Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke A child asks their father why there are different languages. The father begins telling the biblical story of the Tower of Babel — people built a tower so high that God knocked it down and

## The Joke A teacher tells a class of children: "Hi kids, welcome to art class. The first thing I want you to know is I am an artist." The children then stand up and declare in unison, "I am an arti

## The Joke The comic retells the legend of the Sword in the Stone — where King Arthur proves his right to rule by pulling a sword from a stone — but with a logical twist. A character pulls the sword

## The Joke A car salesman is pitching a vehicle: "For only a few thousand dollars extra, this car comes with full self-driving capability." A customer asks if it really has that, and the salesman re

## The Joke Two characters discuss whether people need money to be happy. One says "No," but then the other asks: "Do you need money to have a house?" This launches a cascade of escalating requiremen

## The Joke A man comes home excited, announcing he was "so surprised" and listing mundane tasks — taking out the recycling, parking the car — but is interrupted by something that genuinely surprises

## The Joke A crowd chants "SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!" at an academic who "cited a claim from a paper that wasn't the original source of that claim." The caption below reads: "It was remarkably eas

## The Joke A massive tidal wave approaches, but instead of water, it is made entirely of Eliezer Yudkowskys. The caption reads: "In an attempt to make world perfect, runaway nanobots convert all mas

## The Joke A man is visited by a figure who says "Hey human, it's God." The man asks if he's a prophet, and God replies: "Nah, I just wanna chat." God then asks why humans are always surprised by th

## The Joke A student asks her teacher a pointed question: "Teacher, why do you make us learn books by dead people written in dead ways of speaking?" The teacher responds, "That's your opinion." The

## The Joke A doctor examines a patient and delivers the news: "It's quite a bad hangnail, Ms. Derkins. You have two weeks to live." The punchline appears in the caption below: "Those comets that are

## The Joke The comic depicts a conversation about vaccine conspiracy theories. One person raises the common anti-vaccine conspiracy: "These vaccines are nanobots, how do you fit a silicon microchip

## The Joke A student asks a professor to explain the difference between artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence. The professor begins by explaining: "An artificial intelligence i

## The Joke The comic has a header reading "Every social science text introduction:" and shows an open book with the text: "Continued disagreement about the definition of what we're all talking about

## The Joke The comic shows a person greeting a dog: "Scruffles! You look so good!" Then they lavish attention on the dog: "Oh Scruffles, go, you eat your food, look at you, no wonder you've got thos

## The Joke A child asks their father, "Dad, what's it like getting old?" The father begins what seems like a philosophical reflection: "You get more and more particular about smaller and smaller thi

## The Joke A mugger demands "Gimme all your money!" and the victim asks "Why should I?" The mugger explains he's an extreme-horizon scientist-utilitarian who believes morality should be calculated o

## The Joke A woman prays to God: "Dear God, why don't you give us a unified consciousness? All we've got is this mass of constantly fighting brain modules!" God responds: "Man, you're describing a n

## The Joke The comic shows Batman confronting a villain who declares: "You'll never get away with this, Batman! Materialism..." Batman interrupts with a philosophical argument: "I don't need to 'get

## The Joke A man delivers what starts as a romantic "Hey Girl" style pickup line to a woman, saying something like "Hey girl, I just want you to know you're a beautiful person." But then he veers int

## The Joke The comic presents a graph titled "A Simple, Quantifiable Method of Nerd Detection." The x-axis shows "Quantity of Alcohol Consumed" and the y-axis shows "Level of Technical Detail Given V

## The Joke The comic opens with one character asking another how to tell if a girl likes you. The response is: "She laughs at your jokes, even if those jokes aren't clever, original, or deserving." T

## The Joke A person announces they are thinking of starting a religion. Another person says "That's easy!" The would-be founder then describes their vision: giving inspired, charismatic speeches as a

## The Joke The comic is titled "How Energy Headlines Work" and shows a mock newspaper. The main headline reads: "SCIENTISTS HARVEST POWER DIRECTLY FROM MOSQUITO WING-FLAPPING." Below it, a subheadlin

## The Joke The comic shows a professor at a lectern who shouts "HOW SHOULD I KNOW?!" with an exasperated, panicked expression. The next panel is labeled "MOMENTS EARLIER" and shows a student in a cla

## The Joke A scientist in a lab coat presents what she calls "our standard reference bastard." The bastard is kept in a controlled environment -- a sealed chamber where climate and internet access ar

## The Joke A person prays to God, asking "Dear God, why is there suffering?" God responds from above: "There isn't. I sent Buddhism, Platonism, Confucianism. All good guides to this OS." The person r

## The Joke A person approaches someone who is reading and says something like: "Hello there! You! I have radical views of epistemology and the good life. Let me interest you in persecuting me so I ca

## The Joke The comic is a multi-panel strip featuring what appears to be a dramatic confrontation about physics and its relationship to other fields. It opens with a dramatic declaration: "The physic

## The Joke The comic shows a person in military-style gear (helmet, green clothing) crouched in a trench or behind a barrier, holding a paintball gun. In the second panel, an unfolded leaflet is visi

## The Joke The comic depicts a conversation between God (shown with long dark hair) and a human. God asks the human, "Are you happy?" The human responds, "Are you stupid?" and explains that happiness

## The Joke The comic shows a series of robbery scenarios that escalate in absurdity. In the first panel, a robber demands: "Gimme a non-fungible token of the contents of your wallet." The victim resp

## The Joke The comic is presented in two panels. In the first, we see a shadowy silhouette of a person contorting their body in what appears to be an attempt to bite their own tail or form a ring sha

## The Joke The comic features what appears to be a philosophy professor or ethics lecturer addressing an audience. In the first panel, he announces: "Good news everyone. We've generated a trolley pro

## The Joke The comic shows two characters having a conversation outdoors, possibly on a mountainside. One character declares: "Ethical philosophy is pointless. I'm simply going to work hard and do ri

## The Joke This is a lengthy comic featuring what appears to be a bearded presenter (possibly meant to evoke a religious or prophetic figure) speaking to an audience of colorful alien-like creatures.

## The Joke The comic is a short three-panel strip. In the first panel, a person at a podium announces: "It became impossible to attend Golem ceremonies once I realized 'tolerance' sounds like 'taller

## The Joke The comic shows a domestic scene. In the first panel, a child is lying on a couch while an adult (presumably a parent) stands over them asking, "What are you doing?" The child responds: "I

## The Joke The comic features a conversation between a human and what appears to be a personified version of Evolution (depicted as a green, amorphous, blob-like entity). The human asks: "Dear Evolut

## The Joke A character with glasses and long hair passionately explains the extraordinary effort and expense involved in creating and transporting a single painting during the Renaissance. They descr

## The Joke A woman begins a prayer with "Dear Satan--" and is immediately interrupted by Satan himself, who appears startled, saying she was not praying to him. She clarifies that no, this is God, an

## The Joke A presenter with long dark hair stands before an audience making an elaborate economic argument about computer problems. They begin by noting that a large percentage of computer problems c

## The Joke The comic opens with a thought experiment: if you could step inside a "pleasure box" that would make your consciousness experience maximum happiness, more than you could ever have in real

## The Joke The comic retells the myth of Pandora's Box. A character shouts at Pandora not to open the box because bad things will come out. In the next panel, Pandora has opened it and asks in horror

## The Joke A father figure, drawn in a serious authoritative pose, declares that the "command economy structure of the household is limiting productivity." He proposes implementing various economic r

## The Joke The comic shows a scene of apparent catastrophe. One character, sinking into what appears to be a massive wave of brown substance, shouts "What's happening?!" Another character, also being

## The Joke Two characters sit at a computer. One, a bearded man with glasses, explains a plan: "So that's the plan. We make the online discourse so vile and filled with logical fallacies, that young

## The Joke The comic features a human encountering an alien. The alien says it has come to take a "perfect snapshot" of Earth's culture, compress it, and then destroy Earth. In subsequent panels, the

## The Joke A child asks their father if he had a favorite kid when they (the children) were little. The father says that now that the children are older and have kids of their own, he can appreciate

## The Joke A person addresses the "Dear Simulation Creator" and asks why they wanted to make "10 billion people suffer." The creator (shown in silhouette) responds "No clue" -- they were just given