Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This single-panel comic presents a mock "fun fact" claiming that "all baby anecdotes begin the same way." It shows a group of babies at what appears to be a casual gathering, with one baby confidently

This comic is a tribute to Grace Hopper (1906-1992), the pioneering computer scientist and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral. The comic presents her as a supernatural figure who introduces herself and lists her

This comic satirizes the idea of using deceptive "scientific" methods on first dates. A woman explains to her friend that she asks men to draw the male symbol (a circle with an arrow) on a first date,

This comic presents two satirical flowcharts about how people discuss the economy. The first, "How to Talk About the Economy: A Guide for Elected Officials," reveals the no-win nature of economic prog

This comic humorously reimagines the origin of prehistoric cave paintings. Instead of being the product of a deep spiritual connection to nature or sophisticated artistic impulse, the cave paintings w

This single-panel comic plays on the timing of the Super Bowl, which takes place in early February each year. The caption reads "Fun Fact: Geeks have their own form of Superbowl once a year in Februar

This comic riffs on the famous Socratic paradox "I know that I know nothing," attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. Socrates proudly declares himself the wisest man because he alone re

This comic explores the well-known idea that science fiction inspires real scientific innovation. An interviewer asks an older inventor what led him to create so many amazing inventions, and he explai

This comic presents an absurd alternate-history scenario that attempts to put a positive spin on Hitler. The narration explains that aliens needed a "gripping area near human mouths" to begin their in

This comic is a commentary on internet privacy and civil liberties, structured as a series of parallels between online policies that are presented as "responsible" or "reasonable" and their real-world

This comic explores the philosophical distinction between love and infatuation through a conversation between a father and his young son. The father offers a thoughtful and nuanced explanation: when y

This single-panel comic depicts a father bursting into his son's bedroom announcing that there was a radiation leak from his synchrotron experiment, but reassuring the boy that "if the shield to your

The comic personifies science as a heroic warrior figure, "the Spirit of Science," who wields a sword called "Empiricism." He dramatically declares that he battles ignorance, conquers absurdity, and s

A man arrives at a formal dance and is told by the doorman that the party is already over. When he protests that it was supposed to start right now, the doorman explains that everyone came early, got

A nervous man works up the courage to ask a woman at a bar if he can buy her a drink. She politely declines, saying she's already there with someone. He walks away and tries to reassure himself that t

A woman is asked to explain the concept of self-referential phrases. She responds by asking, "Well, do you know the old saying about self-referential phrases?" When the man says no, she simply replies

A professor at a lectern poses a rhetorical question about what ears and noses have in common. He explains that evolution has adapted these sensory organs to be large enough to take in a great deal of

The comic presents an alternate reality scenario in which Hitler was captured after World War II and, rather than being executed or imprisoned, was punished by being forced into a demeaning career as

A young man addresses his own penis directly, laying out the dire situation: they are out of clean underwear, the only available pants are sweatpants, and there will be attractive women in his lecture

The comic is a single panel styled as a theatrical playbill. A man lies in bed reading a "Playbill" program, and the text above reads: "Wife was unavailable due to lack of intimacy in recent interacti

A boy who used to earn three dollars a week for bringing in the mail learns that his younger sister has been born and is now willing to do the same chore for $2.50. Outraged, he appeals to his father

A group of girls at what appears to be a sleepover excitedly ask the classic joke, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" An older woman with glasses -- clearly an English teacher -- answers in the mos

This comic is titled "Academician versus Person from Anywhere Else." An academic complains to a non-academic about the pressure of "publish or perish" -- the well-known expectation in academia that pr

This comic is drawn in the style of a child's school project, titled "How Software is Made, by Sally, Age 8." It walks through the software development process as understood (and misunderstood) by a y

In this comic, a mother presents her daughter with a children's book about sex, saying she wrote it "so nobody will make the same mistake that I did." The daughter fires back with a cutting remark: "M

This comic presents a guide to "Infrequently Used Punctuation Marks," each shown with a symbol, its meaning, and a sample usage. The marks include: a sarcasm mark (a reversed question mark), used to i

This comic is titled "Batman vs. Programming." A programmer tells Batman that he forgot to put parentheses after "main" in his code. Batman throws a batarang at the programmer's head, then ominously d

This long-form comic imagines a scenario where a senator devises a system to let consumers pay micropayments to skip commercials. The math seems elegant: if there's a 1 in 50,000 chance of buying a pr

In this comic, a son tries to come out to his father, but instead of simply saying he's gay, he uses overly academic language: he says he's "further right on the Kinsey Scale than is socially normativ

This comic is labeled with a "Comedy Tip" banner that reads: "Kid''s joke + needless uncomfortable context = funny." It then demonstrates this formula. A man cheerfully asks: "What did Hitler''s cat t

This comic presents a humorous argument that the Tree of Knowledge from the Book of Genesis was actually a metaphor for bacon. A woman with glasses makes the case to a stunned man: "Think about it. It

This comic features a bearded man and a red-haired woman engaging in a rapid-fire philosophical dialogue. The woman asks a series of big questions -- "What is science?", "What is philosophy?", "What i

This comic draws a parallel between the Fermi Paradox and an absent father. A couple lies in bed looking at the stars, and the woman poses the classic Fermi Paradox question: "If life is elsewhere in

This single-panel comic depicts a group of Jesus look-alikes -- all with long brown hair, beards, and robes -- butting heads aggressively like rams or bighorn sheep. Two of them growl "HAR-R-RGH!" and

This comic features a father explaining menstruation terminology to his daughter using an elaborate (and entirely fictional) system based on punctuation marks. When the daughter asks why it is called

This long-form comic tells the story of an escalating technology arms race between two engineers in a relationship. A man introduces the "Balls-O-Tron," a device that emits pressure waves at the reson

This comic is titled "A Brief History of the Purpose of Man" and presents four famous thinkers across history, each offering their answer to humanity''s ultimate purpose. Socrates says "Justice and ri

This comic imagines what it would be like if Sylvia Plath, the famously depressive American poet and novelist, wrote children''s fables. A woman (depicted in Plath''s likeness with glasses) reads a be

This comic contrasts the public and private reasons someone might oppose brain scanning technology. The top panel, labeled "Why I say brain scanning should never be legal," shows a man making an eloqu

This comic depicts an English professor tied to a chair by a former student who has "turned to evil" after failing the professor's class due to poor grammar. The villain devises a diabolical trap: he

In this comic, an economist excitedly explains that every possible state of the economy can be defined using a wavefunction borrowed from quantum mechanics. His colleague asks if he has any evidence f

This comic is titled "Reductionism: The Ultimate Form of Sarcasm." A man gives his wife flowers for their wedding anniversary, but describes the gesture in the most clinically reductive terms possible

This comic illustrates the concept of "Mount Stupid," a humorous take on the Dunning-Kruger effect. The graph plots "Willingness to Opine on a Topic" against "Knowledge of That Topic," showing that pe

This comic satirizes the misuse of scientific research to support personal agendas, specifically in the context of the "friend zone." A man presents a study to a woman claiming that, according to the

This single-panel comic proposes the idea of a food brand specifically marketed toward depressed people. It shows a sad-looking man next to a store shelf displaying a product labeled "Barbecue Chips a

This comic draws a humorous analogy between a common bedroom frustration and the universal experience of dealing with an unresponsive computer. In the first panel, a woman lies in bed thinking about w

This comic satirizes the idea of using economic incentives to motivate children. A mother tells her daughter Sally that they're going to "economically incentivize" her to stop playing video games by p

This comic features a character meant to represent mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, famous for his work on fractals and self-similar recursive structures. He delivers a pickup line that is itself recu

This comic takes the idealistic premise of abolishing war and follows it to its absurdly logical conclusion. A speaker at a podium declares that war shall be abolished, but an audience member immediat

This comic starts with a familiar childhood scenario: a kid is scared to go to the bathroom because he believes a monster under the bed will grab his legs. Instead of offering reassurance, the father