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

[User]
Which keeps my coffee warmer longer: holding the cup in my hands or leaving it alone on the table?

I often hold my hot drinks (coffee, tea, etc) in my hands to warm up. Does this make my drink lose heat quicker than if it was left to alone sitting on a table?

[Assistant]
Holding the cup in your hands will maintain a higher temperature at equilibrium.  That is, somewhere above room temperature.

The initial difference of radiative heat loss from the sides of the cup versus conductive heat loss to your hands is a difficult calculation.  However, assuming near boiling temperature, the efficiency of conductive heat loss to your hands with a gradient of 100:30 C will be greater than the radiative heat loss with a gradient of 100:20.  So your hands would cool very hot coffee quicker.

At some point in between the extremes of boiling and room temperature the rate of heat loss will be equal.  What that temperature might be would be easier to discover experimentally versus empirically.

Kid's science project!


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

[User]
[WarHammer 40k]What is life like for the residents of the Imperium?

I am talking about hive cities and forge worlds.

[Assistant]
You're all forgetting the perspective of the elite:

**Hive City Nobles**

You were born so fabulously wealthy that the blanket you were first wrapped in is worth more than any random ~~ten~~ hundred people in the spire below you are likely to make in their entire lives combined. Pampered Luxury doesn't even begin to describe your life. For example; having a two hundred year old vintage Amasec with a scone made from flour from a grain that grows once only every ninety years mixed with little pieces of a fruit harvested from a partially sentient tree that kills three quarters of the people who try to get close enough to harvest it is a tuesday morning snack.

It is no wonder that with such amenities at your disposal, so many of your friends have turned to any form of entertainment possible. Many find political intrigue to slake their boredom, still others turn to gladiatorial fights (who fights? slaves, culled from the ranks of the lower hives), plenty turn to sex so debaucherous that we *literally don't have words to describe it*, and yet still many more seek out the ruinous powers. Not because they have any grand ambitions to rule the Imperium. Just because summoning a screaming demon from hell itself is something to do after you have that scone.


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

[User] In the movies, when someone is shot directly in the head, they die instantaneously. How true is that? Also, why is it that we die so quickly from something entering our brain?

[Assistant] Depends on where you are shot. Famously Phineas Gage had a railroad spike go through his head and survived (although his personality was changed). Some parts of your brain control really important things like breathing. It would be bad if you were shot there. The brain also uses a lot of blood. You could pretty quickly bleed out.


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

[User]
Is there a terminal velocity for a buoyant object rising through liquid water?

If so, how would one calculate it?

[Assistant]
The forces involved are weight (W), buoyancy (B), and drag (D).

Applying Newtons second law, we find that W + D = B, or D = B - W.

The buoyant force is *_f_*gV, where *_f_* is the density of the fluid. The weight is gV, where  is the density of the object. And the drag is some function of the velocity; we can assume linear drag for low Reynolds number flows, so D = bv.

So the terminal velocity is calculated at steady state, when these forces are all balanced, and the result is v*_t_* = (*_f_* - )gV/b.

So it increases with the density difference, and decreases with the linear drag coefficient of the object.


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

[User] [Batman begins] Whatever happen to the hotel Bruce brought?

[Assistant] Thats where his safe room penthouse suite is on the TDK. He moved into it or permanently rented out the penthouse suite and secretly installed/made the saferoom there after Wayne Manor was burnt down.


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

[User] If the gravitational pull of a planet is the same in all directions, why does Saturn, for example, have rings in only one plane? Shouldn't it be inside of a "shell" of debris instead of just having rings?

[Assistant]
A shell or ball is what you'd expect if the particles don't collide with each other. This is why you can get elliptical galaxies - stars almost never collide and don't even have close encounters very often, so once you get a ball of stars, the stars will just keep on buzzing around in a ball for a very long time. This is also supposed to be the case for dark matter. The dark matter particles don't really collide with each other, so they just stay in a big puffy "halo" around the galaxy.

However, the dust and rocks and moonlets in a planetary ring *can* collide with each other. So if you some particles in a "polar" orbit, going up over the north pole and back around the south pole, and other particles in an "equatorial orbit", going in circles around the equator, then these particles will smash into each other. Unless all the particles are orbiting in the same plane, their orbits will cross and they'll collide. These collisions transfer momentum between the particles, and also get rid of kinetic energy. Eventually, through enough collisions, everything will settle down until you get a disc or a ring. Then all the particles can have nice circular orbits without bumping into each other. (Another way to think of it is this: you can get rid of energy, but you can't get rid of momentum. A ring or disc is the lowest energy system you can get while still conserving angular momentum).

This is true for more than just planetary rings. Gas and plasma particles in space will bump into each other too. So when you get a lot of gas coming together to form a galaxy - or, on a smaller scale, a chunk of gas coming together to form a star - it will also collapse into a disc. For a galactic gas disc, this will collapse to form stars, so you get a disc of stars. For a stellar gas disc, this will collapse to form planets, so you get all the planets within the same plane. It's not that the stars or planets need to be in a disc - neither really is good at collisions - it's that the gas they formed from was in a disc.


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

[User] Polaris, the North Star, is .7 degrees off the Earth's axis of rotation (at present). Is there another star known to be spot on, but invisible to the naked eye?

[Assistant]
There will never be a star that is spot-on for any period of time, since the exact celestial north pole is always moving, due to precession and other factors. That being said, there are always faint stars that are closer to the celestial north pole than Polaris. For example, HIP 3128 (mag 8.1, easily visible in binoculars) is closer currently.

As fainter and fainter stars are considered, the total number of stars grows quickly. The actual positions of these stars is more or less randomly distributed. So it's easy to see that exactly how close to the pole you can find a star is closely related to the faintest star you can see.


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

[User]
[DC] Why do people stay in Gotham City when it's a living hellhole?

First you have a psychotic clown spraying laughing gas everywhere while setting the police station on fire, a Mob boss who flips a coin to determine if he shoots you, a Mexican wrestler who's addicted to Energy drinks and Steroids, a living plant lady who will turn you into fertilizer.

And the local prison seems underfunded as the criminals escape on a weekly basis.

Oh and to top it off you have a deranged man who dresses up as a bat driving a armored car smashing though infrastructure and no regards for traffic laws.

So why don't people just pack up and move to a safer city that isn't under daily threat of being blown up?

[Assistant]
Various sources make Gotham less hellish than depicted. Writers for years asked he same question, if "Gotham is so bad" why don't people leave. In reality Gotham is a metropolitan city thus has it's good and bad areas. Batman and the Family pertain to the bad. More recent showcase Gotham with industry/business but namely Culture of fine arts.

Plus,  Gotham tends toward regular old-fashioned crime; mobsters, thieves, and
 the like, things common in Many cities. If you go to a place like Metropolis, you have a skyscraper a week getting damaged or huge destruction from the things Superman fights. Coast City once got completely destroyed.
Keystone City has a horde of super-powered villains running amok.

Central City has Flash's rogue gallery

Star City got destroyed by an artificial earthquake and replaced with an enchanted forest. Gotham's really not that bad, all things considered.


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

[User] [Terminator movies/TV] Are Terminators conscious thinking creatures with hard artificial intelligence, or non-thinking weak AI algorithms in a robot body?

[Assistant]
I think they are in between.  They can be re-programmed and their memories edited.  But they can learn and seem self aware.

This sort of question is ambiguous, because science has so far pretty much failed to find a mechanism or even really define consciousness.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why were Mas Amedda and Palpatine so close?

Isn't Palpatine xenophobic against non-humans and wasn't Amedda just in that position because he had the job under Valorum? Why would Amedda go all evil just because the new Chancellor is?

[Assistant]
Palpatine wasn't xenophobic in any specific way, he just understood how to manipulate people. In fact he was probably one of the best the galaxy had ever seen.  How do you get a group of people to line up, put on uniforms and start committing atrocities?  Make them an "in" group.  Tell them that they're better and more special than anyone else.  Tell them that their problems are caused by "others," and they're just defending themselves.
Humans are the most populous, successful species in the galaxy, and of course Palpatine himself was a human, so that was the ideal line to draw.
Amedda was a political climber. He was ruthless, unscrupulous, and very good at his job.  Palpatine needed/wanted someone like him, because he didn't really want to *run* the empire.  He wanted the empire to exist to help him do what he really wanted, which was gain true, absolute mastery over the force.  Amedda was just the best candidate for someone who was happy to shoulder as much of the government noise as Palpatine felt comfortable allowing.
Their relationship started in the senate, where senator and later chancellor Palpatine formed an alliance with the well connected and highly ambitious Amedda.  They respected each other for their usefulness and abilities to each other's agendas.


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

[User] [Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Series] Please explain the disjointed totally inexplicable series of events that lead up to WW3?

[Assistant]
1) The United States sponsors terror attacks in Russia, specifically the massacre of civilians at the airport in MW2.

2) Russia calls the US out on it, The US denies involvement.

3) Ultranationalists in Russia take power because there are no moderates to really oppose them at this point. The US was caught red handed with CIA operates murdering civilians. If the US won't admit to sponsoring attacks then Russia decides it will attack Washington and find proof itself. The goal isn't to take over the US, it is to punish the US for its actions.

4) Some other things happen. Conspiracys are revealed, friends betrayed, people set on fire.

5) Pierce and Soap kill everyone.

6) We all collectively agree that Modern Warfare 3 never happened.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does heat cause some materials to expand (such as types of metal) and some materials to shrink (such as plastic)?

[Assistant] To understand this you need to understand what heat is. Heat kind of is vibration of Atoms. The hotter something is, the more it's Atoms vibrate / move. Since the forces between atoms force them into a fixed distance between one another, they need room when a material gets hotter. So the material expands. Metals expand in every direction since the atoms in metals are (more or less) neatly stacked. Plastics are another case since they aren't made up of one sort of atoms but complex molecules. These molecules build chains and sometimes more complex constructs. Now some of these have configurations that can kind of flip when heat is applied. If the configuration the plastic enters while heated takes up less room than the room temperature configuration it shrinks.


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

[User]
[DC] Is the Joker a sex offender?

I know how his crimes don't usually involve sex, but considering the length and variety of offenses he's committed in his criminal career there has to something he's done that could put him on that list.

[Assistant]
Its been implied he molested Barbara Gordon after he paralyzed her. He stripped her naked and took photos of her nude body, which is absolutely enough to make him a sex offender, but it was implied that he, or his men, sexually gratified themselves with her while she was helpless to do anything.

He also raped Johnny Frosts wife in Joker, though thats noncanon.


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

[User] [Predator] Could you temporarily disable a yautja in order to escape by kicking it in the balls?

[Assistant] No. They don't have external genitalia that's vulnerable to harm like that. You'd be better off trying to rip their dreadlock like tendrils off but if you're that close to one to engage in hand to hand fighting odds are you're already dead or dying impaled on one of their many weapons.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Polyjuice Potion. I have some questions.

So I was reading up on some history from the second rise of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and came across an interesting find. In the 1994-95 school year at Hogwarts, Barty Crouch Jr. had gone a year impersonating Prof. Mad-Eye Moody, keeping him alive in a trunk. But Why?

Wouldn't have been easier to just have him die and then keep collecting clippings from his corpse? Perhaps you would take the form of the decaying body instead. But what if he were to shave off the hair off Moody early on, then killed him, would the hairs start to decompose and turn the Polyjuice drinker into a corpse or would they retain the life essense of Moody and presented Crouch as a living Moody.

I just asking just...to know. I'm not planning to drink the potion or anything sketchy like that. A friend wanted to know.

[Assistant]
You already partly answered your own question.

Note that hair and nail clippings are already "dead cells".  They are no longer growing.  Hair and nails both grow from the roots.

This is actually one of the reasons that the Polyjuice potion has such a short affective (and effective) time span.

The ingredients of the potion magically enhance the "person ingredient" and apply the transformation/illusion to the imbiber, but in essence "burn off" the "person ingredient" to do so.

Thus, if you were to take clippings from a dead person, it would work a couple times, maybe a few more, but with a living person, you can (somewhat) easily replenish your stock of "fresh person ingredient" to brew new batches of potion.

When the life essence of a person vanishes (i.e. they die) all vestiges of it start to "decay" from their body rapidly.  Eventually, even hair clippings from a dead person will no longer function as a potion ingredient.

Plus, Moody was a powerful enough Auror that if he were to die from anything other than the Killing Curse (which would instantly remove all life essence from his body, hence negating any chance of Polyjuice functioning) he would likely return as a ghost and be able to alert people as to what was going on.


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

[User] ELI5:Why is it socially acceptable for women to "experiment" with other women but not socially acceptable for men to do the same thing?

[Assistant] There's a theory that homophobia is deeply rooted in misogyny, meaning that males playing a female role and abdicating their societal power is what people find disturbing about male-male partnerships. If you see homophobia like that, you can also see why people who say gay partnerships disgust them don't have a problem with two conventionally attractive women (i.e. women who still look their idealized submissive lady) because that doesn't challenge the status quo.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we have multiple pee streams sometimes?

[Assistant] The walls of the opening of the urethra can sometimes stick together and form a temporary obstruction (especially post-orgasm). Once that happens, it's the same effect as if you were to hold your thumb over the end of a running water hose. The water sprays in random directions at higher pressure due to the obstruction.


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

[User] Why does tapping on the edge of a stuck jar lid loosen it and make it easier to open?

[Assistant] It breaks some of the hardened salt (or sugar, or whatever crystalized substance) keeping the lid from turning. It doesn't work if the lid is stuck because of something viscous instead of hard; for those, a prolonged application of medium force works better than a very strong force of short duration.


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

[User]
What exactly is happening to a cat while it's under the influence of Catnip?

.

[Assistant]
There is a chemical in catnip called nepetalactone which affects about three-quarters of the domestic cat population. It is most potent as a vapor; cats are most affected by it through inhalation (smelling it), but often become mellow and relaxed when it's eaten. When inhaled, it affects the pleasure center of the cat's brain and triggers the release of endorphines which is what makes Miss Fluffy go crazy.

Fun fact: Even cats with a damaged sense of smell can still be affected by catnip.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it that alcohol does not have to have the ingredients or nutritional facts printed on the bottle?

[Assistant]
It all depends on whether something is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA, part of the Department of Health and Human Services) or the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB, part of the Treasury Department.) Only FDA-controlled items are required to have nutrition labels. For TTB beverages, it's voluntary. There have been efforts to standardize this, but nothing's ever come of it. The historical reason for this split is simple: Alcohol has always been an important source of government revenue, much more so than food.

Distilled spirits (aka hard liquor), wine, and malt beverages (aka beer and malt liquor) are all under TTB control. This creates some peculiar exceptions. Gluten-free "beer" made with something besides malted barley is an FDA-controlled beverage with a nutrition label. Hard cider is just as alcoholic as beer, but it's not malted, so needs a label. (For some purposes, it's apparently treated as wine.)


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

[User] ELI5: Why are music reaction videos monetizable on platforms like YouTube but not cover songs?

[Assistant] Basically because reaction videos fall under fair use, which encompasses satire or educational purposes.  A song cover can actually also be monetized, depending on how the property owner has set their preferences. In general, if your cover uses the original track in any way, the IP owner can chose to block, restrict, or redirect revenue generated by the video.


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

[User] Why doesnt dark matter affect planetary motion like it affects the rotational velocity of stars at a larger scale?

[Assistant]
The short answer is that it pulls the Sun and the planets by the same amount, so their relative motions within the solar system can ignore what's going on outside.

The dark matter halo of the Milky Way is very big and smooth. It's a big roughly spherical blob, that's denser in the middle, and less dense on the outside. Its net effect is that it an adds extra gravitational force towards the centre of the galaxy.

But this is all just classical gravity. The weirdness is that dark matter doesn't interact electromagnetically (although neutrinos don't do that either), but it's totally normal in how it interacts with gravity. If you had a big blob of gas with the same mass and distribution as the dark matter halo, it would produce exactly the same gravitational force (although this gas halo would be unstable, and would cool and collapse, as it can interact electromagnetically). The reason dark matter makes stars and gas orbit faster than you'd otherwise expect is just because there's more mass, and more force, and this mass is more spread out than the stars (which are more heavily concentrated in the centre), which means that the force drops off less slowly with distance than it would otherwise.

So the answer for why dark matter doesn't affect the orbits of the planets in the solar system is the same as why the combined gravity of all other stars and gas and black holes and everything else in the galaxy doesn't affect the orbits of these planets, or even why the Sun doesn't affect the trajectory of a football on Earth. If the gravitational force field varies only on a much bigger scale than the system you are looking at, then it pulls all objects in that system by the same amount. This means that, from within the system, you can't really tell that you're getting pulled at all, other than by looking at the overall motion of the whole system.

There is a middle ground where you get "tidal forces". This is where gravity differs *a bit* across some object. So, the Moon does pull the near side of the Earth more than the far side, which pulls Earth's oceans a little bit. But this is much smaller than the net total effect of the Moon on the Earth as a whole. But the gravitational force of the galaxy is on a way bigger scale than that, and we really can just ignore it if we only care about what's going on inside the solar system.


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

[User]
ELI5: When going to bed after a day at the waterpark, doing rollercoaster or at sea, I can feel the "movements" of the day. Why is that?

Also, why does it only happens with some activities (ie: i don't feel myself walking) ?

[Assistant]
Your inner ear detects your movements and send signals to your brain so you can respond to the situation and balance. Your eyes are also sending similar information. Eventually your brain gets used to the same signals being sent at regular intervals (waves being regular at the beach). Your brain starts to expect this movement as normal, and keeps compensating. When you return to land, your brain is still compensating for motion that isn't there.  There's lots of other stimulus for the rest of your day at the beach so you might not notice, but at the end of the day when you are in a quiet, dark room with little stimuli you'll feel that compensation again, and feel like you're still rocking.

You can override the signal by giving your brain something else to base stability on (same thing for when you have the dizzies after a few too many drinks). You can put your hand or foot on a flat surface and your brain will recognize that you aren't actually moving. Anecdotally, I've found that touching the floor or a table works better than a wall when lying down.


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

[User] [MCU/Iron Man 2] In order to avoid the paladium poisoning, why didn't Tony just keep the arc reactor outside of his body and route the power to the electromagnet in his chest through a more body-friendly medium or battery?

[Assistant]
First of all, that thing is literally his one life line. He doesn't want some permanent weight to carry around, especially if someone else built it, and extra especially if it could fall out in his sleep or while walking about.

I alse think the major issue is finding a battery that would have the energy storage capacity and density that the arc reactor has, only the Arc Reactor could power the suit for extended periods of time and have enough to keep the electromagnet going all day every day while also being lightweight enough to not get in the way. Tony wanted to stay as Iron Man, and would have stayed that way until it killed him.


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

[User]
Space rocket launch sequence

My question: Is the rocket being "held" untill the force generated from boosters is bigger that the Earths gravity and air drag or does the rocket lift off right after boosters are ignited (by that i mean that the boosters produce the needed lift force right from the start)?

[Assistant]
The rocket is not actually being "held back," as this would generate unnecessary stresses in various components, but it is held in place until launch by an interesting method.

Typically, a rocket is held in place on the launch pad by pyrotechnic fastneres (explosive bolts) and/or frangible nuts (same concept, but the nut is sacrificial rather than the bolt).

For instance, with the Space shuttle, each solid rocket booster was held to the pad by four 3.5-inch-diameter studs, and the nut at the top of each is detonated at the exact time the boosters are ignited.  The nuts are captured in a container, and the studs fall down and away from the vehicle due to preload in the stud, gravity, and pressure from the explosives themselves.

With the Space Shuttle, you'll also notice the main engines are ignited before the SRBs, but this is before the SRBs are ignited/frangible nuts detonated, and the main engine lacks the thrust to lift the full vehicle off the platform.

After ignition, rockets build pressure and generate thrust almost instantaneously, so the release of the vehicle and the moment that the vehicle begins traveling upwards are almost simultaneous events.


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

[User]
[Economics] Why is the interbank interest rate (LIBOR) the "core of the financial system"?

I.e., why is it all-important?  I just read a Time's piece on the U.S Commodity Futures trading Commission's chair (CFTC), Gary Gensler.  The CFTC, at least in part, is charged with regulating the reporting of LIBOR.  I was confused as to why, again, the rate is so important.  Any explanation is appreciated.

[Assistant] It the basis on which most interest rates are set. So interest rates for most loans, credit cards, financial institutions etc uses LIBOR as a reference for their rates. Manipulating LIBOR is a bit like manipulating Greenwich time; since everything is relative to LIBOR there is no trustworthy reference for interest rates.


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

[User]
Summer Doldrums

I feel like an idiot complaining about it, but I don't like being an academic in the summer.  While I work over the break (I'm writing a book right now), I miss being in a class, and being in the outside world.  After the rest of the family goes to work/camp, I sit in my office writing or procrastinating (thanks, Reddit).  It gets lonely.  I go to the office once a week or so (it's a bit of a drive) just to get a change of scenery, but nobody but the department administrative assistants are there.  I get bored and weird without human interaction.  I have a sabbatical coming up and I'm considering passing on it because six months of this sounds awful.

Does anybody else feel this way?  How do you keep yourself working, engaged, and happy in such an isolated situation?

All my non-academic friends would kill for a summer "off", but it makes me lonely and a little sad.

[Assistant]
Here in the UK we just hosted a US member of staff who took their sabbatical over here, developing collaborations and using our lab kit.

I guess there's a difference here in STEM vs humanities, but the summer is our opportunity to actually focus on getting the research work done without students in the way. If you're getting lonely, then maybe you should look at developing some collaborative projects?


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

[User] ELI5: Why is SMS based Two Factor Authentication considered insecure?

[Assistant]
The attacker could take over the phone number by fooling the cell company into thinking you changed phones.

So then, since SMS has no authentication built in, the SMS message just goes to the attacker's phone.

An application for 2FA won't just work on the attacker's phone.  They would have to go through the process of setting up the new phone with the 2FA software, which hopefully, they can't do because they aren't you.


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

[User]
[Marvel] I'm a scientist interested in an independant scientific study of basic magic. How should I go about learning a few simple spells?

Who should I talk to?  Where should I go?  Are there any supplies or prerequisites I need?

[Assistant]
Buy yourself a copy of the Greater Key of Solomon (namechecked in MCU as a real magical text) and summon and bind yourself an angel or demon to interrogate.

Failing that, google search for wizards and scour the world for someone practicing real magic to become an apprentice of.


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

[User] What is that horrible fuzzy feeling you get in your brain when you've gone to bed too late and woken up too early?

[Assistant] It's really two things that are going on. First is that you most likely did wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle, as Mrunicorn said. Most people's sleep cycles are 2-3 hours long, so if you normally get 7 hours of sleep, but got 5 last night, and your cycles are 3 hours long, your brain never really wakes up all day (a cycle is a period of dozing, then dreaming, then dead-sleep, then back up to dreaming and dozing). Second, that loss of 2 hours of sleep is a loss of recovery time from yesterday's physical and emotional expenditure, so your brain and body are quite recharged yet.


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

[User] Has Communism ever been successfully implemented in a society?

[Assistant]
One of the closest examples of a classless, stateless society would be Revolutionary Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Hotels and restaurants were commandeered and turned into canteens. Taxis were repurposed as public transportation. Workers were paid in labor vouchers which represented the number of hours they had worked. The Spanish Revolution was ended when the Spanish Republican government cracked down, but Revolutionary Catalonia lasted for over a year.

Adam Hoschild *Spain in Our Hearts* (2016)


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

[User]
[Marvel Movies] What's the importance of the Aether in Thor 2? (Thor 2 Spoilers)

So Malekith wants to release it when the 9 realms are in convergence, but why would nine planets being aligned be so imporant? I could see the Aether destroying all of those nine realms but why the whole universe? Is it because they're super far apart?

[Assistant]
The Aether doesn't destroy the universe, it returns it to darkness, the Elves' natural habitat. "In the beginning" there was a battle between light and darkness, and the light won out (that's what Bor's battle in  Svartalfheim at the beginning was all about). Many forms of life that could thrive in the light came to power; asgardians, humans, etc. but the Elves, the last of the species that can thrive in darkness, want to return the universe to darkness so that their kind and others like them can live and expand their influence. The problem being that all life that has already evolved to live in the light cannot live in darkness, and will die out.

*That's* that the Aether was all about. The planetary alignment coincides with the metaphysical alignment of the nine "Realms" (or dimensions, or realities, whatever you want to call them) where they're all "closest". That's why various portals were opening up all over the place, and how Jane and Thor are able to travel from Svartalfheim to Earth seemingly instantaneously. Having portals to all the realms easily accessible means Malekith could infect the entire universe with the Aether at once instead of having to go from place and place and giving each's inhabitants time to prepare and fight him.

I suspect the analogies of "light" and "darkness" are actually referring to matter and anti-matter. Scientists believe there were originally slightly unequal amounts of matter and anti-matter in the beginning that mutually eliminated each other until all the anti-matter was gone. Because there was slightly more normal matter, there was some left and that's what creates the observable universe today. Thor 2 just added a Norse twist to the idea.


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

[User]
[Half Life 2] Possible Spoilers: Combine Question

Why didn't the Combine just kill all the humans after they entered our world. I mean, they seem to be open to killing and even causing the extinction of our species using the suppression field. They clearly are intent on occupying Earth in the foreseeable future so why keep humans alive?

[Assistant]
If there is an infinite number of dimensions then it doesn't matter how big the Combine forces are they will never be big enough to conquer them all. But they could defeat the native species and have them rule themselves under the Combine banner.

Similar to how the British Empire conquered other countries. Why should Brits occupy India when they could simply build a British Indian Army and had them rule themselves in the name of Britain.


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

[User] What does it mean for existence to precede essence in existential philosophy?

[Assistant]
The phrase "existence precedes essence" is Sartre's statement about radical free will in humans.

Sartre claims that the human condition is one of constant choice. We may come from certain culture, have certain physical limitations, etc. but we still experience our lives as one in which we must choose who/what we will be. Unlike, say, a tree, we don't have any programmed pattern for our self development--in other words, some essence that determines our existence.


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

[User] ELI5: why does the rest of the Middle East hate Israel?

[Assistant]
The two primary reasons are religious differences and the history of how Israel became a (disputed) country. During the time of WW1 and WW2, the areas now known as Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and parts of Egypt were controlled by different powers, starting with the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and the British. After WW2, artificial borders were drawn up giving Israel an "official" territory. In the following decades, the countries surrounding Israel, at various times, attempted to take over parts of that territory (most notably the 6 Days War in 1967). Those conflicts were largely unsuccessful but had the effect of breeding resentment between Israel and its neighbors. Territorial conflicts with Palestine continue today from the results of the 1967 conflict. Add to that fundamentally opposed religious views and a history of aggressive self-defense (arguably bordering on open aggression) from Israel, plus open extremism from Hamas (terrorist attacks against Israel, etc.), and you get the situation you see today.

*note that the story will vary wildly depending on which side you ask, but this is a fairly neutral overview.


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

[User] [Marvel 616] How does Wolverine get off scot free with killing so many people?

[Assistant]
Generally speaking, theyre all really bad people. Often people who wont be reported dead, they just disappear gangsters, henchmen,  Hand ninjas, private security forces, military personnel, mercenaries, dangerous mutants, these are not high on anyones give a shit list, and as such their deaths are largely unnoticed by law enforcement.

Occasionally Logan kills (or more often, severely maims) some racist, aggressive drunk in a bar, but usually by the time anyone who cares shows up to investigate, hes long gone. And even then, there may be a good bit of Skeeter got what he had comin attitude about the matter that precludes further investment of investigatory resources.


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

[User] ELI5: Aluminum foil, when put in a dishwasher, acts as a polisher for stainless steel utensils. Why?

[Assistant]
The aluminum foil stays trapped in the cutlery basket, so its not scrubbing your silverware clean. Instead, the explanation has to do with how the foil ball interacts with the chemicals in your dishwasher tablets.

The reaction is a sort of oxidization process, similar to the trick used to polish silver. In that case, aluminum foil is used to line a container, and tarnished silver is soaked in water and powdered detergent. The chemicals in the detergent interact with the metal in the foil, according to Readers Digest. This process, known as an ion exchange, oxidizes the tarnish and leaves your silverware looking as good as new.


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

[User] ELI5 Why do geese travel so far during migration? I understand the lack of available food during winter, but why is 5,000 miles necessary?

[Assistant]
Necessary is the wrong question. It worked, and it kept working generation after generation after generation. No pressure to change.

Clarification: is your question actually about evolutionary pressure and natural selection?


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

[User]
Does psychology overstate early childhood experiences as the primary cause of mental illness because psychological intervention can change maladaptive behaviour but not biology?

Just to clarify, Im not asking a broad nature vs nurture question. Im wondering if in your view psychologists and therapeutic modalities as a whole have a tendency to overstate early childhood experience because behaviourism is efficacious and biology is complex and difficult to treat.

[Assistant]
Changing maladaptive behavior is changing biology. The mind and body are one thing. Changes to how you think are reflected in neuroplastic changes.

Experiences matter and earlier experiences matter more because the brain is more easily influenced earlier in life. It used to be thought that childhood was the only time your brain was plastic at all.

A person never exists independently of their experiences. Epigenetics is the science of how experiences impact genetic expression.

Psychological modalities are about treating problems that are best treated through subjectivity. It is work on the part of the patient to treat something like a personality disorder or trauma, a patient has to participate in their own healing. In many cases, due to the materialistic worldview that is currently fashionable patients resign themselves to something like biological determinism.


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

[User]
ELI5: The motivation behind North Korea's difficult behavior.

Usually when you hear about a nation being violent and obstinate it is because many of them have a completely different philosophy than the rest of the world. And they don't like that everyone feels differently than they do.

I never hear of any big speeches about how the world "should be" from Kim or their leaders though.

I loosely am aware that they are a communist country but so is China and they are worried about their economy growing and becoming powerful.

NK is like the opposite. They seem to want the least growth possible. Let's have no food or electricity.

What is the driving force behind their odd behavior?

[Assistant]
Korea used to be a single country, that had a lot of communists. The communists wanted to take over and for whatever reason this particular country became a weird proxy for the west and the US and the soviets so the US put a ton of money into stopping the communists taking over and the soviets up a ton of money into making sure they took over. After a terrible war it basically dead locked into all the communists living in the north and all the capitalists living in the south.

For a long time the soviets gave the north a ton of stuff and they were the richer country than the south, and the US and friends set up a super strict "no body talk to these guys or trade with them" rule. The the USSR vanished and so it didn't give them stuff but the US still had it's super harsh embargos that didn't go away so they have slowly just become more and more crazy living in a country no one will trade with. And for a while china sorta kinda kept trading with them but as they became more friendly with the US even that has changed mostly, so more or less it's a totally isolated country. They aren't exactly choosing to starve to death specifically.


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

[User]
ELI5 They say if your stranded at sea not to drink the salt water because it will kill you faster, however dehydrated patients are given saline drips. Why?

Is it somehow different? Is it the concentrate?

[Assistant]
On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5%. Sea water also has all sorts of other stuff in it.

Normal saline is the commonly used phrase for a solution of 0.90%. Saline contains water and salt.


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

[User]
Is writing your own libraries from scratch really as bad as many programmers say? What's your stance?

I've been programming for around nine years now. For the vast majority of that time, I've rarely ever used public libraries or frameworks unless absolutely necessary in favor of writing my own from scratch. However, this mentality seems to be a bit controversial within the industry. Why is that?

As for me, my reasoning was that it is often easier to develop a solution which is very specific to my needs without going through the hassle of trying to decrypt someone else's code. What's your stance and why?

[Assistant]
Yes.

* You're doing duplicate work.
* You have to maintain your new library. Existing libraries have already had optimization and bugs have been removed; if not, you can extend or patch that library instead of rolling your own. They may have more features, which you will need to add as you continue development.
* Other people using your code base will need to learn your library, versus being able to leverage existing knowledge.

Exception to the rule: when it's faster to write your own, and you plan on throwing the code away or replacing it with a library when it's stable.


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

[User]
[Walking Dead] Where would you go?

Rick and the group have a real hard on for staying south of the Mason-Dixon Line, preferably in easily breached holdouts. I'm starting to question their decision making skills...

So I was thinking, where would I go? It would have to be someplace that's easily fortified, difficult for walkers and bandits to attack... Close to natural resources and towns where there's supplies to loot...

Or maybe not.. I don't know.

[Assistant]
There certainly are places like that. There are a few problems with them though. First, they're probably going to be taken. Logically such a good position will serve the original owners just as good as any group you have. Second, the chance of finding a stronghold that's self sufficient would be even more difficult to find. And finally, these are going to be fairly rare. Think about how many easily defensible locations with easy access to quality scavenging there are in just your area, not many.

But honestly most of the places they decided to bunker down in, save for the farm and campground, were pretty defensible. The prison, was a very big get. Prisons are easily the easiest defended structures you'll find in the US, the problem would be clearing it, but they even managed that. Then the Church might have seemed ill conceived, but churches of that style are actually very fortified with heavy wooden doors and high windows, breaching a church is no easy feat. Then a town surrounded by steel walls? That is probably the best place for a home they have found yet.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Can Cyclops' Optic Blast(TM) travel through Black Bolt's shout?

Let's assume cyclops is standing directly in front of black bolt and he starts firing and a split second later black bolt starts speaking directly to cyclops. Will the blast continue traveling?

[Assistant]
I think if Cyclops were shooting directly at Black Bolt from outside Black Bolt's range then he would hit at a greatly reduced force maybe having the shot dissipate completely.

Cyclops's optic blasts are not lasers they are actually focused kinetic force, Black Bolt also produces kinetic force with his shout which would oppose Cyclops in this case but since both attacks are at the "unlimited" scope it is hard to say what which would "win" if they connected full force.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k]: I don't mean to sound like a heretic but has anyone tried pulling the plug on the Emporer?

Maybe he could go through the Chaos sooner rather than later and save the human race?

[Assistant] By the Golden Throne, the new acolytes are getting worse every generation. Listen up, scav! The Golden Throne isn't just a fancy, schmancy life support system. It directs the Astronomican, the Warp Beacon that all Imperial forces use to navigate the Warp. More importantly, the Golden Throne is the only thing keeping the Human Webway entrance from collapsing completely, creating a new tear of the Warp right in the heart of the Imperium. So no, fuckwits. ***We do not contemplate*** "pulling the plug on the Emperor".


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

[User]
[dc/marvel] Are humans in these universes more durable?

How can normal humans withstand injuries that would kill or cripple anyone in this Universe? Is it cause they are more durable or something else?

[Assistant]
Pretty much. The laws of superhero universe is similar to action movie universes, where a gun shot mean you just walk around with sling on your arm for a week, getting knocked out with blunt object trauma just means you wake up with a hangover instead of brain injury, and gunfire is as loud as a cap gun.

However, severity of injuries can be augmented based on dramatic impact.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why is it that when we sweeten a drink like tea or coffee we use 2-3 teaspoons of sugar, but sodas have around 12-14 teaspoons ?

When you prepare yourself a cup of coffee or tea, to sweeten it you usualy drop a max of 2-3  of sugar in to it.

Sodas seem to have 3 times as much sugar on them, while i do understand that sodas are drunk cold so the taste needs to be stronger, it seems like an exagerated ammount of sugar for a drink.

[Assistant] Cold suppresses the taste of sweetness on the tongue.  Ever taste a warm coke? It's extremely sweet, *too sweet*,  but a cold coke is refreshing. More sugar is needed to sweeten a cold beverage rather than a warm beverage. For this reason, soda companies anticipate this and design their beverages such that they taste sweet at a cold temperature, which necessitates adding a lot more sugar than you would think. Next time, try a room temperature soda and notice how syrupy sweet it is, then compare to an ice cold soda.


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

[User] [Star Trek] I keep having a reccuring nightmare where one of the warp pylons falls to pieces. How much trouble would my ship be in if this happens?

[Assistant]
If you're at sublight speeds when a nacelle breaks off/is destroyed, there's no immediate danger (well, beyond the fact that a significant chunk of your ship decided to up and leave). Depending on the nature of the damage, you *might* be able to limp home at low warp on a remaining nacelle - but you're best off waiting for help to arrive.

Now, if you lose a nacelle at high warp - that's where life gets interesting. Absolute worst case would be one of your nacelle pylons decides to blow up spontaneously without any warning. The sudden shift in Warp Field Geometry could cause the ship to "spin out", and be torn apart by internal stresses as parts of the ship deaccelerate at different rates. This scenario, and complete loss of the ship, would be one of the most unlikely situations to occur on a starship - you'd be more likely to encounter a God from Roman Mythology.

More likely situation - there'd be enough warning of a problem to start dropping out of warp, or to prepare the other nacelle to take on the full load of maintaining the warp field. In that case you'd rather suddenly drop from warp and be thrown around a bit, but inertial dampeners should let your survive without too much injury.


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

[User] ELI5 Why are there so many different internet browser and can I make my own?

[Assistant] So, there are two  different aspects of an internet browser: the user interface and general usage, and the browser "engine" which does the transforming of a webpage to a more computer friendly structure. There are only 3 main engines now: gecko (firefox), blink (chrome, brave, opera, modern edge, etc., and which  is based on webkit) and webkit (safari). You could make your own browser using an existing engine which would take some work, but the biggest codebase is the engine. Making your own engine would take in all likelihood a number of years.


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

[User] [DC/Marvel]In the real world a common and false conspiracy theory is that aliens landed at Roswell and the government covered it up. In comics, everyone knows aliens are real. What are common and false conspiracy theories in comics?

[Assistant]
Mr. Fantastic has a crapload of super science inventions that could revolutionize the world (cold fusion, cure for cancer, reactionless thrusters), but he keeps them all locked up and doesn't share them with the rest of us because he prefers that regular humanity act as the low-tech peasants to his chosen technological elite.

Whenever the Incredible Hulk is supposed to have gone on a rampage, it's actually the government using him as a patsy for one of their false flag operations or experimental weapons tests gone wrong.

There's no such thing as Batman. "Batman" is actually just Superman putting on a black suit and having a bit of fun dressing up as a goth kid. No mere human being could survive what "Batman" has survived, or do what he's done.

Lex Luthor would actually make a fantastic president, but the liberals keep sabotaging him.


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

[User]
ELI5 how are radio stations named, and why do they start with a K, like KSSK and KZOO?

Assuming there is a particular naming convention for stations, but how did that come about? Why the K and 4 letters?

[Assistant]
The 4-letters is just because we thought that would be enough.  3 is too little and 5 is way too much.  K is used west of the Mississippi, and W east.  There are historical stations that still use three letters (WGN Chicago, for example).

The actual letters K and W were agreed to in 1912 at the International Radiotelegraphic Conferences in London.  In Morse, one is dot-dash and the other is dash-dot, which makes a little more sense.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] how physically strong is data?

And how does he compare to othrr humanoids like Klingon and Vulcan?

[Assistant] In "Time's Arrow," Data carries an anvil with one hand quite leisurely; he lifts a larger anvil in "Thine Own Self." In addition, he lifts a large metal beam in "Hero Worship" and is considerably stronger than both Borgs and Klingons.


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

[User] ELI5:If Conservatives and right wing politicians like small government and free market, why are they generally for the criminalization of drugs, for the bulk collection of metadata, for bailouts to big banks, and hold views on various other issues that are against small government?

[Assistant]
What you've detected is actually a split in the three pillars of the Republican Party: Big Business, Libertarians and Social Conservatives.

The "small government, free market" talking point is one that Big Business and Libertarians can agree upon so they use is all the time. The problem is only the Libertarians really believe it. Big Business doesn't want regulations that limit it, but loves huge government handouts, bailouts and regulations that limit their competition. Social Conservatives dig big government getting all up in your body to make sure you don't use drugs or have sex and spy on you to make sure you're not a terrorist.

Really there is a lot the three groups do NOT agree on. So please don't point this out or they might become aggravated with each other. :(


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

[User] What happens inside my charger if I plug one end into the outlet, but don't plug the other end into my phone?

[Assistant]
The circuit is open loop, which means infinite resistance (not really infinite in real life but extremely high. Current does not flow in an open circuit, which means the charger is ignored. No current flows into or out of the charger.

Once the phone is plugged in the circuit completes. One pin of the charger brings current into the phone, it charges the battery, and a separate pin flows out. Now there is a circuit and the charger passes current.


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

[User]
What's the reason diesel engines are left to idle for long periods of time instead of shutting them down?

Heavy diesel engines (buses, construction equipment, transport trucks, etc) particularly tend to be left idling for long periods of time between uses. What's the rationale behind this practice?
Is this practice still applicable to modern engine design?

[Assistant]
Turbocharged diesel engines need some time to cool the turbocharger down, especially if it's been driven at high stress.

The turbocharger spins at much, much higher speeds than the engine, so when you drive for a prolonged amount of time under boost from the turbocharger and you cut the engine power, the blades in the turbo keep spinning, but the oil does not keep on circulating. This makes the temperature in the turbocharger rise, which can overheat the bearings of the turbo, which burns any residual oil. The byproduct of burning oil is thick gunk which can block the bearings and cost a small fortune to fix.


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

[User] [Marvel] Could Phoenix disintegrate Hulk?

[Assistant]
One of the fundamental forces of the Universe, the Phoenix, could easily defeat the Hulk. The Phoenix spirit has a rage to match Banner's. Plus she has telepathy that could force him to alter to a Banner state, assuming he wasn't directly threatened. Finally, if you look at it on a pure comparison of energy, the Phoenix eats stars. Now, we're talking full on Phoenix force here. But ultimately, it doesn't matter how much energy Bruce has at his disposal. The phoenix force can take an ACTUAL gamma ray burst and come out shiny and full in the tummy.

The only time the Phoenix has been restrained was with the M'kraan crystal, created specifically to contain it, or by it's host forcing it to blink. So yeah, there's at least one Marvel entity that the Hulk can't top.


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

[User]
[General] How does gaining all (or most) of another's memories not drastically change a person's personality?

I see examples all over the place of someone mind-reading, downloading, magically copying, or otherwise copying/taking all of someone's memories, then just using the information in them to get around their plans, or predict their moves, or otherwise screw with them by knowing everything they know.

What I have to ask, is how does this not effect their personality? I could understand if they were just looking at their memories like a video or something, but completely copying as usually seems to be the case should imply that they've effectively lived the other person's entire life moment for moment.

Of course, they could also just pull up relevant memories to figure out certain things, but the intent usually tends to be completely understanding the person so they can be outwitted, which I think would involve a much deeper examining of their thoughts and emotions, aside from just watching a few select instances from an outsider's perspective.

[Assistant] Many characters do have this problem, like X-Men's Rogue. Everyone who doesn't have issues with mind-reading has the required secondary powers (a well-organized mind and/or super willpower). And even then, many of *those* characters will often pick up subconscious mannerisms and habits from their targets.


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

[User] Does gasoline become "stale" when stored for a long period? If so, what is happening, chemically? Are additives sold to prevent this from happening effective?

[Assistant] It will, gas is a mixture and over time the more volitile compounds will off gas. Oxidation will happen over time as well. If the gas contains ethanol it will also grab water from the air. There are fuel stabilizers avalible like Sta-bil.


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

[User]
[DrWho] Could the reality bomb really destroy everything?

The reality bomb wavelenght cancels out the strong nuclear force in all matter in meets. And the daleks would send it through the medusa cascade, crossing over to alternative universes and it would destroy all reality.

But would it tho? Would it destroy literally everything everywhere? Does that include things like higher dimensions or pocket universes or the time vortex? Would it destroy the guardians of the universe that lives in the higher dimensions, or the chronovores in the time vortex? Or House, or gallifrey, in its pocket universe? Or could you escape it by going into the time vortex, ascending and leaving the physical world behind, or hide out on gallifrey?

If you cant hide from it in those places, then it must mean that you can reach those places by the medusa cascade. The void was "dead" becasue of the bomb, so you must be able to access it from the cascade. If gallifrey would die, then you can use the cascade to visit them.

Also, a few questions about escaping the wavelenght in our universe, and its streanght. If you see it coming towards you, can you teleport behind it, where it has already passed? Or is it not a shockwave, and more like a blob? Could someone as durable as say, Superboy Prime? Or someone like Galactus? Would they survive?

[Assistant]
Who cares about higher dimensions that dont have traditional matter in them?

If it is made of sub atomic particles then it is going to be dissolved into energy. The cascade would allow this bomb to reach all possible timelines and all of existence. AKA everything that is made of matter that has or will ever exist will be extinguished.

I imagine you could not hide in a pocket universe since the bomb will reach out to all possible timelines, so the matter you take into this pocket universe, like yourself, your TARDIS and a pretty Earthling you kidnapped will have been destroyed prior or after entering this pocket universe.

Same with all hypotheticals. If you are made out of matter and have at any point the stuff that you are made of has interacted with the universe it will be undone.

Its not so much a slow bomb moving at the speed of light destroying everything in its path, it is literally blowing up all timelines at once.


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

[User] ELI5: why are the rhyming words in poem stanzas give a sense of satisfaction when read?

[Assistant]
The human brain likes solving things, and rewards it's self for doing a good job.

The brain is also particularly optimized to spot patterns so that the unfamiliar can be spotted and quickly processed. Examples are all the faces of Jesus in toast & pieces of wood.

Poetry you get the build up "oh, a pattern!" as far as your reading & oration skills are on par to connect that there is indeed a pattern, and you did find it! Good job, your brain has rewarded you.


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

[User]
[Man of Steel] How does Jor-El know how to fight on par with that of a soldier?

People on Krypton are bred for certain tasks: Warrior, worker, leader etc. Kal-El was the first natural birth Krypton has in centuries which means he wasnt bred for a role and he could choose to be whatever he wanted to be. Jor-El was bred to be a scientist, Zod confirms this by describing him as Kryptons top scientist. Why would a scientist be given soldier-like fighting capabilities? Or know how to fire a rifle pretty accurately? If Jor-El had the opportunity to acquire military training or if he had military training and decided to be a scientist then wouldnt that go against his whole free will spiel and defeat the whole reason in having a son?

Edit: I also meant to include his Hand-to-hand combat capabilities and how we was able to acquire them or why he was allowed to have them.

[Assistant] Well like you said, Jor-El receiving military training would break the Kryptonian policy of knowing your role and sticking to it, but ultimately breaking that policy was his goal, so it stands to reason Jor-El probably found a way to get the necessary training despite his caste because to him caste should not matter. Hell, he may have received training from his old pal, Zod himself. Remember, it is heavily implied in dialogue that prior to Zod's coup, Jor-El and Zod worked together and were pretty close. Also, Zod's crew that was sentenced to the Phantom Zone were probably all military Kryptonians, yet they modified a phantom drive to give their ship some propulsion, something that probably only scientific caste people know how to do, yet they did it as well.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are roaches and other insects sometimes discovered upside down when theyre dead?

[Assistant]
Many insects legs will curl under them when they die. This makes for a very unstable tumbleweed of limbs on one side and a comparitively flat back on the other. Insect remains are incredibly lightweight and can be disturbed by anything from light breezes to other bugs scurrying by, so there will be many opportunities for the corpse to be flipped on its back where it is most stable at rest.

Also any bug flipped on its back and not struggling obviously to right itself is pretty clearly a dead bug. If a bug is dead and right side up then it might at first glance just register as bug not currently moving. Most people see a lot of insects without physically investigating whether or not they're dead.


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

[User]
[Destiny]What is it that prevents me from wearing multiple pieces of exotic equipment, and what would happen if I did?

Guardians, there's a lot I still don't understand about this world I've awoken to. I've conquered many challenges, battled God-like enemies, and found precious Golden Age Relics. However, when I have my MIDA Multi-Tool strapped to my back, anytime I try to also prepare my Thunderlord, a strange compulsion forbids me from withdrawing it from my ship's storage.

Same thing occurs when wearing the sacred Helm of Saint-14 and trying to don my Ruin Wings -- I just can't will myself to do it!

Have any of you found yourself being similarly forbidden from making full use of whatever technological marvels you've come across?

[Assistant] Your ghost is only able to generate so much via the power of the light.  He uses his power to revive you upon death in the field, hold all of your other weapons and armor in memory, so that they can be generated when you switch to them, and can materialize you on the planets surface when you arrive.  This all means that exotic weapons and armor take up too much memory of the ghost to generate more than one of each for you at any one time.


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

[User]
CMV: It feels weird that a woman can sue the dad over child support for a kid he didn't want

I'm definitely pro choice and think it is clearly the woman's decision not the man's.

And I think I understand why requiring parents to support their children even if they end up leaving is a good thing for society.

But together these seem at odds with a hypothetical situation where a condom breaks during a one night stand, and when she tells him that it is his he has already moved on in his life (maybe is dating someone new) so offers to get her an abortion. However, since she wants to raise the kid he is required to give at least financial support.

I'm looking for why him having to pay makes sense (if you could convince me that he should be able to force an abortion that would also change my mind but that seems unlikely)

[Assistant]
Moral hazard.  It takes two people to make a baby.  If the absent father does not provide financial support for their own children, then that support must come from somewhere, and that somewhere is via welfare programs.  Ok, what is the big deal if the government has to foot the bill?  Well if everyone knew that there is a government program(s) for children with absent fathers, do you know what you get more of?  Absent fathers.

Children are best served living in a household with both parents.  Absent that, having two engaged parents.  Having the government pay everytime someone steps out means that you are incentivizing one of the worst models for raising children.  And the last thing to tie all of this together, if you have better childhoods, then you end up with better adults, which is good for society, that is why society has a need to make sure that the burden of children rests with the parents of those children.


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

[User]
Why is nuclear fusion so much harder to achieve than fission?

Edit: thanks for all the replies guys, I understand this a lot better now!

Edit: Solved
( commented but my flair didn't get added :3 )

[Assistant]
Many heavy nuclei like to undergo fission on their own, producing neutrons (among other things). Neutrons, being electrically neutral, have no problem smashing in to other nuclei because they aren't electrically repelled from the protons. Being hit with a neutron causes nuclei that like to undergo fission to break apart immediately, rather than just randomly; control your environment so you get many neutrons hitting other fissile nuclei and you achieve a chain reaction.

Fusion requires combining two nuclei, which are both positively charged. It requires a lot of energy, in the form of temperature or lasers or explosive compression or whatever, to get two positive charges close enough together so that nuclear forces take over. Doing it in a bomb is easy enough, but doing it in a controlled situation is a much harder problem.

In short: fission requires slowing down neutrons so they hit more nuclei (easy), but fusion requires speeding up nuclei so they hit each other (hard).


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

[User] [Terminator] What is LAs response to what seems like one man driving a car into a police station and killing 30 police officers?

[Assistant] Similar to the events that would happen in LA nearly a decade later. Police armaments updated and improved for extended combat against armored opponents. Heavier arms and fully automatic arms carried in the vehicles of police for easy access in a crisis. Body armor mandated and provided to all officers. Plexiglas and bullet resistant materials used in all public facing offices and walls. Anti vehicle barricades installed in front of every station. Ultimately it'll be treated as an outlying incident of one well prepared but unhinged individual. The police will review all available records and footage of the event and make changes to their operations to limit the success of future attacks. It'll be mourned as a tragedy and likely see widespread changes in every police department but little in the way of immediate changes to the public awareness.


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

[User] [Star Trek] I want to buy my wife some nice jewelry for our anniversary. How does buying luxury goods work in a post scarcity society? Do I have a bank account with credits? Does the state cover me?

[Assistant]
"Luxury goods" don't really make much sense as a concept in an post-scarcity civilization- you can go to a replicator, produce your wife's weight in gold and diamonds, and do that every day of your relationship. The closest are various industrial components that are hard to replicate, but showing up to your with a litre of rocket fuel isn't the most romantic gestrue.

It seems, from the things we see of gift giving, most is more sentimental  or at least effort based- you might perhaps make a painting of her or replicate the meal from your your first date or something like that. That kind of thing. It's just a cultural difference: the idea of showing your love by getting someone expensive things is as obsolete as showing your love by jousting in a royal tournament is.


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

[User] [Doom] Would the Slayer come to defend earth from a regular, non demonic alien invasion?

[Assistant]
Probably, if he's around. The Slayer is noted as being concerned for Earth, even if the Earth he's saving isn't explicitly the one he came from. He's not just a blind rage monster who rips and tears every demon he comes across.

That being said, the Slayer spends most of his time walking through the various realms of Hell, ripping and tearing every demon he comes across. Largely in order to prevent larger and nastier invasions from occurring.

So if a mundane alien invasion happens, the Slayer will take part in the defense if he's around. But don't count on him being there if it's not a demonic invasion.


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

[User]
Conference Attire

Hi all, I'm a first year doctoral student in education attending my first conference (not presenting) this fall. It's an interdisciplinary conference, attendees will likely fall into the humanities/social sciences categories. I'm looking for some suggestions for conference attire. Are nice jeans and a blazer acceptable? (F, 5'2, plus/curvey).

\*\*\*Edit\*\*\* Thank you for all the tips, everyone. General consensus seems to be to err on the side of office wear, and speak to my colleagues, so that's what I'll do.

[Assistant]
For STEM conferences I've found that if you're presenting you're in business wear, if you're just attending you're in business casual, and if its the last day and starting to thin out you can dress casually.

But ask colleagues... "What's the dress code for this meeting?"


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

[User]
CMV: There is no defending the Last Jedi's plot and writing

Let me start off by saying The Last Jedi (TLJ) has some redeemable aspects. The CGI was completely top class, and the visual effects were incredible. Also, some of the action was good and the humor was at times good.

The first issue I will raise is involving the light speed maneuver. This forever changes the Star Wars space battles as it completely disregards previously established lore that light speed is in another dimension in which you travel faster. From now on, every space battle in a Star Wars movie people will be expecting either faction in the conflict to employ this strategy. This scene also disregards every previous space battle in the saga's history, as this surely would have been used before, if not only as a kamikaze attempt. In the next movie, the creative team will probably have to create some contrived 'hyper-shield' to stop this from happening again. This is a perfect example of style of substance. Edit: I now have been informed that large structures have a shadow mass in hyperspace. The main problem presented in this point should now be about how this has never been used before.

In addition, half the plot is completely contrived. From the moment Laura Dern's character comes in and is secretive to Poe (who is known to be completely loyal but also hot-headed and prone to solving problems himself) it causes half the plot to happen. There is no reason for Dern's character to do this, and considering half the Resistance's leadership just died he may be one of the most appropriate people to tell. Half the point of this is probably to kick-start Finn and Roses adventure to Space Vegas, which was a whole completely useless subplot.

Furthermore, Rian Jhonson and the creative team completely disregarded the previous film in order to have the protagonists be underdogs. There is no reason for the Republic funded resistance to having this little of a fleet. This is partially the fault of The Force Awakens for a lack of initial world-building but there is no reason for the previously victorious rebels to be down to 9 useless bombers, a few X-Wings, 1 cruiser, and 3 medical friggets. Given this takes place immediately after the events of TFA there is no way a comic or TV show explains this.

The Space Vegas portion of the film is completely cringe-worthy. The obvious anti-capitalism theme is ironic, considering that this trilogy seems to more and more be looking like and unplanned cash-grab from the corporate enterprise that is Disney. This entire scene could have been cut for more world-building if Maz was available to be the master code-breaker and was not just in the film for 30 seconds to meet a diversity quota.

The movie completely destroys Luke's character. The man who converted the evilest man ever to the light side was always hopeful and optimistic would not try and kill his sister and best friends child, who was just a boy. He is shown as a grumpy, miserable old fart. The sadness on Mark Hamill's face during interviews regarding this film is telling. My favorite part of the movie is when Luke walks out of the rebel base alone and faces the army of AT-ATs alone, but this is ruined by him making a brushing the shoulders gesture, which is completely out of character for him.

Rey is also a complete Mary Sue. Her power would be understandable if she was the daughter of someone relevant like maybe Palpatine, Kenobi, or maybe even Luke but she is 'nothing'. She faces no challenges and has no relatable character flaws unless being bored with being too strong is one. She pilots the Falcon better than Han, she is the strongest force user ever (Luke even says so) and can beat Kylo in a duel.

The First Order is also portrayed as incompetent and amateur in this film, in particular, General Hux. Their actions in the space chase make no sense. General Hux, who was previously intimidating and one of the few snew trilogy characters I like is played for slapstick and laughs. Kylo goes from being menacing to an angsty teenager in minutes. If the reason for half your plot is the antagonists are incompetent or dumb, your movie is badly written.

The final issue I'll raise in this main body of the text is how the film had about 0 original ideas. Yes, there were one or two vaguely new ones but it's undeniable that a lot of this film was cut and pasted from episode 5 and 6. The new trilogy is obviously trying to show they were more like the originals.

I will also clarify that at points the film was enjoyable somewhat, but that doesn't mean it is any better, so if someone could explain these major fundamental flaws in this movie then I could change my view. So far people have just said 'well I enjoyed it', which seems to be based upon all the fan service.

Edit: Wow, this really blew up. I will work towards getting to all of your comments later today and tomorrow. Thank you all for contributing!
Edit 2: Thanks for my first ever gold awards!

[Assistant]
I think your view encapsulates the biggest problem that a lot of the star wars fandom has and why it's such a central problem for the series going forward: star wars is small. Its empty. There's nothing interesting left to do with star wars and if you try to do something new the fans will get upset.

Your last paragraph is a complaint that the film doesn't do anything new, when your second paragraph is a complaint that the film featured a new, surprising plot device that will change the series going forward. (Or more likely it will be ignored but whatever.) When the ion cannons suddenly appeared on hoth in empire were you upset that they hadn't explained ion cannon technology and it's effects in a new hope? But even this is such a minor point, but it illustrates how it's nearly impossible to expand the universe without upsetting people.

And the characters. A whiny, angsty teen (but he's still really dangerous) is an interesting, new type of villain for star wars. But you can't do that because the fans want classic villains. Luke Skywalker being a jaded asshole is an interesting place to see a beloved hero and it's a logical result of the universe and the events he's witnessed. But the fans whine that you've changed his character if you do that. (Yes, amazingly, this person changed over the course of 20 years.) Having Rey be nobody is good; dynasties shouldn't matter. But if you do that the fans will complain.

The fans just want to see AT-AT's exploding and Darth Vader. You can't do anything new or interesting with star wars because they'll whine and complain that it's ruined now. And if you do the same thing over they'll whine and complain that it's the same thing over.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it that when I see or hear about something for the first time, I start seeing more and more of it

Let's say I'm out in the park and I see a guy driving a Fiat, for the rest of the week, I just see more and more Fiats wherever I go. The other day I found out what a "Dinges" is, then I saw a commercial on TV where Tina Fey shouted "Dinges for everybody!", I then noticed a waffle stand that had Dinges on the menu. I've noticed this phenomenon for years, but I simply don't get it.

[Assistant]
The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon mentioned in another post is part of it, but another part of it is mass media.  One of your specific examples is a TV show.  If a TV show uses an uncommon word and a million people watch it, at least some of them are going to use that word again the next day, and it perpetuates.

What made you go find out what a "Dinges" is? maybe you saw the commercial and forgot it, or maybe someone else saw the commercial and used the word in casual conversation.


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

[User] [James Cameron's Avatar] Dr. Augustin describes one of the Avatar pods as "the least glitchy." Does that mean something like lag between the user and the Avatar body?

[Assistant] Since the pod is transferring sensory information from the Avatar body to the operator's brain, I'd imagine glitches would manifest as sensory issues. Maybe your fingers go numb, or your vision gets a bit fuzzy or you get ringing in your ears.


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

[User]
[Halloween/Friday the 13th.] Are Micheal and Jason actually serial killers?

I mean they don't have any long cooling off periods and rather just kill several people usually in the span of a single day.

So would it be more accurate to call Micheal Myers and Jason Voorhees spree killers or mass murderers instead?

[Assistant]
Perhaps spree killer would be more accurate although, if were taking sequels into account, Michael Myers does have several extended periods of inactivity. *But* depending on which continuity youre looking at, these periods of inactivity are due to extended incarceration/hospitalisation/magical coma.

Friday 13th parts 2 - 4 take place in the span of a few days so perhaps spree killer is an apt description of Jason here. When Jason is inactive, its usually because hes dead, or in hell, or cryogenically frozen.


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

[User]
When astronomers refer to distances between galaxies, do they mean the distance as we observe them or as they are now?

For example, if astronomers describe the distance between two galaxies in a supervoid that is a billion light-years away to be 150 million light-years. Is that distance representative of what we have observed (essentially an image from a billion years ago) or as it is now (accounting for the expansion of the universe)?

[Assistant]
It'd be distance at the observed time in the past. We sometimes use "comoving units" which do take into account the expansion of the universe. If two objects are a kiloparsec apart back when the universe was half its current size, then they are "two comoving kiloparsecs apart".

But additionally, galaxies are moving around and interacting with each other, so we typically can't just tack on the expansion of the universe factor and get the right present-day distance. We might see two galaxies on a collision course in the distant universe. By now, they would have merged and probably formed an elliptical galaxy, and maybe had other interactions too.

So we use the distance that's observed in the past because that's all that we can really know about.


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

[User] ELI5: why can we visibly see steam, but cant see air normally outside? And why is it sometimes we can see the shadow of exhaust (like from a bus) but not exhaust itself?

[Assistant]
When you can see steam, what youre seeing is tiny drops of water being carried upward by the invisible water vapor. Since the air around steam is usually cooler than the steam, as soon as it evaporates tiny drops of water will condense out of the steam. Its basically a cloud being carried up by hot air.

The air outside usually has much less water vapor in it relative to its temperature. However, if there is a lot of water vapor in the air and it is a cold day, you will see the water vapor condense into fog. Thats also tiny droplets of water.

As to the shadows, those happen because exhaust is much hotter than the surrounding air. This heat means that light travels at a different speed through the exhaust, and when light moves from a medium where it travels at one speed to a medium where it travels at a different speed, it bends, or refracts. You see the effect of that refraction as a shadow on the ground. For a similar effect, try holding a pair of glasses a short distance above the ground on a sunny day. They bend the light, creating a shadow.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k] What would the imperium do with a "useless" medieval world?

Assuming the world has not a lot of resources, and uneducated medieval people that doesn't know a gun or a machine, what would they do with the world and the population after the world is brought to compliance?

Seems like a bad investment of time and people.

[Assistant]
There's a line about how lasguns make no sound beyond the ionization of air.  Because of that, recruits from pre-gunpowder firearm societies have little trouble adapting to them as they're about as quiet as crossbows, bows, or thrown spears.  Same idea, same sound, slightly different execution - you're here, the enemy is there, you want them dead, do this - they're dead.

Those from firearm societies have problems adapting to them, as there's no loud explosion when they're fired.  They often have them modified in, as guns are supposed to be noisy.

Space Marines love recruiting from those backwards worlds as anyone able to survive to their teen years essentially already passed any physical tests needed to start the process to join their ranks.

They're also easy to bring in to compliance - an army of people waving regular swords around cannot stand against just a squad of Guardsmen.  Relative to high tech worlds, fewer resources in manpower are needed to bring the population in to compliance and, after a few lascannon demonstrations where a castle or two are vaporized or a particularly obstinate kingdom is flattened by orbital bombardment, the rest of the planet generally falls in line.

Even the worst performing world - crap land but not so crap that it can't feed the locals, no resources to speak of, harsh conditions but not so harsh that it's a deathworld, not even Space Marine chapters wanting to recruit from them - still provides people.

And the Imperial Guard needs people above all.

You can train someone to fire a lasrifle in an afternoon.  The rest of the Guardsman life isn't too different than what they're already doing.


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

[User] All all rechargeable battery chemistries inherently degrading, or are there technologies either practical or theoretical that would allow for rechargeable batteries that barring mistreatment keep the same capacity?

[Assistant]
There are lots of Electrical energy storages devices that do not degrade with direct usage.  Their issue is that they either are very expensive, or have limited power to weight or volume.

1. Ultra Capacitors.  These can have millions of change/discharge cycles without loss of capacity.  Problem?  Energy Density
2. Flywheel energy storage.    Used everywhere, ultra robust.  Problem?  Cost and minimum size required.

3. Flow Batteries.  Hydrogen Fuel cells being the most common.   Problems?  Low efficiency, high cost, difficulty in generating clean Hydrogen.

Every electrochemical battery with a self-contained anode, cathode, and electrolyte degrades over time.  The only question there is the number of cycles before they must be recycled.    We can improve the number of cycles, but anything with a redox reaction that doesn't allow us to separate the materials, purge and recycle them, is going to degrade with use.  There are just so many more paths for it to degrade, then there are for it to improve.  Entropy works only in 1 direction.


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

[User] [Discworld] Are The Great A'tuin's cells supersized proportionately to his own giant sized form, or does he just have more of them?

[Assistant]
Great A'tuin just has more cells, he/she's just a very large creature.

A tiger doesn't have bigger cells than a mouse, despite being much bigger, they just have many more of them. The same applies to Great A'tuin, who is a space turtle and started off as a small hatchling before growing to his/her current size.


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

[User] [Portal] If I create an infinite loop and fall through it, would the air friction and pressure eventually cause me to burn up similar to atmospheric reentry?

[Assistant] Not really. You would reach the terminal velocity (a maximum speed of falling for a body) and you wouldn't go any further. It's like skydiving - people falling down from big heights don't get burns because human's terminal velocity is too low.


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

[User]
CMV: women are equal to men in most western countries

Okay so Im completely against any injustice. The reason Im posting here is because Im open to other opinions. But here is my opinion: in most western devolved countries there is more or less equality of the sexes. I live in the Netherlands and from my experience women are treated pretty much equal to men. I do think that there are advantages to being a man but there are also definitely advantages to being a woman.

I think that in poorer countries women are almost always treated as less than men however I think in western countries this isnt really the case. For this reason I find it hard to agree with Dutch women when they have feminist in their Instagram bio. I am completely for equality of the sexes but I think in the Netherlands the situation is pretty much equal.

Change my view.

[Assistant] Even if you were correct, why would that mean Dutch women should not call themselves feminist? Why should they disavow the movement that got them where they are, and will protect them from backsliding?


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

[User]
Is it possible for a standing urinal to erode from people unrinating on it constantly similar to landscape changes due to weather? If so, how long would it take before a hole was formed through the urinal?

I've wondered with millions of people possibly urinating all the time especially in high traffic areas (e.g. restaurants, airports etc..) would the urinal be urinated in enough to the point where the urinal would no longer serve to be useful and if so how long would that take?

[Assistant]
Fired ceramic is extremely durable; we're talking thousands of years...thus we find pot sherds in the archaeological record that are broken, yet not terribly worn or eroded in other ways.

Ceramic, especially when glazed, is also significantly acid-resistant.

So basically, it would have to be peed on pretty continuously for thousands of years for any wear, if any, to be apparent.


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

[User]
[Fallout] What would happen if I fed a Deathclaw nothing but addictive chems and ghoul meat?

So let's say that some day a certain wastelander got really drunk and managed to capture a deathclaw. Then in this wastelander's divine wisdom he decided the best thing to feed the deathclaw is a healthy mix of Jet, Psycho, Mentats, Buffout, and pretty much every dangerous addictive chem that I can find plus some ghoul meat just to make sure the thing doesn't starve.

So what's gonna happen with this Deathclaw? Should I be worried?

[Assistant]
Munch on some Mentats and rig up some kind of remote-control drug injection thing on it's back, with several hours worth of Calmex. Give it plenty of Mentats in an alcohol/Calmex solution and sit down to have a really weird conversation from a safe distance. Once you've established a rapport with the Deathclaw to the point where he is neutral to you in a non-drugged state, THEN slowly take him off the Calmex. Keep the Mentat dosage up, and make sure he understands what they are. Try to teach him to drink out of a bottle so you can keep him nice and drunk. Once you've solidly befriended the Deathclaw, start putting on armor (Deathclaw Hide is thick enough that you can just nail it on) and consider improving his natural weapons. Talk to him about changing drug dosages and permanent, lasting effects. You should have your very own Deathclaw pal.

WARNING: Do not give the Deathclaw Psycho.


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

[User]
[Marvel/DC] Why do Thanos and Darkseid like to clasp their hands behind their backs?

What's up with that?

[Assistant] It's a show of power. Both entities grew up in universes where power is traditionally wielded in one's hands (gloves and rings being amongst the most powerful weapons in their respective cosmos), so rather than appearing with hands up and ready for a fight, they take on a pose of confidence that leaves their hands as far from action as possible. The fact that Darkseid has vaporizing eye beams might detract from the gravitas of the stance, but still.


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

[User]
Would space-time get "stretched thin" between two (large?) black holes?

... and if so, would there be anything special about "low-density space"? (The thought came to me when thinking about virtual particles in extreme vacuums)

[Assistant]
> "low-density space"

I don't think such a thing exists.

But anyway, spacetime does get distorted near a black hole - e.g. time passes more slowly, from the p.o.v. of a distant observer. Between two black holes, you will see the same effects, simply due to the action of the two objects, combined.


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

[User]
CMV: The best way to stop crime is not to have more police or to lock more people up; The best way to stop crime is to fix the reason why people commit crimes.

Right now there is a debate over crime and the way to stop it.  Certain groups fervently maintain that we need more police and harsher punishments. That is not going to stop crime because it does nothing to fix the cause of most crime.

Most crimes are caused by circumstances and need.  Making sure people have food, shelter and healthcare would go much further at stopping crime than locking people up or arresting people.   Convictions and prison only exacerbate the problem because when people get out of prison they are treated as second class citizens and struggle to find legitimate ways to meet their basic needs.   Preventing the reason people commit most crimes in the first place is overall cheaper, easier and will lead to improvements for everyone.

[Assistant]
I think your view lacks a very critical component. You fail to mention time tables. One solution is very long term and difficult. One is short-medium term and relatively easy.

First, you are completely right that nothing will cut down on crime like economic opportunity, education, and access to resources. However, people have been trying to solve poverty issues pretty much forever. There is no easy fix and there are a lot of details and obstacles. Foremost is that changes will take time. Not like a year, more like 10-20 years.

More police provide and immediate effect. For someone living in a dangerous area, knowing the response time if 5 minutes instead of 15 is important. More crime will be prevented in the short term. Uniformed police are a deterrent for a lot of violent crime. There is obviously an interplay between mass incarceration and poverty but benefits of police are clear.


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

[User] How did they weld before they had protective glasses/masks?

[Assistant]
Dark glasses existed long before welding. Welding also started with gas welding, wcich required much less shielding.

Then again, at that time, workplace safety wasn't a big thing. Heck, in many countries, you see people welding wearing only sunglasses.


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

[User]
CMV: having no regrets is not something we should encourage

People will often boast of having no regrets in life. Now, I dont really take people literally when they say this, but I dont like the ideal that it promotes. In my view, any reasonably introspective person should be able to come to terms with their mistakes and acknowledge that they regret them. Nobody lives a flawless life - and having regrets means that youve learned along the way and are mature enough to know where youve gone wrong. I think we should encourage people to have regrets as ways of furthering their development and emotional maturity. Change my view.

[Assistant] Regretting something is not the same as saying "yeah that was stupid of me, whatever, cant change it now". Regretting something, in the context of this manner of speech means constantly thinking and beating yourself up about the thing you wish you would have done differently. Its the opposite of coming to terms with it.