Two connected boxes, one with tightly packed dots in it. In the next two panels, a door is shown opening. Dots progress in a few panels to equilibrium, spread out more. Make the dynamics pretty accurate for a gas, but make sure all the details are big enough to survive the thousands of years.
You could make a stylized arrow in addition to that, made of dots. The base of the arrow would be smaller with tighter packed dots, and as you progress along to the tip they'd be more spread out. The tip end would be larger than the base.
Then you'd use that stylized arrow for everything in the message. Make sure it's used the same way in all the comics, including the entropy one.
The concepts of gas and entropy are pretty young, I am not sure we can rely on humans knowing about those in 5000 years or so. The other uncertainty is the correct interpretation of your depiction. Do future civilisations map the same concepts to "our" visualisations?
It's still arrows though. Put some illustrations of (actual) arrows and spears along with the stylized arrow, all pointing in the same direction. That should cover the less advanced civilizations, and provide a good bridge to the thermodynamic depiction to others.
I'm 100% certain if you showed panels with stylised representations of entropy, arrows and spears to a random assortment of modern people with good general knowledge and access to every part of the internet apart from this subthread, you would get an extremely wide range of explanations about what the panels conveyed about an artefact and its surrounding location (absolutely none of which would be the correct response of "absolutely nothing, these panels are simply an illustration of which direction to read panels in")
No it doesn't. We're defining the arrows here. Sure, we'll keep left-to-right to avoid confusing them, but as long as the usage of the arrows is consistent the message would still be correct if it was right-to-left.
That's the entire point of defining the arrows using entropy.
Try to get movement in whenever possible. Take the stairs, pace around during calls (when you do not share an office). Get up and stretch between "work segments". And my favorite new tool: A skipping rope that I use whenever I feel too tired/ like my concentration is breaking / I do not want to do, what I currently have to do. (Mind you, there is a storage room big enough next to my office room that is right above the underground garage, so I will not disturb my colleagues.). Before that, I used to climb the stairs to the top of my office building (five floors) and down to "unfog" my mind and get some energy back.
I once got a bright idea to climb up the stairs to the 13th floor where our office was located. Once I got there, I found that doors can only be opened from the inside, so I climbed 13 floors down and took an elevator up again like a good little sheep.
I'm not posh enough to routinely pour my drinks into a glass so an attached cap either drips, scratches, or gets in my way and I have to tear it off and then usually remove the plastic ring since it now comes with prongs that only sometimes come off with the cap.
Attached cap is also less convenient when screwing the cap back onto the bottle.
If I remember correctly, people had the same issues with the soda can tabs. Back in the days they were detachable (and people simply tossed them wherever). So they introduced various attachable designs before settling on the current one. It took some time for people to adjust.
But you can flip the cap so that it stays open and in a single place when attached. There is often a small bump at the bottom of the cap that makes this easier. I also drink straight from the bottle and I find this unobtrusive. Even helpful - I no longer misplace a cap; I guess that was the goal.
friends. you understand that you can just.. take it off, right?
fully unscrew the cap then just either continue twisting the cap over the the edge - honestly effortless - or just.. pull it off? the cap still functions as a cap, afterward.
apologies, but i don’t understand the furore over this change.
