this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025

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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

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Posts and discussion about the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Hugo Award-winning author Zach Weinersmith (and related works)

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168

Humourous (2025-04-05) (discuss.online)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humourous

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All natural, in the sense of not having been made in a particle accelerator.

Bonus panel

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Note that homeopathic ...products... actually do this.

[+] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I've done a few "homeopathic overdose" things, in front of homeopathy believers. It's hilarious to see them immediately switch from "this is a super powerful medicine that you should take seriously" to "oh, it's just SO safe you can't overdose on it", and then right around to "the fact that you took 200 sleeping pills and feel fine is because your energies are not aligned"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

I wouldn't do that, but I'm fairly risk adverse when it comes to trying to correct people who are really invested in being wrong.

Babies have died because of improper dilutions meaning the products had the actual substance in some amount, and downing an entire bottle might actually be dangerous for an adult.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Indeed. But I don't trust their QA not to have a highly shaken glob of lead make it through to the sugar pill

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

The difference is that unlike homeopathic products here the products actually contain these chemicals.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

That one needs an explain-smbc...

Anyway, looks like "green vitriol" = iron sulfate (so it's enriched with iron), "spirit of hartshorn" = amonia (spoiled beans certainly release lots of this), "brimstone" = sulfur, "quicksilver" = mercury, and "aquafortis" = nitrates (on this context, but also nitric acid - afaik, our bodies can't use nitrates for anything).

(EDIT: yes, quicksilver is mercury, not lead.)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

I thought quicksilver was mercury.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Quicksilver is mercury, but anyway thank you!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Aquafortis is specifically nitric acid. It's called that because it can dissolve "any" metal except for gold. Where "any" is "anything they knew about in the middle ages".

also, green vitriol is actually green. And blue vitriol, copper sulfate, is (surprise) blue. Copper sulfate is also what they put in antifreeze as a vomiting agent. I once had a single drop as a mistake, and it works REALLY well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

And the stuff that can dissolve gold: aquaregia

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Where are you seeing aquafortis

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

Bonus panel

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

All from the first result in Duckduckgo. Mostly wikipedia, but I got "aqua fortis" on some dictionary.