The comic was released the day after the election, by an author who lives in the United States. I suspect the comic is explicitly about American politics.

I’ve noticed that, if an equation calls for a number squared, they usually really mean a number multiplied by its complex conjugate.

Yes, but not all clients expose dependent tasks (which is sadly a common issue with open standards: they aren’t always properly implemented). I’m using Tasks.org on my phone (which supports dependent tasks), synchronizing to a Nextcloud server with the Tasks app (which supports dependent tasks now, but didn’t for a long time), which also syncs to Thunderbird (which does not appear to show dependent tasks as dependents).

Edit: remembered that the Nextcloud Tasks app has long supported dependent tasks. I was thinking of recurring tasks, which it does not support. Again, open standards aren’t always fully implemented.

I think CalDAV (which uses the iCalendar format) may be the closest thing. It covers calendar items, obviously, but also task and journal items.