bignum
Original: bignum on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A caveman with long dark hair and a beard, wearing a fur tunic, gestures toward another caveman.
Caveman (speaking): ME CAN CONSTRUCT NUMBER FAR BIGGER THAN 3 OR EVEN 4 BY KILL MAMMOTH, COUNT MAMMOTH BONES.
Caption (below panel): Early "biggest number" contests were much shorter.
Votey:
Close-up of a caveman's face looking unimpressed, with a speech bubble above.
Caveman: 4 AM MERE LOWER BOUND.
A caveman with long dark hair and a beard, wearing a fur tunic, gestures toward another caveman.
Caveman (speaking): ME CAN CONSTRUCT NUMBER FAR BIGGER THAN 3 OR EVEN 4 BY KILL MAMMOTH, COUNT MAMMOTH BONES.
Caption (below panel): Early "biggest number" contests were much shorter.
Votey:
Close-up of a caveman's face looking unimpressed, with a speech bubble above.
Caveman: 4 AM MERE LOWER BOUND.
Alt text
A two-panel SMBC comic. Main panel: Two cavemen in fur tunics stand in a barren prehistoric landscape under a pink sky. One, with long dark hair and a beard, gestures emphatically toward the other and declares in all caps: "ME CAN CONSTRUCT NUMBER FAR BIGGER THAN 3 OR EVEN 4 BY KILL MAMMOTH, COUNT MAMMOTH BONES." A caption beneath reads: Early "biggest number" contests were much shorter. Votey (aftercomic): A black-and-white close-up of a caveman's face, looking skeptical and unimpressed, with a speech bubble saying: "4 AM MERE LOWER BOUND." The joke: ancient humans bragging about the largest number they can conceive, with values as small as 3 or 4, and a rival dismissively insisting 4 is merely a lower bound.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.