Coronavirus Genome 2

Explanation:
This comic is another comic in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
It is also a direct continuation of the previous comic, 2298: Coronavirus Genome , making this a new series .
Megan sent her copy of the coronavirus genome to Cueball , who then proceeded to share it with his friends on social media. In effect, he is spreading the virus over the Internet, though not in a form that can actually make people sick with COVID-19 (which may seem obvious, but then some people believe 5G causes coronavirus .)  If his post catches on and is widely shared, it might be described as "going viral".(This "virtually" spreading the coronavirus , would be a prank).
Additionally while exchanging research data generally is as good an idea as using readymade tools for science publishing the genome of a dangerous virus actually might cause the virus to spread further: There are specialized manufacturers that can mail you arbitrary DNA snippets if you send them their sequence as an ASCII file. That actually can work in the other direction, too: Some of the machines used by such firms in order to save space stored a base pair in 4 bits of memory and could (using a buffer overrun) be convinced to actually try to execute instead of manufacturing the DNA code.
In continuation of the previous strip, Cueball appears to be fascinated by the fact that the entire genome of this very consequential virus can be fully detailed in a text file, using only 30,000 characters. He realizes that he can't fit this much information in a single tweet (Twitter has a 280 character limit), but is able to fit the entire genome in a Facebook post (Facebook allows up to 63,206 characters in a post ).
This strip draws humor from the contrast between the costly physical precautions that are being taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus between people and the blitheness with which Cueball attempts to share (the genome of) the coronavirus electronically.  Cueball's response (that it's okay, because he sanitized his phone before posting) could be taken as a sarcastic rebuttal, given that Megan sent the genome to him without knowing why he wanted it, or a commentary on the useless or counterproductive behaviors of clueless people (e.g. people who wear gloves before touching potentially-contaminated surfaces, but then scratch their noses while still wearing the possibly-contaminated gloves).  It could also be a reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, in which humanity is revealed to possibly be the descendants of the "useless" occupants of the planet Golgafrincham, including telephone sanitizers; unfortunately, after sending their useless members to the planet later called Earth, the remaining Golgafrinchans were subsequently wiped out by a plague caught from an unsanitized telephone. This may also be a reference to the concept of digital data sanitization (the screening of user inputs to prevent exploitation of security flaws) as in 327: Exploits of a Mom .
The title text deals with the almost inevitable outcome of the resulting message being 'liked' by some other party. In this case Megan, although she just told Cueball it was weird that he shared it. This may be a commentary on the common reflex to "like" your friend's posts, even if you think they're strange. Alternately, the "like" button on Facebook was historically the only way to signal a reaction to a post (other than actually commenting).  When someone posted about a bad event, such as an injustice, a tragedy, or a difficult personal event, people might "like" the post to indicate their support of the person posting it, but it could read as having positive feelings toward the incident itself.  (Facebook has since added multiple reaction buttons to express such emotions as surprise, sadness or anger).  In this case, Megan "like"ing the coronavirus genome could be taken to mean that she likes the virus itself, which would be quite odd.
[Megan sits in an office chair at her desk with a laptop. She is leaning on the back of the chair with one arm while turning away from her desk to talk to Cueball standing behind her.] Cueball: Hey, if you have the coronavirus genome as a text file, can you email it to me? Megan: Sure. Megan: ...Why?
[Megan has turned to her her laptop typing on it, Cueball is off-panel.] Cueball (off-panel): Nothing. Megan: I ... see. Megan: Well, here you go. Laptop: Click
[In "two" frame-less panels in a row Cueball is shown twice while typing on his phone with both hands. The second time the text on his phone screen is shown above it in a square "speech bubble" with a "speech line" going down to the phone. It displays a Twitter interface, highlighting that he is trying to tweet too many characters. The last line of text in the tweet is marked with red. A number below is in red font and the + in a circle after that is in cyan font. The last word is in white font inside a cyan strip.] Phone: GAAAGGTAAGATGGAGAGGCCTTGTC CCTGGTTCAACGAGAA -29,602 (+) Tweet
[Back to the original setting but with Megan still typing on her laptop while Cueball looks at his phone that he holds up in one hand.] Cueball: Okay, it's too long for Twitter, but it can fit in a Facebook post. Megan: Unsettling that your first instinct is "share it online." Cueball: It's cool, I sanitized my phone before posting.


Everyone's an Epidemiologist

Explanation:
This comic is another comic in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Megan complains that the sudden rise in awareness of COVID-19 has led to many people that act as if they are epidemiologists ; i.e. experts on the issue of global policy and the virus's traits, while in fact most are just repeating what they have heard from various news outlets, which do not always get everything right . She compares the situation to people who are suddenly expert on mountain climbing safety every time a mountaineering disaster hits the news - and uses an analogy of Joseph Beuys' "Everyone is an artist" for saying that.
Cueball notes that her analogy fails to account that everyone is directly affected by the virus, meaning that everyone should be educating themselves on the topic as much as possible, similar to how if everyone was stranded in mountains all at once, lots of people would try to become experts as fast as possible.
Megan acknowledges this fact, but continues the mountaineer analogy to the virus saying that she wishes those that now think they are experts would at least not go out on TV saying they found out that everyone would come down fast if they just curl up in to balls and roll down because their "research on gravity" says they will get to the bottom quickly, which Cueball agrees.
In corona pandemic terms, this is probably a reference to those that claim we need to get out of lockdown as fast as possible, to save the economy (the closure of which has its own costs, potentially including losses of life through e.g. depression, homelessness, displacement, and so on), and maybe to induce herd immunity (SARS-CoV-2 does not mutate as rapidly as e.g. the influenza family of viruses, so it is hoped that individuals who are infected and survive will develop long-term immunity, and that a single vaccine will be very broadly effective, but this is still not known for certain as of this writing). But those are not considering all the lives at stake, which is what frustrates Megan. Who should decide that those with weak immune systems should be placed in such grave risk, for the better of the economy? Maybe not the every-man who has read something on the internet... which could be wrong, see 386: Duty Calls .
The title text explains how the decision may not even be yours; if those who were in more precarious positions above you now start to hit you on the way down and cause you to tumble as well, you will also end up as one of those rolling downhill. And in pandemic terms - if enough people ignore the precautions, then it will be much harder for the rest to avoid getting the disease, which will cause more deaths.
The rolling-down-hill strategy is reminiscent of 1217: Cells in that it solves the immediate problem (whether being stuck on a mountain, or having some disease) while also likely killing the patient. It may therefore be in reference to Trump's widely reported comments that an injection of a disinfectant could cure coronavirus; such an injection would "kill" (inactivate) any virus particles it contacted, but it would also kill so many of the patient's cells as to risk the patient's life.
The Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake is an annual event in which people intentionally roll down a steep hill (chasing after a wheel of cheese, or a foam replica since 2013), and they do indeed reach the bottom very quickly (the cheese was known to reach speeds in excess of 70 mph) and are often injured enough to require hospitalization, although because all participants are volunteers in good health, there have been no fatalities.  The May 2020 event has been canceled due to COVID-19.
Alternately, it may be a reference to the "just succumb to the problem" solution of ignoring the dangers involved in letting what happens happen. Just quickly get everyone into the valley bottom and they all (who survive) subsequently have a herd immunity where none of them now needs to be scared of falling any more, and can jostle against anyone else without any such issues.
[Megan and Cueball are walking with makeshift medical masks covering their lower faces. Megan has thrown her arms in the air, and a star burst at her forehead where her speech line emanates, indicate she is agitated.] Megan: Ugh, everyone's an epidemiologist. Megan: It's like when there's a mountaineering disaster in the news, and suddenly everyone is an expert on mountain climbing safety.
[In a frame-less panel they walk on together.] Cueball: I mean, it's not exactly like that. Cueball: If the entire world's population were suddenly stranded on mountaintops together, a lot of people would understandably be trying to become mountaineering experts really fast. Megan: Okay, that's fair.
[Megan stops and lift both hands palm up while Cueball walks past her.] Megan: But I do wish they wouldn't keep going on TV and saying "According to my research on gravity, if everyone curls into a ball and rolls, we'll get to the bottom quickly!" Cueball: Yes, that's definitely not helping.


Turtle Sandwich Standard Model

Explanation:
This comic references particle physics. The Standard Model of physics explains the base particles and fields that make up the universe.  The elementary fermions of the standard model can be laid out in a 3×4 grid, with three " generations " of matter, each containing a quark with charge +⅔, a quark with charge -⅓, a lepton with charge -1, and a neutrino with charge 0.  The first generation contains the familiar up and down quarks, which make protons and neutrons, the electron, and the electron neutrino.  Each succeeding generation of matter is more massive than the one before, and only the first generation of particles occurs naturally on Earth; the others have only been created and identified in particle accelerator experiments (although they also arguably exist in various extreme places around the universe; for example, the strange quark is suspected to be a component of the denser parts of neutron stars).
Quarks were initially proposed by Murray Gell-Mann to simplify the " particle zoo " that physicists were discovering.  He found that the twenty-five or so mesons and hadrons that were known at that time could be organized into what he called the " eightfold way " by just three properties: spin , charge, and what he called " strangeness ".  He proposed that three quarks (and their corresponding antiquarks) governed these properties.  His chart had an empty space for what he called the omega baryon , and when a particle of the properties he predicted (including its mass) was discovered, his model received a lot of support.  The quark model was eventually extended to include six quarks, and as with the eightfold way, one of the lines of evidence in favor of what became known as the Standard Model is that it predicted the existence and masses of several particles, which have since been confirmed; the top quark 's mass was predicted in 1973, and experimentally verified in 1995, for example, and on the gauge boson side of the chart, the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012.
In this comic strip, sandwiches (lettuce, cheese, tomato, and possibly other fillings, surrounded by bread) and turtles (an aquatic reptile which wears an armored shell) are likewise proposed to not be "elementary" entities, but in fact combinations of 4 elementary parts, namely bread, fillings, reptile, and shell.  The narrator's lab is looking for the hypothesized "bread-shelled turtle" and "shell-coated sandwich".  In fiction, turtles' shells are often depicted as articles of clothing which they can remove at will, but in the real world, the shell is a part of the turtle's skeleton, so unless the narrator's lab is willing to commit extremely invasive surgery, they will never find a bread-shelled turtle, although they could much more easily take the shell of a dead turtle and put some sandwich fillings inside.
The failure to detect the bread-shelled turtle could be taken as evidence that the turtle-sandwich standard model is flawed -- perhaps turtles and sandwiches are elementary entities, or perhaps the elementary entities that make them are much smaller than is proposed here.  There is also the small matter that there are things besides sandwiches and turtles in the universe [ citation needed ] .  Alternatively, it could be taken as evidence that the bread-shelled turtle has an extremely high energy, and so does not exist under typical conditions of our universe.  This might be analogous to magnetic monopoles ; we would know one if and when we saw one (and many experiments have sought them out), and we believe we know how they would behave, but no such particle has ever been verifiably detected or created.
In the same vein, the lack of observation could be due to the instability of the arrangements. Turtleshell-turtle assemblies can last for more than 100 years, while bread-filling assemblies are indefinitely stable under sufficiently low energies . The two other arrangements may simply be formed rarely, and have a relatively short half-life.
The title text introduces more particle physics jargon, proposing that the "top and bottom" parts of the bread and/or shell have distinct " flavors ", and that there may be "strange" and "charm" variants as well (a reference to the higher-generation quarks -- strange and charm in the second generation, and top and bottom in the third).
Unlike the turtle-sandwich standard model, there are no particles predicted by our Standard Model that have not yet been detected; however, there are several gaps between the pure Standard Model and what we observe in reality, most notably the existence of gravity and the apparent asymmetry between the amounts of matter and antimatter in the universe.  For this reason, the Standard Model is generally considered to be somehow incomplete.
[A two-by-two grid, with a piece of bread next to the top left cell; a turtle shell next to the bottom left cell; lettuce, cheese, and tomato above the top left cell; and an turtle head enclosed in a circle above the top right cell.]
[Top left cell: an image of a sandwich.]
✔ CONFIRMED
[Top right cell: an image of a shell-less turtle sandwiched between two slices of bread.]
(?)
[Bottom left cell: an image of a turtle shell housing lettuce, cheese, and tomato - the contents of a sandwich.]
(?)
[Bottom right cell: an image of a turtle.]
✔ CONFIRMED
[Caption below the panel]
Our lab is working to detect the two missing pieces of the turtle-sandwich standard model.


2020 Google Trends

Explanation:
This comic is another comic in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Randall wants to go back in time to show a 2019 person a Google Trends graph , showing massive spikes in a group of search terms, all around the same time. Some of the terms (flour, webcam, sewing machine) had fairly steady popularity, then rapidly jumped higher.  Others (pangolin, Andrew Cuomo) were barely searched for at all until they suddenly became items of intense interest.  The joke is that, without context, it would be impossible to guess what caused these simultaneous spikes, and the pattern would seem completely random. A person might guess that there was a single event that drove all of these searches, but it would be difficult to speculate what that might be.
All of these trends are presumably due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The title text is a possible "guess" by the 2019 person for these search terms having an increase together: a YouTube craze of exotic animals (which includes pangolins) in homemade aprons (possibly made with the help of sewing machines) hosting baking shows which leads to a response by New York governor Andrew Cuomo. This is not correct. [ citation needed ]
A recent prior comic that touches on the past's possible views on the present situation from limited information was 2280: 2010 and 2020 .  In that case, the relative costs of cryptocurrency and hygiene supplies was considered unremarkable by a 2010 person because (unbeknownst to him) the price of both had skyrocketed.
[A line chart plotting the popularity of various search terms from May 2019 through April 2020: sewing machine (blue line), webcam (red), Andrew Cuomo (yellow), flour (green), and pangolin (purple). The yellow line starts at the bottom of the chart and rises about halfway up at the end of March 2020 before decaying to about 20% by the end of April. The purple line starts at the bottom of the chart and has a small lump in February 2020 and a slightly bigger lump in March 2020 before trending back down. The blue line starts at about 10% up the chart and then spikes up to 50% at the beginning of April before decaying to 40% at the end of April. The red line starts at about 20% up the chart, has a small lump in September 2019, and then jumps up to 40% in March 2020 before trending back down. The green line starts at about 30% up the chart, has a small lump in December 2019, and then spikes up to the top of the chart at the end of March 2020.]
[Caption below comic:] I want to show someone from 2019 this Google Trends graph and watch them try to guess what happened in 2020.


Error Types

Explanation:
This comic is another comic in a series of comics related to the 2020 pandemic of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 , which causes COVID-19 .
The comic is inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, as there is a lot of medical testing for the disease being done, including detection of the virus itself, usually by qPCR, or of antibodies present in people who have had the disease (sometimes unknowingly). The quality of these tests is often mediocre and never perfect, leading to discussion of different types of errors that can occur, including "false positives" (calling presence of the virus/antibodies when they are not really there) or false negatives (failing to see the virus/antibodies which are present).
The comic is riffing on Type I and type II errors , also known as "false positive" and "false negative", respectively. The first two rows of the comic's table are correct definitions for established terms in statistics. Further rows contain suggestions for new terminology.

[A list with nine entries. The left side has 9 types of errors numbered with Roman numerals. The right side has a description of each type of error:] Type I Error: False positive Type II Error: False negative Type III Error: True positive for incorrect reasons Type IV Error: True negative for incorrect reasons Type V Error: Incorrect result which leads you to a correct conclusion due to unrelated errors Type VI Error: Correct result which you interpret wrong Type VII Error: Incorrect result which produces a cool graph Type VIII Error: Incorrect result which sparks further research and the development of new tools which reveal the flaw in the original results while producing novel correct results Type IX Error: The Rise of Skywalker


Preprint

Explanation:
This comic is about how media reports non- peer-reviewed research papers. The newscaster depicted is attempting to report breaking news based on information in a study; however, the study in question has not been formally published. This leads to uncertainty on the part of either the newscaster, Blondie , or her scriptwriters as they try to determine how to refer to this study, represented here by alternative introduction lines being scribbled out.
Randall suggests that, instead of explaining that the paper was in preprint , or unpublished or submitted to a preprint server and not peer-reviewed, the newscaster could simply say it was a PDF . PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format for documents developed by Adobe to be used independent of application software, hardware and operating systems.
Randall proceeds to lists several benefits of using "PDF":
The title text makes fun of what is incorrectly believed to be the official name of PDF; it is now an open international standard (ISO 32000-1), and the only PDF files that are "Adobe Acrobat files" or "Adobe PDF" files are those created using Adobe Systems' software. Further, Adobe does not use the ® designation in conjunction with PDF. (See Adobe Trademark Guidelines, 1 Nov. 2014 ) Adobe trademark guidelines were also made fun of here .
Since so many applications can create and even edit PDF files, implying a connection with Adobe every time someone talks about one is preposterous, and one could sarcastically pronounce the registered trademark symbol to show contempt for the fact that it is a registered trademark.
This comic was possibly produced in response to the preprint study "COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California" , Bendavid et al, which was posted online in mid-April 2020 before peer review. The authors of the paper went on a media blitz immediately after posting it, appearing on major cable news networks and writing editorials in major publications, claiming that their results show that COVID-19 is not nearly as bad as thought and that most people are already immune to it. Other scientists have pointed out that, if the very high false-positive rate of the test used and the sample bias of their methodology (testing only people who self-report as sick) are properly considered in the analysis, the data collected is such poor quality as to be meaningless, with properly applied error bars on the number of actual cases in the general population extending below 0. Nonetheless, many less-scientifically-literate politicians, media figures, and protest groups continue to use the much-criticized study as proof that COVID-19 should not be considered an emergency, and that quarantine measures should be cancelled. As of May 11 2020, the study has still not passed peer review, nor undergone any revisions since the first posting.
[Blondie as a newscaster is sitting at a desk.  To the right is a screen with text, the bottom word is a thin line making the letters white. Just above her head is what she says as her opening line for her news story. But above this text, is more text which have been grayed out and scribbled over. This are three other alternative opening lines which she did not use, indicating revisions to her script.] Blondie [gray and scribbled out]: According to a new preprint… Blondie [gray and scribbled out]: …An unpublished study… Blondie [gray and scribbled out]: According to a new paper uploaded to a preprint server but which has not undergone peer review… Blondie: According to a new PDF…
Inset graphic: Breaking news
[Beneath the panel is a long caption consisting of an underlined headline with three bulleted points beneath it:] Benefits of just saying "a PDF": Avoids implications about publication status Immediately raises questions about author(s) Still implies "this document was probably prepared by a professional, because no normal human trying to communicate in 2020 would choose this ridiculous format."


Coronavirus Polling

Explanation:
This comic is another comic in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
The comic compares opinion polling of COVID-19 related topics to polling of other, mostly unrelated topics. The American public often tends to be sharply divided about major political and social issues, but polling shows that the country is remarkably united about the dangers posed by the COVID-19 and the measures necessary to prevent its spread.  This is notable, because responses to this pandemic have significant political and economic implications, which usually results in major division and distrust. The poll results also contradict the extensive news coverage of notable anti-lockdown protests prominent in many major cities; by implication, this comic is arguing that such protests are unrepresentative and disproportionately covered. Or else that this vocal and demonstrative minority is almost the only group making their opinion public in such a newsworthy manner.
To put these majority opinions in perspective, polls on other topics are shown with similar but slightly smaller high percentages of likemindedness but on extremely uncontroversial questions [ citation needed ] such as liking apple pie or Tom Hanks, or the importance of elections to democracy.
The title text refers to the chapter "How To Win an Election" in Munroe's book How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems , in which a similar set of near-unanimous survey questions are shown for prospecting candidates to support, or, alternately, oppose, thus guaranteeing their popularity or lack thereof.  To see what this politician's speeches might have looked like, we can look at FiveThirtyEight's "perfect stump speeches" that espouse only opinions held by a majority of Republicans or Democrats .
The polls cited in this comic are all linked at http://xkcd.com/2305/sources .

[A panel only with text. At the top there is three paragraphs of explanatory text. Below that is a paragraph in smaller gray font with link to sources. Below that there are two columns of poll results, each with a heading. There are six polls in the left and seven polls in the right column. Instead of a bulleted list, each poll has its percent that agrees given to the left of the statement, which is thus aligned to the right of this percentage. At the end of each statement there is a reference in brackets in gray font.] It's hard to get people to agree on anything in polls. But we agree about the coronavirus. Here's how Americans feel about COVID-19, along with other topics that get similar levels of agreement for comparison. Compiled with help from HuffPost polling editor Ariel Edwards-Levy. Sources: xkcd.com/2305/sources
[Left column:] Recent coronavirus polls 86% say "stay-at-home orders are responsible government policies that are saving lives" rather than "an over-reaction" (ABC/Ipsos) 85% oppose reopening schools (NPR/Marist) 91% oppose resuming big sporting events (NPR/M.) 85% trust local health officials and health care workers (Axios/Ipsos) 93% are trying to maintain 6-foot distances while in public (Axios/Ipsos) 81% say Americans should continue to social distance for as long as is needed to stop the Coronavirus even if it means continued damage to the economy (Politico/Morning Consult)
[Right column:] Other polls 81% enjoy apple pie (HuffPost/YouGov) 76% feel positively about kittens (HuffPost/YouGov) 84% have a favorable impression of Tom Hanks (Ipsos 2018) 89% say fair elections are important to democracy (Pew) 86% feel positively toward Betty White (Ipsos 2011) 86% do not trust Kim Jong-Un to do the right thing (Pew 2019) 64% are concerned about the emergence of "murder hornets" (YouGov)


Common Cold

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
This comic with talking viruses was followed by a comic debating if viruses are Alive Or Not ?
Many of the measures humans have undertaken to fight SARS-CoV-2, such as careful hand-washing and sanitizing of frequently-touched surfaces, are effective against most pathogens. Hence, one of the ironic silver linings of the coronavirus pandemic is that the aggressive implementation of these measures is likely to slow the spread, not only of SARS-CoV-2 but of many common illnesses. If these measures become long-term social expectations, they may improve public health long after the current pandemic has passed.
Hand-washing with soap is a particularly effective way to disable coronaviruses and influenza viruses, which have a viral envelope .
Most common colds are caused by a rhinovirus , a non-encapsulated virus that is not as sensitive to soap. Nonetheless, proper and frequent hand-washing appears to reduce the spread of most viruses, by removing biological residue which harbors the virus. Hence, more aggressive hygiene is likely to have at least some impact on most easily transmissible diseases.
In this strip, Randall addresses the matter from the point of view of viruses. Specifically, those that cause the common cold , imagining them as sentient entities, with spreading infection as their conscious goal. Much like in 2287: Pathogen Resistance , the humor comes from the perspective flip, where health measures intend to protect us are seen by the pathogens as terrifying attacks. In this strip, the cold viruses become aware that more aggressive hygiene measures are putting them at risk, and hope to negotiate with humanity, on the grounds that, unlike SARS-CoV-2, they are rarely fatal. Their hope seems to be that, once the current pandemic is brought under control, humanity will abandon these measures, and allow them to freely spread, once again.
Cueball's adamant refusal likely reflects Randall's hope that this pandemic will result in lasting changes, slowing the spread of all diseases, including those which are merely very unpleasant, as opposed to actually fatal. By treating this as a conscious battle, people may be more inclined to be vigilant, and not allow the enemy any opportunity to recover.
While colds are unlikely to kill otherwise healthy humans, they still cause symptoms that can be painful, even debilitating, in the short term. Previous strips made reference to the miserable nature of the disease.  In December 2015, Randall released both 1612: Colds and 1618: Cold Medicine .
The what if? book previously dealt with the plausibility of eliminating the common cold through aggressive physical distancing alone. The section in that book concluded that total elimination would be impractical. However, the current situation suggests that minimizing the spread of disease by careful hygiene measures is realistic.
In the title text, Randall mentions a virus with the name metapneumovirus . He states that this is easily the common cold virus with the coolest name. But that does not mean it warrants our sympathy (as it is present in up to 40% of colds, and can be deadly in vulnerable populations). And he finishes by stating that "Colds suck. No mercy." So Randall would not be sorry to see the common cold eliminated, or at least substantially contained, by our coronavirus precautions.
[Three large viruses hang in the air in front of Cueball. The one closest to Cueball looks a bit like the virus causing the corona pandemic, although it is made clear it is not this type of virus. The other two are put together in small circles. The one behind the corona-like virus has 7 small circles, four in a group, one above and two below. The other has three circles. They are not so closely knit together, and may instead represent three smaller viruses rather than one large. The corona type virus addresses Cueball with a starburst above it indicating it speaks the lines above.] Corona-like virus: Hi there! We're the viruses that cause the common cold. Corona-like virus: This handwashing... Corona-like virus: It stops when this is all over, right?
[Same setting in a slimmer panel.] Corona-like virus: It's just, it's making things really hard for us, too. Corona-like virus: Maybe we could make a deal?
[Same setting in a frame-less panel. The large virus also speaks as indicated with a starburst above it.] Large virus: We won't kill you! Large virus: We just want to get back in your throat and make you feel gross now and then. Corona-like virus: Show us some mercy?
[Zoom in on Cueball, beat panel.]
[In the close-up of Cueball, he lifts his hand up, which has been balled into a fist. He is emphatic in his reply.] Cueball: No.


Alive Or Not

Explanation:
There is no universally-accepted definition of " life "; all definitions thus far proposed have either excluded some things commonly understood to be alive or included some things commonly understood to not be alive. Take reproduction, a trait commonly assumed to be essential and unique to life; by this definition, anything which cannot reproduce (including mules , worker bees , and postmenopausal women) would be considered nonliving, while anything which can duplicate itself (including computer viruses , advanced 3D printers , and fire —see below) would be considered alive.
Many more elaborate definitions of life have been attempted over the decades.  Some common additional factors include:
Despite all of this, the only definite definition of "life" is "something everyone agrees is alive". This comic attempts to rank several types of things by how likely people are to perceive them as "alive". As there is a debate as to whether viruses are alive or not, Randall has taken a side, and may spark debate, by putting viruses above the alive line.
Given that this comic was released during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, viruses are for sure on Randall's mind, given that most comics more than a month before this one was about COVID-19. And this comic is most likely inspired by this, and the previous comic 2306: Common Cold , where the cold viruses are definitely alive, and afraid.
Interestingly, the vertical line linking the categories extends beyond both the most-alive and least-alive things, making one wonder what Randall might think is more alive than "normal animals" or less alive than "regular rocks". In the latter direction an explanation might be that shortly before this comic the scientific press wrote about heat-resistant bacteria that live in the desert and slowly eat regular rocks generating their own water in this process making even the sand in the desert partially alive.
[A chart consisting of vertical line, with 14 dots and a horizontal dashed dividing line drawn across the list a bit below the middle. Each dot has a label to the right of the line with a line pointing to the dot they belong to. Above and below the dividing line is a label with a broad arrow pointing up above and down below.] Up arrow: Alive Down arrow: Not alive
[Dot labels from top to bottom above the dashed line:] Animals (Normal) Animals (Weird ones like jellyfish and coral) Fungi Plants Slime molds Bacteria Archea Viruses
[Dot labels from top to bottom below the dashed line:] Prions Fire Clouds Fossils Rocks shaped like faces Regular rocks


Mount St. Helens

Explanation:
This comic marks the 40 year anniversary of the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens that killed 57 people. It was a Monday so a normal release day could be used to mark this event.
It shows a graph of the height of the mountains in the state of Washington as a function of time over the last 100 years. The only mountain to change its height significantly over this time period is Mount St. Helens , which the comic is named after. It is also the only black line as all other (30?) lines are gray.
Mount St. Helens is a volcano that famously and explosively erupted in 1980. Millions of tons of earth were blasted from one face of the mountain all over the surrounding countryside.  After it was over, the peak of Mount St. Helens was no longer the 5th highest in the state of Washington , having lost approximately 1,300 feet (400 m) in height (from 9,677 ft (2,950 m) pre-explosion to 8,363 ft (2,549 m) post-explosion).
The comic shows a rare event that had major effect and was predictable in hindsight, but would have surprised an observer that is just tracking the height of Mt. St. Helens in a non-representative timeframe. Such an event is called a Gray Rhino event.
Currently, the 5 highest mountain peaks in Washington State are Mount Rainier (at 14,411 ft or 4,392 m), Mount Adams , Mount Baker , Glacier Peak , and Bonanza Peak . As shown in the comic, Mount St. Helens was the 5th highest, but now has fallen to #35 (using a topographic prominence cut-off of 500 m (1640 feet)). Only mountains above 8,000 feet (2,438 m) are included, with the graph topping at 15,000 feet (4,572 m), 600 feet (182 m) above the highest mountain. There are 92 peaks above 8000 feet in the state, so not all are included and the lines are not really distinct below 9000 feet. Seems like there are less than 30 lines drawn. Of course it says Mountains not Mountain peaks, but there are only four mountain ranges in Washington with peaks above 8000, so he must mean peaks!
Technically, the other mountains may be fluctuating in height as well, due to erosion or the movement of Earth's tectonic plates, but this phenomenon should not be visible on the time-scale and vertical resolution that Randall has plotted.  Precision GPS measurements of various peaks in Washington have only been available since 2010, and it's likely that the primarily volcanic mountains of Washington experience significant but comparatively slight variations throughout the year due to snowfall, melt, or the pressure of swelling magma inside volcanic cores.  These changes go largely unmeasured, while the mountains continue to appear equally physically unchanging and imposing both in person and from a distance.
Source: Seattle Times . So while the comic does appear to show some slight fluctuations in height for mountains, that is more likely a side-effect of the comic's free-hand drawing style than an accurate reflection of any real fluctuations.
The title text is a play on the term "peak" meaning both the highest point of a mountain and also the optimal, most famous or most impressive stage of a trend; for instance: "The band Rolling Stones really peaked in the 80s."
[Caption above graph:] Heights of mountains in Washington State Over time
[A graph is shown with close to 30 horizontal gray lines which seem not to change much, if any, as they go from left to right. Only the top 6 gray lines are distinctly separated from others. The top line is way above the second line which again is far above the next two that are close together. Two more close together is somewhat further down, and just below them the rest of the lines follow in close proximity down to the bottom of the graph. A single black line is also shown. It begins as the fifth highest line, just above the two last mentioned above. It, like all other lines, goes horizontally, but only three fifths of the way across the graph – then it immediately drops down well below most of the other lines (at 1980) and levels off, continuing on its horizontal path. There is a caption above the graph, and both Y-axis and X-axis has labels. For the Y-axis there is a tick for every label, for the X-axis only every 2nd tick has a label. A unit is given on the top label on the Y-axis.]
[X-axis:] 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020
[Y-axis:] 15,000 feet 14,000 13,000 12,000 11,000 10,000 9,000 8,000


X

Explanation:
Cueball has developed a new programming language with novel syntax. Such languages are usually classified as esoteric languages — programming languages developed for no practical use other than novelty, challenge, or academic interest, and which are difficult to understand or work with (although that doesn't stop people from trying to use them). Some classic examples of these are INTERCAL and brainfuck .
Normally, there is no law against developing bad programming languages or bad code (although some would argue there should be). The law often has to play catch-up with technology. However, as when the EPA took an interest in Cueball's Laptop Issues , and Cueball's other tech support problems , it seems that a judge has previously ordered Cueball to stop developing new programming languages, possibly because the result was so egregious as to cause real harm.  However, the ruling was overturned on appeal, and Cueball is free to inflict his work on the world once again, unless and until there is another appeal.  Cueball's use of the phrase " higher court" suggests that he has not gotten a ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States or whatever state has jurisdiction over him, or else he would have said so, and evidently the offscreen voices hope to appeal to them and get Cueball's injunction reinstated.
A variable is a piece of data (such as an integer or a string of text) whose value can change over the run of a program. Variables are identified by name and can usually be named any string of alphanumeric characters. To make code easier for a human to follow, variables are usually given a name that indicates what the variable is for; for example, a variable counting how many seconds have passed since the program was launched might be called elapsedTime .
The overall concept of a variable is usually first taught in Algebra , where the most basic nondescript name for a variable is x . When first learning or teaching programming, it's not unheard of for sample variables in practice problems to be named "x". However, outside of a controlled learning environment calling any variable "x" is considered bad coding practice, because anyone reading the code will not immediately understand what the variable does unless they are familiar with it. Even the original programmer may come back to it and find that they have forgotten what the variable was for.
Here, Cueball is developing a language where all variables are named X - and the only way to differentiate different Xs is to write it in different typefaces. Needless to say, this is a terrible idea. The language would be a nightmare to program in, as all of the variables would look very similar unless careful attention is being paid, and there would be little to no way to determine what each one does, since font names are typically not very descriptive. Additionally, the fact that some fonts look similar (such as Arial and Helvetica) would require the programmer to have an intricate knowledge of different fonts and how to distinguish them from only one letter.
Such a language would also require the source code files to be in some rich text format such as a Word document, in order to store the font information. Additionally, it would also require the use of a word processor or similar in order to edit the code. Programs would also run into difficulties if the system does not have the required fonts installed, or if the font is not licensed for them to use.
By contrast, normal code is always written in plain text (usually with ASCII or UTF-8 encoding), which does not specify a typeface and can be edited by even the most basic of text editors.
This comic may also be a jab at mathematicians, who by convention use variable names which are short and nondescript (e.g. "x"), and which can also be "typeface sensitive" - for example, ℕ denotes the set of natural numbers, and it is not uncommon to see the definition of a limit as "For every ℇ>0 there exists N in ℕ such that for every n in ℕ, if n>N, |f(n)-l|<ℇ". Or for example, ℜ may denote the real part of a complex number, whereas ℝ denotes the set of real numbers, and R might denote the radius of some circle in the complex plane.
The title text references the fact that most code editors use a monospaced font (i.e., one where every character is the same width), as opposed to variable-width fonts, in which some characters like 'I' are narrower than others. This is partly because fixed horizontal alignment is sometimes useful when dealing with certain text strings.
'Variable-width variables', a pun on two meanings of the word 'variable', refers to the fact that the letter X, like all letters, has different widths in different fonts. This would make this fixed alignment almost impossible, thus creating yet another reason why Cueball's language would be highly unpleasant to use. It likely also directly (mis)refers to systems such as variable-width encoding in which the data linked to in a variable storage is packed into an unfixed number of bits and/or bytes. Such systems often use Huffman-type encoding to progressively differentiate, from the initial elements, how many more elements are needed to fully define the value, but a reserved deliminating value marking the end of a cumulative arbitrary-length array might be considered another form.
[Cueball holds a laptop with code visible on the screen.] Cueball: I've developed a new programming language! Offpanel voice: Didn't a judge order you to stop doing that?
[In a frameless panel, Cueball holds the laptop with one hand and types on the keyboard.] Cueball: Higher court threw out the ruling! Cueball: I'm back, suckers! Offpanel voice: Dammit.
[Cueball holds the folded down laptop at his side.] Cueball: But I promise it's good this time! Cueball: Just normal code. Good clean syntax. Nothing weird. Offpanel voice: Okay...
[Cueball holds the laptop at his side, and raises a finger on his other hand.] Cueball: Except the only variable name is "X". To refer to different variables you have to write "X" in different fonts. Offpanel voice: I'm calling the court. Another offpanel voice: Maybe we can appeal.


Great Attractor

Explanation:
Cueball comments on the fact that as summer approaches, the sun rises earlier and sets later, a common topic of conversation, especially to complain that it is still light at times of day where you are used to it being dark out. Beret Guy comments that he fell off of the wall this morning, a seemingly unconnected topic.
People will often complain about falling out of bed as an indicator of having slept badly. The later sunset is often linked to worsened sleep . However, Beret Guy didn't fall from the bed, he fell from the wall. While being able to figure out he's talking about his worsened sleep, Cueball is understandably confused, so Beret Guy clarifies.
Beret Guy is strongly affected by the Great Attractor , a large gravitational anomaly that influences the galaxies near it, but is difficult to observe directly. Beret Guy claims that the Great Attractor pulls on him unusually hard, which could be another one of his strange powers . This attraction, while not overpowering the gravity of the Earth, (he states in the title text that he can "Jump extra high" when it is above him) affects his life greatly.
For Beret Guy his attraction to the Great Attractor means that, at various times, like now, he can lie on the vertical surface of any wall (external or internal) that is currently oriented in a fortuitous direction (i.e. facing north). He fell off the wall this morning due the Great Attractor being below him during daylight hours and on the horizon during night hours. Thus, Beret Guy's complaint in the first panel comes across as an attempted solidarity with Cueball's complaint; he was still asleep when the Great Attractor moved to below him, causing him to fall off the wall and presumably awaken him. The Great Attractor reaches the same apparent location once in a stellar day which is about four minutes shorter than the solar day. This means Beret Guy would only be able to sleep on walls for certain part of the year, as the time of day when the Great Attractor is near the horizon would occur 4 minutes earlier each day.
He gives a short explanation of which Attractor he refers to (the space one) and why the Great Attractor affects him. According to his doctors it is apparently caused by the motion of galaxies and how many dimensions his bones have. Since having fewer than 3 spatial dimensions may lead to trouble, his bones may be existing in more dimensions than our normal 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time. Galactic motions normally have no significant effect on a person with 3-D bones. [ citation needed ]
Beret Guy then says that day-sliding season is near, due to the Great Attractor being at the horizon in the day, and offers to run errands for Cueball in the South, implying that he will be pulled towards the south during day-sliding season, and can run much faster in that direction.
Beret Guy is not standing straight up during this comic, he has one knee slightly bent towards Cueball in the first two panels. This is because it is evening (8:00 PM as Cueball states) and the Great Attractor is now coming near the horizon, where it will be during the night. So Beret Guy will be pulled towards the south, behind him in the comic, and thus leans away from the pull. In the final panel, when he leaves Cueball, moving right towards south and into the pull, he can be seen sliding along the ground without walking. He leans a bit back to not stumble forward. His last sentence also indicates that he either speeds up or that he is a little uncertain on his feet altering his voice.
He mentions that at the moment during day-time the Great Attractor is beneath him so he can stand straight. He then just feels a little heavier (he will thus weigh more than another person with the same mass).
In the title text he says he liked living in the south because the Great Attractor was often above him, meaning he could jump higher with the help of its pull (and would weigh less than a normal person with same mass). Since he could jump, the force is clearly weaker than Earth's gravity, but still enough for him to easily slide over the ground when it is near the horizon. So he could likely win some high-jump or long-jump competitions if he chose the right time and place.
Being Beret Guy, he is never really unhappy, so he states that he also likes it here (in the north). But then he continues to comment on how easy it will be for him to get to the south. Because if he entirely stopped bracing himself against the pull by crouching into a more spherical shape, and just waited for the Great Attractor to get near the horizon again, then the pull would cause him to start rolling over the ground to some place with lower net gravitational potential, i.e. further south, where the Great Attractor will be more directly over his head. In practice travelling any extended distance, let alone thousands of kilometers, by rolling would likely result in unpleasant bruising and be generally a bad idea. [ citation needed ]
A prior example of an xkcd character with alternate gravitational susceptibility is 417: The Man Who Fell Sideways , where a consistent off-vertical pull somehow applies (rather than one linked to a spot on the stellar sphere). In 1376: Jump Cueball floats sideways across the ground a bit above Earth, in a similar idea to being pulled sideways.
See also these other fictional examples of 'personalized' gravitational susceptibilities .
Beret Guy has previously been interested in strange attracting forces in the universe, in 502: Dark Flow , where he hoped it was his mom and wished she would pull on him. It was though not about the Great Attractor, and the force did not clearly affect him, although his love for his mom did affect two space probes, as mentioned in the title text.
This comic came out just a bit more than a month before the next comic with one of Beret Guy's strange powers, 2325: Endorheic Basin . Which is interesting since the previous comic with such a power came back in November 2017, 1922: Interferometry , more than 2.5 years before this one. Also in the Endorheic Basin comic strange forces exerted a pull on Beret Guy, although in that it was he who attracted water, where here it was himself that was most affected.
Some of the humor of the comic has to do with the immense differences in scale between Beret Guy and the Great Attractor.
In very round numbers our own Milky Way galaxy is 150,000 - 200,000 light years across.  It is just one of several galaxies in something called the Local Group , which is around 10,000,000 light years across.  And the Local Group is itself in something called the Local Supercluster (also called the Virgo Supercluster), around 110,000,000 light years across.  Each galaxy, each group, and each supercluster is not just a chance alignment, but is a gravitational coherent structure. And all this is just yet a part of the even larger Laniakea Supercluster in which also the Great Attractor is located, along with more than 100,000 other galaxies, in a region of space spanning more than 500 million light years.
Something unpredictable (hence "anomalous") is going on with the galaxies in the Local Supercluster (including our own).  These galaxies are indeed accelerating away from one another as seen by their red shift. Hubble's Law predicts the expansion should be uniformly proportional to their distance from Earth and from one another.  But for the Local Supercluster something is restricting the expansion.  That something is, as "viewed" from Earth, somewhere in the direction of the Southern Triangle constellation but 250,000,000 light years distant, and has (but only since 1988) been termed the Great Attractor.  The Great Attractor can't conveniently be seen at visible wavelengths, because that direction is the so-called Zone of Avoidance : the area of the night sky obscured by our own Milky Way.
Boiling this all down: something a quarter of a billion light years away that makes an anomalous blip in the local rate of expansion of the universe, and whose existence astronomers deduce only by X-ray observations of stellar red-shift, has large-scale effects on everyday gravitational forces uniquely experienced by Beret Guy.  OK, now you can smile.
[Cueball and Beret Guy stand next to each other, talking. Beret Guy leans towards Cueball by bending down one knee.] Cueball: I can't believe it's still light out. It's 8:00 PM! Beret Guy: Seriously! This morning I fell off the wall.
[In a frame-less panel with the same setting Beret Guy is looking and pointing to the right.] Cueball: Wait, why were you sleeping on the wall? Beret Guy: The Great Attractor is near the horizon at night right now.
[Zoom in on Beret Guy, who hold one hand palm up towards Cueball who is speaking to him off-panel.] Cueball (off-panel): The Great Attractor? Beret Guy: Yeah! The space one. Beret Guy: It pulls on me extra hard. Doctors said it's something to do with galactic motion and how many dimensions my bones have.
[Cueball is still standing as Beret Guy slides away to the right, while looking and leaning back towards Cueball. He holds his arms slightly out, to keep his balance. Lines behind him and at his feet indicates his motion, even if he is clearly not walking. In his last word the letters becomes italic after Good and the last three Ts becomes smaller and smaller than the previous letters.] Beret Guy: This time of year, it's below us all day, so I stand vertically. But day-sliding season is near! Beret Guy: Let me know if you have any errands to run to the south! Beret Guy: Good niiight t t


Confidence Interval

Explanation:
This is another one of Randall's Tips , this time a Science Tip .  This is the second time that a category of tips (with the first being " Protip ") has been re-used.
Graphs of continuous functions' predicted values often show confidence intervals , a region (either shaded or marked with dotted lines, the latter used here) that indicates the margin of error for the prediction at any point. The joke in this comic is that the estimate has so much uncertainty that the confidence interval extends off the top and bottom of the chart, which in a real report would usually prevent it from being printed and require a re-scaled chart to show it (if not declined altogether, as data with such wide variance might be deemed useless).  This may be a tip as if it's outside the printable area, it won't be seen by anyone who reads it, and thus they won't realize how bad your model is, though this is more of a tip in how to trick people into falsely thinking you've shown a good result with your work than it is a tip in presenting an actual legitimate useful scientific result.
In the title text, a millisigma would be an error of +/- 1/1000th of a standard deviation .  Statistical error and uncertainty is typically measured by standard deviation , which is written in formulas with the Greek letter sigma , and is also frequently referred to by the word "sigma."  Measurements of sample means, one of the most common experimentally determined variables, will tend to follow a normal distribution , such that 68 percent of members of the population will fall within one sigma (plus or minus) of the mean value, 95 percent within two sigma, and 99.7 percent within three sigma.  Any of these intervals may be usefully reported as the confidence interval, so long as it's made clear to the reader, but two- or three-sigma are sufficient for most applications.  However, this graph shows data of such poor quality (or such poorly-chosen y -axis bounds) that even the millisigma confidence interval (0.08% of the population -- not often used in science, but occasionally found in e.g. molecular analysis tools ) does not fit on the graph.  Variations in the curve that are small compared to the error bar typically can't be distinguished from errors. Therefore, the shape of the curve - and the entire graph in this example - is meaningless.
[A graph is shown in the middle of the panel. There is a square frame around it. The graph has two unlabeled axes with ticks along both axes.  The axes end in arrows. A solid line graph is shown. It begins around the middle of the Y axis, goes up and flattens twice before falling down towards the right. Far above and just below the frame around the graph are two gray dotted lines. They do not follow the same path as the solid line inside the frame, but do follow the same general trend. Below the graph, but inside the frame, is a caption:] Fig. 2: Predicted Curve
[Caption below the panel:] Science tip: If your model is bad enough, the confidence intervals will fall outside the printable area.


mbmbam

Explanation:
In part, this comic is an homage to the referenced podcast, My Brother, My Brother, and Me , which often features rapid garden-path conversations and puns and double entendres that are at once groan-worthy and delightfully witty. "MBMBAM" is an acryonym of " M y B rother, M y B rother, A nd M e".
The millibar is a metric unit of pressure (force per unit area), equal to a thousandth of a bar , or 100 Pa .  It is slightly less than one-thousandth of sea-level atmospheric pressure on Earth (a standard atmosphere is 1013.25 millibar).
The millibarn is a metric unit of area, equal to a thousandth of a barn (a humorously-named unit approximately equal to the cross-sectional area of a uranium nucleus), or 10^-31 m^2 or 10^-27 cm^2. Both units would theoretically have the symbol mb . Hence mbmb (the pressure unit multiplied by the area unit) would be a unit of force. This can be seen by applying dimensional analysis; pressure x area = (force/area) x area = force.  Nobody in the comic strip discusses the magnitude of this force, but it would be 100 Pa x 10^-31 m^2 = 10^-29 newtons = 10^-24 dynes, or about the weight of an electron under Earth's gravity.
am would be the symbol of an attometer , or 10^-18 meters. Multiply that to create the unit mbmbam , which would be a unit of energy. Specifically, it would be a unit of work: the energy expended to move an object. More dimensional analysis: force x distance = (work/distance) x distance = work. The actual value of 1 mbmbam is correctly calculated in the comic: 100 Pa x 10^-31 m^2 x 10^-18 m = 10^-47 joules = 10^-40 erg. White Hat dubs this unit "one podcast".
The final panel is an extended series of puns: 'rise' referring to physically moving upward as well as biologically growing (expanding and becoming lighter and softer) as yeasts do; 'foam' referring to both quantum foam (the fluctuation of spacetime on very small scales due to quantum mechanics) as well as the foam generated by yeast fermenting; 'unleavened dimensions' punning on the eleven dimensions of spacetime in string theory (actually, ten— M theory says eleven), while continuing to play on the theme of yeast--in this case, the universe is presumably flat because some of its dimensions lack the Planck yeast that would make them rise.
The example used in the comic of lifting a yeast cell 1 Planck length is one of many possible examples of 1 mbmbam of work. (The Planck length , approximately 1.6×10^−35 m or 1.6×10^−33 cm, is how far light travels in one unit of Planck time .) Another interpretation of 1 mbmbam would be the work necessary to pull two socially distancing (6 ft) SARS-CoV-2 virions apart by the thickness of a single strand of hair against the gravity they exert on each other.
The Planck Era (or Planck Epoch ) referenced in the title text is the near infinitesimally short period covering the first 10^-43 s after the Big Bang, when energies were so high that the four fundamental forces were combined into one and ordinary subatomic particles didn't yet exist. It is unlikely there were advice shows during this era [ citation needed ] , so this would likely be a modern nostalgia show for physicists. The title text is also a play on My Brother, My Brother and Me's tagline: An advice show for the modren [sic] era.
[Cueball, Megan, and White Hat are standing next to each other, talking. Megan has her hands raised to the side, in a shrugging gesture.]
Megan: Odd how in physics " mb " is both millibars (pressure) and millibar n s (area). Megan: mbmb could mean millibar-millibarn, which is a unit of force, strangely. White Hat: Units are weird.
[Same scene - Megan is now checking her phone. White Hat is raising his right index finger.]
Cueball: So what's mbmbam , the My-Brother-My-Brother-And Me unit? Megan: Millibar-milliibarn-attometer, I guess? That'd be a unit of energy. 10 -47 Joules. White Hat: "One podcast"
[Same scene in a frameless panel. Megan holds her phone to her side. White Hat has his arms raised to the side, excited.]
Cueball: 10 -47 sounds small. Megan: Yeah, it's roughly the energy you'd need to lift one yeast cell by one Planck length in Earth's gravity. White Hat: Planck yeast!
[Same scene in a regular panel. Megan has put away her phone, and has her right index finger raised. White Hat has his hands balled into fists, frustrated.]
Cueball: Doesn't Planck yeast rise on its own? Megan: Yeah, that's what makes quantum foam. But data suggests our universe is flat. Megan: String theory says it's because spacetime has unleavened dimensions. White Hat: ...I hate you.


Wrong Times Table

Explanation:
A "times table" (or multiplication table ) is a table used to show the products of numbers. Typically, elementary school children are taught to memorize the table of whole numbers up to 10 as part of learning arithmetic.
In this comic Randall supplies his own alternative version of the multiplication table, with entirely incorrect values that nonetheless "feel" reasonably correct to him. It is unclear how his values are derived, as they don't follow a consistent pattern, but it could be that when calculating products, he sometimes has to correct his mental arithmetic, perhaps thinking along such lines as "8*4 is 36... Or, wait, is it 32?". Most of the values are transposed from their correct position (e.g., adding or subtracting one -- or two, or three -- from one or both multiplicands), some are "off by one" (or two, or by a factor of two), and some (mostly in the 1 row and column) could be created by adding, subtracting, or dividing the two factors instead of multiplying them. It is notable that some properties of mathematics are not followed, as sometimes smaller multiplicands multiply to a larger product than larger multiplicands, and sometimes two even multiplicands produce an odd product.
The table is symmetric, indicating that Randall's form of multiplication is commutative .
The title text (referencing Randall's suspicion that 6x7=42 may be wrong) is an allusion to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , in which the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything is said to be forty-two . However, in the book this answer is meaningless without knowing the ultimate question , and so to calculate the ultimate question, a planet-sized computer is constructed. This later becomes Earth, but Earth is destroyed shortly before its calculation is complete. Arthur Dent, one of the last surviving humans, has some white mice (pan-dimensional beings looking like white mice to us) try to get him to give them his brain, so they could attempt to recreate the ultimate question, hoping it may be stored within his brain since he was part of the computer matrix up to just before Earth was destroyed a few days before completing a 10 million year calculation. Arthur refuses, and the mice try to think of some question that makes the answer 42 make sense, like " how many roads must a man walk down ". They also suggest 6x7. Arthur later tries to recreate the question himself by picking letter tiles from a bag, and produces the sentence "What do you get if you multiply six by nine".  This leads him to remark "I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe." Note, however, that operation of said planet-sized computer was disrupted, both by its near-total destruction and by the much earlier crash-landing onto it of the 'B' Ark and its somewhat useless passengers, so it's also possible the universe is okay and only the question was computed incorrectly.  As it happens, 6x9 = 42 in base 13, but Douglas Adams has disclaimed this as being a mere coincidence.  In Randall's table, neither 6x7 nor 6x9 are said to result in 42, but 7x7 is.
If we consider the smaller multiplicand to be a and the larger to be b , then (one of infinitely many possibilities of) the formulas used by Randall are as follows:
The correct multiplication table for the numbers 1-10 is below:
[Caption above table:] Wrong Times Table The incorrect answers that feel most right to me


Carcinization

Explanation:
As Megan is telling Cueball , separate species of animals have evolved into "crab-like" forms at different times. Naturalists who noticed the tendency gave it the name carcinization .
It is a specific form of convergent evolution , where differing families of animals (in this case, nominally across the crustacea ) develop a tendency towards developing a 'crab' bodyplan to a greater degree than their origins would suggest. A similar process has created several varieties of river dolphin with similar adaptations to their environments, despite being 'stranded' offshoots of different forerunner pelagic species.
"True crabs" ( Brachyura ) form just a small subset of the Crustacea subphylum, and the Cancer genus is a subset of that, yet there appears to be something about the bodyplan and even resulting behaviour that has meant a number of species have arisen from alternate areas of the family tree that are now trivially indistinguishable without extensive study.
Carl Linnaeus even initially included all Crustacea under the 'Cancer' genus (using the Latin name for crabs), and his taxonomic classification has been heavily refined as further knowledge has come to light, in order to reveal this phenomenon.
Apparently this principle is much stronger in the webcomic than in real life, as shortly after being told this, Megan notices that Cueball (not a crustacean!) has himself turned into a crab. This isn't really evolution as we know it (outside Pokémon evolution at least), which refers to changes (usually gradual changes, but not always) in a species across generations caused by random mutations. The organisms individually never change [ citation needed ] , they are merely different from their ancestors, and the organisms with changes that make them more fit for their environment are the ones who are more likely to survive long enough to pass down those changes. What happens to Cueball is more like a transformation, but it could still be called 'carcinization', since he becomes crab-like.  The comic strip might be an allusion to Franz Kafka's short story The Metamorphosis (another word used to describe life-forms that dramatically transform themselves, like caterpillars turning into butterflies), which starts with the main character suddenly waking up and finding that he has transformed into a giant bug.
Cueball's sudden transformation is perhaps explained by the title text, that "Nature abhors a vacuum and anything that's not a crab". The text is a reference to Aristotle's Horror vacui , a statement about how empty space tends to be immediately refilled by surrounding things, so vacuums seem to be impossible to maintain. As does "not being a crab", it seems.
Strictly speaking, we don't know for certain that Cueball actually transformed; it could be that he has ducked out of sight and left a crab in his place (or noticed a crab conveniently nearby) to play a prank on Megan.
[Cueball and Megan are walking next to each other towards the left with Megan looking back at Cueball.] Megan: Have you heard of "carcinization"? Megan: The tendency of nature to evolve things into crabs. Cueball: Oh?
[They continue to walk, both of them looking forward.] Megan: Yeah, the basic "crab" design has evolved separately a number of times. Cueball: Evolution just loves making crabs, I guess!
[Narrower panel with only Megan seen walking on while lifting both her arms slightly to each side.] Megan: Apparently!
[Two smaller beat panels are drawn between the previous and next normal sized panels. The first is a bit lower than the top of the normal panels, and is partly lying in over the other small panel, which is below and to the right of the first. The top panel shows Megan continuing to walk along.  The second shows Megan stopping and turning to look back.]
[Megan has turned completely and is looking down at a small crab scuttling along on the ground where Cueball was before.] Megan: Oh no
In January 2020, less than half a year before this comic was released, the Dinosaur Comic also released a comic about Carcinization . This web comic is on Randall's list of Comics I enjoy and was also used in 145: Parody Week: Dinosaur Comics . Another popular webcomic, Questionable Content, had a crab-themed comic the day before this comic was released.
Just a month after the release of this comic, "carcinization" was the Word of the Day in Wiktionary.
This comic was also the inspiration for SCP-6010 , a story about all animal life turning into crabs, set in the SCP Foundation setting. SCP 6010 mentions life turning into crabs o June 1st 2019, the release date for this comic.


Eventual Consistency

Explanation:
Cueball 's employer wants him to continue his work, possibly as a home-based remote worker as encouraged by the common current advice during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic .
The stated task is to "test the database" and "guarantee eventual consistency". Trying to avoid work, Cueball points out that the second law of thermodynamics itself "guarantees eventual consistency", as the universe is guaranteed to eventually die a heat death , at maximum entropy and perfect consistency . His boss responds that in a system that has reached maximum entropy, no work can be performed (as this requires a difference in energy states between two sources).  Cueball claims that he's simply getting a head start on this.
Eventual consistency has a double meaning here.  In computing, many systems are distributed (spread out) across multiple servers, sometimes in very different parts of the world.  When data changes -- like the number of views on a video or the likes on a social media post -- updating it across every server can be a challenge, and it's often not necessary to keep the data perfectly in sync everywhere.  So the system will use eventual consistency instead.  Each individual server will record changes, and after a certain amount of time or a certain amount of change, the results will be synced across the whole network.  At any given moment, an individual server's data will be a little off -- but eventually everything will get recorded correctly.
The title text constitutes another play on the words "heat bath", which can refer to the thermally uniform state of the universe at heat death . However, in this context, we can assume Cueball instead plans to prepare a literal warm bath for his own relaxation and enjoyment after or during (or instead of) his work.
[Cueball sits at a home desk.] Laptop: I know it's hard to focus right now, but we should try to finish testing the DB. Cueball: Ughhhh. Cueball: Okay.
[A frameless panel. Cueball still sitting at his desk. He has his hand on his chin.] Laptop: The system needs to guarantee eventual consistency. Cueball: I mean, it does.
[Closeup of Cueball.] Cueball: Eventual consistency is guaranteed by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Cueball: Sooner or later this will all be a uniform heat bath. Cueball: Maximum entropy.
[Back to Cueball and desk.  Cueball is leaning back in his chair.] Laptop: Maximum entropy means no useful work can be done! Cueball: I'm getting a head start by doing no useful work now .


Hair Growth Rate

Explanation:
This strip is one of the simpler jokes that xkcd has done, being an observation on mathematics, biology, and human expectation. White Hat starts by sharing various facts about hair with Ponytail; hair count, individual hair growth rate, and finally total hair growth rate. Ponytail proceeds to snark about how unpleasant it would be if, rather than 100,000 hairs growing at a gross total of five feet (1.524m) per hour, humans grew a single hair at five feet per hour. The comic then delves into the absurdity of gradual versus spontaneous growth, and then the sound effects involved therein.
The comic touches on what information can be obscured by just looking at aggregate values.  A person whose 100,000 hairs grow a half-inch (1.27cm) per month experiences the same total new hair growth as a person with one hair growing five feet in an hour, but their grooming experiences would be very different.  Likewise, a person with one hair growing steadily for an hour has the same average rate of hair growth as a person experiencing sudden hair growth on the hour, but the profile of instantaneous energy conversion and protein production would be very different.  One of Ponytail's suggestions for what five feet of instantaneous hair growth might sound like is a sound effect generally used for directed-energy weapons ( Pew! ).
We never see what sort of hairstyle White Hat has under his hat, but Ponytail's hair is fairly long.  If she had to grow it out by one hair per hour, as in the title text, then it would take over eleven years before all 100,000 hairs had grown out.
[White Hat and Ponytail are walking to the right.] White Hat: The average head has about 100,000 hairs. White Hat: And hair grows at about ½" per month. White Hat: Plus or minus. Ponytail: Okay...
[They continue to walk while White Hat lift a hand up palm up.] White Hat: So our heads are producing an inch of hair every minute. Ponytail: I see.
[They continue to walk.] Ponytail: I'm just glad it's evenly distributed. It would suck if we grew a single new five-foot-long hair every hour.
[White Hat and Ponytail are seen in silhouette from a distance. White Hat has lifted a finger up and while Ponytail has thrown both her arms out to the sides.] White Hat: Hmm, would the hair grow steadily, or would it suddenly shoot out 5 feet on the hour? Ponytail: If the latter, what noise would it make? Ponytail: Ziiip? Pwiff? White Hat: Fwip? Ponytail: Blip. White Hat: Zhooop. Ponytail: Pew!


Pinouts

Explanation:
Electronics connectors are designed to transport both information and power. A pinout diagram describes the function of each pin such as to communicate data, transport power, physical function (keying), etc. In this comic there is an absurd alternative to the actual pins used in connectors. The pin labels are references to many tech issues and attributes, and not all may be documented correctly here.
Hardware hobbyists might feel excitement at seeing a unified specification for these common connectors, but the comic is of course humorous. The real life diagrams are as follows: HDMI , Micro USB , USB-C .
The HDMI interface uses four pairs of shielded twisted-pair connectors, along with seven other connectors. ( Twisted pair means a wire is wrapped with the other wire that returns the current to the original device, thus minimizing electromagnetic noise. Shielding refers to wrapping a cable with a conductor to absorb the energy of noise.) Three of these pairs are for data (TMDS Data0, Data1, and Data2) and the other is a clock. These pairs take up three pins as one of them is a ground pin for the shielding wrapped around each pair. TMDS stands for " Transition-minimized differential signaling " and is also used in the DVI standard.
DDC stands for "Display Data Channel" and is based on the I²C serial standard. It is used to allow the transmitting device to learn what formats of data the receiving device can accept.
CEC stands for "Consumer Electronics Control" and is supposed to allow a single remote control to control multiple devices.
"Hot Plug Detect" refers to hot-plugging, where a cable is connected to a device already turned on. The device should then ideally detect that the cable has been plugged in and respond appropriately.
A ground pin is commonly found on USB and other pin connectors. At least one ground is necessary to complete the circuit, and some cables use multiple ground lines to distribute current or to support twisted pairs . However, there is no purpose served by having many more ground pins than data pins. Therefore, it seems rather silly for the micro USB to have 4 ground pins and only 1 functional "USB" pin. It also does not give much information about what the "USB" pin would do, as opposed to a standard pinout diagram. This diagram also leaves out the +5V power pin that is present in the real micro USB connector, which would render most USB peripherals unable to function.
The ordering and count of the pins may be an allusion to Monty Python 's "Spam" sketch, in which one of the many Spam-related menu items is "Spam, Spam, Spam, egg, and Spam".

The two sides of a USB C connector are labeled "A" and "B". These are rotationally symmetric, mostly. For example, B10 and B11 are Rx1, a separate twisted-pair for receiving information in Superspeed mode compared to A10 and A11's Rx2. This gives two Rx/Tx pairs for Superspeed use. CC1 and SBU1 are mirrored to CC2 and SBU2. However, the D, VBUS, and GND pins are perfectly mirrored.
The fact that only half of the USB-C pins are documented might hint to an alternative way to manufacture connectors that can be inserted rotated by 180°: Make the receiver use only the right side of the pins and make the sender connect both the left and the right side so all Pins that might match a function are connected correctly no matter if the cable is rotated by 180°. However, doing this would result in only having one Rx/Tx pair for Superspeed use.
A coaxial RF connector has two contacts - one pin, and the shield; typically the whole connector is labeled with whatever function/signal is carried by the pair.  The joke here is that the label is technically correct (the best kind of correct), but not very useful to the end user, as it does not specify the voltage rating, impedance, connector size, or other useful information about the cable.  Some serial data transmission systems, such as Ethernet , used coaxial cable early on as a low cost, widely available solution, however most of these have largely become obsolete.  A common coaxial cable still widely in use is RG-6 , which is typically used to deliver satellite television, cable television, and cable Internet services in the United States and Canada.
[Caption at top] Pinouts Quick Reference Guide
[Four common connectors are depicted - vertically, rather than the usual horizontal orientation.]
[The first connector is a 19-pin HDMI connector.] [The nine pins on the left are labeled:] Data +5V +6VI +7VII Antidata Water Vacuum Amazon Copyright Pin Decorative [The ten pins on the right are labeled:] +3.3V DC -3.3V DC Tx Wx Rx Only Unknown +240V DC 5V AC GND Ground
[The second connector is a 5-pin Micro USB connector.] [The five pins are labeled:] GND GND GND USB GND
[The third connector is a 24-pin USB-C connector, with only the right side labeled.] [The twelve pins on the right are labeled:] +5V DC +3.3V DC +120V AC Boobytrap Pin (Pure Solder) Mechanical +3.3eV/C Candlepin Facebook Use +5V (Positrons) Pin Roulette GND SKY
[The fourth and final connector is a 1-pin COAX connector.] [The one pin in the center is labeled:] Pin


Dynamic Entropy

Explanation:
This is another one of Randall's Tips , this time a Science Tip . This time it is a bit special since it came less than three weeks after another Science Tip: 2311: Confidence Interval (which was itself the first time that a non-Protip Tip type has been re-used). This is the first time a type of tip (that was not a Protip ) has been used for two "tips comics" in a row.
This Science Tip suggests that if you have a cool new concept, you should call it dynamic entropy , hence the title.
Dynamic programming is a mathematical optimization method and computer programming method developed by Richard Bellman in the 1950s. The History section of the Wikipedia article contains the full paragraph from Bellman's autobiography that contains the quote that is in the comic strip. Bellman describes how he was doing mathematical research funded by the military at a time when the Secretary of Defense had a literal pathological fear of the word "research", and by extension, "mathematical". Bellman borrowed the word "dynamic" from physics as being both accurate for his work and as a word that in plain English has positive connotations and is never used in a pejorative sense (expressing contempt or disapproval).  The word "dynamic" itself comes from the Greek dynamikos , "powerful", which is a positive meaning in itself, and has been applied to topics in physics that are related to motion and forces and used in ordinary English to refer to things that exert power, force, growth, and change (dynamo, dynamite, and as an adjective).  Even though those things aren't always good, when they're bad, we use other words instead (e.g. cancer undergoes metastasis , not "dynamism").
Entropy is a term from physics, specifically statistical mechanics, describing a property of a thermodynamic system. When Claude Shannon developed a mathematical framework for studying signal processing and communications systems, which became known as Information theory , he struggled to come up with a proper name for one mathematical concept in his theory that quantified amount of noise or uncertainty in a signal. Computer scientist John von Neumann noticed the similarity of the equations with some in thermodynamics and suggested, "You should call it entropy , for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage." (see History of information theory ).
The naming of dynamic programming and of entropy in information theory are both examples of scientists choosing a name for what were at least partially very non-scientific seeming reasons. In one case because it has only positive and no negative connotations in plain English. In the other case because there is much confusion over the meaning of the word so Shannon would be free to adopt it in a new context. Randall is claiming that would make them great to put together to name some new concept; the combination will mean whatever the creator wants it to mean (even able to change mid-debate), and never sound bad the way that e.g. cold fusion has come to be.
Even though the caption implies that "dynamic entropy" would be available as a new name, it has actually been used in physics [1] , probability [2] , computer science [3] , and even the term "dynamical entropy" in physics [4] [5] and bioscience [6] .
In the title text Randall mentions that, even though his physics professors have continued to use the word "dynamical", "trying to normalize it" by repetitive usage, he remains convinced that it is not really a word.  Presumably he doesn't like that it has two suffixes used to make words into adjectives, -ic and -al, as if "dynamic" wasn't already positive enough. The Free Dictionary discusses how -ic and -ical suffixes are confused in many common words and explains their different uses.
The term "dynamical" in physics generally is used in " Dynamical system " or as an adjective to name a concept as applied to dynamical systems such as "dynamical entropy" [7] .

[One panel only with text and a few lines and arrows. There are two columns each with a heading. Beneath each heading is a quote written on four lines. Below the quote, in grey font, and indented, starting with a hyphen, with the text aligned to the right of this are five lines of text. This explains who the quote belongs too and where it was stated (in brackets at the end). From the bottom of each of these two gray text paragraphs gray curved arrows goes down to two gray lines. Below each of these two lines are one large word per line. They are again in black text.] Dynamic "It's impossible to use the word 'dynamic' in the pejorative sense... Thus, I thought 'Dynamic Programming' was a good name." - Richard Bellman, explaining how he picked a name for his math research to try to protect it from criticism ( Eye of the Hurricane , 1984)
Entropy "You should call it 'Entropy'... No one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage." - John von Neumann, to Claude Shannon, on why he should borrow the physics term in information theory (as told to Myron Tribus)
Dynamic Entropy
[Caption below the panel:] Science Tip: If you have a cool concept you need a name for, try "Dynamic Entropy."
Many of Buckminster Fuller 's designs and works were associated with the word " dymaxion ", a combination of the words "dynamic", "maximum", and "tension", all words that Fuller himself used a lot in talking about his work, and which are words that simultaneously have use in science and positive connotations in lay English.


Large Number Formats

Explanation:
This comic shows what the way you write large numbers says about you. Different people use different methods to express large numbers. And this comic claims it can tell something about you based on the way you format large numbers. In this way, the comic is similar in idea to 977: Map Projections , where it was your choice of map projections that could tell something about you.
See the table below for each of the 10 different ways to express large numbers, plus the 11th mentioned in the title text.
The number used as an example is the approximate distance from the planet Earth to the planet Jupiter as of the release day of the comic on June 12th 2020, in inches (1 inch = 2.54 cm).
Two days after the release of the comic the following text could be found on Jupiter info on The Sky Live .
The distance of Jupiter from Earth is currently 640,084,108 kilometers, equivalent to 4.278698 Astronomical Units. Light takes 35 minutes and 35.0908 seconds to travel from Jupiter and arrive on Earth.
64,008,410,800,000 cm / 2.54 cm/inches = 25,200,161,732,283 inches - much less than the number used in the comic. But Jupiter's distance to Earth changes quite quickly, and was decreasing at the time of the release of the comic.
According to a graph of the distance as a function of time on The Sky Live, the distance on the release day was 643.1 million km. This will give 25.3*10 13 which the used number will round to.
The used number 25,259,974,097,204 is equivalent to 641.6 million km. On June 13th the distance is given as 641.7 million km in the graph on The Sky Live, very close to the number used. As this was the day after the release of this comic, it seems like Randall used a different distance than the exact one for the release day. He may have also used an average for June which would be 642 million km based on the average of the distance on June and July 1st.
[A panel only with text. At the top there is four lines of explanatory text. Below that are 2 columns with 5 rows of number formats. Each numerical format is in red, with black text explaining the format below it.]
What the way you write large numbers says about you (Using the approximate current distance to Jupiter in inches as an example)
25,259,974,097,204 Normal person
25 trillion Normal person
25 billion Old British person
2.526x10 13 Scientist
2.525997x10 13 Scientist trying to avoid rounding up
2.526e13 or 2.526*10^13 Software developer
25,259,973,541,888 Software developer who forgot about floats
10 13 Astronomer
{∅,{∅},{∅,{∅}},{∅,{∅},{... Set theorist
1,262,998,704,860 score and four Abraham Lincoln


Millennium Problems

Explanation:
Randall , drawn as Cueball , is presenting a slide on the Millennium Prize Problems , seven problems designated by the Clay Mathematics Institute in the year 2000 as some of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics, a sort of successor to David Hilbert's list of 23 problems announced in 1900.  The seven problems are:
There are $1,000,000 prizes attached to each problem, although Grigori Perelman , the mathematician who proved the Poincaré conjecture , turned down his prize.
Randall is attempting to demonstrate relationships between the various problems. According to the presentation, proving one might either disprove or prove others, and the proposed interactions between problems are so complex that the Institute might decide to award an additional prize to whoever can figure out which problem or problems have actually been solved by any given proof.  This eighth prize could perhaps be funded by the award Perelman rejected.
Randall has previously been banned from conferences for various provocative acts; presumably he's on his way to getting thrown out of the Clay Mathematics Institute as well, as the "other" Cueball is already calling security. However, this seems to be only these three people, thus not a conference to be banned from this time.
The title text mentions that, if someone were to find a hole (a common expression for a deficiency or error) in Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture, the famously reclusive author might show up again and fix the problem by applying the theoretical mathematics of differential geometry, where "hole" has a different meaning, to the figurative "hole" in the sequence of logical conclusions. The suggested method of enclosing the hole in a loop and then shrinking it away is reminiscent of the specific technique (Ricci flow with surgery) by which Perelman solved the Poincaré conjecture.
[Randall, drawn as Cueball, is holding a hand palm up towards a screen where a projector on the floor in front of him is projecting a diagram. The projector is propped up on some kind of legs to project up on to the screen. Behind the projector Ponytail is watching him, while Cueball is looking away from Randall, while yelling after someone off-panel.] Randall: ...Proving that one of these four is unsolvable, but not which.  If it's one of these , it would open a hole in Perlman's Poincaré conjecture proof. Randall: But it would also mean that solving either of the other two would re -prove Poincaré, and imply Hodge is isomorphic to... Cueball: Security?!
[The slide on the projector screen shows a four-by-four matrix with 16 illegible entries, and also illegible text left and right of the matrix. The matrix is connected by four lines to four text segments written around the matrix. Two above (left and right), one to the right (at the bottom) and one below to the left. Arrows go between the right and left text at the top and both from the top left and the right text to the text at the bottom. The two to the right are connected by a line with an illegible equation written over this line, intersecting it. From the bottom text below the matrix an arrow goes down to another text beneath it. And from there an arrow goes up to the right text.] Hodge Riemann Navier-Stokes Birch/SD Poincaré wrong??
[Caption below panel:] I'm trying to make it so the Clay Mathematics Institute has to offer an eighth prize to whoever figures out who their other prizes should go to.