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

[User]
[Malcolm in the Middle] Is Malcolm president now?

As you know, time before the graduation, he discovered that Lois and Hal have planned a future for him to become president of USA instead of making him to choose working in a lucrative job that eventually he could become rich.

What is the reason behind the parents' decision?

Did Malcolm change his attitude/way to see around during his Harvard years?

What would happen to the country and family if he's president by choosing the job and later buy his way to become the powerful man in the world?

At this time, does Malcolm has been president or not yet?

[Assistant]
>Is Malcolm president now?

Malcolm isn't President, he's still too young to even be a Senator.

>What is the reason behind the parents' decision?

His parents knew that he was one of the smartest people alive. He's also not a *total* dick, but is still good at manipulating people and he can be ruthless when he needs to be. They figure that a smart President with good people skills who also knows what it's like to have a shitty background and didn't grow up rich as fuck would be better than the normal guys (at least in Lois' eyes) with more money than heart or common sense. Specifically, she wants him to make life better for poor working-class families.

>Did Malcolm change his attitude/way to see around during his Harvard years?

Impossible to tell.

>What would happen to the country and family if he's president by choosing the job and later buy his way to become the powerful man in the world?

Depends on the policies he decides to focus on. He's still got six years before he's old enough to be the President, if he aims at getting elected as soon as possible. 2024 will be the first election year he's eligible. That's still another two Presidencies away, where anything could happen.


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

[User]
[Back to the Future III] Why not combine parts from both DeLoreans?

The DeLorean Doc Brown possesses in 1885 has blown time circuits, while the one Marty arrives in has functioning time circuits but a ruptured gas tank and no fuel. So why not either take the time circuits from Martys DeLorean and install them in Docs DeLorean and go home? Or put the intact fuel tank w/ fuel from Docs DeLorean on Martys, and go home that way?

[Assistant]
The one in the train tunnel has had it's fuel lines drained ready for long term storage - you can't leave half a tank of petrol in a car for 100 years it would turn to jelly and clog the engine.

The problem was not having any fuel, they could patch the fuel tank but not get any new fuel. Then they blew up something important in the engine (carburetor, maybe more) trying to run it on alcohol. They should have used coalgas, that might have worked.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] How did Ron recognize the invisibility cloak?

In the first Harry Potter book, when Harry first received the cloak, Ron almost immediately recognized it as an invisibility cloak. But later we learn that the cloak is the only one of it's kind. Granted, there are other, cruder invisibility cloaks with disillusionment charms woven into them etc. But it seems unlikely that they look exactly the same as Harry's cloak, which was one of the Deathly Hallows.

[Assistant]
Invisibility cloaks arent one of a kind, they are rare.  What makes Harrys special is that the invisibility charm doesnt wear off.  Most only work like Harrys for a brief time and then become more opaque.

Dumbledore explains to Harry that the Peverell brothers made the deathly hallows and that they all are exceptional versions of semi common magical items.


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

[User] [General SF] I am in the Market for a Secret Lair. What Should I be Looking For? Any Suggestions on Resale Properties?

[Assistant]
A lot of rookies make the mistake of getting a lair that's "secret" like in a cave or something.  What they fail to realize is that "secret" just means annoying adventurers and heroes will come sneaking in all the time and start causing trouble within anyway (not to mention random people will stumble in from time to time and just be annoying.)  And to make it worse, caves are usually cold dark and wet so you're stuck being miserable in a cave and they'll still find you anyway.

best option is to go for a big fortress or tower, something that just proclaims your power so that everyone in the surrounding area knows you are there and to be feared.

Ancient fortresses are good ideas if you don't want to build your own, also ancient tombs can have good aesthetics but just make sure that you do some good remodeling to make it more pleasant to live in.

Make sure you have a throne room or inner sanctum of some sort, preferably with a throne to sit in and look menacing in.  You want to make sure the light is just right so that you get the properly menacing feel to the place.  You should also make sure the room is big enough for a fight with your enemies and, very importantly, don't store anything that can blow up or otherwise cause you an ironic death, in the room with you.

as for interior decorating, you want to make sure you focus on buying: Good Prison Doors, locks that actually work, a secret escape route of some sort, and plugging any holes in the wall people might use to sneak in through or listen to your evil plots through.

How do you afford all that?  Well first off aside from your throne room or inner sanctum don't bother decorating the rest of the place, it will just get trashed when adventurers come through and steal your stuff anyway so don't bother leaving anything valuable lying around.

You can also save a lot of money by...scaling back on safety regulations.  Yeah the unions and safety regulations call for hand rails and safety measures along the edge of bottomless holes and at the top of towers but really, when are you ever going to need them?


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

[User] If a black hole created from matter, and a black hole created from antimatter collide, is the result a bigger black hole or would something else happen?

[Assistant]
A black hole built from antimatter or one built from matter with the same mass are identical.

The quantity that distinguishes matter from antimatter is the baryon number. It is the total number of baryons (like protons and neutrons) minus the number of antibaryons. Baryon number is conserved in the standard model and that is what you would recognize as "conservation of matter" in some sense, and the reason for which the proton is stable in the SM: it is the lightest baryon and so it cannot decay to anything else because it needs to preserve its baryon number of +1. So the proton can only release its mass in energy for lighter particles if it meets an antibaryon carrying -1 baryon number, so they total to 0 and they can produce lighter non-baryon particles such as photons or mesons. That's why matter & antimatter annihilate.

(A similar argument works with leptons, with a thing called lepton number).

These, baryon and lepton #, however, are not conservation laws with any specific deep or fundamental justification behind, they are just accidental symmetries of the standard model. (Unlike, for example, charge). As soon as you step out of the SM, these are violated. Black holes are well outside the SM and do not care in the slightest about baryon number. Black holes don't have a well-defined baryon number and throwing a proton or an anti-proton\* into a black hole produces the same final black hole, whose only macroscopic distinguishing properties are mass, charge and angular momentum. After a lot of time the black hole has evaporated into Hawking radiation which is made of standard model particles, and the final baryon number of the radiation does not have any discernible relation with the baryon number of all the stuff that fell in.

\* woops forgot: except for charge, charge is conserved even by BHs. So maybe you can throw a hydrogen atom (baryon # 1, charge 0) or an anti-hydrogen atom (baryon # -1, charge 0). Or neutron/antineutron.


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

[User]
How is sodium bicarbonate seemingly so versatile?

I have an ulcer, the internet told me to put bicarb soda on it. Apparently it can also be used as soap, shampoo, toothpaste, playdough, it can get rid of smell, put out grease fires, remove grease from clothing, give relief from irritants, be used in cooking, and a plethora of other things. Is this a case of sodium bicarbonate having a magical chemical composition, or a myth propagated on the internet?

Cheers!

[Assistant]
Sodium Bicarbonate will react with acids to neutralise them, producing CO2. It will also give off CO2 if heated up, by thermal decomposition.

This CO2 production is why it is used in baking, it produces gas which will form bubbles in the dough. It is also why it will help put out fires, as it produces CO2, which will exclude oxygen.

It's used for ulcers as it will neutralise some of the stomach acid, but it will produce CO2 which might not be too pleasant!

It's essentially a not-very-toxic molecule which produces CO2 easily, and neutralises acids. There are a range of uses for this, so it's a useful compound!


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

[User]
Do the forces against a dam change as the reservoir behind it freezes, and if so how?

And how do civil engineers plan for this?

[Assistant]
It's pretty unlikely that the reservoir will freeze. It will freeze *over,* which means it freezes on top, but if you drill down (usually at most a couple feet or so) you will find liquid water. It would have to be shockingly cold for a long time to completely freeze an average dam reservoir.

As for any pressure changes that might happen - well, it's not really pressure *changes* you have to worry about. Dams are already under a hell of a lot of pressure, simply because as you go deeper, the pressure rises, and it's all pushing against the dam. Dams are designed to withstand that pressure. What dams have to worry about is increased flowrate into the reservoir from things like flooding, spring runoff, etc. For that, dams have spillways which are basically giant drains - the extra water flow will go over the spillway and continue on down the river without increasing the pressure on the dam.

Some spillways are controlled, which means the dam operator can open and close giant gates (called Tainter gates) to regulate how much water flows through the spillway - this allows them to drain off the excess water in a controlled manner, which among other things minimizes damage from the spillwater hitting the (usually concrete) footing of the dam.


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

[User]
[Kill Bill] Vernita Green was a professional assassin. Even if she had been off the job for a few years to raise her kid, how could she miss her killshot on Beatrix?

I mean, I get that she might be rusty, and maybe knives and explosives are her specialty, not handguns.  But how do you miss from that close? This is like 6 feet away.

Not as bad as Greedo missing, but might as well be.

[Assistant] I would blame the fact that it's in a cereal box while being fired. She had no way to line up the shot. She probably hid the gun there to be retrieved and used, rather than fired from inside, but knew she wouldn't have that kind of time at close range with Beatrix.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Is Vader's mask intentionally made to look intimidating or are those mask styles common?

Granted, we've never seen a similar mask as Vader's, but I was wondering if it was a special mask mold ONLY unique to Vader's, or if it was some traditional sith/usual mask.

I ask because as a kid I found Vader's face creepy as hell, so I'm wondering if it also had a purpose to instill dread into the people looking at him. Like, if I was Luke and saw Vader in the cave I'd have pissed my pants. Vader may seem badass in hindsight but I can totally see if someone saw him for the first time he'd come off as a scary cyborg monster. His mask just looks creepy.

[Assistant] Iirc one of the legends novels mentioned the mask being based off of traditional sith warrior masks with more modern medical attachments.  Vader and palpatine just never bothered making a friendlier face to the mask since ultimately he was the emperor's fist not his pr guy.


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

[User]
So you are a red blood cell of an average human. How long does it take to visit every part of the human body?

Also, do you even get a chance to see every part of the human body or do you die way to early. If so how much of the body would you have travelled?

[Assistant]
It'd depend on what you define as "every part". Your entire blood supply passes through the heart roughly once a minute, although where each cell goes is pure chance.

 They "live" for about 120 days, which is more than enough time to reach every major organ and all the major vessels. But, every organ has different parts and sections, so every RBC gets to see the lungs, but there's no guarantee they get to see every lobe of the lungs (statistically they will), or get to every branch of the pulmonary arteries (it's possible), or every single alveoli (now you're pushing it).

Source- Tortora & Derrickson's "Principles of Anatomy & Physiology"


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

[User]
CMV: I think that in the end, humanity will grow to become a prosperous eternally happy bunch & that every person can do something to help today.

If you look at history, it's very clear that stuff is getting better- only 100 years ago, there were no *proper* democracies & medicine was extremely unadvanced.

Nowadays, we have all this amazing technology & medicine & a rapidly growing list of new democracies.

It seems that by each century in history you go forward so far, thing get way better. I think this trend will continue.

**I know someone is going to mention about global warming/overpopulation,** but I do genuinely believe that will will come up with solutions to all of this, many of which are already in the pipeline. So many people seem to have a doom and gloom view of how the world is getting much worse. To me, this just seems like a contradiction in history.

I think anyone can help by being nice to others, and also by donating money to whatever cause, even if it's technological development. Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but then again, perhaps I'm not.

[Assistant]
I will address a couple of assumptions here that you may want to reconsider:

1) You suggest that history is one steady progression towards a better and better society. By and large that has been true for very recent history, but much of human history is the story of great societies being destroyed and regressing. At the height of the Roman Empire, much of Europe had stability, plumbing and clean water, a healthy economy, infrastructure. Those luxuries were not guaranteed, they were destroyed and didn't come back for a long time. In the Middle Ages, the Islamic world was very advanced - they had science, trade, and many other things. Then the Mongols came and burned it all down, killing millions of people along the way. You could argue that the region has never recovered. History shows that it is anything but "very clear that stuff is getting better."

2) Just because something can happen does not mean that it definitely will happen. We can address climate change, overpopulation, and other problems, but only if we take them seriously and treat it as a real threat. If everyone had the attitude of "everything will turn out fine, just relax", then we would never find the motivation to solve these problems. Hard societal problems can only be solved if we face the reality that we *need* to solve them or else we're doomed.


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

[User] How is space expanding? Are objects(such as galaxies, stars, etc) just moving to fill the empty space, or is the actual 'space' expanding?

[Assistant]
Space itself is expanding.  Objects themselves are not moving through space (at least, not very much).

The reason we know that space itself is expanding is that, in any direction we look, we see distant galaxies moving away from us.  It's *possible* that Earth is at the center of the expansion, and that everything is, in fact, moving away in all directions - but that goes against most other observations that suggest the universe is isotropic (more or less the same in all directions) and homogeneous (pretty much the same over large volumes).  If everything were moving away, that puts us in a very special spot, which contradicts the isotropy and homogeneity.  Thus, we conclude the expansion is uniform across the universe.

Furthermore, we observe that more distant objects are moving away from us *faster* than closer objects.  This suggests the expansion of space itself.  If space is expanding, then the more space between two objects, the faster they will appear to be moving apart.

A common analogy of this is baking raisin bread.  As the bread expands, all the raisins in the bread will get farther from each other - but they aren't actually moving through the bread at all.  The expansion of the bread moves them apart, but relative distances and locations stay the same.  Further, *every* raisin would look around and say that all other raisins are moving away from it, and that the more distant raisins are moving away faster (because there is more bread between them that is expanding!).


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

[User]
[Warhammer Fantasty Battle] Wtf happened? I somehow missed the universe ending?

[OOC: I haven't played or really kept up with the lore since 2006, it looks like they've done a soft-reboot or something? I don't even know how to properly phrase this question in-universe. If I could get a run down of that and the new lore it would be great! I wouldn't mind it coming from the pov of an in-universe scholar or something.]

[Assistant]
Cliffs notes...

Teclis unwound the Vortex and unleashed the full force of the Winds of Magic, so he could bind them to mortals and create new gods capable of defeating the Chaos Gods.

It sorta worked, creating 8 immensely powerful Incarnates, but is also unleashed the full force of Chaos. Unfortunately, because Morathi interfered, Teclis lost control of many of the Winds, and was unable to elevate his chosen champions.

There was a final confrontation at Middenhiem between Teclis and his Incarnates, and the forces of Chaos, and things basically went tits up, and the world was consumed by chaos.

The Incarnates managed to save some of their own, however, and created 8 new worlds modelled after the Winds of Magic. Over centuries, the new factions polarised into 4 primary alliances; Order, Chaos, Destruction and Death, led by Sigmar, The Chaos Gods, Grimgor and Nagash respectively.

There's a good deal more to it, but that's the synopsis of the conflict... Lots of characters died, some new ones cropped up, the Horned Rat became a 5th Chaos God... And now we have 8 Magic-Themed worlds ruled over by immensely powerful Demi-Gods of former characters.


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

[User]
[Batman] Where do zombies and other undead creatures fall under Barman's "no killing" rule?

Can batman kill a zombie because it's already dead?  What about a vampire (the mystical kind, not the viral kind)?

[Assistant]
They are already dead. Generally, his no-killing rule only applies to living humans. Aliens and the undead, he has less qualms about.

Batman has had no moral trouble putting down vampires he's encountered, by the way. He's fought Dracula in several continuities (and put him down, hard, in most of them - in one continuity he actually *became* a vampire).


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

[User]
[The Thing] Could you have a conversation with the thing about its nature ?

Like, if we captured The Thing and put it in a cell, would he respond questions we asked or would he try to convince us he was not an monster?

[Assistant]
Could you have a conversation with an octopus about it's nature? The Thing is a fundamentally alien being, we have no idea if it's even sentient, or intelligent in any way that we'd understand, or capable of understanding the concept of communication. A dog is a social animal. They've evolved to live in groups with other dogs and cooperate with them for mutual survival. That requires an ability to communicate, to convey their wishes and desires to others, and to in turn understand the wishes and desires of others. That makes them perfectly suited to living with humans, because their brains are already programmed for getting along with others. A dog can imagine, to some limited degree, that other dogs/humans are beings similar to itself, they have to to survive.

An octopus is an intelligent animal. They have large brains, they're capable of complex problem solving, even limited tool use. But they're absolutely not social animals. In fact they're often cannibalistic. They don't communicate. They can't cooperate with other octopi. An octopus probably can't imagine anything about any other animal beyond itself. Their survival has nothing to do with that. They're probably the closest thing to an alien intelligence on earth that we know of. The Thing is even more alien than that, likely in ways we simply can't comprehend.

We don't know if the Thing even has a mind, it may simply be operating on complex instinctual programming like an ant colony. An individual ant is not intelligent, it can't think, it has no mind. But as a colony they're capable of complex cooperative behaviors. The cells of the Thing may behave in a similar manner.

The Thing can seemingly use human speech or compel it's hosts to engage in complex behaviors, but we don't know that it's consciously choosing those actions. The Thing may simply be hijacking more advanced biological processes like a virus, and activating responses that will benefit it, with no real understanding of what it's doing.

If you locked a Thing-human in a cell and tried to talk to it, it would probably spout some normal human speech responses. It would insist that it's human, it's not infected or an alien, it has no idea what you're talking about, it wants to be set free, please let me out just let me out for god sake it's me let me out! The Thing isn't sitting inside the hosts brain like a little pilot in a ship. The host believes everything they're saying, but there's perhaps just some itch, some compulsion at the back of their mind they can't explain. They just, really really need to get out of here, or at least talk to another person face to face. The human mind understands these things, it understands communication and cooperation. The Thing does not, the Thing perhaps feels a need to OUTSIDE! SPREAD! FEED! Then it activates whatever chemicals in your brain might achieve those needs. It doesn't understand why making those noises could get it to those goals, it just feels that it could. Whatever the Thing is, it's form of survival doesn't require true communication or cooperation, just the simulation of those things for it's own gain.


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

[User] [MCU] What would happen if a Blue Pym Particle Disc (enlarges things) struck an infinity stone?

[Assistant]
Infinity stone, but big. All the Pym Particles do is change the space between atoms. Since Thanos could reduce the stones to atoms after the snap, they seem to be made of matter.

So, Infinity Boulder.


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

[User]
CMV: I as an adult should be allowed to order from the childrens menu if I want to.

Look, Im not always that hungry and I need some food at a restaurant but not a ton. At my local diner for example, the kids meals are basically just smaller versions of the regular meals. When Im doing pick up, I like to get a childrens Turkey dinner because its delicious and its just the right amount of food. But when I dine in person, they can see that Im not a child and wont serve me the childrens version and I have to get the regular version.

I understand that the purpose of a kids menu is so that parents can get their child an appropriate amount of food for a child at a decreased cost, but even if Im an adult, if Im just as hungry, shouldnt I be able to get that for myself?

[Assistant]
The issue isn't the portion size, it's the pricing. Restaurants essentially fold a discount for kids meals into their menu pricing as an incentive to get parents to come with their kids. Part of that discount is made possible through smaller portion sizes and simpler ingredients, but they've likely also built in a lower profit margin and are making it back up through higher volume.

As you are an adult, you ordering only from the children's menu breaks their pricing model. While they could make an exception only for you, allowing this as a regular policy would put their business at risk.

Your CMV is more like "I, as an adult, should be able to use a 20% off coupon meant for children".


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

[User]
I got a debugging gig and I literally spent 5 minutes on it, should I accept payment?

I got a JS project to debug and I spent 5 minutes on it and I feel like I'll be scamming these people of I take their money, what do you normally do in situations like this?

[Assistant]
You should absolutely accept payment.

They pay for your skill AND for your time.

If it would've taken an amateur 1 hour, and it took you (a pro) 5 mins, does that mean you deserve less money? Absolutely not.


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

[User]
ELI5: What's the difference between a psychologist, psychiatrist, and counselor?

I know psychiatrists can prescribe meds and counselors cant, but is there a difference otherwise?

[Assistant]
Psychiatrist: Has a medical degree, like a doctor but has specialized in diagnosing and treating mental illness, emotional disorders and behavioural issues. They often handle prescribing medication.

Psychologist: Has a bachelors degree, continued to graduate training in psychology and specialize in treatment and diagnosis of mental illness, emotional disorders and behavioural issues. They work with a patient on treatments but do not prescribe medications.

Counsellors: They come from all background and may have masters or doctoral degrees from counselling programs however they may not have specific training in assessing and treating mental illness.


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

[User]
[Gravity Falls] How is Mabel always wearing a sweater and Wendy a flannel jacket when it's the middle of summer?

If it's that cold, why are they seen swimming, and why does Mabel wear a knee-length skirt while Dipper has shorts?

[Assistant]
Mabel is a very weird kid- wearing a sweater constantly is far from the strangest thing we see her do.

Wendy meanwhile doesn't seem to be wearing a jacket but a shirt (she takes it off and ties it around her waist at one point), which is perfectly reasonable to be wearing in summer.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why is the garbage compacter full of water?

You can't squish water smaller, why is it there?

[Assistant]
A certain amount of waste fluids end up in the disposal units just under normal operation.  Half full drink containers, equipment that wasn't properly drained before disposing, that sort of thing.  It's not an intentional feature, it's just something that ends up happening.

It doesn't really complicate or hinder the disposal process, so there's no reason to keep it from happening.


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

[User] ELI5: When youre intoxicated, why do your eyes stutter back and forth when following a pen during a field sobriety test?

[Assistant]
I don't know exactly how much info y'all want, so I'll do a tl;dr at the end.

Brain signals that initiate muscle movement start in the cerebral cortex and move through the spinal cord to the muscles. While the nerve signals pass through this system ( specifically when they're in the medulla) they are molded by signals from the cerebellum.

So basically(generalizing here)  the cerebellum controls fine muscle movement.  Unfortunately, drinking alcohol increases ~~production~~ (correction: uptake) of GABA (a neurotransmitter which primarily has a sedative effect) in the brain.  When there is an overabundance of GABA, the cerebellum doesn't function properly, and causes jerky, shaky fine motor movement.  Your eyes are controlled by fine motor movement, and thus get the same effect.

This is also why you have a hard time touching your nose when you are drunk.

TL;DR
When you drink, the motor control center in your brain gets too much of a specific neurotransmitter, and does not function well.

Disclaimer:  the GABA inhibitor theory is only that, a theory.  Alcohol may very well affect the cerebellum via different mechanisms.  However, this is a widely accepted theory and is the best one we have right now.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] If a Wizard chooses to craft their own wand, will it always choose them?

The wand chooses the wizard, but what happens if a wizard makes their own wand? Will the wand they made always choose them, or will there be a situation where you've made a wand, but it doesn't accept you as its master?

[Assistant]
The traits a wand favours depends on its materials and length/flexibility.

Even if you made a wand, if you dont match the traits it favours then it's not going to choose you. Though obviously you could still use it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why isn't there toothpaste that's "Whitening" & "Enamel protection" & "3-in-1 plaque defence" etc. Is there actually a big difference between them all?

[Assistant]
So, whitening toothpaste and to a much greater extent the professional whitening treatments are pretty hard on your enamel and can damage the teeth the roots, which is the exact opposite of the enamel protection.

Think of the enamel protection as something like putting polyurethane on a table and the whitening is like scrubbing it or even sanding it.  Those two things don't really work together.


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

[User]
How are false positive lateral flow tests possible?

 The rapid lateral flow tests, from my understanding, detect fragments of the virus. If no fragments of the virus are present (i.e. you are in fact negative for covid) then how can a test possibly show a false positive result?

[Assistant]
Lateral flow tests typically use an antibody with an affinity for some target molecule (the virus fragments in this case), but there is always a non-zero probability that some other molecule will bind to and activate the antibody.  Many drugs work by fooling a protein in the body to activate as if it was in contact with it's normal target molecule, so there are molecules present that will fool an antibody.  A simple analogy is artificial sweeteners- molecules that bind to sugar receptors in your taste buds so the food tastes sweet.  In the virus tests, some other molecule might have the right shape to trigger the antibodies.  It is also possible that not all the antibodies incorporated into the test device are the correct ones- manufacturing is not perfect.

Biochemistry is inherently a probability game, and so some percentage of the time these antibody tests will trigger a positive result with no virus fragments present.  On a good test that might only be 1% or 0.1% of the time.  The tradeoff to be made with tests like this is sensitivity vs specificity.  Sensitivity is basically your detection rate for true-positive samples.  Specificity can be thought of as the detection rate for true-negative samples (how often a negative person will read a negative test).  The antibodies used in these tests are never perfect, so they usually aim for the best sensitivity they can get with reasonable specificity.  "Reasonable" is determined by the cost of a false positive- in the case of Covid, the cost would be quarantining a healthy person unnecessarily or requiring them to seek additional, more expensive tests like PCRs.


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

[User]
I believe that personal and professional lives should be separate and that being unfaithful in marriage shouldn't be grounds for a resignation or termination CMV

I'm referring to the CIA scandal a few months back. I couldn't care less if the guy cheated on his wife as long as he was doing his job.

[Assistant]
The guy wasn't just some random CIA worker. He was the *director* of the CIA. If someone found out that he was cheating on his wife, they could have blackmailed him into doing some pretty serious things. Even had it not been a secret, it still would have diminished the reputation of the CIA.

When you get a leadership position in an organization, your private actions reflect on the organization. Thus, it's perfectly fair for the organization to judge you on your private actions. If you don't want this, you just shouldn't seek a leadership position.


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

[User]
ELI5: The conflict of interests between the advice a physician gives vs. the advice a coach gives towards serious athletes.

Why does it seem like athletes never follow the strongly recommended rest and therapy that physicians, who spend years and years studying injuries, give? While at the same time, why do athletes follow the highly dangerous advice about injuries from coaches, whom themselves maybe only have a few months of formal education in injury treatment?

[Assistant]
Because athletes are extremely competitive and train for incredibly long periods of time to perform for incredibly short periods of time. When it comes time to perform and there is a risk of injury vs. a risk of simply wasting the investment, the sunk cost fallacy is not very persuasive...

Keep in mind that coaches are often former athletes, everyone (except the doctor) has bought into the competitive culture of athletics.


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

[User]
How much have we evolved as a species over the past 100, 200 or 500 years, in contrast to how much we have evolved over the past 200,000+ years?

We've certainly changed over the past few hundred years. Per Wikipedia, our anatomically similar ancestors came into being 200,000 years ago while we reached full behavioral modernity about 50,000 years ago.

Is the rate of our evolution changing, either slower or faster? Rather, are we evolving at an exponential rate?

Cheers, folks.

[Assistant]
There is a whole lot of debate among anthropologists how much it's appropriate to apply evolutionary theory right now.

Some evolutionary-minded folks want to recode all of anthropology and history in evolutionary terms; they say everything's "evolution".  Ideas, people, ethnicities, etc.

As for actual physical evolution - it's pretty hard to say on such short time scales.  There's more intermixing of different previously-separate groups, that's for sure.


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

[User] [Mass Effect] Why is Garrus always in the middle of some calibrations?

[Assistant] The weaponry of the Normandy is often used at ranges of thousands of kilometers. At that distance, even a very slight deviation from a perfectly straight path will cause you to miss your target. Therefore, they must be calibrated very precisely, and quite often in order to ensure that they are ready to go at any moment that a fight could arise. As weapons officer, that duty falls to Garrus. He could have a subordinate or EDI do it for him, but he doesn't trust anyone as much as he does himself for these matters.


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

[User]
[Batman] What if the Bat was a baddie?

Yeah, as the title i. What if our hero was a villain? Who could stop him and what would his objective be?

[Assistant]
If batman was a baddie, we would have to postulate a motive. What he does would depend totally on that motive.

I see two main ways this could go. The obvious way is that Batman wanders the night, breaking into places and being a crazy. This is boring.

The less obvious, but more likely way this would go is that there would be no Batman. If Bruce Wayne were to turn evil, his wealth and position gives him untold opportunities to abuse the law without ever breaking it.

Let's say, for example, that Bruce decided he wanted to rule his own tiny empire with the power of life and death over all he surveyed. He could just buy a small country. He could easily buy a Senator or 4 (legally, with private contributions to re-election funds) and over the years own the presidency/ governorship.

Careful investment in third world sweatshops, market manipulation, and abuse of his personal celebrity-hood would grant him untold power. All very, very legally.

If he wanted to go whole hog and become Emperor of Earth, he'd need to realize that was a multi-generational plan. He's smart enough that he could almost certainly determine an appropriate plan and execute it- totally within the bounds of the law. No good guy could touch him, and if any tried, he'd probably call on the justice league for help, as a law abiding, tax dodging citizen can.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do forests stop at a certain point?

I feel like a lot of the forests I see around me (pine forests in western US) have a line where they just end and lead into a open field with almost no trees even though the environment is the seemingly the same. Is there a reason the trees just stop growing at certain point?

[Assistant]
> Is there a reason the trees just stop growing at certain point?

Yes, it's called farming.  As Europeans swept westward, they were given land if they were willing to clear it of trees and farm it.  The logging industry has also taken down a huge share of the forests.  Even the indigenous peoples  cleared land for growing crops, harvesting wood, and for other purposes. Over the centuries, much of the original forest covering the land has been chopped or burned down.  Any forest you see is actually either replanted or abandoned land that has reverted to forest.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do automated/self-driving cars work?

How do they stay in the correct lane when driving?  How do they maneuver around obstacles?  How do they recognize stop lights?

There is a lot of judgment involved in driving.  How do the cars make these decisions?

[Assistant]
The same way a human does.

Using sensors the cars can use various algorithms to determine where relevant road markings are, read signs, or otherwise get all the information put out there for human drivers. It uses this data to inform its decisions on how to move the car. It moves the car using various mechanisms to interact with the car's mechanics in much the same way as a human driver pushes the pedals, turns the wheel, etc.

When the technology gets a bit better (if it's not already true) an automated car would be quite a bit safer than a human driver. A human is decent at guessing whether, say, a swerve is necessary to avoid a collision, but a computer that understands Newtonian physics and has an array of sensor data about the car's velocity and the position of some other car or obstacle can work out with much greater certainty what the least dangerous corrective action is that will prevent an accident.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it so difficult for us to just replicate a bird instead of the kind of fixed wing aircraft we have?

[Assistant]
Flapping bird wings are kind of inefficient. They're great for picking yourself off the ground, but require a lot of energy to keep going

Larger birds, which are still small and light compared to an airplane, achieve flight easier by riding updrafts in the air and gliding, with very little flapping at all.

This is what the fixed wing aircraft replicates. This has added benefits of less turbulence, with the plane not being pushed up by the periodic addition of lift.


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

[User]
ELI5: If NATO relies on collective defence, what happens if two NATO countries declare war on each other?

Is there anything in NATO text that says what would happen? Which side would NATO take?

[Assistant] Well the whole idea is that NATO is a collection of like-minded countries. If something were to happen that would cause two members to go to war, the whole system of NATO would collapse and fall back to "unincorporated" alliances. NATO is built on mutual trust and defence, and if even one country falters then the whole system loses faith and stops working.


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

[User] How do Gemalto tokens work? Curious how the system knows when a numerical value off of a Gemalto token is a valid number.

[Assistant]
The token and the authentication system share a secret key, and both have a clock. They also share additional information: a "time epoch" (a date from which the token's clock starts counting) and a "time step" (usually 30 seconds or 1 minute).

The token gets the current time in seconds since the epoch, divides it by the time step, and this way it gets a number.  For example say the epoch is 15 December 2016 midnight, now it's 16 December 2016 midnight and the time step is 30 seconds. The number is 86400 / 30 = 2880 (86400 is the number of seconds in a day).

The number is mashed with the secret key and passed through a "hashing algorithm" (this step is called HMAC). The hashing algorithm produces a small value that is then converted to 6 digits. The result is the one-time password.  The exact algorithm does not matter, as long as it's the same between the token and the authentication system. Of course the hashing algorithm should be audited by cryptologists, so that you cannot recover the secret key just by gathering a few one-time passwords. But as long as you stick with known-good HMAC algorithms, the conversion to 6 digits can be very simple (for example, if the encrypted time is a 64-bit value, you can multiply by 1000000/2^64 and keep the integer part).

Because the authentication system knows all the parameters (time, key, epoch, step) it can reproduce the same steps and it ought to get the same value. If it doesn't there are two possibilities: either the code was wrong, or the two components used slightly different time values. This is because all the other parameters never change.

Now, the difference in time values is usually very small. Assuming that the clocks are perfectly synchronized and you use the value within one minute of the time that it was generated, the difference will be 0, -1 or -2. So the server will usually check a small number of values (e.g. the three values between -2 and 0 for a 30 second time step, or the two values -1 and 0 for a 60 second time step) and let you in if the numerical value matches any of them. For the code to be declared wrong, it must not match any of these possibilities. The possibility of a collision (i.e. of a random guess being correct) is still very low, around 1/333333 or 1/500000.

Unfortunately, sometimes the token's time is off by more than one minute, or the token's clock is fast. In order to fix this, the server has a special synchronization mode where it checks for a larger set of values, say between -10 minutes and +10 minutes.  This mode lets the server know a bit more precisely the time reported by the token's clock. After synchronization, the server remembers the value that it found, and it will use it as a skew value for further authentication (so for example if the skew was -5, corresponding to -2.5 minutes for a time step of 30 seconds, the server will check -5, -6, -7 instead of 0, -1, -2) In this case it requests two consecutive codes, to make the possibility of a collision much, much smaller, around 1 in 100 billion.

This is the description of TOTP ("time-based one-time password"), but there are other one-time password schemes based on HMAC. For example HOTP, which means simply "hash-based one-time password", uses a progressive number instead of basing the number on the current time. The first time you generate a one-time password you encrypt 1, the second time you generate a one-time password you encrypt 2, and so on. The disadvantage is that it's much easier to get out of sync, since you can increment the counter arbitrarily just by pushing the button many times. However, an interesting property of HOTP is that you can pre-generate a few dozen codes on paper, for emergency needs. This is less useful now that you can use your smartphone as a secondary TOTP generator (there are apps such as FreeOTP), but pre-generated one-time passwords were common 15 or so years ago.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What's household technology like?

What sort of household technology would a normal middle-class person have access to on a technologically advanced world like Coruscant during the late Republic or early Empire eras?

[Assistant]
Well tech is basically uniform.

Lower class will have some holonet access. Maybe industrial level droids. Middle class will have better access and astromech droids patrol their apartment buildings. Upper class will have protocol droids as well as dedicated astromech droids as well as their own hyperactive engaged ships.

But in general on Coruscant, a middle class citizen likely lives in an apartment in one of the higher levels. They'd have good access to the holonet, larger apartments, could probably afford a speeder and galactic scale transport on commercial travel.

Most importantly, they're away from the crime that plagues the under levels of Coruscant.

OOU: They have the lifestyle of a middle class person in any large Western city on Earth, but with holograms instead of screens and droids instead of people working service jobs.


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

[User]
ELI5 Why does water from a shower head lose heat so rapidly based on distance from the shower head?

I.e feels much hotter at the head compared to 50cm away even though the stream isnt obstructed.

[Assistant]
Well, the more mass something has got, the better it stays warm. The more surface area, quicker cooling. Higher the the air temperature, slower the cool.

Water droplets are small, cool easily. They have a lot of surface area to contact with cool air, this cools it quickly as well. And the if the water comes out 40C, that's about a 20 difference.


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

[User]
How do laser measuring devices have such high precision?

So I just bought a laser measuring device for around $25.  It seems to read down to 1/16 inch precision.  Now I got curious and did the math to figure out what the round trip time for light to travel 1/16 inch and its around 1.0E-11 second.  So what I am wondering is, how is that even possible to have a micro processor time something that fast.  The fastest processor speed that I can find has a clock speed of around 8Ghz.  Even if the cheapo components in my $25 laser measure is actually hitting those kind of speeds, the light would travel about 2 inches in one clock cycle, which would mean it could count in inches, not sixteenths.  The math says it would need to be counting up around 1800Ghz to count with 1/16" precision.  (a 1/16" distance equates to a 1/8" round trip, and a 900Ghz clock will have a 1/8" round trip per tick, but your precision is half your sampling speed, so you need at least double that, right? so 1800Ghz)

 Is there some other principle going on than simply timing the return trip of the light?  The fastest transistors that I can find are in the 300Ghz range.

[Assistant]
For the type of range finder you're using (and not just you, but whenever you want to use a range finder to find short distances) they don't use time of flight. Instead, they send out laser light whose frequency is sinusoidal modulated. What that means is, there is a center frequency (say, ~400 THz is it's red light) and what it does is ramp up the frequency (say, to 410 THz), then drops it down to 390 THz, and then back again. It is easy to modulate the frequency very rapidly, and just as importantly, very consistently in time.  The laser range finder then knows what frequency it is currently sending, and measures what frequency it gets back, and by knowing the difference in what they're currently sending and what they received, it can calculate the time of flight.

You might think this method is better than time of flight, and should be what is used always. But, these have a limitation. There are range ambiguities in measuring distance this way, because any distance which is d + 2c/T where c is the speed of light and T is the period of the oscillation will measure as the same distance. That's why your laser range finder has a shorter maximum range than a laser range finder which directly uses time of flight to measure longer distances.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it bad to press pimples on your face?

I've seen this almost everywhere, 11 out of 10 persons I've met have warned me against pressing pimples growing on my face. They only suggest that I wait it out.

Anytime I ask, I always get a similar response, "it'll make it worse"

But does it make it worse? And how exactly?

[Assistant]
A pimple is basically a battlefield where white blood cells are fighting against bacteria (the white stuff is mostly dead white blood cells).

White blood cells are made to fight inside your body.  As long as the pimple stays closed they generally have the advantage, they can fight well and call for reinforcements - chemical weapons, more white blood cells, etc.  Basically it gives your body control over the site.  Once it is open to the air and dried out, they can't get to the site anymore.

Of course, many bacteria are also more suited to a moist environment than a dry one, and they will usually die when the pimple opens.  But there are other kinds of bacteria that can handle both environments.  These often live on your skin (all over, but especially your fingers) and will invade the wound when it is opened; once the wound closes up the battle will begin again, which is why popped pimples very often come right back.  There is also the possibility of breaking layers of skin underneath the pimple, in which case the invading bacteria will be able to get deeper and cause more problems.

Generally the best thing to do is to wait; once the battle is over the body will clean up the mess on the inside.  If you must pop it, make sure to clean the site well, ideally with antiseptic to kill opportunistic bacteria that try to invade the site.

Also, don't dry up that clear fluid that sometimes leaks into a popped pimple - white blood cells can live in this fluid and that will allow them to fight the invading dry-surface bacteria.  If the area is dry the skin bacteria will be able to multiply unmolested and get a head start in the next battle.


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

[User]
How can a computer tell itself to turn on again when performing a restart?

To clear things up: You have commanded the computer to restart it has turned off, but how does it then initiate the command for it to turn on again?

[Assistant]
The trick is it doesn't fully power anything off (unless you use the Kill switch on the back of the PS) there is always a constant feed of power coming through it.

Many mainboards have an LED (on the board itself) that remains lit to let you know that the power is still on if it's plugged in.


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

[User] ELI5: How does you cellphone know certain cell signals are for it and most others aren't?

[Assistant] This is really tough to ELI5. It is based on orthogonal waveforms. Basically orthogonal means if you multiply one waveform by an orthogonal waveform, you get zero. So your phone has a code. When that code is multiplied by every other signal out there, it results in zero. When that code is multiplied by your encoded signal though, it results in a data signal. Your phone signal is the only signal not orthogonal to the code.


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

[User] ELI5:What is rendering in video game?

[Assistant] "Rendering" essential just means "creating the image you see on the screen". Internally, the computer just represents the scene as a bunch of polygons and textures. Rendering is the step where the computer decides exactly what those polygons should look like when viewed from *this* precise location, with *that* exact lighting, and with *those* textures mapped onto the polygon meshes.


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

[User] ELI5: The difference between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and their respective significance.

[Assistant]
Taliban=Afghanistan, obviously. They were the government of Afghanistan from 1996 until the US invaded in 2001. They follow a strict interpretation of Islam and enforced it in their society. Then after we invaded and installed Hamid Karzai, the Taliban still controls/governs different parts of rural Afghanistan, which is why the US is currently attempting to negotiate with them as they close out the war, because they have legitimacy to some peopel in some areas. So Taliban=government.

Al-Qaeda=all over the world. They are also Muslim based, but instead of focusing on governing, they focus on what can be called global jihad. Some people will tell you this means holy war, the word in Arabic literally means to struggle against (an external force). That force in this context is the West, and different scholars have different thoughts about why they are at war with the West. So instead of being one big group, they are based on a system of 'cells' that are loosely connected, not everyone knows each other etc. So Al-Qaeda=causing chaos wherever they please.

They are related because the Taliban is sympathetic to the aims of Al-Qaeda, so the Taliban allowed them to have a 'base' in Afghanistan to carry out their actions on 9/11. When the US military meets a member of the Taliban in the field they negotiate with them, when they meet a member of Al-Qaeda they throw them in Guantanamo.


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

[User]
[Bleach] Can I lie about the name of my Zanpakuto?

Please help me out here! I just communed with my Zanpakuto and he told me his name was "Honey-buns"!

I don't want to have to tell anyone that my sword has such a ridiculous name, can I just make up a name and lie? Would that alienate me from my Zanpakuto or hinder my combat abilities?

[Assistant] It would do both. For instance, sources say that the 5th seat of 11th division's zanpakutou is actually named Ruri'iro Kujaku, not Fuji Kujaku. Now, his sword's obviously still functional, and he's a skilled warrior, but it doesn't operate at its full potential.


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

[User]
CMV: Anna Sacoolas should return to the UK voluntarily and face trial

For those unfamiliar with this incident, Anna Sacoolas is the partner of an American consular official based in the UK. She was driving on the wrong side of the road and caused a traffic accident which killed a 19 year old on a motorcycle in Northamptonshire. Following this incident, she fled the country under what was believed at the time to be diplomatic immunity. This was back in October 2019. Since then, it has been determined that she did not in fact have diplomatic immunity because she was only the partner of a consular official, and she was based outside of London.

Recently the UK's Crown Prosecution Service have determined that the evidence is sufficient that she could be charged with the offence of "Causing Death by Dangerous Driving". They have now begun extradition processes. The maximum penalty for an offence of this kind could be 14 years in prison.

Representatives of Ms Sacoolas have described the incident as "a terrible but unintentional accident" and argues that the charge and potential sentencing is "disproportionate".

The reason I think she should return to the UK is pretty simple.

She did it.

No one is disputing that she was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Failing to obey a road traffic law out of ignorance is bad enough, but you don't need to be married to a consular official to know that the UK drives on the other side of the road to the US. She can't have been ignorant. She can have been negligent.

The fourteen year jail sentence is the maximum. Not the expected result. Although refusing to face justice is likely to increase, rather than decrease, the sentence length. Also, it isn't the job of Americans to interpret what is and is not 'proportionate' in the British legal system.

Even if she had diplomatic immunity, it is not a literal "everything-proof shield". It's purpose is to prevent diplomats being taken advantage of by another nation's laws. It's not there to let diplomats get away with serious crimes.

If the situation were inverted, there's not really any way that the US would tolerate the UK holding a British diplomat who left the country under mistaken diplomatic immunity.

Why should she be able to perpetually take advantage of a mistake and not face justice? She committed a crime. No one is disputing that. It doesn't matter if the crime was done by accident or not.

Criminals should be tried and punished according to the legal system.

[Assistant]
>Even if she had diplomatic immunity, it is not a literal "everything-proof shield". It's purpose is to prevent diplomats being taken advantage of by another nation's laws. It's not there to let diplomats get away with serious crimes.

That's exactly what diplomatic immunity is.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do websites such as Facebook and YouTube constantly update their layouts when nothing is wrong with them?

Facebook has gone through almost one layout change every year for the past 4 or 5 and YouTube is constantly changing.

Why do they keep changing Where a website like Google is constant?

[Assistant]
They make changes to make money.  Product teams inside of these companies are responsible for KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators.  They often have very specific goals that feed into broader business goals.

Facebook is extremely data driven.  They might have a metric that tells them that people who post photos at least twice a month spend 10% more time on the sight than other users.  So they will devise some UI changes to encourage the posting of pictures and then measure the impact against their large user base.

These companies aren't just bored or trying to 'stay fresh'...they have very specific business goals and have the data to back up the changes that they make.


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

[User]
Is there such a thing as excess blood in your system? Hypothetically speaking what would happen to someone if you gave them a rapid blood transfusion when they didn't need one thus filling them up with more blood than they need?

I was watching a youtube let's play and after getting hit real bad one of the commentators said it was fine, they had too much blood anyway. While obviously a joke it got me curious what would happen if that were a real thing.

[Assistant]
So this can happen. It's called Transfusion Associated Circulatory Overload. Part of the pathology is essentially excess fluid leaking out into the tissues, such as the lungs. Younger, healthier people with fully functioning hearts and kidneys are more able to deal with the excess fluid, so it's less likely to happen in this group.

In theory if you could give just the red blood cells, taking away some of the fluid component, you'd been causing the viscosity of the blood to go up. This predisposes to blood clots, strokes, etc.


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

[User]
What's Up with China's Demography Bomb?

Why do people keep saying China has a demography bomb with its super lower birth rate when China's birth rate is the same as the US and a lot of other countries 1.75ish?

[Assistant] It's because China had a birthrate of 5 in the 1970s while the USA has had a pretty consistent birthrate of 2 since the 70s. This means over time as the birthrate drops in China a bigger gap appears between elderly and youth. Because of the one child policy this drop occured significantly quickly. A country would typically fill this gap with targeted immigration as the USA had done this entire time. China didn't do this and now has too many elderly people that require expensive services and too few young workers to pay for those services. The US on the other hand has been filling this gap as much as it can over decades and still is going to be hurt by demographics discrepancies. It may be China's biggest challenge domestically because it isn't something you can simply get your country out of. It takes decades of planning either through domestic birth incentives or high immigration. China just seemed to of been blindsided by the issue until very recently.


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

[User] In my experience and to the best of my knowledge, most lab equipment is made of glass. What is it that is so special about glass that leads to it being so stable when in contact with such a variety of substances?

[Assistant] The reason why it is so stable is because the Si-O bond has a very high bond energy (glass is mainly silicon dioxide), around 600 KJ/Mol. This means it takes a large amount of energy for something to react with glass by breaking this bond. This is also why diatomic nitrogen is used as an inert gas, because the N-N (triple bond) has such a high bond energy (~900KJ/Mol).


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

[User]
What is the likelihood of an economic depression happening in our lifetimes?

It seems that recessions come like clockwork but what about economic depressions like the great depression? What is the likelihood of one occuring in the next 60 years or so and what (if there are any) signs are there that one is approaching?

[Assistant]
Pretty low. The fact is, a depression stems from a recession that lasts.
For a depression to happen, it basically entails that either the fiscal side or the monetary or both of those side aren't doing what is necessary to fight the recession which leads to a spiral.

A recession becomes a depression when businesses go under, unemployment rise, households are reluctant to spending which leads to even more businesses going under and it then impact the financial system as people and companies aren't able to repay their loans.

Fiscal and monetary can fight that, the fiscal side can compensate for the lack of demand during the recession and support distressed companies, avoiding a widespread wave of bankruptcies.

Monetary stimulus can help by acting as a lender of last resort providing liquidity to whoever needs it, households don't need to be scared about a bank going under and doing a run on it (bank runs are a pure disaster for an economy). They can also reduce the interest rates making loan to distressed companies more affordable.

If you look at what happened during the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve messed up. Instead of increasing the money supply, it actually steadily decreased during the whole duration of the Great Depression.

In large part because of bank runs : depositors lost money (which meant lower spending from them) but it also meant less lending to an already distressed economy. If the Federal Reserve had acted appropriately by providing liquidity to the banks who needed it, the depression probably wouldn't never have happened. Depositors would have never lost money which means more spending and less bankruptcies, and banks could have kept lending flowing to companies.

This why economists typically say that it's better to provide too much than not providing enough. Overshoot, great you can scale back. Undershoot ? It's going to be painful, by the time you act the damage is already done.


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

[User]
[X-Men] Would Magneto die if, while he in unaware, someone snipes him or shoots him in the head?

For someone so powerful, it seems awfully easy to kill him. His face is always open, his helmet may stop psychic abilities, but doesn't look thick to stop sniper bullet, and his suit just looks poorly made.

It's not like he has super-sense of things approaching fast at him, if he doesn't know a bullet is coming, he's pretty much dead, no?

[Assistant]
If he's wearing the helmet, he's in combat mode. Which means not only his helmet but all his clothes are made of iron backed up by an electromagnetic forcefield, which means pretty much any attack weaker than high-powered energy weapon is not going to get through.

If you catch him incognito, quietly having a coffee or enjoying a nature ramble while wearing ordinary clothes, you might conceivably get him with a non-metallic bullet - he'd sense a metal one coming, and have a decent chance of stopping or redirecting it.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Is the holodeck ever used to simulate programs similar to the violent video-games of the 21st-Century?

I've been reading up on my early 21st-Century history, and I've noticed that one of their past-times bears some similarity to the programs we run on our holodecks. However, the most popular of these "video-games" are very violent - far more violent and graphic than any holodeck simulation I've encountered. Some appear to glorify warfare and brutality, and some even have the user playing the part of a homicidal, amoral criminal.

It's hard for me to imagine that a Starfleet ship's computer would run a simulation program that encouraged wanton, egregious violence against fellow sentient beings. And if these programs are being run, how does Starfleet react to those who enjoy such pursuits? Surely a visit to the ship's counselor would be in order?

[Assistant]
Worf had some training programs which were basically hand to hand combat that escalated in danger, violence and intensity.

On Voyager, the ship was hijacked by a violent, militaristic race that liked playing violent wargames on the holodeck so much that they converted the entire ship into a holodeck. They simulated WWII non stop, 24 hours a day, playing the part of the Nazis while the crew played the allies.


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

[User] [General man-eating beasties] How many calories is an average adult male? A particularly fit adventurer (say a barbarian or the like)? A sacrificial virgin? Assume they get eaten whole, bones and all, with only moderate blood loss.

[Assistant]
Popular Science covered it in this month's issue (oddly enough); a standard human is around 80,000 calories if you count ALL consumable tissues.

I didn't think I'd be putting that knowledge to use today.


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

[User]
If our bodies replace all their cells between 7-10 years why do I still have scars from when I was little?

I know that the 7-10 years may not be accurate for every cell.  But even just for skin, why do I still have scars from 20 years ago?  That's not an actual DNA change, right?

[Assistant]
Scar tissue is mostly **not** cellular.  It's a dense, fibrous network of collagen.

Collagen is a structural protein that features most prominently in connective tissues.  The collagen network in a scar is different than that in other places where it is found; it is much more dense and the fibers align with each other, acting as a barrier that cuts off the wounded tissue from the surrounding healthy tissue.


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

[User]
How to make a simple webpage again after working with heavy frameworks for 5 years?

I've been working with Angular for the past 5 years and am used to the heavy nature and design of web apps. Lately I've been thinking about going freelance, and need to build up a portfolio of completed projects.

The first thing i want to do is some pro-bono personal websites for some musician friends of mine. Obviously using Angular to make a single page website with no forms is complete overkill. What would you recommend for a simple project like this. Basic javascript with bootstrap? Maybe react, because its more lightweight?

Thanks, it feels like I've dismounted a monster truck to try and learn how to ride a bike again.

[Assistant]
Keep it simple. Don't turn a simple website into an "app".

Drop in basic JS only where it's *necessary*.   Should really only be a couple of snippets for e.g. a photo gallery, YouTube / soundcloud embeds.

Most importantly it should be very easy to find tour dates, without waiting for some giant framework to load, or single page JS navigation to initialize. Should be reachable through its own URL, not via hash navigation.
If you have to fetch the dates through something like bandsintown, ensure that it loads fast and doesn't just show "local" dates or the next five and then requires to click through to the source website to see the rest.


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

[User]
My first paper just got accepted. What am I (not) allowed to do with the document now? (philosophy)

Hey guys,

I'm an undergraduate in philosophy and I submitted a short paper on ethics to a journal. Last week I found out that it was accepted and that it'll be published soon. Now, my question: What am I (not) allowed to do with it?

1) I can share it with my friends, right? ("it" being the initial manuscript)

2) Can I post it on Reddit?

3) Can I post it on a blog? (no, right?)

4) How can I reference it to other people who'd like to learn more? Do I wait for the publication to put it online? (if they do?)

I'm lost and I don't want to be sending a "stupid" follow-up question E-Mail.

I'm looking forward to any response or other information that'd be useful to me. :)

Thank you very much in advance!

[Assistant] Take a look at the contract you signed with the publisher. You probably signed over rights not only to the finalized article, but to the work as well. If so, that limits what you can do with the preprint legally. However, most publishers are currently letting small-scale sharing slide if they even notice, so you can likely go ahead.


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

[User] [James Bond] How much does a double-O make?

[Assistant] It's not about the paycheck. It's about the benefits. Cars, clothes, airfare and all the martinis you can drink are covered. A double o agent is probably somewhat similar to a United States Congressman that only makes $30k-40k per year, BUT gets a budget of over $1 million to hire staff and pay for "office expenses". Like donuts, coffee and high priced escorts. The essentials.


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

[User]
Do different GPS companies have different satellites that their customers beam to?

On a related note, how many devices can communicate with a satellite before overloading it?

[Assistant] Most of your question has been answered but here is another part that wasn't. All GPS satellites are owned and operated by the US Air Force. They maintain these systems and provide their signal for free use to anyone in the world who wants to "listen". A big radio station in the sky, all you need to do is tune in to hear it.


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

[User]
[MCU/spiderman] slight homecoming spoiler. Question about what Tony said to peter.

So he said that of captain America wanted to lay him out he would have meaning that Spider-Man isn't as powerful as he appeared in civil war and why he was still kinda of an amateur in the movie. But in civil war he blocked a punch from winter soldier with ease and he doesn't seem like the type to hold back. When he punched captain America he needed to use all his strenght to stop it.

[Assistant]
It's not simply about strength. Strength-wise, Spiderman definitely outclasses Cap and probably anyone else on the Avengers save Hulk (and maybe Vision).

Remember the Cap vs. Iron Man scene at the end. The Ironman suit is clearly stronger than Cap, but it was all about tactics. Tony only gained an advantage by having his AI analyze Cap's fighting style to develop a counter-measure.

It takes more than just strength to win a fight. At the end of the day, Spidey is a kid who thinks he's acting out a part in a comicbook. Captain America is a battle-hardened soldier who killed and watched people die.


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

[User]
How YouTube streaming works versus how Netflix streaming works.

I'm interested partially because I want to know how the streaming works anyway, but also why you can go back to any previously watched point in a YouTube video, but not in a Netflix video, amongst other differences.

[Assistant]
Streaming a video isn't substantially different than downloading and watching it. Basically, you start to download video, and when you have enough of it (a buffer) to start showing it on the screen, you do. Meanwhile, you keep downloading more. As long as you can download faster than you can watch, you're streaming.

There are three things that make streaming tenable:

1. Advanced video codecs -- these are bits of math that allow people to compress video so that the file sizes are small enough to be downloaded faster than they are watched. Streaming codecs also assemble the file in a way that you don't have to have the whole file for the video to be watchable (some non-streaming codecs need to have the whole file or none of the video will play).
2. Adaptive algorithms -- these are bits of software on your computer that request different versions of video based on how fast you can download at the moment; this allows you to keep watching video if your internet connection slows -- just at lower quality (since lower quality usually means smaller files).
3. Cheap and ubiquitous broadband -- most people who are in the lower-middle class or above can afford enough bandwidth to watch streaming video in acceptable quality.

> but also why you can go back to any previously watched point in a YouTube video, but not in a Netflix video

That is not a difference. You can go back (and forward) while watching Netflix.  If you can't on the device you're using, it's because that device's software has decided not to implement the feature.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are all search engines so goddamn awful compared to Google?

[Assistant]
Its because the algorithm Google uses for search is very, very good.  It is, by far, the most valuable piece of IP that Google owns.

Since it is so good, most people use Google as their search engine.  This gives constant feedback on what results people actually want, which they use to make the algorithm more accurate.


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

[User]
ELI5 how does someone, e.g. a detective distinguish if a stab wound is made before or after death?

Dont worry this isnt anything alarming. Im in the process of writing a whodunit and I just want to know if there are any signs that occur/do not occur in a stab wound that is made after death? Any answers would be a great deal of help. Thanks!

[Assistant]
in most cases the coroner/pathologist will be the one doing that.

but the main difference is blood, on a live person the heart is stil pumping blood which would be getting pumped into the wound and out.

there is no blood flow on a corpse to push blood out of the same wounds whihc would in turn also allow any remaining blood to clot in the area of that wound.


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

[User]
Eli5: How do libertarians justify the working conditions of the industrial revolution?

Do they honestly think the lack of labor laws is worth treating people so badly, or do they think that it somehow wouldn't happen again?

[Assistant] They believe absent government intrusion businesses that treat their workers better and pay them better will prosper (workers are more productive/creative) and the evil businesses will be forced to improve conditions to compete or go out of business.


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

[User]
[LOTR][Groundhog Day] If Phil Connors found the One Ring, would its corruptive effect stay with him forever, eventually turning him into a Gollum-like creature?

Or would he wake up each morning good as new?

[Assistant]
Gollums body was twisted like that more from living in a cave and eating raw fish for 500 years. The Rings corruptive effects are almost entirely mental, though it stretches you thin and slowly makes you vulnerable to light as you become more and more evil and possessive.

Phils body resets everyday so he wouldnt develop the light sensitivity that drove Gollum underground, but his mind stays the same so he becomes a twisted and possessive monster over time. Hell just be a hissing, grumbling, and evil version of Bill Murray.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Is transporter assisted binge eating a thing?

People like eating.

Eating too much causes health problems. (Obesity, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol etc.)

But people eat too much anyway, because people like eating.

The 24th century Federation has replicators advanced enough to create practically any delicacy imaginable instantly, with a negligible cost in resources and energy.

The Federation also has transporters, which can quickly and precisely teleport any matter to any location within range.

Transporter assisted births are a common medical procedure. We see one done in Voyager, where a crewmate has her baby beamed straight out of her womb and into a waiting incubation pod.

Federation era humans aren't shy about using 24th century technology to satisfy their various appetites. Sex with holodeck characters is common. ("Come on Harry, everybody's done it. Or at least thought about doing it.") Even Vulcans do it when they're in heat ("Pon Farr") and they're unable to release the tension normally.

Given all this, I can imagine Federation people indulging in gut busting bacchanalian feasts, and just having most of it beamed right out of their stomachs. You could have a chocolate coated bacon wrapped donut bun double cheeseburger every day, all day, with no negative health consequences.

I think that for most people, it will be an occasional, sort of shameful thing. Like, you get drunk with your buddies and end up eating three plates of chicken tikka and eight slices of pepperoni pizza, and you have the sense to have it all beamed out before your arteries get clogged any further.

For others, it might be a deliberate thing. Maybe they're doing a holodeck re-enactment of a Thanksgiving or Eid feast. Or some zany eating competition to see who can eat the most caviar in 15 minutes. I dunno, I imagine post scarcity societies will find ever more strange and elaborate ways to amuse themselves.

For a few, it might be something they just get into the habit of doing. After a stressful day at work, their evening ritual is inhaling five tubs of ice cream, then having it all beamed out. Or at every family gathering, the grandmother in charge of the replicator insists on replicating enough food for a dozen people, and everyone is too polite to turn her down, but are also afraid of getting a heart attack.

On a darker note, this technology would also enable those suffering from bulimia nervosa - a psychological condition that causes one to become obsessed with weight and appearance, resulting in cycles of binge eating and "purging" of food. 24th century might be advanced enough to treat this condition easily. But if it isn't, the Federation might have a problem on its hands.

Have there been any mentions of this in Star Trek media? It's an optimistic show, but it hasn't shied away from exploring some of the funkier ways people use its technology.

[Assistant]
Fetal transports aren't exactly common, they're used in extreme circumstances when there is otherwise a danger to the mother or child. It's also not a convenient procedure, it entails being immobilised in a biobed and scanned by some of the most advanced internal sensors available. Just having transporter room 2 lock onto your pre-expulsions is going to result in bits of your insides getting scooped out along with it. A skilled transporter operator could probably beam you as a whole and separate the waste while you're held in the pattern buffer, but either way it's far more complicated than just beaming shit out of your bowels while you're going about your day.

You know what would be better than eating five tubs of replicated ice-cream, then being restrained for 20 mins while sickbays sensor suite takes exact measurements to remove said ice-cream? Eating 5 tubs of holographic ice-cream that taste just like the replicated stuff but simply cease to exist once you leave the holodeck, or even replicated to have the taste but without the calories.


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

[User]
[Stargate] Why didn't the Ancients upload a virus to shut down the Pegasus gate network before using the device that destroyed Wraith vessels in Hyperspace?

Their major reservations of using the device was the untold destruction of exploding Stargates, so why no just shut them down?

[Assistant]
I wonder about that every time i watch the episode.

But with the war with h Wraith going on they might not have thought about all the options they might have had, or if they did maybe they didnt have the time to put it into use before leaving th Pegasu Galaxy?

Or if they did maybe they thought about everyone offworld doing...whatever it was they did when away from their home planets, and what if they couldnt get the gate system back online if not all the Wraith were killed and they still needed to get to Earth?


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

[User] [MCU] what would have happened if when Thanos snapped his fingers with the Infinity Gauntlet there was an odd number of Lifeforms in the universe?

[Assistant] Well, it doesn't make sense to kill half of all life forms, especially how long it takes them to go out. It would make more sense, and satisfy the "half" requirement, instead, to assign each living thing a 50% chance of survival. If they pass, they live; if they fail, they die. Everyone gets the same chance. Statistically, it's close to half, but there's a margin of error that probably doesn't concern Thanos.


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

[User]
[Aliens] What tactics should the Colonial Marines have implemented to optimally complete the mission?

If the marines hadn't panicked, if Gorman didn't freeze like an Antelope in headlights, if YOU were in charge of the bad\-ass crew of bad asses what would you have done differently?

[Assistant]
Although it's a meme, bombing the site from orbit and never even going nearby it, would be the surest way. Otherwise, allow them to use their ammunition from the start, rather than waiting.

Kept a better eye on the shuttle so the Xenomorph doesn't get aboard.

Watch the shady Wayland-Yutani Corp guy closely.

Basically, shoot first, ask questions later, and get out of there before the reactor blows.


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

[User] Why do smartphones know the answer to (170!) but show as infinite the answer to (171!) ?

[Assistant]
Computers (including smartphones) typically store numbers in variables of a fixed size. That size determines the range of numbers that can be stored. For example, a variable that uses 1 byte of memory can have 256 different values, so it can store numbers from 0 to 255 (or from -128 to 127).

If a calculation yields a result that "doesn't fit" in a variable, then several things may occur. Typically the variable "overflows", that is that it simply starts counting from 0 again. In this scenario, the sum 255 + 2 would give the result 1 if variables are single bytes (the result is obtained by incrementing 255 twice, the first increment should take it to 256, but this is outside the range so it overflows to 0, the second increment takes it to 1).

Well-designed software can recognize when this occurs and instead of displaying a seemingly incorrect outcome, it will simply display an error, or infinity. This is to let the user know that the outcome does not fit into the variable size that the program uses.

In the case of the question, 170! is the largest faculty that still fits within a 1024 bits (128 byte) number. 171! is just too big.

Note that there are tools to allow software to work with arbitrarily large numbers. These typically allocate more space for storage as the number gets bigger. They're often quite a bit slower than fixed-size numbers and since such large numbers are rarely needed (in many cases, a computation can be reordered to avoid having such a large number as intermediate outcome), most software simply uses fixed-size numbers and will display an error in the rare situation that an overflow occurs.


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

[User] ELI5: what's the difference between derealization, depersonalization and dissociation?

[Assistant] Dissociation is a more general term, derealization and depersonalization both fall into dissociative symptoms. Derealization is detachment from external environment, depersonalization is detachment from self.


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

[User]
[Star Wars ROTJ] Why didn't Palpatine send Vader down to Endor to defend the shield generator?

While the point was to tempt Luke into joining the Dark Side, what better way to do it than make his father murder his friends on the surface? Since Luke's whole reason to come to the Death Star was to redeem his father, wouldn't denying him access to his father be a better push towards becoming a Sith? And I wonder how willing Luke would be to convert his father after he killed/captured Han and Leia.

It's not like the Death Star was in danger of being damaged while the shield generator was up and I doubt Palpatine ever feared Luke so greatly that he'd ask for Vader's protection out of necessity.

[Assistant]
Palpatine's cruelty, sadism, and ego made it impossible to think in such a way. He wanted the grand display, the showdown between father and son to happen in front of him like a live performance. Palpatine had been trying to replace Vader for years, especially after his apprentice learned about Luke's identity. And in the sith master's mind, the only viable replacement for the disappointing chosen one is the chosen one's child. What better way to get Luke immerse in the dark side than the exact series of events that the Emperor planned out?

Also let's not forget that many of Palpatine's decisions were guided by his ability to see the future. Unlike the Jedi during the clone wars, who had their future vision clouded by the dark side, Palpatine saw with perfect clarity. It's how so many of his plans succeeded so wildly. And he assumed this pantomime in his throne room would end with Vader's death and Luke standing at his side. And it almost happened until Luke suddenly stopped pummeling his father and instead threw his lightsaber to the side.


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

[User]
[Middle-Earth: Shadow of War] What happened to the orcs under Talion's control after the end of the game?

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR SHADOW OF WAR

I mean in the few years/decades in-between Talion joining the Nazgul and the destruction of Sauron.

I assume they fell back under the dominion of the Dark Lord as soon as Talion did, but how did the Nazgul and other orcs feel about it?

Were those orcs cast out of orcish society forever? Hunted down? Forced to integrate with the other orcs? Did Talion's orcs get to keep their forts?

[Assistant] The orc society is based primarily on brutality and racial concerns. The strongest among them lead and uruk hai and trolls lead over orcs. They would be integrated back into the main host but through infighting and dominance of might.


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

[User]
ELI5: What are physicists referring to when they say "information" being destroyed or lost in black holes?

What are they referring to when they say things like "information is lost when it enters a black hole" or recently that the information isn't lost but preserved. What is this information? Is is matter? Light? Random floating space books?

[Assistant]
What they mean by "information" is in fact the physical state of the matter itself. Basically, the theory that says the interior of a black hole is a homogeneous soup of elementary particles from which restoration of what may have created them is forever impossible. Suns, stars, planets, people... we'd have no idea what went in.

This is a problem for physicists because they like to believe that if you look at a system at any point in time, you should be able to predict its past and present states.

For a real world example, if you walk into your kitchen and see a broken plate on the floor, you can figure out that those pieces used to be a plate. You can go a step further, and examine them more closely and find out that the plate itself is glass. And further investigation reveals more information about the nature and state of its existence through time, as sand and what kind of rock eroded into the sand and so on.

But if you walked into your kitchen, and found a puddle of homogeneous elementary particles with random positions and motions, you'd have no way of knowing it was a plate unless you had perfect information of exactly what the kitchen was like before, and through the process of elimination established that one of the plates was missing. So far, that's not how anything works... except possibly black holes.


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

[User] [Guardians oTG] Why isn't Yondu's Yaka arrow & Transmitter more common? Surely there are beings that have the ability to control an arrow even if not at Yondu's level.

[Assistant]
The guy who takes it after Yondu dies is only ever shown to be a danger to himself and his shipmates (accidentally).  So, its not a choice between being at Yondus level or below, it's a choice between being at Yondus level or being more of a hazard to your own side than to the enemy.  Training to use the weapon is evidently difficult and dangerous compared to "point the dangerous end downrange and press the trigger."

Yondu's backstory is he was a Kree battle slave.  He represents the perfect mix of showy and expendable that would justify training him to use the arrow.


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

[User]
CMV: Palestine is in fact the illegitimate state, not Israel

Full disclosure: I'm Israeli and a Zionist, born and raised in a kibbutz in the middle of Israel and is generally liberal in my views (tho I'd never vote to Meretz).

Palestine lost the war that they started. They could have accepted the partition plan that was majorly to their advantage (80% the land would have gone to the Palestinians, 20% to the soon to be Israelis), but nope! They decided that they want to be greedy, and claim all the land to themselves.

Mind you, the Jewish national fund purchase over 3 million acres until 1948 (according to Wikipedia). That's quite a lot of land considering that Israel is only 22,072 kilometers squared.

Even without the amount of land the JNF bought, Palestine still lost the war. Multiple times! Since when do the losers not get any repercussions? And yeah, I know that history is told by the victors, but there are still plenty of Palestinians who tell their story, and it's very clear that they lost from what they tell.

I would love to hear your thoughts, just... Keep it civil, k?

[Assistant]
\> Even without the amount of land the JNF bought, Palestine still lost the war. Multiple times! Since when do the losers not get any repercussions?

If we're talking about moral legitimacy, losing a war should have nothing to do with it. Let's imagine that tomorrow, a coalition of states decided to attack Israel. It's happened before, as you know. Imagine this time, they won and Israel lost. Would the new state they set up have legitimacy and any straggling Jewish state and it's promoters lack legitimacy?

Does might make right?

You're correct that it has historically been so, but we can't always call that morally legitimate. And the world has attempted to move away from allowing that.


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

[User]
ELI5: What happened after my mom had a hysterectomy?

So after I was born my mom had her uterus removed and I'm confused about a few things. What happened to the space where her uterus was? Is it still empty? Also, where do her eggs from her ovaries go now? Do they just float around in her?

EDIT: Answered, thanks!

[Assistant]
The eggs, which are very tiny, are just released into the fallopian tubes and then when they can not go anywhere they are broken down and absorbed by her body.

The uterus is quite small when there is no child growing in it. The other organs and internal body fat move around and fill the space the uterus once occupied.


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

[User]
[Star Trek TNG/DS9/VOY] How much radiation is the average starship crew member exposed to in their career?

It seems like every few months there's some kind of radiation leak, surge, or breach. There's also ambient radiation just from standard shipboard operations.

 How large of dose can I expect to receive during my career?

What sort of treatments are available for this exposure?

How do such treatments compare to what was available during the early decades of the 21st century?

[Assistant]
Actual dosage of radiation (barring exotic ones like Thaleron) doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't outright kill you. They are several treatments to prevent radiation damage while in an irradiated environment, and the after-effect of most radiation can be fully repaired

Ambient radiation isn't normally much of an issue, as most devices which can leak it are shielded.


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

[User] [Inside Out] What does the headquarters inside the mind of someone with autism look like?

[Assistant]
I think everyone's headquarters looks the same, they just all have one leading emotion.

An autistic person is normal in nearly every sense of the word, except for how they process the outside world. For instance an autistic person, who's extremely adversed to being touched, most likely has all the 'normal' senses, he/she just has the emotion for disgust or anger kick in when someone touches him, instead of for 'normal' events.