Burn it! Warrior 3: Smash it! Warrior 4: Push it into the gorge!
[Caption below the panel:] How vaccine failure due to viral vector immunity works


Depth and Breadth

Explanation:
Tree structures are one of the most common data structures used in computer science.  The common ways of enumerating items arranged in a tree is either depth-first , or breadth-first , which are depicted accurately in the comic.  Randall humorously combines the words, to produce "brepth-first", "deadth-first", "bread-first", and "death-first" search algorithms.
Depth-first search explores down a full branch of the tree before working back to a higher level. This type of tree structure was already discussed as inefficient for human needs in 761: DFS . The "opposite" of this is breadth-first search, which explores each level of the tree at a time.
In the "brepth-first" algorithm, a depth-first and a breadth-first search are hybridized where the left-most node is visited more frequently than the right node, but the right node is still visited.  This might be good for exploring data that is loosely but not strictly weighted to the left, or where data in deeper nodes needs some time to be loaded before it can be used. As implied by 761: DFS , this might be the best algorithm for a human to employ, where one can explore several topics briefly before deciding which one to explore more deeply, rather than blindly following the first rabbit hole to an absurd conclusion. Informed search algorithms like A* search , Beam search , and other Best-first search algorithms show this type of behavior by expanding the most promising node in the current set (under some appropriate metrics).
The nature of the "deadth-first" algorithm is unclear and inefficient, since it searches the same nodes multiple times before moving to an entirely different region of the tree.  It might be useful in a context where examining nodes has some probability of returning a noisy or incorrect result, such as searching for small objects that may be overlooked.
The bread-first search is taken literally.  Bread is searched for first.  Since the computer user now has already met their want to find bread, the computer has no reason to explore the tree at all. [ citation needed ]
The title text introduces a "death-first" search, in which the user explores what it is like to be dead, before considering anything else. Specifically, the title text refers to hell, which calls to mind the adventures of Dante Alighieri in his Inferno , and is a less likely place for keys to be left than one's coat pockets [ citation needed ] . In 2021 (the year this comic was published) there are commemorations for the 700th anniversary of Dante's Death. These are expected to take place among the living only, and not in Hell. [ citation needed ] A much more pleasant death-first algorithm might be to skip hell and purgatory and search heaven first, perhaps multiple times (which in itself would be a use of the deadth-first approach).
[Five panels, each containing identical copies of a rooted tree graph, grayed out in the background. The tree has a height of 3 and 15 nodes.] [In all five panels, a black twisty arrow in the foreground indicates the order in which nodes are traversed. The arrow does not complete the entire traversal but cuts off at some point. Backtracking is indicated with a dotted line.] [In the descriptions below, node 1 is the root, nodes 2 and 3 are its child nodes, nodes 4 and 5 are 2's child nodes, nodes 6 and 7 are 3's child nodes, nodes 8 and 9 are 4's child nodes, and so on up to node 15.] [Backtracking is omitted from the descriptions below, as they increased confusion when read.]
Depth-first search [The arrow visits nodes 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 5, 10, 11.]
Breadth-first search [The arrow visits nodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 [ sic ] , 6, 8.]
Brepth-first search [The arrow visits nodes 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 3, 6, 10, 11.]
Deadth-first search [The arrow visits nodes 1, 2, 4, 4, 2, 4, 3, 6, 12, 13, 12.]
Bread-first search [The arrow starts at node 1, then immediately leaves the tree off to the right to point to a small loaf labeled "Bread".]


Egg Strategies

[3x3 grid of egg cartons, each containing between 5-8 eggs in an arrangement matching a description of lawful/neutral/chaotic paired with good/neutral/evil. Each egg carton is depicted from a top-down view, with the lid open and the eggs and their places visible.]
Top Left - Lawful Good
[6 eggs centered
3 in the top row, shifted to the right
3 in the bottom row, shifted to the left]
Top Center - Neutral Good
[7 eggs
4 in the left side
3 in the right side, with one in the top row and two in the bottom row]
Top Right - Chaotic Good
[6 eggs spread randomly while preserving reflective symmetry between eggs and non-eggs]
Middle Left - Lawful Neutral
[5 eggs all on the bottom row, starting on the left side]
Middle Center - True Neutral
[7 eggs all to the left side
4 in the top row
3 in the bottom row]
Middle Right - Chaotic Neutral
[6 eggs staggered in every other space so that each egg is diagonal from the two nearest
no two eggs are directly next to each other side-to-side or up-and-down
3 in the top row, starting in the left-most position
3 in the bottom row; starting position second from the left side]
Bottom Left - Lawful Evil
[8 eggs
6 in the egg carton, centered but offset one place to the left; 3 eggs each on the top and bottom
2 eggs are on top of the 6 that are placed in the carton]
Bottom Center - Neutral Evil
[8 eggs
3 on the bottom edge of the lid
2 in the top center positions in the egg carton
3 centered on the edge and on top of/between the eggs on the lid and the eggs in the proper positions]
Bottom Right - Chaotic Evil
[broken eggs in the center of the carton and spilling/splattering over the rest of the carton and onto the lid
6 or 7 yellow-orange yolks are visible
the spilled egg whites are colored light yellow-greenish
several pieces of eggshells, varying in size from approximately one-half to very small chips are mixed in with the yolks and whites]


Steepen the Curve

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly became the main public concern. The virus spread at an exponential rate before initial lockdowns started to reduce the trajectory for a time. The graphic drawn in black depicts exponential growth in the measure of deaths — though it is not clear (without proper units or values on either axis) if this is because it is a cumulative count of deaths or the rate of deaths per day.  Such graphs were common in the spring of 2020, enough that Randall has previously parodied them in 2294: Coronavirus Charts . These graphs often showed future projections that compared continued exponential growth vs. curves that did not grow as fast, or even flattened out. Governments around the world realized that if the trend was to continue healthcare services would become overwhelmed, thus all kinds of political, civic and personal efforts were put towards doing things that would cause the 'curve' to flatten and not rise as rapidly as it would do unchecked. "Flatten the curve" thus became the rallying cry for all measures taken to reduce the spread of the virus.
In 2021, the pandemic is ongoing (with second or even third 'waves' of resurgence affecting some populations that had temporarily flattened the curve) but now we have a handful of vaccines available. In 2278: Scientific Briefing , White Hat remarked that many scientific briefings use similar or identical charts, but in this briefing, a chart from the beginning of the pandemic is reprinted verbatim and then crudely updated with red ink.  The red overlay intends to update the 'original' graphic to portray the number of vaccines provided (again, it could easily be either cumulative or rate-wise). With the change to what is represented, the line remains the same but the hoped-for outcome is changed accordingly. Making the curve steeper represents getting more people vaccinated faster.
In both cases, there would be an upper limit on the cumulative value, but the ceiling must be well beyond the upper limits (x and y axes) of this graph. If this is a rate-graph, it would show a peak and subsequent decline at the same point in time where a cumulative graph would show an inflection in its gradient, but neither are visible here.
Additionally, the analogy between the number of deaths and the number of vaccinated people could be considered as questionable, as the number of deaths in the initial stages of a pandemic is expected to follow an exponential law, whereas the same cannot be said for the number of vaccinated people.
The title text gives a summary of the overall goal.  Flatten the curve (of infections/deaths), Steepen the curve (of vaccinations/immunizations), Hang out.  We've done the first, we're starting the second... and the third is where we can (hopefully) all hang out together again, in person, without masks or social distancing.  But we have to finish the first two steps successfully to get to the third one.
[Line graph shown with a rising curve drawn in black. There is an underlined label above and another label below the graph. The Y-axis line is ending in an arrowhead and also has a label. All this is in black. But the last number in the upper label as well as one word in each of the other two labels, have been scribbled out in red and then another number or word has been written behind or beneath in red.] [Caption above the graph:] 202 0 1
[Y-Axis:] COVID Deaths Vaccinations
[Caption below the graph:] Flatten Steepen The Curve


Apple Growers

Explanation:
On January 6, 2021, a group of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol while Congress was in session to certify the results of the 2020 election , in which President Trump lost a bid for re-election. The attack resulted in an evacuation of Congress, a disruption of the operations of the legislature, and the deaths of several people. While Trump was not directly involved with the riot, he has been accused of contributing to it by consistently refusing to accept the election results, claiming that his opponent's victory was fraudulent, and using inflammatory rhetoric when speaking to his supporters. As a result, officials from both major political parties have called upon Trump to resign, and other avenues to remove him from office have been proposed. At the time of publication, Trump's second impeachment had been mooted but it, and all other events that followed, had not yet happened.
Normal American life, already strained under the COVID-19 pandemic , was dealt another blow by the conflict. Normally planned events continue to be held, but the shadow of current events impacts everything. This comic depicts one such event, a news conference hosted by the State Apple Growers (of an unspecified state). This group apparently had a scheduled meeting to discuss apple variety standards, but their meeting was instead dominated by discussions of events in government, resulting in them issuing a formal statement calling upon President Trump to resign. This statement obviously has nothing to do with apples, [ citation needed ] and when pressed, the spokesperson makes generic statements in favor of apples, but points out that they're too distracted by more urgent matters to focus on their normal jobs.
This strip appears to be based on a number of private companies and other organizations without specific political missions, which nonetheless felt the need to respond to the event. Famously, both Twitter and Facebook banned the president from their platforms in the aftermath. The events of the strip are reminiscent of Signature Bank and the National Association of Manufacturers calling on Trump to resign. Many national brands released statements of condemnation and announced plans to cut political contributions for legislators who voted against certification of the election results. The joke appears to be that even small and local organizations feel compelled to weigh in on an issue of this significance, even though their influence in the matter is likely minimal.
Cosmic Crisp , mentioned in title text, is a variety of apples developed in the Washington State University that has been on sale since 2019, amid a large marketing campaign. The implication of the title text is that the people involved are in fact, very interested in and concerned with details of apple cultivation and marketing, and hope to return to a state in which they they can focus on those. But the more immediate draw of events makes it difficult to focus on what they usually like to talk about.
Beret Guy is shown to be a member of the State Apple Growers' Association; in 2209: Fresh Pears , he sells "fresh pears" (so fresh, he doesn't even plant seeds until a customer pays for one) and expresses an interest in growing apples, and evidently has either figured out robotic grafting or chosen another approach (or maybe, given his usual eccentricity, he is only a member of the Association as an aspiring apple grower).  This is one of very few comics with Beret Guy where he is not really doing anything, although this is also a weird turn of events that the Apple Growers discuss Trump. However, usually Beret Guy is not interested in real-life problems.
[Beret Guy and Cueball stand on either side of Megan with her hair unkempt. They stand behind a lectern with an image of an apple on the front of it. Unreadable text is written on both side of the apple in two rows.] Megan: *Ahem* Megan: The state apple-growers' association has decided to formally call on President Donald Trump to resign.
[A wider shot shows Beret Guy, Megan, and Cueball on a podium behind the lectern. The visible audience consist of a Cueball-like guy, Hairy, and Ponytail, who is holding a microphone to her mouth as she addresses those on the podium.] Ponytail: Weren't you meeting to update the standards for new apple varieties? Megan: Yes, but we talked it over and this is what we decided. Megan: We feel strongly that this is important.
[There is a narrow shot with a zoom in on Megan.] Ponytail (off-panel): Did you discuss anything on your actual agenda? Megan: Thanks for the question! Megan: We did not.
[Beret Guy, Cueball and Megan is again seen from the front behind the lectern, Megan's hair even more unkempt.] Ponytail (off-panel): Do you have any apple-related announcements at all? Megan: Uh, apples are great. Best fruit. Everyone should buy 1,000 of them. Megan: We're a little distracted right now, okay??


1/10,000th Scale World

Explanation:
This comic is the first in the Scale World series.
Large objects (cars, airplanes, etc.) are often reproduced as scale models , which are proportionally smaller physical models of the original objects.  The scale of such a model is typically expressed as the ratio of the size of the model (the first number) to the size of the original object (the second number). For example, a 1/10,000th scale model means that 1 meter in the model represents 10,000 meters in the original object. The same applies to maps and globes . What Randall has here, though, is neither a map nor a model but a seemingly complete copy of Earth , at a 1:10,000 scale. Various features and warnings are labeled.
Miniature parks , also known as model villages, are tourist attractions around the world of a scale between 1:9 and 1:72.  For example, the finale of the movie Hot Fuzz features a battle amongst a miniature of the streets and buildings seen so far in the film.  Normally a miniature park would feature a representation of one geographical location rather than a geologically/technologically accurate depiction of our current planet. Whether or not Randall is aware of it, the reputed largest outdoor relief map in the world is set out at a horizontal scale of 1:10,000.
Real-world phenomena are reproduced at scale, for humorous effect. A real 1/10,000th scale "Earth" would have a diameter of less than a mile, and a surface area of around 2 square miles, the approximate dimensions of a medium-sized asteroid. On such an object, constrained by known physics, there would be no air, standing water, weather, or large magma bodies, and any sort of rough-housing would irrecoverably catapult the visitor into space.
Normally in a miniature model, most warnings try to prevent the visitors from accidentally doing something cataclysmic to the model. Likewise, the "ocean play area rules" in the title text tell visitors not to create any megatsunamis , which could conceivably be induced by a cannonball dive. But as digging seems to be discouraged mainly where it causes volcanoes to break out, the visitors seem to be given far greater freedom than usual.
Visitors are also instructed not to try to pry the model of the wreck of the Titanic off the ocean floor.  In our world, the wreck is at a depth of 12,500 feet, which would be 1 foot and 3 inches in Randall's model world.  The Titanic was over 882 feet long, but the ship split in half as she sank, and now lies in two pieces about a third of a mile apart.  Randall's model would have two pieces about a half-inch in size separated by about two inches.  If the models are rusted and sunk in mud just like the real wreck is, trying to pry them loose would certainly damage them, but all of Randall's other rules seem to be about preventing harm to guests, not preventing damage to the model, so maybe he just doesn't want guests bending over and exerting themselves in the water where they could slip, submerge their faces, and be at risk of drowning.
Scale models, and the problems with them, were the subject of 878: Model Rail . In general, illustrating relative scale is a recurring subject on xkcd. This comic is also somewhat reminiscent of 941: Depth Perception .
[At the top of the image, inside the panel, a large title is floating in the air.] RULES
For visitors to my 1/10,000th scale world
1 meter = 10 km   1 ft = 10,000 ft ~ 2 miles
[Each of the following rules is written near a character or point of interest on the map.]
[Two small dots with thin lines coming out of them horizontally are in the air near Cueball, who is brushing them off.] Watch out for airliners cruising near shoulder level
[Small mountains are seen near the left edge of the screen, by Cueball's feet.] Trip hazard: Appalachian Mountains
[A young Hairy is climbing on mountains reaching approximately Cueball's waist.] Do not stand or climb on Mt. Everest
[Under the water, a small bump in the ground expells bubbles.] Caution: Hydro-thermal vents underfoot
[Science Girl stands shoulder-deep in the ocean, peering down into the trench below.] Children must be supervised while in the ocean, especially near trenches
[Megan's hand is extended, and lightning from the cloud is jumping to her hand.] Danger: positive lightning! Do not touch cloud tops
[Ponytail sits near some mountains, with a dotted line in the air stretching across her forehead.] Avoid hypoxia by regularly sitting to bring your lungs below the death zone
[A blob-shaped thing with wiggly grey texture lines drawn all over is underground.] Do not dig near Yellowstone
[A second Cueball is jumping in the air, a hand reached back, in position to smack a weather balloon.] Please do not smack weather balloons
[Some very tiny vertical lines extend from the ground.] Be careful not to step on cities with especially pointy towers, like Toronto, Seattle, and Dubai
Megan, who is touching the top of a cloud, appears to be standing on top of the ocean, but as other characters are visibly either in front of hills and mountains or standing upon their slopes, it is likely that she is stood upon the ground (at an imperceptible height above 'local' sea-level) on or just beyond a shoreline located in the almost mythical third dimension.


1/100,000th Scale World

Explanation:
This comic is the second in the Scale World series.
Randall has another seemingly complete scale model of Earth , this time at a smaller scale of 1:100,000 – that is, 1 meter in this scale world represents 100,000 meters in the real world. (This is one tenth the size of his previous scale world .) Again, real-world features and phenomena are depicted at scale and labeled with warnings. Details on the various remarks are in the table below.
The title text states that the floor should be slightly curved. In fact, given that the model in the comic is about 10 meters long, it represents about 1000 km of Earth, which spans about 9 degrees of a great circle. Therefore, if the model wasn't larger than the part shown in the panel, its edges would have a very noticeable slope of 4.5 degrees. What's more, the note that they haven't invented artificial gravity reveals that the scale worlds are nothing more than a mundane model, rather than some supernatural phenomenon that allows giants to roam about the surface of the Earth.
[At the top of the image, inside the panel, a large title is floating in the air.] RULES For visitors to my 1/100,000th scale world 1 meter = 100 km, 1 ft=100,000ft≈20 miles
[Each of the following rules is written near a character or point of interest on the map.]
[Dark-colored aurorae are floating in the air.] Our aurora are probably non-toxic but please stop trying to taste them
[Ponytail is kneeling and breaking off part of an ice cap. In her other hand, she holds a wine glass.] No breaking off pieces of the ice caps to put in your drink
[At around ankle height, a mountain is shown.] Do not step on Mount Everest
[A relatively small ocean is shown on the right of Mount Everest.] Caution! [A pictogram of a person slipping.] Ocean floor slippery when wet
[A cell coverage icon with one cell bar.] Warning: Limited cell network coverage above the ionosphere. Crouch down to get more bars
[Megan is facing the aurorae. Thin horizontal lines are at her knees.] Wear sunscreen; the ozone layer only protects you below the knees.
[Cueball is standing with three meteors whizzing both at and away from him.] Beware of chest-level meteors
[A dotted line is at the Cueball from the last rule's chest.] -100°C mesopause vest recommended
[A wine glass is resting on the ground near a shallow depression.] If Lake Tahoe or the Dead Sea dries up, refill them with this 5oz wine glass
[Another Cueball is standing, holding both hands up to his face.] Safety glasses required for protection from reentering spacecraft Cueball: OW! (off-panel voice): What? Cueball: I got a Soyuz in my eye
[A tornado-shaped lightning sprite is hovering over a cloud.] Do not anger the sprites
[A dotted line weaves belowground.] Please stop digging through the Moho. Staff are tired of cleaning up large igneous provinces.
[An arrow pointing above the panel top.] ISS (14 feet up) Returns every 90 minutes Hit it with a Nerf dart, win a prize!


Pulsar Analogy

Explanation:
Pulsars are a kind of old, shrunken, fast-spinning star.  They are usually neutron stars .  They no longer shine in all directions, but instead produce beams of radiation out of their magnetic poles, which blip by us in rapid pulses as they spin.
Ponytail, an astronomer in this comic, explains a pulsar's fast rotation with an analogy about a tape measure retracting.  The analogies that Ponytail picks are incredibly poor ones.
Since the analogy does result in something that spins, the reader might think that, while they don't immediately see how it helps in understanding pulsars, they're willing to reserve judgment to see what is then done with the analogy; Cueball's response may suggest this sort of wait-and-see attitude.  However, the analogy is likely to be useless or misleading, as the tape measure starts to rotate because the retracting tape is not moving only in a radial (in/out) direction. As a star collapses into a pulsar, its natural rotation rate is greatly amplified by its shrinking moment of inertia.
Further elaborations of the analogy, rather than clarifying matters, are successively more surreal.  More misleading than the tape-measure is the idea of a laser measure being "exactly" like the emissions of a pulsar, which, although both pulse, are produced in entirely different ways and are at best simply helping the mind hold the concept.
When a tape measure retracts, the part of the tape outside the tape measure is not going directly towards the tape measure's center but rather towards a hole in the side. This means the tape possesses some angular momentum relative to the tape measure. In addition, when the tape measure retracts, the part of the tape inside the tape measure rotates around a spool (which pulls the part of the tape outside the tape measure inside), so it also has angular momentum relative to the tape measure. When the tape is completely retracted, the tape can no longer rotate relative to the tape measure. Because of the conservation of rotational momentum, the tape measure will start spinning at this point.
While pulsars also rotate quickly due to the conservation of angular momentum, the exact mechanism is completely different. Pulsars are formed when stars collapse due to no longer performing enough fusion to produce enough heat and energy to cancel out gravity. This causes the star to contract, which causes its mass, on average, to be closer to its axis of rotation, which causes the rotational inertia (also called the moment of inertia) to decrease. If the star's angular velocity stayed constant, this would cause the angular momentum to decrease, so the star's angular velocity must increase in order to offset the decrease in rotational inertia, i.e. the star (which is now a pulsar) spins faster. This is demonstrated here . This method requires an initial rotation, which comes from the star. (The star's rotation comes from the dynamics of the gas cloud which forms the solar system in the first place.)
Some tape measures have a built-in laser line level and others have a built-in laser rangefinder . Pulsars emit electromagnetic radiation out of their magnetic poles, which is similar to a laser, but unlike the laser of a tape measure, the pulsar beam is emitted through the axis of the magnetic field.  The pulsing nature of a pulsar comes from when the axis of rotation is not precisely aligned with the axis of the magnetic field, and the location of the viewer as the beam sweeps by.  In the tape measure analogy the beam is at a right angle to the axis of rotation, so as long as the viewing angle isn't parallel with the rotation axis, the viewer would see the laser increase and decrease periodically as it the rotating tape measure points towards or away from the viewer.
While pulsars do demonstrate incredible starquakes and rotational glitches , neutron degeneracy is part of the mechanisms in which they are originally formed. During the formation of a neutron star, usually in the form of an initial inward implosion, the neutron degeneracy (basically the impossibility of neutron of occupying the same space because of fundamental constraints in physics that are studied by quantum mechanics) stops the implosion and redirects the shockwave outwards, thus producing a Supernova explosion. The analogy is with a tape measurer that hits a hand (the constraint) during its rapid rotation due to its retracting tape (the implosion) thus redirecting part of the energy towards the hand (s the supernova energy is redirected outside).
However, astronomers do not usually let go of laser tape measures frequently, so they are probably not the top cause of any type of hand injuries, as Ponytail said.
The title text mentions the right-hand rule in three-dimensional space. In a typical 3D coordinate system the Y-axis will point counterclockwise to the X-axis when looking down from the positive Z-axis.  In academia, students are often taught to remember a number of mathematical conventions by using their actual physical right and left hands to align the axes.  When the axes are in a different order, the left hand can be used instead of the right, but there are a number of common operations in engineering and physics that use the cross product in systems where the first axis might point in absolutely any direction relative to the viewer.  Using the hand rules, the thumb is aimed along the first axis, the forefinger along the second, and the middle finger along the third — all at ninety degrees.  So, when the first axis points off to the right, the right wrist is torqued to its full extension to make the thumb point that way while the other two fingers don't.  During exams, students can be seen performing this feat.  People who learn cross products early in their life may develop other approaches for remembering these things, that don't stretch the hands as much, but then adopt the common approach once taught it.
[Cueball and Ponytail are standing next to each other.] Cueball: Why do pulsars spin so fast? Ponytail: Hmm, let me think of an analogy...
[A tape measure is retracting above Ponytail's head. To the right of her head, a tape measure is spinning rapidly.] Retracting tape measure: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Spinning tape measure: SNAP Ponytail: You know how when you retract a tape measure and let go, it leaves it spinning? Ponytail: It's like that. Cueball (off-panel): Oh, I see.
[A tape measure with a laser instead of a measuring tape is spinning slowly.] Cueball (off-panel): And if the tape measure is the kind with a laser level, that's the beam of radiation? Ponytail (off-panel): Exactly!
[Cueball and Ponytail are walking next to each other in silhouette.] Ponytail: And when the tape whips around and smacks your hand, that's the neutron degeneracy shockwave. Cueball: Sounds painful! Ponytail: Top cause of astronomer hand injuries.


Solar System Compression Artifacts

Explanation:
Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by the United States in 1977. Originally designed to study the outer planets of the Solar System , it is now several decades into an extended mission beyond Neptune (see #Trivia ). The Voyager probe has made history for passing many milestones of our solar system.
When images are compressed by a lossy compression format (e.g. JPEG ), visual artifacts are created. Randall here is suggesting that the probe has passed the artifacts as if the artifacts were an actual feature of the solar system rather than a consequence of our technology.  The banding lines he has drawn are commonly seen in old images with low bit depth.
The 'solar system' in the snapshot appears to be a 4-bit greyscale-plane at a more pixelated level than the image given. It contains 16 'banded' levels from the brightest (closest zones, within this image, to the Sun) to darkest (the furthest illustrated expanses, including interstellar space), with irregular or non-trivial transitional edges but no obvious or dominant dithering/speckling or 'noise'. The Voyager image (and track) is overlaid in a white 'line drawing' format.
Each apparent pixel in this low-res rendering is approximately 1 AU², where 1 AU ( astronomical unit ) is the distance from the Sun to the earth. The Sun is off the left side of the image by about 30 pixels, meaning that of all the planets in the solar system, only Neptune would have an orbit that is within the image at all (at the left edge). The heliosphere is 120 AU from the sun, in the direction that Voyager 1 is travelling: Voyager crossed that milestone in August 2012. At time of publication Voyager was just over 150 AU from the Sun, as shown in the image.
Continuing on its course at 38,000 mph, or 3.6 AU/year, Voyager will reach the outer edge of the Oort cloud , the edge of our solar system, in about 300 years.
The title text refers to 'our spacetime codec ', suggesting a representation of reality itself as a series of ones and zeros. If empty space is the darkest possible thing that can be represented--which may be the case when only 16 levels are available (see above)--then it is possible that dark matter is so dark that it cannot be represented: it would require a negative number, which is not available. This is the dynamic range issue mentioned.
Artefacts are evident in 1683: Digital Data , and mentioned in the title text of 331: Photoshops .
[Irregular bands of gray are shown, shading from a white circular segment on the lower left side of the panel to completely black on the right. The bands have pixelated edges. A small white space probe is shown just outside the last dark gray band, in the completely black area. A dotted line starting from inside the dark gray area and ending at the space probe indicates that it is moving to the right, out of the gray area. Close to the white area, there are many bands packed closely together and with hard to define edges. But there are five gray areas clearly separated from the white, with a tendency to be elongated in the space probe's direction.]
[Caption below the panel]: Milestone: Voyager has passed through the streaming video compression artifacts that mark the edge of the solar system


Allow Captcha

Explanation:
Captcha is designed to prevent spambots from being able to post on websites by posing challenges that humans can easily solve but that spambots and other automated programs cannot solve. The original version (used in 632: Suspicion ) asked users to identify text that was rotated, warped, or otherwise modified in order to make it more difficult for automated programs to solve. Once automated programs got good at that, new captchas were put out that exploited the fact that computers tend to be bad at image recognition, e.g. asking the user to select only images that contain cats from a grid of images of cats, dogs, and other objects (used in 1897: Self Driving ). This captcha appears to combine the two methods—with the additional hurdle that in order to pass the captcha, users must be able to not only read but also understand (i.e. know the definitions of words). However, if the goal is to allow humans but not computers to pass (although, as the next paragraph will describe, it is not the goal), this is not a good method of differentiating between the two. Any computer program that can accurately read text (and there are now many programs that can do so) would know which words start with 'A' and would be able to look up the definitions (including parts of speech) online, so this would not be effective as a captcha. Humans on the other hand, would often get confused between "ale" and "ail" or between "allot" and "a lot". The English language has no distinction between nouns and verbs by spelling, only grammatical usage, and many words in English are both nouns and verbs, depending on context and placement.
In reality, however, the window is merely disguised as a captcha in order to trick human visitors into allowing the website to install "a helper tool", which may be malware, on their computer. The top of the window uses a similar shade of blue to the current version of reCAPTCHA (currently the most common brand of captcha), the prompt includes the phrase "to prove you're human", and the grid is similar to the grid used by reCAPTCHA. However, positioned to appear to humans as two reCAPTCHA boxes is a window asking viewers whether they want to allow or deny the website's request to install the supposed "helper tool". The idea is that because "allow" is a verb beginning with the letter A, human visitors would click on what they think is the box with the word allow in it but actually allow the website to install potential malware on their computer. The window attempts to disguise this by formatting many of the words in boxes as buttons and including other text in smaller font on other boxes. In addition, the captcha may be intentionally difficult so that users will be too distracted by wondering whether ale is a verb to process the meaning of the request.
It should be noted that simply tricking humans would not necessarily be enough to install malware on their computer. First of all, while a person can select any part of a grid box in order to select that box, only clicking on the actual button that says allow will allow malware unto the computer. If a person clicks on another part of the supposed box, nothing will happen, so the person will likely take a closer look in order to see why the window is not being selected and then possibly realize that this is a trick as a result. Further, the website would likely not be able to specify where the permission window appears, so would not be able to fit it into the fake reCAPTCHA. In addition, the user's computer may have an anti-virus software that will prevent the computer from executing malicious code downloaded by the website. Or in order for the user to install software, a second window may pop up requiring the user to type in an administrator password, which will likely startle the user.
Shady websites often use similar tactics to trick you into allowing notifications, including saying " Please allow notifications to confirm you are not a robot ". This comic combines that with a traditional reCAPTCHA to try and trick savvier users too.
The title text is a another trick reCAPTCHA which is trying to make you give out your social security number by clicking the pairs of numbers that appear in your Social Security number. A social security number is a form of identification used in the United States, originally used for the Social Security Administration. Over time, this number has become a type of national identification number, so stealing these numbers would allow a scammer to commit identity fraud. Of course, it would use a different grid, as the grid pictured in the comic has words, not pairs of digits. If you can find all of the pairs then they would be able to guess your real number and thus this would be a weird kind of phishing attempt. If the grid is 4×4 (and some reCAPTCHA grids are only 3×3), then it can only show 16 of the possible 100 pairs of two digits, so any people who are successfully tricked likely would not reveal their entire Social Security numbers because some digit pairs in their Social Security numbers would not appear. However, it should be noted that this trick likely will not be as successful as the captcha-based trick because the phrase "Social Security number" will likely raise alarm bells concerning identity theft, and people who are not citizens or permanent or temporary residents of the United States will not have Social Security numbers, so they will not be able to be tricked into revealing personal information this way even if they are especially gullible.
It should also be noted that the phrase "to prove you're human", while also attempting to disguise the trick, has a somewhat different implication. In the first example, the idea of the supposed captcha is that it asks the user to complete a task that human brains but not computer programs can perform accurately easily, such as image recognition. In the example in the title text, the idea of the fake captcha appears to be that humans are issued Social Security numbers (at least if they live or have lived in the United States), but computers are not. As the website does not already know the users' Social Security numbers, it would not actually be able to tell whether the user's response was correct. There is nothing to prevent programming an automated spambot program to randomly select zero to four of the boxes. Likewise, users could lie and not reveal their actual Social Security numbers, although those who realize that the supposed captcha is an attempt at identity theft will likely not complete it at all and could report it to law enforcement instead.
[Header at the top of the image with white text inside a light blue rectangle]: To prove you're human, please click every box containing a verb that starts with "A"
[Below the header, a series of panels in a 4x4 grid. Each panel has a word in capitals. Most of the words appear to be in buttons, and several have illegible text above or below. Some are tilted or off-center]
Alike
Elope
Aloe
Ale
Avow
Danny
Allele
Allot
Askew
[Two buttons, both saying]: Deny
[The next two panels are joined together, with two buttons next to each other. One says "Deny" and the other "Allow". The text above reads]: [illegible].com wants to install a helper tool
[With the word "Allow" printed clearly above and illegible text below]: Alto
Allow
Deal
Delay


Trash Compactor Party

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Randall is planning a party for when the pandemic is under control and it will again be acceptable to meet with people in close proximity and without a face mask or other kinds of protection.
But he has realized that after more than a year, where social distancing has been a thing, it will be difficult to get people to voluntarily move closer than 1-2 m from each other.
Thus to break the ice, and the social distancing, his party will have a theme - it will be a Trash Compactor Party. So he plans to install two moving walls on either side of the party room, which will slowly move together pressing people closer together. It is supposed to be a theme party, so the walls are not supposed to crush people in the end, but force them to get much closer than one meter apart.
In the comic Randall shows how people might react to this after more than a year without being close to anyone not from their own family/corona bubble.
Cueball and Megan are trying to push each of the walls of the trash compactor back in order to prevent it from pushing them closer to the three other people. Two of the other attendees, Science Girl and White Hat appear to be anxiously shying away from the inexorably increasing proximity of both of their neighboring guests, as they hold their arms nervously and protectively around their chests and necks. Thus reflecting the common current trend for many normal people to maintain increased personal space when meeting or passing other people out and about, compared with the pre-COVID era. Randall's claim is that this will not just go away because the restrictions are completely lifted if the pandemic comes under control. Ponytail is the one that seems least concerned; she even stands with a wine glass in her hands. She is looking at Cueball, maybe amused at the other people's reactions to a now safe situation.
The title text references a high-profile instance of the trope from the original Star Wars film (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope ). Han Solo utters this quip shortly after he and several other main characters bail out of a firefight and land in a trash compactor. The walls then start closing in and, as in the comic, the characters are not enthused about being pushed ever closer together, and seek to push back on the walls before being crushed. Here, the quote also expresses a sense of (a new) hope: since a common symptom of COVID-19 is a loss of smell, the fact that the characters are all able to smell their surroundings suggests that the pandemic is gone.
[An ongoing party of five people is placed between two walls on wheels. There are two machines on either side of the walls,  moving the walls on the left and right ever-closer in. The machines have pistons that push the walls together. Their rods are not long enough for the walls to meet in the middle, only to push the people close together. Near the left wall, Megan is sitting on a chair pushing on the approaching wall with hands and feet. Next to her is (and adult) Science Girl looking toward the other wall with her hands held up to her neck. Then follows White Hat, also with his arms raised towards his neck, he is looking at Megan's wall. Next to him is a small table with a glass and a plate with something on it, probably snacks. On the other side of the table stands Ponytail with a wine glass in her hand. She is looking to the right at Cueball, who is standing on the other side of a chair standing between them. Seems like he just got up after having been sitting there looking at the advancing wall. Now he is standing pressed up against it pushing on it with both hands.]
[Caption below the panel:] I'm planning a trash-compactor-themed party for when this is all over so we can get used to standing near each other again.


1/1,000th Scale World

Explanation:
This comic is the third in the Scale World series.
Yet again, Randall has a seemingly complete scale model of Earth , this time at a larger scale of 1:1000 – that is, 1 meter in this scale world represents 1000 meters in the real world. (This is ten times the size of Randall's original scale world .) Again, real-world features and phenomena (such as several underground neutrino detectors ) are depicted at scale and labeled with warnings. Several of the warnings point out humorous consequences of the scale, such as non-scaled goldfish eating scaled-down blue whales.  Other than the usual homo sapiens, the introduction of non-scaled animals into the scaled world (with consistently humorous consequences) is an addition to the earlier comics of the series.
[At the top of the image, inside the panel, a large title is floating in the air.] RULES
For visitors to my 1/1,000th scale world
1 meter = 1 km   1 ft = 1,000 ft
[Each of the following rules is written near a character or point of interest on the map.]
[Keep hot objects off the ice sheet over the south pole neutrino observatory]
[Do not bother the meteor crater ducks]
[No connecting the dead sea to the ocean]
[Be patient: Niagara falls will take a few minutes to fill your water glass]
[Trip hazard: the Gateway arch]
[Do not let ants into the Sudbury neutrino observatory]
[Megan balances on the Golden Gate bridge,her legs wobbling.]
[Only one person on the Golden Gate tightrope at a time]
[Watch for small planes]
[Drone altitude limit]
[Do not remove statue of liberty LEGO minifig]
[Do not remove safety caps]
[Caution: sharp]
[Do not mix up the USS enterprises:]
[Two zeppelins float in the sky.]
[No open flames in zeppelin area]
[A fish at a size relevant to the characters in the strip faces towards two small two small horizontal lines, presumably whales.]
[Please stop releasing goldfish in the ocean. They keep eating all the blue whales.]
[An arrow points to a small line in the sky resembling an airplane.]
[Warning! Choking hazard! Keep small children away from ascending/ descending airliners]


Metacarcinization

Explanation:
The comic strip opens with a conversation between White Hat and Cueball as they are walking together.  White Hat asks Cueball if he has seen a video of a crow sledding on a roof — presumably this one , or one of its later viral reposts. ( Animals sledding seems to be a thing lately). In this case, the crow is a Hooded Crow . Cueball remarks that it's a cool example of tool use by animals , a sign of intelligence (which corvids [Corvidae; the crow family], including crows, ravens, and jackdaws , are famous for).  He then points out that sea otters use tools too, namely using stones to crack open crab shells.
This in turn leads him to bring up the fact that the 'crab' body plan has evolved multiple times, a phenomenon known as carcinization , previously discussed in 2314: Carcinization .  In that strip, Cueball turned into a crab shortly after hearing about carcinization, so perhaps White Hat will likewise be transformed momentarily.
The conversation serves as an example of a wiki walk , where a conversation naturally diverts from the original topic into a seemingly unrelated topic through a series of logical associations. Although a sledding crow has little to do with carcinization in and of itself, the conversation has managed to bridge the two topics through intermediary steps (crow using a sled, animals using tools in general, otters using stones to open crabs, crab evolutionary process).
The title and caption is a joke that, much like natural life-forms have evolved into crab-like forms multiple independent times, so too do all of Cueball's (or Randall's) conversations wiki-walk into a discussion of that evolutionary process.
In the title text, Randall jokes that marine biologists have a similar tendency to bring up whalefall (or "whale fall") ecosystems, which arise whenever a whale's carcass falls onto the deep ocean floor and are thought to provide "stepping stones" for species migration across the generally barren seafloor.  Such occurrences are relatively rare, perhaps occurring once every few miles on whale migration routes, but they happen anyway, much like conversations about them. Another example of scientists tending to bring up facts from their field of study can be found at 1610: Fire Ants , and Randall often brings up the fact that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
[White Hat and Cueball are walking together.  White Hat has his smartphone out in his hand. White Hat: Have you seen this video of a crow sledding on a roof? Cueball: Yeah! It's always cool to see animals using tools. Cueball: Like how sea otters use rocks to open crab shells. Cueball: Hey, did you know the "crab" body plan has evolved multiple times?
[Caption below the panel:] Regardless of the starting topic, any conversation with me eventually converges to carcinization.


Hug Count

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
The comic displays a bar chart showing the number of Individuals Randall has hugged per year, spanning from 1996 to 2021, and goes up to 35 individuals hugged in 2007. The apparent spike in the estimate for 2007 may have been chance or may have been a known social event that Randall remembers, such as a family reunion or anticipated parting from a social group (such as a school or job from which he left), where he hugged many people he otherwise would not have hugged. While it varies a decent amount for the first 24 years, it drops sharply in 2020 and goes even lower in 2021. However, it should be noted that 2021 (at the time of the comic) had just begun, which is why the final bar is grey. It seems he is down to only two people hugged in 2021, one of which is most likely his wife. In 2020 he managed 5 different hugs, but the extra three may have been before the onset of COVID-19 precautions in the US.
This is because in 2020 when the pandemic happened, everyone had to social distance and avoid contact with strangers. This was a widely used method of slowing the spread of COVID-19. People are asked to not closely associate with those outside a very limited 'bubble' or even isolate themselves in their own household. As such, people have had less physical contact with each other since the beginning of this pandemic, including hugs.
No explanation is given for the variations year-to-year preceding 2020, and much of it may be random walks . However, one can see a major spike in hug levels in 2010 and 2011; Randall's wife was diagnosed with cancer in late 2010 (see Category:Cancer ). Loved ones of those with cancer tend to receive much compassion from others, and compassion tends to beget hugs.
The title text states that, while Randall isn't very big on hugs, he too desires hugs. It plays on the common phrase "I'm not too big of an (x) person", which is used to indicate that someone isn't extremely fond of said activity. One could then infer the person is not fond of the activity at all, though in this case, he indicates his desire for hugs is non-zero, as presumably demonstrated by the frequency being now less than even he would prefer.
[A bar graph is shown with 25 black bars and one gray at the far right. Most of the bars have a height around the center of the graph, but the one in the middle is clearly higher than all others, and the two before and after are lower than average. There are also a couple of high bars in pairs on either side of the central spike. The far-right, however, are two very low bars, with the last in gray less than half the height of the previous, which was already only a third of the next lowest bar. There are numbers on both axes. The X-axis has the year for every fifth year below the relevant bar, and the number of hugs is given in intervals of 10 on the Y-axis. The Y-axis has ticks for every number, but those with labels are longer.  The chart has a title written above:] Estimated Number of Distinct People Hugged per Year
[Y-axis:] 30 20 10 0
[X-axis:] 2000  2005  2010  2015  2020


Appliances

Explanation:
This comic shows a confusion matrix of the applicability of various household appliances to different tasks. Green indicates an excellent performance, yellow not ideal, but usable, and red dismal or destroyed. The diagonal is green as it shows the tasks done by the machines they are supposed to be performed by. See table below. The comic is similar to 1890: What to Bring , but that comic does not use yellow or another intermediate color.
Salmon can be easily cooked in a dishwasher , so it's marked "cooked", and thus "cook a frozen dinner" is only yellow on the dishwasher entry.
The stove/oven has three green as it can also cook a microwave frozen dinner, although slower, and can toast bread, again slower than the toaster. It is by far the machine that has the fewest red entries, only one, as it cannot wash clothes. It can also not clean dishes, but it might sterilize them, thus that entry is yellow. It may actually dry the clothes, but is liable to burn them and is therefore yellow.
The microwave oven can also cook eggs, thus it has two green, the only other than the stove/oven with more than one green.
The toaster and the washing machines are the only ones without any yellow, and with only one green, for making toast/washing clothes - they are thus the appliances with the fewest other potential uses (zero). The washing machine will at least not destroy the clothes if you try to dry them, but it has the opposite effect, thus still red. The toaster will not destroy the dishes, but will potentially just make the dirt burn harder.
The title text mentions that it would be theoretically possible to cook eggs in a dryer, but it is not a common use for a dryer. [ citation needed ] The joke is that it is not called scrambled eggs but tumbled eggs. It also mentions that the dryer has to become hotter than usual for a dryer (maybe dangerously hot for the clothes for it to work). And then the eggs should be cracked and put in an oven bag, that really needs to be tight and well zipped.
[The comic is laid out like a grid, with usages for common household appliances the left-hand side (Make toast / Wash dishes / Cook a frozen dinner / Wash clothes / Cook eggs / Dry clothes) and appliances for these activities across the top (Toaster / Dishwasher / Microwave / Washing machine / Stove/oven / Dryer). The grid illustrates the "match-ups", with a green square denoting a "correct" match-up, a yellow square denoting something that may work somewhat, and a red square denoting something that most certainly won't work.]
[From the top left corner, going from left to right, top to bottom, with each first item being on its own line in the grid, the images in the squares are as follows:]


Tower of Babel

Explanation:
The story of the Tower of Babel is the Biblical explanation for the existence of different languages in the world. In the story, humans endeavor to build a tower reaching heaven. Their arrogance angers God and prompts him to sabotage the project. He does this by "confounding their speech" (commonly interpreted as giving everyone their own language), inhibiting their ability to work together.
In this retelling, however, the events are the same, but the motives changed. God is pleased with the tower, and promises to create a diversity of languages, not as a punishment, but as a reward for the member of the party who finds words interesting. Megan seems to recognize the potential issues this would cause, but the word-loving woman is enthusiastic. This plays on Randall 's various geeky interests, recognizing that complexities of the world, which frustrate many people, are a source of great joy and interest to others. A world with only one language would make travel and global communication much easier, but for those with an interest in linguistics, it would be deeply limiting, as there would be only one language to study.
The party that ascends to the top of the tower consists of Cueball , Megan and a curly-haired woman, who may be the linguist Gretchen McCulloch as she was depicted in 2381: The True Name of the Bear .
Phonology is the study of the sounds used in a language or dialect, or of the systems that languages use to organize sounds. For example, English has the words "light" and "right", indicating a distinction between /l/ and /r/, but other languages, such as Japanese, do not, resulting in the (in)famous stereotype. On the other hand, English does not make a distinction between /u/ and /y/, while French does, having words such as "le but" (the goal) and "le bout" (the tip).
Word order is the study of order of the parts of a language, e.g. the subject, object, verb, and other modifiers. English uses the subject–verb–object order ("She loves him"), but other languages use subject-object-verb ("She him loves") and other permutations of these orders.
Morphosyntactic alignment is the relationship between the "roles" in a sentence, and how they relate to transitivity. The vast majority of world languages, including English, use nominative-accusative alignment. In nominative-accusative languages, the subjects of transitive verbs (verbs with objects) and the subjects of intransitive verbs (verbs without objects) are treated the same, and differently from the objects of transitive verbs. For example, "She sees him" and "She runs" use the same word "she". However, other forms exist like ergative-absolutive alignment, where the subject of an intransitive verb matches the object of a transitive verb ("She sees him" and "Her runs"), transitive alignment, where the subject and object of a transitive verb are the same and different from the subject of an intransitive verb ("Her sees him" and "She runs"), or split-S and split ergativity, where it follows nominative-accusative or ergative-absolutive based on context. For example, if it depends on animacy, you could have "She (the person) runs", but "Them (the trees) fall".
The title text expands the joke by suggesting that the miscommunication caused by the Tower of Babel is not due to language barriers, but instead because linguists have created intentionally meaningless sentences to illustrate points about grammar, and identifies two famous examples of such. " Colorless green ideas sleep furiously ", coined by linguist Noam Chomsky in 1957, is an example of a sentence that is structurally correct but contains paradoxes and meaningless comparisons: Something cannot be both colorless AND green (see Invisible Pink Unicorn ), ideas do not sleep, and sleeping generally is not done furiously. [ citation needed ] That said, the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is so well known in linguistics that a competition to make the sentence meaningful was held in 1985 and attracted a number of entrants .
"More people have been to Russia than I have" is an example of comparative illusion . This sentence seems to make sense at first, but upon deeper analysis does not. Many people misinterpret its meaning as "I do not own/have in my household as many people as those who have been to Russia."
[The Tower of Babel is shown. It has a broad two sectioned base and above that extends straight up out of the top of the frame, with 10 identical segments. This is seen from afar, so the three people standing at the base of the tower is very small. But Cueball and Megan can be easily identified. They are standing on either side of a woman with big curly hair (which is first clear in the next panel). The text spoken is written over the tower in white sections that hides the tower. But the tower can be seen above, between and below these two text segments:] Cueball: The Tower of Babel is complete! Megan: Let's go meet God!
[Cueball, the curly haired woman and Megan are now standing at the top of the Tower of Babel. The top is made of bricks, but the part of the last segment before the top looks like those shown in the first panel. God is represented by an off-panel voice coming from a star burst at the top of the panel. The three people look up in that direction.] Cueball: Hi God! God (off-panel): Wow, nice tower! God (off-panel): You did a great job! I'm so proud! Megan: Thanks!
[Same settings but Megan has turned towards the curly haired woman holding an arm out towards her. The woman has taken one hand to her chin.] God (off-panel): I'm going to give you a reward. God (off-panel): What do you like about the world? Curly haired woman: Hmm. Words are really cool. Megan:  No, wait-
[Same settings, in a broader panel. The curly haired woman lifts her hands up curled into fists. Her yell comes from a starburst over her head, to indicate the difference to normal speech. Megan has taken her arm down.] God (off-panel): Great! I'm going to give you lots of languages to study, each with its own phonology, word ordering, morphosyntactic alignment... Curly haired woman: YESSSSSS! Megan:  We should not have brought a linguist.
In 2381: The True Name of the Bear , sentences spoken by the curly haired-woman, the suspected Gretchen McCulloch do not have periods at their ends, a fact which she mentioned on Twitter. However, in this comic, she uses periods, so her previous periodlessness might be a coincidence and not a trait of her character on xkcd.


Vaccine Ordering

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic , specifically regarding the COVID-19 vaccine .
Two COVID-19 vaccines have been approved in the United States (one from Moderna , the other from a joint venture between Pfizer and BioNTech ). Each of these vaccines require 2 doses, taken 3-4 weeks apart.
Megan is reading an article on her phone to Cueball. A report from the CDC says that it's possible to get effective immunity against COVID-19 when mixing mRNA vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna, but that this practice should not be the norm. The report in question can be viewed here ; it stresses that mixing the vaccines is acceptable only in exceptional circumstances, such as "when the first-dose vaccine product cannot be determined."
Cueball wonders whether the order in which you receive the vaccines matters. Megan then attempts to create mnemonic devices to help them remember which mix-and-match strategy is best for the mRNA vaccines (e.g., "Beer before wine and you'll feel fine; wine before beer and you'll feel queer"). She "concludes" that receiving the Pfizer vaccine after the Moderna one will be just as effective as having two doses of either, but that having the Moderna vaccine after Pfizer's will lead to the patient becoming the ruler of an ancient city. Megan might mean that the patient will be literally transported back in time, as she and Cueball (and Black Hat ) were in 2321: Low-Background Metal .  The apparent truthiness of these mnemonics might be attributed to the rhyme-as-reason effect , a cognitive bias that is often misleading - very much so in this case. Megan succeeds by rhyming "Pfizer" and "wiser," but struggles with finding a rhyme for "Moderna," settling for Smyrna , an ancient city located in what is now Izmir , Turkey.
A side effect of a drug is an effect incidental to the intended purpose of the drug. Side effects can be positive or negative, though in vaccine trials the greater concern is usually about negative side effects. Becoming ruler of an ancient city that is now only a historical ruin would certainly be an unexpected side effect. [ citation needed ]
The title text continues the theme of difficult rhymes, using the full names of both the Moderna vaccine drug ( mRNA-1273 , rhymed with banshee ) and the Pfizer one ( tozinameran , rhymed with catamaran ).
[Megan and Cueball are talking. Megan is looking down and reading a news story on her phone.] Megan: The CDC says it's okay to mix and match the mRNA vaccines for doses 1 and 2, but only in "exceptional situations". Cueball: I wonder which order works better, if either.
[A slimmer panel. Megan has her finger raised and her phone to her side] Megan: Well you know what they say. Megan: Moderna before Pfizer, you'll be none the wiser.
[A regular panel, Megan and Cueball still standing next to each other.] Megan: Pfizer before Moderna then you'll... rule ancient Smyrna. Cueball: Weird side effect. Megan: A lot of hard-to-rhyme drugs have those.


Project Orion

Explanation:
White Hat and Cueball are having a conversation. In the first panel, Cueball is telling White Hat about his gardening experiences. White Hat tunes out for the middle two panels, and when he starts paying attention again, Cueball is discussing Project Orion .
Project Orion was an ambitious idea, funded briefly by the US government in the 1960s, to launch enormous spaceships into orbit by detonating a series of nuclear bombs below them. The force from the explosions would be absorbed by a pusher plate on the bottom of the rocket, which is the detail Cueball is sharing when White Hat tunes back in. In Ad Astra , Roy McBride uses a similar mechanism to get from Neptune back to Earth. It was considered feasible for construction, but abandoned because of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty as well as out of concerns for both cost and the idea of spaceships literally armed with atomic bombs. People probably daydream about this project because it seems like it could provide for rapid and massive entry into space, but it was halted due to the intense danger. We may have sufficient technology to somehow make this safe with extensive additional engineering, but the risk is still so large it has not been pursued.
The fact that physicists' conversations tend to converge towards Project Orion is similar to how Randall's conversations tend to converge towards carcinization in 2418: Metacarcinization . Cueball turned into a crab (i.e., he carcinized) when Megan first told him about carcinization in 2314: Carcinization ; hopefully physicists don't do something analogous when discussing Project Orion.
The title text transitions to another cool nuclear rocket technology, dusty plasma fission fragment rockets , which also uses nuclear energy, and would fit well in the 2326: Five Word Jargon collection.
Project Orion has been mentioned before, in 786: Exoplanets , where Beret Guy sums it up as "nuke-riding city ships", and on what if? .
[Cueball is raising his arm, holding the hand tilted down with palm up towards White Hat. Above them is the words Cueball says (without a speech line showing this). The first three lines are in normal font, but then successive lines fade to lighter and lighter gray and finally in the fourth line, just above their heads, the text is almost white. The overall effect is that Cueball's words gradually become background noise to White Hat.] Cueball: Our garden grew really well last year, so we think we might put a second raised bed along the garage, if we can find a...
[Only White Hat is shown, without text, as he stares away from where Cueball must be off the edge of the panel.]
[Only White Hat again, who now seems to look straight out of the panel.]
[Back to the original setting. Cueball has lifted both hands up in front of him. He once again has the attention of White Hat. The text above begins with a line half hidden under the top of the panel, almost white font, and then the text fades back to black font over the next three lines, with the next, and last, line in his first paragraph all in black. And then a small gap and connecting line between this and the last two lines of text in his second paragraph. This time there is also with a speech line down to Cueball. The text from "..." to the first comma is difficult to read as only bottom half is shown, and in very faded font.] Cueball: ...thanks to X ray ablation, the pusher plate would absorb the nuclear blast, recoil, and then return to position for the next bomb. Cueball: Such a wild idea! Probably good that it was abandoned.
[Caption below the panel:] If you temporarily tune out while a physicist is talking, when you tune back in they'll be talking about Project Orion.


Normal Conversation

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Randall / Cueball has shown in many comics the difficulty of making small talk, or having a "normal" conversation, when you spent your developing years developing work skills ( comics of this are here ), a trait of nerds such as engineers that is frequently used as material in comics .  With the COVID-19 pandemic, he feels that others may have difficulty having normal conversations as well, and so this seems to be a "silver lining" for the pandemic. He can now use this excuse instead of having to admit that he has difficulty in social situations (and always has, even before the pandemic). Randall also uses a false but plausible excuse to cover unusual nerd behavior in 1900: Jet Lag . He also uses another excuse which can get him out of life in general in 880: Headache .
In the title text, he shows his dislike, which existed prior to the pandemic, of going to crowded bars. In the future, even after the pandemic passes, Cueball will still have the excuse that the pandemic made him feel uncomfortable in crowded bars due to possible virus spread and that the feeling has persisted past the pandemic.  Cueball remarked on his good fortune in 2276: Self-Isolate , as it turns out he has been "practicing social distancing" all his life, but that it has now finally become common practice.
[Randall, drawn as Cueball wearing a white face masks, is talking to Cueball wearing a face mask with striped pattern.] Randall: So how's...everything. Randall: I mean, I know everything is, um...but are you, uh... Randall: Sorry, I feel like the pandemic has destroyed my ability to have a conversation like a normal human. Cueball: Haha, I know, right?
[Caption below the panel:] I'm at least glad I have this excuse now.


mRNA Vaccine

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic , specifically regarding the COVID-19 vaccine .
This one is another analogy to how mRNA vaccines work, by creating inactive fragments of the virus to prime the immune system to be prepared to stave off the real thing. This is done in response to Cueball's question to the person vaccinating him, "Why would my body attack something it made itself?", using elements of the film Star Wars: Episode IV as an analogy.
The analogy starts in the second panel, where the Rebel Alliance has retrieved the Death Star plans, conveyed by Princess Leia to General Jan Dodonna (in Star Wars , via R2-D2 and some adventures, but shown as a simple handoff here). The Death Star is a space station the size of a small moon that has the power to destroy planets. In the film, the plans are analyzed to find a weakness in the enemy Death Star and destroy it; however, in this panel, the "Death Star plans" are passed down a line of people until they are interpreted as a construction assignment and are used to build a Death Star. In the analogy, the mRNA in the vaccine corresponds to the plans for the Death Star, the spike proteins (inactive COVID-19 virus fragments) correspond to the benign Death Star itself, and the cellular processes that build spike proteins correspond to the builders of the benign Death Star.  Just as merely having the plans on hand led to the Death Star being built, the mere presence of the mRNA in the cellular environment leads to it being translated, producing the viral protein.  Amusingly, as the plans are handed off to the construction crew leader, he replies "Copy that," which both acknowledges the handoff in conversation and presages his actions.
After Leia's Death Star has been built, it is positioned near a planet/moon. This Death Star is benign : it only looks dangerous and isn't about to actually hurt anyone; the Death Star crew are Rebels, after all, and state that they don't have the laser wired up. The Rebels mobilize to destroy this benign Death Star because it looks like an enemy battle station, evidently not listening to the construction crew's transmissions. Analogously, immune cells cannot think [ citation needed ] or directly communicate, basing their determination of friend from foe entirely on external chemical signatures. However, the Death Star operators are confused, because they believe Leia (a member of the Rebels) had ordered its construction. The Rebels initially attack the surface of the benign Death Star, without much effect; Leia orders the factories to continue developing torpedoes and ships as they run out, presumably putting an extra workload on the factory workers and tiring them out, or at least diverting resources away from other projects. In the analogy, the Rebels correspond to the immune system's B cells and T cells , which mobilize to attack the spike proteins (the benign Death Star) made as a result of the vaccine, but are often ineffective at first. The body keeps producing these immune cells, trying many variants (many ways of attacking the benign Death Star) in an attempt to find one that works well against the spike proteins. This results in Cueball experiencing side effects from the vaccine, including soreness and tiredness, and he lies down and rests.
After much effort on the Rebels' part, they find a weakness in the benign Death Star, a "thermal exhaust port" vulnerable to "proton torpedoes" that can destroy the Death Star. Firing a proton torpedo down the exhaust port destroys a Death Star very rapidly, compared to the initial, ineffective frontal assault on the surface. After this benign Death Star is destroyed, Princess Leia allows the fleet to stand down.
Up to this point, the entire thing seems like a comedy of errors, with huge expenditures being made for no apparent reason, due to a simple lack of communication.  But during this process, the Rebel Alliance has both built a huge fleet and figured out how to target the Death Star's weakness and destroy it. Later on, when a real, dangerous Death Star approaches the planet (with the apparent intent of destroying it), the Rebels immediately deploy their fleet, target the weakness, and destroy it almost immediately, much to the shock of the Imperial troops, who had believed they were on an invulnerable ship and are surprised by the Rebels' immediate response and overwhelmed by it.
The analogy is that the immune system (the Rebel Alliance) figures out a way to attach to the spike proteins (attack the benign Death Star) made by the mRNA vaccine; the immune system's antibodies (Rebel planners) now "know" how to recognize and destroy things that have these spike proteins — including SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (real, dangerous Death Stars). Hence, when the vaccinated Cueball approaches White Hat, who is maskless, coughing, and presumably sick with COVID-19, Cueball's immune system is able to destroy dangerous SARS-CoV-2 virus particles because it knows about the virus's spike proteins. This is represented by Cueball not experiencing any suffering from COVID-19, and he goes on his way whistling merrily, perhaps to the tune of The Throne Room/End Title (from the ceremony celebrating the destruction of the Death Star).
It's notable that Cueball continues to wear a mask after being vaccinated. This is in accordance with CDC guidelines, which recommend continuing to wear a mask, practicing social distancing, etc. after getting the vaccine; doctors at CDC "don’t yet know whether getting a COVID-19 vaccine will prevent you from spreading the virus that causes COVID-19 to other people, even if you don’t get sick yourself." [1] None of the vaccines available as of when the comic was posted are 100% effective at preventing infection, with the best ones about 94% effective at preventing symptomatic cases, but all vaccines that are approved or submitted for approval are completely (100.00%) effective at preventing death from COVID-19.
The title text references the fact that the two COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the United States as of the date of publication (the Pfizer-BioNTech one and the Moderna one ) require two doses of vaccine to be fully effective, as do many others in use worldwide (AstraZeneca, Gameleya Institute, Sinovac, etc.). The second dose strengthens the body's immune response to the spike proteins and causes it to "remember", via antibodies, how to attack those proteins for a long time — hopefully years or even decades. Likewise, the Rebels in the movies destroy two Death Stars, the second one in Return of the Jedi . Incidentally, that second Death Star was destroyed while it was apparently incomplete, much like the Death Star here was destroyed before it could destroy Cueball; however, in the film, the Emperor had deliberately left it with an incomplete outer structure to lure the Rebellion into attacking it, only for the Rebels to find that its superlaser was fully operational.
Vaccination was also explained, xkcd-style, in 2406: Viral Vector Immunity .
References to the Star Wars franchise are a recurring theme on xkcd.
[Cueball seated in a doctor's office getting a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Both he and the doctor are wearing masks; the doctor is also wearing a scrub cap.] Doctor: The vaccine contains mRNA instructions for making the virus spike protein. Cueball: Weird, so the vaccine is just blueprints? Doctor: Yup! Your body reads the mRNA, makes the proteins, and then has an immune reaction to them. Cueball: Why would my body attack something it made itself? Doctor: Well...
[Princess Leia and General Dodonna in frame.] Leia: Here are the Death Star plans. Dodonna: Thank you, Princess.
[Dodonna, Ponytail, and White Hat in frame.] Dodonna: These blueprints are from Princess Leia. Ponytail: Ugh, she's always giving us projects.
[Ponytail and Cueball in frame.] Ponytail: Here, take these blueprints to your construction crew. Cueball: Affirmative. What is it? Ponytail: No idea. Something the Princess wants. Cueball: Copy that.
Panel heading: Soon... [A view from outside of the Death Star.] Voice from Death Star: Hi, Commander? Construction crew B here.
[A view from inside the Death Star, with a planet visible through two adjacent windows. Cueball is standing at some kind of control/communications panel.] Cueball: We finished building the Princess's big metal orb thing.
[A view from outside the Death Star again, with the curve of the planet in the foreground.] Voice from Death Star: Do you know if she wants us to park it somewhere, or— Voices from the planet: AAAAAA!!!
[A view from the planet's surface with the Death Star in the sky. 3 Cueballs, a Megan-like character, and Ponytail are on the planet's surface.] Voice from Death Star: ...Is everything ok? Cueball 1: AAAAAAA! Cueball 2: Imperial battle station!!! Ponytail & Cueball 3: AAAAAAAAAA Offscreen voice: Red Alert Red Alert
[Another view from the planet's surface. There is some type of military encampment surrounded by an open field, with trees and mountains in the background. People are running around on the field, which also contains several currently grounded craft and several flying craft streaming toward the Death Star.] Death Star voice: Hello? Generic field voices: Get the fighters in the air! Red Alert Blow it up! Blow it up! AAAAA Generic tree voices: AAAAAaa Generic spacecraft voices: Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it
[A zoomed-in view of the outside of the Death Star, which is accumulating light damage. Numerous spacecraft are shooting at it; various explosions occur on the Death Star's surface and in space nearby.] Death Star voice: Hello? Generic spacecraft voices: Shoot it! Shoot it! Shoot it! That armor's too strong! We're not getting through! Keep firing!
[A view from inside the Death Star again with Cueball at the control panel and the planet in the background windows; various projectiles and explosions can be seen through the window.] Cueball: Can everybody please just chill? We don't even have the laser thing wired up. We— BOOM Hey!! I said , we...
[Ponytail enters from the left, and points to her left. Princess Leia points at her.] Ponytail: We can't get through! We're running out of proton torpedoes! Leia: Send every crew to build more torpedoes! Ponytail: There aren't enough ships to— Leia: Build more ships!!
[Ponytail is standing still and Princess Leia is walking to the right with her fists raised.] Ponytail: That thing is just sitting there. Are you sure we— Leia: Keep building ships! Build ships forever! Destroy the orb!
[A view of the Death Star in space and the curvature of the planet off to the side. An enormous torrent of (barely visible) ships is seen streaming from the planet's surface to the Death Star. The damage to the Death Star is slightly worse.] Generic ship voices: aaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaa Death Star voice: What is wrong with you people?
[Back in the real world, Cueball is standing with arms hunched and a cartoon helix above his head. Megan stands next to him.] Cueball: Definitely feeling a little sore. Megan: Yeah, they said you might have some side effects. Megan: You lie down—I'll get you some hot tea and a blanket.
[An outside view of the damaged Death Star with ships swarming it.] Generic voices: Die die die die! Die!
[An inside view; Cueball appears injured, and the control panel is damaged with a fire on the ground nearby.] Cueball: I hate you all so much.
[The outside of the Death Star again.] Ship 1: What's that?! Ship 2: Looks like a thermal exhaust port. Ship 3: I'm going in!
[The outside of the Death Star.] pew pew pew pew pew pew
[Beat panel.]
[The Death Star explodes.]
[A disheveled Dodonna, Princess Leia, and Ponytail in frame.]
[The same frame.] Leia: Good work.
[In the real world, Cueball sits on top of a bed with a blanket draped over his lap. Megan stands next to the bed.] Cueball: I'm feeling better today. Megan: That's great!
Panel heading: A few months later... [Cueball and White Hat walking past each other. Cueball is wearing a face mask; White Hat isn't but coughs into his elbow.] White Hat: Cough cough
[The real Death Star drifts toward the planet.] Death Star voice: We have reached the rebel system, Lord Vader.
[View from inside the real Death Star.] Vader: Now they shall witness the firepower of this fully armed and oper—
[Leia, Ponytail, and Cueball in frame.] Leia: Thermal exhaust port!! Ponytail: Aaa Cueball: Aaa
[An equally large torrent of ships stream from the planet to the real Death Star.] Death Star voice: What. Various ships: aA AAAAAAA aaa aAAAAAAA aaa AAAAAA aaa aAAAAA
[The Death Star explodes, leaving debris trailing away.]
[In the real world, White Hat and Cueball continue to walk past each other.] Cueball: ♫ ♫


Animal Songs

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Jokes about professionals not being so professional in private have been presented before, for example in 2401: Conjunction and 1463: Altitude .
Dr. Anthony Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who was largely responsible for informing the public in the United States on how to avoid spreading SARS-CoV-2 in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic . He was recently awarded a one million dollar prize for his recent work. This may be the press conference he is going to. The comic shows him singing a silly made-up song to his pet fish as he goes about his daily routine - a counterintuitively childlike (albeit delightful and relatable) habit for an authority figure who normally presents himself to the public in a professional and prosaic "grown-up" manner. Incidentally, this characterization of Dr. Fauci doesn't seem to be far from the truth: Fauci's daughter Jenny is quoted in the Washington Post as saying of her father: "He's a goofball[...] He works hard and he does his thing, but he comes home and he's singing opera in the kitchen and dancing around."
In 231: Cat Proximity , it's presented as 'normal' for people to make inane statements and use baby talk near cats , but here, Dr. Fauci is singing to his fish. The title text explains that, as he is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he is forbidden from owning a pet cat, because petting the cat would be "giving aid and comfort" to an allergen, which is (a reference to) one definition of treason under the United States Constitution . The “allergen” refers to the hypothetical cat—some people are allergic to cats .
[A man with a bit of hair, later shown to represent Dr. Fauci, is putting on a white lab coat as he walks past his fish tank. The tank, on a small table, has one small fish in it, looking at him. Inside the tank there is also a seaweed-like plant and a small castle and an even smaller pyramid. Seven music notes, 4 double and 3 single notes, are scattered about Fauci's speech which is written with lower case letters (normal capitalization) as opposed to normal xkcd text with all small caps.] Dr. Fauci: ♫ Putting on my doctor coat ♫
[Dr. Fauci is buttoning the coat. He is now standing to the right of the fish tank. The fish has turned towards him and has moved to the end of the tank near him. He still sings with the same letter type and six music notes, 3 double and 3 single notes, are scattered around the text.] Dr. Fauci: ♫ It's the coat I wear ♫
[Dr. Fauci is back to the left of the fish tank, looking at himself in a mirror, and touching his face. There is a small shelf with three items on the wall beneath the mirror. The fish has swam back to its original position turned towards him. He is still singing, with one double and one triple note on either side of his lyrics. An off-panel voice addresses him from the right, and he replies. These exchanges are written in normal xkcd small caps style.] Dr. Fauci: ♫ so they know how good a doctor I am ♫ Off-panel voice: Dr. Fauci?  The press conference is in five. Dr. Fauci: Be right there!
[Caption below the panel:] It's nice to think about how serious and important people probably also absentmindedly sing made-up songs to pets.


Perseverance Microphones

Explanation:
This comic is a play on dual meanings of the word "sample". The day before this comic was published, NASA successfully landed a new rover, Perseverance , on Mars; part of its mission is to drill and scoop Martian rock and dust from the surface, store it in tubes, and leave them on the surface for collection by a future mission which will return them to Earth. If successful, this would be the "first Mars sample return" in history.
“ Samples ” can also refer to short snippets of recorded sound used in music. Perseverance is the first Mars mission to land on Mars with microphones too, so it would be possible to use audio samples from those microphones musically, e.g. using a looper pedal , which lets a musician play short samples of music and then repeats them back live as if it were another musician. Using a loop pedal would make sense if the sample includes a tune that repeats throughout the song—or that could repeat throughout the song. This is similar to 411: Techno .
The joke is that these audio samples, as opposed to rock samples, would be "the first Mars sample return." Additionally, the comic might be a reference to Samples from Mars , a company that sells sampled audio from older instruments for digital music production.
The title text anthropomorphises the rover, suggesting that the drop to the surface was so frightening for it that it was screaming as it descends.
The period between entry into the Martian atmosphere and touchdown on its surface has been dubbed the "Seven Minutes Of Terror", mainly for the terror felt by the mission controllers on Earth, rather than the lander, as they are unable to make any useful corrections to a craft that is hundreds of millions of miles/kilometres away. The round-trip communication delay significantly exceeds the whole of the passage through the thin atmosphere, so they have to rely on whatever pre-arranged autonomy they engineered and programmed into their craft beforehand, and hope they anticipated all eventualities .
You can view the landing here .
The landing was the topic of the next comic 2428: Mars Landing Video .
[Megan is sitting in an office chair at a desk, typing on her laptop. The laptop is connected to an audio mixer box on the floor. The box has several buttons and indicators etc. Cueball is standing on the other side of the box, holding an electric guitar ready to play. The guitar is plugged into the box. From the box there is also a wire going to a small pedal on the floor. Cueball has one foot on top of this pedal.] Megan: Perseverance's microphones are active! Downlinking audio! Cueball: I'm ready with the looper pedal.
[Caption below the panel:] The first Mars sample return