[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why are banks only open Monday through Friday from 8-5, which is literally the only time that most people can't go to the bank due to work?

EDIT: Hoooly crap.. I posted this as a rant thinking it'd only get a few responses. Thank you everyone for your responses, whether smart, funny, dumb, or whatever else. I will do my best to comment back to avoid being the typical OP that everyone hates.

[Assistant] The actual target customers of banks are not individuals, but businesses. Businesses have far more cash to deal with than you do, and it typically isn't worth their time to stay open for your transactions during the weekdays. The banks are open when businesses are open and making deposits, which only makes sense.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Marvel 616] How come Cyttorak has never chosen the Hulk as his Avatar?

I was reading some of the declassified files from way back when S.H.I.E.L.D was disbanded one of those times. We know that Cyttorak loves chaos, rage and destruction, it's why he gives Juggernaut more power the more the dude embodies those qualities. Colossus of the X-men is quoted as saying Cyttorak told him he was his favourite avatar because "heroes always create so much destruction". Why hasn't the big bad crimson dude tried to get a line on the Hulk or Banner?

I know the classic line is that they want to be left alone, but there are definitely times when I feel Hulk would have accepted a little help from our favourite demon lord in exchange for getting the humans off his back, or Banner would have surrendered the Hulk psyche to Cyttorak in exchange for being separated.

[Assistant] So in general, Cyttorak is pretty casual and laid back about Juggernaut being his champion. He gives the guy more power when he's being a rage monster, sure, but it took a personal visit from a bunch of the X-Men to make him realize that his champion had been usurped by the Serpent. Honestly, it doesn't seem like he cares THAT much, or else he would have found plenty of better options than Caine Marko for a host.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[DC/My Hero Academia] How would Superman and All Might get along?

If Superman met All Might, how would they get along?

What would Superman think about All Might fighting despite his injuries, or passing on his abilities to a teenager?

[Assistant] honestly i think supes would probably tell All Might to chill a little, they would like each other and get along very well but superman would also absolutely tell all might that he is being far far to reckless with his own health and well being. knowing superman though in all honesty he would probably fly all around the entire planet using some kind of quirk scanning device he pulled out of the phantom zone or apocalypse or some shit to find the one person on earth that could heal All Mights injury. now all that aside the man of steel would also most likely chew out the number one hero for passing on his power to essentially a child and then thrusting that child into wildly dangerous situations over and over again that consistently result in the kid suffering horrific amounts of injury's and pain.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars: Force Awakens] Why don't people encrypt data they don't want stolen?

They could have encrypted the map, and copied it and sent it with every available method. Even if they were forced to physically carry it around, encrypting it would at least make it impossible for the New Order to find it. It's possible that they have quantum computers, but that only breaks asymmetric encryption. If they gave the guy a key before he left, they wouldn't need that. They could have given him a one-time pad, which is completely impossible to break. Did the entire galaxy never think of that? Or did they somehow find a way to magically tell whether a 0 was from 0 xor 0 or 1 xor 1?

[Assistant]
Because it's more effective to hide it, as like so many technologies, encryption in the galaxy is asymmetric in scope. Known decryption technology is far more advanced than the encryption. Development in the galaxy has plateau'd, and much has been lost. Notice that many developments are just refinements on ancient technology. People maintain what works, even if the principles aren't fully understood. So they could encrypt it, waiting to be stolen and run through the Code Breaker (Model 900 or higher), or they could hide it well.

Societies in the galaxy advance in leaps and bounds for a while. Physics, art, mathematics - their first tentative steps into the galaxy are products of thousands of years of racial striving.

Then they get out in to the universe at large and find out that everyone has already done it, bigger and better. So they stop trying. Other people will do it, so why bother? Programs are slowly defunded. Research labs close.

Science sometimes advances in leaps and bounds, but is just as often lost in the constant conflicts destroying societies around the galaxy. The technologies that remain are often standardised and wide spread - holocomms, for instance. Advancement would require a large amount of long term effort and resources -  a stable society - which just isn't available with constant wars.

Some races, like the Twi'leks, never developed even that far before galactic contact and remain the poor retarded cousins of the galaxy. Others become dependent on the Force.  The few that do continue to advance quickly disappear.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How does an animal's body know when to drop it's winter coat?

[Assistant]
In true ELI5 fashion;

Changing of coats can be to a variety of things such as the lengnth of time the sun is out, temperature and diet. It varies species to species but it's usually down to hormonal changes caused by day length and temperature.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How, at 93 million miles away, does the sun feel so warm, yet when a simple cloud passes over it the warmth is incredibly dampened?

[Assistant]
So when you feel the sun's warmth, you're not feeling heat coming from the sun. You're instead feeling heat created *on your skin* by the sun's light.

Light carries energy. Things with colour, like your skin, absorb light. When they do, the atoms that make them up get 'excited'. Depending on the atom, and what state its in, a few things can happen. If the atom is part of a molecule that energy can go to work breaking it out of the molecule. If the atom or molecule is on the surface of a solid or liquid, the energy can go towards flinging it off, into the air, turning into a gas.

If there's not enough energy to do either of those things, then the atom will just release the energy to its surroundings. Most of the time, most of the energy is released as heat. This is what you feel when the sun feels warm. Sometimes the energy can be released as light. This is how glow-in-the-dark things work.

A cloud doesn't block all the light from the sun, but it does ~~absorb~~ *scatter* a lot of it. *Think of water droplets in a cloud like a million tiny disco balls*. The light that gets through is either too sparce to be noticeable, or high-enough energy that it causes damage instead (ie. UV light).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How can a site like imgur use only six to seven characters in the url for each image uploaded when other sites need to use nearly dozens?

There are millions of images on imgur, but the URLs never have the image code exceed eight characters.  How is that possible when comparing to similar sites that do the same thing as imgur, but have url's so much longer?

[Assistant]
6 characters with the possibilities to have letters and numbers gives a total of 36^6 possibilities, or 2176782336 possibilities. If we use 7 characters it becomes 78364164096 possibilities. If we start using words and numbers, the amount of possibilities is a lot smaller. For example gfycat only uses combinations of words, which becomes very limited and has to add more words or characters to the URL in order to keep up with the amount of posts.

*imgur also makes a difference between upper and lower case letters, increasing the amount of possibilities to 62^6 (56800235584) or 62^7 ( 3.5216146e+12).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How did soldiers in hot countries in middle east and India survive the heat during wars wearing a metal body armor when temperatures in these regions touched 35 degree celcius (95f) in summer days?

[Assistant] One of the popular theories is the surcoat, a light cotton coat worn over the armor. This would keep you a bit cooler because it would stop the (heat absorbing) metal armor from being exposed to sunlight while also shielding you from the sun, especially if it's a lighter color. Typical Arab clothing, even in the modern day, consists of a full-length white coat for exactly this reason. If you look at historical images of Persian, Turkish, and Mamluke warriors they're often wearing a surcoat or robe over their armor. Even more interestinglly if you look at the Bayeux tapestry, the Norman Knights are not wearing surcoats, but later depictions of English and French knights, from after the crusades, do show them wearing surcoats, suggesting it was a fashion the knights picked up in the middle east.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Eli5: How did Rats end up being domesticated by humans?

[Assistant] So at first, you had professional ratcatchers, who operated on a purely exterminatory basis. But once there was a formalized profession in place, the ratcatchers started side hustles with the produce of their work, the most lucrative of which was bloodsportsupplying live rats to sporting houses where people would bet on the performance of terriers and other ratting dog breeds. This became so lucrative that wild-caught rats weren't enough to meet the demand, so the more prolific ratcatchers started breeding their feeder stock. Over time this produced a sub-genus of docile rats that would become the domesticated species we know today, and once the breeders started selecting for unique fur patterns, public interest in pet rats exploded.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why drums and cymbals never sound out of tune when the rest of the instruments change keys and the drums/cymbals never change tuning.

Edit: I guess what I mean is, the drums do fall out of tune, but if they didn't and they started in the same key all the time, shouldn't it sound like it's out when the band changes keys?

[Assistant]
Percussion typically doesn't have a fundamental frequency. They occupy a large range of frequencies on a curve rather than the typical melodic instrument which has a fundamental frequency and a quieter set of overtones which give the instrument its timber.

If you run a note from an instrument through a frequency analyzer you'll typically see spikes of the note's frequency then subsequent spikes at integer multiples of the base frequency. You might also see other minor spikes from different parts of the instrument contributing to the timber as well.

If you run something like a bass drum through a frequency analyzer you'll see more of a flatter curve shape with emphasis around the intended range of frequencies and then falling off on either side of it. It's technically considered noise because you can't distinguish a particular pitch.

If you look at older video game systems, their sound chips sometimes used to include a dedicated white noise channel specifically for percussion. The Texas Instruments SN76489 used on the Master System/Game Gear for example has three tone channels and a noise channel. The 2A03 used on the NES also had a noise channel along with its two square wave and one triangle wave channels.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How deep down does water exist in our crust?

Does the earth have a certain "limit" where water can no longer seep into its rocks or stay inside little caverns? If so, as a follow up question, can life exist in those deepest areas in the earth that have water?

[Assistant]
There are cracks in rocks going way down that are very porous to water, and these provide a vast living area for lithotrophs (rock-eating bacteria).  I've read some estimates that the biomass of such comfortably exceeds that of the daylight world (i.e., everything but the life around underwater black smokers) by an order of magnitude.

Below a certain point, though, no, there's no water pooling up in small caverns.  The pressure and heat is too great even for fractured solid rock.  It's all hydrated into minerals and rocks.  It affects their formation, which is how we can tell it's there.  But that's about it.

The Soviet era Kola borehole project did find that mud from 12 km down was "boiling" with hydrogen.  Which is kinda cool.  Means that it was trapped there by gas-impermeable layers of rock above.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 in the sport of Curling, how come when a team pulls ahead by 2+ points in a game they don't just use every stone they have to ram the other out of the zone - the other team will never be able to catch back up those 2 points?

[Assistant]
There is a rule called the Free Guard Zone.  This zone is right in front of the scoring rings. Teams cannot remove stones from this zone until the 6th stone of the end.  If a guard stone is removed from play before the 6th stone, it is placed back in its original position the the stone that caused the collision is removed from play.

These guard stones help keep the game aggressive. Teams can curl stones around their guards into the scoring ring making them hard to remove without also hitting the guard.  Guards can also be knocked into the scoring rings later in ends.

Just generally, it keeps more stones in play until later in the end.  It makes it harder to remove all the stones and creates more opportunities to score more than one point.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How do we get diarrhea, and why is all liquidy??

Just things you think about when you are awake at 4am taking a shit.

[Assistant]
Diarrhea is the result of stool passing through the large intestine too fast and the intestine not being able to absorb all the water. Causes vary from infection, to nervousness, to too much fiber. Also, it depends on how what you're consuming reacts with your body. Alcohol causes some people to get diarrhea because it irritates the stomach lining and your body pushes it through the intestines faster, same thing with spicy foods. Capsaicin reacts poorly with a lot of stomachs and the body doesn't always break it down hence fire poops. Also, there's things like IBD and IBS.

Source: lots of diarrhea, roommate has IBS.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
CMV: The government should not bailout the airlines

There should be no bailout for airlines. In a capitalist society, businesses that cannot survive by itself should go under. For the past 10 years, airlines have spent most of their profits on stock buybacks and artificially inflating their stock prices instead of holding money for an emergency. It is the airline's fault for getting into the situation they are in right now. It is ridiculous that the average person has to save up money for an emergency while corporations don't. If airlines fail, so be it. A new one will start up. We should not have socialism in this country.

[Assistant] If the airlines fail and nobody starts up a new one for at least a year or two, what kind of ripple effect will that have on the economy? Many other jobs rely on quick transportation which when compared to driving and public transit, flying is the way to go. In the business world minutes lost are dollars lost. Hours are thousands. Days are millions. Can everyone else take that kind of hit? And will the ones that dont deserve to fail because another business failed?


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Is there any actual evidence that multiple dimensions and universes exist?

[Assistant]
There is not.

The BICEP2 result from about a year ago seemed to imply that the universe had undergone such a rapid expansion in its early stages that there are sections of it that would never be able to see each other, which spawned some discussion about what this would imply and whether it was even scientifically justifiable to talk about universes we have no hope of detected. However, that result turned out to just be dust.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z] What happened to all the anthropomorphic animals

In *Dragon Ball* there are anthropomorphic animals everywhere, but there are almost none in *Dragon Ball Z*

what's up with that?

[Assistant]
We have less focus on them in the series, that's it. Most of our attention isn't on Goku wandering the world, but the series of fights. We see the King of the World near the Cell saga and Korin pops up a few times.

That said, they were always a bit of a minority.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Harry Potter] If the Weasleys struggled with money to the point that it was considered characteristic of the family, why didnt Molly get a part time or seasonal job to help Arthur?

I know she chose to be a homemaker and has kids to look after, but once Ginny went to Hogwarts they were all away at school most of the year or adults who had left the nest.
Any time we see the burrow there are pots stirring themselves and needles knitting on their own. In Fantastic Beasts we see it takes no time at all to cook a meal. It's seems magic drastically reduces the time a homemaker has to spend doing chores as they could theoretically all be taken care of with the flick of a wand once one gets home from work.

I never thought to question any of this until a close friend of mine who is quite possibly the most brilliant person i know as well as the ultimate HP fan, brought it to my attention. Having read the books and seen the movies many times in the past, neither of us could think of a compelling reason for Molly not to get a job and help out a bit.

[Assistant]
It's simple; the Weasleys aren't poor.

They're lower-middle class landowners, a far cry from actual poverty. They're the magical equivalent of the Dursleys, except instead of living in some cookie-cutter suburbia with a perfectly manicured lawn they live in a ramshackle tower of a townhouse on a decent plot of land, and unlike the Dursleys they're perfectly happy and secure in their image.

Molly doesn't work because Molly doesn't need to work, ends are met.

All of this is from the perspective of Harry and the Wizarding world. Harry is crazy rich, Malfoy is crazy rich, even Hermione is from an upper-middle class family of two professionals, presumably with their own practise(s).

Almost all, if not all, of the other pureblood wizarding familes we see are of Malfoy's class, so it makes sense that they'd sneer at the Weasleys and their lack of wealth, especially given how massively bigoted they are as a people. We also know from comments Malfoy makes that there a lot more Weasley kids than there are in your typical wizarding family. Having a lot of kids close in age when you're not fabulously wealthy means that hand-me-downs and recycling school materials just makes sense, especially for a down-to-earth and pragmatic family like the Weasleys.

We really don't get much of a look at any readily identifiable working class wizards. Lupin, perhaps?

tl;dr They aren't poor, they're just not that rich, and don't care about looking rich.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Is it worth finishing my PhD in this situation?

I'm 3 years into my PhD. Not bad, says you. Except my supervisor got sick and had to retire about a year ago. My backup supervisor left to go to another university before that, so I've been passed around to various academics in my college like a hot potato over the last 12 months. I haven't done my confirmation exam yet. Moreover, I've lost interest in my subject area.

I find myself just chugging along, and want to go get a job, so I can fund part-time postgraduate study in a field I'm still interested in. Is this a good idea? Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any advice would be useful, I feel quite isolated right now.

[Assistant]
It's hard to see the upside of staying in your present situation.

You are probably better off cutting your losses in this department, and maybe this university. If you still retain any interest in the field, consider looking for an advisor whose work you've become familiar with in the course of your studies.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why is black pepper a staple seasoning along with salt?

I can understand why salt is since saltiness occurs in most dishes and salt allows you to increase that, but why is black pepper right alongside salt always?

[Assistant]
Salt enhances flavor while pepper compliments it. Black pepper specifically if kept correctly and ground fresh adds earthy, woody, citrus and spice without any capsaicin which is what almost all other spicy flavored ingredients are derived from. Black pepper has a alkaloid all it's own that creates a different type of heat that is unique to the berry.
I am a Chef and own a restaurant.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: What's the difference between a barrel roll and an aileron roll?

I fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and I'm having trouble differentiating between the two types of aerial maneuvers. Wasn't sure how to tag this post, so I just chose physics, I hope that's okay.

[Assistant]
Imagine a straight line through the aircraft from nose to tail.

During an aileron roll this line doesnt move and the aircraft rotates about the imaginary line.

During a barrel roll the imaginary line moves in a circle while the aircraft rotates about the center of that circle (similar to how the moon orbits the earth).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[X-Men] Are there mutants with seemingly "useless" mutations/superpowers, and if so, what jobs do they serve on their missions/teams?

I mean, like, for example, what about a character who can only make their fingernails grow longer, and that's it? Does that character go on missions with the rest of the team or are they more inclined to play some sort of secretarial role inside of Professor X's office? Thanks.

[Assistant] Not every Mutant is part of the X-Men. Xavier made the school just for mutants to have normal lives and learn how to deal with their powers with the X-Men being a side thing that is both a choice and something that the heads of the school need to approve on. Majority of Mutants just live their normal lives to the best of their abilities.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How do doctors know the amount and strength of medications when prescribing for acute conditions.

When a doctor diagnoses you with something, say a localized infection, how do they determine the amount of the medication as well as the length you take it?

[Assistant]
The general guidelines and typical dose is first determined by pharmaceutical companies who created the drug; and the company get the number through FDA testing/trials to determine the effective dose, allergy, side effects, min/max safe dose, etc.

The prescriber will usually start with the typical dose and adjust if needed rarely going beyond the recommended max dose so not to damage the liver/kidney/OD/other risks.

Sometimes a drug will be given for off label use and thats usually determined/backed by research articles. Off label just means the type of use have not been approved by the FDA.

Source: Im licensed to Rx meds.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does lice seem to vanish from the Earth as soon as everyone becomes like 12 years old?

[Assistant] Adult people can generally be trusted not to paw at the heads of their peers and will address any itchy sensations or the feeling of critters running about on their scalp with appropriate medications. There definitely are older people with lice but they tend to be the vagabonds pushing shopping carts down the street full of trash and yelling at the street lamps, not normally functional adults.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why is it socially unacceptable for men to wear dresses?

[Assistant]
It is; In the Middle-East.

In Europe, and America which descended from Europe, dresses were reserved for women for the most part of relatable history.

A whole essay could be written on how the depiction of women changed through the years. But here's a grossly oversimplified timeline:

- "From Ancient Greece to the Middle-Ages": Women are beautiful. We need to enhance them with various trinkets according with their wealth and place in the hierarchy. Satin & Velvet, being really fucking expensive at the time, donned vigorously onto someone's body was sure to make some heads turn.

- "Middle Ages": CATHOLICISM, BOOBS ARE BAD AND TEMPTRESSES GO TO HELL, AND BRING MEN WITH THEM. HIDE ALL OF YOUR WOMANHOOD AND MAKE BABIES. (Personally? Not religion's finest moment) And what better garment to use that a loose, straight dress that could be at will doubled or tripled?

- "Ever After": Corsets and hip-baskets through the dress to make them look voluptuous and motherly.

So, really, our society had dresses serve women and only women for as long as we've kept registries. Men never saw any benefit in them, We had toges, but those were for political men only. Then they were also unpractical for manual labour, combat and everyday movement in general; things that women never had to care for until they started wearing pants like men.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Are you morally culpable for the actions of the person who you voted in to office?

As the title suggests. Maybe Im too young and naive but this election cycle got me thinking hard about the morality of government officials and who is morally responsible for their actions, at least elected ones. If I vote for X candidate and X candidate ran on continuing wars that are known to have killed a countless number of innocent people am I, who voted for X candidate, morally culpable?

[Assistant]
Here's a basic and easy to understand picture of the conditions for moral responsibility.

* You are morally responsible for *x* only if you:
 1. had control over *x* and
 2. could have reasonably known that you would have caused *x* provided the actions you took.

The "only if" means that the two conditions are what are known as necessary conditions. So, the part that comes before the "only if" being true is sufficient for everything afterwards being true.

In the case you describe, it looks like the main dispute is going to be over whether 2 is true. It seems like it--I take it you're saying that this candidate does go on to do what you describe. So, you know what they're going to do if they're in the position to do it, and you knowingly cause them to be in that position. It does seem like the folk intuition that people are morally responsible for the votes they make survives a bit of analysis.

There are a bunch of little debates and directions you can go from here and try and push and prod on each of those conditions and issues in various ways to see whether there's any skepticism warranted towards any part of this picture, but that's the basic way of thinking about it.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] How do black holes fit into the scheme of "heat death" or max entropy.

[Assistant] A black hole has the maximum possible entropy that can fit into a given region of space (the Bekenstein bound). If you think about all the possible configurations of the star prior to the black hole, and then that a black hole only has three properties (mass, charge, and spin), you can see that a black hole is the macrostate with the most possible microstates.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How do computers keep track of time passing?

It just seems to me (from my two intro-level Java classes in undergrad) that keeping track of time should be difficult for a computer, but it's one of the most basic things they do and they don't need to be on the internet to do it. How do they pull that off?

[Assistant]
The component that keeps track of the time in a computer is called the Real Time Clock (RTC). The RTC consist of a crystal that oscillates at a known frequency. In this case, 32768 Hz is often used, because it's exactly 2^(15) and that allows for convenient binary arithmetic. By counting the oscillations, the RTC can measure the passage of time.

In a regular computer, the RTC runs regardless of whether the computer is on or off with a small battery on the motherboard powering the RTC when the computer is off. When this battery runs out, the system can no longer keep track of the time when it's off and will reset the system time to a default value when it's started up.

RTCs are fairly accurate, deviating at most a few seconds per day. With internet connected devices, any deviation can be compensated for by correcting the RTC time with the time from a time server every now and then.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How does a turtle shell grow?

Is the shell like an exoskeleton? Is it even bone? Turtles aren't crabs and migrate from she'll to shell, therefore do they grow or does the title get big enough to push the shell and expand it?

[Assistant] Turtle shells are not exoskeletons. They are ribs covered in scales. Hence, they are made of bone and keratin, and grow just as your bones and fingernails do. The enlarged scales, called scutes, overlap each other and provide protection for the space between the ribs. Leatherbacks lack hardened shells, however, and their bones are just covered in skin.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Wonder Woman] When Hippolyta sculpted Diana out of clay did she make everything anatomically correct or is it Barbie doll down there?

[Assistant] She made the clay figure under the direction of the gods (and more specifically, under the direction of Aphrodite, who would probably be pretty exacting on physical appearance as the goddess of beauty), with the gods probably planning to make it come to life from the start, so it's unlikely that Hippolyta shied away from making it as close to human as possible. Diana was certainly able to have a child herself (presumably the 'normal' way) back in the golden age, so there was nothing going wrong down there for her in that case.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5:What exactly does it mean when it's said that gravity is the weakest force? What other forces are they comparing it too? And how can it be compared to something else entirely different?

Question is in the title.  I'm no physicist, so you'll need to dumb it down for me.

[Assistant]
There are 4 forces that are in the discussion. Weak nuclear, strong nuclear, magnetic and gravitational.

The other three all have much higher strengths in comparison to what is generating them. For example, a small magnet can easily override the forces exerted by the gravity of an entire planet. The nuclear forces work at the atomic level and are incredibly strong, which again, is starkly contrasted by the tiny scale they apply at compared to gravity.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[ASOUE] Once Count Olaf was a known felon, why did he continue trying to acquire the orphans' fortune through legal trickery? Wasn't the law already against him? Why not just go rob the place where the money is stored?

Also, how did he know the money wasn't in the house he burned down?

[Assistant]
Bank robberies are actually ridiculously hard to pull off. It's much easier to try legal chicanery to have yourself named a beneficiary of the fortune. Banks don't actually keep all that much money in the vault.

People don't actually keep vast sums of money in their house with them.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5:The difference in a single payer health care system vs Obamacare... what makes one better than the other... why does Obamacare fall short?

[Assistant]
A single payer health care system has the government pay for everyone's health care using taxes. It means that the government runs hospitals and clinics and hires staff, and that the government buys the medicines and supplies. Citizens are all covered for health care.

Obamacare is not that.

Obamacare keeps the current US status quo of health care being run by a bunch of different private companies, with individuals paying money to insurance companies to cover their health care costs. It's just that now those insurance companies have some additional regulations, and people who can't afford private insurance will be covered by state-provided free to low cost insurance.

It was a compromise between Single Payer and keeping the status quo, but it leaves no one satisfied.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does America help and support Israel so much?

[Assistant]
1. Highly organized and well-funded political backing from pro-Israeli groups (AIPAC, et. al.), and a lack of similar political backing from pro-Palestinian groups.

2. An undercurrent of apocalyptic Christianity in certain political groups in the U.S. that believes the existence of Israel is a requirement for the second coming of Christ.

3. A continuing belief in the U.S. that the Jews need require some form of reparation for the Holocaust, and that support of Israel constitutes such reparation.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars: The Force Awakens] Why did Kylo Ren accompany the First Order forces the first attack on Jakku but not the second?

They both seemed like pretty important missions. Why be present for just one? What was keeping him so busy aboard the Finalizer?

[Assistant] Kylo knew Lor San Tekka was in that village.  Lor San Tekka is a personal friend of Luke Skywalker and a member of the Church of the Force.  There is a good chance he has some level of force affinity so Kylo wanted to be there to deal with him in case he had more power then he displayed.  As well Kylo is trying to continue Vader's Crusade so killing Lor San Tekka is a step to finishing eliminating all the Jedi, even though he wasn't an actual Jedi.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Starwars]How in gods name did the Jedi, an order devoted to enlightenment, freedom and peace, ever agree to lead to lead CHILD SLAVES who were created only to die as fodder in war?

I was watching the Clone Wars and nothing could have possibly drawn a more ridiculous clash in Jedi ideals than one episode where they try to save the life of a giant monster as it rampages through Coruscant, presumably killing tens of thousands of people because "it might be sentient and might be the last of its kind!" and the next episode, where you see the Jedi interacting with child-soldiers and training them.  Even if they reach biological adulthood, they have been alive for like a year, a year!  How in gods name could the Jedi ever agree to lead an army of slave children!?! What about their principles!?!  That is just... morally repugnant in the extreme!

[Assistant]
They may have been alive for a year but they are fully matured. Just only with a years worth of experience. Honestly their age isn't important it's still morally repugnant to be using clones in that way where they don't have a choice in the matter. Desperate times though.

The Jedi claim to have the moral high ground and claim to be so enlightened but in reality some of their practices are iffy as well.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Iron Man Suit Weigh

How much does it weigh ? It should be pretty heavy shouldnt it ?

[Assistant]
His suitcase suit weighs just under 25 pounds, thanks to Stark's miniaturized tech and some high-quality carbon composites and metal alloys normally reserved for building spacecraft. Most of his other suits weigh only a little more than that. Bear in mind that Stark himself is 6' 1" and weighs 225 pounds when he's in good shape.

His specialized suits can weigh a lot more. For example, Hulkbuster suits weigh at least three tons.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Trek] What if Borg Assimilation Was Voluntary and A Little Less Creepy?

There's really no reason for all the black tubes and creepy glowing eyes. Cyborgs could be attractive or at least less evil.

If the Borg just visited worlds and offered assimilation into their "Shared Consciousness" (Sounds better than hive mind), could they be successful? Would the Federation stop citizens from volunteering?

[Assistant]
It's an interesting question, and the answer mostly revolves around what the Borg then does and how the Borg 'mind' is structured. In every instance we've seen, Assimilation seems not to be a means but an actual end to the Borg. Their goal is to just... assimilate everything.

Now, if Assimilation becomes voluntary, then it can no longer be an end (or at least not pursued with such ruthless efficiency as the current Borg do). Then the question becomes, what now is the Borg's end goal? Why do they assimilate? The answer to that question - and whether it is mutually exclusive with the Federation's goals - will give most of the answer.

The other half of the answer is whether an Assimilated person has their personality overwritten. Obviously, in the canon-Borg they do: Being turned into tools for the Borg's objectives. Now, whether or not the Federation finds the Borg's goals appreciable, they might still find their means a little too extreme if it involves subsuming someone's mind and identity. If the Borg do *not* do this, however... are they still even the Borg anymore?


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why do we have itches and why do we need to scratch them?

[Assistant]
Itches are a reaction from your nerves. Some things can stimulate these nerves (histamines, for example) in a specific way. Scratching is, put simply, temporarily deadening those nerves. Some stronger histamines, allergens, poisons (stings, bites) have a more pronounced effect, hence more scratching to "deaden" the nerve it's affecting.

tl;dr, itchiness is a specific reaction from your nerves, and scratching sort of deadens it.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Marvel] When did Deadpool start breaking the fourth wall?

Was Wade always aware that he's a comic book character, or did something happen when he went into the Weapon X program that made him aware?

[Assistant]
Something happened to Wade Wilson when he entered the Weapon X program that gave him the peculiar mental quirk of believing that he is a fictional character in a comic book. She-Hulk suffered from a similar affliction for a time after leaving the Fantastic Four and Avengers, but has seemingly recovered and doesn't wish to talk about that period of time in her life, which to be fair was full of rather strange and odd adventures.

This may have something to do with the fact that Marvel does publish comics loosely based on the real world exploits of certain heroes, such as the Avengers and Fantastic Four. But Marvel doesn't publish a comic based on a mercenary who fights the X-Men, as the X-Men have always been one of Marvel's lowest selling titles, kept around solely because Stan Lee and later Marvel editors sympathize with mutant rights activism.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: We keep hearing that ISIS has millions of dollars in revenue, but where does it keep this money and why is it so difficult to cut off the money?

[Assistant] They are getting it from oil illegally transported out of their borders, "taxes" on the people inside their borders, extortion, hostage exchanges, all the normal ways large organizations get money illegally. We can't stop oil exports because we don't have the resources to clamp down all of their borders, we can't stop taxation or extortion because they have the power in those areas, and we can't stop hostage taking because people keep going to the region. It's a mess.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: What is the United States Merchant Marines?

How do they differ from private shipping companies, as they seem to fulfill the same purpose?

[Assistant]
In peacetime, the Merchant Marine transports cargo and passengers no differently than any other shipping company.

In wartime, the Merchant Marine transports soldiers and material for the military. The Department of Defense can also commission Merchant Marine officers as military officers.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
CMV:People who have been arrested or charged with a crime, should not have it broadcasted on the news or publicly shared until an actual guilty verdict has been reached in court.

Although this is probably an impossible thing to accomplish, morally I believe no one should have there picture or information publicly shared about a crime they are charged with, until a guilty verdict on the allegations is reached in court. The justice system of the United States subscribes to an idea called "Blackstones Formulation". This is the idea that it is better for 100 guilty men to walk free, then for one innocent man to suffer. This is why, in the legal system at least, you are innocent until proven guilty. I think the exact opposite seems to be the case when it comes to the reporting of alleged crimes. The concept of Blackstones Formulation should be applied to media aswell. With how widespread media is today, information travels so quickly that being charged with a crime you didn't commit, is still incredibly damaging to who you are and how people see you. To the point where weather you even commit the crime or not is irrelevant and you are now forever connected to something ugly you had nothing to do with. The false rape allegations I've seen in the news is what made me start to think about this. Once your face is plastered on a tv screen being an accused rapist, you are now an outcast of society and even your closest friends will wander if you did it. There has been cases where innocent people have gotten computer viruses that unknowingly stored child pornography on there computers and were completely innocent. Only to have there face plastered on tv for everyone to see, accused of being one of the most vile things you can be. Everyone will at least think on some level you might be secretly a monster, if not completely accept you are one from the get go. Family's are torn apart and the humiliation knowing you are viewed as a monster for something you didn't do must be unbearable.  Now these false allegations are definitely the overwhelming minority, but i believe it would be better to save the reporting on guilty people after they have been found so, then to cause suffering  to an innocent person who has done nothing.

Change my view.

[Assistant]
The problem here is that we are guaranteed a public trial.  Secret trials, where the public isn't allowed to know who is being accused and what for, would be a lot worse for society.

Imagine a high ranking senator or someone getting arrested one day, and no one was allowed to report on why they were arrested or what was going on.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
If the universe is essentially a non-uniform vacuum, could the differences between these areas exert a force between them?

Sorry if this is a dumb or basic question. I'm not very smart so I just want to be able to wrap my head around this. Blame Mythbusters for lifting a car with a household vacuum if you must. It all made me think of dark energy and how the vacuum of space actually works.

Would a complete vacuum in one region of space exert any influence over a non-complete vacuum right next to it? Would there be pressure differences that would equal out over time as one pulled matter towards it from the other? Do the variable parts of the vacuum of space have any interrelationship at all or is it all just passive without an energy source powering one part or another as there would be with a home vacuum cleaner creating the vacuum?

[Assistant]
I think it's easier to understand this question if you flip it around. Instead of thinking of things in terms of vacuums (with some vacuums being more vacuumy than others), it's best to think of space as being like an *atmosphere* - it's full of gas, it's just a very very thin gas. A "vacuum" can be thought of as just a very very low pressure gas.

And, as you suggest, this gas is not distributed evenly throughout the universe. The gas in the disc of the Milky Way is denser (and cooler) than the gas in the "halo" around the Milky Way, which is denser than the gas in the vast expanses between galaxies.

And this gas interacts with stuff. It collapses to form stars. These stars heat up the gas and increase its pressure. The gravity of all the stars and dark matter stops the gas from escaping away from the galaxy. The combination of pressure and gravity means you get a bit near-spherical blob of hot gas around the Milky Way - this is the gas "halo". Some of this gas is spinning, and the combination of gravity, angular momentum, and pressure, gives you a disc of gas too.

And yes, this gas does flow around, with high pressure gas trying to expand into low pressure areas. This is basically the same processes that happen within our atmosphere, just on much larger scales. But, just like our atmosphere, it's not like everything just evens itself out and then stays still forever. It gets stirred up by stellar winds and radiation and supernovae and gravity, and by the rotation of the galaxy, and all sorts of stuff. So you end up with a big turbulent mess of all sorts of stuff going on at once - which again, is pretty similar to what happens with Earth's atmosphere. Essentially, what we're talking about here is the galaxy's "weather".


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5:Why are wait staff exempt from federal/state min wage regulations and why aren't unions/ workers rights orgs making any efforts to change this?

Seriously... How is it legal to pay them <$3 an hr in some places?

[Assistant] They arent exempt. If their tips dont get them over the minimum wage then the company has to pay them enough to bring it up to the minimum. No one is trying to change it because waiters prefer it this way. If they all made a decent amount in an hour then people would start viewing tipping as truly optional ( sure it is technically optional but you are an asshole if you dont tip in america ). Then they would make way less than they do now. Waiters make good money at most restaurants. People will walk home with 100 dollars in their pocket at even just modest restaurants. Basically the way it is now benefits wait staff and restaurants.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[DC] Why does Lex hate Superman the most? Why not Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, or even Supergirl?

In some continuities, Clark is (indirectly?) responsible for his baldness; but for the most part, Lex just hates Superman for everything the latter represents.

So why doesn't Lex attack Supergirl, cousin to the Man of Steel and potentially more powerful? Or Wonder Woman, who is a bonafide demigoddess? Or Martian Manhunter, someone who is obviously an alien?

[Assistant] Because Superman was the one who chose to move to his city and show him up. He has everything Lex always wanted: public adoration, power beyond imagining, even the loving family Lex never got. Why should an alien get to luck into everything Lex worked so hard to build for himself?


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
What are the best contemporary defences of liberalism against Marxist critiques?

At least in what I've studied, post Rawls there seems to be a basic acceptance of at least a modest liberal framework in contemporary analytic political theory, even from philosophers pretty far to the left (e.g. Otsuka or even Cohen).

I'm looking for the best contemporary works/philosophers that defend this assumption against the more traditional Marxist critiques that wholly reject that framework (others welcome too). Thanks!

[Assistant] A lot of the contemporary defense of post-Rawls liberalism centers around Marxs critique of justice. You may want to look into Allen Buchanans *Marx and Justice: The Radical Critique of Liberalism*, as well as Will Kymlickas *Liberalism, Community, and Culture*, which defends liberalism against both communitarian critiques and Marxian critiques (see especially chapter 6 on Marxism and the Critique of Justice). Another book worth reading is Steven Lukes excellent *Marxism and Morality*, which analyzes and assesses Marxs critiques of morality and *Recht*.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How did the world come to a common consensus as to what day of the week it is?

[Assistant]
To make a very long story, short (human history). Through the expansion of empires that forced the standard upon the conquered and through trade routes that agreed upon a standard in order to plan out shipments.

Missionaries to 'uncivilized' natives also contributed to this standardization.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why is the ocean salty?

[Assistant] Salt and other minerals are leached out of rocks. Once in the ocean the salt has nowhere else to go so the salinity of the ocean slowly increases over time. Lakes and rivers are not salty (except for some exceptions) because they are continually supplied with fresh water, and they have outlets into other rivers or the ocean. Lakes that are salty have no outlet, so just like the ocean the salt builds up over time.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why is violence, murder and death so widely accepted in movies/TV/Video games, while sex and nudity is considered taboo?

[Assistant]
That's mainly in puritan societies that are heavily influenced by religious entities. In many European movies nudity is not such a taboo.

Violence is a reflection of a society that's focused on war and guns, where physical strength is important to subdue "enemies".

Since the US has a huge influence over global entertainment you end up with a skewed view.

Go check French movies and Brazilian TV. Nudity is not a big deal there.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why is it bad to scratch itches due to mosquito bites, poison ivy, chicken pox, etc? Is there ever a time when it is good to scratch?

[Assistant] When you contact poison ivy, there is oil on the leaves that causes the itch. If you scratch at the itch, you spread the oil and prolong the itching. When you get chicken pox, not only can you spread the contact area of the spot, but you can get scars as you constantly scratch skin weakened by the disease. Scratching mosquito bites only deadens the itch for a minute or two and can spread the mosquito saliva that causes the itch. Better to take a benydryl and go to sleep.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [LOTR]Are all orcs inherently evil , warmongering and violent? Or could there be some peaceful night ones who would oppose the war and prefer to cooperate with other races?

[Assistant]
In Letter 153, Tolkien states that Orcs aren't irredeemably evil.

> They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making  necessary to their actual existence  even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)

So are Orcs evil? Yes. Could they be changed? Possibly. Has one ever been changed? Not that we know of.

As far as we know, all Orcs are violent and warmongering. They're beings made of corruption, so all of the "good" has been effectively corrupted out of them. They can still show positive traits, e.g. Ugluk was brave and had good leadership skills, but Orcs will entirely use these "good" traits to do evil.

If they're not fighting Men, Elves or Dwarves, they'll fight among themselves. And they'll only ever deal with other races under extreme circumstances. Worth noting that after Sauron's final defeat, Orcs either killed themselves or fled to deep, dark places. None of them surrendered to Aragorn's army.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] If Japan wants inflation why don't they just print money?

[Assistant]
In monetary theory there is a concept of pulling and pushing on a string.

Contractionary policy is akin pulling on the stringI.e. raising interest rates will always provide for some level of pricing individuals, banks, corporations out of the credit markets, just like pulling a string will cause the tail end to follow.

Expansionary policy on the other hand is like pushing on a string. Eventually the string doubles up on itself and no matter how hard you push, youre not able to move the tail endI.e. at a certain point, no amount of interest rate reduction is able to convince banks to lend out, or convince debt-laden companies to borrow rather than pay down existing debt.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: The purpose of the statute of limitations law on rape and sexual assault.

In light of Bill Cosby's accusers coming forward, what exactly is the purpose/benefit of statute of limitations on rape and sexual assault?  With a person of his celebrity, one can understand why these women didn't feel comfortable reporting him at the time.  Although there may be some civil cases against him, he'll likely serve no jail time.  This seems completely asinine!

[Assistant]
The purpose of a statute of limitations for sexual assault is identical to the purpose of a statute of limitations for pretty much every other crime.  The idea is that the rights of the accused must be respected, and waiting before prosecuting presents some issues:

- If a crime really happened and the victim really feels wronged, then they have a responsibility to address it.

- If someone waits a long time before pursuing charges, it's likely that there was a change in their motives.  Chances are that they're more interested in seeing the accused suffer than actually seeking justice.

- Over time evidence becomes less reliable.  Physical evidence degrades or gets lost, and witnesses have less accurate memory of the events in question.  This reason is the least philosophical and most practical.

Statutes of limitation vary by state, crime, and the specific circumstances surrounding the case, so things can get more complicated.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 - Whats the difference between buying low, selling high and being a scalper?

[Assistant]
There isn't that much difference.  Pretty much all retail sales and resale is based on the idea of buying a product for X, marking it up by Y%, and then selling it for Z.

The issue with scalper is that they insert themselves as _additional_ middle men, marking up the price by _a lot_ because of incredible demand and constrained supply.  People feel they add no value to the process and just extract profits from people because there aren't many units available.

Few people have an issue when Best Buy buys and Xbox for $400 and sells it for $500 because they provide you some value - you can drive to the BB, go into their store and buy the product from their existing stock (which is valuable).  People have an issue with the scalper who buys the Xbox for $500 and sells it for $1,000 because there are no other Xboxes to buy.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [DC] Are Lanterns capable of creating "perfect" constructs that look and feel like the real thing they are imitating? Or will they always be an obvious projection tinged with the same color of the ring being used?

[Assistant]
I guess it depends on what you mean by "perfect" John Stewart was an architect. Everything he builds is "perfect" Hal once said "Stewart's constructs are solid". If John makes a sniper rifle out of light his construct will have everything that an actual gun would have, right down to the firing pin, even though it doesn't technically need one. His constructs are pretty damn "perfect".

Kyle R was a graphic artist. His constructs are CRAZY detailed because of that. If he were to make a house and you walked inside you're most likely going to find everything you'd find in an actual home. Couch, chairs, scuffed walls, dirty dishes etc. but it is all still going to be made out of green light.

Perfect details? Totally. Not looking like it's made out of green light? Nah. Most likely not.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
CMV: The average American life is futile and empty

Once people are in their adult stage, they have to start working 9-5, most likely 5 times a week. It is most likely a job that they dislike, but there is no other choice than to work just to maintain your well-being and image. As we get older, our hormones decay, meaning we lose the passion, sex drive, and overall energy that we once had when we were teenagers/young adults.

Yes, we might marry someone we initially love, but statistically, there is a 53% chance of divorce in the United States. And, even if one decides not to divorce, the love with their spouse will eventually die down. Sex will not be like it used to, they will become tired and bored of each other, and possibly even angry or hateful.

One might even have a child, but at this point, his/her main duty is to work and care for your child by any means. Now, you essentially live for someone else and you cannot enjoy your life for yourself. Also, you cannot pay attention to your spouse, and the relationship will go further downhill. There will be increased pressure of working harder and harder just for your kid(s)/family.

At some point you're just a breathing robot.

[Assistant]
From this perspective, why aren't *all* lives futile and empty? Why just American?

A separate avenue of argument: statistics about failure are not a great basis for such criticism -- 53 percent of marriages ending in divorce doesn't make the attempt worthless. After all, 100 percent of lives end in death, and yet we try to make the most of them.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: The difference between Cajun and Creole.

What's the difference between the two groups? Is it regional? Ancestral? Were the Cajuns French speaking? The two groups are almost interchangeable in my mind but I know that isn't right.

Can anyone explain like I'm five?

[Assistant] Cajuns are decended from acadians,  french speaking canadians who moved to then french controlled New Orleans when the british took Canada sometime before the american revolution.  Creoles were/ are people of european descent who are living in the "new world" . They were wealthy enough to keep their bloodlines "pure" and usually contested with appointed officials from the mother country for political and economic power. It is a term that was used throughout central and south america, which if you think about it New Orleans is a part of.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: sometimes when I'm listening to music through headphones and I yawn, the pitch of the music shifts down a semitone or so for the duration of the yawn. Why does this happen?

[Assistant] The sinuses are connected to the inner ear via Eustachian tubes.  In a yawn, the musculature around the jaw can squeeze on these tubes, affecting the pressure in the inner ear.  This pressure change also effects the resonance of the ear drum and the anatomy in the inner ear.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Is there a limit on how small a gas giant/dwarf can be? Can a gas planet have the same radius as the Earth?

[Assistant]
it needs to have enough mass to have gravity strong enough to hold hydrogen and helium. Those gases rise out of the atmosphere of earth and disperse into space because earths gravity isn't strong enough to hold them.

So, a gas planet of earths diameter would have less mass thanthe rocky earth does, and would disperse into a diffuse cloud.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why do we have to turn off our phones during takeoff/landing? What about mid-flight calls and wifi? Why can't we have that?

It would be less of an issue travelling for thirteen hours to get to the USA if i could just watch netflix or play an online game.

[Assistant]
Turning off your phone during takeoff and landing is mainly just to make you pay attention in case of emergency rather than any significant chance of interference with aircraft systems.

You can't use them during flight because cell towers are ground-based and you will be crossing from one cell tower's coverage to another so quickly that it would play havok with their systems trying to keep up with your speed of travel. WiFi within the airplane is OK as their system is hooked up to a long-range communication system that would transfer the traffic to a satellite or system designed to handle aircraft communications. WiFi connections to something on the ground is obviously too far away.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: The color of water

Why is it, that if I pour myself a glass of water, it is see through, clear, etc... However, I can put that same water, into a plaster white bottomed pool, and the result is the pool looking blue... I thought maybe clouds?

[Assistant] When it's in the pool, the water is being hit by sunlight. Most of it is reflected back at you, but some of it is being absorbed. It turns out that water absorbs "red" wavelengths more readily (haha puns...) which leaves more of the wavelengths being reflected at the "blue" end of the spectrum. This is what you see.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: why does sitting out in the sun all day make you so tired even if youre not doing any physical activity?

[Assistant] your body is finely tuned to a certain temperature. the hotter or colder the outside temperature is the harder it works to get back to what it wants. your internal body is working hard pulling levers and turning valves even if youre just laying down flat in the sun all day long.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] What was the weather like in northern parts 13,000 years ago that humans would consider and make the trek from Asia to NA?

[Assistant] I recall learning years ago the prevailing idea was that nomadic groups of people followed the migration of the megafauna they hunted. Looking at today's Inuit (eskimo), and other Arctic indigenous peoples, it's unlikely that winter conditions especially when such a large portion of the Earth's surface was covered by glaciers, would deter the movement of determined (read: hungry) humans.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: If you have microscopic tearing in the anal canal, why doesnt your own faeces poison you?

Very small tears in the delicate anal tissue are apparently a common problem in humans, obviously more so in certain groups than others. Whether theyre microscopic or severe enough to cause bleeding, why doesnt the faecal matter enter the blood stream and make you very ill? If you ate faeces youd get gastroenteritis I assume, so wouldnt faecal matter in the blood be really dangerous?

[Assistant]
Large amounts of faecal matter in the blood can be very dangerous, but remember, the tear is microscopic, so only very small amounts get through. The body has a number of defense mechanisms once it detects disruption to blood vessels to prevent them from becoming contaminated.

Clots don't just help to stop bleeding, but also provide an extra boost of immune defense to help immediately shutdown any bugs that can get in.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does it "hurt" when you swing at a baseball but miss?

[Assistant]
Basically your brain analyses from past experience how much force you need to swing with to hit the ball, and usually goes overboard because you want to hit it hard. If you're just swinging in the air without an aim to hit anything, you're using less force.

Not connecting with the ball means the bat has excess force from the energy you put into it, making it swing further than expected because the force hasn't been transferred to the ball, and overextending or otherwise stretching our muscles which causes the pain.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
I think Transgenderism is a mental disorder, CMV

I believe that Transgenderism is, in fact, a mental disorder, akin to schizophrenia or depression. In fact, it was classified as such by the American Psychiatric Association until less than a year ago; that is part of why I hold this view. Furthermore, there is no physical manifestation of Transgenderism; it is all in the subject's mind. While we may not have a cure for it per se, just like we don't have a cure for depression or schizophrenia, that doesn't mean that something so drastic as a sex change and hormone therapy should be considered normal, or an acceptable treatment. I believe that in the future, as our understanding of the brain and mental health improves, we will be able to treat this condition as we currently treat a lot of other mental disorders; with drugs and targeted therapy.

[Assistant] Transsexuals at least (they fall under the umbrella of transgendered folk) have demonstratively different brains than those of their body's gender and rather have brains much more similar to those of the gender they associate with, making for a physical disorder- their whole body is wrong as opposed to their brain- rather than a mental disorder.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Back to the Future] Does Mr Fusion actually use fusion? Or is that just the brand name? If fusion, why does Doc put in an beer can (mostly aluminum) and a banana (mostly carbon) rather than just plain water (mostly hydrogen)? If not fusion, how does the product work?

[Assistant] Mr. Fusion is a likely a brand name and it doesn't use nuclear fusion at all. It is a generic matter-energy conversion device: put in matter, it converts it to energy to power something. In the case of the Delorean, it powers the time circuits/flux capacitor.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How are phones able to reach the towers while using far less power

Lets say we have an LTE signal.

The towers use a very strong signal to get it to our phones. But how are our phones able to reach the towers to request something (Like a website)?

[Assistant]
The general idea: the larger the antenna, the weaker signal it can receive.

The antennas on a cell phone have to be small, so they can only pick up stronger signals. The antennas on a cell phone tower are very large so they can pick up weaker signals.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: What causes adult teeth to push out baby teeth?

I was looking at a picture of a childs skull (totally recommend, its nightmarish and cool) and it got
me wondering: what causes the adult teeth to push out the baby teeth?

[Assistant] Its not so much a push.  Its more like this: you got your set of baby teeth. Then this adult tooth bud grows (think of it as a seed in dirt).  As its growing, its just growing upwards from its bud as a plant would. As it grows, it eats away (resorbs) the bone and tooth ahead of it (the baby tooth). And your baby tooth gets loose when theres no more root left to hold it into jaw bone. Thats when you wiggle and it come loose and the adult one grows up out of the gum.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why isn't fish considered "meat"?

[Assistant]
Real answer:

During lent you were supposed to give up a luxury- meat at the time period was considered a luxury while fish was a staple which people needed to survive.

So fish is considered a meat, it's just exempt from the "no meat on Friday" rule because tradition.

Overtime this has just evolved to people saying that fish in general isn't meat which isn't true.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How exactly is the BBC publicly funded and how can it support its massive international presence with British funds?

The question may be inherently incorrect due to my lack of understanding on the matter.

[Assistant]
Anybody who watches broadcast television (or "almost as-broadcast", e.g. internet via streaming) in the UK has to pay for a television licence (currently 145.50 -- about US $220 -- per year). This applies *regardless of which TV stations they choose to watch*, so even if you never consume anything produced by the BBC you're still required to pay if you own a television. However, approximately 92% of the British public use *some* BBC services each month (that might be TV, radio, and/or online).

The total of all those TV licences comes to about 3.4 billion per year (around US $5 billion), and out of that the BBC funds for UK consumption 8 national television stations (and one regional one), 11 national radio stations (and nearly 30 regional ones), and one of the largest and most respected websites in the world. In return for the British public paying for the BBC in such a way, it is illegal for the BBC to carry advertisements on its domestic output, or to charge the British public in any other way for live TV/radio (although it *can* charge for DVD boxsets etc).

Outside of the UK these rules don't apply -- what's more the British public would feel somewhat upset if their money (which they have no choice but to pay) was being used to provide subsidised or free television to people in other countries. So the BBC also owns a for-profit company which sells BBC content (both entire programmes and intellectual property rights, e.g. for remakes) to other countries around the world. This company, BBC Worldwide Ltd, has global revenues of around 1.2 billion a year (about US $1.8 billion).

So to (finally!) answer your question, the BBC in total has around 4.6 billion income per year, equivalent to nearly US $7 billion. It's restricted in that some of that money *must* be spent in the UK, and some of it *must not*, but as you can imagine a media company with that sort of income is more than capable of supporting a "massive international presence".


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: What causes my stomach to hurt when its hungry but then it un-grumbles and the pain goes away?

If Im hungry for too long, my stomach grumbles weirdly; it hurts a lot and then releases a big grumble and it doesnt hurt as much. What is this?

[Assistant] Your digestive tract moves food through it via squeezing it along, in an action called peristalsis. Gas bubbles or other blockages can build up in certain places and cause pain. If the bubbles are being squeezed and suddenly find a path to another region, the pressure is reduced and this movement can cause noise. In some cases when you are hungry and have a less full stomach a larger fraction of the space can potentially become air, though it may not always be related to hunger - rather gas production by your gut microbes.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: why doesnt sunburn appear until hours after youve left the sun?

[Assistant]
Sunburn is a type of radiation burn caused by exposure to the sun. To put it simply, the radiation from the sun has bombarded the atoms that make up your DNA, causing irreparable damage. These cells with damaged DNA can no longer self-replicate, meaning they must be shed and replaced.

Like any burn, your body responds with inflammation of the affected area. This is the redness we typically associate with sunburn. What is happening is your body's immune system has recognized that there is a region of localized damage to your skin, and has begun to repair that damage by replacing the skin in that area with new cells.

To do this, it increases bloodflow to the damaged area in order to supply more oxygen to help with the 'repairs'. Depending on how *deep* the damage is, the more extreme the immune response will be (i.e. first, second, or third-degree burns).

Redness can appear within an hour of exposure, but typically you'll experience the most pain between 6-48 hours. The pain and redness you feel is actually your body's response to the sunburn, and will take several hours to fully peak.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[G.I. Joe cartoon] Do any of these guys know what tactics are?

So I've just been recruited into the Joes. Its a real honor and all. Hell, I'm lucky to be here at all, E-3 straight from the army and all.

But after our first engagement with Cobra I just...Well Lady Jaye just ran up an threw a spear in the middle of battle! I thought she was covert ops, what is she doing chucking spears at people? And some of our guys just ran out of cover and punched the enemy. I mean come on!

We have all this advanced equipment, why are we charging at the enemy like its the Civil War? For such a prestige group you'd think the Joes would be smarter than this!

[Assistant]
Look... there's no easy way to say this. Let's see... when you joined up, did they have you do a _very difficult_ test? Think hard. It may have had questions like "If a cat is stuck in a tree, who do you call?" or "What is half of 100?"

You might say that G.I. Joes are a... _special_ forces group.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[The Office] What did Dwight actually want them to do during the fire drill?

He blocked all the exits and they were on the second story so I'm curious how he wanted them to respond. There was seemingly no way to get out of the building.

[Assistant] Like many things he does, Dwight didn't think his plan all the way through. He wanted them to follow the protocol of what to do in an emergency, which on the surface is a valid concern, but he didn't allow for any escape route or chance to get out.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Do satellites orbiting earth travel in a system of space-lanes so that they don't run into each other?

[Assistant]
No not really. When satellite orbits are being designed, they are carefully checked such that they don't intersect with the orbits of existing satellites or debris in space.

One special orbit is the geostationary orbit where satellites must be 35,786km away from the Earth and directly above the equator in order to stay in the same position in the sky with respect to the Earth. This means there is a limited amount of space in that orbit for satellites to position themselves safely without risk of radio interference and collisions. The ITU (International Telecommunication Union) oversees the slots in the geostationary orbit and the radio frequency bands being used.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Death Note] So in the event that Light won and finished in doing away with all the criminals how exactly did he plan to purge the world of lazy people?

As you may know, Mikami started to kill off people who were just being lazy and Light was against it not out of any moral reasons but because he thought Mikami was jumping the gun and saying that it was "too soon for that"

So if Light won and finally got around to killing Lazy people how did he intend on doing it? Light although he considers himself a god is not omniscient and with criminals, he basically just relies on the judiciary, police, the news and if he gets lucky maybe someone will commit a crime right in front of him with no mask and state their full name aloud.

But with lazy people? World wide? Was he just expecting news headlines to in place of "school shooter kills 16" to instead say "Man binges Netflix and plays video games for 6 hours before reluctantly getting off his ass to do the dishes"?

[Assistant]
The first step towards that was already happening, the US government officially stopped investigating the Kira case.

If other governments followed suit and Light wouldn't have to worry about any serious investigation into him he could start making explicit demands through his victims (a Death Note can control his victims before death by making them write a specific message).

He would then demand some kind of productivity data to be made available publicly for every company like hours worked etc. and start killing the people slacking off the most.

And yes you don't have to point out how horrible flawed that metric is but Light is a high school student in Japan who thinks that the death penalty is an actual deterrent against crime so he isn't that bright when it comes to social sciences, let's be honest.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How does salt lower the temperature of ice water?

I know that salt water has a lower freezing temperature than water, but I don't understand how adding salt to ice water (such as when making ice cream by hand) lowers the temperature of the ice past 0 C without additional cooling.

[Assistant]
When you add salt to ice at 0 C, its freezing point drops...to up to -21 C, depending on the salt concentration.

However, when water melts, it absorbs heat...a lot of heat.  This is known as the latent heat of fusion, and occurs whenever something transitions from solid to liquid.  For water, it takes 80 times the heat to change ice to water as it does to raise it 1 degree C.

So in order to melt 1g of salt water, 80g of water has to get 1 C colder.  With a well designed ice cream maker, a lot of this heat will come from the cream, and you'll get frozen goodness.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] Was Darth Vader angry or depressed?

First off, I know he's angry, it's just, he never really seemed that way to me. Just angry seems like far too simple of a way of putting his general mood. As a person that suffers with depression, the anger Vader displays, to me, has always seemed like anger borne of sadness, rather than the rage you start to feel when losing a game, it comes off as the bitterness that despair brings. To me, he always seems like the guy that would go on an anger rampage, but would want to cry while doing so.

[Assistant]
Vader's experiences with the scientist Cylo show that he has a lot going on in his head.  He hates who he used to be, and what little is left of 'Anakin' in him hates who has become.  He despises Obi-Wan but also wishes that Obi-Wan had killed him.  He knows his life choices have crippled him, and he often has to suppress thoughts of Padme and what could have been.

Dominating this mess of emotions, though, is Vader's will.  He is sad, angry, and traumatized deep down, but he is resolute.  He resists the temptation to wallow in misery or nostalgia.  He has and endless supply of demons, but he also has the will to choke them into silence.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Harry Potter] Why didn't Harry, Hermione and Ron use apparition to escape more often?

Watching the Harry Potter marathon on ABC family this weekend, this question occurred to me.  Namely in Deathly Hallows, they use apparition to escape the wedding and also the Lovegood home.  Why not apparate out of the Ministry..maybe that isn't possible due to an enchantment or something..but all of the other danger (namely when they are caught by snatchers in the forest) they could use this method.

[Assistant]
There exist spells that can be cast over an area to prevent people from Apparating. Dumbledore used one such spell to prevent Death Eaters from escaping during the final battle in the ministry in Order of the Phoenix.

It's quite possible that, to prevent people from escaping the ministry like Ron/Hermione/Harry would have, they would have placed anti-Apparition charms over the ministry, forcing people to go in and out via the Floo network.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[ATLA] What makes Azula flames so potent and can others replicate it?

Azula blue flames burn at a hotter temperature than most firebenders and seem compressed. So can other powerful firebenders like The Avatars, Firelord etc. replicate her technique?

[Assistant]
They state in one of the episodes that firebending comes from your "inner fire", your *passion*. That's why Zuko loses it when he switches sides. He has no direction, feels lost, has no real goal, no self-confidence.

Azula is insane. completely berserk, a full-on psychopath. she is 100% rage inside, and completely sure of her own righteousness. All of that madness stokes her inner fire to the point where it will probably consume her and destroy her eventually. But in the meantime, she gonna blast some serious blue flames.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 - How can it be, that we went from Roman times up until the late 1800's with the horse and chariot/carriage. And then in less that 100 years managed to reach the moon.

[Assistant]
Technology scales exponentially. Better technology begets better technology and has forever in all fields.

We spend hundreds of thousands of years as nomad hunter gathers before we invented agriculture, then really quickly we developed cities.

Basically the better technology you have the better technology you can make, its a positive feedback loop of progress:


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Why are colossal (eg. Godzilla) things depicted as moving so slowly?

Moreover, why are small things able to maneuver with such agility and precision? Even if humans were capable of moving like that, I don't think we would be able to, say, dodge a giant flyswatter (because it would be moving at absurd speeds that far surpass our capability to react in time). Are flies actually brilliant tacticians, calculating trajectories and movement analyses at lightning speed?

[Assistant] As things get larger they may appear to move slower, but that is just because they are far away. Godzilla would be walking much faster than an insect could fly, but not in comparison to its size. If it was matching speed to size it would probably be breaking the sound barrier.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Superman] Why don't evil Kryptonians constantly sundip?

So, it's known that superman can massively boost his power by sun-dipping, as can presumably other kryptonians. Now, Supeman and Supergirl and Superboy and all those guys aren't hugely invested in massive power- they tend to hold back and limit themselves to avoid hurting others, so it makes sense they're not doing this when they don't have to.

General Zod, on the other, absolutely *is* invested in massive power, has no interest in holding back for the sake of others, and can pretty easily fly to the sun and back. So what's *his* excuse?

Were I one of the many evil kryptonians who wanted to beat up superman, my first thought would be "gonna spend a few hours in the sun before this one". It's not like I give a shit if I accidentally kill anyone. So why is this not the bad guy's go to plan?

[Assistant]
Zod isn't usually active as a Superman villain. He's either still in the phantom zone, or off in space somewhere doing his own thing (fairly recently he was just raising his son with his wife).

So basically when he does want to fight Superman, he's too "new" to the yellow sun to really figure that out, or take advantage of it. While later on he often doesn't need to, being a superior combatant through his martial experience and willingness to kill.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does water help a suction cup work better?

[Assistant]
Suction cups work by being pressed against a flat surface. While being pressed, the air underneath is pushed out. So you've created a negative pressure area as the cup "wants" to return to its original shape, but can't. So this all hinges upon not letting air back under the cup. So you need a good seal. Water essentially fills in the "gaps" or imperfections around the suction cup, thus giving a much better seal.

On a similar note, you will find suction cups work poorly if at all on uneven surfaces, surfaces with holes, etc.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] How did Boba Fett react to Mace Windu's death ?

While Boba wouldn't have known the exact circumstances around Mace Windu's death. He would have known of the Jedi purge and Mace's death. Has his response to this been covered anywhere ?

[Assistant] under the thick layer of impassioned professionalism, he would feel a pang of righteous happiness that the murderer of his father died, followed by a hollow sense of being robbed of his revenge, by forces greater than him.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
What was the region of the brain that allows us to read used for in cultures without a written language?

And for that matter, how do we already have an *entire brain region* dedicated to the use of a specific tool that's still a recent innovation, evolutionarily speaking?

[Assistant]
Reading uses a few regions.  Namely the temporal lobe, the broca's areas and  the angular and supramarginal gyrus.

The first two are also used in speech for phoneme and sound recognition and for language comprehension respectively.  The third set are responsible for linking the areas of the brains so the shapes can be linked to sounds then word and meaning.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [DCEU] So assuming Luther didnt blow up the courthouse what the flying fuck were they gonna do about Superman in that courtroom?

[Assistant]
They wanted to hold him accountable for the damage he caused and most likely bar him from doing it again.

On the other hand, everyone in that room knew they couldn't really make him do anything. They were just banking on the idea that Superman is, in general, a good person and will follow the will of the law.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Do the top 1% have enough capital to control the trends of the stock market?

I read a statistic that the 1% own half of all US equity. Would this allow them to manipulate the market in their favor? I.e prop it up when they want to, as well as have it show a downturn when they want to?

[Assistant] The top 1% of Americans would be roughly 1.6 million people (\~325 million  - in 160 million households). So though they may be labelled 1%, it would be very difficult to enforce a cartel of that size. Every single household would have the incentive to cheat, so without an outside enforcement mechanism this would not work.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: What is the difference between Windows Operating systems 32-bit and 64-bit? Why do they exist and what are they used for?

I came across some of my old childhood games like Heros of might and magic 2 and Dark Reign 2. I tried installing them on my Acer Aspire 5532 Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit, and I wasn't able to due to compatibility issues. A technical explanation coupled with a ELI5 answer would be awesome

Edit: Addition: How about x86 vs x64?

[Assistant]
The difference in 32 bit and 64 bit is the size of the number your cpu can work on. A 32 bit processor can work on numbers up to 32 bits in length (for example an unsigned 32 bit integer can hold any value from 0 to 4294967295 ) and a 64 bit processor can work with numbers up to 64 bits in length ( an unsigned 64 bit integer can hold any value from  18446744073709551615 ). The most major implication of this is that 32 bit processors can only address 4294967296 (computers start counting at zero) bytes of memory, which means that no 32 bit processor can use more then 4GB of ram. Since 64 bit computers can use much longer numbers, they can access much more ram.

There are other, more arcane, befits of having the ability to use bigger numbers that programmers can use to their advantage, such as being able to shove two 32 bit numbers inside one 64 bit slot inside the processor so you don't have to fetch those two numbers from memory outside the processor.

The inability to run old software on your Win 7 doesn't stem from it being 64 bit, it stems from Microsoft ~~now handling 32 bit executables in a manner much different from how they did when most computers were 32 bit.~~ removing window's ability to work with 16 bit executables.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Breaking Bad] How exactly did Mike find Heisenberg?

In season 2 episode 8 of Breaking Bad, Walt meets with Saul Goodman for the first time. Jesse and Walt eventually pay Saul to set up Jimmy "In and out" to take the fall while pretending to be Heisenberg. Afterwards, Saul unexpectedly visits Walt at the school where he was a teacher. Walt is shocked that Saul figured out who he was. Saul says it was remarkably easy, as he paid his PI for 3 hours, which means it probably didn't take more than one.

I don't know if it's ever explicitly stated, but I'm assuming the PI was Mike. So how did Mike figure out who Heisenberg was so fast? If I recall correctly, the only clues were a description of what Walt looks like, as well as Jesse, the fact that Walt had a bad cough, and that he was remarkably talented at making meth.

I know Mike is good at what he does, but how would he figure it out within one hour?

[Assistant] Probably searched local chemists in the area. Then looked at any that didn't live in upscale areas or were employed by any major well paying jobs. If that wasn't narrowed down to just Walter then he probably either looked for any recent medical expenses and inquiries. Or simply found a snitch that knew Jesse and worked backwards based on the description of Walt and the knowledge that he was a chemist. Walt being a Nobel chemist and having a son with disabilities makes him stick out as a giant red flag for possible corruption or illicit activities to anyone with half a brain for why people will break bad as the term goes.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: How did the "college standard" happen?

I applied for the exact same job at the exact same steel mill that my dad worked at through the late 60s-2012. He started right out of high school, got a pension, saved a bit of every pay check, and collected social security.

He is retired now and set for life, plays golf and swims everyday.

That same job at the same steel mill now requires a college degree.

How did stuff like this happen? It feels so unfair and just wrong.

I dont believe people when they say technology is more advanced, because anyone can learn how to do a job with enough repetition.

When my dad retired in 2012 he said there wasnt much difference in the way he did his job in 2012 compared to 1970, and if a high schooler applied nowadays he could learn just like they taught him back in the 60s.

I understand we have more people now and theres more competition, but a lot of thats due to outsourcing jobs. A lot of the steel industry is outsourced, if it were just citizens working jobs it would probably be different.

I just dont understand how the working force of America let colleges take over and demand degrees for jobs.

Why is that OK? How did it happen?

Can it be reverted?

[Assistant] They do it because they can.  If you are looking for people to hire, and you want them to be reliable, smart, and not likely to just flake out in 3 weeks, you need an easy way to select for these people.  The easiest demographic is college grads.  Having invested another 4 years of education and making it to the degree show some amount of responsibility, dedication, and basic intelligence.  With people that only graduated high school, you don't really know what you're getting at all.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [DC comics] Cyborg has one organic eye and one cybernetic eye so how does his brain process the difference?

[Assistant] Your brain is really good at filtering out that kind of thing already, plus he's got cybernetic parts to his brain. Humans normally have different vision in their eyes and your brain compensates without any significant problems.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How do perishable food companies know the expiration date of their food/drink?

[Assistant]
They "set" the date, they don't know it precisely.

And they set that date based on a combination of studied observation when they can  (how long an apple will last) a set of conditions ("keep refrigerated" or "consume immediately on opening"), and known properties of the food and its packaging, and then add a safety margin to it.

The known properties can include how long a piece of cut meat remains safe before too many bacteria contact it and start growing, or how long before the vegetable starts to get brown and crinkly and so won't sell, or how pristine a plastic wrapper can expect to last if exposed to different temperatures and degrading light sources on a store shelf, or how many preservative chemicals are contained within the product, or when it starts to smell bad, or how long before freezer-burn sets in.

All of that adds up to a time when it's very likely the product will no longer be AS SAFE (which is not the same as 'safe') to consume, as well as "as tasty" and "as visually appealing" and "as mixed uniformly and not all congealed".  Then they stick a time buffer on there so it expires or is 'best before' a bit before that.

Finally, that Best Before date has to pass the inspection of whatever food control agencies are out there. Your business will be shut down, for example, if you sell rotten meat.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Eli5 Why does heat slow down electronics?

[Assistant]
If it does depend on the electronics. CMOS transistors do get a bit slower because of how electrons move in the warmer material. Bipolar on the other hand gets faster. For most other components there is a not significant change. Resistance in wires does increase with temperature and it can have an effect. But this is not something that has a practical effect for almost all consumer products, you need to do extreme CPU overclocking for it to start to be relevant.

The main reason that computers and phones have reduced performance when warm is that the speed is intentionally reduced.  It is not because they can't operate as fast it is to stop them from getting too warm and avoid physical damage.

So the clock speed is reduced so the temperature in the chip does not get to high.

The efficiency of a cooling system depends on the temperature difference between the hot and cold object. So the rate of heat leaving a phone or computer is reduced if the surrounding air is warmer. The rate of heat can be removed from the device is often a limiting factor for the performance of the system.

Compare that to if you do physical work a warm vs cool day. You will get too hot a lot faster a warm than a cool day.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5:What exactly does "too big to fail" mean?

[Assistant] "Too big to fail" is a term that is applied to an industry or company that is so large and important to the economy that allowing it to fail would have grievous consequences for the economy as a whole that simply are not acceptable.