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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Unified
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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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Science Memes
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I almost kinda dislike the messaging on this one because it implies authoritarianism is the key to discovery. Scientists are implied to be passive and unindustrious when left alone, so the government (FBI-type characters) declare a truth they want proven, force development of it through the threat of violence, and it eventually yields an answer they're happy with.
I'm reminded of the film The Death of Stalin and it's depiction of the USSR's treatment of bourgeois intellectuals like doctors.
I guess that's the joke - this is so stupid and obviously won't work, but that perspective is subverted when it turns out to actually work, causing humour.
I quite like it.
Fair, I guess I'm just letting the world get to me!
Read more SMBC, it might help! Or give you more anxiety. But at least you'll be smiling.
I interpreted the opposite; once they were freed from day to day bullshit, they were able to reach new discoveries the way 20th century hiking scientists
That's how I read the intent of the author, at least. Getting scientists out of their isolated bubbles and allowing them to actually experience the world drives innovation.
That, or the one physicist who figured it out was so traumatized by merely being outside that she figured it out as quickly as possible to make it all stop, haha.
My interpretation was that pink lady shouted out some crap formula FBI guy does not understand anyway so they would be left alone again.
Last panel half contradicts it, half just leans harder into the absurdity of it all. I wouldn't expect physicists to care much about Rubik's Cubes, I think even the cliché fits mathematicians much better.
Basically, my spontaneous takeaway was "government and media are so science-illiterate that nobody understands anyone anymore".
that's a great film. it's on my annual watch list, will update the date i watch it on when appropriate.