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

[User] ELI5: How does a clone differ from an identical twin?

[Assistant] Genetically, they don't.  In practice, a twin is a birth defect that causes one fertilized egg to grow into two people, and a clone would be a person grown from an already-born person's DNA, probably not taken from their reproductive organs.


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

[User]
[Die Hard] If Al Powell the cop is on desk duty, why is he out on patrol with a police car?

He states he couldn't raise his weapon again after accidentally shooting a kid and thus put on desk duty. What was he doing with a police car when buying snacks at the convenience store and why did dispatch send him to investigate Nakatomi Plaza if he wasn't a street cop?

[Assistant]
Hes still a cop, and a sergeant, so keep that in mind up top. Desk duty could mean any number of things, and as a sergeant, Als scope of responsibilities could entail stuff that is mostly desk-adjacent, sure. But hes still a cop with a radio that has to leave the station sometimes. In most major American cities like Los Angeles, a police sergeant has something akin to operational authority to make judgement calls on the scene. So the fact that he gets the call and is giving orders before deputy police chief Duane Robinson arrived is no oversight.

So Al could have just been on the way home (from, say, desk duty in the robbery unit) and dispatch saw him in a squad car nearby. Being a sergeant, hes the ideal option for checking out a suspicious though serious hostage and gunfire call, and making the determination on-site if more backup is needed.

Thats a no-brainer for dispatch. And remember, he said himself he was just on his way home when the call came in, so he wasnt on patrol, really. Just the right guy at the right spot at the right time (like Roy)


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

[User]
[Dragon Ball] Cell can sense ki. Why doesn't he ever try to reach the Lookout?

Cell has shown the ability to sense ki multiple times (most notably to track down 17 and 18 when Piccolo is fighting 17), yet he never uses this to reach Kami's place. He expresses to Trunks after Grade 3 Trunks loses to Cell that he's curious as to how Trunks and Vegeta got so much stronger in a short period of time. He definitely would have felt Goku testing his power to Karin after just coming out of the Room Of Spirit And Time, so why does he just ignore the Lookout? The moment Buu could sense ki, he flies straight there.

The only real reason I can think of is the moment Cell arrives in the original timeline, he is preoccupied completely with absorbing 17 and 18. Once he does so, he constructs the Cell Games to test his strength, and even encourages the Saiyans to train again for ten days. But I would think he would be at least a little bit curious as to how they get so strong so quickly, and he definitely has the means to find out.

[Assistant] Given that Cell is an amalgamation of the Z fighters DNA, he's inherited a lot of their strengths, but also weaknesses. His major fatal flaw was his pride/confidence in his own superiority (Thanks Vegeta).  Despite his minor curiosity, he just didn't care enough to really look into it. In his mind, he's the perfect being and no one could EVER stand a chance against him.  So why would he go through the trouble of sneaking a peak at their training?  Plus, he had other Cell things to do, like flexing and stuff, probably.


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

[User] [DC comics] How is superman the last descendant of Rao and the reason of him being the strongest Kryptonian is because of this when Kara his cousin should also have the same demigod blood and be a descendant?

[Assistant]
Kal-El is not the last descendant of Rao - he may however be the last **pure-blood** descendant, whatever that means in Kryptonian culture.

If it's anything like Egyptian pure-blood descendants of Ra, Kara probably doesn't qualify due to her mother not being a close enough relative of the house of El - IOW she's insufficiently inbred.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do so many people use "Jesus Christ" and other God-based words as curse words and not names of evil people like Hitler in the same way?

[Assistant]
Profanity comes from the assumption that something upheld is being debased. Curse words can come from a few places, but using words with deep seated cultural connotations force you to see it as vulgar when used in certain situations. This is because it crosses a boundary, it's taboo, it shows disrespect and people find disrespect insulting.

Hitler wouldn't have the same effect because we are not "bringing it down" when using it as an exclamation.


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

[User] How much closer would a human have to travel (Mi./Km) towards the Sun to feel a noticeable rise in temperature? Vice verse for traveling away from the sun?

[Assistant]
Are we in space or on earth? The sun transmits heat via radiation (vs convection or conduction).

The amount of energy transmitted follows an inverse square law (1/x^2) so if you are twice as close to the sun, you experience 4 times the energy transfer.

You have a LOT of variables to consider if you are in space. What is the suit made out of? does it reflect heat back? how does it conduct heat to your body? The amount of energy transferred also depends on the difference in temperature of the two bodies.

In short, you need to define a lot more variables before you can get a viable answer. What is considered to be a "noticeable change", what sort of vehicle are you in? what is the vehicle made of?


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

[User] [The Lion King] Mufasa is badly injured in the wildebeest stampede, but manages to survive. How does the rest of the movie play out differently?

[Assistant] Pretty quickly IMO. It's his word against Scar's, who was never popular to begin with, and only had an alliance with the hyenas on the promise they'd have prime access to food when he's king. Mufasa has the whole of the pride on his side. Knowing Mufasa, he probably wouldn't have Scar killed even after a murder attempt, but would have him exiled. Mufasa's injuries would probably last his entire life, and he would be more dependent on the pride to do anything physical for him until Simba came of age. Simba would grow up to be suspicious, colder, practical (think Stannis Baratheon).


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

[User]
How populated was the earth with Dinosaurs during the Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous periods?

If I were to DeLorean back to the age of the Dinosaurs, what would my chances of seeing a small/medium/large dinosaur in any encounter?  Would driving anywhere be like a safari in Africa or would you really have to seek out the creatures?  How different was the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods?

[Assistant]
Well the Triassic was immediately following the Great Dying, 90% of life was gone, so you wouldnt see much of anything at first.  Then youd see more Lystrasauros (sp?) which werent dinosaurs but rather some of the last of the Mammal like Reptiles.  They were really the first animals to recover and were everywhere.   Then you start seeing a rising group of reptiles, the archosaurs, the precursors to crocodiles on the one hand, and dinosaurs on the other.  After that the first small dinosaurs start appearing, as do mammals.  At the end of the Triassic theres another extinction event that kills off the rest of the mammal like reptiles and the large archosaurs, but the dinosaurs thrive and dominate.

In the Jurassic and Cretaceous theyre ubiquitous.


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

[User]
ELI5: What happens when a magnet is too close to a hard drive and ruins it? Does this also apply to solid state drives?

Title pretty much says it all.

[Assistant] A magnetic field is like waves hitting the beach. A normal hard drive is like drawing your data into the sand. The data is washed away by the waves, because they move the sand. A solid state drive is like drawing your data with little stones. They aren't moved by the waves, so they wont be affected by the waves.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are some types of alcohol drinkable while some, like rubbing alcohol will kill you?

[Assistant]
"Alcohol" is a general term for a group of organic substances. There are a lot of them and almost all alcohols are poison for the human body. However, at some point in time people found out that beer tastes well, and over the course of many generations a pretty good resistance to a single alcohol that is called ethanol was developed (hurray to the liver).

So only one Alcohol is somewhat safe for consumption **in very small quantities**, which has its reason in ancient human culture, all the other ones really are not (a few ml of methanol will blind you, a few more will kill you, for starters).


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

[User] Why does Venus rotate in the opposite direction to the other planets in our solar system?

[Assistant] The planets conserve their initial angular momentum. Uranus and Venus have opposite rotation from the rest of the planets. This is due to the impacts by asteroids in the early years of their formation. These impacts have probably reversed their rotational direction.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do credit card rewards work, and can I really get free flights and such just by spending money?

I only have one credit card right now, which I am using to slowly build my credit by buying gas each month (anywhere from $75-$125 a month). I do not really know anyone who uses a reward card, but I've heard plenty about frequent flyer miles and other rewards and such. How do these cards really work?

[Assistant]
Credit card companies make money in 2 main ways;

1) If you do not pay of the balance at the end of every payment period (usually a month, but there might be cards with other terms), they can charge interest. Usually this is a rather high rate.

2) Companies that want to accept payments from credit cards must pay the credit card companies for this. For this reason credit card companies give you gifts for using their cards. If you want those rewards, you'll use your credit card more often, which means companies must pay your credit card company more.


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

[User]
What makes something 'important?'

Why is literature more important than gossip, philosophy more important than masturbation, world affairs more important than smoking pot etc?

AFAIK, the word 'importance' is only useful when used in reference to a goal. So a pair of scissors would be useful if you want to cut pieces of paper, but it is useless/less useful if your goal is to push a nail into a piece of wood, for that you require a hammer. Likewise, if all I want from life is to masturbate to animated high-school girls with dicks, philosophy or literature holds no relevance for me. But in everyday life, it is taken for granted that some things are just inherently more valuable than others. Why is that?

Personally, gaming and weed is more fulfilling and holds more relevance to my life than the news or philosophy, but my reasoning might be flawed so here I am.

[Assistant]
The best answer to this question for me is simply that those things are considered to be more important because people who enjoy both type of things, recognize that intelectual pursuits are more meaningful to their lives than masturbating. They also masturbate and enjoy themselves doing it, but recognize that it is a far less transcendent pleasure.

In a similar way, a dog may look at your passion for video games and wonder what's so special about video games, when you can run around in the park all day. However, you know the dog would think this because the dog is not intelligent enough to understand and appreciate the complexity involved in playing video games. If he had the capacity and willingness to invest time in video games, he would probably end up finding video games more important than running in the park, because video games stimulate more developed parts of the brain.

But, in the end of the day, if you don't like video games, that's fine. If you don't enjoy philosophy that's fine. To each his own.


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

[User]
PhDs who successfully landed a job in academia: how's your workload compared to that of a PhD student?

Are your responsibilities as time consuming? Is your mind constantly set to work, due dates and what needs to be done next? How's the pressure to meet the job requirements vs the usual PhD pressure?

[Assistant]
Postdoc was fine -largely like an extended PhD although this depends mostly on what your PhD was like and how much academic freedom you're used to.

Tenure track is an unending hell, where you switch from grant deadlines, to brief moments of research, to service and to teaching.

The pressure continues to be largely self inflicted.

But everything takes up so much time.


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

[User]
[MCU] "I have defended Asgard and the lives of the innocent across the Nine Realms since the time of the Great Beginning." So...did Odin just not notice the major incursions on Earth by the Skrulls and the Kree?

During the events of Captain Marvel, Earth, one of the Nine Realms, becomes the site of a (relatively by Earth standards) major conflict between the warring Kree and Skrull Empires. An invasion by several Skrulls and the presence of a member of Starforce, one of the Kree's most elite military forces, seems like the kind of thing that would need "defending". This seems to be a huge violation of the sovereignty of an Asgardian protectorate. Did Odin simply not notice this? Did he not care? Did he not want to risk drawing Asgard into the Kree/Skrull War?

[Assistant] Heimdall was probably monitoring the situation and telling Odin that everything was cool. Keep in mind that up until Ronan arrived Earth wasn't really in too much danger, and when he did appear Captain Marvel already had everything under control.


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

[User] ELI5 How are we able to charge our phones wirelessly, and why isnt that technology being used everywhere?

[Assistant]
Wireless charging is done through induction. When you run and electrical current through a coiled wire, you generate a magnetic field around it. Conversely, when a coiled wire experiences a change in the local magnetic field, it generates a current.

So your charger runs an alternating current (AC) through a coiled wire. This generates a rapidly changing magnetic field. Your phone has a wire coil in its induction charger "module". This wire experiences the changes in magnetic field, which generate a current in the wire. This current is then used to charge the battery.

The reason why we can't use this everywhere is that the power you can transfer with this method doesn't reach very far. Also, the more of these changing fields you have going around, the more likely for something else to be impacted, since this will induce currents in any wire coils, even if in other electronics.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Has Vader ever been shown to use the buttons on his suit? In comics, animation series, movies?

[Assistant] He can use them, but everything is set how he likes it. Remember how mad you dad got when you messed with his car seat, adjusted his wheel, or fucked with the radio levels? Now, Imagine your dad was burn to a crisp, and able to kill with a thought. Needless to say, his buttons don't get messed with often.


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

[User] ELI5: What is Learned helplessness and what is a typical example of it in today's society?

[Assistant]
Learned helplessness is esentially when you try something and either fail or are told you failed so many times that you stop trying. A great example from the animal world is that young elephants are often chained with an ankle restraint to a pole. They learn that that ankle restraint is strong enough to stop them from moving. When they get older they still think this. You will sometimes see at circuses full grown elephants with ankle chains tied to a stake that could never restrain a full size elephant. But they don't try because they have been taught it isn't going to work.

One big area of child development is in growth vs fixed mindset. Fixed mindset is the idea that you are either good at something or you aren't. If a kid is told enough times that they are dumb, they will believe it. They won't  try. They'll fet bad grades because they didn't try. Bad grades reinforce what they'd been told. (Ironically, being told you are smart too much can lead to totally different issues and anxieties).

Growth mindset on the other hand emphasizes effort and improvement. You did well on the test, you must have worked hard. You didn't  do well, you can do better next time with more effort, etc. It emphasizes success as a process, and one driven by internal effort (not ignoring that it can be aided no doubt by some people's natural abilities and hindered by natural disabilities) and one that can therefore be changed in the future for better or worse through effort.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why are maps and nearly all pictures of earth from space oriented south to north?

I understand the linear orientation is probably driven by the poles. But what about the solar system, we look at everything from our sun to neighboring planets the same way...was it by chance or early astronomers drawings? Is it something to do with direction of spin/orbit?

[Assistant]
It is only by preference. Most of the continents are in the North part of the globe. Mapping software can now make maps with any orientation. You can use Google Earth to show you the world oriented in any direction.

Producers of maps are taught to include a directional sign, usually North, on the map to help with orientation. But so many maps are now made by people who are not professional cartographers that this tradition is fading.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is happening internally when a boxer 'loses his feet' ?

When a boxer has the difficulty to move around, what exactly happened inside his body and where did he need to get hit in order to 'lose his feet' ?

Clarification: I don't mean a knock out. I mean not being able to move around freely; it's like like your legs are resisting.

(edit: word stuff)

[Assistant] Well aside from the whole "O shit that hurt!" part of the brain when you take a massive body shot. It's also a biological reaction. When you receive that kind of trauma to the internal organs. You're body reflexively goes into survival mode. As it's not sure exactly what the hell just happened. So it ramps up blood production to start healing or clotting blood if it needs to and it's starts loading those new blood cells with more O2 to aide in this process. It also starts to constrict the blood vessels of the extremities to increase blood flow to the torso and the vital organs of the body. A similar process to that of hypothermia. It then decides that the "pain" is to distracting so it starts shutting down nerve function and your receptors. So fundamentally, your legs and arms lose circulation briefly, reducing the O2 to those cells and nerves and then the nerves that are really important to, you know muscles movement and stuff are turned off. You body doesn't know your a dumb ass boxer. It's just knows, "Holy flippin' hell something just hit the crap outta us! Save all the inside stuff, toes are for CHUMPS!" Is basically what happens.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Why is the Ravenclaw common room so easy to get in to?

Ravenclaw may be the house that values intelligence the most, but that does not mean that everyone in the other houses is stupid *cough*Hermione*cough*.

And if the door asks a riddle that one could reasonably expect a first year Ravenclaw to answer, then surely one of the older years in another house (you know, those who would have reason to go breaking in to other houses' dorm rooms) would be able to get by without much trouble.

Or, to put it another way, every other house has a secure password, while the house of the most intelligent gives you a clue on how to get in.

[Assistant] [](/rscootaplease) Rowena Ravenclaw didn't care about security so much as keeping the dimwits out. The other founders all played their political games and tried to keep one another from learning their secrets, but Ravenclaw just wanted to create a sanctuary for the clever and the wise. It didn't really matter to her whether those clever and wise people were in her own House or in Gryffindor, though of course nowadays an intruder to the Ravenclaw common room would get in a lot of trouble if caught.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why doesnt the Clone Army or the Droid Army use proper military tactics?

There are numerous examples of large scale battles in which both armies refuse to use standard military tactics, and instead march towards the opposite army in large tight columns with shots being fired straight at them, also completely disregarding the danger of thermal detonators being thrown into a tight crowd.

It doesn't exactly take a Ghengis Khan to realise that marching towards enemy fire in tight columns is an absolutely terrible tactic - so what were the military leaders in the Clone Wars thinking?

Post Clone Wars, it seems military leaders fortunately changed tactics and began using more effective battle tactics (ref: Battle of Mimban, the use of trenches, flanking, artillery). But this doesn't answer the poor military tactics of before that then - especially as we know that Clones and Droids were programmed to avoid themselves coming to harm (i.e. they had a sense of self preservation).

[Assistant]
Because Palpatine's ultimately in charge of both sides, and he doesn't *want* to win any battles.

What he wants to spread chaos and destabilize the republic so he can later swoop in and reform it into the empire. For this to work, obviously, the republic can't win. Then they've stabilized and all is fine. But they can't lose either- his whole plan is based around his power as senator, and the occupation and dissolving of the government where senators are a thing would obviously put a stop to that.

No, what *he* wants is bloody, horrifying battles with massive death tolls that fail to accomplish any tactical objectives, spreading terror and damaging infrastructure but not actually bringing the war any closer to an end. So he gets the generals to go for terrible tactics- maybe by ensuring idiots and minions are promoted, maybe by spreading convincing sounding but terrible military theory, maybe just old fashioned corruption. There's lots of ways to subvert a military.

Come the later movies, of course, both sides *are* trying to win, so they use real tactics. But here, it's not a real war. It's a ploy by someone playing both sides, and he's trying to make sure it goes as long and as bloodily as possible before he makes his play.


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

[User]
Pro-life friend has questions about birth control and egg fertilization

My conservative Christian friend is getting married and has heard that there's a tiny chance birth control will destroy a fertilized egg. She believes that life begins at conception. She is planning to only use condoms, but gave me permission to do some research and present her with a pro-life argument for birth control.
I've been doing that research, and I just came across a statement that "fertilized eggs fail to implant all the time; it's not the same as abortion." What does this really mean?

I am not entirely sure that this is the right subreddit, but I couldn't think of a better one.

[Assistant]
It means that a fertilized egg often is not sufficient to be pregnant. Many pregnancies do not get to the stage of an implanted egg and many of those that manage to implant in the uterus still do not get past the 8th week.

Basically, there are so many things that can go wrong between intercourse and birth it is a wonder any kids are born at all (and healthy ones at that) :-).

If the pill works correctly, though, there should be no egg ready to be fertilized present. However, if one happens to be fertilized, the pill inhibits an implantation.

So, yes, the pill has a tiny chance to abort a fertilized egg even if by most definitions this would not be seen as an abortion as the pregnancy had not *really* started in the sense that you are not immediately pregnant after an IVF procedure....


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

[User] [LOTR] What does the ring show/say/feel to frodo and others whom have it that makes them act so differently or have PTSD?

[Assistant]
Basically the ring subjects its wielder too intense subliminal brainwashing.

When Sauron and made the One Ring he put a part of himself into it which is why it could only be destroyed in the fires that made it and when it was destroyed it killed Sauron.

That bit of Sauron slowly eats away at you compelling you to act towards his benefit with the ultimate goal of making it back to Sauron.

The longer you have it in your possession the stronger that becomes. Even more so if like Frodo Bilbo and Gollum you put it on.


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

[User] [Dog With a Blog] How the hell does Stan type with dog arms?

[Assistant] Easy, he's an early 40k psyker. Before the Age of Strife, most humanoid Psykers were unheard of, but there were dog psykers before since they had been a species for much longer. Using psychic power from the early Warp, he is able to take control of the computer's machine spirit. Yeah, that's how it goes.


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

[User] [The Incredibles] Frozone is unable to use his powers due to a lack of moisture in the air. Upon being confronted by an officer he drinks a relatively small amount of water and is able to use his powers again to encase the man in far more ice compared to what he drank. How??

[Assistant] You forget they are standing arguing in the jewelry store for a bit. There's probably a fair amount of water left in the air there as that store wasnt on fire. He probably just needed the water to kickstart his powers with a little bit of hydration.


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

[User]
Has the thickness of phones reached a physical limit?

Not much more contect needed I think. (If yes, what stops us?)

[Assistant] There's nothing directly keeping phones from getting thinner.  There's a number of things that will make it unlikely anybody would decide to, though-- the biggest of which is probably the camera.  Cameras are effectively setting the phone thickness limit right now, to the point where the common design workaround is to make the camera stick out.  Without the camera, you could take all the parts in a modern phone and lay them out so it was even thinner.  Even something like the new iPhones could be thinned out-- their innards are still a sandwich of multiple layers.  At a very simple level, you could just put the battery, screen, and mainboard next to eachother instead of on top of eachother.  The result might be ugly and wide and so forth-- but it would be substantially thinner than currently without having to even invent anything new.


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

[User]
If I we were to place an optical telescope 100 light-years away from Earth, and look back at it, would we see Earth 100 years ago?

This is something that recently occurred to me.

Assuming perfect conditions, if an optical telescope with unlimited power were to be placed 100 light-years away from Earth, then pointed back at it, would we be able to see life 100 years ago?

~~Also, I'd add the "Astronomy" tag, but at the top of the submission page it says 'Add flair to your post by clicking the "flair" button under your title.', and I see no such button.~~

**edit:** Found the button.

[Assistant]
This is correct - a telescope that is currently 100 light-years away from Earth would see Earth as it was 100 years ago...but there are a few caveats:

- First, you'd need a big telescope - like, *really* big. To even see the Earth near the Sun, you'd require a telescope hundreds of times larger than anything that's ever been built. As it stands, the planned James Webb Space Telescope could not spot an Earth-sized planet 1 AU (the Earth-Sun distance) from our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, and 100 light-years is about 25 times further.

- Second, seeing Earth as anything more than a single pixel would require another few orders of magnitude in telescope size.

- Third, you couldn't carry a telescope out to that distance from Earth to see into our planet's past, because the trip would take greater than 100 years. (since you are confined to speeds less than the speed of light).


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

[User] ELI5: Why do so many Americans blame Obama for practically everything?

[Assistant] Because most American citizens have very little idea of how their government actually works, and how limited the president's power is, domestically and economically.  The president is the most well-known governmental figure, and it's a lot simpler to blame him than to go watch C-SPAN or check voting records and see that it's actually your representatives and senators who are screwing you, in many cases, *specifically* because they know you'll blame Obama for it and they want his approval rating to go down.


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

[User] [House of Cards] Is Frank Underwood able to deliberately break the 4th wall, are we simply seeing his thoughts in those moments, or is something else happening?

[Assistant]
Before tv series there were movies and before movies there were plays, before plays there was your buddy telling you what was going through his head earlier when you both were at that thing.

Its called an "aside". As in taking the audience aside to fill them in on more details.

He's not breaking the fourth wall, he remains in his own universe. You are the one who has left yours.


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

[User]
[40k] never played, can somebody explain the psychic orcs to me?

The most I know is the story about a guy who was kidnapped (or surrounded?) by orcs and without any ammo, but because the orcs didnt know he had no ammo he just pointed his gun and shouted BANGBANGBANG and the orcs... actually died?

This one story has made me somewhat interested in 40k for no reason other than sheer bullshittery

But how do orc psychics work? Is it all orcs or just some? Whats the gist of their power?

[Assistant]
All orks possess a low level of psychic ability that contributes to the gestalt psychic field. This means that the larger the assembly of orks, the more psychic power there is to create effects that mirror what the orks expect.

For example, a small band of a few dozen orks might paint their trukk red because they believe that red ones go faster. They will be able to channel enough energy to actual make a red trukk go slightly faster than other trukks of similar make.

On the more extreme end, a space hulk with a massive greenskin infestation may have orks walking on its surface without void suits because they forgot that they need to breathe. It's the psychic field that is keeping them alive in that case.

There is also a caste of orks that woeld psychic abilities, called weirdboys. They are able to channel the energy of the psychic field into the material world intentionally to create a multitude of desired effects.


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

[User]
Is it possible to reverse yellowing of teeth by brushing harder? Or is tooth yellowing permanent?

Edit: wow, calm down mods! I'm seeing a lot of helpful comments being removed.

[Assistant] Staining isnt the only reason teeth turn yellow.  Enamel is white-ish but it's not completely opaque.  Dentin, the material underneath your enamel is naturally yellow, aging and natural wear thins your enamel making the dentin more visible. If you brush too hard you could just end up stripping away more enamel resulting in even yellower teeth.


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

[User] ELI5: If so, what's the difference between a Sith Lord and someone using the dark side of the force?

[Assistant]
A Sith Lord is trained as a Sith Lord. He or she learns not only the Force, but a certain code of ethics as well, questionable as they may be.

Someone who uses the Dark Side of the Force is just someone who has figured out how to use the Dark Side of the Force. Most likely, they were trained, at least to some degree, by Jedi, but chose not to follow their code.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is hand-made stuff "better" than machine-made stuff?

A lot of high end suits and shoes brag that they're hand-made. Why is this better than machine-made, where the machine will do things precisely, while the man making it could make mistakes?

[Assistant]
Machine-made generally means something that's designed for mass manufacturing. There are shortcuts in the design, because it has to be efficient to manufacture in quantity. The materials involved also have to be suitable for mass manufacturing and, ideally, inexpensive.

A good craftsman can do much better work. This involves skill, time, and generally better materials, because there's no point in wasting skill and time on inferior work.


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

[User] If I lie in bed all day and don't eat between 10am and 6pm, I feel ravished and will go far out of my way for a meal. Every single night I lie in my bed and eat nothing between 10pm and 6am, and I feel no urgency to have breakfast. What's the difference?

[Assistant] Insulin levels rise and fall depending on your sleep schedule. Leading to hunger and fasting. In fact recent research in mice showed those mice that only ate during "mouse day time" for a set amount of time. 8 to 12 hrs. Maintained weight better then those who forged anytime.


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

[User]
How straightness is achieved in construction?

How did we develop first straight objects? For example to create a ruler we need some straightness reference(I assume). Of course nothing will be 100% straight but when you think all the delicate machinary such as medical devices and the machines used in the space we must be pretty close. Is there a way to geometrically approximate to a straight line without a straight device?

[Assistant]
simplest straight lines are a taut string or a flat water surface.

early surfaces were just created by hand.  our precision has increased over time.  we never hit perfectly straight, just straight enough to suffice.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do video game developers choose to only release games only on some consoles/PC but not others? How much more work does it take to program a game to operate on a different console, say Switch vs Playstation for example?

[Assistant]
It takes a lot of work. Consoles tend to have less power than PCs and each of the major consoles uses a different operating system. PC and Xbox share a lot of internal code, but PCs have thousands of combinations of parts, compared to the consoles all using the same processors. For a small studio this is a lot of work.

In general game companies have two options: make a game run okay on all platforms or really well on one. Im a PC gamer, but Im shocked at how well God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn run on the PS4. Knowing exactly what hardware your game will run on is a major help to optimization.

And also, game companies sometime sign contractors to only release on a single console. Sony may pay a company a million to not sell their game on the Xbox. Or in the case of Bethesda: Microsoft owns them, so theyll be making almost exclusively PC and Xbox games from now on.

There you go, it takes a lot of people and time to make a good cross platform game, and theres a lot of money involved in keeping games from getting ported.


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

[User]
When a video game runs at 60 frames per second, does that mean only the display shows what happens every 60th of a second, or does the game have markers that take inputs and produce outputs only at those times too?

For example, I know that the CPU that's processing everything can make a cycle every couple billionths of a second, and all though it would take a lot of them to produce a result, taking an input and sending it to the game should be very fast, and be able to happen in between frames, right?

So for instance say there's a certain game that runs 60 fps, where the simple objective is to press a button before your opponent. If you press it after exactly 101 ms, and your opponent presses it after 115 ms, since the next "marker" for the game would happen at 116.6 ms, would this produce a tie, or would you win? I would imagine that the CPU could tell you pressed it first, but when working with emulators and such, everything is cut into individual frames.

[Assistant]
It depends on the game.

Minecraft will draw frames as often as your GPU and your monitor can handle, but the physics system only "ticks" once every 1/20th of a second. Time happens in 50 ms slices. If you and a friend both hit two buttons to start two redstone clocks at the same time to within a few milliseconds then they will be perfectly simultaneous.

If you are interested in breaking things for fun or testing purposes then the weirdness of discrete time is a good place to start looking for bugs.


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

[User] [General] Everyone is envious of Superman's Kryptonian powers and Spider-Man's spider-like abilities, but what superpowers are the most overrated?

[Assistant]
Fire powers. Like... yeah, if you had Human Torch level immunity or Pyro's manipulation, it could be awesome! But if you had Avatar level fire bending, you're more than likely going to end up burning everything and everyone around you.

Also, power copying or cancelling... not only is it lame for stories, but if no one else had powers, you're just a fucking muggle.

Flight has a lot of inherent problems that would limit your ability unless you had other abilities to compensate for the temperature, pressure, oxygen levels, collisions, and it's basically useless unless you can fly at a velocity (at least) comparable to your fastest running speeds.


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

[User] If you pointed a powerful laser (like the ones the military are using to take down missiles) at a mirror would it burn through the mirror or bounce off it?

[Assistant]
Well, even a really great mirror isn't 100% reflective, so it will always absorb some of the light.  If you pump strong enough, yes, you'll start to heat up the mirror faster than it can dissipate the heat and eventually it will melt.

 Another thing to consider is that the reflectivity of a surface depends heavily on the wavelength of light.  A mirror that might be reflective to visible light, say 99% reflective, might only be 5% reflective to infrared light.  So if you were trying to build an anti-missile laser or a laser-proof missile hull, for example, you'd want to take that into account.


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

[User] ELI5: why do LED torches have multiple small LED's instead of one big one?

[Assistant] Some of them (the nice, expensive ones) do have a single LED, such as Mag-Lite.  Low-output LEDs are much less expensive to produce, so cheap flashlights often will have 25-50 of them (a dead giveaway is their very bluish tint); their overall light output is typically less than those with a single LED.  When purchasing, look for how many lumens the flashlight produces, not how many LEDs; more lumens = brighter.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why aren't other animals as freaked out by bugs and creepy crawlies as humans?

Are we the only ones afraid, rationally or irrationally, of bugs?

[Assistant]
Fear is generally a learned response in humans rather than being present from birth. Whenever a human is observing another human as being a role model, the observer sees the response taken by the role model, and is more likely to recreate that response in the future. Because of this, it's easy to pass on your fear of bugs to another person, as long as that person's subconscious processing thinks you are worth learning from.

On the other hand, some fears are present from birth as a defensive response to tell an animal to run away when presented with a dangerous situation. Most animals don't fear bugs simply because bugs don't do anything to the animal. But if you put a cucumber behind a cat while it's eating, it will panic and run away because it is born with a fear of snakes, and the cat's innate processing mistakes the cucumber for a threat.

It's likely that our original fear of bugs did come from the knowledge that certain bugs can have bad or even deadly effects on us, which then spread the mentality that we should be afraid of all bugs. For an animal to fear that same bug, it would have to be because of a survival instinct, unless the animal somehow also learned to fear bugs.

Edit: apparently the cucumber/snake thing with cats may not be 100% scientific, but it was the first example that came to mind when thinking of innate fears.


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

[User]
[Star Wars Legends] What was the point of the chosen one prophecy?

In legends, even though Anakin killed Palpatine on the second Death Star, he only truly died during the events of Dark Empire. The Sith would also still be around for at least 100 more years. Considering this, what was the point of the prophecy when the Sith still exist and Palpatine only died years later and not due to Anakin.

[Assistant]
The imbalance came about because, through Palpatine's machinations, the Dark side had grown incredibly powerful, blinding the Jedi and other servants of the Light to his intentions, and even some of his actions. The Light was crippled by bureaucracy, negligence, tradition, politics, and a slew of other things. The Dark side had no such impediments: the Chancellor (or Emperor) made the rules.

The (first) death of the Emperor by Anakin's hand brought balance to the Force. It put a stop to the Sith, at least in that one moment. The Emperor was dead, Anakin turned back towards the light, and all that was left of the Sith were a few scattered apprentices.

When Luke put together the new Jedi Order, that allowed the Light side to grow and dominate, and thus they were able to fight the Sith on almost equal footing. Yes, the Imperial remnant fought on, and yes, Palpatine kept playing the part of the mole in a game of whack-a-mole, but the Jedi weren't as blind anymore. They didn't have to hide. At times, they even had the entire Republic behind them. Knowledge and training in the Force was allowed to grow and diversify.

It wasn't a perfect balance, but it was better than the utter oppression of the Force that existed under Palpatine's rule.


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

[User] If Earth's atmosphere is primarily nitrogen, then why did life develop using oxygen and carbon dioxide?

[Assistant] Something that is not brought up in many of the comments here is that life did not develop using molecular oxygen (O2) at all. The large concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere is actually the result of biological activity (carbon fixation from CO2 and reduction of iron oxide before that) and not a prerequisite for it.


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

[User] [Marvel] If i had a way to contact Galactus, how hard would it be to convince him to make me his herald?

[Assistant] If you can actually contact Galactus, you're pretty much halfway there. He's been known to force Heraldry onto various people, causing them to lose their memory and only want to serve him. If you simply ask, it's very possible he'll say yes if he doesn't currently have a Herald or has one that's openly defying him.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does it feel colder inside in the winter even though the thermostat says the temperature is the same?

[Assistant]
Humidity plays a big part in temp perception.  In the winter, outside colder air cannot hold the same amount of humidity as hotter summer air, so typically your house, while the same temp, has less humidity.  Even if you have a humidifier, it's tough to match the potentional summer air humidity.  That difference eventually makes it into your house.

The lower the humidity, the more moisture evaporates on your skin, making you feel cooler despite the temp at the thermostat saying the same.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it when I eat or drink some things I feel like pooping within a few minutes when food and drink take hours to digest?

[Assistant] Eating or drinking something kick your digestive tract into motion. Lots of enzymes start squirting into your intestines.  Lots of muscle contractions from your stomach to your butthole getting things moving along.  Some chemicals in food (caffeine in particular) are *really* stimulating to your intestinal muscles.  When those start working overtime, you suddenly get the urge to go, like, now.


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

[User]
If gravity is a property of spacetime, why are we trying to explain it as a fundamental force?

I feel like I sound like a complete idiot asking this. I should mention I have no real background in physics, so I probably am an idiot.

From what I understand, we describe the strong force, the weak force, and the electromagnetic force as fundamental forces of nature, with each force being mediated by their own boson (or in the case of the weak force, two bosons).

Also from what I understand, gravity is caused by mass bending spacetime around it. To me, it seems that gravity isn't something we should be describing as a fundamental force, and that it should be described as a property of the fabric of spacetime. Are we trying to explain it as a fundamental force because it fits better with the math?

[Assistant]
the other three fundamental forces are gauge theories, meaning that they also admit a "geometrical" formulation similar to, but not equal, that for gravity given by general relativity.

There are immense similarities between the other three interactions and gravity. Moreover, the geometric picture and the field picture (the one with the gauge bosons) are really equivalent - barring some global subtleties.

Finally, the unification of gravity with the other forces is almost a necessity, not just something that would be nice. It is likely necessary to build a consistent theory of quantum gravity. We write gravity and the other forces in all possible equivalent ways so that it's easier to understand possible connections when studying theories of everything. For example, understanding how gravity unavoidably arises as the theory of a spin-2 massless boson (the graviton) made it really easy at the time to recognize that string theory included gravitation.

(btw, the weak force has three bosons, and the strong force has eight)