Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke A young man tells his dying father he will be alone. The father sends him on a classic hero's journey: he must travel to see a wise man, who turns out to be a farmer. The farmer redirects

## The Joke The comic is titled "Funtime Activity: Correlation Chains" and presents a series of graphs showing correlations: happiness correlates with amount of sex, income correlates with happiness,

## The Joke A man declares he is not biased and is prepared to believe any god or any argument, as long as there is evidence -- he says he has certain standards for evidence. He then reveals those st

## The Joke A woman is trying to potty-train a puppet (which appears to be a red demon/monster hand puppet). The puppet objects, saying "But floor, you're a puppet! You have no digestive tract! How c

## The Joke A couple is lying in bed. The woman says, "Ever since we got pregnant, when we lie in bed together I get this strange tingling feeling at the small of my back. Like someone's drawing on i

## The Joke The comic is titled "What Researchers Study" and shows four panels, each depicting a different type of researcher and what they study. A mathematician studies "What is" (with abstract equ

## The Joke A corporate presenter announces that thanks to new technology in neurocomputing, they can detect the moment when a worker's attention lapses. To increase productivity, they will be puttin

## The Joke A man is excited to finally be moving in with his partner. His partner asks if he's familiar with the concept of a Potemkin village -- a political notion where you show a visiting dignita

## The Joke A woman is praying, saying: "Dear Lord, I'm told that you have a plan for everything. But the details are, let's say, hmmm, perhaps the grand sweep of things is according to my decision,

## The Joke A child tells her grandpa there are ghosts in her closet. The grandfather investigates and finds not scary ghosts, but the ghosts of his deceased friends having a dance party. He discover

## The Joke A child has placed a tooth under their pillow for the Tooth Fairy, following the classic childhood tradition. However, the Tooth Fairy appears not as a benevolent gift-giver but as a mena

## The Joke A man confronts a senator, pointing out that using total degrees awarded as a metric for educational success is insane -- it says nothing about quality. The senator seems confused. The ma

## The Joke A group of people are discussing a dramatic revelation: "And then at the end it turns out that all of their food is PEOPLE!" One person reacts with shock ("GASP!"), while another says "Th

## The Joke A bearded man prays to God: "Dear Lord, why do BEARD things happen to good people?" God, misunderstanding, launches into a standard theological explanation about suffering leading to stru

## The Joke An older professor gives a lecture on cognitive decline with age. He explains that while it has long been noted that mental ability declines with age -- including memory, reaction time, a

## The Joke A physicist, a biologist, and an economist are on a train. Out the window, there is a cow. The physicist says "There's a cow." The biologist agrees. The economist also identifies it as a

## The Joke A corporate executive gives a presentation about how corporations have access to vast amounts of personal data -- they know your identity, location, health, mood, and dietary habits. She

## The Joke A couple is in various states of undress, attempting to be romantic. But every seductive line immediately devolves into mundane domestic complaints. The woman says her elastic is worn dow

## The Joke A person stands on a mountain and reflects on motivational quotes. They observe that "the thing about motivational quotes is that they separate the mental sensation of accomplishment from

## The Joke The comic imagines a world where brain implants make it possible to electrically alter emotional states. When the technology is first demonstrated (accidentally, during an ultrasound appo

## The Joke A man finds a genie lamp and asks: "A genie? Do I get three wishes?" The genie corrects him: "No. You get one." The man then asks: "You used your second wish to forget all of the conseque

## The Joke An astronaut radios mission control in a panic: there is no food on their two-year mission and nobody packed any. Mission control responds that it is "an experiment." The astronaut's daug

## The Joke The comic presents a graph titled "How Art Gets Made" with axes labeled "Self Doubt" (vertical) and "Narcissism" (horizontal). The cycle proceeds as follows: the artist starts at low self

## The Joke A man complains that he cannot get a girlfriend. His friend asks if he has tried "standard deviatin'" (a play on "standard deviation"). The scheme is explained: you get 1,000 men of low q

## The Joke A person says they do not see why the government needs a backdoor to all software. A government official says "You make it sound so sinister" and offers an analogy: "You're wearing clothe

## The Joke A woman asks a man if he is familiar with the Meissner effect. She explains that when a superconductor gets cool enough, it expels its magnetic field, causing magnetic field lines to move

## The Joke The comic begins with the crucifixion of Jesus and the announcement "He is risen" three days later. But then, three more days later, he rises again -- "Wow! Another one!" Three days after

## The Joke A man in Hell asks the Devil to confirm his punishment: he has to dig in the acid mines every day, and no matter what, when he goes to sleep he wakes up there again to dig, forever? The D

## The Joke A child asks their father how to find "the one." The father says there is no such thing and explains that relationships work like a three-stage rocket. The first booster is called "lust"

## The Joke A doctor (or psychologist) tells a patient that they are going to hold up a series of cards and the patient should say what they depict. The doctor holds up a card showing the number 10,

## The Joke A weatherman on a news broadcast announces: "And today's forecast calls for an all-time low in humility." His female co-anchor whispers that she thinks he meant to say "humidity." The wea

## The Joke A woman is staging what appears to be a classic addiction intervention, listing all the telltale signs: dependence on something just to feel safe and happy, repeating destructive behavior

## The Joke A man recounts the history of AI beating humans at increasingly complex games: first checkers, then chess, then Go ("even mates at a species"). He then proposes a solution: design a game

## The Joke The comic is titled "Funtime Activity!" and instructs the reader to "Refer to any who disagrees with you as the (area of disagreement) police." It then presents four panels illustrating t

## The Joke This long-form comic traces the evolution of social media and its effects on society through several stages: 1. **Reporting bias**: People are more likely to report success than failure

This comic is a parody of a romantic "say my name" moment between a couple. The man asks his partner to say his name, and she responds with "Oh Nyarlathotep, or Chaugnar, the dread spawn of Cthulhu" -

## The Joke A parent tells their child, "I have trained you in mathematics. Now that you are going to college, I present you with options." Option one: "I pay for your entire college education." Opti

## The Joke An interviewer asks: "If you could send a message to your past self, what would it be?" The woman begins to answer, but then pauses and realizes something: "The fact that current me is ad

## The Joke Two people discuss what it would be like to be president. In the fantasy, a British dignitary presents the president with a bust of John Locke, "a founding philosopher of both of our mode

## The Joke A young boy asks his father, "Dad, why don't you care about my favorite band?" The father responds, "Sweetie, no. It's not that I don't care. It's that I *can't* care." He explains: "I've

This comic is a time-travel joke. A child finds his father, whom he believed was shipwrecked and killed, only to discover that his dad is on a boat full of naked women cruising the seven seas. The fat

## The Joke A man describes a recurring dream. He is falling out of the sky, knows he will splatter against the ground in a few minutes, and as the earth looms larger, he notices he has twenty unansw

## The Joke A man explains the old saying to his partner: "They say that if you love someone, you should set them free, and if they come back to you, it was meant to be." He then offers his interpret

This comic satirizes modern surveillance technology through the lens of helicopter parenting. A mother tells her daughter that instead of personally chaperoning her date, she's sending a swarm of quad

## The Joke A scientist is giving a presentation about the "space fountain," a real theoretical concept for non-rocket space launch. She explains how a system of accelerated pellets could create a ta

## The Joke A man encounters the "Happiness Fairy," who announces she is here to make him happy. He is initially excited, but the fairy explains that this year they are taking a "scientific approach.

## The Joke A scientist with wild hair explains that CO2 release is like putting a "fuzzy coat" around Earth, trapping heat. She then says the good news is that we can stop global warming simply by b

## The Joke A couple is in bed together. One partner says, "I think we should... experiment more in the bedroom." The other enthusiastically agrees: "Let's do it." The next panel reads "Later that d

This comic explains and then satirizes the "criterion of embarrassment," a real principle used in biblical scholarship. The criterion holds that if a passage in the Bible would have been embarrassing

## The Joke A father announces a new punishment for his daughter Sally: "the time travel method." Every time she misbehaves, he will set her technology back one year. If she misbehaves twice in one d