Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic plays on the double meaning of the word "quantum." In physics, "quantum" refers to the smallest discrete unit of any physical property, and quantum computers use quantum mechanical phenomen

## The Joke A motivational speaker at a "GET MOTIVATED!" event tells the audience that the truth about self-doubt is: "It's all in your head." A man in the audience asks what that means, and the spea

## The Joke A young girl asks her mother, "Mommy, what is sex?" The mother, trying to find an age-appropriate explanation, uses an analogy: "You know how your favorite thing is going to Disneyland wi

## The Joke A child tells his father that he thinks their candidate is going to lose today's primaries. The father dismisses this as "nonsense" and explains: there are three states voting today, and

## The Joke A girl introduces her unicorn, Poppy, explaining that "she eats grass in the meadow and her poop is made of pleasure sugar!" A man in a suit (likely a businessman or investor) is intrigue

## The Joke A professor declares that "the most profound equation is Euler's identity" and displays the famous formula: e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0. He proposes making it "the standard unit of profundity." A s

## The Joke A man encounters a genie and begins asking for the standard three wishes — vast wealth, true love — but the genie cuts him off with "Nope." It turns out that the last person who found the

## The Joke A woman delivers an awe-inspiring monologue about the vastness of the universe: 100 billion galaxies, 100 billion stars in each, half a dozen planets orbiting each star — and in all that

## The Joke The comic contrasts what people think scientists do (eureka moments, dramatic breakthroughs, profound insights) with what scientists actually do (pipetting, waiting, debugging code, filli

## The Joke The comic presents three tiers of political viewpoints. "Viewpoints I understand": a man reasonably explains that politicians are often self-interested seekers of power, and you can under

## The Joke A child asks their father why he sits at the computer all day when it just brings him stress. The father explains that the world guarantees a certain amount of stress each day, and people

## The Joke A woman praises a little girl building with blocks: "Good job!" Another woman scolds her, saying that praise will make the child feel dependent on approval and unable to self-motivate. Th

## The Joke A man describes the predictable stages of adult life to a friend. First, you're at the age where everyone's getting married, so you attend a million weddings. Then you're at the age where

## The Joke A man dramatically declares that his beloved Sally Jenkins can't be dead, and he will journey beyond this world, into the bowels of Hell itself, to find her. He makes a heroic descent — p

## The Joke A couple is sitting in candlelight when the man exclaims, "Wow! It's like we're back in the 19th century!" The woman asks if it's because the power is out. He replies, "Because I secretly

## The Joke A couple is watching a TV show. One says "This show is terrible," and the other agrees: "Of course it is." But the first person insists they need to keep watching — let it grind them down

## The Joke The comic is titled "The Problem with Predictions of the Future." A vintage-looking man predicts that automation will reduce the work day from 12 hours to 8, then to 4, leading to a life

## The Joke A scientist presents a technological solution to the problem of stupid things coming out of world leaders' mouths. He proposes modeling politicians as "hollow spheres radiating stupidity

## The Joke The comic contrasts a "normal engineer" with a "rocket engineer" when asked "What's delta-v?" A normal engineer gives the textbook answer: "Change in velocity." A rocket engineer, however

## The Joke A man tells a woman that playing a game where behavior is the goal rather than reinforcing gender stereotypes is fantastic. She says "No?" and he immediately says "That's not what I meant

## The Joke Jesus is depicted speaking in grand Biblical language: "And when the man sat down, it was as if the salt sea were upon the land." The caption below reveals that Jesus is "once again" givi

## The Joke Someone tells another person that "God hates" some group. God appears and clarifies that He doesn't hate anyone — He's just deeply indifferent to everyone equally. The person who was bein

## The Joke A child at a museum asks their father why it took humans at least 100,000 years after developing modern brains to figure out how to make pottery. The father, a bearded man who appears to

## The Joke A customer at a restaurant asks to pay by weight for a salad. The server agrees, but the customer then raises a concern: what's to stop him from loading up on high price-to-weight-ratio i

## The Joke The comic presents a detailed chart titled "Methods for Going to Space, with Problems and Solutions," listing various proposed methods of reaching space (rocket, mass driver, skyhook, spa

## The Joke Two people discuss how modern movies now feature princess characters "doing important stuff instead of just getting saved." One responds positively at first -- "Great! Now it's the girls

## The Joke A scientist observes that "autism-spectrum people are over-represented in research science" and then trails off with "But... but that means..." as the realization dawns. The other charact

## The Joke A person makes a dramatic confession: for years, every time someone gave them a high-five, they carefully kept their thumb folded in. This means that every "give me five" only returned fo

## The Joke A person asks a scientist what it means to "have ethics." The scientist, who studies comparative intelligence, explains that intelligences are too complicated to study from first principl

## The Joke A manager explains that their office has programmable matter and advanced acoustics built into the walls. When an employee says something, the walls reshape to capture the sound, amplify

## The Joke A person being tortured in Hell laughs at the Devil and shouts: "HAHAHAHA! The effectiveness of your torture obeys the law of diminishing marginal utility!" The caption below reads: "Econ

## The Joke A caveman declares: "Damn! All females want to mate with me and Jim! Can make jazz hands longer than anyone!" The scene jumps to "50,000 years later" where a professor explains: "Human ma

## The Joke A child tells their grandfather they do not like the word "undead" because it is chauvinistic. They argue that the undead can move, communicate, think, have DNA, are made of hydrocarbons,

## The Joke A grandmother tells a child that unicorns live in the woods and will only play with you if you are a virgin. The child asks how the unicorns would figure that out. The grandmother says: "

## The Joke Two people discuss the famous George Santayana quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." One agrees enthusiastically, but the other points out that if you ac

## The Joke The comic presents a series of "Proposals for New Chess Pieces," each with a humorous illustration and movement rules: 1. **Bishop Kicker** -- Moves like the king. When next to a bishop,

## The Joke A woman tells a man she would not want to live forever. Her argument: first you would have sex with 100 partners at once, then 300, then 4,000, and so on. Sure, it would be fun for a whil

## The Joke A group of people discusses whether immortality would be desirable. The conversation spirals through increasingly elaborate philosophical objections: you would eventually get bored, your

## The Joke A man excitedly shows off a device strapped to his face, declaring that it can beam "all sorts of information" directly into his eye -- a clear reference to augmented reality (AR) glasses

## The Joke The comic, titled "New Directions for Valentine's Day," proposes three absurd categories of Valentine's Day cards: **Surprising Subject Matter**: A piece of bread (a loaf) tells another

## The Joke Two bears spot a human in the woods. One bear panics -- "Oh God, a human!" -- while the other tries to calm him down: "Calm down, Frank. He's probably just as scared of you as you are." T

## The Joke A man attempts a physics-themed pickup line: "Hey baby, if I were dark energy and you were dark matter, would you want to couple explicitly with me?" The woman responds that it sounds int

## The Joke Scrooge from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" thanks the three spirits of Christmas for visiting him and says he has one question. He asks: "What do you do when poor people need help

## The Joke The comic presents a "Philosophy Tip" at the top: "Make any question sound profound by adding the word 'true' to it." Below, a bearded philosopher-type gazes thoughtfully at a cheeseburge

## The Joke The comic explains that the solar system was once a huge mass of space junk, and over time most of it accreted into planets. However, a few planets kept some of that junk orbiting around

## The Joke A man tells a woman he has a fantasy about a device that gives you stats on anything -- like "31% of people in this building wear white briefs" or "you have sat on this chair 8,793 times.

## The Joke A father tells his son it is time for "the talk." The son says he already knows about sex, so the father pivots: "Good. Let's have the relationship talk instead." What follows is a bleak,

## The Joke A teacher explains to students that computers are binary (base-2), using two symbols: 0 and 1. DNA is quaternary (base-4), using four symbols: A, C, G, and T. She then asks: "Now, how man

## The Joke A woman excitedly tells another person about various scientific phenomena: a self-organizing assemblage of nanoparticles is growing, a crystal structure of calcium titanium oxide has made

## The Joke God (depicted as a smiley face) explains to a human how jokes work using the example of "Why did the chicken cross the road?" He says all jokes follow a pattern: you establish a logical o