measurement
Explanation
In this comic, a professor (or lecturer) is giving a presentation about the various systems of measurement used around the world. She begins by listing well-known systems such as the metric system and imperial units, but the list quickly spirals into increasingly absurd, fictional, and comically niche measurement systems. The audience grows visibly confused and overwhelmed as the enumeration goes on and on, covering ever more ridiculous-sounding units.
The joke escalates when the presenter brings up a globe labeled "America," singling out the United States as the punchline. The U.S. is famously one of the few countries that still uses the imperial system rather than the metric system, and Americans are often teased internationally for this. The comic exaggerates this premise to absurdist extremes: rather than just having one quirky holdout system, the world apparently has dozens upon dozens of incompatible measurement frameworks, and America's insistence on its own system is just one drop in an ocean of chaos.
The humor mechanism here is escalation and absurdist enumeration. Weinersmith takes a real cultural observation (the U.S. refusing to adopt metric) and blows it up by imagining a world where measurement is a hopelessly fragmented landscape. The sheer volume of fake measurement systems overwhelms the reader in the same way it overwhelms the audience in the comic. The final panel, in which a loud explosion or dramatic reaction occurs, serves as a comedic exclamation point -- the professor's head figuratively (or literally) explodes from the insanity of it all.
This comic fits into SMBC's tradition of taking a nerdy or scientific observation and pushing it past the point of reason for comedic effect.