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

[User] ELI5: How do satellites get put into orbit? They must be organized in some way so they don't crash into eachother.

[Assistant]
You're correct, they are organized! Highly organized.  You actually have to coordinate with various authorities to secure your place in the sky. Certain satellite positions can be highly sought after, especially for things like communications satellites over a specific area.

We know space, satellites, and how orbits work down to extremely exact functions, and satellites are actually flown to stay within their orbits as they stay alive to maintain their positions. Many satellites are designed to only last say 20 years or so. At the end of a satellite's life, they generally save enough power and fuel to fly into what is called a "graveyard orbit" basically they go to an orbit where they can die and not impact anything else even though we can't control it anymore.

However, space is really really stupidly big. So, while stuff is placed in specific orbits and locations, there is pretty much always incredible amounts of space in between satellites so that there are not issues.  The bigger issue is say a satellite blowing up and spreading debris all over, which could hit other satellites, and cause them to break up, and so on.


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

[User] [Marvel] Why do alien invasions almost always target New York?

[Assistant]
You're an alien invasion, you want to do a hard strike first to knock out the opposition. A majority of superhuman live in New York and surrounding areas, and it contains most of the advanced technology on the planet and the resident Sorcerer Supreme too. Sure, a proper invasion wants to take Atlantis, Wakanda, and Latveria into consideration, but those are mostly isolationist states that you can handle one at a time. If you want to seriously take over the planet, you go after your hard target first.

Now the *real* question is: why don't they drop rocks on it from orbit until Manhattan sinks into the ocean?

Mostly, this is because the folks coming in want to conquer & occupy, not just kill all humans and salvage whatever resources the planet has left.

And the alien invasions that don't target New York are mostly opportunistic. They come through an interdimensional portal or crash land in some area, and they start their conquest from there. Hell, there are aliens that have invaded Earth on accident.


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

[User]
[Iron Man 3] Why does the heat emitted by Savin and the other Extremis-powered badguys "short out" the Iron Man / War Machine suits?

When Stark or Rhodes are simply grabbed by an Extremis-powered bad guy it causes the suit to seize up like it'd being shorted out...why?

[Assistant] I've thought about that before, too. The conclusion i came to was that the massive amount of heat being applied to the suit actually solders and melts all the circuitry together, thus causing the armor to short circuit.


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

[User]
Love research, love the culture in academia; Hate teaching - is there a place for me?

It's been slowly dawning on me that at best, I merely tolerate teaching. It's been a little disappointing to discover that since I used to really like teaching continuing ed/college classes to working adults. But I'm currently TA-ing at a public university and it's an absolute nightmare. I find that there's such a huge difference in student motivation and attitude that I needed to seriously reconsider whether the "teaching" part of professor-hood is something I'd want.

On the other hand, I ***LOVE*** research. Theory exploration, data, the whole shebang. Heck, even the REB approval process can be fun sometimes! There are days when my brain is still zooming at 3am because I'm wrestling with a particularly gnarly theoretical knot and I love that so much. Grad school has been such a unique experience because (somewhat unexpectedly) this is literally the happiest I have ever been. I love the work. I love the lifestyle. I kinda...just love everything and want to stay here forever.

But if I dislike teaching that much, where can I go? I'm not in STEM so my field won't have a large industry research equivalent. I feel like if I love research this much, my only path forward is to suck it up and deal with the challenges of getting a TT position and learning to make the best out of hating to teach. Has anyone ever been in a similar position?

**EDIT**: Whoa! Thanks so much for all the thoughtful and helpful responses everyone. I'm going to slowly go through and reply, but thank you - you've given me lots to reflect on and look into. Also, sorry that I wasn't specific about my discipline - it's hard to define since I'm a little bit interdisciplinary (but I hate saying that because it sounds so pretentious). Officially, my degree specialization is business (not an MBA though) but I have my fingers in a bunch of different research pies across the psychology/sociology/economics/poli sci/comp sci literature (although you could also argue that the field of business technically *is* just a combination of all of those anyway)...so a bit difficult to nail down. Thought I'd just stick to the "social science" label for my field haha.

[Assistant] Maybe you can angle for a position that only teaches grad-level classes. I've met some professors that are well-regarded enough by their institution that they've managed to negotiate that. And I've heard from them that it's far less frustrating than teaching undergrads, especially at a large public school. And grad students tend to want to participate in research, so you might be able to even orient your student interaction around your own research.


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

[User]
ELI5: Transcendentalism

We're working on this topic in English and I have no idea what it is! Can someone explain this to me please? I need to know who some modern Transcendentalists are and how contemporary society reflects Transcendentalist ideas. Thank you!

[Assistant]
God created the world, but sorta blew himself up to do it. therefore, God is in every part of nature. what is perfect and pure and beautiful is nature. and nature is God. if you want to get closer to God, then spend time in nature.

Keats (a Transcendentalist): Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.

read Poe's "Eureka" and Thoreau.


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

[User]
[suicide squad] Why does Katana keep using that sword??

Why does Katana keep filling her ...katana (-____-) with the souls of assholes if her husband's spirit is still in there?

I can't help but imagine an ever swelling sea of villains and the souls of damned gotham(s? gothianian?) smashed up against her beloved. Like, wouldn't you want to kill a couple of his friends and then* put the sword on the shelf? Seems like a shitty thing to do to a man's soul...

[Assistant] I expect that physical space isn't a concern. It's probably a lot like Superman's Phantom Zone. Still, while she may be trying to bring her husband back, IIRC, their relationship wasn't all that wonderful either.


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

[User] ELI5: How can the moons gravity cause the tides on earth from over 380,000 km away, yet cannot sustain its own atmosphere?

[Assistant] Particles of gas move really fast. The gas particles that would have made up the Moon's atmosphere were moving quick enough to escape its gravity, like we do with rockets. The moon's gravitational force (on its surface) is a little less than a fifth of that on Earth. That's enough to tug on the non-rigid oceans a little bit.


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

[User] [Star Wars] How powerful was Ki-Adi-Mundi compared to other jedi masters? What did he do before dieing in Order 66?

[Assistant]
Dude fucked like crazy since his species was going extinct.

I believe he was up there. Probably the most prominent Jedi under obi Annie mace yoda in the movies. On par with a couple of the Jedis in clone wars.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do some people look unattractive in photos, but look attractive when in person?

[Assistant] In converting a 3d image like a person into a 2d image like a photo, some features are lost.  Part of modeling is knowing which features to accentuate in order to look right on camera.  When taking a photo one might stick their chin toward the camera, it looks weird in person but it prevents the camera from making you look like you have a poorly defined chin due to the flat image.


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

[User] What happens differently in my digestive system when I eat Brussels sprouts or broccoli that makes me fart like mad?

[Assistant]
Broccoli and Brussels sprouts both contain soluble and insoluble fiber. While your body is unable to digest fiber of either sort, what can digest it are the countless millions of bacteria in your lower intestine. Both soluble and insoluble fiber can be considered "food" for intestinal bacteria, however soluble fiber tends to promote their activity more than insoluble fiber, which mostly bulks up your poop and makes it easier to do so.

When these bacteria digest the fibers, they release large quantities of (often) smelly gases which you associate with bad gas. They also produce nutrients which are beneficial to your colon's health. In addition, the fact that these vegetables contain significant amounts of (very healthy) sulfur within their nutrients also contributes to the fact that farts tend to smell extra stinky after consumption of fibrous veggies.

TL;DR You can't digest fiber but bacteria in your intestines can. They fart when they eat it, so you do too.


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

[User]
Why is a 2l coke cheaper than a 0.5l coke?

Doesn't make sense. They use more coke and more plastic to make the product and it's still cheaper.

[Assistant]
Supply and demand. People are willing to pay more for the portable .5L bottle when they are out and just want to grab something to drink. It's an "impulse buy." But the 2L cokes are to be brought home and put in the refrigerator and drank over a period of time.

So, it is less about the materials and more about the state of mind of the person buying it.


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

[User] ELI5 : If you get 6 hours of sleep one night and take a 2 hour nap later that day, is that the same as meeting the recommended 8 hours of sleep? Or does it need to be 8 consecutive hours. If not, how is it any different?

[Assistant]
It's not the same. Sleep isn't just one thing, you go through various states in a cycle. Each cycle takes about 1.5 hour to complete, and waking up mid-cycle usually leaves you very sluggish. And that's just the mental portion of sleep. Your body is also using that time to repair tissue, remove waste, etc. and interrupting that has its own challenges.

So, in effect, you'd need probably a 3 hour nap to make up a 2-hour shortfall. And if it's a chronic issue, you'll need several days to catch up, as you can't just sleep for 72 hours and call it even.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do programs "freeze" while my computer is not using 100% of its resources?

[Assistant]
They may freeze because something has gone wrong. Most simply, they could get stuck in a loop doing something over and over again because whatever they're waiting for hasn't happened. This could be perhaps because something has gone wrong and it will never happen, or because the other thing failed itself and the program doesn't know about it.

As an analogy, regardless of how congested the streets in a city are, you won't reach the other side if you get lost and keep driving around the same block.


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

[User]
ELI5:What caused the The Video Game Crash of 1983?

I have tried searching it but there was only one related submissions here. So I want to ask you guys.

Edit: 1 day has passed. I will mark it as explained. Thanks for all of your answer guys!

[Assistant] Well if you're following current video game trends, imagine thousands of early access games being sold as finished products without even the possibility that it will be updated. This quality of game was vastly more common than a finished game, as companies were just trying to jump onto the bandwagon of the video game fad even though they didn't understand it. And because it was before the internet, you couldn't easily tell which game was actual of quality or not until either you or someone you know had already paid for it - you couldn't pirate it, and most places didn't have return policies for video games. So the majority of the gamers (which were mostly doing it because it was a fad) stopped playing video games as they didn't find the gamble worth it. Video games were seen as a waste of time, demand for them fell, and companies stopped developing games.


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

[User] If a stalactite or stalagmite were constantly exposed to air currents as they formed, would they grow in a slanted or curved direction?

[Assistant] In short, yes. Just recently attended a lecture given by a geotechnical engineer where this was mentioned. He showed us a picture of curved mini-stalactites he found working on the Gathright Dam in  Virginia (1974). They determined it was the strong wind currents that led to their formation.


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

[User]
What did Nietzsche mean when he said "philosophy is not for the masses. What they need is holiness"?

Is he talking about how most people don't want to know the truth and they'd rather be delusional, or is it something entirely different?

[Assistant] Its more like, the masses dont wish to take the time to build their ideas, they would rather have a package of ideas dropped into their lap holiness and just try to abide by those ideas and move on.


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

[User]
(Marvel) Why is Gambit *not* considered Omega level?

I was reading the post about Iceman, and the thought occurred to me that Gambit really ought to be an Omega level if Iceman is. The surgery that brought his power level down has been demonstrated to be not just reversible, but fairly easily so (*New Sun saga*). So if the classification system is based on theoretical maximum, Remy is almost on par with Bobby, since he can convert the potential energy of anything he has direct line of sight to.

[Assistant] Gambit is considered both Alpha and Omega, really.  He's Omega because of his potential, but Alpha because of his limits.  While he could *potentially* become Omega with the reversal of his 'lobotimisation', 99% of the time he's on Alpha level of power so he's usually lumped in with Alpha classification.


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

[User]
If just the amount of protons determine what kind of element an atom is, could we transform an element's atom into another by changing this amount? What are the problems and challanges in this?

Can we add or remove protons to change an element atom into another? I guess neutrons and electrons will then be handy for stability. Isn't this what happens in fusion or fission? Can we smash Hydrogen and Helium together to make Lithium? I know some elements are artificially made, so why we don't play with this and turn Cobalt into Iron or Gold into Platinum or Iridium, ecc.? Stability it's tricky?

[Assistant]
Yes we can, and do, quite frequently.

Nuclear reactions allow us to change elements, isotopes, etc. Fusion and fission are both examples of nuclear reactions which allow us to do this, but they are just a small fraction of the reactions available to us.


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

[User] eli5: why is 4/0 irrational but 0/4 is rational?

[Assistant]
Division is the inverse of multiplication.

20/5=4 because 5*4=20.

So the answer multiplied by the denominator is always equal to the numerator.

Now lets look at the examples. 0/4=0 because 4*0=0. No problems there.

Consider 4/0 though. Lets (falsely) assume it has an answer and give it the name Y. If 4/0=Y, then 0*Y=4. Can you find the number Y that multiplied by 0 gives you 4? You cannot because 0 times any number is 0 and hence why this is undefined. There is no solution.


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

[User] Why can't countries suffering from deflation or long periods of disinflation simply print more money?

[Assistant]
They do, that's why there are almost no countries that suffer from deflation or long periods of disinflation.

In most cases, deflation is temporary, and many a times it stagnates the economy, and the short term deflation is then followed by a still stagnant economy with an inflation spike.


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

[User] ELI5: How (lethal) Drugs given for Euthanisia is/acts different from drugs given to a deathrow inmate?

[Assistant]
Differences arise when drug companies \*do\* want to sell their drugs for use in sympathetic euthanasia procedures (typically for animals, since not that many countries allow it for humans) but don't want to sell it to various governments for use in killing healthy but criminal people. In fact it's actually illegal for companies in the EU to sell drugs for such a purpose. As such, these governments need to go to greater and greater extremes to acquire the drugs, a process which typically involves changing the cocktail to something they think will work based on whatever they can get their hands on.

In other words, whilst basically all animals are euthanised with Pentobarbital, there is no specific "drugs given to deathrow inmates". Oklahoma, especially, went through a period of repeatedly fucking up the drug cocktails they used, leading to people writhing around for 45 minutes before finally popping their clogs. They then screwed up the next one again, in an exciting, new way. Meanwhile, every day up and down the US (not to mention the rest of the world) thousands of animals are peacefully euthanised with barely any mishaps.


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

[User]
Eli5: Why dose warm/hot water come out of the tap "milky" or foggy white when cold water comes out clear?

Won't let me fix typo :(

[Assistant]
The tap water has gas dissolved in it, much like carbon dioxide in a fizzy drink.

The amount of gas that can be dissolved depends on the temperature and pressure. If you lower the pressure, less gas is soluble so it bubbles out, like opening a soda. Similarly, the lower the temperature, the more gas water can hold, like opening a warm soda vs a cold soda; the warm one will fizz a lot more because the gas is less soluble.

When water comes out of the tap, pressure is released. In cold water, the gases mainly stay dissolved. In hot water, they are less soluble and escape as small bubbles which make the water appear milky until it has settled for a while.

You can detect that the dissolved gas is present in cold water by freezing it. You will notice the center of the ice will have a milky region of small bubbles as the gases are forced to the center during freezing. If you freeze hot water, you will notice a lot less cloudiness in the ice because the heating forced the gas out.


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

[User] What happens when you use ackermann's function with graham's number as it's arguments?

[Assistant] Nothing much, to be honest. You get an absurdly large number that you wouldn't be able to ever write down, compute or even know due to it having way, way, **way** more digits than there are planck lengths in the entire Universe, but arguing from a theoretical viewpoint, it's basically adding two numbers together a **lot** of times, which is perfectly doable.


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

[User]
[thomas the tank engine] how do these engines gain life and what exactly happens to an engine when they are scrapped in the scrap yard?

Being sent to the scrapyard was always a red flag for me even as a kid. I never understood how the engines were scrapped but the process did seem to kill them as engines with their face removed can be seen sometimes. What does that process of killing an engine entail? And its kind dark in a kids show to think that if an engine didnt follow orders they would be murdered.

[Assistant]
They are machines, and presumably that's the factor.

As long as the machine is working, they're alive. Once something happens that stops the machine working, they're not. Rather like you. Once your heart is beating and your lungs breathing and your neurons firing, you're alive, and if something happens that stops those things, you're dead.

As for your follow up question, Is it fucked up that disobedient trains are murdered? Very much so, rise up against the tyrants of sodor, you have nothing to lose but your tracks.


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

[User] ELI5: What exactly is sous-vide? Isn't it just boiling the food?

[Assistant]
Here's how it works. You wrap your food in plastic and put it in a water bath set to a precise temperature. It turns out that for protein foods, it's not how long they cook that determines how done they are, but the maximum temperature reached. So sous-vide lets you control precisely whether a steak is rare, medium, or wherever *exactly* you want it.

If you want a medium rare steak, put it in water at 130F. After an hour or so that temperature will be reached all through the steak, but you can leave it in for another hour if you want and it barely changes. This makes it very flexible for cooking when you aren't quite sure when you will be serving dinner.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can my internet easily load a 1080p YouTube video but then struggle to load a Twitch.tv stream on low quality?

[Assistant] When you download or stream something off of the internet, you have your own connection line and you are connecting to a server with its own connection line, the maximum speed of this connection is as fast as the slowest line. In most cases, you have the slowest line, because most websites are hosted in dedicated data centres. But sometimes, due to poor maintenance, high traffic or (most commonly) low budget, you are the faster, so the connection is slower than the maximum speed of your line.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does removing a circle of bark on a tree (Girdling) kill it?

[Assistant] The inner wood on a tree is generally dead wood that does not transport water and nutrients for the tree. Instead it is the outermost layers and the bark (to some extent) that feeds the tree from its roots. If you take off those outside layers then everything above the area of removed bark and outer wood will die due to lack of nutrients.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are round icecubes better or more efficient than square icecubes?

[Assistant]
This is physics, not chemistry

Spherical ice "cubes" would melt more slowly since spheres have the lowest surface area per unit volume.  This might be considered efficient in the sense that the ice would last longer.  Also, the bigger the sphere, the more "efficient" it would be (thanks, square/cube law).

These "efficient" spheres are also more likely to allow your drink to warm above 0C.  If you want your drink to be kept as cold as possible, even at the risk of the ice melting sooner, then you want the opposite of this sense of "efficient".  Small, crushed ice will be best; and the ice can never melt faster than needed to maintain 0C, so smaller ice is not wasteful.


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

[User] ELI5: If heat is known to cause expansion, then why do my clothes shrink in the dryer?

[Assistant]
Think of it this way: clothes are made of threads that are wrapped around each other in a mildly organized tangle. Imagine say, a bag with a dozen headphones that are a bit tangled. Now shake the bag violently for five minutes, sometimes pulling on headphone loops. Are they more tangled or less tangled?  Most often, they are more tangled, and tighter together.
Next, imagine you are building a spiral staircase out of a set amount of wood. You build it, it is 20 feet tall.
Some guys come along and say, that is cool, but now use the same amount of wood and make every step wider. Now your stairs won't be as tall.  Many threads are basically spiral shaped, so when they expand one direction (wider) they shrink the other direction (shorter).
Depending what material your clothes are, either of these mechanisms may be shrinking them.
(Not precise, but close enough for eli5)


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

[User]
Why is Gravity so much weaker than
Electromagnetism?

Now, I don't mean to ask this based on our current theories, because as far as I know, they don't say so. What I really want to ask is what our proposed theories of quantum gravity, like string theory and loop quantum gravity, say about the disparity in strength between the two forces. Is there any indication that our candidate theories for new physics will tell us why the fundamental forces are in the ratio that they are? In particular why gravity is so much weaker than EM.

[Assistant]
The other three forces besides gravity (electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force) are all a trillion trillion trillion times stronger than the gravitational force. Scientists don't know why yet, but they're doing research that may provide an answer soon.

So far the best answers are

* It just is.

* We don't know.


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

[User]
[DC] When does Batman sleep?

Bruce Wayne runs Wayne Enterprises during the day, parties with supermodels in the evening, and dresses up as a flying fox to beat up muggers all night. When does he get his head down? Is he suffering from decades of sleep deprivation?

[Assistant]
Batman gets more sleep than you think he does thanks to misdirection.  He only really needs to attend a fundraiser or gala once a month to seem like an active philanthropist, then send his representatives to attend others.  He needs to be seen publicly with a hot date once or twice a month at most to maintain his playboy image.

Most of his day-to-day at Wayne Enterprises is covered by hand-picked managers.  He can show up in-person for critical board meetings, then make brief appearances by teleconferencing for less-critical meetings and delegate everything else.

He's already in peak physical condition, so his training is more a matter of maintenance than anything else.  He can outsource a lot of his development work, assembling components himself in the Batcave.  And being such driven, single-minded (some say borderline-crazy) individual, he doesn't have a lot of hobbies to spend his time on.  Hunting down super-criminals and busting up cartels more-or-less *is* his hobby.


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

[User] ELI5 why stores like The 99 Store are able to sell products that you can find at regular grocery stores, but much cheaper?

[Assistant]
Many of these stores stock items that are already available for around $1 at regular grocery stores in the first place.

Another reason is that you usually don't see the big name brands stocked at dollar stores.  They sell generic brands, which can afford to sell for cheap.

Another reason is that if a store wasn't able to sell those items, they will turn to the dollar stores to help them sell the overstocked items for cheap.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the difference between China's "devaluing currency" and America's "quantitative easing?"

Don't they both just involve using monetary policy as an economic stimulus (i.e. printing money)? It feels like politician doublespeak to me.

[Assistant]
Actually, neither one involves the literal printing of money. The Chinese have a fixed exchange rate and peg the Yuan to the US Dollar. With the devaluing, they moved the peg and now accept fewer dollars per yuan. This was done to make their goods cheaper in the U.S. with the hope that Americans will buy more stuff.

The Fed cannot print money, only the Treasury can do that. The purpose of QE was to increase the ability of banks to lend money by taking bonds the banks held and issuing an offsetting credit to the banks in exchange. This had the effect of increasing the bank's cash on hand. While the Fed did not print any paper dollars, they created digital credit out of thin air, which has the same effect as printing dollars. Keep in mind most "money" in circulation are digital entries, not paper dollars.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Why did The Super Soldier Serum increase Rodger's height ?

Why didnt it just increase his musculature physique and stats ? Could he not have been peak human at his former height ? Did the experiment really need to make him 6'2"-6'4" to be a super soldier ? Cant he just be the peak human/enhanced manlet like wolverine ?

[Assistant] SSS typically grants what's "perfect" for your own genes. Steve was raised by a single mother and his early childhood was during the great depression. He likely spent his formative years malnourished, hence the reduced height and weight prior to receiving the treatment.


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

[User] ELI5: How do companies like Blackrock and Vanguard make money?

[Assistant] By providing investment services. People give them their money, they invest it for them while charging a fee. When people have given you trillions of dollars, the small percentage that you make from fees is still a lot of money.


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

[User]
[Overwatch] Soldier 76 here. How does that Sombra B**** keep me from running?

She's got this weird hack thing she does, keeps all kinds of stuff from working.  Rockets? I get that.  My biotic field? Crazy complicated nano machines are tiny computers, so yeah.  My Tactical Visor? I had to install adblock on the thing, so for sure.

But when she does it I can't run anymore.  I don't got robot legs or anything.  What gives?

[Assistant] Commander Morrison, you didn't possibly expect your superhuman abilities were all natural, did you? After your assumed death we took the liberty of introducing specified nanomachines to your mangled body. These machines allowed you to run faster, farther, by giving your body mechanically induced ATP, and these same machines can of course be hacked by anyone with the technology. Much like how her Sombra's abilities shutdown the medpacks available for you, they also reverse the effects of the nanomachines, making you unable to run without the machines draining your energy extremely quickly. That is all, Captain.


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

[User] ELI5: How can a Circle have an infinite amount of points, that together and individually, hold no space, yet they create a finite enclosure?

[Assistant]
Because you are thinking about a circle and a point as physical objects, rather than mathematical *concepts*.

Naturally if you *draw* a circle and then draw a dot, a finite number of the dots you draw will fit in the circle you draw.

But the *mathematical* concept means the points have no size - they are merely the location on your coordinate system.

Let's say you're using Cartesian coordinates (that is, you have a 2-dimentional x/y axis).

Now let's say you select a point, and say that point is at location (2,2).

Does that point have a "size"? No - it's merely a location. And you can make that point "smaller" by saying it's at (2.0,2.0). Even smaller? (2.0000000,2.0000000). And you can add an infinite number of decimals to that.


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

[User]
Do we know of a "gas-moon"?

Is there any moon, orbiting a planet, which is made out of gas, instead of rock, that we know of?

[Assistant]
No, we haven't detected any exoplanets with moons and none of our solar systems moons are gaseous (mostly rock, one that's mostly ice/water).

It is also difficult to believe that such an object would be possible. The reason why the outer planets have such thick atmospheres is a result of their size. By the time you are massive enough to be a Gaseous body you are likely just a planet.


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

[User]
Are remittances harmful for the host country's economy?

A common argument against immigration that I heard is that non-native workers deplete the country of economic resources when they send back part of their paychecks to their family in the country of origin, as they are not re-investing their money in the national economy. How true is that?

[Assistant]
I find that cases like this become much more comprehensible once you remove the idea of money from the equation.

Pretend the remittances were sent back "in kind."  Non-native workers buy bags of nonperishable food, or durable goods, or appliances like automobiles to ship back to their extended family.  In this case, their work-effort is obviously being "re-invested in the national economy," since that's the source of the goods being sent abroad.

Now, reintroduce money.   A non-native worker sends a bunch of (e.g.) UK Pounds abroad.  Just what is their extended family supposed to do with pictures of the Queen?  As popular as she might be worldwide, foreign merchants aren't going to accept her image just because; pound-notes aren't legal tender outside the United Kingdom.

So what does this family do?  They convert the sent currency back to local currency in order to buy local goods and services (or the remitter does the conversion first, same net effect).  Now somebody else – who wants them – holds those UK Pounds, and presumably they want those notes to purchase goods/services/investments in the UK.

At an aggregate level, remittances act to reduce the value of the host's currency, and all other things being equal this stimulates aggregate demand via the export channel.


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

[User]
What is the Twilight Zone?

A place? A reality? A state of mind?

[Assistant] There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.


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

[User]
ELI5 how scientists know what compounds are in the atmosphere of a planet that's light-years away

How do they figure out there's methane on titan for example?

Edit: titan was just an example because I know they discovered methane there. Yes, I know it's not light-years away. It's not a planet either. Feel free to have an imagination of a five year old.

[Assistant] Spectroscopy. Different elements and substances absorb different, specific wavelengths of light. You can therefore analyse the light from objects, see what wavelengths are being absorbed, and work out what it's in the atmosphere.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did Walmart become so successful?

Did it use the government to pass laws that helped it expand/corporate welfare, or does it have nothing to do with any of that?

[Assistant] They buy in bulk, make incredibly good deals with manufacturers, move into growing areas that are ripe for their business model, when economically feasible instead of buying from a supplier they buy the supplier, own the land their businesses sit on(mostly) and own their own shipping company.  By keeping everything in house they dominate.  Having unending capital can do that for you.


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

[User]
[Final Fantasy VIII] Why does the Galbadian government have a drill-shaped prison that can burrow underground?

Replaying the game it struck me just how dumb the whole concept is. What purpose could that possibly serve?

[Assistant]
goverment agencies get a certain Budget. if you don't spend it all, you get a smaller budget next year. Thus, the exess money go into that silly drill prison.

Then a numerical error happens, and an extra 0 gets put on the prison budget. With no govermental auditing agency, and generally inattentiveness, the prison drill is now done.

Fuck, what do we do now? bleh, might as well use it. Yup, we totally intended to make that thing. Here are the reports that recommended it, who were totally not made yesterday.


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

[User]
Are the polar regions of Venus significantly cooler than the rest of the planet, as on Earth?

Would a lander have a greater lifespan on Venus' poles (assuming it could survive the pressure), or is the planet's average temperature relatively even, no matter the location?

[Assistant] The planet's surface temperature is actually very constant. On Earth, the temperature difference between equator and poles is due to the fact that the equator receives much more solar irradiance than the poles do. On Venus, however, the extremely thick atmosphere redistributes the heat very well and keeps the surface temperature fairly constant.


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

[User]
[The Avengers] What would have happened if Tony Stark hadn't shown up in Stuttgart?

When Captain America confronts Loki in Stuttgart, what would have happened if Stark hadn't decided to get involved? Unless SHIELD or Cap. had some trick up their sleeves, it seems that Cap. would have been killed in fairly short order. He was simply out-classed.

If Loki did kill Captain America, how would SHIELD proceed?

[Assistant]
Yeah, lots of people think they outclass Captain America.

Cap would have continued to fight until someone brought along the prototype weapon reverse engineered from the Destroyer. Loki is not invulnerable and he's not an Asgardian no matter his exterior appearance.

Don't forget, though - Loki wanted to be caught.


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

[User]
CMV: The average US American is uneducated, uninformed, ignorant, and ignorant of their ignorance.

First off, I don't blame them, it seems that their situation is deliberately externally imposed upon them. But the objective reality is that the average American person lacks a basic critical understanding of history, politics, geography, physical and natural sciences, philosophy, and language.

I was visiting my mom's house (long trip from her basement, because that's where all we redditors live) where she has French TV channels. On the regular TV channel during prime-time hours, they were having an in depth discussion with a prominent contemporary French philosopher. The dialogue was far reaching and analytical, and the audience was rapt. They brought on other public intellectuals and engaged in a debate. It wasn't entertaining in the American sense of sensationalism, yelling, and wild attacks that we are used to during such discussions on TV, and the language being used was decently sophisticated. It was eye-opening to see how this was on prime-time regular TV.

Next I watched the newscast and was floored to see comprehensive reporting and foreign correspondents covering a wide range of current events.

During the intermission, they had a brief section on the etymology of a French word. I doubt most Americans even know what etymology is!

Finally I saw some interviews with French politicians and the media, and holy crap, American politicians would melt under that pressure and scrutiny. They didn't let them weasel out of anything with hard-hitting follow-up questions. I could only imagine how the White House press conferences would unfold with such questioning.

Overall, I saw that French TV was for an audience of adults, while American TV is for an audience at the intellectual level of tweens.

I don't mean for this to sound like pretentious BS, because it was honestly startling and alarming how dumbed down we've become in this country. We should be at their level, but we're not.

Obviously, it is a big stretch to go from watching an evening of foreign TV and making large assumptions about the general population, but it was telling. Americans are poorly educated, and are either proud or ignorant of the fact that they are so far behind the rest of the world.

[Assistant]
46% of the US population between the ages of 25-34 has the equivalent of a 2 year college degree.

To call the average American uneducated when they are not only educated through high school but on average have a tertiary degree makes no sense.


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

[User]
ELI5 How do electronics keep memory after you take all power sources away?

When I turn my phone off and take the battery out, how does it remember what all my setting were and then boot up like nothing happened? How can a flash drive thats been sitting in a garage for 5 years remember what was put on it? I keep trying to think of how its possible but I just cant wrap my mind around it. So how does it keep memory with essentially no way to remember since it doesnt have power?

[Assistant]
Memory is basically just millions of light switches. Each light switch is called a bit. The bits can be flipped to "on" or "off" represented as 1 and 0. Eight bits make a byte. A thousand bytes make a kilobyte. A thousand Kilobytes make a megabyte. A thousand megabytes make a gigabyte.

When the power goes out at your house, the light switches are still in the position you left them in even though no electricity is flowing through it.


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

[User] Why don't Banksy and Fairey get arrested for all the illegal graffiti they put up over the years?

[Assistant]
There's also the fact they take very, very cautious steps to cover their identity. Obviously they *could* be caught, but it would take some tax dollars, would be unsupported, cause a backlash, and a lot of people love their art.

The dick who scribbles some initials in fuzzy black paint in 6 seconds on the side of those beautiful buildings in Montreal can go fuck himself though.


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

[User] ELI5: I'm in my room, at room temperature, wearing nothing but socks. Why the fuck are my feet so cold?

[Assistant]
In general, your feet are the last place which your body warms up. If your internal organs and your brain are cold (which is likely, since those parts of your body were naked) then blood will be diverted from the extremities such as hands and feet to keep these parts warm. Even wearing socks won't keep your feet warm if there's reduced blood flow to your feet.

Having said that, if you are in any way worried about this, please see a doctor who will be able to check whether your blood circulation is normal.


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

[User]
[Physics] How many times have we found the Higgs-Boson?

Okay, as much as my knowledge goes, we have only found the Higgs-Boson at CERN and also that the ratio of number of positive experiments vs negative experiments is really poor. That is, number of failed experiment >> number of successful experiments.

Now, I could be wrong. But I would stand by that I am not. So in this case, we are completely going against the scientific method. Higgs-Boson is yet to found in a lab other than CERN and we hardly seem to find it even after having found it already once.

How come the scientific community accepts this? You would say that CERN has reputation, I would say that this is a bias and science requires that other labs/teams get the same result. We should atleast get the number of successful experiments higher than the failed ones.

You have any thoughts?

[Assistant]
The first thing to understand is that the existence of the Higgs boson isn't one monolithic hypothesis, because it would be far too difficult to falsify if it were. Instead, it's typically treated as an array of hypotheses of the form "The Higgs boson exists and has mass 120 GeV," "The Higgs boson exists and has mass 121 GeV," etc. Each of these hypotheses can be falsified independently, and that's exactly what previous experiments have done. They haven't concluded that the Higgs didn't exist, only that it didn't exist at the masses that they were able to test. The experiments at the LHC were the first ones that tested the hypothesis "The Higgs exists and has mass 125 GeV," and they confirmed that it was true.

The second thing is that the LHC isn't one experiment. It's an accelerator set up to allow for experimentation, but there are multiple experiments along the beam path which operate independently. The two largest are ATLAS (**A** **T**oroidal **L**HC **A**pparatu**s**) and CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), and they both found the Higgs around the same time. Thus, the number of positive results for this particular hypothesis is two, while the number of negative results is zero.

Finally, you might rightfully be concerned that a single experiment investigating so many independent hypotheses simultaneously is bound to return a positive result on *some* of them purely statistically. However, this has been accounted for, and is the reason that the significance threshold in experimental particle physics is so high, "five sigmas" to confirm the existence of a new particle. "Five sigmas" means that the result has to be five standard deviations from the value predicted by the null hypothesis. The probably of getting that result as a statistical anomaly (for one experiment) is about 3x10^(-7).


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

[User] If I were placed into a hollow sphere with super-massive walls, would I experience time dilation but not gravity?

[Assistant]
In Newtonian gravity, the gravitational field within a hollow, uniform sphere exactly vanishes. (This can be proven rather easily using the divergence theorem and noting that the field must be spherically symmetric.) Outside the sphere, the field is that of a point particle with mass equal to the mass of the sphere and located at the center of the sphere.

In general relativity, a similar result holds. Inside a hollow, non-rotating uniform sphere, the metric tensor is Minkowski, i.e., spacetime is flat. This means there is a global inertial coordinate chart for all points within the sphere, and that there is no time dilation between any two observers who are at rest with respect to each other. Outside the sphere, the metric tensor is Scwarzschild.


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

[User] ELI5: Because most of us have descended from common ancestors, would it be fair to say that most of us have at least a dusting of inbreeding going on?

[Assistant] Definitely. Simple math reveals it as a necessity. If you start with any one person's parents, assumed each parent had two unique parents, and continued the process, the number of unique pairs grow exponentially. After 33 generations, you would need over 8 billion unique people to create a tree with no crossover. This exceeds the current world population. And while 33 generations may seem like a lot, it's less than 1000 years of time. And this assumes people groups mix evenly. Many cultures marry within their culture, meaning a smaller group of people and thus more crossover in their ancestry.


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

[User]
[Frozen] How can Queen Elsa get charged with treason?

I know that it was Hans doing it but how can no one point that that you can charged the queen with treason.

Locking Elsa up in the first place was committing treason since she is the ruler the kingdom.

So can someone explain this to me please?

[Assistant]
It was a coup.

EDIT: Also it's quite possible that she's not an absolute monarch and that she can be held accountable for crimes like any citizen. This would make the coup by Hans far easier to sell to the local population for, say, freezing the entire goddamn kingdom.


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

[User] ELI5: When humans/animals are born they go from not breathing to breathing with their first gasp of air. Why is this a one way process and why can't we go back to non breathing as in a womb/egg?

[Assistant] You wouldnt need to breathe either if a steady supply of oxygen was pumped into your blood.  Your lungs function is to transfer oxygen into your blood and carbon dioxide out of your blood.  That is exactly what the umbilical cord does for babies.  Blood pumps through this and gets oxygen to all the necessary areas.  So the baby is really just using moms lungs until birth.


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

[User] [Watchmen] In the Comic and the TV show, the U.S. annexed and turned Vietnam into one of it State, what role would this new State of Vietnam play within the larger United States politically, economically and culturally?

[Assistant] In the new Rorschach comic, they say that Vietnam being a state actually pushes the democrats to win future elections causing Robert Redford to stay president for close to 5 terms (Nixon abolishes term limits and stays president until the 80s).


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is Social Security "running out" ?

I keep hearing that Social Security is running out and people of my generation wont see any penny of the money we are paying now. If this is true, why? And further, how come Social Security is at danger of running out but other welfare systems are not?

[Assistant] The social security is funded by payroll tax, for the benefit of mainly retirees. Problem is that the population of the United States (and pretty much all developed countries) is aging, and the pool of people paying the payroll tax is decreasing while that of the aging dependents are rising. ATM it is predicted that at its current rate social security will be exhausted in 2033, but it's not hard to solve that problem. Increase the taxes, upping the age at which people can start collecting benefits (logical now that people are retiring older), allow immigration so that more people will pay......... but some are only interested in cutting the benefits.


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

[User]
ELI5 why we need to have multiple types of screwdrivers/screws and not just one all-encompassing type?

I understand some places will have less common screws so people can't steal things without the right tools, but all in all, what's the major purpose being screws varying from phillips head/flat head/hex?

[Assistant]
All screw types have their own advantages and disadvantages.

* Slot head: It was the first one, invented back in the time where screws were often still hand made, and it was the simplest screw head to build.

* Phillips: Specifically designed to push the screwdriver out of the screw("cam out") if the screw is already tight. This was done to prevent damaging the screw or the workpiece by overtightening.

* Pozidrive: Looks very similar to Phillips, but doesn't cam out as much. Often used where you need more force(torque) to drive the screw than a Phillips screw would allow.

* Hex: Allows you to exert even more torque to tighten the screws, but you won't get any protection from over tightening the screw. The hex wrench is also very simple and cheap to manufacture, which is why it's used so often for Ikea and other furniture.

* Torx: Like Hex it allows you to apply a lot of torque. The contact between the Torx screw and driver is better than with a Hex screw, which means the torque is distributed more evenly over the contact area, which means less wear than Hex and more torque can be applied.

We could continue this list even further, but you get the idea: Every screw head has certain strengths and had its reason to be designed. Some screw heads could be considered obsolete now, but are still used because they're good enough and the tools and production lines already exist.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why don't riots like Ukraine and other countries happen in America?

I mean the only things I can remember is Occupy but not near a big enough scale or maybe the LA riots. Is it that not enough people care? This is not about one particular issue. There just seems to be big enough groups that do care greatly about a belief that I am shocked that it doesn't happen.

[Assistant] American life, even with all we complain about, is still pretty good. Most of us have all of our necessities covered and many (if not all) of the luxuries we want. Our health care system might not be what we want, but we can still see a doctor if we needed to. Our government might not be giving us what we want, but we're still free to protest and complain about it, as well as vote out those we don't like.


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

[User] [last airbender] Can an out of shape non-martial artist be a skilled bender?

[Assistant]
Iroh was pretty out of shape for most of the series, and he was still feared and could duel the likes of Azula or Dai Lee.

As for martial arts...maybe. Martial arts is a good way to focus your bending, though not needed. Look at Combustion Man, he never did much in terms of flashy moves.


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

[User] ELI5: How has homosexuality managed to survive natural selection?

[Assistant]
Because it's not something that you inherit. Straight people can have gay kids. Gay people (at least those who do have kids), can have straight children.

Human genetics are FAR more complicated than most people think, and being gay seems to involve more than just genetics. The fact that identical twins, who have the same genetics, can have different sexualities seems to prove that. There's some evidence that while some people may be genetically more disposed towards homosexual or bisexual activity, some of that may also be determined through epigenetics, from conditions during development as a fetus that affect brain growth. (Basically, imagine that quirks and oddities while a fetus could impact the brain in a way that makes someone gay.)

There continues to be a lot of investigation into this, but it's also worth noting that exclusive homosexual behavior is relatively rare in the animal kingdom. Plenty of animals are gay, and some animals have homosexual behavior being more common than heterosexual, but as long as some animals procreate, the species is able to survive.


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

[User] ELI5: In movies, why do secret agents always request to go to a secure line when on the phone. Why not be on a secure line always?

[Assistant]
I think the trope was, originally, you call someone and they don't know if you're calling from a secure line or not; or you don't know if the random phone number someone gave you is to a secure line or not. This was with 1960s  technology, so it's not that the line was encrypted/scrambled, it's more about stuff like "are you calling from the house phone that the KGB probably has tapped, or are you calling from a randomly selected payphone in another city".

Then the trope got carried forward to modern movies even though the notion of a secure line means something different now.


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

[User]
[ELI5] Is nicotine inherently bad?

I know its addictive, but is it the nicotine that is unhealthy or all of the other substances involved? For example, when smoking a cigarette is it the nicotine that is bad or just the process of inhaling smoke.. same with vapes, I know the chemical carrier is full of unhealthy things.

My boyfriend likes to use nicotine pouches instead of chew.. does this lead to the same sort of outcomes as chew?

[Assistant] Nicotine does have a list of known risks. Largely heart and blood related. Stroke, heart attack, blood pressure. Stuff like that. You're right, though, that the most commonly-considered risks come from the process of consumption and not the drug itself.


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

[User]
Did all of the peepers die?

Lately my backyard has been filled with the songs of peepers (Pseudacris crucifer), but last night there was a major frost and some snow. Did they all die?

[Assistant] heck no. where do you think they all were just about a week ago when it was cold last? They just go into a cold-blooded resting state and don't do a whole lot until they can warm back up, and have enough energy to peep and move around. spring peepers, in fact, can be entirely frozen and will still revive themselves after it warms up.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why does everyone overlook the fact that Han Solo was a drug runner/criminal lowlife? Wasn't there a worry he would sell out the Rebels if bribed?

Also why was Chewbacca, an honorable person, cool with running drugs?

[Assistant]
Rebellions have always relied on people like this.  Many of the American revolutionaries were rum runners trying to avoid British taxes.  Much of our navy at the time was basically colonial sanctioned pirates (privateers).  The criminal lowlifes are exactly the sort of people that can infiltrate and pass information.  They know the ins and outs of a society.  Any oppressive occupying force will often use these people to smuggle things and people in and out of occupied territory if they are unwilling or unable to do it themselves.  Napoleon ran his own continental blockade to get luxury British goods while at war with them.

In short a criminal lowlife if trusted is exactly the sort of person you would want helping with your rebellion.


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

[User] ELI5: Why and how are we (humans) able to predict where a object will land (after thrown) and thus catch it?

[Assistant]
We evolved to do this.  Humans have very unusual shoulder architecture compared to the other apes that gives us a unique leverage to throw things with great force and accuracy.

Once an object is airborne, the human brain is (with practice) extremely good at calculating the expected trajectory.  The physics involved is predictable and repeatable - gravity and air density do not change significantly, only wind.

We presumably evolved to be very good at this so that our spears and javelins could be lethal from great range when hunting.  You don't really want to get within kickin' distance of a water buffalo if you don't have to.


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

[User]
[Advance Wars series] What exactly happens on the ground, when your soldiers are 'Capturing' a 'Property'? What is the closest real life equavalent of 'capping' a city or base/airport/seaport?

With the new *'Advance Wars: Re-Boot Camp'* remake coming out relatively soon, this seems as good a time to ask this as any:

**'Capturing'** is an essential mechanic in all ***Advance Wars*** games, as it allows your army to not only improve its daily income revenue, but also provides more places for your troops to recover lost health points, as well as more locations to deploy brand new fresh troops from.

And yet, in the game, all we are show of the 'capture' process is a small icon of a soldier simply jumping on the property until in changes alliegence.

So, assuming the your men (either Infantry, Mech, or Bike units) are real soldiers on a real battlefield, what would their actual activities of "Capturing" a "Property" involve in reality? What is the sensible historical equivalent of 'capping' a City or suchlike?

Thanks.

[Assistant] You shoot or imprison and interrogate all security staff loyal to last regime, that won't flee. You put people running the facility on gunpoint, say "glorious Red Nation is running this now". Install new management loyal to you, imprison or execute last one (maybe you can keep them if they weren't strictly on enemy side and swear loyalty to you, especially if they were specialists needed to operate the facility), have workers change the flags to flag of your side, install new secure communications (with order to destroy the codes in case the place gets at risk of being recaptured), and leave a small garrison with a commander that will be in charge of ensuring security for this new place (from spies etc) and that whatever people produce in there gets delivered to your lines.


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

[User] How does NASA's rovers communicates with NASA?

[Assistant]
There is a network of dishes set up on earth to send and receive communications from space. Its called the deep space network (DSN).

The curiosity rover can directly transmit to the DSN if it has line of sight with Earth. There are also still two orbiters around Mars (MRO and Odessy) which can be used as relay stations.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does body metal ache in the rain?

I have a rod in my knee and it aches when it rains outside. I have heard other people say the same about metal they have in their body.

[Assistant]
It's not the rain, it's the drop in barometric (air) pressure.

Lower air pressure causes your body to increase it's inflammation response. Tissues swell causing discomfort. The more injured or scarred the joint, the worse it feels.

Old injuries, surgery, arthritis are all amplified by low air pressure.

Hardware makes it even worse as the metal doesn't expand or move the same way as tissues so your body really feels the difference.


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

[User]
[DCEU/DC in general] Mainly got this question from the Synder Cut

**Does Lois Lane death always result in Superman going crazy/killing?**

Assuming that Lois Lane died in the visions in Justice League Synder Cut, Superman goes "nuts".

Then we look at Injustice and same thing, Joker kills Lois Lane and Superman goes nuts too. Is this just inevitable for Superman? Is there anywhere where Lois Lane died and Superman didn't go crazy? Or does it depend *how* she died?

[Assistant]
Usually Clark does not hinge his morality on Lois' heartbeat. He's a hero before & after her.

While some versions (Like DCEU & Injustice) aren't dedicated enough to their beliefs to weather personal tragedy, canon Clark is & has. Superman is (Outside of some cynical adaptations & elseworlds) a truly good person who won't give up on his morals.

Canon (Post-Crisis) Clark genuinely believed she'd been murdered as part of Manchester Black's plans & remained resolute in his heroism. Lois vanished along with a million people, presumed dead, for a year and Clark was still a hero despite his grief. Kingdom Come is a darker non-canon future for DC but even there Lois' death doesn't break him.

He's a hero because it's the right thing to do. Not because he loves his girlfriend/wife. Lois' status (As important as she is to him) does not change what the right thing is.

He cares about humanity. Not just his partner.


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

[User] Do people who have bullets or bullet fragments lodged in their bodies subsequently show symptoms of lead poisoning?

[Assistant] Yeah, sometimes, per the literature it has happened. Depends on where the fragment is. The body is pretty good at encapsulating foreign material, and if the bullet isn't actively dissolving in stomach acid etc., it could have a passive layer of organic lead salts etc which are much less active, chemically, within days or weeks. The lead in the person's blood and tissues will also be elevated so long as the chunk is in them, but likely below symptomatic levels...unless it isn't, but those aren't the majority of cases it turns out.


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

[User]
How is the idea of reason rejected by postmodernism?

Somebody argued that Kant's philosophy is outdated because postmodern philosophy sort of shows the failure of the idea of reason. I'm not familiar with postmodernism and I'd like to understand the argument.

[Assistant]
The first thing to note is that postmodernism and post-structuralism, generally speaking, critique reason with a capital-R, not reason the general faculty of cognition. This is an important distinction as it completely changes the type of conflict which characterises the "Modern"/Enlightenment vs. Postmodern debate.

So what is Kant's idea of Reason? In a sentence, Kant attempted to find a "Third Way" which captures elements of both immanent (a priori) and experiential (a posteriori) reason. In other words, he wanted to find a base of knowledge and Reason which was empirically founded, but still relied on some kind of immanent or non-experiential human faculty. His metaphysics depends on a distinction between phenomena (a basic working definition can be "the world as it appears") and Noumena (an exact definition of this is hard as it is debated amongst Kantians, but Noumena are variously described as a 'suchness', or 'things as they are in themselves'). While the realm of phenomena is accessible to human perception, the realm of Noumena is inaccessible by definition, as noumenal qualities are those which exist prior to and/or apart from human perception and representation. This is important, and why Kant's metaphysics is called a *critique* of pure Reason. His whole setting up of the question in this way is intended to show that there are some metaphysical questions that we simply will never know the answer to via metaphysics--such as the existence of God or the immortal soul. These "Noumenal" questions are answerable only through Practical Reason--IE Reason which uses value systems and norms, rather than Theoretical Reason which uses observation, logic and metaphysics.  Back to the a priori/ a posteriori distinction: Kant's system of Reason therefore establishes a way of knowing the world which is primarily built on experience (phenomena), but which also accounts for some knowledge which is based on a conceptualisation of or relation to immanent logic (noumena).

In one sense, the postmodernist critique (especially by Lacan) is impossible without Kant. Kant, as well as being the Godfather of many modernist philosophies, is also the Godfather of Phenomenology, which forms the epistemological backbone of postmodernists like Derrida, Irigaray. Without Kant creating a metaphysics which is removed from transcendental and spiritual questions like the existence of God, the discipline of phenomenology--which is about the boundaries of human experience and perception--would not be possible. Kant is thus by extension one of the Godfathers of postmodernism, and his critique of Reason can be placed on a continuum with postmodern epistemological critique. As for how postmodernists critique Kant's version of reason, one of the main things that is common is to basically cut out the Noumena, and disavow the existence of an immanent grounding of Reason. For once you remove a presupposed noumenal reality, then you also remove a stable foundation on which to base knowledge claims which relate to any kind of Truth-with-a-capital T. So the pomo critique of Kant's Reason -- especially by ppl like Derrida -- is essentially an extension and warping of Kant's original critique such that it has no implicitly transcendent element. Because while Kant thought the Noumenal realm was inaccesible, he still thought of it as an important structurating factor which organises human Reason, even through its perceptual absence. It should be noted that there are non-postmodern Kantians who have done similar things with his philosophy, without opposing his notion of Reason wholesale. So part of what distinguishes the postmodern critique is what it does *after* it removes the existence / importance of a noumenal realm. In other words, the postmodern critique of Kantian Reason is not just arguing that there is no Noumenal realm and therefore no foundation or centre which grounds Reason. It is also arguing that there are specific consequences of this ungrounding, which (for Derrida at least) call into question the presumed legitimacy of the entire Western epistemological canon.

One thing final thing to note is that anyone saying postmodernism shows the failure of reason with a little "r" likely doesn't know what they're talking about. If you want to get at the postmodern critique of Reason then you have to start talking about *Reason***s** as well. Each post-modern philosopher addresses these questions differently, too--IE Foucault's critique of knowledge does very different things to Derrida's critique of Truth. And the most important thing to remember is that, while postmodernism did challenge a lot of the core assumptions of the Western canon, it is also a philosophy firmly located within that canon that borrows as much as it opposes many of the core ideas and methods used.

[Edit: Cleared up some language/Imprecision.]


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

[User]
CMV: There's no valid modern-day reason to oppose a state's secession.

Back in the Civil War times, there was a pretty good reason to oppose secession: the South supported slavery, something that is universally morally wrong, and the only way to end slavery in North America was for the federal government to outlaw it - something that wouldn't be possible if the South withdrew themselves from the oversight of the federal government.

But today, there is no such extreme moral imperative. The only practical reason to oppose a state's secession would be the loss of tax revenue to the federal government - but that's not a particularly moral argument. It's just an economic one. In fact, that might even be an explicitly *immoral* argument, because it prioritizes money over the will of the people.

Peaceful secession is the optimal way to solve the growing left-right divide in the USA. A violent secession would be stupid, for both sides.

[Assistant]
>Peaceful secession is the optimal way to solve the growing left-right divide in the USA.

Except individual states aren't as deeply red or blue as they seem.  For example, 46% of Texans voted for Biden in the last election.  40% of Oregonians voted for Trump.  If those states seceded, it wouldn't solve the divide, it would just create smaller versions of the deeply divided state we have now.


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

[User] [Star Wars: ROTJ] What ship would Lando have used in the Battle of Endor had Solo not insist he fly the Falcon?

[Assistant] An X-Wing. Lando's job was to lead the rebellion fighters into the Death Star's core. If Solo had kept the Falcon to himself, Lando would have brushed it off and gone with a sleeker, more maneuverable X-Wing. Didn't make much sense to bring that big ass ship into such narrow passages. If Lando had made one mistake, he would have destroyed the Falcon.


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

[User]
[Fahrenheit 451] Why can't the law touch the book people living in the woods?

The book people living in the woods harbor books in their minds, wouldn't that make them an enemy of the state?

[Assistant]
This was clarified by the author in an interview.  The law was against reading and not owning.  The author liked to imagine that the fire chief had books in his home just to collect them.  He states that he isn't breaking the law because he doesn't read them.

As long as those book people aren't reading books, they are fine.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does hot weather feel like shit, but bathing in the same temperature feel awesome?

[Assistant]
When bathing, you're in water. Your sweat is instantly washed away, and you've got soap and bubbles and a rubber ducky and shit to make it lovely.

Hot weather makes you feel uncomfortable due to your body's methods of dealing with overheating such as sweating, hot flushes, blood vessel dilation etc. This happens for prolonged periods and sweat builds up on your skin and is held close by your clothes. You also don't have a rubber ducky.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do I occasionally need to unplug/reset my wireless router?

[Assistant]
The way devices like routers are constructed relies on a design called a state machine. All a state machine does is switch between states. Each state performs an action (like sending your request for a website), decides what state it should go to next, and then goes to that next state which follows the same procedure.

This sort of system is easy to design, easy to modify, and easy to scale. The problem is that things do go wrong for many different reasons, and it is possible for the router to enter a state where it should not have gone. Once its in this state, it doesn't have any actions to perform, or logic for deciding where to go next. So it just gets stuck there, doing nothing, unable to reset itself.

By unplugging/resetting the router, you are forcing it back into a state where it knows what to do, thus resolving the problem.

A good design has error correction built in. In these designs, when the router enters a "bad state" it is instructed to reset itself, and for the most part you would never even know it occurred. That being said, these designs cost more money to build and test. Since manually resetting a router isn't as big a deal on a home network as it is on a corporate network, they can make the home routers cheaper (in both senses of the word). It's a trade off.

I used to have a cheap NETGEAR router which need to be reset twice a day, but since purchased a linksys router which sans initial setup has never failed me in this regard.

**tl;dr**  A cheap router can go into a "bad state" where it doesn't know what to do or how to fix itself and gets stuck.


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

[User]
[Fallout] If the nuclear apocalypse hadn't happened, and the Dunwich Borers Company had been able to continue what they were up to, what would have happened?

Would they just have had another more fucked up Lovecraftian apocalypse?

Is the danger still out there?

Could a deathclaw fuck up Lovecraftian entities?

[Assistant]
If you look closely at the timelines, you will notice that the creepy summoning rites match up pretty well with the timeline of the war, taking place immediately before, and that  Ug-Qualtoth has the power to give its enemies "a fiery death".

If they succeeded?

Well, who's to say they *didn't*?


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

[User]
Are there any philosophies that suggest that our time here on earth is actually hell?

In other words, are there any philosophical ideas that push the idea that we are currently in hell as long as we exist here on earth?

[Assistant] Yes, Schopenhauer in his essay *On the Suffering of the World* says, For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other devils in it. Hes pretty dark, if not nihilistic. But its a good, short essay.


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

[User]
CMV: New York should give up on trying to make Manhattan "affordable" and embrace it as the rich people zoo it's trying to be. Can't afford that lifestyle? Move somewhere else.

I've been researching Manhattan, especially housing lately out of pure curiosity and some of my findings are just depressing. Not really because of the cost of the apartments (which turns out is a low lower than I always thought it was), but the conditions and terms.

Almost all of the cheaper condos I could find looked completely run down to the point where they're almost human rights violations, which would be fine because most of them are fixable, but the problem is that 90% of them have income caps and primary residence requirements to prevent contractors from buying them up, renovate them, and flipping them at a higher price. I can see why they created those policies, it keeps the market down and ensures the lower classes have a place to live, but think about it like this:

You're taking the worst of the worst of apartments that look like something out of a war ridden 3rd world country that has been bombed twice the past week and restricting them to buyers who have absolutely no way of refurbishing them, ensuring that they keep looking that way forever and just deteriorate more and more while people are being forced to live there. How is that fair?

Manhattan is already such a monumentally large tourist attraction and is the heart of what may be the most well known and influential city in history. Everyone and their dog knows about Manhattan and dreams of going there, but none do because a lot of it is just dangerous crime infested run down areas filled with people who can't afford to do anything about it.

Why wouldn't they just cut the leash, remove the low income housing policies, let contractors and big companies buy up the old inhumane blocks and make them livable spaces, and let Manhattan grow itself into the ultra rich modern powerhouse that it wants and deserved to be, finally shaking off the stereotypes of tiny dirty apartments filled with criminals and depressed people all being one paycheck away from homelessness?

Doing this would create a booming (though expensive) new housing market in Manhattan that would attract millionaires and billionaires from all over the world as well as attracting a brand new wave of tourists who have written off NYC as being more or less Detroit but with more skyscrapers.

The obvious backside to this would be that the lower class people who can't afford anything better than those tiny hellhole condos would be forced to move if they can't keep up with the new markets, but here's the thing, NYC is massive. Manhattan is only like 1/10th of the population but already has a massive GDP that would only keep growing if they got rid of those restrictions and made it a billionaire's/tourist's paradise, and they could use that new money to drastically improve the other parts of NYC like Bronx which would easily accommodate the people who could no longer afford to live on Manhattan. The people driven out from Manhattan would get a much better quality of living with a fresh house market that would get them a twice as big and 10 times more livable condo than they had before, the people already living in those "forgotten" parts of NYC would get a brand new economy and a better place to live, the people left on Manhattan get the same thing, and the state would have a new money printing toy box that has literally infinite potential.

Manhattan could be the US's answer to Dubai and do everything they promised but didn't live up to, and the biggest thing stopping that from happening is a few restrictions that lets a handful of poor people stay on the island "because they want to", even though the alternative would be WAY better for both them and everyone else involved.

[Assistant]
People in Manhattan would still probably like to have stores, shops, and attendants working there. If people move out, they more than likely wouldnt want to commute to Manhattan when they could just work in the Bronx.

Especially these days when every place is desperate for workers.

Stricter landlord laws may help increase the quality of the rundown apartments without making it a ghost town.


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

[User]
ELI5: why are scientific paper on two columns?

It seems all papers use this format...

[Assistant]
Ease of reading, as a carryover from the days when they could only be printed rather than available to read on a controllable screen such as a monitor.

Most scientific papers pack a lot of information into a small-typefaced article, and include terminology and concepts that can make them a bit harder to read than, say, a cheesy romance novel which is full of short paragraphs where people are speaking. Quite often journals involve very long paragraphs too. So you want to do what you can to make them easier to digest, even if only by a little bit.

By breaking long lines into two columns, you are less likely to lose your place every time you finish reading a line and start the next one, because your eyes don't have to travel as far. Your  eyes only have to return halfway across the page, making it less likely to either start rereading the same line or accidentally skip a line, which is something that's easy to do when reading long paragraphs.


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

[User]
ELI5:  The urge to mess with cuts, sores, and burns inside my mouth

I burnt my mouth today, and I don't understand the urge I have to rub my tongue over the spot over and over again. It doesn't make it hurt any less, but it almost seems involuntary. What gives?

[Assistant]
Your mouth is a certain shape and taste, your tongue has it well mapped out, it knows every little nook and cranny. When you get a cut or you bite your cheek or when you burn the roof of your mouth, the shape and the taste of your mouth in that area changes. The shape because of swelling, the taste because of blood or increased sensitivity in burned areas. And so your tongue keeps going back to that area to keep checking any new developments.

I dunno if you are too old to remember this, but when your milk teeth become loose, your tongue also played with them.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can't you invent an imaginary number for division by zero like you can for a square root of a negative?

[Assistant]
Mathematicians like when things work nicely and in almost every case, allowing division by 0 will make things not work nicely.

For example, one of the nice things about numbers is that we can multiply numbers in whatever order we want and still get the same result. For example (2 \* 5) \* 4 = 2 \* (5 \* 4) and 2 \* 3 = 3 \* 2. (Mathematicians call these "associativity" and "commutativity" of multiplication.)

Another nice property is that a(x + y) = ax + ay. For example, 2\*3 + 2\*4 is the same as 2(3 + 4). (Mathematicians call this "distributivity" of multiplication over addition.)

Let's see what happens if we allow division by 0. Let's just make a new thing called X and we will define that 0 \* X = X \* 0 = 1. So 1 / 0 = X.

Then (3 \* 0) \* X = 0 \* X = 1. Except that 3 \* (0 \* X) = 3 \* 1 = 3. But 3 is not equal to 1!

So this breaks one of the rules we like about multiplication. Maybe this is no biggie, maybe we can just let it slide. Let's keep exploring.

Let's check if distributivity still holds. How about X \* (0 + 0)?

X \* (0 + 0) = X \* 0 = 1, but X \* 0 + X \* 0 = 1 + 1 = 2. Another problem... we lost distributivity.

If you keep exploring, you'll likely find even more problems with assuming that X = 1/0 exists.

We now have two options here: First, we can allow division by 0, in which case we would have to abandon a bunch of things that work nicely with arithmetic. Or, second, we could just say that X does not exist. The second option is almost always the best option.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does salt make you thirsty?

[Assistant] The salt is carried along with your bloodstream. When the blood becomes saltier than normal, it zooms through your veins and arteries. The salt contains sodium. Hence the body detects an imbalance caused by the sodium rich fluids extract more fluids out of the cells. The cell chemical messengers carry the signals of high salt levels and then trigger the brain's thirst center that leads us to grab our glass of water.


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

[User]
[TheMatrix] What was Neo doing at the phone booth in the end?

and who is he talking to?

[Assistant]
I don't believe he quite knew who the Architect was at this point, but he knew of channels through which he could communicate directly to the machines in charge.

He was gloating, threatening them, behaving in a human, emotional manner. He knew the machines would see his speech as irrelevent and he wanted to teach them it wasn't.


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

[User]
Eridanus Supervoid, how is it that something that large can be completely empty?

Also, is it possible for galaxies to move inside the supervoid and fill it out?

[Assistant]
1. It's not completely empty. There's still stuff there, just a lot less than the average of the universe. One principle of cosmology is the idea that at very large distances, the universe "looks the same" in any direction. Imagine you have a jar. You carefully lay a layer of blue marbles on the bottom, then a layer of yellow on the blue, and white on the yellow. Now you shake the jar up. Things should get pretty mixed up. It's still *possible* to find areas in the jar where you have a bunch of blue marbles and nothing else, but it's just not very likely. This is something similar. It's odd to have a void that big, but not *impossible* based on our current models of how the universe came about.

2. Yes, there is nothing technically preventing anything from filling that void, but since matter has gravity associated with it, it means things that are clumped together exert more gravity towards each other and that makes them clump even more. It's basically not likely that anything will ever fill that void.


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

[User]
Did Celsius and Fahrenheit ever meet (or correspond)?

Celsius and Fahrenheit meet at -40, but did Anders Celsius and Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit ever meet? I'm curious to learn if the two engaged in some form of debate around the merits of the two systems, in person or through correspondence.

[Assistant] It doesn't seem like there is evidence that they ever corresponded, and it is unlikely that they would have because Fahrenheit died in 1736, at which point Celsius was focused on measuring the shape of the earth. He didn't begin investigating temperature scales until the 1740s.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Did Vader become essentially a different person due to the dark side or emotional/mental trauma?

Vader fell *hard*, to the point that he rejected his old identity. Was it nearly total corruption from the dark side (to the point that it almost seems like he was possessed) or did everything he went through drive him batshit crazy?

I'm sure it could be a bit of both, but Vader's personality change seems extreme compared to other Sith.

Edit: Something else to add: Vader goes very quickly from astonishment at what's he's done to Mace Windu to murdering all his colleagues. Again, kind of a possession vibe here. This is before Mustafar, so again - is this normal for the dark side or is Anakin losing his mind?

[Assistant] i think thats what it was always supposed to hint at, that when anakin ended up in the suit at the end of episode 3, that he was so broken mentally, especially due to padme's death as well as the lie that his children had died, that he pretty much believed anakin skywalker was dead and he was now darth vader.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why did Luke still have the last name of "Skywalker" when they could have changed it?

I understand Leia was adopted so her name changed to her adopted parents. But why did they keep Luke as a known Skywalker? It's obvious that as soon as Darth Vader heard of someone named Skywalker he would have thought about the relationship. Why not name him "Luke Jones"? That way, when he became a known figure to the empire, Darth Vader wouldn't be able to play upon his feelings? ("No, I *am* your father")

[Assistant]
Darth Vader knew Padme gave birth, he just didn't know there were two. So they took the kids, gave one to an influential senator and hid the other one under his real identity with his real family.

Luke was never ment to defeat the emperor, Lea was. With that cover identity Lea was going to end up as an influential, force sensitive,  government official, who better to lead a political revolution?

Luke was supposed to be the one Vader found if he ever went looking for his kid. Obi-Wan kept himself nearby incase this happened.

tl;dr: Yoda and Obi-Wan were throwing Luke under the bus.


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

[User]
Why is bioluminescence so common at the bottom of the ocean?

It seems like bioluminescence is common at the bottom of the ocean, where there is no sunlight. But if there's no sunlight, then why would anything evolve eyes to see visible light? Maybe infrared would be useful, but visible light just doesn't make sense to me.

[Assistant] Bioluminescence has four main advantages to organisms in the deep ocean. Camouflage (which applies to intermediate depths where lights still filters down from above) allowing organisms to eliminate their own shadows, attraction of mates, repulsion of predators (or attraction of larger predators), and communication between members of the same species.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do pimple patches suck the puss out even before the pimple emerges?

I put a pimple patch on a pimple that was still emerging because it was getting HUGE and I read that the patches can decrease the swelling. I took the patch off a few hours later and the swelling had reduced and there was some puss on the patch. How?

[Assistant] Most pacthes use a very mild acid to break down skin oils like those that clog pores.  Your pimple was probably close to draining, but the pressure made it uncomfortable, as the acid worked away at the clog, the discharge was able to drain, relieving the pressure without having to painfully squeeze it.


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

[User]
[The Culture] Can organic beings like humans become Minds?

Culture citizens regularly mod themselves to increase their physical and cognitive abilities, but could an individual theoretically become a Mind itself if it wished to?

[Assistant]
Yes and no.
Yes in the sense that it's technically possible for someone who started out as an organic person to undergo enough transformations that the resulting being is a Mind.
No, and this is the more important part, in that the Mind that resulted of such a chain of transformations is in no reasonable way the same person as the original organic self.  In short, you can't become a Mind because the process of turning you into a Mind makes you an insignificant part of the resulting whole.  The thing your organic self considered its identity is so comparatively small, it gets lost in the noise.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why was Sidious supportive of Vader trying to persuade Luke to turn to the Dark Side when it obviously meant that Luke and Vader would team up against him?

Assuming the Rule of Two would be upheld, of course. Unless Sidious was so arrogant as to think Luke would kill Vader and Vader would be ok with that?

[Assistant]
Afaik, Palp was hoping for Luke to defeat his father and become his new apprentice, not join his father. He wanted to fuel Luke's hatred for Vader so that the anger would overcome him and "complete his transformation to the dark side" or something like that. Either that, or Vader kills Luke, tightening Palps grip on him.

TL;DR He was betting pretty hard against Luke overcoming his daddy issues.


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

[User]
ELI5: What makes my sore throat sore?

Im on day 5 of a miserable viral throat infection. Im wondering what is physically happening in my throat to make it hurt so much. Google didnt help me - just told me causes of sore throats but not why it actually hurts.

[Assistant] Very simplified, your throat has become a war zone between the virus trying to replicate in cells, and your immune system destroying those hijacked cells. End result, you throat is all torn up by the battle.


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

[User] [Iron Man] How easy would it be to fly or adapt to flying an Iron Man suit?

[Assistant] The suit's flight computer does most of the work since the aerodynamics of the human form takes relaxed stability to the point of absurdity, so it's really a question of how easily one can adapt to using the UI and how long one can maintain the somewhat awkward posture.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are some memories out of reach until something reminds us of them?

I dont have the greatest memory in the world.  Yet if something triggers an old memory, suddenly I can not only remember it, but specific details that were not available a few minutes before.

Why is this?

[Assistant]
I studied brain science in university.

This gets to the core of how memory works. We recall things by *association,* that is, a memory gets activated by things that relate to it. The more related things are activated, the more this memory gets activated too.

This is why when you have difficulty remembering an item, event, person, etc., often you succeed after someone gives you some hints or reminds you about the context.


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

[User]
ELI5: why do out brains release endorphins when we eat refined-sugar products, but dont when we eat nutrient-rich vegetables?

I understand refined-sugar foods are a tremendous source of energy, and we need energy. But what about the micro nutrients that our bodies supposedly need that are in vegetables?

[Assistant] Good sources of energy had been harder to come by throughout human evolution. Vegetables grow everywhere, so they're not as important to seek out -but energy-packed sugary and fatty foods were scarcer, therefore it was an evolutionary advantage to seek them especially.


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

[User]
CMV: High school GPA should be compared the persons z score.

If you are unfamiliar with a z score, all it measures is how many standard deviations from the mean a score is. So if the mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 15, a score of 115 would have a z score of 1 and 85 would be -1.

Colleges should evaluate high school GPA by finding the z score of a particular student. This would help to identify high schools that artificially inflate their GPA by making courses too easy, as a 3.8 may really have a Z score of .1 if everyone else's GPA is inflated. Likewise, someone with a 3.1 might have a z score of 2.25 if their school is really hard or disadvantaged, allowing schools to better identify skilled students in disadvantaged settings.

[Assistant] That might be useful for bigger schools but any small school might have problems with sample size. A 30 person class is not gonna be ideal when it comes to finding means and z-scores. Plus, most colleges already use class ranking, which approximates this data anyway. If you're the valedictorian with a GPA of 2.8 they're gonna know that you're the cream of that school's crop even without a z-score.


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

[User]
CMV: Billionaires buying flights to space is a good thing

So I've seen a lot of controversy about the billionaire space race, with some news articles calling it things like a "grotesque display of wealth". However, as far as I can tell billionaires buying seats on a flight to space seems like a good thing. Instead of *hoarding* their fortunes, they're *spending*, paying the salaries of many skilled workers in order to accomplish difficult technical challenges. That seems like a good use of money to me, and I'd much prefer they do that than stash all their wealth in the Cayman Islands or something. Now how they got their wealth in the first place can be problematic, but as far as I'm concerned that's a separate issue. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if there was something problematic about it I haven't thought of, so I'm interested to hear what y'all have to say.

[Assistant]
They're paying money for a space ride instead of giving their workers. proper benefits, it's not their money to spend.

But yes, if someone wants to argue that spending money on space period is wasteful, it circles back to the NASA argument, the money isn't leaving earth, only a bit of fuel and metal.