Ballot Tracker Tracker

Explanation:
This comic was posted 3 days after the 2020 election day in the United States (November 3, 2020). As of the date of posting, the 2020 United States presidential election , between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden , still had not been "called" for either candidate by most news outlets ("called" refers to projecting the results of the election). This was atypical for most US presidential elections, which were "called" either on election day or on the morning following.
A major reason for the delay in determining the results of the election was the greatly increased use of mail-in ballots , caused by social distancing concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mail-in ballots in some states were counted after the in-person voting, which caused delays in the vote-counting, and thus the projection of the winner.
As of the date of posting, the electoral vote counts - as called by most major news organizations - were 253-214 in favor of Biden, with 270 electoral votes needed to win the election. Six states were considered "too close to call", with no determined winner until more ballots were counted.  Biden was winning the popular vote by about 4 million.
Cueball in this comic has created an app, doc, or website that tracks in real time how quickly "ballot trackers" update. A ballot tracker is a web page provided by a news organization that reports updated vote counts as they are published by the states. The news organizations use these counts as the major input to the "decision desks", which are their staff who analyze the ongoing vote results to decide when to declare a projected winner for a state. (See "Tracking Which News Outlets Have Called the Presidential Race in Each State" ) Cueball (representing Randall) is anxiously awaiting resolution to the long election season. Not only is he anxiously checking to see if the race has been decided, but he is also predicting how close the race is to being decided by constantly checking the ballot trackers to see how they change, as well as keeping track of which sources of tracking information most quickly show updated information on which to base those predictions.
The last line of dialogue in the comic, where Cueball says, "I will breathe when they call it", may refer to the idea that many people " hold their breath " when waiting for an important result, so people may hold their breath until the Presidential race is called. However, since this time around the announcement could have taken days if not weeks longer, literally holding one's breath until the winner was announced would not be possible. [ citation needed ] As it happens, the election was called for Biden the morning after this comic was published, about 3½ days after the election, although Trump was still attempting to challenge the results in court, which would make holding one's breath until all appeals and recounts are complete an even worse idea than if he had conceded.
In the title text, Randall wishes good luck to the Democrats in the state of Georgia who are running in later run-off elections. Two Senate seats were being voted on in the state of Georgia in 2020, but no candidate achieved over 50% of the vote in either race. It was highly likely that the runoffs would determine control of the Senate. By law in the state of Georgia, these two races were decided in "runoff" elections, where the top two candidates from each of the races ran against only each other, on January 5, 2021. In the end, both Democrats were elected to the Senate. Randall also wishes good luck to the SREs ( Site Reliability Engineers ) of Google Sheets, an online spreadsheet program, who are in charge of maintaining the Google infrastructure while people like him are constantly refreshing their sheets and pulling data. Randall is comparing Georgia's upcoming "runoff" election to the current election, calling it a "run-on" for how long it is taking.
The theme of recursive naming is a recurring one in xkcd, most recently with the "contact tracer tracing program" in 2376: Curbside .
[Cueball is sitting behind a desk, pointing at a laptop. White Hat is standing behind him. Crumpled-up papers are strewn across the ground. ] Cueball: And this tab is my ballot tracker tracker, which tracks how quickly other ballot trackers update. White Hat: You should add a tracker for how often you breathe so you don't forget. Cueball: I will breathe when they call it.


Electoral Precedent 2020

Explanation:
This comic is an update to 1122: Electoral Precedent , adding "broken precedents" for the US presidential elections in 2016 and 2020. It was published six days after the 2020 election took place, and two days after most news networks "called" the election , projecting Biden as the winner. The majority of the comic's panels are duplicates from 1122, with the exception of the 2012 panel (modified to show that Obama did in fact break the streak), the 2016 panel (added to reflect the election of Donald Trump), and the two 2020 panels. It continues the theme of pointing out that an arbitrary 'precedent' can always be invoked to predict the outcome of an election. Presidential elections happen rarely enough that each is a unique event, and something is always happening for the first time. Like with the other examples, the precedents mentioned here mix factors that could plausibly impact the election (such as one candidate having been impeached), with precedents that are just a product of time and chance (like a successful challenger having a website).
The final two panels again show how, no matter which candidate won in 2020, it would be a 'first' in some way.
The 2020 election was also precedent-breaking in a few ways that Randall didn't mention:
Also, Biden is the first president from the state of Delaware, thus he broke the "precedent" that Delawareans can't win. Randall then proceeds to combine these 2 facts to create a new precedent: Only Delawareans can defeat incumbents with a website.
All original options can be found at 1122: Electoral Precedent .
The problem with statements like "No <party> candidate has won the election without <state>" Or "No president has been reelected under <circumstances>"
★ Updated for 2020 ★
[Each statement below has its own panel. The year is in a caption, the precedent is stated by a standing Cueball in the main panel, and the president who broke it is below the panel.] 1788... No one has been elected president before. ...But Washington was. 1792... No incumbent has ever been reelected. ...Until Washington. 1796... No one without false teeth has become president. ...But Adams did. 1800... No challenger has beaten an incumbent. ...But Jefferson did. 1804... No incumbent has beaten a challenger. ...Until Jefferson. 1808... No congressman has ever become president. ...Until Madison. 1812... No one can win without New York. ...But Madison did. 1816... No candidate who doesn't wear a wig can get elected. ...Until Monroe was. 1820... No one who wears pants instead of breeches can be reelected. ...But Monroe was. 1824... No one has ever won without a popular majority. ...J.Q. Adams did. 1828... Only people from Massachusetts and Virginia can win. ...Until Jackson did. 1832... The only presidents who get reelected are Virginians. ...Until Jackson. 1836... New Yorkers always lose. ...Until Van Buren. 1840... No one over 65 has won the presidency. ...Until Harrison did. 1844... No one who's lost his home state has won. ...But Polk did. 1848... As goes Mississippi, so goes the nation. ...Until 1848. 1852... New England Democrats can't win. ...Until Pierce did. 1856... No one can become president without getting married. ...Until Buchanan did. 1860... No one over 6'3" can get elected. ...Until Lincoln. 1864... No one with a beard has been reelected. ...But Lincoln was. 1868... No one can be president if their parents are alive. ...Until Grant. 1872... No one with a beard has been reelected in peacetime. ...Until Grant was. 1876... No one can win a majority of the popular vote and still lose. ...Tilden did. 1880... As goes California, so goes the nation. ...Until it went Hancock. 1884... Candidates named "James" can't lose. ...Until James Blaine. 1888... No sitting president has been beaten since the Civil War. ...Cleveland was. 1892... No former president has been elected. ...Until Cleveland. 1896... Tall Midwesterners are unbeatable. ...Bryan wasn't. 1900... No Republican shorter than 5'8" has been reelected. ...Until McKinley was. 1904... No one under 45 has been elected. ...Roosevelt did. 1908... No Republican who hasn't served in the military has won. ...Until Taft. [The precedent takes up the entire panel this year. Consequently, there is no Cueball.] 1912... After Lincoln beat the Democrats while sporting a beard with no mustache, the only Democrats who can win have a mustache with no beard. ...Wilson had neither. 1916... No Democrat has won while losing West Virginia. ...Wilson did. 1920... No incumbent senator has won. ...Until Harding. 1924... No one with two Cs in their name has become president. ...Until Calvin Coolidge. 1928... No one who got ten million votes has lost. ...Until Al Smith. 1932... No Democrat has won since women secured the right to vote. ...Until FDR did. 1936... No president's been reelected with double-digit unemployment. ...Until FDR was. 1940... No one has won a third term. ...Until FDR did. 1944... No Democrat has won during wartime. ...Until FDR did. 1948... Democrats can't win without Alabama. ...Truman did. 1952... No Republican has won without winning the House or Senate. ...Eisenhower did. 1956... No one can beat the same nominee a second time in a leap year rematch. ...Until Eisenhower. 1960... Catholics can't win. ...Until Kennedy. 1964... Every Republican who's taken Louisiana has won. ...Until Goldwater. [The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1968... No Republican vice president has risen to the Presidency through an election. ...Until Nixon. [The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1972... Quakers can't win twice. ...Until Nixon did. 1976... No one who lost New Mexico has won. ...But Carter did. 1980... No one has been elected president after a divorce. ...Until Reagan was. 1984... No left-handed president has been reelected. ...Until Reagan was. [The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1988... No one with two middle names has become president. ...Until "Herbert Walker". [The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1992... No Democrat has won without a majority of the Catholic vote. ...Until Clinton did. [The precedent takes up the entire panel this year. Consequently, there is no Cueball.] 1996... No Dem. incumbent without combat experience has beaten someone whose first name is worth more in Scrabble. ...Until Bill beat Bob. 2000... No Republican has won without Vermont. ...Until Bush did. [The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 2004... No Republican without combat experience has beaten someone two inches taller ...Until Bush did. 2008... No Democrat can win without Missouri. ...Until Obama did. 2012... Democratic incumbents never beat taller challengers. ... Until Obama did. [The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 2016... No one has become president without government or military experience. ... Until Trump did. 2020? No one has won after being impeached. ✓ 2020? No challenger with a website has won. X
[Caption below the comic] Congratulations to President-Elect Joe Biden for breaking the website curse!


Set in the Present

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Cueball is watching a wall-mounted television set that's showing either a movie or a TV program, and notices that none of the characters are taking the recommended precautions concerning the COVID-19 pandemic . This leads him to speculate on the timeline and internal logic of the show.
On-screen, people are talking face-to-face without face masks, and other maskless people mingle in the background. Cueball notes that, if the story takes place in the same reality and time as us, the absence of precautions should mark the characters as reckless or irresponsible (which impacts the story).  Alternative explanations he comes up with are that the show might be set either prior to the pandemic or far enough in the future that the impacts are no longer visible. However, these possibilities are be difficult to square with era-specific cues like technology and popular culture references.
Billie Eilish is an American singer and songwriter who first became active in 2015, and rose to stardom in 2019, so a reference to her implies a show set within the last few years, and likely only one year in the past. The presence of "modern" phones (presumably a late model smartphone) has a similar implication. But in a TV show or film series where time passes in-universe, this also creates problems. If it's set in the recent past, and the series continues for a few more years, then the characters should encounter the pandemic in later seasons. If it's set in the future, then the entire series must be set in the future (because none of it included the pandemic).  If the series has gone on for several years, the current episode must be at least several years in the future, which raises the question of why all the technology and pop culture shown is familiar to us.
The simplest explanation is that COVID-19 doesn't exist within the program's universe (an idea Cueball briefly considers as an " alternate timeline ," but doesn't dwell on). Perfect consistency with the real world in fiction is hard to achieve, and how accurately stories track to current events varies widely. Movies and television productions are enormously complex, and months, if not years, can pass between when a screenplay is written and the finished product is released. This means that rapid changes in the real world are rarely reflected promptly in fiction. Alternately, the production might have taken place in the COVID era but the creators consciously chose not to include the pandemic in the story. Some viewers can ignore these inconsistencies, but for others, they make suspension of disbelief impossible.
Cueball has previously been distracted by minor details in film or television in 1451: Background Screens . The idea of using thumbtacks and strings (usually accompanied by newspaper clippings and photographs) to study a problem is pop-culture shorthand for a conspiracy theory . Randall has previously mentioned this in 2244: Thumbtacks And String .
[Cueball is standing and watching a presumed typical wall mounted flat-screen television. There is no background, nor other physical features, just Cueball and the obliquely aligned screen positioned to also let us view its foreshortened image. In this, Megan and Ponytail are seen talking face to face with hands almost or actually in contact. Their faces are sociably close together and they are not shown as wearing masks. In the background of the scene are several other Cueball-like figures, not notably masked up or distanced from each other, and two may be holding hands. Cueball himself is given a large thought bubble above him, within which is written his current, distracted train of thoughts:]
Cueball: Okay, they're hugging, and no one has masks, but she has a modern phone. Is this story set in 2019? Cueball: Or is this a post-vaccine future? Or an alternate no-COVID timeline? Cueball: Or are we supposed to think these characters are irresponsible?
[Caption below the panel:] Movies and shows that are vaguely set in "the present" will be awkward for a while.


Final Exam

Explanation:
In this comic, Ponytail appears to be administering a group sitting for cybersecurity exam. However, at the beginning of the exam, she informs her students that they have all failed, despite not having taken a test yet. She then informs them that their grades are stored on the department server and will be submitted the next day. The implication here is that the true test, rather than being a traditional exam, is actually whether the students can hack into the server and change their grades. This may be a jab at education security which is known to be vulnerable to assault ( not the first time XKCD has made such a joke). In real life, students have attempted to change their grades in this manner, with occasional success.
The title text adds a twist to this. In order for a student to get a good grade in the game theory class, they need to get a below-average grade on this final exam. This incentivizes the students to also change the grades of other students when they change their grade. However, this is more complicated than it seems, and depends on various factors, such as the fraction of students who take game theory in addition to cybersecurity. If, for example, half of the students also take game theory, then for all of them to get 80% of the average score, even assuming that all their non-game-theory classmates get maximum possible score, they would have to target for 2/3 (or about 67%) of the maximum possible score, to get 80% of the final average. While that would make their game theory grade perfect, it might noticeably worsen their cybersecurity grade. This gets progressively worse with the increasing fraction of students who take game theory along with cybersecurity.
In the extreme case of all cybersecurity students also taking game theory class, this degenerates into another common game theory problem: Guess 2/3 of the average of everybody's guesses. The only winning strategy is, of course, for everyone to guess 0, which means that 2/3 of the average will be 0. This assumes perfect rationality of all players with respect to the game theory problem. The catch is that here we have the same number as a grade for the cybersecurity exam and for the game theory guess. We'd like one to be as high as possible, and the other to be zero or close to zero, which are obviously conflicting goals.
To improve their overall results, students could resort to various compromises and strategies, such as increasing other students' scores against their will, or making alliances with students who might not mind taking a hit to their game theory grade (perhaps in exchange for other incentives) - these are all topics that the game theory class would have been dealing with. Specifically, this test seems to refer to the prisoner's dilemma and tragedy of the commons ; if one student changes their grade to 80% of the average, they will receive high marks, but if more and more students attempt this, the gain for each one drops and tends towards zero.
The combination with cybersecurity adds another layer of complexity, in that students could, for example, also attempt to lock each other out of the server to achieve maximum control over the results to their benefit.
In the strip, there is no actual test to take. But if there was one, there would still be strategies to optimize performance without hacking the grades. One option would be to take the test normally, and then change every fifth answer to the bubble below it; using this strategy your overall grade will drop to 80% if you were at 100%, and may even raise your score if a student performed particularly poorly. The trick, though, is that other students (assuming rationality) would try this strategy as well; thus, a student may need to overcorrect more, weigh the possibilities of whether any of their classmates had followed this as well, and perform this recursively until it is most likely that the score is 80 percent of the average.
Note: All of the above is based on the assumption that the game theory mark will be directly (and not inversely) proportional to how close the cybersecurity grade is to 80% of the average. This is left ambiguous in the formulation.
Note: The above also assumes the system accepts a maximum of 100%.  If (as is likely) the system allows for extra credit you could reach a Nash equilibrium by setting the non-game theory students to an arbitrary, but very high, number (say 2000%) C and then the game theory students to (C*g)/(.25+g) where g is the percentage of students not in game theory.
Note: The solution becomes trivial if the game-theory grade is stored on the same server but submitted after the cybersecurity grade. Students would simply give themselves full marks on cybersecurity, then edit the game-theory grade after cybersecurity has been submitted.
[Ponytail is standing in front of a whiteboard addressing someone off-panel to the left.] Ponytail: Welcome to your final exam. Ponytail: The exam is now over. Ponytail: I'm afraid all of you failed. Ponytail: Your grades have been stored on our department server and will be submitted tomorrow. Ponytail: Class dismissed.
[Caption below the panel:] Cybersecurity final exams


Ten Years

Explanation:
Randall 's then-fiancée, now wife was diagnosed with cancer in late 2010. This is a matter he has discussed in the comic multiple times before , with Randall being depicted as Cueball and his wife as Megan. It has been 10 years since her diagnosis and treatments.
This comic is a continuation of 1141: Two Years and 1928: Seven Years , which are shown in the first 16 panels, slightly grayed out.
The first of the new panels shows Randall and his wife at a "Rabbit Rescue", interacting with buns ( a recurring theme of xkcd).  The purpose of such events is to get rescued (often surrendered or seized) rabbits or other animals used to interacting with each other and with unfamiliar humans under controlled circumstances, to help them be more suitable as pets and hopefully entice visitors to adopt them.  Randall facetiously asks his wife if she thinks the rabbits have socialized enough, even though he and his wife are there for the sake of their own enjoyment (and she indicates that she would like to spend more time patting a bunny on its head).
In the next panel, Randall is pushing his wife in a handcart, which is presumably stolen. (As evidenced by the off-panel person asking if anybody has seen the handcart.)
The third new panel shows Randall and his wife exploring a mountain. They appear to have found something interesting, due to Megan pointing her finger towards something off-panel. It appears to be a reference to a similar climbing scene from 1190: Time .
The fourth panel shows Randall and his wife sitting on the edge of a pier, looking at the night sky. This is a typical romantic nighttime activity. The panel is distinguished because there was considerably more effort put into the drawing of this panel than of the other panels, by virtue of it being nighttime. Thus, the reflection of the starlight on their faces is the center of attention in the drawing.
The final new panels show Randall and his wife sitting on a hill, talking about how they couldn't believe that Megan would make it to 10 years cancer-free, which according to 881: Probability wasn't all that certain (77% probability -- the probability of picking an M&M out of a bag at random and getting one that isn't blue ). Randall's wife voices a concern that she had seemingly been carrying for a while, that she was a burden to Randall, and explains that she couldn't understand why he would marry her, except as a show of grace. Randall firmly rejects this notion, stating that it was no mere gesture, but that it was important to him that they enjoy "whatever time we could have".
Finally, and as with the first comic in the series, the comic takes a light-hearted turn: because the table does not include values for probability of survival more than ten years after treatment, Randall's wife jokingly concludes that she is now immortal, perhaps thanks to a cursed artifact.  Many anniversaries are traditionally marked by giving gifts, such as the silver jubilee after twenty-five years of marriage (or of a monarch's reign, or an employee's seniority within a company, or anything else).  The tenth anniversary is traditionally associated with a tin gift (tin being a much more precious metal in 1922 than it is today), but maybe Randall bought it at a cursed shop .
The title-text expands on this final joke, as it suggests that there is an official name for this giving of cursed artifacts once the ten-year mark has passed. Also, it seems as though Randall has finally found a less-gross name for this anniversary than "biopsy-versary".
Cursed artifacts that cannot die were recently mentioned in 2332: Cursed Chair .
From 1141: Two Years [Randall (drawn as Cueball) and Randall's fiancée (drawn as Megan) sit on a bed, Randall's fiancée is talking on the phone. The person she is talking to, a doctor holding a clipboard, is shown inset.] Randall's fiancée: Oh god.
[Randall and Randall's fiancée sit together while Randall's fiancée, now bald, is receiving chemotherapy. They are both on their laptops.] IV pump: ... Beeep ... Beeep ... Beeep ...
[Randall and Randall's fiancée (who is wearing a knit cap) are paddling a kayak against a scenic mountain backdrop.]
[Randall and Randall's fiancée sit at a table, staring at a cell phone. There is a clock on the wall. Her head is stubbly.] Randall's fiancée: How long can it take to read a scan!?
[Randall and Randall's fiancée are back at the hospital again, Randall's fiancée receiving chemo. They are playing Scrabble.] Randall: "Zarg" isn't a word. Randall's fiancée: But caaaancer. Randall: ...Ok, fine.
[Randall and Randall's fiancée (wearing a knit cap) are listening to a Cueball-like friend. A large thought bubble is above their heads and it obscures the friends talk. The text below, split in three is the only part there can be no doubt about:] Friend: So next year you should come visit us up in the mounta a and Randall and Randall's fiancée (thinking): "Next year"
[Randall and Randall's fiancée are getting married, with a heart above their heads. Randall's wife's hair is growing back.]
[Randall and Randall's wife (wearing a knit cap) stand on a beach, watching a whale jump out of water.] Fwoosh

From 1928: Seven Years
[Randall and Randall's wife (with her hair noticeably longer) are walking through a forest.]
[Randall's wife is sitting down, not in the forest anymore.] Randall's wife: My toe hurts and I found a report of a case in which toe pain was an early sign of cancer spreading. Randall: Wait—didn’t you stub your toe yesterday? Randall's wife: Yes, but what if this is unrelated?
[Randall and his wife are going spelunking. The guide is gesturing deeper into the cave while Randall and his wife are climbing down.]
[Randall's wife stands on a rock above an alligator in a swamp, photographing the alligator.  Randall is on a balcony behind safety railings.] Randall: When they estimated your survival odds, I think they made some optimistic assumptions about your hobbies.
[Randall's wife sits on an examination bed, listening to a doctor holding a clipboard.] Doctor: This is probably nothing. Doctor: But given your history, we should do a full scan. Doctor: We'll call with the results in a few days.  Try not to worry about it until then!
[Randall and his wife stand above a deep pond full of fish and other objects.  Randall's wife is piloting a wired underwater camera with lights.]
[Randall and his wife are standing next to each other.  Randall's wife has shoulder-length hair covering most of her face.] Randall's wife: Hard to believe—six years ago, I was bald.  But today, after a long struggle, I finally look like the little girl from The Ring . Randall: That's, uhh... good? Randall's wife: Hissssss
[A line of six people, including Randall and his wife, stand and watch the solar eclipse.]
New to 2386: Ten Years :
[Randall and his wife are sitting in a room with five bunnies sitting around and on them. The Poster on the wall reads: Rabbit rescue.] Randall: Do you think they're socialized enough? Randall's wife: This one might need one more head pat.
[Randall is running and pushing his wife on a hand cart.] Someone off-panel: Has anyone seen the hand cart? Randall's wife: Wheee!
[Randall and his wife walks up hill with snowy mountains near by and in the background. his wife is gesturing to something ahead of them.]
[A large dark panel, to the right of the previous three, to the left in two rows. Randall and his wife sits, leaning back on their hands looking up, at the end of a pier going into a lake. The end is broader and they sit to each side of the middle of he pier. It is night and behind the lake there is a forest of pine trees. Above the three is a clear starlit night sky with hundreds of stars and the band of the Milky Way clearly visible. The trees and some of the stars are reflected in the water of the lake, distorted by the movements of the water.]
[Randall is sitting on a grassy field, a bit higher than his wife who lies on her back looking up.] Randall: You did it. Randall: Ten years. Randall's wife: It doesn't seem real.
[Zoom in on Randall's wife, who is not longer lying down.] Randall's wife: When they showed me my 10-year survival chart, I really didn't believe I would make it here. Randall's wife: I don't understand why you married me when it looked so bad. Randall's wife: But it was very sweet.
[In a frame-less panel Randall is standing in front of his wife, who is sitting on the ground, arm leaning on her bent knees.] Randall: You make it sound like an act of grace, and not something I desperately wanted to do and was worried I wouldn't get to. Randall: You're the coolest person I've ever met. I just wanted whatever time we could have.
[Same setting but seen from a distance and in silhouette. Randall's wife has lifted her fist towards the sky, and it seems like Randall has turned away from her looking up.] Randall's wife: Well, good news, my hideous and inexplicable existence continues unabated! Take that, Biology! Randall's wife: You failed to kill me and now I can never die! Randall: Is... that how it works? Randall's wife: It was in the fine print on the chart.


Blair Witch

Explanation:
The Blair Witch Project is a found footage horror film released in 1999. For the marketing campaign of the film, the producers created the legend of the Blair Witch, a supernatural being whose legend originates in Burkittsville , MD. As it sometimes happened in Protestant societies in the colonial era , a woman was ostracized from the community after having been accused of witchcraft . This woman, who tends to conflict in name with various versions of the lore, would supposedly attempt to inflict revenge upon the community that exiled her, and these fearful people fled from the town.
The comic takes a humorous turn on the legend, suggesting a conservation program to save the Blair Witch. While the film was described by reliable sources as faked and misrepresented footage, the Blair Witch is postulated as separate species that is being tracked by the IUCN Red List . With the rise of camera-phones in the modern age, sightings of beings that are most likely fictitious , such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, are becoming rarer over time, due to lack of credibility of a reported sighting without visual evidence (although with the rise of deepfakes, even visual evidence might lose credibility in the future). A species which has not been notably documented for a long time would indeed be moved to the "possibly extinct in the wild " category, as Megan notes.
Rather than taking this to mean the Blair Witch does not exist however, Megan instead suggests habitat loss as the reason why encountering a Blair Witch might be more difficult. Habitat loss is in fact one of the most prominent and concerning reasons for extinction in recent years. Megan claims that suburban projects have fragmented the witch's "spooky forest" ecosystem, a reference to the many species that are dying off due to encroachment, logging, and similar human activities. Migration due to climate change is also an observable phenomenon in animal populations (and some plant populations, depending on their mode of travel while in seeds; those that rely on animals to germinate will migrate as well).
Megan then proposes a plan to catch and breed Blair Witches in an attempt to resurrect the species. This final panel is more obviously humorous, as even if the Blair Witch did exist separate from humans, there is only one, [ citation needed ] and thus any attempt to breed and repopulate would be futile. It may be possible that this is not a problem , but if it is, it could also raise the objection that any pair of Blair Witch may both be female, and thus unable to reproduce. This could be resolved by (a) assuming that Witches can ( sometimes? ) be male as well, or (b) assuming that, much like Tremblay's salamander, females can reproduce with a male of a related species (most likely human, in which case the project might have difficulty obtaining approval from an ethics review board .) The phrase "Blair Witch Reintroduction Project" is a reference to The Blair Witch Project .
The title-text suggests that the comic is a lecture, as Megan's whiteboard and pointer would suggest. A (presumed) student asks whether Megan is concerned that witches won't breed in captivity (a serious real-world concern to the IUCN). If this is a press conference, the question would be asked by a reporter instead.  Megan replies that they are worried that there will be breeding, but biologists are unsure how the breeding occurs, calling it "harrowing" (presumably because they have captured the Blair Witch and it has set a curse on their laboratory as she supposedly did in Burkittsville).  Historically, communities practicing witchcraft may have fled to the woods to engage in sometimes very sexual behaviors that others at the time were very frightened by.
Randall previously wrote about an ill-advised fauna introduction project in 2349: Rabbit Introduction , but at least rabbits are cuter and less harrowing than witches. [ citation needed ]
[Megan is standing in front of a screen looking away from it at an audience off-panel. She is holding a stick, pointed at the chart behind her. The chart shows the stick figure from The Blair Witch Project . Above is an unreadable line of text, and below are two smaller rectangles a smaller one above the other, the small seems to be empty, but there seems to be some kind of graph in the bottom one.] Megan: Other than the fake 1999 video, there have been no Blair Witch sightings in 30+ years. Megan: The IUCN redlist says the witch is "possibly extinct in the wild."
[A close-up of Megan's face. The screen now shows a habitat map, with four separate shaded areas enclosed in a dotted line. The dotted line and one of the areas goes to the upper edge of the screen indicating they continue beyond the shown area. Beneath the dotted line and to the right there are three small squares, one of them clearly shaded the same way as the areas above. Next to each there is an unreadable label.] Megan: Development in the Maryland suburbs has fragmented the spooky forest habitat. Megan: Climate change will push any remnant populations north.
[Back to the original setting, Megan is standing with the stick pointing downwards, and the chart is out of frame.] Megan: That's why we plan to capture any surviving witches and establish a breeding population. Megan: Then, in time, the Blair Witch Reintroduction Project can begin.


Viral Quiz Identity Theft

Explanation:
Hairy is trying to compile a list of names and addresses, for identity theft purposes. He intends to do so by posting an online quiz to entice people into posting their personal information; for example, asking people to post their 'porn star name' by combining their pet's name (or their middle name, or their mother's maiden name) and the street they grew up on. However, as White Hat points out, a lot of this information is already in the public record making his "viral quiz" unnecessary. This comic is one of very few where White Hat's argument is not used as a straw man ; rather, Hairy is the unenlightened one and White Hat has the idea that will require much less work for the same result.  However, when Hairy proves to have no idea about public records, White Hat decides that it will be easier (or at least more fun) to just play along with Hairy's plan rather than try to educate him.
Even though White Hat is correct that there are public databases with lists of legal names and addresses, lots of online interactions take place in forums where people adopt pseudonyms.  A viral quiz like this one could be useful for de-anonymizing users, a process known colloquially as " doxing ". There is also a suspicion that these kind of viral quizzes are used to create databases to answer password recovery questions correctly. Together with a man-in-the-middle attack on the email system used, this can lead to hackers taking over user accounts.
In the title text, it turns out that lots of users did not provide their personal information. Instead they provided fake information, which Hairy naively takes as truth.  The number '420' is associated with the use of marijuana and the number '69' is used to refer to a sex position .  These two numbers have found their way into society from memes to car prices . White Hat could also be taking the data at its word when he replies that there must be a high-rise building at that address to hold so many respondents, but it is more likely that he is making a sarcastic double-entendre pun.  420 69th St. is a real address in several US cities, but it looks like they're all single-family dwellings or small offices, not high-rises.
If Hairy had talked to Black Hat , he might have been told about the time Black Hat made a bunch of free web services to harvest usernames and passwords.  Black Hat's project stalled when he realized that he didn't know what he wanted to do with the information he harvested, and Hairy's plan doesn't seem very well-thought-out past the "get personal details" step either.
[Hairy and White Hat are standing across from each other at a table.  Each has a laptop open in front of him.]
Hairy: Here's my plan: we start a viral quiz to trick people into posting the name of the street they lived on as a kid. Hairy: Then we use it to steal their identity! White Hat: Okay. White Hat: Just checking, you know voter files and mortgages and stuff are mostly public records, right? Hairy: Huh? What are you talking about? White Hat: ...Nothing.  We can do your thing.


Unread

Explanation:
Cueball has an unspecified communication application on his phone. As the chart displays, the longer he has the app, the more unread messages he has on it (likely due to a combination of more people trying to contact him over it and him checking it less diligently). Eventually, he gives up reading every message, and he notices apathetically when it reaches 10,000 notifications. The joke comes in the caption, which states that all communication services have this problem and implies that this problem is the key problem with email .
The caption, " Another way every system eventually becomes email" (emphasis added) is a reference to Zawinski's law of software envelopment : "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."  In this case, it's not that every program will eventually become capable of sending and receiving emails, but rather that Cueball/Randall will treat every program that provides notifications the same way he treats his email inbox.
In the title text, Randall uses this reasoning to explain why he'll never install a smart smoke detector . A smart detector would send a notification to his phone when the smoke level is high enough to trigger it, or perhaps when it is running low on battery; following the same trend, Randall believes he will eventually stop reading the alerts from the smoke detector. Ignoring a smoke detector is dangerous. [ citation needed ] Traditional (non-smart) smoke detectors typically use sound to denote status, with very loud piercing sounds used to indicate events requiring immediate notice (i.e. an active fire producing large amounts of smoke) and quieter chirps to indicate other conditions, such as low battery levels.  While some people can and do tune out the low battery warnings, it tends to be difficult to ignore the active fire types of alerts.  However, a person would need to be within hearing range for those alerts, versus allowing people to ignore alerts from around the world with a smart smoke detector.
Randall has previously covered his trouble keeping up with email, for example in 1783: Emails .
[A graph with the x-axis and y-axis labeled]
[The graph has a line that starts near the bottom of the x-axis, fluctuates a little, then steadily increases until it is approaching the maximum of the y-axis, whereby it begins to level out] Percentage of received messages in the service that are marked unread Time --->
[Three Cueballs standing at different points on the graph. The first two are shown directly above the line at the beginning and middle areas, and the third is shown below it near the end of the graph. All three are holding phones.]
[The first Cueball looks at his phone, which displays two notifications on an app] Oh hey, two new messages!
[The next Cueball again looks at his phone, this time with 45 notifications on the app] Ugh, gotta take some time to go through these.
[The last Cueball's phone app shows 10129 notifications] Wow, it hit five digits.
[Caption below the panel] Another way every system eventually becomes email


Linguists

Explanation:
Ponytail hears the cries of an unidentified person who has become trapped in a hole. She rushes over, but rather than helping the person out, she instead asks whether the trapped person's chosen phrasing for their predicament – "fell down a hole" – is equivalent to "fell in a hole."
To most people, the phrases "fell down a hole" and "fell in a hole" are paraphrases. To other people, however, the two sentences have a subtle difference that implies slightly different things; for example, whether one has fully or only partially fallen down/in the hole, how big the hole is, or whether the person has exited out of the hole yet at the time of speaking (see the paragraph on the title text below). Ponytail is thus asking whether the person chose to use 'down' over 'in' for those reasons. In either case, the joke here is that this is probably not the best time for Ponytail to ask.
In the caption, Randall comments on the stereotype that linguists are obnoxious elitists who only love telling people how wrong they are (" Grammar Nazis "). A linguist might make a statement like this that ends with something like "linguists actually are only trying to describe existing grammar rules, not prescribe them." Instead, Randall takes the comment in an unexpected direction by saying not that linguists are better than expected but actually worse. He claims that seeking to extract exact information is worse than if they were pedants browbeating their audience, possibly because a pedant could prioritize the elements of a situation better than Ponytail is doing here.
This is similar to the viewpoint dedicated to scientists in comic 877: Beauty , as in studying that field seems to be a cold and sad way to analyze the thing, but instead is an extreme form of child-like awe and inspiration.
The title text sees Ponytail asking the person whether their answer is dependent on the current situation, or in technical terms, tense-aspect-mood . As noted above some people see the difference between 'fell down' and 'fell in' as to whether the sentence still holds true at the time of speaking; this is called the perfective aspect . There are other variations, such as recent vs. remote past: "I just fell down a hole"; the perfect (not to be confused with the first one - note the lack of -ive ): "I fell down a hole, and it has consequences relevant to our conversation"; habitual : "I had previously fallen down a(nother?) hole, and I have fallen down this hole now", all of which can influence one to choose 'down' over 'in' or vice versa.
The last sentence “assuming you get out” drives home the point that Ponytail is concerning herself with linguistic matters over practical ones. Ponytail’s use of “assuming” rather than “when” suggests that Ponytail doesn’t have a plan to get the person out, or that she has a plan but isn’t confident in its success. The former interpretation, that Ponytail is thinking of the person getting out as abstract and unconnected with her, is funnier and more consistent with Ponytail’s actions so far.
[Ponytail is walking to the left. A voice calls out from behind her (at the right of the panel):] Off-panel voice: Help! Off-panel voice: I fell down a hole!
[Ponytail runs to the right, toward the hole.]
[Ponytail, kneeling down next to the hole, calls out:] Ponytail: Hey! Ponytail: Is "fell down a hole" exactly equivalent to "fell in a hole," in your usage? Or do they have slightly different implications?
[Caption below the panel] There's a myth that linguists are pedants who love correcting people, but they're actually just enthusiastic about understanding language in all its infinite varieties, which is much worse.


Life Before the Pandemic

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Megan and Cueball are having a conversation about life before the pandemic, which was declared as such on the 11th of March, 2020 by the World Health Organization. They talk about what they miss about life before the pandemic, but Cueball says that he can barely remember it. This is borne out by the rest of their discussion: None of the activities they list were ever common and most are strange, some are even forbidden and various items are misconstrued as existing for pandemic mitigation purposes.
After they finish reminiscing, Megan says that she can't wait for a vaccine, further implying that she can't wait to have all of these things "back." Both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are making vaccines, with Pfizer/BioNTech making their application for emergency use on November 20th, 2020, 7 days before this comic's release. It is expected to be approved for use by the end of the year.
Scuba stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. It consists of a tank of compressed air, which is conducted through a tube to a mouthpiece which allows the diver to breathe underwater. A mask is a fundamental part of scuba diving to allow the diver to see underwater better. Cloth masks, to help lower the spread of the virus between people, are a recommended precaution when in public, but wearers are advised not to wear them when swimming. Megan is conflating these two different types of masks, misremembering a world where scuba diving did not have masks involved. You do not need to wear a cloth mask if you are scuba diving, but you do need to wear a scuba mask–irrespective of whether there is a pandemic.
Scuba masks previously rated quite well on the mask effectiveness scale in 2367: Masks .  However because the regulator is technically not a face covering, Megan's Scuba club may be requiring full face or "hardhat" style diving equipment, which would justify her complaint.
Gas stations are locations where you can buy gasoline, which powers internal combustion engines, especially those in cars. Many of these locations have a small convenience store attached, where customers can purchase snacks or drinks while having their car filled up. It's unknown whether Randall/Ponytail meant "free refill" of gasoline or of drinks from the convenience store, but either way it was not a business practice that was common. [ citation needed ] Free refills of drinks are more associated with restaurants and diners, who allow free top-ups of relatively cheaper soft drinks, tea, or coffee, in the hopes that it will attract people to come in and buy more expensive meals to cover the cost.
Grilling food generally poses a significant fire hazard (and can produce toxic carbon monoxide) and is thus typically not allowed indoors, especially in libraries, whose shelves full of flammable paper books present both an increased fire hazard (as the fire could spread more quickly with plenty of fuel, and the shelves could potentially hamper efforts to evacuate the library if the fire made that necessary) and a liability (because if the books burned, they would be destroyed/unusable, and it would likely cost a lot of money to replace them). In the pandemic, many libraries discourage people from spending time there, preferring that visitors only check out or drop off books. Some libraries have even removed chairs to achieve this.
Even if grilling were allowed in Cueball's and Megan's library beforehand, it would not be allowed during the pandemic, as it would involve eating in an enclosed area, an activity specifically warned to increase the contagiousness of the virus. Backyard (or library) cookouts have been discouraged by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention , or CDC, because of this.
Tennis is a sport where two players use racquets to hit a ball at each other. The game is played on a court divided in half by a low net. The net is not used for anyone's safety; it's to ensure that the ball must be volleyed to the other player with some minimum height. Megan seems to believe that the net is there to ensure that the players stay on opposite sides of the net, in order to lower the spread of the virus.
Many indoor activities were moved outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic, as poorly-ventilated indoor spaces vastly increase the chance of the virus spreading. Fireworks are explosives shot into the air for entertainment. Due to inherently being explosive, fireworks can be dangerous, i.e. cause injuries or even death. Some countries (for instance, The Netherlands) have temporarily banned fireworks because of COVID-19, reasoning the fireworks-induced injuries would put additional stress on hospitals that are already nearing maximum (intensive care) capacity due to COVID cases. Most fireworks are not suitable for use indoors; setting them off indoors is even more dangerous than they already are, even before the pandemic. [ citation needed ] However, there are specially designed indoor fireworks, most often used by specially trained and licensed pyrotechnicians. These are usually seen in large indoor venues for concerts and sporting events, both of which have been curtailed due to the pandemic.  In this case Cueball would be accurately lamenting his inability to enjoy indoor fireworks.
Arcade claw machines have a bin of prizes (often stuffed animals) with a claw mechanism hanging overhead. The player pays a few coins into the machine and maneuvers the claw over a desired prize. The claw will descend and "attempt" to grab the prize for retrieval. There is often a hidden percentage chance that the claw will not fully close.
This is a frustrating experience for the player (e.g. Cueball), but he misunderstands the purpose of the claws. While manipulator arms are also used for handling dangerous items, the claws in these machines are not to reduce coronavirus spread. Instead, they make toy-grabbing deliberately inefficient so that people may play again and pay more money. If people could take toys freely from the bin with their hands, operators would lose money, as people could take multiple toys or avoid paying entirely. It is unlikely that they would allow this even after the pandemic.
Out of frustration, some players attempt to reach through the deposit hole in order to try to take one of the stuffed animals or other prizes without the use of the claw. Since multiple people would presumably have already touched the metal interior, this is an effective way to spread the contagion quickly, which makes it even more imperative to discontinue this practice. There are other dangers to doing this as well; one can get their arm stuck in the machine , and can even cause themselves serious damage.
Again it is possible that the arcade used a ticket or token system where one could cash out their winnings for self-selected items such as plush toys.  As a COVID mitigation, the arcade may have found it necessary to make the plush toys only available via an enclosed claw style "skill" game.
A mall, in a historical context, refers to a large open walkway, such as the National Mall , where one could conceivably enter with a horse, although it was considered inappropriate to do so. However, it appears Cueball and Megan are referring to a shopping mall , where a shopper entering with a horse was never a regular occurrence [ citation needed ] , at least in universes where there isn’t a horse in aisle five .
[Megan and Cueball are having a conversation.] Megan: What do you miss most about life before the pandemic? Cueball: I can barely remember it.
Megan: I miss going scuba diving without having to wear a mask. Cueball: I miss free refills at gas stations. Megan: I miss grilling in the library.
[Close-up on Megan, Cueball's voice comes from off-panel, to the right.] Megan: I miss when tennis players didn't have to have that safety net between them. Cueball: I miss indoor fireworks.
[The frame returns to seeing them both, they are now walking to the right while talking.] Megan: I miss when arcades let you take toys from the bin with your hand instead of using that stupid claw. Cueball: Ugh, I hate that thing. Megan: I can't wait for a vaccine.


Cyber Cafe

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
A cybercafe, or Internet cafe , is a cafe or other restaurant that provides Internet access.  Prior to widespread ownership of personal computers and cell phones, such cafes would host computers that clients could use, and nowadays, many fast-food restaurants and cafes provide free Wi-Fi to their customers, so that people can use their computers while at the cafe. "Cyber" is a prefix meaning something relating to computers (as in Cyber Monday, the day the comic was posted), but this comic suggests that it sounds dated, previously discussed in 1573: Cyberintelligence . However, in 2020, he jokes that "cafe" actually sounds more dated. This is a result of lockdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic preventing people from going to cafes, and like the preceding comic is a play on the sense that the lockdowns could shift economies and cultures to remove parts of the physical world permanently, depending on how long they last.
In the title text, Randall indulges his munchies of ambiguity by proposing that the term "cyber cafe" be re-used to refer to online hangout spaces that try to feel like cafes.  This would change the meaning from "a cafe where computers are available for use by patrons" to "a setting or activity in cyberspace that feels like a cafe" (which would at least be inline with similar terms, like cyberbullying , cybersex , etc.).
Which word in the name "cyber cafe" sounds more dated?
2015 - Cyber 2016 - Cyber 2017 - Cyber 2018 - Cyber 2019 - Cyber 2020 - Cafe


Presidential Middle Names

Explanation:
A list of what Randall perceives will be the prettiest presidential middle names after the inauguration on January 20, 2021. Joe Robinette Biden (46th president-elect) will take the second slot bumping previous second-place holder Franklin Delano Roosevelt , the 32nd president, back to third. Warren Gamaliel Harding , the 29th president, remains in first. Robinette is Biden's grandmother's maiden name .
The title text announces that Rutherford Birchard Hayes , the 19th president, remains at or near the bottom.
Overall, the ranking would not include every president, as many early presidents, such as George Washington and John Adams , lacked middle names. Some presidents were also more commonly known by their middle names as opposed to their first names, particularly John Calvin Coolidge , Stephen Grover Cleveland , Hiram Ulysses Grant , and Thomas Woodrow Wilson . In the case of Grant, the Senator who enrolled him at West Point messed up his full name as Ulysses Simpson Grant, hence he is widely known as Ulysses S. Grant with the spurious middle "S". Also, Harry S Truman 's middle name was just the letter S and was not an initial of a name; Truman's parents could not agree on which of his grandfathers' names to give him, but luckily they both started with the letter. One president has even changed their entire name: Gerald Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., officially changing his name in 1935.
There is no evidence in the comic for how Randall’s list would deal with these cases.
The humor is based on the sheer oddity of ranking people by the perceived prettiness of their obscure middle names.
Raphael Gamaliel Warnock became a U.S. senator in January 2021, a hundred years and a week after former president Warren Gamaliel Harding left the Senate. Randall’s favourite presidential middle name is thus once again represented in government.
(updated for 2021, as the comic)
The Presidents without middle names — almost all of those before Grant, and a few a bit later — were George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson , James Madison , James Monroe , Andrew Jackson , Martin Van Buren , John Tyler , Zachary Taylor , Millard Fillmore , Franklin Pierce , James Buchanan , Abraham Lincoln , Andrew Johnson , Benjamin Harrison , William McKinley , and Theodore Roosevelt .
Prettiest Presidential Middle Names Official Rankings (Updated for 2021)


Contiguous 41 States

Explanation:
The United States of America is composed of 50 states, 48 of which are contiguous – meaning they share common borders. Two states are separated from the other 48 states, Alaska and Hawaii . Alaska, purchased from Russia in 1867, is separated from the rest of the United States by the country of Canada, or at least appears to be as a result of the Mercator Projection . Hawaii, annexed in 1898, is a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. As these states are not contiguous to the rest of the 48 states, they may be omitted from maps of the United States. Typically, these 2 states are included in inset maps, separate sections usually placed at the bottom of the main map.
The United States also includes 5 permanently inhabited territories (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa), which are not contiguous with states.  Puerto Rico may become a state . The District of Columbia is not ( yet ) a state, but is contiguous with the states.
The map in this comic is "Alaska and Hawaii's revenge", with seven additional states removed: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.  Most of these are accomplished by eliminating a column of states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. Oklahoma and Texas, which are directly south of these, are slid over to the west into the space freed up by deleting New Mexico.  The other two deleted states are Pennsylvania and Delaware, with the states to their south and north slid/extended to fill the gap.
The map is also missing Isle Royale , Michigan, the third-largest island in the contiguous U.S. This seems to be a legitimate oversight, as the map includes numerous smaller islands in detail, including Michigan's Beaver Island and North Manitou Island. Even the non-contiguous Northwest Angle of Minnesota is depicted. (The Eastern Shore of Virginia , which is not connected to the rest of Virginia and only borders Maryland, is also not shown—presumably to make way for New Jersey replacing much of the Delmarva Peninsula ).
Some states, while not removed, are significantly distorted. Iowa and Missouri lose their contours with the Missouri River, while Wyoming's eastern border is crooked. The eastern border of Maryland follows the Delaware river with New Jersey. The border between Oklahoma and Arkansas is moved west.
The United States did have exactly 41 states for a few days in 1889, from the admission of Montana, the 41st state, on November 8, to the admission of Washington (the state, not DC), the 42nd state, on November 11.  However, it was not the same 41 as shown here; for example, Pennsylvania and Delaware were two of the original 13 states (Delaware calls itself the first state, based on date of ratification of the Constitution) and Arizona and Oklahoma did not become states until the early 1900s.
The title text riffs on synonyms for "shared borders", which, according to Randall, linguists are inventing more of (while claiming they already existed) to make life more complicated for modern English users, for obscure reasons.
In fact, 'contiguous', 'coterminous', and 'conterminous' all date from early modern English, early-to-mid 17th century (just after the time of Shakespeare). 'Coterminous' and 'conterminous' are alternate spellings from the same Latin root ('cum' + 'terminus'), whereas 'contiguous' is from a different root (Latin 'contiguus'). Randall, facetiously, accuses linguists of having fabricated this history.
'Conterguous' is a neologism by Randall, though he blames it on linguists, consistent with his claim that they made up all the others. It is a portmanteau of 'CONTERminous' and 'contiGUOUS'. It is etymologically absurd (the prefix 'conter-' is meaningless). Its 'top-down' introduction into the language would simply be for the purpose of messing with people's minds, as Randall suggests. However, should the word catch on with English speakers, perhaps precisely because it is a joke, its 'bottom-up' entry into the language is certainly possible. One could then argue just how much Randall would have to answer for.
[Heading above the panel:] The Contiguous 41 States
[A map of the United States, missing Delaware, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota, along with Alaska and Hawaii.]
[Caption below the panel:] Tired of being left off maps of the US, Alaska and Hawaii begin producing maps with other states missing, too.


Covid Precaution Level

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
This comic seems to represent the problem that precautions that are insufficient feel excessive to many people and vice versa, thus there is such a large overlap between the 2 sections. Even a moderately sensible individual will likely consider some blanket precautions restrictive because they don't allow a nuance of behaviour they think they should be able to embrace safely; meanwhile they'll find some of the actual official exceptions, that probably do not apply to them, to be taken reckless advantage of by others.  Additionally, neither range mentions whether the precautions are actually effective, which also can have a level of subjectivity.
Randall points out that part of the challenge with finding the 'right setting' is that you can only know for sure that your precautions were insufficient if and when you catch COVID and either get tested or develop symptoms, by which point it is too late to change your precautions (although your case could at least inform others). However, some people do not take precautions seriously even though they believe in COVID because they view it as a mild disease, like the common cold or influenza, that won't kill them, and there have been people who contracted COVID-19 multiple times, so perhaps Randall was referring to dying from COVID-19 instead.
COVID Precaution Level [Shown is a control knob for adjusting the stringency of precautions taken against COVID-19 (the knob has a black line indicating exactly where it is pointing), with fewer precautions to the left, more to the right. Most of the lower two thirds of the range is labelled "precautions that feel insufficient"; most of the upper two thirds is labelled "precautions that feel excessive".  There is an overlap between the two, covering about 1/4 of the range.  The control is set to somewhat above the top of the "insufficient" subrange.]


Wonder Woman 1984

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Ponytail, who was eager to see Wonder Woman 1984 , the 2019 sequel to the acclaimed 2017 Wonder Woman film, decided to block all news media leading up to the film, to avoid spoilers . Avoiding spoilers is a common practice for people who do not wish to be "spoiled" by reading or hearing any plot points of the film, because they want to be immersed in the movie when watching it for the first time, by not being able to predict any plot twists before they occur. Many early reviewers may inadvertently give away key parts of the film, which may ruin the experience for some watchers, and story elements may be leaked by inside sources, either accidentally or deliberately.
However, there have been many delays for release of the film, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. The film was originally delayed from November 1, 2019 to June 5, 2020 to allow more time for production, and then, after the pandemic struck, was pushed to August 14, 2020, then October 2, 2020, before it was finally moved to December 25, 2020. The film studio announced a simultaneous release of the film in theaters and also on streaming platform HBO Max .
Absurdly, Ponytail apparently continued to block news sites after the delays, and so has not read any news in over a year, even news unrelated to movies. Because of this, she is apparently totally unaware of the entire pandemic, as well as more predictable major news items like the 2020 United States presidential election. This is particularly absurd, because these events were influential enough that it would be difficult or impossible to avoid awareness, even with no media exposure. They have been common topics of conversation, not to mention face-masks and other public health-control measures have now become ubiquitous, and election campaign signs and bumper stickers were common sights in the lead-up to November.
How the release date being postponed (twice) did not convince Ponytail to find out why, therefore becoming aware of the pandemic with its associated lockdown and public health-control, is a question that is left unanswered. It is also unclear how she became aware that the movie had, in fact, been postponed. Her confusion as to why her movie is now being shown at a drive-in theater is a sign that she's unaware of COVID-19. Drive-in theaters have been seen as a safer option than indoor movie theaters during the pandemic.
Cueball tries to warn her about the ongoing pandemic, but in an effort to avoid spoilers, she silences him. This may imply that in her wildly excessive effort to avoid spoilers, she's avoided leaving her home and talking to people, which could explain her exceptional level of disconnection from current events. Cueball then tells her to wear a mask, but she is still confused. Ponytail says that she will dress up in costume as Wonder Woman, who is traditionally shown wearing a tiara but not a mask (unlike Batman or many other comic characters, although efficiency of their masks still varies wildly in regards to COVID-19 protection).
The title text expands on Ponytail's speculation that the use of the drive-in theaters is a "retro promotion," presumably because drive-ins and the '80s setting of the movie are now both considered to be retro in 2020. However, they are not associated with the same period; drive-in theaters in America had their heyday in the 1950s and '60s, and were in rapid decline by the '80s. Ponytail further demonstrates her misunderstanding of history by mentioning several other things which she wrongly believes are from the '80s. Britney Spears is a singer who was popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Hustle was a disco dance popular in the mid-1970s. Pogs under that name peaked in the mid-1990s. Elvis 's appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show - a pivotal moment in American pop culture - occurred on September 9, 1956. ( The Ed Sullivan Show went off the air in 1971, Ed Sullivan died in 1974, and Elvis Presley died in 1977.) This joke concerns the phenomenon of people lumping together all time periods before their birth, which results in "retro" or "period" representations combining elements from widely different time periods. (A similar behavior is seen in 771: Period Speech .) Cueball points this out by asking Ponytail when she was born, implying that, if she'd actually lived through any of those time periods, she'd realize that they were distinct. If Ponytail could not remember any of these events in her childhood, an age of about 20 years can be set as an approximate upper bound for this particular character's age.
This comic is similar to 2280: 2010 and 2020 and 2338: Faraday Tour , which also involve characters who are unaware of the COVID-19 pandemic.
[Ponytail sitting at a desk, chatting with Cueball (off-screen) on a laptop.] Ponytail: Just two weeks until I see Wonder Woman 1984 , learn who the Democratic nominee was, and find out how the election went. Cueball: Huh?
[Close-up on Ponytail.] Ponytail: To avoid spoilers, I blocked all news sites ahead of the November 2019 release. Ponytail: But then they bumped the date on my ticket to June 2020, and now December 25th. Ponytail: It also moved to a drive-in theater? Some retro promotion, maybe.
[Cueball on his laptop, chatting with Ponytail (off-screen) on a laptop.] Cueball: Wait, you haven't seen any news? Ponytail: Nope! Cueball: So you don't know about - Ponytail: No spoilers!
[Back to Ponytail sitting at a desk, chatting with Cueball (off-screen) on a laptop.] Cueball: Okay. Just... Cueball: Bring a mask, in case you need to get out of the car. Ponytail: Oh, I'll have a full costume! But it's a tiara, not a mask.


I Just Don't Trust Them

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic , specifically regarding the COVID-19 vaccine .
Cueball partially echoes a statement made by anti-vaccination activists about " Big Pharma " (the powerful and profit-driven companies which develop pharmaceutical drugs such as vaccines ). Anti-vaccine protesters falsely believe that vaccines contain harmful toxins (such as HIV proteins, aluminum salts , formaldehyde, mercury , and nanoparticles) that cause ill effects on the human body, that just because there has never been a licensed mRNA vaccine before that these new vaccines are not safe in the long term, and that the corporations that make them are not to be trusted because they are exploiting a captive public for profit while disregarding public health. The joke is that Cueball is revealed to be not talking about Big Pharma but, instead, bats.
According to the WHO, COVID-19 has an ecological origin in bat populations. Hence, Cueball sees the virus as something developed by bats, and the ambiguity by which he expresses his desire to not be infected adds to the joke.
The comic could simply be seen to serve as a compelling argument against the anti-vaccine movement, which is often criticized for spreading misinformation and increasing rates of disease, especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This comic comes shortly after the news of the development of several COVID-19 vaccines with high rates of success; there are concerns that herd immunity may be delayed if people refuse to take the vaccine.
The title text refers to getting immunity the old-fashioned way, i.e. catching the disease and waiting for your immune system to build up a response. This is usually considered healthy when immunity to minor diseases is common, and can avoid the sudden forced evolution of new diseases among extensively hypercareful communities, but developing natural immunity is certainly incredibly dangerous during a pandemic of a serious illness. One joke here is that many anti-vaxxers claim that it is more natural to not take a vaccine. Because many people conflate "natural" with "healthy", the assumption underlying the claim "it is more natural to not take a vaccine" is that it is therefore more healthy. Such arguments are an example of the logical fallacy known as Appeal to nature . Thus, the title text is apparently written from a pro-vaxxer's take on the stance of an anti-vaxxer.
The title text also playfully suggests that the immune system would attempt to use an Internet search engine to learn how to manufacture spike protein antibodies . While this may be an effective technique for a human being to acquire knowledge, it would not likely be as efficient for a nonsentient biological system. [ citation needed ]
[Cueball stands with his arms to his sides, facing Megan.] Cueball: I just don't trust them, and I don't want to put something they developed into my body.
[Caption below the panel:] How I feel about bats


Vaccine Tracker

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic , specifically regarding the COVID-19 vaccine .
Similar to 281: Online Package Tracking , Cueball is trying to "track" the status of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine , which was approved in the USA the week prior to the publishing of this comic, and began to be administered the day of publication. Cueball is impatient for the vaccine to be released to the public, wanting the pandemic to end as soon as possible. Because of that, he is treating the state vaccine website like a package tracker, even though it will probably be several months before he is vaccinated.
Of course, the state vaccine website does not act like a package tracker, and updates will be few and far between. The comedy in this comes from Cueball expecting it to update regularly, even though the vaccine is not going to come anytime soon for most people, especially for those in Cueball's presumed priority level. Checking once a day for general 'movement' probably would more than suffice to get a head's up on when a possible invitation or opportunity to book would present itself.
The title text refers to Pfizer's vaccine plant in the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan , and is also a reference to 281: Online Package Tracking .
[Megan walks towards Cueball. Cueball sits in front of his laptop.] Megan: What are you up to? Cueball: You know how when I have a package coming, I sit here refreshing the package tracker? Megan: Is that the state vaccine website? [Cueball refreshes the page] *REFRESH*
Megan: You know it will be a while before you can- [Cueball refreshes the page, cutting her off.] *REFRESH* Megan: They haven't even announced when- [Cueball refreshes the page again, cutting her off.] *REFRESH*
Megan: Are you going to sit there clicking refresh for several months? Cueball: I am ready for the pandemic to be done.


2020 Election Map

Explanation:
This is a sequel to an earlier comic, 1939: 2016 Election Map . The United States elects its president not directly by popular vote but by an Electoral College composed of a number of electors, partially proportional to population, from each state. Presently, a "winner-take-all" system is used in most states: the winner of the popular vote in each state receives all of the electoral votes for that state. Though, strictly speaking, the electors are not required to cast their ballots according to this system, many states impose penalties on them if they don't. Technically, the popular vote in each state is to elect a slate of electors who in turn elect the President.
During the election season, news outlets and other political trackers tend to color-code each state with the party which won the state (or which is projected or speculated to win).  Since the 2000 election it's become common practice to code Republican victories as red and Democratic victories as blue. Other parties have less consistent colors, but are commonly green. These colors have become embedded in popular vernacular, as states that are heavily Republican are known as "red states" and those that are heavily Democratic are known as "blue states".
These graphics can be misleading as to the realities on the ground, though.  Because each state is colored solidly red or blue, it gives the impression that each state belongs entirely to one party or the other, when the color could represent a very slender minority, or an overwhelming advantage. In addition, such a graphical view means that larger states translate to more area of a given color, giving the impression of party strength, even though that may not represent many voters. In the US, large cities trend largely Democratic, while rural areas trend largely Republican. This means that many Democratic voters are concentrated in relatively small urban areas, so a large "red" state may represent fewer voters than a small "blue" state.
Randall's solution to this is to represent the Republican and Democratic voters in each state with Cueball icons, each icon representing 250,000 voters.  He has made some attempt to distribute the Cueball icons within a state in a manner similar to how the actual votes were distributed.  This has the advantage of giving a decent impression of how popular each candidate was, how their popularity varied across the country, and how the votes were distributed by both state and region.  It also gives at least a basic indication of population patterns in the US, with large regions that are sparsely inhabited, and populations clustered in urban centers.
The title text compares different voter pools in terms of absolute size. These facts are frequently counter-intuitive. California is generally thought of as a "blue state", and Texas as a "red state" (Although that may be changing), so it's surprising to realize that, in 2020, Donald Trump received more votes in California than he did in Texas. The reason for this is not complex, California has a huge population, nearly 40 million people, of whom 17.5 million voted in 2020.  Even though Joe Biden won the state easily, Trump received 6 million of those votes.  Texas, by contrast, has 27.7 million residents and 11.3 million voters in the 2020 election. Trump received 5.9 million of those votes, which was enough to win the state. Because of the huge variation in population among US states, and the political divisions within each state, there are multiple "blue" states which have more Republican voters that at least some "red" states, and vice versa. This underscores the importance of not viewing any state as politically uniform. Even if a state trends heavily toward one party, there is always a substantial population of the other party, and in large states, that means enough people that they'd be a formidable political force anywhere else.
Source
The following table lists the number of 250,000-vote markers in the map by candidate and state, and compares this with the actual number of votes. Source
2020 Election Map [One stick figure in a black circle] = 250,000 votes [Stick figure in a blue circle] Biden [Stick figure in a red circle] Trump [Stick figure in a green circle] Other Votes are distributed by state as accurately as possible while keeping national totals correct. Location within each state is approximate. [Blue, red, and green circles are distributed across a map of the United States.]


Statistics

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic , specifically regarding the COVID-19 vaccine . It is also another one of Randall's Tips , this time a statistics tip.
The main focus of the comic is a graph showing cases of COVID-19 versus time for two groups: one group was vaccinated and the other group was not. Graphs are ways to visualize data, and for real data indicate specific values. This graph seems to be based on the Moderna vaccine's results but is somewhat fictionalized. The higher line ("placebo group") rises in a steep curve. The lower line ("vaccine group") follows the first for a bit but then levels out to a much slower rate of climb. Officially, a scientific assessment of the effectiveness of anything requires rigorous statistical analysis. This is particularly true in medical studies, where impacts of biology can be highly complex and subject to many factors, meaning that careful review of the data is necessary to confirm that an intervention was effective. The joke of this comic is that the intervention presented here is so obviously effective that it's obvious even to a layman with little understanding of the math. A few days after the vaccine was administered, cases in the vaccinated group essentially flatline, while cases in the placebo group continue to rise as a significant rate. The data is so "good", meaning that numbers for the treatment and control groups diverge so dramatically, that actual analysis becomes almost a formality: a glance at the chart would convince most people that the treatment is effective.
This comic was released one day after the FDA's Dec 17th briefing document for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was released. The document includes the following chart .  The charts draw the integral of the incidence data rather than the data itself ("cumulative" rather than "rate"): this results in changes in disease rate towards the left side of the chart, being added into the data on the right side, amplifying their difference.  This technique for emphasizing the data is valid: the spread between the lines only continues to increase if the effect continues happening, such that the total spread at the right is proportional to the total effect the vaccine had.  The charts do not show any information on other possible variables.  Randall has described previously in his webcomics how very clear charts can be made to hide misleading data.  The linked graph does not leave the numbers out, and the numbers indicate the vaccine is 91% effective at preventing the disease (and a 95% chance of being between 85 and 95% efficient).
The advice here could be seen as the inverse of the "science tip" in 2311: Confidence Interval , in which the data was so bad that its error bars fell outside of the graph and were not shown. Also there's some association with 1725: Linear Regression where the data is not so good that you don't need to perform linear analysis.
The null hypothesis, mentioned in the title text, is the hypothesis in a statistical analysis that indicates that the effect investigated by the analysis does not occur, i.e. 'null' as in zero effect. For example, the null hypothesis for this study might be "The vaccine has no effect on whether subjects catch COVID." The null hypothesis was previously the subject of 892: Null Hypothesis . The null hypothesis is rejected when the probability of something like the observed data would be very low were the null hypothesis true.
For a simplified example, imagine there are 10 000 people in the vaccinated group, and each has a 5% chance of catching COVID under the null hypothesis; we expect 500 people to catch COVID. If only 490 catch COVID, the null hypothesis remains plausible, but if just 10 do, the odds are (in Python; see binomial distribution ) sum([math.comb(10000, i) * 0.05**i * 0.95**(10000-i) for i in range(0,10)]) = 1.5 × 10 -204 . In other words, it is wildly improbably that an ineffective vaccine would have produced such excellent results. We therefore conclude that the vaccine is not ineffective, and have rejected the null hypothesis.
Most people however, on seeing the raw results, would have concluded that the vaccine worked and statistics were just a formality. As the title text says, they would have "reject[ed] the null hypothesis based on the 'hot damn, check out this chart' test."
[Shown is a graph with the x-axis labeled "time" and the y-axis labeled "COVID cases." There is a black line on the graph labeled "placebo group", which has a roughly linear slope moving toward the top right corner. There is a red line labeled "vaccine group", which follows the black line for about an eighth of the width of the graph before leveling off at a much slower increase.]
Caption beneath the graph: Statistics tip: Always try to get data that's good enough that you don't need to do statistics on it


Conjunction

Explanation:
Cueball and Ponytail are observing the 2020 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction . This comic is similar to other comparisons between expectation and reality, such as 2176: How Hacking Works , 683: Science Montage , 2341: Scientist Tech Help , and 538: Security . The expectation is that the scientists will remain professional and serious throughout the event, testing Einstein's theory of General Relativity and using technical terms such as arcminute , a unit of measurement often used in astronomy. In reality, however, they are actually treating the event quite whimsically and are having fun with it, even jokingly commenting about the event. Other astronomical phenomena, such as solar eclipses, actually have been used to test Einstein's theories, but in this case the interest is purely aesthetic.
The title text references the misconception that the planets physically get very close at conjunction, rather than merely appearing to do so. The wording suggests a quick and uneventful merger, possibly alluding to the way drops of water merge when the surface tension between them is broken.
If Jupiter and Saturn really did come into contact and "blooped together", most of the mass would stay collected as an extremely hot [ citation needed ] and turbulent blob that would eventually settle down as a new planet (which Randall suggests might be called "Jaturn" ), but more than a bit would be spewed outwards.  The possible outcomes vary enormously, depending on factors such as how direct the impact was, and its alignment relative to the planets' spins. However, while such a collision would be preceded by a conjunction, a conjunction does not necessarily indicate an imminent collision, as Jupiter and Saturn, although on the same sightline from Earth, are still separated by 734 million km (456 million mi) at the time of the conjunction - almost five times the distance from Earth to the Sun.
[Caption above the first panel:] What people imagine astronomers observing a conjunction are like
[Cueball and Ponytail are both looking through telescopes at the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.] Cueball: 6.15 arcminutes! Ponytail: Stupendous! This confirms Einstein!
[Caption above the second panel:] What they're actually like
[The same picture with different spoken sentences.] Cueball: Wow! Look how close they are! Ponytail: It's so cool!! Cueball: Now kiiiisssss!! Ponytail: Dooo iiit!


Into My Veins

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic . It also references a common meme .
Two of the next four comics also contain references to the vaccine, 2404: First Thing and 2406: Viral Vector Immunity , and the first of these, like this one, additionally references a common Internet trend.
The COVID-19 Pandemic has been one of the most consequential and broadly unpleasant events in living memory. [ citation needed ] As of the publication of this strip, it is estimated to have caused over 1.5 million deaths worldwide, with over 300,000 deaths in the United States, and many more serious cases, often with lasting impacts.  Even for those who have been spared infection, measures to slow the spread of the virus have been highly impactful, and have been ongoing for nearly a year.
As a consequence of all of this, many people (including, presumably, Randall ) are excited for the vaccine, which will hopefully end the pandemic. This comic shows Cueball clearly thrilled to receive the vaccine. "Inject this directly into my veins" is a meme based on a line (from The Simpsons ): in the episode " A Star Is Burns ", an alcoholic character wins a lifetime supply of beer, and replies "just hook it to my veins". The meme is typically applied to things that are not injected at all (such as a form of media or entertainment) to express exaggerated enthusiasm.  When Cueball applies the meme to the COVID-19 vaccine, it causes some confusion, because the vaccine is delivered by injection, but not directly into a vein . The medical staff delivering the vaccine have apparently heard this or similar lines frequently, and appear to take it literally, repeatedly explaining that it's not actually possible.
The title text references another such meme, "Shut up and take my money," which derives from the 2010 " Attack of the Killer App " episode of Futurama . This meme, like the first, expresses extreme and immediate desire for something, with the implication that the speaker is not only willing but eager to pay whatever it costs, and is too excited to wait for a sales pitch or for any warnings or disclaimers. The COVID-19 vaccine is being provided free of charge to Cueball, so taking his money is entirely unnecessary (and possibly illegal). Once again, this is a source of potential confusion because, under the American healthcare system, many people likely will have to pay at least part of the cost of vaccination. The workers administering it could easily confuse the meme for a genuine request.
This was the last comic before this years Christmas comic . It was about the Covid-19 vaccine. The last comic before the 2021 Christmas comic, 2558: Rapid Test Results , was about Covid-19 tests.
[Close up of Cueball.] Cueball: Yesssss Cueball: Inject this directly into my veins
[Beat panel. Ponytail looks down at a clipboard while Cueball is looking at her.]
[Zoom out to reveal that Cueball is standing by a stool, with Ponytail in front of him with a clipboard and syringe and Hairy behind him with a box of bandages and a first-aid kit.] Ponytail: Ok, but the vaccine is intramuscular... Hairy: Why do people keep saying that? Cueball: Sorry, sorry. Cueball: Just excited.


Wrapping Paper

Explanation:
This comic was published on Christmas Day, 2020, a day where people who celebrate Christmas traditionally open presents.
In this comic, Megan is unwrapping a present while Cueball looks on (perhaps it's the present he gave her). The premise is that the definition of a present is not what's inside the box, but what's inside the region of space that the blank side of the wrapping paper faces. So if you wrap the box with the printed side towards the box, everything in the universe outside the box is the gift. Apparently, the box contains a pair of headphones, which would be a nice present, but not nearly as impressive as almost everything in the universe. [ citation needed ] And since the rest of the universe contains millions of headphones, many of which are probably nicer than the ones in this box, she still gets headphones as well.
The title text extends this to regifting , which is the practice of using a received present (usually unwanted and hopefully unused) as a present for someone else. This practice is often considered to be impolite because it's assumed to simultaneously show a lack of appreciation of a gift you've received (because you want to get rid of it), and an unwillingness to spend much time, effort, or money on a gift for someone else. But if you wrap an ordinary present inside out, all the gifts you've ever received in the past are part of the entire universe except for that present, so you're actually doing an enormous amount of regifting including stuff belonging to other people , which is as rude as regifting can get.
Douglas Adams 's novel So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish , the fourth in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, contains a similar joke. A man living in an inside-out room in a desert treats the rest of Earth as an insane asylum, with himself living outside of it as the only sane man.
This may also refer to a math joke about how to create the smallest fence around a group of animals. Rather than finding the obvious fence, a mathematician would build a small, circular fence around themselves and declare the region on the other side of the fence "inside", thus enclosing all the animals!
The mention of headphones might be a reference to the AirPods Max , which were released by Apple on December 9, just 16 days before this comic, and stirred much debate for their USD$549 price tag.
[Cueball is standing at the left of a decorated Christmas tree, with present boxes underneath it. The presents are wrapped with the undecorated side of the wrapping paper facing out. Megan is kneeling at the right side, unwrapping a gift, revealing stripes on the inside.]
Megan: Cool! I got the entire universe and every object within it except for a pair of headphones!
[Caption below the panel]: Presents get a lot more impressive if you turn the wrapping paper inside out


First Thing

Explanation:
This comic is another in a series of comics related to the COVID-19 pandemic , specifically regarding the COVID-19 vaccine .
This comic, somewhat like 2402: Into My Veins , references both the COVID-19 vaccine and a common Internet trend. Two comics later in 2406: Viral Vector Immunity , the vaccine is again referenced.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most consequential and broadly unpleasant events in living memory [ citation needed ] .  As of the publication of this strip, it is estimated to have caused over 1.5 million deaths worldwide and over 300,000 deaths in the United States. Many more cases that have not resulted in fatality often need serious medical support and/or have lasting implications.  Even for those who have been spared infection, measures to slow the spread of the virus have been highly impactful and have been ongoing for nearly a year.
In consequence of all of this, many people are excited for the vaccine (which will hopefully end the pandemic). Many people online have been sharing plans for what they'll do after getting the vaccine, like "see my friends" or "travel the world." In this comic, Ponytail takes the phrase literally, listing not what she will voluntarily choose to do but what low-level involuntary systems in her body will do immediately after getting the vaccine:
The next step is mentioned in the title text:
The last point, which are the only things that Ponytail will choose to do is important, for a number of reasons.  The vaccines currently available offer a great deal of protection to an individual patient, but that protection takes several days to even begin in a significant way. Full immunity will likely require several weeks and an additional dose.  In addition, while highly effective, the current crop of vaccines are not 100% effective. And even those who develop immunity can become contaminated with the virus on their person and then transmit it to others.
For all of these reasons, there is a very real fear of people who receive vaccinations immediately abandoning all other precautions and continuing to spread the virus.  Genuinely ending the pandemic will require precautions to remain in place until enough of the population is vaccinated that a combination of high levels of population immunity and other distancing precautions lower the infection rate to a controllable level. Abandoning safety precautions before this occurs could extend the pandemic and cost lives.  Accordingly, Ponytail's intent is to be responsible and maintain all appropriate precautions until such time as it's safe to change them.
[Ponytail and Cueball are walking toward the right side of a single panel. Ponytail is gesturing with one arm.]
Ponytail: The first thing I'm going to do after I get the vaccine? Ponytail: Definitely make a bunch of spike proteins and engulf them with dendritic cells. Ponytail: Then I'll probably display the antigens to my T-cells...