Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic imagines what the Christmas season would be like from the perspective of a sentient snowman. When a human companion cheerfully asks Frosty if he loves the Christmas season, the snowman resp

This comic riffs on the concept of messenger pigeons and camouflage. A character observes that messenger pigeons aren't extinct, then describes a technology that involves camouflaging messages so they

This comic features a parent grounding their child. When the kid asks why, the parent reveals they spent the child's college savings to build an algorithm so accurate it can predict bad behavior befor

This comic comments on the way modern AI language models handle literary analysis. A professor excitedly tells colleagues that new AI systems are so generative that you can give them any book and ask

This comic features a character being mocked for writing a "hyper-realistic novel about a duck with human-level intelligence." When challenged about the premise, the author explains that a duck gainin

This comic presents a pointed observation about the desire for AI servants. A programmer explains that they want to develop "a perfect AI to be my servant" -- one that has perfect empathy, can do ever

This comic uses calculus -- specifically the concept of integration -- as a metaphor for life experience. A father tries to explain integrals to his child: you draw a curve, look at the area under it,

This comic depicts a person arriving at the gates of Heaven, only to find that the admission criteria have changed dramatically. Saint Peter (or a similar gatekeeper) explains that the old rule-based

This comic tackles a classic problem in probability theory through an increasingly frustrated math professor. The setup is a variant of the Bertrand paradox or a geometric probability problem: given a

This comic features a conversation at what appears to be a social gathering, where someone asks a woman what it feels like to be in one of the "impure, not-real, normative sciences" (i.e., social scie

This comic satirizes the contradiction between people's stated concern for data privacy and their actual behavior. A person holds their phone and declares, "My private information is very important to

This comic jokes about mind-body dualism, the philosophical position (most associated with Descartes) that the mind and body are fundamentally different substances. Two people are discussing: one asks

This comic satirizes the gap between the stated goals of quantum computing research and what people actually want to use it for. In the first panel, a person asks: "Wait, so if you build a quantum com

This comic is set in what appears to be a demonic or hellish counsel/parliament. A speaker addresses the assembled demons about various bureaucratic or procedural matters, and the joke plays on the id

In this comic, government agents in suits arrive to inspect someone's vegetable garden because global warming is advancing faster than expected and they want to study plants that can survive the worst

This comic introduces the concept of an "invasivore" -- someone who exclusively eats invasive species that are degrading local ecology. When asked to explain at what appears to be a social gathering,

This comic offers a darkly humorous alternative explanation for why ancient burial sites contain flowers. In the first panel, two cavemen stand over a body, and one says "Oh no, accidentally murdered

A man stands on a hillside praying, asking God for a sign to restore his wavering faith: "Lord, I'm losing my faith. If you're real, if you're out there, please... give me a sign." In the next panel,

A guide welcomes a visitor to "The Valley of the Unicorns," explaining that the unicorns can only be seen because the visitor is a virgin. The visitor, rather than being flattered, asks "Can they see

This single-panel comic shows a door with an elaborate set of instructions for entry: "This is a steel door. The door can only be opened by picking it, a combination, or keywords that please a compute

A child asks their father, "Dad, can money buy happiness, or is it about intrinsic things?" The father responds by asking the child to imagine a bunch of strangers deciding whether they would buy happ

This comic reimagines the biblical destruction of Sodom (traditionally interpreted as God's punishment for the city's wickedness) with a completely different motivation. A voice from the heavens decla

This comic depicts scientists celebrating the achievement of human-level artificial intelligence. In the first panel, a researcher exclaims, "We've done it! The first robot with human-level intelligen

This single-panel comic shows a little girl watching a clown, with the clown urgently explaining: "It's not a pocket. Those aren't scarves. I'm begging you. We as clowns expel our viscera. Many of tho

This comic features a conversation between God and Evolution (depicted as a green, amorphous figure) about why Evolution created sympathy in humans. God points out that sympathy doesn't seem useful in

This comic shows a man sitting on the floor looking distressed, with a large, menacing shadow looming behind him in the shape of a monstrous dog-like creature with the word "DEPRESSION" written on it.

This comic contrasts "Actual Sigmund Freud" with "Popular Science Treatments of Freud." In the top panel, the actual Freud is shown delivering a characteristically explicit and disturbing psychoanalyt

A child asks his father, "Dad, is death real?" The father, trying to be reassuring, initially asks a clarifying question: "Death like the robed guy with a scythe who shows up and kills you?" When the

A bespectacled man (resembling a professor or linguist) confronts a werewolf in the woods and explains that the "were" in "werewolf" comes from the Old English word "were," meaning "man." Since the we

This comic is about the tension between traditional expertise and data-driven approaches. In the first panel, a woman announces that there is no more need for subjective experience or intuition becaus

A couple is in bed, and one partner says, "Charlotte, when I die..." Charlotte responds, "Anything, dear. Anything." The dying wish is then revealed: the person wants their penis surgically enlarged t

A woman in bed at midnight hears a voice and says, "Mom? What... what are you doing under the bed at midnight?" The voice from under the bed replies, "But I'm not under the bed, Susie. I'm out here."

This comic features an alien (or robot) talking to a human about how aliens have never memorized a joke. The human asks if they're stupid, and the alien explains that memorizing a joke means dedicatin

A person excitedly shows their friend a new app, saying it "takes you to every website, headline, even social media post, even ones you'd never find." The friend's response is dread: "You're going to

This comic plays on the phrase "extra sausage" as a pizza topping request. A customer calls to order a pizza and asks if it comes with "extra sausage." The pizza worker confirms it does, but warns tha

This comic expresses generational disappointment about how the internet turned out compared to early utopian expectations. In the first panel, an older man tells a younger person, "I feel bad for you

This comic is a darkly philosophical meditation on consciousness and mortality. A woman addresses evolution, asking why humans evolved to be aware of their inevitable demise — why would a survival-ori

This comic takes aim at the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971. A woman is reading a psychology textbook and complains about "these stupid Zimbardo prison experime

This comic satirizes the concept of algorithmically generated romantic partners. A tech presenter announces that thanks to advanced technology, you no longer need to wait for a soulmate — you can now

This comic contrasts animal and human self-awareness through the lens of the "mirror test" — a classic cognitive science experiment used to determine whether an animal can recognize its own reflection

This comic riffs on the relationship between scale and comprehensibility in physics, particularly quantum mechanics. A man in a suit tells another person that "AI images appear to make sense until yo

This comic is a short, punchy fantasy/RPG-themed gag. A man tells a woman named Sally, "I have a confession. I'm actually just a threesome mimic." In the second panel, the man is revealed to literall

This comic depicts a man in the shower who catches a glimpse of something — possibly his own reflection — and has a moment of panic. He thinks, "Wait... am I feeling fear?" His brain then responds: "Y

This comic explores moral philosophy through the classic ethical thought experiment: "Is it moral to steal bread to feed starving people?" In the first panel, one character says it "depends on the ou

This comic takes the familiar format of a knock-knock joke and turns it into a commentary on race and social discomfort. The setup has one character asking, "Hey, wanna hear a joke you won't wanna tel

This comic addresses the debate around AI-generated art and its impact on human artists. In the first panel, a woman asks a man sitting on a couch whether he thinks AI image generation is a problem f

This comic is a bedroom scene depicted entirely in darkness (black panel), with only speech bubbles visible. One person asks, "Why... why is your elbow in my ear? What is the pineapple juice for?" Th

This comic imagines a scenario where Freud's psychoanalytic theories — particularly his emphasis on sexual symbolism — turned out to be literally correct, and explores what that world would look like.

This is a single-panel comic showing a bald man with glasses standing at a podium, apparently delivering a eulogy at a funeral. He says: "Some bones, old shoes worth 20 copper coins, and mysterious ke

This comic features what appears to be a 19th-century economist (dressed in period clothing with a bowler hat and long coat) talking to a modern-day economist or office worker. The old-timey economis