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

[User]
CMV: People constantly misuse and misapply the word Fascism, which makes opposing real Fascism far more difficult.

Fascism is a very specific political ideology, one that is characterized by an extreme right-wing authoritarianism, hyper-nationalism, a unification between the movement and the state and destruction of democratic institutions that stand in the way of this unification.

It is not any generalized subjugation. It is not forced conformity to any old idea. For example, somebody accuses a BLM activist of being a fascist because they are forcing someone to conform to their views. That is not fascism.

When somebody accuses a trans person of being a fascist for making somebody use their preferred pronouns, its not fascism.

When somebody accuses left-wing political parties of fascism by using beaurocracy to enforce laws or even ideology, its not fascism.

When the state forces you to do something you dont want to do (wear a mask, pay taxes, limit the purchase of firearms) its not fascist, unless its a state that operates under the actual principles of fascism.

I find that this failure of distinction is making it far more difficult to resist and oppose ACTUAL fascism that is threatening democracy right now.

For example Trumps actions and rhetoric embody many aspects of fascism; he talks like a fascist, his prepared speeches have fascistic flair, he seeks to undermine democratic institutions that limit his power, seeks to present himself as an embodiment of the state, stokes racial division to maintain and increase oppressive power structures, is fueled by white-nationalists and supported by avowed fascists, seeks to use the power of the state via military/police to dominate and subdue specific political ideologies that undermine his own, etc.

My opinion is that he is a true fascist, though others could argue that his fascism is more performative than substantive.

(Fascism is also popping up in other countries in Europe as well, but Im American, so I used Trump)

The more that fascism is used interchangeably with subjugation, authoritarianism, or any kind of forced power, the harder it becomes to identify and resist actual fascism.

[Assistant]
Fascism isn't well defined to begin with. There's not a lot different from fascism as compared to nazism compared to various other sorts of populism. A lot of people use their own definition that is carefully structured to apply to the people they don't like. There were academics who were trying to fit Bush 43 in fascism, in part because they didn't like the militarism during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his more common reliance on executive orders compared to Clinton.

Fascism is used that way because everyone recognizes that it is bad, and it has a malleable enough definition to be made to fit. This is a valid use of words that is roughly analogous to how "socialist" or "communist" was used in the cold war. Socialism being incredibly loosely defined in common parlance and being considered bad.

This will have the unfortunate side effect of rehabilitating the term. Socialism isn't the dirty word it once was because it's applied to things that people like in a bid to make them no longer like it. So, because they like the thing that it's applied to they must also like it, right? Well, the same sort of thing is going to happen to fascism as it is not well defined to begin with. And now it's any feels bad where the individual is being subordinated to the other socio-economic-political "tribe".

It was originally considered to be a "third way" a non-democratic, non-communist political structure intended to subjugate the individual to the "people" be it culturally or religiously or racially defined. And by "people" they really meant a small clique of populist leaders who had the full mobilized as though for war power of the people to use for the good of the people and by that they really meant themselves.


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

[User]
ELI5: How come people in America need $15/hr jobs if people from Asia can apparently live off ridiculous wages like $2/hr?

What causes everything to be so expensive in America vs. other countries? Why don't prices fall to meet those other nations when things like outsourcing and free trade come up?

[Assistant]
Accepted standards of living, and societal expectations of what you will be capable of doing.

Our standard of living requires that everyone have enough food for 3 meals a day, electricity in our homes, running water in our homes, plumbing in our homes, air conditioning, entertainments (books, tv, cable, internet, video games, etc), communication devices (e-mail, physical mail, telephone, instant messaging, texting, skype, etc), personal transportation, medications, and many other things. The reason people in Asia can pay so little is that they do not have these same basic standards of living. To them those things are luxuries.

We also require people to be accessible. Many jobs require you to be able to transport yourself to your work or to travel fairly significant distances on your own. Many jobs require you to have a cell phone or at minimum a landline phone. Many jobs require you to have regular access to e-mail. Without these things it can be difficult to get a job or keep one.


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

[User]
ELI5 How operating systems are batch installed on devices like phones, tablets or pc's on the assembly line.

My Xperia Z2 tablet came with the Amazing Spider-man 2 trailer and it got me thinking how this was possible for all the Z2's out of the box. Is there someone copying files across millions of devices in a factory before it's wrapped?

[Assistant]
(I copy/pasted an older post of mine)

Used to work for a cell manufacturer here.

At some point at the assembly line, right after the case is put on but before it goes in the box..... behind some secure walls... there is what we used to call (name may change elsewhere) a provisioning station.

The provisioning stations are simply banks of charge/sync pods (more rugged than the consumer ones of course).... like 20 of them... tied to a single computer through some special high speed interface.

The operator entered the model #, any other hw version info, then selected what Cell Carrier and a few other parameters that decide WHAT software goes on (each carrier gets to customize to some degree). Clicks the go button.

First off, for each device, provisioning/enabling things are done. Essentially using unique hw IDs like mac address, cpu serial, crypto keys (most of which are burned into silicon), the device is registered with the master provisioning server (which keeps track and heretofor calls that chunk of phone "phone xyzqrs". Like an IMEI #. Until this point, the phone was just a chunk of components.

Now that the phone has a unique identity, the software gets zapped on. So they load them 20, 30, 40 at a time, times however many provisioning stations you have.  I've seen thousands of phones being provisioned simultaneously.

You can usually half the operators to provisioning stations. The op is putting fresh blank phones into the banks, and taking completed phones off and putting them into bulk cartons or trays (that go onto the packing stations).... They can swap the phones in one station

while the other station is burning phones.

Lastly the pack station is where the thing gets shoved into a carrier branded box with carrier "welcome to your new IGalaxyBerry from AwesomeCarrier!" instructions, shrink wrapped and shoved into a carton with 100 others, on a pallet and on a truck.


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

[User] [Watchmen] With Dr. Manhattan perceiving time as happening simultaneously; does he view his life as like a series of memories, since he's more or less along for the ride and can't change anything and how does that work? If he knows about future events how is it impossible to alter the future?

[Assistant]
It's the same as your memories, but being able to replay them perfectly with all senses present. He can do this along his timeline, however far forward and back he likes.

He essentially moves into a scene like in a play, and says his lines till he gets bored and visits a different scene.


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

[User] ELI5: How does working as a barber/hairdresser increase your risk of getting cancer?

[Assistant] There are a lot of toxic chemicals used in hair.  Especially for dying and perming.  Repeated exposure can lead to cancer.  So it's best to wear a respirator and gloves when doing that.  Same goes for nail polish.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Can a wizard change their name and if so, would both names show up on the Marauders Map or just the new one?

Specifically thinking about Peter Pettigrew or Barry Crouch Jr here.  Lets say Pettigrew changed his name to Scabbers or Crouch changed his name to Moody, would they have been able to beat the Maps magic?

[Assistant]
I think the person has to think of themselves as the new name. Lord Voldemort was Tom Riddle, but saying "Lord Voldemort" aloud invited his attention.

It's kind of a Clark Kent/Superman thing: Which name does the person in question believe to be the true one? That's what would show up.


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

[User]
[Marvel/DC] Which superheroes would be best suited for babysitting?

Personally, I want to bring up Invisible Woman, since she has two kids already. Batman is also generally a total sweetheart with kids... when he's not having them fight armed maniacs. Superman is just a sweetheart in general, and his powers will make both observing and keeping them safe a breeze. Wonder Woman doesn't have x-ray vision, but the same basically applies to her. Spider-Man doesn't have much experience with kids, so he might not be the best at interacting with them, but he certainly knows about responsibility.

What do you think?

[Assistant] Not really a super hero but Agatha Harkness was Franklin Richards nanny when he was a baby. She is a witch and was Wanda's teacher in magic. She is very power but also very caring the children, plus she has a cat that turns into a panther. Good for keeping the little ones safe.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why did the price of RAM skyrocket?

Two years ago I bought 8 gigs of RAM for $30, 8 gigs now costs 60+, what happened?  (Preface, I thought for sure someone would have asked this before, but I couldn't find it searching for it)

[Assistant]
Two things: A rise in demand and a sudden drop in supply.

In late 2013 a Chinese factory responsible for 25% of the market burned, and while they have since rebuild and are back online the market hasn't stabilized yet.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] What are Dementors?

Are they deceased souls? Are they entirely nonhuman? Are they even from earth?

[Assistant] They're classified by the Ministry as Amortal Non-Being Spirits. They were never alive, were never human and do not die. They are not souls, nor do they possess souls of their own. New Dementors spontaneously form in places of decay, most often (but not exclusively) in the company of existing Dementors. They are, in essence, a naturally occurring magical phenomenon.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does water evaporate off the ground after rain, if it isn't at boiling point?

How does water evaporate off the ground if it isn't at boiling point?

[Assistant]
Think about the particles of water as billiard balls, all bouncing around on the pool table. Sometimes, with the random collisions and chaotic bouncing around, one of the balls gets going so fast that it jumps out of the pool table. That's like standing water, when, even if it's cool out, some particles still manage to 'escape' the droplet.

The hotter it is, the more more the particles jiggle around, so more pool balls jump out. Get it hot enough, and it's guaranteed that a ball couldn't possible stay within the walls of the table.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the structural difference between a 512MB SD card and say a 64GB SD card?

And why does memory capacities get significantly greater and cheaper over time?

[Assistant]
All SD cards use one or several chips of memory and a small processor which takes the data and stores it inside the memory chip(s).

At first, it was difficult to make memory chips so small sizes were normal but as the manufacturing process improved, it made it possible to create chips capable of holding more bits of data.

In addition, companies invented methods to take several manufactured chips and stack them in such a way that the final chip looks like a regular memory chip, just a bit taller. From the outside (to your eyes and to a small processor interacting with it), this new large chip looks like a regular memory chip.

Nowadays, the smaller sized SD cards (let's say 512 MB , 1 GB, 2 GB) are often made with memory chips that have some amount of failure/damage in them.

Memory chip manufacturers try as hard as possible to manufacture memory chips that give them the best profit, but some come out with portions that can't hold the data reliably, that are simply bad.  Rather than throwing away these chips, the companies sell them to SD card makers which will then put them in SD cards advertised for smaller capacity.

For example, a 4 GB memory chip with 200 MB of damaged area can be installed in a SD card advertised for 1 GB or 2 GB.  Before the card is put in packaging, the SD card manufacturer puts the card in a special machine that talks to the processor inside the card and makes the processor test each memory cell in the memory chip and "memorize" which areas are bad.

Then, every time you plug the card in a device, the processor inside the SD card tells the computer or device that it's a 2GB card and knows to avoid those areas of the memory chip that are "unstable", not safe to write data to.

This kind of reuse doesn't happen only with memory chips, more complex stuff is made this way... a good example are computer processors. If Intel or AMD makes a 4 core processor but they find out one core uses too much power or doesn't work properly when testing, they may turn off two cores and sell the chip as a dual core model.


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

[User]
How do spiders choose a location for their web?

So this is a multi-part question, I suppose. First time posting here and asking you guys about something.

1. Whenever it is that spiders are grown and ready to set up shop, spin a web and wait for dinner (the species that do hunt this way), how does it choose the location? How does it know where the ideal place is to collect food?

2. How far do they travel to seek out such a place, if they do "seek" out certain places. Do they just drop a web whenever and wherever they are hungry? Move on when they get bored to a new place?

3. Going through some things in the bottom of the closet, stuff that gets moved on occasion, a couple times a month maybe. Inside a shoebox (and similar places) there are usually some tiny, tiny spiders with their homes set up. Is there really a steady food supply in there, tucked away, door shut? Obviously I know there is tiny food for them galore, but really, in my closet?

[Assistant]
It's an almost impossible question to answer due to the vast amount of species of spiders; some spiders spin traps on the ground to alert it and catch the prey: trapdoor spider; Other tall grass faring spiders turn their webs towards the wind hoping for insects to get blown in; Some spiders build their webs over the water to eat insects flying up after they are hatched or down to drink water; Some even make webs underwater so they can trap bubbles down with them and live off plants re-oxygenating it and small fish and underwater insects. Basically, where they think there is food.

Traveling, some spiders travel by flying with web when they are born like a dandelion keeping them in the mile to two mile range and will generally only travel in a half mile zone from there, most web spinning spiders don't even move a half mile from their landing point though; hunting spiders are the only group that tend towards a bit of traveling but still abide in their territory.

If those spiders are cellar spiders they can go a long time without eating over 6 months, so a little food is enough to sustain them.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why are women's clothing sizes all over the place while men and children's are pretty much standard?

wow, keep the comments coming.  I'm loving it.  Ps, thanks for making my inbox explode!  :)

[Assistant]
Because clothing makers have found it profitable to pander yo women's insecurities about their body size by designating lower numbers for previously larger sizes.  Since different brands can size things as they please, some haven't followed suit, and retain larger size numbers.

If a man encounters non-standard sizes that fit weird, or parents encounter that with their children's clothes, they don't bother with that brand again.


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

[User]
Is it possible to powerset a set infinitely many times?

and if so does that mean i have found a set so big that if i powerset it again it will still be the same set? because powersetting a set that have been powersetted infinitely many times one more time will not make it any bigger (because infinity+1=infinity duh!)

[Assistant]
No such set exists.

Suppose that we were given a set *A* such that *X* = P(P(P(...P(A)...))) exists. In fact, let X*_0_* = X and let X*_1_* be the set such that P(X*_1_*) = X*_0_*. Generalize this: define a recursive sequence X*_n_* such that P(X*_n+1_*) = X*_n_*. So we are considering the sequence of sets:

> (X*_0_*, X*_1_*, ..., X*_n_*, ...)

Any set *S* is a subset of itself, hence *S* is always an element of P(S). This means that X*_n+1_* is an element of X*_n_*, for all *n*. Thus our sequence is an infinitely descending chain of sets. This is not allowed by the axiom of regularity (also called the axiom of foundation).

> and if so does that mean i have found a set so big that if i powerset it again it will still be the same set?

Even if you were allowed to make sense of X = P(P(P(...P(A)...))) and this set existed, the axioms would certainly not imply that P(X) = X. For one, the power set P(S) always has strictly larger cardinality than S, for any set S. ~~Secondly, if P(S) = S, then this means that any element *x* in S would also be a subset of *S*, by definition of power set. Thus the set *S* would have non-empty intersection with all of its (non-empty) elements, again contradictory to the axiom of regularity.~~ (There is an error in the crossed-out text. See a follow-up below.)


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

[User]
What causes lactose intolerance?  Can someone
lactose intolerant become tolerant over time?

Someone told me that the reason more Asians are lactose intolerant is due to the food culture.   Babies are born with tolerance due to the bacteria in their gut, but once they are weaned off breastmilk or formula, they no longer consume dairy products, since most Asians do not drink cow's milk or eat cheese.  This will lead to the lactose dependent bacteria in the gut to die off, rendering the person unable to digest lactose properly.  Is this true?

Is there a way to reverse the process?  Maybe ingest cultures of lactose-eating bacteria?

[Assistant]
The ability to metabolize lactose is dependent on a protein called lactase. Those who have decreased levels of lactase or non-functional versions would be unable to digest lactose, so lactose would instead be "digested" by bacteria in the gut, which would then produce gas in the form of methane. This explains the symptoms of lactose intolerance - bloating, loose stools and flatulence.

The activity and presence of lactase varies significantly throughout your life. Most infants have the ability to digest lactose, but this activity decreases as you age. The great majority of the world adult population is unable to digest lactose in great quantities - such as that found in milk - with the exception of populations from Northern European origin, where presumably high levels of lactase activity evolved to allow milk drinking late into adulthood.

It is unlikely that one can regain tolerance as it has to do with decreased presence of a cellular enzyme.  People with lactose intolerance can take Lactaid, which provides exogenous lactase, to allow digestion and avoidance of symptoms.


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

[User]
What are the most useless / funny / pointless programs you've made?

I'm a newbie programmer. Ever since COVID-19, I've been stuck at home with nothing to do. My parents are making me productive and I suggested programming things, and they said yes. So to all the programmers out there, what are some ideas for some dumb coding projects to work on? I've thought of a virtual pet that can crash your program if you don't take good care of it, but I want to hear your ideas and projects!

[Assistant]
Escape room: HTML/CSS/JS edition. Every room is just a button that you have to figure out how to click.

Room 1: It's covered by another element that's transparent and eating the mouse events. Solution: Open the console, delete the element.

Room 2: It has JS that makes it run away from your cursor. And it's rendered via JS, so you can't just disable JS to stop it. Possible solution: Via the console, kill the event listener that's powering the button movement.

Etc.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did humans develop such that a well balanced human diet consist of a wide variety of foods when throughout most of human history we only had access to a few foods?

This seems like it'd doom our survival as a species.

[Assistant]
Eating sub optimally does not mean a swift certain death. It means a slightly lower quality of life (think of how you feel from a week of eating fast food vs a week of eating healthy), deteriorating more quickly (your brain may slow down faster as you age), a slightly higher risk of developing disease, etc.

Good nutrition is just maximizing your optimal health, not something as polarizing as going from dying of every disease at 20 vs living forever.


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

[User]
[Parks and Recreation]How did Ron Swanson become so rich?

It's stated that he has enough money that his kids never need to work again.

* The only investing he does is burying gold.  Granted, that could have netted him a lot of money, but only if he sold at exactly the right time.
* He's a heavy eater, so must spend a lot on food.
* While his woodworking provides him with a side income, he's shown little ambition in monetizing his hobby.
* Despite his support for the free market, he's shown little ambition in business period.
* While has has simple tastes, he nevertheless has a number of expensive hobbies, and own multiple cabins in addition to a massive workshop.

[Assistant] On top of a respectable salary on gets for a mid-level government job he is much more self sufficient than the average person. He has been known to make his own furniture/jewelry/boats/etc, raise/hunt/fish for food and make his own shelter. The price of gold has also quadrupled in the time he has been an adult.


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

[User]
ELI5: health insurance deductibles

My company has open season for insurance and I am trying to figure out health insurance deductibles and how they work.

[Assistant]
The way it usually works is this:

Premium - Monthly fee, always the same. Your work might pay all or some of this for you.

Deductible - Total amount you have to spend on health-related costs before insurance starts to pay. This is often something like $2000. The first $2000 in health fees you incur in a year you pay for; after that, your insurance "kicks in" and starts paying for some or all of any future costs

Max Out of Pocket - You've met your deductible already and insurance pays for, say, 70% of all expenses. Once you hit this secondary level of spending, insurance will begin to pay 100% of all expenses.


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

[User]
[Warhammer] Do Khorne worshippers need to physically remove the skulls they claim for the skull throne, or is just killing someone enough?

Like are the skulls metaphorical or does every fighter leave the battlefield with bags of heads/skulls?

[Assistant]
Just killing an opponent in combat is enough to empower Khorne. It has to be in combat - sneaky ninja-style assassinations don't count - and the more brutal and/or glorious it is, the better.

While you're free to do so if you _want_ to, you don't need to collect the skulls of your vanquished foes for yourself, as they all end up as part of Khorne's ever-growing throne regardless. Of course, due to the what-the-fuck-is-reality-anyway nature of the warp, the skulls are probably simultaneously both _literally_ parts of the throne and only _metaphorically_ part of the throne.


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

[User]
[Knives Out] [spoiler question]

If Marta was such a good nurse, why didnt she notice that Harlan clearly wasnt feeling the effects of the morphine? A person ODing on morphine wouldnt be capable of coherent speech or thought, and Harlan is doing both right up until the end.

[Assistant]
Because she was quietly panicking. The moment she realised she'd got the "wrong" vials, her capacity for cold logic vanished. All she could think about was that she'd just killed her friend. Then Harlan took charge and started telling her what to do, and when you're panicking it's very easy to just accept whatever authority is on offer and not stop to think or to observe.

Perhaps she should have worked it out later, but by that point all she could focus on when she thought back on that night was seeing him cut his own throat.


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

[User] ELI5: I've heard that leaving wall/phone chargers pluged in when not charging wastes power. What prevents them from shutting off automatically when not charging a device?

[Assistant]
When it comes to vampire power drains, phone chargers are a ridiculously small part of the puzzle.  There are plenty of appliances that do much more damage to your wallet.  Big electronics that enter a 'standby' mode are a huge draw.... TV, cable boxes, dvd player, computers, microwaves.  The thing about wall charger in particular is the AC->DC circuitry is always creating a complete circuit, whether you have something plugged into it or not, so, they're always drawing power.

There's a wide swing in terms of claims of how much unplugging the wall wart entirely will save, some say its negligible, some say its upwards of $50/yr.  Its worse to actually leave your phone plugged in all day, especially if its on.  If the phone is off its not as bad, and if nothing is connected its typically negligible...but, then people couldn't write click-bait articles about it!


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

[User]
Relativity says that the phenomenon we know as gravity is in fact the curvature of space. What about the other fundamental forces? Is there a theory that tries to explain them as the curvature of space as well?

My knowledge of physics very elementary, so please correct me if my question doesn't make any sense!

[Assistant]
There actually is an approach that would explain the other forces that way, although it also involves having additional dimensions of spacetime.

There's something called the Kaluza-Klein mechanism (named for work of Kaluza and of Klein in the 1920s, though Nordstrom actually first did something very similar in 1914).  The idea is that we start with a higher dimensional theory in which the only force is gravity, and then require that the extra dimensions be so small in extent that we basically can't see them.

What would our world look like if this was the case? Well, of course we'd only see four dimensions (three of space, one of time), and there would be gravity in these four dimensions, but it turns out there would be some additional remnants of this higher dimensional world. These remnants would appear to us as additional forces, and indeed it is mathematically possible to construct the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces in precisely this way. Thus, higher dimensions offer an appealing avenue for unifying gravity with the other forces; these other forces would thus be explicable in terms of the warping of spacetime -- but the full, higher dimensional space-time, not just the four dimensions with which we are familiar. Whether we can do so in an empirically successful way remains to be seen.

With one extra dimension, you can get electromagnetism (but not in a successful way, as you also get one other artifact, a massless spin 0 particle that is experimentally not observed), whereas you need at least 7 extra dimensions (or only 6, if you have strings rather than particles) to incorporate the weak, strong, and electromagnetic forces.

Is this the way the world works?  We don't know, but a lot of people who work on approaches to unification of gravity with the other forces do find this mechanism attractive, and certainly include it as one of the tools in their toolbox.


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

[User]
ELI5 why we are in a "war" right now?

I understand that it's not considered technically a "war," but why are our troops in the Middle East (and ect.)?

I was pretty young when 9/11 happened, and I really feel clueless.  I'm actually pretty embarrassed at my lack of knowledge of it all. (Almost made a throwaway and all) Can anyone explain to me why our troops are in Iraq and such?

[Assistant]
The invasion of Afghanistan occurred as a direct response to 9/11. The goal was to go after the terrorist organizations that planned the attacks and find the people responsible.

Iraq is a bit harder to explain. Basically, the American people were told that the dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (he didn't). We invaded that country and that's pretty much that.

Troop withdrawal is a very slow process, but we're already starting to see it unfold. After years of fighting, Afghanistan has been mostly cleared of the terrorists and Iraq has been ousted of their dictator. The reason the troops are still there is because it would be pointless to withdraw them immediately...by going slow, we can ensure a smooth transition for the country to go back to being on their own. Plus, in both Iraq and Afghanistan our military is training soldiers from those areas to serve and defend their country once we leave.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] How could the Tamarians be a warp capable species?

How could a culture that speaks in metaphors create technology sufficiently advanced enough for warp travel?  How can they easily convey they need a bolt that is 15mm wide let alone communicate with engineers and mathematicians with the intricacies needed to create such technologies?  How can they even say we need to increase the anti-mater/mater reaction to 15%? How can they say use the tractor beam to adjust the trajectory of an incoming asteroid?

[Assistant] I think the pictographic written language of the Chinese on earth is an apt comparison.  Each individual symbol translates into a concept, which makes sense in context, but it is still specific enough to get science accomplished.  The metaphorical nature of their speech is the literal translation of a poetic and flowing manner of speech which makes perfect sense to a native speaker.


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

[User] ELI5: What is herd immunity and how does it work?

[Assistant]
Viruses and bacteria transmit from person to person.

With a large population there will always be some people who cannot get vaccinated for a variety of reasons (such as being immunocompromised following radiation therapy, organ transplant, is allergic to the vaccine, too young for a vaccine, etc)

Herd immunity happens when the majority of the population has been vaccinated or otherwise immune to contagious disease. Lots of vaccinated people means the disease is not constantly hopping around from person to person.  When a person who is not vaccinated is surrounded by people who *are vaccinated*, this reduces their possible exposure to sick people.

It does not stop a sick person from *directly* exposing a disease to a vulnerable person, but *if almost everyone is vaccinated* then it greatly reduces the numbers of sick people and carriers.


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

[User] ELI5 - how can mattress stores (sleep one, mattress firm, wtc) always be closing? How do you know when one is really closing?

[Assistant]
Around here it is the fancy (Persian etc) rug stores that are always saying that they are closing...but they rarely if ever do.

It would seem that people would be on to them by now;  must say something about people who want fancy rugs.


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

[User] [Terminator] John Connor is terminated before Judgement Day even happens. What does Sarah Connor do? Does she head to the nearest bar to find another one night stand and try again?

[Assistant] Since the Terminator series seems to have constants, perhaps Sarah Connor's importance would be at an end and the timeline would shift to someone else being the resistance leader? They stopped skynet from being activated in T2 but that only slowed down Judgement Day. Who's to say it wouldn't work the same for the other side? As judgment day is inevitable, so is humanity's triumph.


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

[User]
Why is a turning point on the plot of 1^1 to 0^0 ?

So we take the fallowing problem :

1^1 = 1

0.9^0.9 = 0.909

0.8^0.8 = 0.836

0.7^0.7 = 0.779

0.6^0.6 = 0.736

0.5^0.5 = 0.707

0.4^0.4 = 0.693

0.3^0.3 = 0.696

0.2^0.2 = 0.724

0.1^0.1 = 0.793

0.0^0.0 ~ 1

So we see that somewhere between 0.5^0.5 and 0.3^0.3 it will be the lowest value. Seems that the turning point is 1/e ( 0.36787944117^0.36787944117 = 0.69220062755 ). Why there ? Is there a special thing about this number ? Does this problem have a name ?

Sorry if this a noob question, but it's the first time I see this pattern.

[Assistant] If you know calculus, you can compute it easy. We want to find the minimum of x^(x). If we take natural log to get f(x)=xlog(x), then the minimum of xlog(x) will be at the same point as x^(x), so we can work with f(x) instead. Compute the derivative to be f'(x)=log(x)+1. We then know that if f'(x)=0, then we have an extrema. Solving log(x)+1=0 will give us x=1/e. This can easily be checked to be a minimum point using the second derivative f''(x)=1/x, for which we have f''(1/e)>0. Therefore (1/e)^(1/e) is the minimum of x^(x).


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

[User]
How far would the missed shots from laser turrets in Star Wars travel? Will we one day be inundated by a barrage of stray laser turret blasts from a long ago, far away intergalactic war?

For clarity: Star Wars was just for the sake of an easy example. I recognize that there are numerous other, more SCIENCE-fiction-y films, books, etc that could be used in place, but Star Wars was the easiest for the sake of this question.

Also, I'm aware of the hypothesis of the origin of gamma ray bursts being from some intergalactic war before the origin of these was discovered. I was hoping to get some further expansion on this subject.

[Assistant] No, don't worry. The energy dissipates over distance/time. After only a few thousand miles (in which time it would be very unlikely that a stray laser blast would hit anything given the relative emptiness of space) the energy would have spread out over such an area to be (mostly) harmless.


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

[User]
[A:TLA/LoK] Is it possible for waterbenders to bend other form of liquid as long as there are water in it?

The principle behind it would be similar to how Toph and some earthbenders could metalbend, but this time it's the water they're bending.

[Assistant]
We see the swamp bender guy bend vines so its should be possible.

During Katara and Tophs mud fight, both are able to bend the mud, so it would appear that water benders should be able to bend water found in anything

Plus theres blood bending but that proves that its not necessarily easy to bend other water-based fluids.


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

[User] ELI5: How does antibacterial soap actually kill bacteria?

[Assistant]
Many regular soaps contain substances such as chlorine or alcohol to kill bacteria.  Soaps that are labeled "antibacterial" often contain an additional agent such as triclosan or triclocarban.

Those last two work by messing with the bacteria's ability to do its normal jobs for living.  One of these jobs is to build and maintain their walls.  Their walls are important because it helps them keep good stuff in, send bad stuff out, and keep bad stuff out!

They're like little factories inside, and all day they're bringing in resources to help them build and maintain their walls.  Well one day the UPS truck shows up just as it always does at 9:00 AM.  The 9:00 AM delivery always contains the pieces necessary to work on the walls, so the security guards at the cell wall sign for the delivery and thank the truck driver.

The resources delivered plug in perfectly where they're supposed to for making bricks for the walls, so the factory workers chug along happily plugging them in.  After plugging them in all in the workers begin to realize that something isn't right:  the new bricks for the wall aren't forming correctly with this new delivery.  It's too late to do anything about it, though, because all of the brick-making spots already have this new resource plugged into them.  So even if we got an emergency delivery of the CORRECT resource right now, we wouldn't even be able to use it.

The factory workers look our their windows in horror as they see their precious wall outside begin to crumble around them, helpless to do anything to repair it.  Through the new ruined wall they're left unable to properly accept new deliveries of any resources, or send out their spent waste resources.

They spend the rest of their short, miserable lives simultaneously starving to death and drowning in their own shit.


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

[User] ELI5: How do comic TV shows like South Park and Family Guy get away with parodies referencing current events, with copyrighted material, without getting sued?

[Assistant]
There is a concept in US copyright law called "Fair Use."

Fair Use says that there are circumstances and situations where you're allowed to use someone else's copyrighted material without infringing the copyright. For example, research, scholarship, and news reporting are all considered fair use.

Parody and satire are also considered fair use. There are a lot of complicating factors, but that's the ELI5.


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

[User]
I currently plan on voting Conservative in the next Canadian federal election. CMV!

Feel free to use my post history as an example of what I support and who I am, and why if at all I should support a different party. I'm definitely aware of the scandals that are happening or have happened recently, and I'm slowly starting to lose faith to begin with. However, I believe that these issues can be resolved and that it likely will not have a significant impact on the way the party governs the country in the future (That being said, I STRONGLY disagree with the recent actions taken on libraries and the preservation of research and knowledge).

CMV!

[Assistant]
Harper has not only been regularly accused of being opaque to the rest of the parliament and intentionally misleading them, he's actually made history as the first PM in the Commonwealth to be found guilty of it! Contempt of Parliament.

Under Harper from 2006-2010 we actually went from a surplus to a defecit. A big one.

One of his aides managed to get convicted of 5 counts of fraud. On its own this might not be anything but an unfortunate misjudgment of character, but how many people in his party and around him, now, have been investigated for outright criminal behviour? Of course you've got the recent Senate scandal there, and the willful overspending on the elections back in '06 if IIRC.

He refused to sign a UN declaration that clean water is a human right. Why? Almost all agree it has to do with the fact that a huge number of the First nations and other remote communities have risky water supplies and lack the means to really ensure it's safe. He didn't cause the problem, sure, but he's certainly turned a blind eye to it for a long time and is now hoping to build an oil pipeline over the waterways that feed some of these communities.

Also he's just kind of a ponce on top. Who the hell decorates the parliament with pictures of themself, especially when the tradition is there that it should be photos of the past PMs.


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

[User]
[LoTR] What makes Balrogs different from other Maiar?

What makes a Maia a Balrog? Does the balrogs have any specific traits that differentiate them from other Maiar?

If it is just that they used to serve Melkor, then why is Sauron not a Balrog?

[Assistant]
Not all  Maiar who served Morgoth are Balrogs. The Balrogs are Maiar of Fire who took physical form.  Sauron, is not the final part. He is not a Maia of Fire and he is not a Balrog.

Gandalf is an example of a Maia of fire who is not a Balrog.


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

[User] [The Culture] Everyone seems concerned with getting invited to the cool parties. What's stopping people from just showing up anyway? Isn't enforcing who's allowed entry where very non-culture?

[Assistant]
From *Player of Games*:

>'What more do you want? Social death, Hamin; you don't get invited to too many parties.'

>'Ah; but in your Culture, can't you gatecrash?'

>'I suppose so,' Gurgeh conceded. 'But nobody'd talk to you.'

The only thing worse than feeling alone, is feeling alone in a crowded room.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why would you put a severed toe/finger on ice to preserve until reattached when they would amputate it if frostbitten?

Why would you put a severed toe/finger on ice to preserve until reattached when they would amputate it if frostbitten? It seems like in one scenario freezing preserves while in the other it destroys the tissue.

[Assistant]
First off, only incredibly severe frostbite requires amputation, mild frostbite will heal on its own or at worst leave minor scarring.

Now, frostbite occurs when blood flow is restricted to your cells for an extended period of time, causing them to die. Since the finger or toe in question is already severed, that's not really a concern (or, more accurately, you're already at the worst-case scenario).

Secondly, frostbite typically occurs at temperatures *well* below freezing. The lowest a finger on ice would get is 32 degrees F.

Finally, cold really is a great preservative. It slows the degradation of your cells and prevents infection. While you certainly wouldn't want to keep a finger on ice for days, having a severed finger in an ice bucket for an hour or two while you make it to the hospital can definitely help preserve it for reattachment.


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

[User]
[General SciFi] Our galactic empire is finally on the verge of creating planetary-scale objects. Is the demolition of planets to gain ressources unethical and should therefore be cancelled?

Centuries of slow, but steady colonization of a few dozen solar systems under my rule have passed.
The Empires' best scientists and engineers keep approaching me to pitch their large-scale projects.
Moon-size structures, planetary and maybe even solar rings, spaceships.

It would take huge effort, but constructing those things promise techological progress (and economical wealth) of unprecedented scale.

But some people keep telling me that the process of aquiring the needed raw materials -carving+melting down planets uninhabited of higher life forms- is unethical.

What do you think?

[Assistant]
Ethics are relative to the (possibly sentient) thing being affected.

We already destroy huge amounts of our own planet for progress and profit, sometimes with horrible consequences for life.

If there is no effect on any sort of sentient life, or even life at all, then the pros hugely outweigh the cons.


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

[User] [Time Travel - General] What are some examples of the negative aspects of time travel that are never/rarely discussed in literature/movies/etc?

[Assistant]
Dont drink the water and stay out of sight.

I figured one of the hard things would be small changes compounding over time. Ever hear about an actor who forgets their original accent after putting on so many fake ones?

I figure long enough time traveling would do the same thing. Your original timeline would be gone after a while. You could never go home.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are voices unique?

Everyone has a different, distinct voice with varying tone, pitch, thickness, clarity, volume etc. Why is that?

[Assistant] Humans produce sound by forcing air through a complicated series of vibrating flaps and chambers. Possible differences in the size and shape of those flaps and chambers are so numerous that it is highly unlikely for two sets to ever be exactly the same. These differences are what give each voice unique characteristics.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do deers run out into a highway full of loud cars and bright lights yet the smallest footstep rustling leaves in the woods can spook them?

[Assistant] Learned behavior. A rustling in the leaves is related to a potential predator. Lights and engine noises are related to those big metal buffalo things that always stay on that black hard stuff. They realize cars aren't predators. Also confirmation bias. Maybe 90% of deer *do* run away from cars.


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

[User] ELI5: Fedoras and why they are universally hated by reddit.

[Assistant] Because at one time they looked good on men.  But it was contextual.  The men that wore them also wore suits.  It wasn't just the style of the day, it was pretty much the only style.  Decades and decades later, after the styles have all changed, some guys think that by wearing an old fashioned hat, they will simply become as "classy" as they perceive these men to have once been.  The hat looks silly with a pair of cargo shorts and even sillier in a sea of baseball caps.   Just because your snorkel and flippers make sense on a beach it doesn't mean you won't look strange wearing them at the shopping mall.  Just because you look distinguished in your cap and gown at high school graduation, you won't look very smart if you wear them to your first day of college.


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

[User] ELI5: When bacteria die, for example when boiling water, where do their corpses go?

[Assistant]
When you take a close look at a bacteria, it's just a little bag of chemicals with a protective skin around it, plus some other stuff like hairs that can help it move. The chemicals are mostly water plus electrolytes and a few complex carbon-based molecules.

If the bacteria is placed in boiling water, the pressure inside rises and ruptures that skin, and then the chemicals inside leach out and dissipate into the water, while some get changed into other chemicals in the same way stuff like an egg changes when it cooks. But it's such a tiny amount of material and it's dispersed so thoroughly through so much more water that it's not noticeable or harmful or anything.

Baking or frying it does the same thing, rupturing the skin, except in this case there's no water to carry the chemicals away, so after the fluid in the bacteria evaporates you have a itsy-bitsy stain. RIP bacteria.


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

[User]
What's the difference between water drying and boiling on a molecular level? Is the reaction same between different types of liquid?

I've always thought that water turns into gas only after boiling because the molecules spread out. How does water that's just sitting there dry out?

[Assistant]
On the surface of any liquid, there will be a few molecules with more energy than the others, simply due to random jostling. If one gets jostled hard enough, it will leave the surface and evaporate.

Boiling is a more extreme form of this process. The jostling is so intense that molecules _throughout_ the liquid, not just on the surface, have a chance to be jostled into high speed. If they're under the surface, they join with other fast-moving molecules to form a bubble, effectively creating a new surface for more boiling (homogeneous nucleation).

Incidentally, the creation of a new bubble is helped if there is any speck or flaw in the vessel where fast-moving molecules can agglomerate. This is called heterogenous nucleation, and it's why tossing salt into a pot of boiling water will make it seem to boil more fiercely.


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

[User]
Why are rockets/ spacecraft corrosion resistant, if there is no oxygen in space?

I was reading about the different types of alloys used in rockets, and many of them are labeled as 'corrosion resistant'; does this actually matter or is it just a useless byproduct of the alloys that rockets use? (btw, sorry if I used the wrong flair.)

[Assistant]
There are 3 main aspects that are relevant there on why you would want corrosion resistant materials.

First while the goal is to send the thing to space it will spend a significant amount of time on the ground first. Even in a clean room environment you can get corrosion. Moreover contrary to a lot of other vehicles and systems you can't easily protect the materials with paint, oils or other rust inhibitor because they are typically not vacuum compatible. Rockets also often launched close to the coast where they can have to spend days in hot humid environment where there can be salt water spray.

The second thing for some parts is that a lot of propellants are very chemically agressive and corrosion resistant materials are usually also pretty resistant to chemical reactions.

The last one is that there is actually oxygen in space! It's a very tiny amount but at the very top of the atmosphere you get what is called "atomic oxygen", basically instead of O2 it's single atoms of oxygen. Those are way way more agressive than normal oxygen and it can be a significant problem after years in low earth orbit. Plastics might get attacked for example. Using stainless steel or passivated aluminium really helps cutting this effect.


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

[User]
[Flatland] How was Mr. Square able to perceive the three-dimensional world, if his vision is ordinarily restricted to a 1-dimensional line?

Even if being lifted expanded his physical ability to see 3D objects projected onto a 2D plane (from his previous ability to see 2D objects projected onto a 1D plane), his brain has absolutely no way of coping with what he's seeing.

edit: A little late now, but I'm talking about the book - I didn't know there was a movie.

[Assistant] I always imagined it as feeling clarity, like you finally matched the edges of puzzle pieces you didn't know you'd been collecting your whole life. A single, shocking experience that explains so much while creating so many more questions before quickly fading to nothingness. But you never forget how it made you feel.


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

[User]
[The Elder Scrolls] Tsun guards the whalebone bridge and says that anyone who wishes entry into Shor's Hall must first best him in combat. Can the average Nordic warrior really do that?

Like, imagine you're the Stormcloak guy that the Dragonborn first meets in Sovngarde who got killed by an arrow in battle and sent to Sovngarde. You're a frontline warrior, siding your fellow soldiers in a shieldwall and the last thing you see is an arrow heading right for you before you wake up in a dark, starry realm. After the whole Alduin thing is dealt with, you walk towards the hall you see in the distance and meet a giant man guarding the bridge. He tells you that anyone who wishes to enter must first best him in combat. You're a rank and file soldier with basic rudimentary combat training. Do you really expect to beat *that*? The guy looks like he was carved out of an oak tree.

Additionally, what happens if you fail to pass the test?

[Assistant] The challenge is commensurate to the challenger. Tsun doesn't use his full capabilities against every soul that approaches but just enough to force them to put their full strength in the fight. Besting him isn't even required just facing the challenge like a true nord would and if need be facing death like one. Beating him gets you a place of honor at the table but proving you're deserving of the table itself is the main goal of tsun's challenge.


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

[User]
If some of the mass within a system was converted to energy, would there be a drop in the gravity detected from that system?

If not, how does energy relate to gravity the way we are taught mass does?

[Assistant] Only if it radiates away. Gravity depends on the entire energy density of the system (technically, the stress-energy tensor), and the mass is the energy in the rest frame of that object. For example, if you had some kind  of reflective spherical cavity with an extreme density of gamma radiation inside, such that there was an equilibrium between positron-electron production and annihilation, the external gravitational monopole field would be unchanged depending on how much electrons or photons were in it at a given time. If light can escape though, the system would lose mass as it radiates energy away.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] When did Obi-Wan learn that Anakin was still alive?

He heard Palpatine give him the name Darth Vader, but surely he could've reasoned it was a different person given the same title for sithy purposes, as a more reasonable explanation than "the guy I watched burn to death somehow survived"

Was it just one of those "I would've felt it in the force" things?

[Assistant]
In the novelisation he feels Sidious coming to the planet, and decides to let the Force decide Anakin's fate. He reasons he could finish him off - and that it would probably be the merciful thing to do - but risks being caught by Sidious if he does. He decides he's not feeling merciful, and not to risk being found by the Sith Lord who presumably just beat Yoda.

In the aftermath he knows the type of Anakin's injuries, and what sort of treatment he'd need. It's not hard to put two and two together.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do we have two nostrils, and not just one bigger nostril?

Ears makes sense, arms/hands make sense, legs/feet makes sense.. Why two nostrils?

[Assistant] Could you imagine only having one nostril? What would happen when it clogs 30% of the day and you don't have the other to fall back on? What about when you have the sickness? Would you be down with it?


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

[User]
ELI5:Since Base 10 was just create due to the number of fingers on our hands, why are all of our senses logarithmic to a base of 10?

Many scientists believe we began to use base 10 because it was easily countable on fingers, and 10 is not more special of a number than 11 or 9. Why then do our senses like hearing work in log base ten? I.E. in order to hear a sound that appears twice as loud, you need a sound that is 10 times louder.

[Assistant]
It is not that the perceived intensity doubles for a ten-fold increase in stimulus, it is that for a given increase you need a constant multiplier (that is, the difference between perceived intensity of two stimuli is constant for a constant ratio of the stimuli).

This gives you a logarithmic scale, no matter what the base is.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What was the "Force" like in Medieval Times?

Is the Force something that only comes into existence in a futuristic society? If not, how would "Force" users be seen in Medieval (or earlier) times.

[Assistant]
The force exists in many societies that are not technologically advanced, but it takes a long time for force sensitive races to identify and harness their force powers, but which time their technology will usually have advanced greatly as well. Very little is known about the very first force sensitive species to develop and what path they took, so it's very hard to say at what stage in their cultures force use became something spectacular and what effect it had.

Many more recent force sensitive individuals in this situation though have been treated as anything from respected shamans, to witches burned at the steak, to gods (depending on the social climate, and the particular culture)


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

[User]
ELI5: What is a VPN and why do I need one?

I am concerned about internet privacy and security.  I've heard of VPN's, but every time someone tries to explain it to me they like to speak in jargon and make me feel inferior.  Can someone explain the whole thing like I'm 5?

[Assistant]
VPN stands for virtual private network. In a nutshell: Imagine you know there's a computer out in the world somewhere that's both connected to the internet and totally anonymous. Any information going to and from that computer is of no use to whomever might want to try and track you down.  If you could use THAT computer to surf the internet, you would be safe from privacy invasions.

But you can't be at that physical location, whereever it is.

Instead, you create a special connection to that safe computer. This connection is called a VPN. Imagine it's like a private highway from your machine to the safe machine. Only you can use it. Any information you want to get from the internet is sent through the private highway first, to the safe machine. The safe machine then makes the request *for you* and then sends it back along the highway to your machine.  If someone tries to track down who asked for the information, they'll only be able to go as far as the safe machine.

Caveat: as far as being totally anonymous on the internet, a VPN is only as safe as the operator allows it to be. In other words, if the VPN operator tracks your connections to the safe machine, it could be possible to connect your requests to the VPN with requests to the internet. The safest VPNs will not keep logs of your connections and will not provide account information to anyone who asks for it. Not all VPNs are safe enough to ensure complete privacy.


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

[User] ELI5: What is that dizzy feeling you get when you suddenly stand up from where you were laying down?

[Assistant]
That's the blood pressure in your head dropping, since gravity is suddenly pulling away from your head, down along your body, instead of evenly along your body's side. Specifically, lower blood pressure means less oxygen to the brain, which restricts its activity.

It's not particularly dangerous or harmful, but if you have low blood pressure, avoid standing up suddenly, as the drop in pressure may cause you to pass out.


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

[User]
[General Fantasy] Why do Dwarves seem to have so much trouble holding onto their tunnels?

In numerous rpg universes, dwarven tunnels are infested with goblins or demons or something, (ex Moria, Deeproads, etc) why do the dwarves have so much trouble holding their tunnels?

[Assistant]
Two reasons-

1) Where the dwarves live happens to be where everything the surface world doesn't want to deal with goes to hide.

Think about it. When the surface dwellers drive off some great threat to themselves, where do they drive it to? Into the bowels of the earth. Even dragons have to sleep off their battles with surfacekind under the rock. Worse yet, the truly foul things, the old nasty things, that live *inside* the world have to crawl up through the dwarves to get to the surface where are the softest most delicious creatures live.

2) The Dwarves have all the really good natural resources. What does the surface provide? Wood? Water? There's enough of each for every one. Food? there are enough things crawling the surface to feed everything on and inside it. No, the surface has nothing anyone can't get for themselves just by looking for it. The good stuff, the hardest metals, truthfully, metal *period*, everything shiny, and sparkling and precious, all the darkest and most powerful of magics, all the most hidden of secrets, they're all under the dirt, in the rocks, far down where most things don't or can't go- where the dwarves live.

So, between everything with a brain on the surface wanting everything they live on top of, and with everything below trying to go through them to go live the easy life on the surface, they make a lot of enemies they have no intention of making. They're trapped by fate in a bad place, and almost always suffer for it.

The crazy thing is, in almost every situation, it's the dwarves that *have* to be where they are for the world to work correctly.

It's the dwarves that bring metal and jewels and deep magic to the world, but it's also the dwarves that keep it from being lost. It's the dwarves the keep the things below as the things below, and deny the dark things of the surface a place to hide and fester.

They also drive the advance of technology in the worlds they're in, usually. Working rock and metal with flesh hands requires some powerful tools, so dwarves become incredible engineers by simple necessity.

Magic runs like water up top, light and quick, anyone can dip a toe in and find it anywhere if they look. But dwarves, where they find their magic, find it running old, deep, rare but powerful, and it is not to be splashed around like kids playing in a pool. So dwarves learn sturdy ways of using magic, that can handle the power and the potency of what they deal with. Between their powerful magics and their tools, they push forward what can be done on their worlds in amazing ways.

In the end, they're by default the guardians, the border between a surface world that is young and vulnerable, and a darker, older world full horrors best banished to history.

And yet every time, all these forces hammer against them until they are banished and forced to cower or wander, and their essential roles go undone. The darkness above finds a place to hide and grow strong again, the darkness below extends tendrils into the surface with impunity, and yes, the men and the elves and all the others get their metals and their jewels and their deep magic, and the machines left behind, but they get none of the knowledge, and each generation makes weaker and weaker work of it as they toy at performing works that should be done by the masters.

As usual, some flighty races end up moving as is their wont, whether it to be to less accessible lands or even different realms, and it's the less mobile races that end up having to face the mess left behind and fix it all. And yes, that usually requires coming back to the poor but proud dwarves to make amends and give them back their place in the world.


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

[User]
The universe is more than 13 billion years old. But what did it look like when it was only a year old?

Lets say we were to send an indestructible camera back in time a couple billion years in order to take some pictures/video of the universe as it looked exactly one year after the Big Bang. What could we expect to see? What about after ten years? A hundred? A thousand? A million? How long would it take the universe to start looking like it does now?

[Assistant] That would be in the middle of the photon epoch, where the entire universe was a super hot and bright plasma soup consisting of photons, protons, neutrons, and electrons.  It was far too energetic for matter to properly form, so even if you did send a camera back to that time it would be vaporized instantly and become part of the soup.  But if you were to Gandalf your way around the laws of physics in order to send the camera back in the first place, you'd just see a bright white light everywhere.  It would take about another million years for things to cool down enough that space became transparent, and atoms could start coming together.


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

[User]
ELI5: Zinc, iron and copper are heavy metals. Does the body ever fully heal from poisoning of these metals?

Since zinc, iron and copper are heavy metals, the body has no mechanisms to get rid of them if they're in excess, and they can lead to poisoning.

Does the body ever fully recover from poisoning of these metals, then? Some heavy metals, like gadolinium given in MRIs, might stick around the body permanently. Is it the same with these heavy metals necessary for life?

[Assistant]
Just because something is a metal, and in the general sense "heavy" does not magically make it a "heavy metal". Heavy metal poisoning generally refers to lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic.

your body CAN excrete zinc, copper, and iron, and of course you need a certain amount of these metals in your body to live. Iron is a very important part of your blood, so you don't die.

A distinction must be made between normal dietary levels of these metals, chronic toxic levels, acute toxic levels, and excretion disorders.

Copper, Zinc, and Iron have very *low* toxicity, so you really need a heck of a lot of iron (or copper or zinc) *or* an abnormality in how your body disposes of excess metal. Wilson's disease causes a buildup of excess copper, for instance.

tldr; those metals are not "heavy metals" and are not "toxic"


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

[User]
ELI5: When and why did all cereal makers stop giving away toys in their boxes?

Growing up in the UK, this was a standard in almost any cereal box, Kelloggs, Nestle or otherwise. Where have they all gone?

[Assistant]
In 2007, new laws were introduced about how companies could advertise which products to children.

It meant that you could no longer, for example, try to persuade a kid to eat your unhealthy food.

I suspect putting toys in cereal would fall foul of that, and that's why cereal adverts are now aimed at parents, telling them their kids will be well-behaved, high achievers if they eat Coco Pops.


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

[User]
is recession the only way out of inflation in all history?

Is Tucker right about the economy? "inflation will get much worse, only way out of inflation in all history is recession"

my question is why is recession the only way out of inflation? What does happen in recession time that calm down inflation?

[Assistant]
The best example of something that causes downward pressure on prices without causing a recession and/or depressed growth would be a big technological shift in an economy, which is something the government cant really plan on.

In theory, the government could also invest in things that could lower the cost of production. This could be better general infrastructure or energy infrastructure.


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

[User] ELI5: why do soccer players fake injuries so frequently AND dramatically?

[Assistant]
If you can get another player ejected for "hurting" you, your team gets an advantage.

The consequences for flopping aren't severe enough to discourage this, so players do it constantly.

In the NBA egregious flopping can earn a technical foul, but even this isn't much of a deterrent and it's become common.

In the NHL "embellishment" is a penalty that can leave your team a man down, which is usually significant enough to keep the flopping to a fake-high-sticking minimum.


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

[User]
[SPAWN] what exactly is the limit of SPAWNS powers?

Growing up in the 90s SPAWN was one of my favorite heroes. I remember him being pretty powerful, but not to the extent hes being portrayed as now by reddit and other comic forums. It seems you cant have a VS discussion using SPAWN without him automatically being declared the winner. So, who exactly in the comic/ anime realm does he compare to nowadays?! I know for a fact he isnt GOD SPAWN anymore, but Im assuming hes still pretty powerful.

[Assistant]
Theres not really much of an upper boundary on what he can do; his main limitation is he works off a limited reservoir of power that drains whenever he uses his powers in anyway. If the reservoir reaches zero its back to Hell for him (with implicitly less will to resist his masters), and while there are a few ways for him to replenish that energy, its not something he can do on the fly.

Weve seen him use his powers to fire green laser things to heal injuries, change his appearance (not always wo what he wants), teleport (but its painful), create illusory worlds, communicate with nocturnal animals or incite them to violence, etc. He also learned some magic from Houdini and his suit is a living entity that automatically protects him and upgrades after severe injury to adapt to weapons used against it.


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

[User]
I have heard that a disease like measles can wipe out a persons immune history and knowledge. How does this affect autoimmune conditions like allergies, Crohns etc?

Does it reset the response for these too, giving the immune system and chance to correct and learn the appropriate response to these factors?  Thanks!

[Assistant]
The measles virus can infect memory T-cell and B-cells in the lymph nodes, which erases the "memories" of previous infections. This is called immune amnesia.

However, the lymphoid stem cells are still present in the bone marrow, and they continually produce new T-cells and B-cells. Everybody has T-cells and B-cells that want to attack their own tissues, as well as allergens (like peanuts).

Usually, these T-cells and B-cells are suppressed through a number of mechanisms: thymus selection, clonal deletion, immune checkpoints, Bregs and Tregs. When these mechanisms fail, you get autoimmune disorders. Measles does not correct these mechanisms, so it doesn't cure autoimmune disorders.


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

[User] [LoTR] If Golum survived the destruction of the ring (that is, didn't jump in with it), would he regain any semblance of sanity now that it lost its control over him? Or would he be driven even more insane?

[Assistant]
When the One Ring was destroyed, Bilbo greatly accelerated in age, as the effect of the Ring on prolonging his life was removed. He still *lived*, as the Ring had not completely consumed him, and he had been saved from becoming a creature of it due to being removed from it.

Similarly, the weight on Frodo's soul from the Bearing and the Ringwraith's Blade were still present after the Ring was destroyed. Frodo was healed, but never returned to be *whole*, until he sailed to the West.

If Gollum / Smeagol had survived the Destruction of the One Ring, he likely *wouldn't*, as it were  he would age hundreds upon hundreds of years, the one thing he cared for and obsessed over would be destroyed, and so he would die a mortal death.

 But even the wisest cannot see all ends.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does some TV-shows become worse when they become too popular?

Lost, Prison break, Heroes and even Sherlock. They all started great but went downhill as they got more popular. How is it that with more attention and money the directors/producers seem to just fuck things up?

[Assistant]
tv shows start out with a good concrete idea. As a show gets more and more popular, networks put pressure on the creators to be even more popular than they already are. This means that creators have to start expanding on a fairly closed idea. This is the case with how i met your mother. That show was most likely only meant to run for 3 or 4 seasons, and as they kept getting renewed, the producers had to find ways to stretch the show. This generally leads to a lack in quality due to a hastily put together filler plot. This is what happens to most shows that get extremely popular.
tl;dr - shows have an ending already, you're just watching the filler.


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

[User]
End of Wall-E, were the field of plants there the whole time.

At the very end of Wall-E, before the credits, the camera pans up and reveals a field full of plants. **Were these plants there the entire time** and EVE didn't scan that area, **or are we panning into the future** as we had just left the captain telling the crew about farming.

[Assistant] The plants' seeds were already in the ground and growing during the early events on Earth that we saw, but they hadn't sprouted yet. WALL-E finds the early growing plant in the fridge because it's sheltered from the constant sandstorms there. The other plants, being exposed, have a harder time growing, so they didn't surface until after WALL-E and EVE had left for the Axiom.


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

[User]
ELI5: Kernels (computing)

I hear they're important, but I've never heard a good explanation of them.

[Assistant]
The kernel is the heart of an operating system.  The most basic kernel does very few things.  It manages and restricts access to memory, it manages processes and threads, it manages communication between processes, and controls access to the disks.

1) Memory access.  In order to run more than one program at a time, you need to have space in memory set aside for each program to use.  Each program needs to be restricted to using it's own space in memory, and *only* it's own space.  If you don't do this, badly behaving programs will damage data from other programs.  Commonly, each program won't even know the memory used for other processes exists.

2) Process management. In order to run more than one program at once, you need some code to keep track of all the programs, and to schedule time for each of them to use the processor.

In most desktop and server operating systems, this is done in some semblance of fairness, allowing each program to request time on the processor, and rotating through each program in turn to give roughly equal access to each, though a process can give up some of it's time voluntarily.

There are other ways to do this, like real-time computing, which allows programs to request hard deadlines, a time that they *must* be finished processing by.  This is often used in some kind of control system, where the computer must take input, and process it quickly enough to respond to whatever is happening in the real world.

There's also the fact that most modern computers have more than one processor available.  This can allow programs to split themselves into multiple pieces that are more or less independent, in order to run in parallel to each other.  Making sure that programs actually gain performance out of this takes some adjustments to how you schedule processes.

3) Communication between processes.  Often, programs will be divided into smaller units that perform some task, and then hand a result off to another part of the same program.  Or you want to be able to take advantage of multiple processors available, and run some of your code on each.  Or your code uses some standard library or device driver in order to perform a standard task, or to talk to some piece of hardware.

To split your code into multiple processes, you need a way to communicate.  In kernel land, this mostly takes the form of semaphores, pipes, message queues and shared memory.

Semaphores let two or more programs control how they execute in relation to each other.  It's essentially a flag that each program can raise and lower to let the other process know they've reached some specific point in their code.  They're commonly used to let parallel processes share some common resource without stomping all over the other processes using it.  If the flag is up, one program is using it, and any other programs using the same resource shouldn't touch it until the flag goes down.

Pipes are common in the Unix based world.  They take the output from one program, and feed it into another.  Usually, they're very temporary, only existing long enough to transition from one program to another.

Message queues are used for longer term communication.  One program can put data into a queue, and when another related program gets it's turn on the processor, it can read from the queue.  Messages stack up in sequence, so the reading program reads them in the same order they were sent.

Shared memory is actually just a careful breaking of a concern from 1).  Normally, each program should be kept separate in memory, so they don't stomp all over each other.  But, if they want to communicate large pieces of data, the kernel can set aside another piece of memory that they both have access to.  Each program can read and write to this spot in memory when it's their turn.

4) Disk access.  Programs need to have access to disk, and while it's less critical than memory and processor time that it's shared equally, you also don't want programs stomping all over each other's data.

The more important point is actually that disk access is slow.  In computing time scales, it's glacially slow.  It's so slow that it would be a really stupid idea for the processor to be idle while waiting for a response to come back when it could run through a few more turns for other programs in the time it would have just been sitting there.

The kernel controls this.  When a program requests disk input or output, it will send the request off to the disk, then put the program in a waiting state.  When the response comes back, it triggers an interrupt, a special circuit in the processor that stops everything and loads up the kernel to process the response.  The kernel then loads whatever program was waiting for the response, and lets it finish what it was doing as if the processor *was* sitting idle instead of letting other programs cut in line.

---

You'll notice that all of these functions for the kernel have something in common.  They're all about letting you run more than one program at a time.  Before we'd written any operating system's and kernel's, running one program at a time is just how using a computer worked.  You'd manually load a program into memory, manually start it processing, and the computer would do only that one thing until it had finished and gave you some output.

Also, it should be pointed out that modern kernels do more than just these four things.  They typically come with all kinds of additional tools to make writing programs easier.  A modern kernel is a one-stop shop for every programming shortcut you might need.

But, if you wanted to write something that would be called a kernel, at a minimum, you'd want it to do these four things.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do dogs tilt their heads when they are confused or trying to comprehend something?

[Assistant]
They are rotating their head to hear better.

its the same response as when they are trying to hear where sound is coming from.

as humans, we translate turning head like that to confusion.

they can be confused, i  guess, but the whole head movement thing is related to hearing things.
if you ever had a dog, that thing also happens when they are not confused at all.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is mint the optimal flavor toothpaste and mouthwash?

[Assistant]
We strongly associate the sensation of mint with coolness & freshness. Naturally, toothpaste/mouthwash companies want you to feel fresh when you use their product, as that will make you trust it more - so they flavour it with mint.

Mint contains a compound that is sort of the opposite of capsaicin (found in chillies) - it tricks your body into thinking it is experiencing cold.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is chewing on ice bad for your teeth?

I love chewing on ice but every time I do theres a little guilty voice that tells me I shouldnt because Ive heard its bad for your teeth.  Ive also heard that chewing ice can also mean that youre anemic?

[Assistant]
A craving or frequent desire to chew on ice can indeed indicate anemia.  If this sounds like you, ask your doctor for a blood test.

Ice is hard, and unless it's very thin, doesn't break super-easily.  Our teeth can handle chewing on hard stuff sometimes, but if you do it frequently it can wear down your teeth or even cause fractures.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did early humans deal with the removal of umbilical cords?

Were early humans able to cleanly separate the mother from child? Did these separations result in "belly buttons" as we know them?

[Assistant]
If you don't cut the cord then this happens:

Child is born with cord leading into mother.  Placenta (afterbirth) comes out within an hour or two, and dries out/shrivels off.  Belly button closes off like normal.

Plus human mothers carry their young, so it's not like they need to be ready to run at a moment's notice :)


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

[User]
ELI5 why do bikes for men have that top tube in the frame?

I understand why it would be easier for women not to have that high bar in the bike frame as it would not work with long skirts and dresses. But as the... area, so to say, is quite sensitive for men, why does their bike frame have a top tube?

[Assistant]
A well fit men's bike should never really get in the way of their balls when standing over it. Stunt bikes tend to be very short, and mountain bikes need to be as strong as possible, which a top bar is. BMX bikes actually are made with a slanted top bar, specifically to avoid "racking" your nuts.

The lower top bar (or missing top bar) was put in place mostly for women's fashion. Originally it allowed biking while wearing a dress. Later, tight pants. The low bar allows mounting without having to lift your leg really high. This actually makes women's bikes really popular with older women, who are (at a younger age than men) more likely to have hip mobility issues.

The downside of a lower (or missing) top bar is that you lose a lot of the strength a traditional top bar adds to the bike. You're left with either a less resilient bike, a heavier bike, or a much more expensive build. When women still had to wear dresses, they were also expected to ride in a much more reserved manner, so the weaker frame wouldn't have been as much of an issue.

You can still find modern bikes made with this lower or missing top bar, but if you look at top of the line women's road or mountain bikes, you'll find they look very much like a men's bikes. Giant's women's road bikes actually have a slight nod to the dropped top bar, with a slightly downward slanting top bar - which is more aesthetic than functional. Most of the changes have to do with the parts on the bike (special saddles, smaller gap between handle and brake or handle and shifters, and the frame usually accounts for a shorter torso. Generally, more ergonomic choices (though some cosmentic) and less... well sexist.

For a casual bike to ride around town, where weight doesn't matter, a dropped or non existent top tube is going to be easier to get on and off, and more easily set to a variety of riders. In fact, many bike share companies choose this set up for that reason. However, once something is labeled as "women's" it is really hard to convince men to get over that trend en masse.


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

[User] [Warhammer 40k] I am an average citizen on a planet controlled by the Dark Mechanicus. What is life like for me?

[Assistant]
There is no average citizen on such a world. They are cesspools of chaos and as such there are no justice, laws, or government. Only individual power. Ether you dominate and enslave your neighbor or he does it to you.

Which amounts in the end to you ether being at the top of the food chain, a genius scientist generously gifted and cared for by Tzeentch pumping out plans for war-machines and weapons and with an army of underlings to boss around and/or use in your nightmarish experiments, or the bottom ,you are a slave with no name laboring in a mine kilometers under the surface and will never see the open sky again.
If you are in between then you get brutalized by your superiors while you yourself brutalize those inferior to you.


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

[User]
ELI5: I feel like I'm decent looking but why do I look uglier in pictures?

Not an insecure post. Just a general question. I think I'm decent looking when I look at myself in the mirror, but when I see pictures of myself I don't like them. Most of the time I find myself looking uglier than what I think I look like. Also some of my features in the mirror look good but when I see pictures they stick out. Like my hairline. I feel like I'm going bald when I see my pictures, but it seems fine when I look at myself in the mirror.

I have to "pose" and stand on an angle and stuff to get a picture. But when I'm standing in front of the mirror, I have no issues about how I look.

It's like your voice. When you listen to a recording it doesn't sound anything like you think it sounds.

[Assistant]
Your image in the mirror is what you're used to seeing.  It's what your mental image of yourself looks like.  In your mind, your image in the mirror **is** you.

However, almost no one has a completely symmetrical face, and when you look at a picture, you're seeing a non-mirrored image of yourself that doesn't quite match your mental image of what you look like. So since it doesn't look like "you", you view it as being less attractive.

Although it might surprise you to know that your friends and family have the opposite opinion.  They're used to seeing your non-mirrored face, so to them, your image in the mirror is the less-attractive one.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Darth Sidious decides to give the Separatists a clone army and the Republic a Droid army. How are things different?

Would the war be vastly different? Would Order 66 have been successful?

[Assistant]
The only difference would have been the way the Jedi were exterminated. Part of the reason the Republic was given clones was so the Jedi could form bonds with their soldiers. Become friends and allies, comrades and respected friends, and they would never suspect the blaster in the back. Plus, the idea of fighting alongside literal slave soldiers helped keep the force and its need to be balanced muddy and off-base. The Jedi had to constantly wrestle with the fact that their most trusted wartime comrades had no freedom or choice.

If the Republic had used droids, the Jedi would have not formed such bonds, or been so conflicted over their role. HOWEVER, they would be upset about their need to kill living beings in order to preserve the Republic.

It's likely that far more Jedi would have fallen to the dark side if they were forced to kill clones. Clones with thoughts, feelings and fears. These dark jedi could turn on their former Jedi brethren, and the order could have torn itself apart.

HOWEVER, even though the idea of converting so many Jedi to the dark side seems nice for a Sith lord, it presents the same problems that plagued the old sith order. Factions would have erupted, infighting would have been rampant, and more than a few Jedi who clung to the light would have gone deeper into hiding than they otherwise would. Palpatine would have had to deal with dozens, maybe hundreds, of rivals who wanted to exercise their new dark powers. They wouldn't have been Sith, but they would still be just as awful and annoying. Plus, he would have had little ability to directly control them like he directed the course of the war itself. That could have created far more problems than it solved.


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

[User]
How was Millikan able to calculate the charge of an electron so precisely?

I can't wrap my head around how he was able to calculate a value for charge in the neighborhood of 10^-19 using such a crude measurement system.  Anything could have impacted the measurements, from his own fatigue in eyeballing the oil drop motion and size, to slight variations in the content of the air in the system, to the vibrations of the apparatus, to his electrical measurements being imprecise due to effects like resistive heating or voltage fluctuations.

I suppose all these could be made to be less impactful by measuring more drops, OR by the charge amount on each drop being a relatively small integer, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the precision he was able to achieve with his experiment.  (I realize he was off by something like 2%, that still doesn't change the fact that we're talking about quantities in the 10^-19 range)

I must be looking at this the wrong way, can anyone help me?

[Assistant]
The fact that we are talking about 1E-19 range is largely irrelevant.

He had 4 significant figures in his result (the result he reported in his Nobel lecture was 4.774(5)E-10 statC). Since he was off by 2%, that tells you that he really only had 2 significant figures.

You are right about what all could have affected his measurements, but if you consider that he had 2 significant figures, this comes down to "how was he able to measure his parameters down to 2 significant figures", and to answer that, you need to consider what his parameters were:

 * Density of oil: not a big deal to measure to 2 significant figures macroscopically
 * Density of air: likewise
 * Gravitational acceleration: likewise
 * Droplet radius: doable with microscopes of the time; also, because droplets are spherical at that scale, not affected by droplet movement or observer movement.
 * Droplet speed: you measure transit time across a known distance in the field of view of the microscope, so you need a ruler that's good to 2 significant figures on the scale of the microscope he was using, and the ability to measure time to 2 decimal places. The ruler was doable with his technology, and time measurements were not an issue because his droplets were moving slowly
 * Voltage between the plates: no problem measuring that to 2 decimal places in kilovolt range (which is what he was using) with technology of the time

Edit: most of the 19 decimal points in his result come from droplet volume, so from cubing the radius of a droplet. If you can measure radius to 1E-6m, you can measure volume to 1E-18m^3 . Measuring down to a micron was well within the microscope technology of the time.


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

[User] ELI5: Tumblr. What is it? How does it work? Why is it so popular?

[Assistant]
Tumblr is a blogging platform. It's typically best for short-form post. Think of it as an in between Twitter and a traditional blog.

Tumblr essentially allows you to post text, photos, videos, etc. It also makes it very easy to share content between blogs. For instance if you like a particular photo you can "reblog" the post, with credit, to your blog. The entire process is pretty easy to get a hang of if you are just starting out yet still offers the ability to professionally blog easily.

Tumblr became popular with youth and this popularity gradually led the platform to be adopted by journalists, artists, and other companies as a way to spread their content easily.


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

[User]
[Zelda] Why do some towns/settlements appear to completely lack any way to defend themselves against the wide variety of extremely dangerous threats that roam Hyrule?

This mostly applies to the newest Zelda game but there are examples in other games as well. Anyway, I couldn't help but notice that basically all the towns occupied by Hylians are dangerously vulnerable.

Take Hateno Village for example; it has no walls, like one guard, and is located terrifyingly close to a large population of incredible dangerous monsters. Kakoriko and Lurelin Village are other examples as well.

So my question is why? Aren't the residents of these towns worried about being raided and slaughtered by a smorgasbord of lethal enemies? This has always bothered me particularly given the fact that Hyrule's central government (and presumably its army) has collapsed and everyone's sorta fending for themselves. And its not like they are oblivious to these threats, several people in the game have noted how dangerous Hyrule is, yet theyre still content with living totally exposed in a perilous world.

You would think that the first thing the villagers of Hateno or Kakariko would have done was build walls to prevent a marauding band of lizalfos or a stray guardian from totally wiping the city off the face of the earth.

Even more baffling is the fact that everyone else seems to appreciate the dangers of the world around them and have taken the necessary steps to defend themselves. Gerudo Village was smart enough to build walls and Goron City has boiling rivers of molten lava to protect it. Rito Village, Zoras Domain, and Tarrey Town are built on strategically defensible sites with steep cliffs and moat-like lakes. So why didn't the other towns follow suit and sure up their defenses and how is it possible that they havent already been totally ravaged by the one of the variety of threats that exist in Hyrule?

[Assistant]
Regular folks are actually pretty adept at defending themselves against low-level monsters and high level monsters don't start showing up until well after Link wakes up. Maybe they just never needed extra precaution for the past century or so.

Also, the monsters we do see are all territorial. They don't really seem interested in traveling or expanding, which is why they're only threats to travelers who cross monster-infested lands.


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

[User] ELI5: How would a programming language designed for a quantum computer work in comparison to a mundane one?

[Assistant]
Computers, on the very lowest level at least, can only do very few calculations with 0 and 1 in binary.
The most commonly used programming languages have nothing to do with how that works directly. When you write something in Java for example, you need to compile your code before the computer can actually run it. The compiler then turns the code into a different code that the computer can actually use.
So it is not unreasonable to assume that there will be different compilers for quantum computers, that can convert the same code you wrote into code that a quantum computer can use.


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

[User]
[Dc Comics] Does the general populace know about Martian Manhunter? How's he perceived, what do they think of him?

What with being an ali**e**n and all. I mean sure Supes is also an alien, but at least he looks human.

Do they know what his power s**e**t consists of? Specifically his shape-shifting? Which personally would scare me.

[Assistant]
Martian Manhunter actually has many secret identities. He's been here since before Superman landed, and he's a world traveler. He spent, and continues to spend, a lot of time battling injustice in countries where the Justice League and other high-profile heroes seldom go.

People tend to accept him, because he uses his telepathic and shapeshifting abilities to choose a form the locals trust. In the US, he often goes by John Jones, detective. But if he needed the trust of someone with no reason to open up to Det. Jones, he could just as easily be an illegal immigrant, little old lady, scientist, underpants-wearing no-powers street vigilante, or your favorite family member.

His public image is an odd one. Ordinary people know him as a polite heavy hitter who fights major threats or catches criminals  the green, caped muscle-man. They think of him as a different, more shy Superman. But the truly horrifying extent of his powers isn't widely known to humans outside of antiterror/espionage circles.