Talk:2315: Eventual Consistency

The current explanation says that "Cueball's employer wants him to continue his work in the COVID-19 pandemic," but that's a "citation needed" sort of statement. Even if the comic is taken to be literally occurring on the day it is published (which is not always the case as comics have taken place in the past, the future, alternate presents, and even spanning large periods of time), there are perhaps multiple things adding up together to make it "hard to focus right now." In the USA, there's hot temperatures, civil unrest, economic woes springing from or accelerated by the pandemic, and even political considerations that may make it hard to focus (governmental responses to current events potentially being out of proportion with the events, etc). If Cueball is elsewhere in the world, there may be other local conditions that might make things hard to focus. There's stuff going on in Hong Kong, the Middle East, Brazil, Somalia, and all over the world that could be making it hard for someone in those locales to concentrate on their work even if the pandemic weren't a possible contributing factor.

Is it me, or is "continue his work *in* the COVID-19 pandemic" also incorrect? It's a database, not (necessarily) anything to do with COVID-19. Perhaps "in" should be "during" (leaving aside the other arguments)? John.Adriaan (talk) 01:37, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi, this is the "makes an edit before checking if anyone already thought to comment about it" contributor. Same again, with added complication of an edit-conflict (someone posted whilst I was trying to identify bicycles, fire-hydrants and traffic lights in the CAPTCHA). Reworded the thing to identify the situation as being popularised (not the right word!) by the pandemic. Though if Cueball were an existing home-based worker, I'm surprised they didn't fire him at the first hint of an excuse to do so. Anyway, moved the Citation Needed that the conflicter edited into the midst of my chosen edit, hopefully a mutually agreeable spot. 141.101.98.194 02:02, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Then, of course, since the comic doesn't specify what is causing it to be hard to concentrate, it's a bit deictic, and the comic can be linked as a response to multiple future situations (not all of them bad -- having a baby, for instance, can make it hard to concentrate on work.) 108.162.216.52 20:58, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Side note: YouTuber Tom Scott explained eventual consistency in one of his The Basics videos: "Why Computers Can't Count Sometimes". --Aaron of Mpls (talk) 21:30, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Purely coincidental, but The Infinite Monkey Cage podcast just had an episode on the end of the universe: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08dy6ym. ...and I'd like to add, in that regard, that I predict it'll be Death-By-CAPTCHA (more hydrants, more bicycles, then motorcylcles, when I made a comment above. Let's see what it thinks I need to pursuasively do this time, eh?) 141.101.98.96 02:10, 4 June 2020 (UTC)