Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke A person presents the classic liar's paradox: "This statement is a lie." Another person says "Okay, go ahead and say it." When they do, a third person immediately analyzes it empirically

## The Joke A person finds a magic lamp, but notes it's made of "unvarnished wood." The genie that emerges introduces himself as a "Calvinist genie." He tells the person they may make three wishes, b

## The Joke A wizard (resembling a children's TV show host) enthusiastically tells a group of kids that they're going to shrink down to the size of a virus to investigate the human body. The kids che

## The Joke The comic is titled "Sometimes, it's better that we don't know history." A pharaoh, depicted as a muscular man wearing traditional Egyptian headgear, instructs an architect: "Build me a s

## The Joke Two people — apparently the last survivors of some apocalypse — stand in a ruined landscape. The man says "We're the only ones left alive. You know what we have to do." The woman responds

## The Joke The comic presents "Apology Cards Sorted by Discipline," showing how practitioners of different academic fields might apologize — each using the reasoning of their discipline to avoid act

## The Joke In the first panel, a scientist announces in alarm that the whole universe is imploding, with gamma ray bursts coming from every direction at once and no one knows why. In the second pane

## The Joke A rock star on stage shouts to the crowd: "Shout if you believe in the music!" (crowd cheers), "Shout if you believe in me!" ("We believe! We believe!"), "Shout if you would follow me!" (

## The Joke A man says to a woman (apparently named Sally), "I think we should see other people." She begins to object with "But..." and he continues: "Like when we look at each other, we should see

## The Joke A woman gives a civics lecture, saying it is very important that every citizen votes in national elections. A man in the audience responds with a logical argument: if he and one other per

## The Joke Two children are playing a board or strategy game. One declares "My fortress shall not be taken!" while looking at what appears to be a game board. The other child says "Boo" (as in a gho

## The Joke A bartender in what appears to be a Wild West saloon tells patrons "Dammit! I said no brawling! You got a way to pay for all this damage?" A cowboy responds that he has a way and reaches

## The Joke A woman presents a mathematical argument to a man using set theory. She considers the series {dog, dog, dog...} and calls it D_1. Since D_1 contains infinite dogs, and you can subtract D_

## The Joke A tour guide at what appears to be a church or religious site explains that the saint's body is "divinely blessed and is thus incorruptible -- it does not decay." A visitor asks, "Wait, r

## The Joke A multi-panel comic tracing the fictional etymology of a curse word. A man on the street says a word (bleeped out), and passersby react with shock. One person asks where the word came fro

## The Joke A woman tells a man (apparently her partner) to throw out a shirt from when they were dating because it is covered in holes. He refuses, saying she does not understand -- "The shirt is cu

## The Joke A math teacher tells his student "No, you'll never use math in real life. Ever." This leads to a cascade of consequences shown via newspaper headlines: "Math Literacy Falls to Zero" (with

## The Joke A cultist arrives to collect a young woman as a virgin sacrifice for the demons. The woman protests: "I'm not a virgin!" The cultist is skeptical, noting she spends 18 hours a day arguing

## The Joke A group of people are threatened by a killer robot. One person has an idea and commands: "Robot! Calculate pi!" The robot says "Done." The humans are confused -- "But it's infinite!" The

## The Joke A parent reads the story of Robin Hood to a child: "So Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor." But the child starts analyzing the story critically. Robin Hood has a really

## The Joke Lex Luthor confronts Superman, arguing that since Superman has super-strength, super-speed, and super-integrity, why does he not also have "super-ethics"? Superman says he already has ple

## The Joke A woman performs a dark, existential reinterpretation of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" for a child. She narrates: "The Itsy Bitsy Spider was trapped in purgatory, endlessly repeating the same S

## The Joke The comic presents a sociological narrative about how society has changed. It begins by noting that in old books, kids encounter strangers and are not scared -- we live in a safer society

## The Joke Someone asks who the greatest scientist of all time was. Instead of naming Einstein or Newton, the answer is some unknown person who had even greater potential but was born in a time or p

## The Joke The comic shows a graph with "Potential for Love" on the Y-axis. The line starts at a moderate level, rises significantly as a relationship develops, plateaus, and then plummets to zero.

## The Joke A man tells his wife he has been thinking about surgery to enlarge his penis. She calmly says that is fine. He then elaborates that he wants it so big it could be used as a banana boat. H

## The Joke A child complains to his father that he does not want to play tic-tac-toe because it always ends in a tie. Rather than acknowledging this valid observation, the father threatens to ground

## The Joke A person offers another person a choice: they can either experience "real life" or step into a box that provides "wonderful but unreal pleasure." The second person initially takes the nob

## The Joke A ghost appears to a woman named Barbara, calling her name dramatically. The ghost explains that before he died, they had agreed that if there was something beyond death, he should try to

## The Joke A statistics professor begins a class on the interpretation of averages. A student offers the classic example: "The average person has one testicle and one ovary." The professor then take

## The Joke The comic takes the famous Nietzsche quote "When you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you" and plays it out literally. A man stares into an actual abyss (depicted

## The Joke Scientists have created a superior artificial intelligence. One scientist declares that humans are now outdated and will be gone soon. The other scientist protests: "No, no!" But rather t

## The Joke A person is praying to Jesus, explaining their plan to skip church and religion since it is boring and no fun, and then repent right before death to get into heaven. Jesus responds by lay

## The Joke A child asks their father to explain the idea of dying. The father, who appears to be a physicist or scientifically-minded person, explains death in purely reductionist physical terms: a

## The Joke This is a long-form comic that appears to depict a series of increasingly absurd and elaborate scenarios involving people making grandiose philosophical or intellectual arguments. The com

## The Joke Two people are walking through a graveyard and both say they love it. The woman explains she finds it peaceful because everything is in its place. The man then reveals his much darker rea

## The Joke The comic presents a fake field guide titled "Know Your Bird-Related Auguries," listing various birds and the omens they supposedly represent. The entries start somewhat plausible (Raven

## The Joke A student enters a professor'''s office and asks if they can use the 4th edition of the textbook instead of the new 5th edition, claiming they can get a copy from another student. The pro

## The Joke A construction worker catcalls a woman with "Hey babydoll!" She recoils with "Oh God." But instead of a crude remark, he begins reciting classical Chinese poetry: "I enter the court throu

## The Joke A group of cultists address Satan, offering a "sacrificial ram." Satan objects: "Aw dammit guys, that's a goat." The cultists insist they are different. Satan explains that a goat is any

## The Joke A bearded philosopher sits in a leather chair and announces that after years of study, he has concluded that the goal of life should be the maximization of personal pleasure. He has publi

## The Joke A man asks his angel and devil shoulder-figures whether he should go out today. The angel enthusiastically says "Yes! Go and do good deeds!" The devil agrees he should go out, but adds a

## The Joke A mother tells her child that she and the father are worried the child has a serious self-esteem problem — specifically, the child has categorically overestimated how good they are at all

## The Joke In a future where brain emulation is possible, a panel of judges must select which historical brain to emulate for the benefit of humanity. The process is expensive, so candidates must ma

## The Joke A child's mother tells her that humans only live for about 70-80 years on average. The child responds with existential alarm: if humans only live that long, how does anyone ever write a g

## The Joke A coworker questions why someone brings their baby to work. The parent responds with an analogy: "You know how we lost that one barely-subcritical piece of uranium?" The coworker identifi

## The Joke A woman excitedly asks a man if he wants to see "this video that Big Pharma doesn't want you to see." He agrees. The video turns out to be a chimpanzee performing fellatio on itself. The

## The Joke A social scientist at a lectern presents "The Companion Paradox" — the observation that friends are the people least likely to have new information (since you already share a social circl

## The Joke The comic begins with a historical fact: when the Roman Emperor Vespasian conquered Judea, he minted coins to commemorate his victory, featuring a date palm (symbol of Judea) and a "Weepi

## The Joke A grad student describes their experience: they work 60+ hours a week, are paid below minimum wage when you do the math, their advisor takes credit for their work, they haven't seen sunli