2479: Houseguests

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Houseguests

Title text: You can come on in, we're all fully vaccinated. Except the spare room off the living room. Don't go in there, we're not fully vaccinated in there.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by the SPARE ROOM OFF THE LIVING ROOM. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Cueball and Megan are standing and looking at each other.]

Cueball: Now that we're fully vaccinated, we can invite people over.

Megan: Exciting!

[Beat panel.]

[Cueball and Megan are standing in a wider panel. Megan is looking down at her torso.]

Cueball: Which means we have to clean.

Megan: ...You know, I suddenly feel only about 98% vaccinated.

Cueball: Yeah, let's give it a few more days.

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Discussion

I interpreted this comic completely differently than what is written in the explanation (though I can agree that the explanation as written is plausible). When I first read the comic, I assumed Megan and Cueball were hesitant to have guests come over because they would have to clean up after the guests left. Presumably their house would be spotlessly neat and tidy after more than a year of no visitors, and having someone visit would spoil that. Speaking personally, it will be great to have guests staying with me again, but there is a twinge of regret that the much simpler and easy pace of pandemic life is over now that I’m vaccinated.172.70.110.170 04:21, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I can see what you mean, but if you also read the title text is it clear that it is their house that is not clean enough for guest. I can totally relate. We always get the house tidy when we invite guest over, and apart from very close family, which do not need this tidiness, we have not had any visitors for over a year... It is thus for sure the problem that the house is a mess, and they have got used to live in this since no one came around to look at it. But now, if they wish to have friends over, they have to make a big effort to not be embarrassed. And having gotten used to not seeing people the effort may bot be worth it (obviously). --Kynde (talk) 09:53, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the title text, the explanation reads, ". . . and assumes that this is an assignment of one state from the other that is commutative (i.e. reversible) from the simplistic idea of readiness arising from status." Can someone translate this for me, please? I've only completed two years of college English, so it baffles me! 162.158.74.117 11:12, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Not sure it's the right word, but a function "A => B" (read that as 'leads to', 'produces', 'implies', etc) need not imply "B => A" (commutative functions, such as matrix multiplication, also give different results depending upon the order attempted).

In reality, "House Readiness <= Vaccination Status + Pre-Pandemic Standards" (reversing the cause/effect sides) so "Vaccination Status => House Readiness" is already wrong, without even considering how the accepted nature of Vaccinatedness is not going to change between rooms (unless your house crosses a state boundary/whatever, with different enforcements?

I'd have explained it differently from the start. Maybe the typical programming confusion between equality and assignment operators, and why it's good practice to habitually produce intended boolean outputs from "CONST equ VAR" (however the code dialect demands) rather than the other way round, for the compiler to catch accidental assignments/non-comparisons, that you may have mis-typed, from the off - but that could be even more confusing for readers. ;) 141.101.99.177 12:13, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

You don't need more of college English. You need college Algebra. -- Hkmaly (talk) 03:21, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I thought that it meant that they had a person living in their spare room, an anti-vaxxer

"2020-21 pandemic of the SARS-CoV-2 virus". I like the optimism that the pandemic will be over in 2021. 😁 Gpk (talk) 14:36, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

xkcd 78 is slowly starting to look like irony, in the face of strips like this one. 172.70.114.38 18:49, 22 June 2021 (UTC)