Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke Two aliens are having a philosophical discussion. One alien proposes that the best strategy in a universe full of potentially hostile civilizations is to remain completely silent — never

## The Joke A woman is telling a story about walking with her baby sister near a softball game. She explains that she realized she could lower the chance of her sister getting hit by a softball if sh

## The Joke A doctor with a mustache, holding a knife, tells his patient: "I'm gonna implant some monkey skin into your balls." The patient asks "Why?" The doctor responds: "I got a hunch." The patie

## The Joke Two older men are discussing "the past" as if it were an entertainment medium they are fans of. One says he loves "past" because "it's so much better than present." They compare the two:

## The Joke A woman is feeling down, saying "Ugh, I feel like I don't matter. Better fire up Emotr." She opens an app on her phone that says "There are EMOTORS in the area within 0.7 miles." A transa

## The Joke A child asks their mother: "Mommy, what is the fastest animal?" The comic then shows four different types of people answering this question. A "Normal Person" says "The cheetah." A "Biolo

## The Joke A beaver is bragging about his sexual conquests. He says that every time he has sex, he puts a notch in a tree. Eventually there are so many notches that the tree falls. He drags it to a

## The Joke The comic presents a "linguistic idea": using the word "internship" as slang for any unpaid activity that benefits others. The example given is: "I have a three week internship with my in

## The Joke A job interviewer asks a candidate standard interview questions, and the candidate answers each one with brutal, literal honesty. "What is your greatest strength?" -- "I am willing to per

## The Joke A person confronts the head of a "Science Channel" about why most of their programming is about ghosts, aliens, and other nonsense rather than actual science. The channel executive explai

## The Joke A father sits down with his children and tells them solemnly: "Kids, we have to tell you something. Santa Claus is dead." The children respond with confusion: "Don't you mean Santa Claus

## The Joke A woman asks a man to imagine what the world would be like if humans had very long lifespans (like thousands of years). The man proceeds to enumerate all the ways society would be differe

## The Joke A young woman is speaking to a silhouetted figure (presumably a doctor, parent, or other authority figure), saying: "So... I started getting snakes. You know... down there. When does that

## The Joke A couple is walking through a forest in springtime. One person comments that "trees always look so contented in the springtime." The other responds that the tree is "currently releasing t

## The Joke A doctor tells a patient: "Well, the good news is that, according to Banach-Tarski, you now have THREE testicles." The patient sits on the examination table looking bewildered. ## The Hu

## The Joke The comic presents a fake "Life Tip" that reads: "Anything philosophers have never bothered considering can be said to have no ethical justification." Below, a child excitedly tells his f

## The Joke Two people are walking through the woods discussing free will. One asks "Do you think we have free will?" The other responds that it is a "vacuous question" because a vast assemblage of n

## The Joke A mad scientist is giving a tour of his lab, which looks "pretty empty." He explains that he just got his PhD in mad science and a little mad science lab space, but startup money was low.

## The Joke A man has fallen into a well and calls for help, explaining that he "thought there was leprechauns in here so I leaned over and fell in." A superhero wearing a costume with a "D" on his c

## The Joke The comic is divided into two panels comparing "Ethics" and "Bioethics." In the top panel, labeled "Ethics," a man states the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto y

## The Joke A man encounters a figure in a pink hooded robe and asks "Death?! What are you doing here?" The figure responds that he is not Death but rather Death's brother, Life, depicted with a chee

## The Joke The comic takes the "intelligent design" argument seriously — and concludes that if a designer did create life, they were clearly not very good at it. The human body is presented as a cat

## The Joke A woman is enthusiastically declaring "HAHAHAHA! SEE! YOU SEE MY POWER?! I'M LIKE A WIZARD!" while a bespectacled woman responds with a flat "Uh huh." The caption below reads: "Fun Fact:

## The Joke A child asks his father if he can ask a "weird question." The son wants to know about a phase where the family had financial difficulties — they couldn't afford a bigger house, so the son

## The Joke A child asks her father whether romantic love is real — specifically, is it a genuine connection between "glowing minds in a dark cosmos," or is it a lie that the body's endocrine system

## The Joke A woman enthusiastically offers something to a crowd: "Now then, who wants some bovine mammary fluid, curdled by stomach enzymes, and infected with mold?" The crowd eagerly shouts "Me! Me

## The Joke A man at a bar says he has a joke: "A man walks into a bar." But instead of delivering a punchline, he launches into a deeply melancholic monologue about how the bar is the only place tha

## The Joke A man delivers an elaborate postmodernist monologue: "You have your truth, and I have mine. All knowledge is theory-laden. All perception is internal to the perceiver. There is no meaning

## The Joke The Evil Queen from Snow White asks her Magic Mirror, "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" The mirror responds "You, my queen!" but then qualifies this with "Accor

## The Joke A woman named Sally confronts a robot, saying she needs to "come clean" — the robot is incapable of love. The robot counters: "What? You're the one who said robots are incapable of love.

## The Joke A student says, "I dunno... if I major in philosophy, what are the career prospects?" His companion enthusiastically responds: "Oh, they're great! Philosophy gives you the ability to thin

## The Joke This is a science-heavy comic set in space, featuring two celestial bodies (drawn as characters) discussing the physics of orbits and gravitational interactions. The comic explains the co

## The Joke A father (drawn as a balding man in sunglasses and a red shirt) gives "some brief remarks on fatherhood." His analogy: "Imagine you're the caretaker for Michelangelo's David, except nobod

## The Joke A woman encounters another woman who claims to be "your mirror image from a mirror universe." The first woman panics: "Oh God, is this one of those things where it turns out I'm the evil

## The Joke The comic is structured as a rhyming poem that follows the economic trajectory of the classic "She Sells Sea Shells by the Sea Shore" tongue twister. It begins: "She sells sea shells by t

## The Joke A banner reads: "Parenting Tip: Avoid work via disproportionate response." A child tells his parent, "Bobby called me a butthead!" The parent responds with extreme aggression: "I will buy

## The Joke Someone poses a classic thought experiment: "If there were a machine you could step in, which gave you a constant but false sense of pleasure for the rest of your life, would you do it?"

## The Joke A man presents himself as having been a good, devout person, but then a test causes a gold coin to fly from his hand. Thirty seconds later, he discovers that a counterfeiter is printing t

## The Joke A banner reads: "Relationship Tip: The quickest way to get out of sex is to describe it." Below, a shirtless man says to a woman: "Time to fill the old skin balloon up with blood." ## Th

## The Joke A child asks "Where do babies come from?" and the parents explain: "The stork!" But rather than the traditional wholesome stork myth, they describe a grotesque parasitological process — w

## The Joke A woman tells a man to "pick two" from a list of desirable traits: smart, attractive, and reliable. The man dismisses this as a "simple optimization problem" — desirability equals smart p

## The Joke A woman whispers seductively to a man: "I want you to tie me up, spank me, and then make me watch while you save all of my files to the desktop. ALL of them." The caption reads: "Sysadmin

## The Joke A man is driving and receives a text message: "Message to Sally: Running late. Am en route." His phone's voice recognition has mangled the message, displaying it as "Message to Sally: 'Ru

## The Joke Two whales are swimming in the ocean near a whaling ship. One whale has been harpooned and is bleeding (indicated by red in the water and a harpoon line connected to the ship). One whale

## The Joke A father is playing the classic "got your nose" game with a young child. He says "Got yer nose!" and the child cries "Oh no!" He then says "Got yer eyes!" and the child again cries "Oh no

## The Joke A professor is explaining Baumol's cost disease to a student. She describes how some jobs become more productive over time due to technology and thus better paid, while others (like music

## The Joke Batman and the Penguin are in a confrontation. Batman declares he is "Process Man" -- he concerns himself with "congressional rules that are ethical and just, but which are created in a w

## The Joke A woman is yelling at a man: "Stop that! You can't draw dicks on people every time they fall asleep!" The man looks annoyed and is holding a marker. The caption below reads: "Look, if tha

## The Joke Two people are lying in bed having a late-night philosophical conversation. One asks what the other thinks would happen if they met aliens that were intelligent like humans but "lacked ou

## The Joke A person approaches a genie-like figure (a green, demonic-looking creature) and is asked "What is your wish?" The person wishes that their parents were still alive. The genie says "It is