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

[User]
How do we know it's 'quantum' uncertainty, and not uncertainty in measurements or interference from unknown factors?

Firstly, I don't mean to suggest that I don't believe the quantum interpretation. When I read articles about quantum mechanics, there is always a bit that says that a particle's position and velocity can't be measured to a certainty; there is always a random chance of finding either within a range, with probabilities determined by the wave function (as far as I can tell). For the sake of example, say we shot a particle at a given velocity, and then measure its position after a given period of time. If we determine the particle's velocity to be somewhere between 10 and 20 m/s, why interpret that as an indication of the particle's probabilistic nature, instead of assuming it's the effects of precision of the particle gun, the precision of the detector, the particle colliding with other particles on its way, etc?

[Assistant] Sort of a quick TL;DR-style approach is to say that quantum theory predicts that a certain amount of uncertainty exists because of the nature of wavefunctions. When we do experiments, after eliminating all sources of uncertainty we can eliminate, we're left with an amount of uncertainty that is never less than the amount predicted by quantum theory. So why not believe that quantum uncertainty is real?


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

[User] ELI5: if adrenaline manage to makes us stronger on specific emergencies, why haven't we harvest these effects to try to makes us stronger all the time?

[Assistant]
Your muscles are strong enough to tear themselves, but usually theres an unconscious limit placed on them to avoid damage.

An adrenaline surge can remove that limit and enable some impressive feats of strength... at massive risk of injury.

The stress response also places significant strain on the cardiovascular system and blunts your decision making.  Your ability to think calmly and logically drops when your body is in war mode, youre only prepared to enact violence.


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

[User]
[They Live] So, if the advertisements we see are all just minimalist white squares with simple text, wouldn't people who work in the factories that produce posters or whatnot realize they are only using white and black paint/ink?

I figure it would be suspicious to *someone* in the production process, right?

[Assistant]
The print Industry is controlled by Them. The colour inks we know of are actually transparent on some wavelength, allowing humans to subconsciously see the messages on the "blank" beneath.

The sunglasses have filters to allow ordinary vision of the messages. This would be obvious to people working in optics and vision. Do not trust people working in optics and vision.


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

[User]
[WH40K] What is done for Tech-Priest rituals and prayers?

I'm new to the franchise (I know, I'm ashamed too) and currently reading through the Ciaphas Cain series. It refers to tech-priests constantly performing rituals to (assist?) turning machines on and to keep them functioning. Is all of their technology just human innovations from the Dark Age of Technology? Let's just discuss the cogboys role in general I guess.

[Assistant]
The Litany of Ignition:

*The soul of the Machine God surrounds thee.*
*The power of the Machine God invests thee.*
*The hate of the Machine God drives thee.*
*The Machine God endows thee with life.*
*Live!*

Holy Oils for the cogs of the Machine, Turn forever as is the will of the Omnissiah.

Please the Machine-Spirit with the proper rituals and prayer.

Chant against malfunction:

*May your weapon be guarded against malfunction,*
*As your soul is guarded from impurity.*
*The Machine God watches over you.*
*Unleash the weapons of war.*
*Unleash the Deathdealer.*

The machine God, the Deus Mechanicus, The Omnissiah is the source of all knowledge and technology of man. Look on it's perfection, every part made to fit together, it comes from a divine source! And all this knowledge is locked away inside the Holy Standard Template Construct.

To attend the highest form you can, your flesh will be only part of the journey, To become perfect you must cast of the biological limit of your body and reach out for the divine knowledge of the Machine God. Join us in the Quest for Knowledge, a life is only worth the knowledge he have gathred during his life, reach out! Reach out for steel and wire!

*Toll the Great Bell Once!*

*Pull the Lever forward to engage the Piston and Pump...*

*Toll the Great Bell Twice!*

*With push of Button fire the Engine And spark Turbine into life...*

*Toll the Great Bell Thrice!*

*Sing Praise to the God of All Machines*


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why would moisture farmers need an astromech droid?

How would R2-D2 help the Lars farm? Would he do repairs or just be a laborer?

[Assistant] You're obviously from the Inner Core. Moisture farms require a lot of computerized automation.  There's constant atmospheric monitoring, pump pressure adjustments, pipe and stream line routing, distillers, condensers, etc.  Unless you know the antiquated language that the system is programmed in, you're going to need an astromech to monitor the jury-rigged set-up that we got going on here from collapsing.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How much different is an unmodified YT-1300 from something such as the Millenium Falcon?

The Falcon being a YT-1300 with a vast array of modifications made to it over the years.  How extremely have these additions changed it from its default appearance and functionality?

[Assistant]
More or less every technical aspect of the Falcon has been enhanced.  It's guns, armor and shielding are equivalent to that of a military vessel.  It has improved computers.  And specialized compartments that can hide contraband from detection.  But, the most impressive improvement is the hyperdrive; which is essentially the best hyperdrive that you could fit on a ship of that size.  It isn't far from the truth when Han says the Falcon is the fastest ship in the galaxy.

As for appearance it doesn't standout much.  It looks like a junky YT-1300 that has been jury rigged to function.  As an analogy it would look like a pickup truck with different colored doors and hood and a bungie cord holding the tailgate on.  You wouldn't suspect that under the hood was an 1800 hp engine.  The Millennium Falcon has been modified to peak performance, but wouldn't cause a customs official to give it a second look.


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

[User] What Would Happen if The Solar storm of 1859 Happened in Modern Times?

[Assistant] The fear mongering in this thread is set to 11. Humans survive. We would have police, we would have firefighters. Their tools would change but they would be there. Engineers would start fixing infrastructure. Without anything else to do we would have an enormous workforce that could be dedicated to fixing the problems. It would certainly be hard, some people would starve or freeze to death, but we would muddle through, like we always have.


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

[User] [Star Trek] How does the Federation base time? Surely not all planets have a 24 hour rotation.

[Assistant]
They tend to use local time for planet-based assignments.  Unless a planet has a radically different schedule, like night lasting a month, people adapt.  Most planets seem to have like a 20-30 hour day.

Ships tend to use 24 hour days.  This seems to be just military convenience, as it allows for 6 hour shifts or 8 hour shifts, depending on captain or crew's preference.  Enterprise-D used three 8-hour shifts, occasionally using four 6-hour shifts that the crew disliked.  Deep Space-9 used the four 6-hour shifts and seemed to prefer them.


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

[User]
ELI5: What makes the Shinkansen so "successful"?

I keep hearing about how the Japanese Bullet Train is so "successful" and "leading edge" and "one of a kind", without really going into detail on why such words are being used. People are saying that other bullet trains in  other parts of the world aren't as fast, or as punctual, or as profitable. Why is this? What is making the Shinkansen so unique and better among the world of high-speed rail?

[Assistant]
The first is that there are major population centers close together. The most trafficked line in Japan is the Tokaido line. Greater Tokyo has 36 million people in it. The Kansai metro area has 20 million people in it. They're only 250 miles apart. You have 56 million people who potentially want to get from place to place. That's not counting the 10 million or so that live in Nagoya and two and a half million that live in Kyoto along the route. So you've got all this customer base and only have to lay 320 miles of track.

A plane means airports. It means security. It means going up. It means going down. A 1h30m flight from Tokyo to Osaka means getting from wherever you are in Tokyo to Narita which is an extremely long train ride, then a flight, then a long train ride from Kansai Airport to Osaka.

The shinkansen involves getting to Chiyoda in central Tokyo, just about every train goes there. You hop on the shinkansen. You walk out 2h30m later in Yodogawa, a short train ride from downtown Osaka.

Compare to the US. You drive to the airport because there's no virtually public transport. You take a plane hundreds or even thousands of miles to your destination. You hire a car because there's no decent public transport in 90% of US cities.

Why would anyone take a plane if a train was as convenient as it is in Japan? You're in Japan so you don't need to worry about a lack of car from taking a train in metro areas. Places like the US on the other hand, there's no advantage to a train. You need a car to get to the station and you need a car once you're there.


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

[User] ELI5: Seriously, What's our long-term plan for landfills?

[Assistant] There is plenty of ground to bury all our trash, and at some point in the future we might actually end up mining the area for useful resources. In the foreseeable future the plan is "put some dirt on it".


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

[User] ELI5:What would happen if every country in the world suddenly started using the same currency?

[Assistant]
It depends. If it goes off the USD then this would give Americans massive amounts of power as they would dictate the monetary policy and can print off new money for itself for the most part at the expense of everyone else. Whereas current when they print off new money they harm themselves for the most part. So the government tends to print as little as possible new currency; generally speaking.

Meanwhile currently say Canada can do the same. They print off new money to fund itself as needed.

If that changed. Canada now can't print money to cover off its mistakes and needs. They end up forcing themselves to take less risks and acting more fiscally conservative. Meanwhile the USD could print itself and harm the Canadians.

So what would happen would be far more commonly there would be countries having economic failures that they can't just print off money and the USD value would drop far less than it has been historically.

Now if we posit a currency which doesn't have a central country of control; much like bitcoin or perhaps the Star Trek federation credit. The problem is that inflexiblity of the currency is a lost tool that for the most part that isn't beneficial to society.


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

[User]
If a satellite is orbiting a body, will its orbit decay if there is no drag?

I have been pondering about this since i've been studying physics recently and after some lengthy google searches i have found that the answer is no, but why? If it has velocity and the only force being applied to it is gravity, then the net force is a vector pointing towards the body it is orbiting since velocity is not a force but a property of an object, and since the net force applied to the body is not 0 then its velocity cannot be constant, but supposedly the satellite does not decelerate only through gravity.

I believe that i am under a misconception somewhere; i am supposing that a force cannot subtract from the object's velocity since it is not opposite to its motion and instead changes its path without actually changing the speed, am i correct?

[Assistant]
With a spherically symmetric primary, a satellite, and nothing else, and ignoring the existence of gravitational waves, the satellite would stay in a Keplerian orbit forever.

Since gravitational waves do exist, the satellite's orbit will decay via their emission. This will take a gazillion years though.

Asymmetry in the primary, and perturbations from other celestial bodies, can cause the orbit to shift on much shorter timescales. For example most low lunar orbits are unstable over a few months - irregularities in the moon's gravity and the influence of the Earth and Sun will change the orbit until the satellite crashes into the lunar surface. This kind of thing works with gravity alone, before you consider other forces like solar radiation pressure.


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

[User]
[Demon Slayer] would muzan ever stop being "evil" if he got what he wanted?

so muzan's main goal is to obtain the blue spider lily, which will "complete" his transformation into a demon by granting him immunity to the sun and not have to eat humans to survive

but...even if muzan didn't have to eat humans anymore, would he still stop killing? it seems pretty obvious that he's quite evil. his main motives are due to his fear of death. would that "fear" go away?

[Assistant]
Very likely the answer is no. He's shown throughout the series to be violent, vindictive, short tempered, and manipulative. Things that, ultimately, are separate from his need to eat humans and his fear of dying.

Ultimately, the thing that holds him back from being a good person is neither his need to consume humans to survive, nor his fear of death. It's his massive god complex. He believes himself to be the most perfect being on the planet, superior to everything else, believing this grants him the right to do anything he wants, and in following this idea, he treats all others as worthless.

He's an abusive, manipulative, raging narcissist and sociopath who believes he's the only person on the planet with any inherent value, and the only value others have is in how they can be useful to him.

While all of this may be exacerbated, and some of it even caused, by his fear of death and his need to consume people, None of it will get any better just because he stops needing those things.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is the shower curtain following me and trying to stick to me while I'm showering?

[Assistant]
The hot air created by the hot water pouring into the shower area rises and creates a little vacuum within the shower.  This causes the air-pressure on the outside of the curtain to be greater on the inside so it "blows" the curtain in towards you.

Alternatively, this is because YOU are so hot that the air heats up and rises resulting in the same affect, but double so because the curtain can't resist your sexiness.

Probably the later of these...


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

[User] [DC] what exactly is the Omega effect?

[Assistant]
Long story short, it's the source of Darkseid's powers. You can think of it as similar to the Odinforce (or later the Thorforce) in Marvel.

DC says that the Omega Beams he creates using the Omega Force are made of entropy, but it goes beyond that. Darkseid can do pretty much anything using them. The Omega Beams unerringly search out their target, and when they hit, they can destroy the target, erase them from the timeline, or turn them into a tiny little ball for safekeeping.

Darkseid claims that no living thing can survive the direct, full force of the Omega Effect, but Doomsday and Superman have both tanked shots ... though they were staggered by the blast. It's possible that the Omega Effect *could* kill them, but it seems like this would tax Darkseid to his limits.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did we know how to translate between different languages.

Let's say for the first time in human history, someone tried to translate something from Chinese into English or vice-versa. How would they know what the right words and sentence structure were in the other language?

[Assistant]
For any living language, it's possible to learn a second language the same way you learned your first. Go to a place where everyone is speaking it and be curious. You'll eventually pick up enough of the basics that a current speaker can start to teach it to you formally. For languages spoken nearby, dual speakers will naturally arise in children who spend some time in each region. Chinese to English may have been harder at one point, but because of the nature of trade in olden times, if you even *had* any Chinese text, you probably also had a Chinese person who had traveled a long way to deliver it, perhaps so long that they had no intention of returning any time soon and could learn English and translate.

Dead languages are trickier, and European scientists had a famously difficult time translating things like Egyptian hieroglyphics. That problem was addressed by the "Rosetta Stone", a fortunate archaeological find that  printed the same text in multiple languages, one of which we already understood and one of which was hieroglyphics.


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

[User]
Why can't we accelerate something to beyond the speed of light?

I have actually studied 5 years of physics at uni but never gotten this explained in a comprehensive way.

[Assistant]
"Beyond the speed of light" does not exist. As a reference frame asymptotically approaches the speed of light, its spatial dimension in the direction of motion approaches zero width, and its time slows towards being stopped, relative to the stationary observer. A reference frame with zero width and no time elapsing is not a reference frame. Therefore, there are no valid reference frames exactly at speed c or above. Space and time simply don't exist faster than the speed of light. In fact, the phrase "faster than the speed of light" is meaningless. Speed is defined as the distance in space traveled over the time elapsed. Without time or space existing above c, the concept of speed itself does not exist above c.

Another point worth considering is that relativistic energy is nonlinear. The closer you get to c, the more energy it takes to accelerate one more increment. It takes an infinite amount of energy to accelerate to exactly the speed of light.


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

[User]
ELI5: How differently does the body process sugar alcohols vs regular sugars?

I've been trying to reduce my overall sugar intake in recent months, and I've notice one option is foods that substitute sugar with sugar alcohol.

I have a baseline understanding of chemistry, and from what I can gather sugar alcohols are basically sugar molecules with an -OH attached somewhere.

This seems like enough to fool the tastebuds into thinking that its regular sugar and send "this is sweet" signals to the brain, but I'm curious to how the body actually processes these molecules in the gut.

If the body ends up breaking down the molecules like regular sugar molecules, that doesn't seem very advantageous unless you're a food manufacturer trying to skirt around nutrition labels.

If the body ends up breaking down the sugar alcohol differently than sugar, how does it breakdown, and what are some advantages and disadvantages of sugar alcohol over regular sugar?

[Assistant]
>If the body ends up breaking down the sugar alcohol differently than sugar, how does it breakdown, and what are some advantages and disadvantages of sugar alcohol over regular sugar?

The body processes sugar alcohols a little differently, yes. Specifically, the human body can absorb a little over half the caloric content (2.6 calories per gram versus four), and sugar alcohols also don't cause blood sugar to spike as hard. Sugar alcohols also don't contribute to tooth decay.

As you note, their chemical structure is similar enough to sugar to fool our tastebuds. However, it's not as potent, meaning more sugar alcohol would be needed to make something taste "as sweet." Because 2.6 is 65% of 4, as long as the sweetness of the sugar alcohol in question is 65% or more of straight glucose, you come out ahead in a 1:1 swap.

One downside that should be noted is because the body doesn't process sugar alcohols completely, you can end up with gastrointestinal effects like gas and diarrhea.


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

[User]
What is happening at the atomic or molecular level that causes dry antibiotic and multivitamin pills to expire?

So apparently my Costco-sized jug of multivitamins expired in May 2009 (happy anniversary!) and my bottle of ibuprofen expires in 2013 some time, but what is happening to cause these pills to expire? Are the active ingredients degenerating? Are the pills becoming ineffective? Is this due to exposure to the atmosphere, or are they inherently unstable?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but the idea of "expired" drugs and vitamins never really made much sense to me. It seems as if the pills should be pretty inert, so what gives?

[Assistant]
Nothing is perfectly inert - especially organic compounds. Many compounds are sensitive to water (Tylenol and Aspirin - acetaminophen and acetylsalicylic acid, respectively - contain amide bonds, which can slowly hydrolyze), others to oxidation (alcohol and unsaturated functional groups - virtually all the vitamins and drugs).

Most of these are not a huge concern, since the reaction rate is quite slow (_very_ slow, in fact), and steps _are_ taken to prevent decomposition (such as those silica pouches you find in the bottle, or the cotton ball at the mouth of the bottle). It's just that nothing is 100% effective - the silica doesn't suck up all atmospheric humidity, the seal on your bottle is not impervious.

So after a couple of years, or a decade or so, we can hardly say with a high degree of certainty how much of our active ingredient is left, or whether there are any toxic decomposition products formed. Other concerns include moisture build-up leading to fungal growths in the pills, etc.

Edit: Or, it could be a ploy by the big pharmaceutical companies to boost revenue.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are the colours blue and purple relatively rare in nature?

[Assistant]
When you look at things, their coloration comes from the light they reflect while absorbing the rest. A blue object absorbs all colors while reflecting only blue light.

Blue light is the part of the visible spectrum with the most energy. Since plants want to absorb as much energy as possible, they didn't evolve to reflect blue light.

Pretty much the only time plants use blue pigments is when they want to attract attention. Blue flowers, blue fruits etc.

Many animals get their pigments from the food they eat. Herbivores eat the plants, predators eat the herbivores. Flamingos are pink due to the red shrimp they eat. The shrimp are red due to the plants they eat.

So on the one hand, blue doesn't make for good camouflage because plants don't want to be blue. And on the other hand, animals can't consume plants for their blue pigments either.

Most animals that do appear blue aren't blue because of pigments (which the usual way organisms display color). Instead, they evolve textured surfaces that bend light and reflect it in a different wavelength to appear blue.

As you can imagine, that's a really unusual adaptation so there's not that many animals that have it.


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

[User] [Superheroes] If a superhuman was legally condemned to death, what standardized or, if needed, specialized execution methods might we need to carry out their sentence?

[Assistant]
It varies wildly based on their powers. Killing Wolverine or Deadpool is all about suppressing their healing or killing them in a way they stay dead, killing Superman is all about actually just getting through his skin, killing the Green Lantern is just about getting him away from his ring.

What heroes and powers are you thinking of?


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

[User]
[MCU] If Steve hadn't gone into the ice or had been found after a few years rather than 70 (say before the 70s), how physically capable would he likely be during the events of the Infinity Saga?

The Erskine serum likely slows aging among the other enhancements, so I'm thinking he'd have the capability of a very fit 50-year-old, but I'm not sure.

[Assistant]
We've already seen it in the MCU.  When he lives his life in the past and returns, he's 100 something years old.  You can subtract 12 years for that as that's how long he was unfrozen in the present, so maybe he'd be a little more physically capable, but Old Steve in the MCU is...old.  He's as fit as a 100 year old person could possibly be (probably stronger, really), but he's not going to be throwing down with Thanos (or even Thanos' children).  He could probably kick the ass of a random punk, but there's only so much the serum can do to counteract aging.  We see Steve as noticeably older in 2023 than he was in 2011.  He's way more experienced and trained and probably a better fighter than he was a decade ago, but his body still shows signs of aging (silver in the hair).

So yeah, he'd be a tough as nails old guy, but certainly not able to compete with any other hero in their 30's physically.


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

[User]
ELI5: In American Sniper he racked up 160+ kills, while in Jarhead he hardly got to take a shot. What were the differences in context behind the events of the films that led to such different sniper experiences?

Did we really use snipers so differently from one war to the next and if so, why?

Edit: Noted on the differences between the two conflicts, including length and the occupation elements. I'd call this explained.

[Assistant]
Well, for starters Jarhead was set during the Gulf War, which was a fairly short and almost entirely mechanized campaign. We took a long time to build up our forces, then steamrolled through kuwait and kicked the iraqis out with relatively little trouble, with airpower and tanks shouldering a lot of the workload.

The Iraq war was like that for the first bit, but has since settled into more of an occupation, with infantry doing most of the work in house to house fighting. This type provides a lot more work for a sniper, especially a really good one.


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

[User] [IT] How does It make children float?

[Assistant]
IT... is magic.

How does it know a child's thoughts? Make a parent ignore a bloody bathroom? Stoke a general malevolence in Derry?

There's no how. IT existed before humanity, and Derry exists only as a pen, that holds IT's food between feasts.

WHY does it make kids float?

I'd say that, if IT is something like a spider, the children are floating in something like a "web".

And like a spider, IT suspends prey and slowly drains them, of fear and hope and vitality and innocence.

That's where Georgie is....


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

[User] What makes electronic money officially money? Why can't people forge electronic money?

[Assistant]
Assuming you're talking about money in banks' computers, the answer boils down to:

1) Becoming a bank isn't easy.

2) Being a bank is very profitable.

3) Cheating and just assigning yourself a bunch of money isn't worth risking getting caught (from the bank's perspective).  An employee might want to, but they would have to get past the bank's security and audits to get away with it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why when you wash a white load with a red item the colour runs and it goes pink, but if you wash a load of colours none of them get mixed?

[Assistant]
Answer: They do get mixed if you wash them on hot and they arent color-fast (dye that wont bleed over).

White clothes are often washed at higher temperatures and higher temperatures make the dyes from color clothing mix into the water. Mixed loads are usually washed on colder settings to prevent this/prevent colors from fading.

Newer clothing hasnt had a chance to have that initial excess dye washed out, so most heavily dyed clothes should be washed with like colors or by themselves on the first wash.

Some clothes will bleed dye regardless. These should only be washed with like color clothes, not a mixed load.


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

[User]
[Ghostbusters Afterlife] How has the accepted fact that Ghosts are real not had a major impact on humanity?

It seems to me Ghosts being real would have major implications to humans. Not just ghosts, Demons and God types as well. But somehow its just business as usual 30 years hence the discovery that the Supernatural is real.

[Assistant] Most people didn't believe it was real. They thought it was fake. Some believed they were caused by nerve gasses inducing hallucinations. There's no real video footage of Stay Puft (not everyone had a video camera in their pocket back then), and there was some sort of terrorist event at a high rise... but nobody was thinking it was ghost or a Sumerian god.


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

[User]
[bioshock infinite] why do they make vigors for fighting?

Why would a place like Columbia need vigors to improve fighting they already have a police force why would they want a way for people to have an easier way to kill them and why didn't they give them to their police force to help fight crimes?

[Assistant] I can't speak for the future of Colombia, but during the events of Infinite vigors were relatively new, having just been developed from Suchong's plasmids.  They were mainly used by Fink for entertainment purposes and for making the firemen.  They probably would have gotten widespread adoption like in Rapture had the ending mot erased Colombia's existence entirely.


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

[User]
[LotR] Why did the Three Rings of the Elves lose their power when the One Ring was destroyed?

AFAIK, the One was created after the Three, with the purpose of influencing the wielders of the other rings, but because the Elves sensed Saurons betrayal as soon as he put on the One, they were able to hide the Three from him. Clearly the Three had power before the creation of the One, so why did they lose that power after it was destroyed?

[Assistant]
The Elves may have sensed Sauron's betrayal the moment that he put on the One, but the Three were still subject to it. They removed their Rings immediately and hid them, and did not take them up again until Sauron was defeated.

But though Celebrimbor forged the Three himself, unlike the other Rings of Power which were made with Sauron's direct aid, Celebrimbor still needed the knowledge he had gained from Sauron to forge the Three. That was enough for them to be under the power of the One, and when the One was destroyed, their power failed as well.


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

[User]
CMV: Rights are generally not things given, but things that cant be taken away. In saying that, everyone should have the right to food, water and shelter.

This should be the case regardless of whether they work or in any other sense contribute. Nobody chooses to be born and therefore should have the choice in whether they participate in capitalism.

Likewise, buying and selling land for the purpose of only living on is absurd - if land is not being used for agricultural or commercial purposes, it has no intrinsic monetary value. Nobody laboured to produce it. Its there for our use - by the logic that we charge for domestic land, breathing air would be charged in dollars and cents.

Everyone should simply be able to find a reasonably sized plot of land that is not protected and make their home there.

Why should the government or capitalism impede us from doing as our ancestors did?

[Assistant]
> Everyone should simply be able to find a reasonably sized plot of land that is not protected and make their home there.
>
> Why should the government or capitalism impede us from doing as our ancestors did?

Who decides who gets the land? If two people select the same piece of land, under what terms is ownership decided, and what happens if the losing person decides he doesn't like the result and takes matters unto his own hands?


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What are Darth Sidiuos's roots?

Where did he come from? What was he like as kid? He was a senator from Naboo, so is he from there? How did he get so powerful?

[Assistant]
He was a manipulative little shit, born on Naboo to one of their noble families. One of the four most important noble families. He inherited a violent streak from his father.

He always thought of himself as different, and was clever enough to twist everyone around him like a kitten with a ball of wool - except his family, who he had a strained relationship with thanks to his actions. His father was never completely convinced the little bastard was actually his, so difficult was he to get along with. The only nice moment they shared was that time Palpatine accidentally killed two people in a speeder his father bought him as a bribe, with Dad in the cockpit. Oops.

He was originally discovered by Plageuis in University, while hip-deep in a scheme to discredit his father and the other nobles by releasing some information about how naughty they'd been in hiring mercenaries to exterminate the gungans (Though the real crime was that they failed). Palpatine was recruited as a spy and may have *accidentally* butchered his entire family during this time. This led to his recruitment as Apprentice to Darth Plageuis, since patricide and other crimes gets you extra points on the checklist.

His power came from a number of things: His inherent potential, for example. His teaching: during this time he began training Darth Maul after obtaining him as an infant and spent a great deal of time delving into Sith lore while building his political career. While Plageuis concentrated on his 'great work', Palpatine centered himself in locations across the galaxy that were strong with the dark side, augmenting his power. He combined a double life successfully; one as the sticky Palpatine, the other as the ice-smooth Darth Sidious. He learnt to hide himself from the Jedi by making 'friends' with them. He travelled the galaxy, met interesting people (in the form of Dark side force adepts) and killed them. Sometimes subjugated them. His crowning glory was getting his Master hammered and electrocuting him in his sleep, causing him to suffocate as his breath mask shorted out.


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

[User]
Why is Bismuth so non-lethal, compared to other heavy metals?  Especially considering its neighbors are Thallium, Mercury, Lead, and Polonium.

Specifically, why can we ingest it via pepto-bismol?  Is it the element itself which is safe, or the way it's bonded in the compound?  If it is the former, what makes Bismuth safer for us?  If the latter, why is pepto safe, yet various lead compounds are not?

[Assistant]
One property of bismuth that separates it from other heavy metals is that it does not accumulate in an organism. This process is called bioaccumulation, and is the reason why its neighboring elements are so much more toxic. With lead, for example, if an organism ingests it, the rate of absorption of lead in the body will be greater than the rate of removal from the body. With bismuth, the body removes it so quickly following ingestion that there is no time for absorption. The half life of bismuth when it is inside an organism is five days.

This is not to say that bismuth is safe though, so dont go off and eat a tuna and bismuth sandwich just yet. Even though it may not stay in your body as long as other heavy metals, bismuth poisoning does exist and can  harm  the kidneys, liver, and bladder. Also, one of its main suppliers, Alfa Aesar, notes that it can cause skin, eye, and GI irritation.


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

[User]
CMV: American portion sizes are too big and this is contributing to the society's problems

Compared to the rest of the world, or at least the places I have travelled to, American portion sizes for restaurant-served meals are easily at least 30 percent more than what they are elsewhere, usually even more so.

I feel that this introduces a host of issues:

1. Some people are doggy-bagging the leftover food that is inconvenient to carry around and the extra packaging is bad for the environment.
2. Some people leave the remaining meal which is wasteful.
3. Some people continue to eat the entire meal even when they achieve satiety or eat their required portion halfway through the meal. This pattern causes an abundance of health issues especially as people are mentally-tricked into thinking that it is their own designated portion size, not realizing that a smaller portion might have sufficed or even served them better. The feelings of satiety often take a little while to transmit to our brain and overeating in that window is often harmful for health.
4. The restaurant and fast-food industry profits from serving people larger portions (more sales per customer) which in turn leads to reduced cost per unit of food for the customers and in turn entices more people to turn to unhealthy restaurant/fast-food vs homecooking healthier meals.

I know my post doesn't apply to every person and if you are a younger guy with a high metabolism, you probably think the portion size is adequate at best. I do understand that portion sizes are subjective person-to-person but given how diverse the American population is, with a mix of people of all races, genders and sizes, it might make more sense to keep the portions smaller so a larger number of the population can only order as much as they need to.

[Assistant] For people with less money, a larger portion can be helpful since a larger portion meal can count as two meals, like you said. They may not have the time to make a homecooked meal, so this may be their best option, at times.


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

[User]
What does the literature say about the effectiveness of prison?

* Does serving time in prison make somebody less likely to commit another crime after they're released?
* Is the fear of going to prison an effective way to deter potential criminals?
* Does prison prepare people to become productive society members?
* Does seeing somebody be sentenced to prison help ease the suffering of crime victims?

For all of the above, what alternatives have been researched? Are they more or less effective than prison?

Are there any books you can recommend that provide a well-researched non-biased overview of these topics?

[Assistant]
Do prisons reduce crime? Yes
 > Levitt, S. D. (1996). The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation. The Quarterly journal of economics, 111(2), 319-351.

Do prisons deter crime? Yes.
> Levitt, S. D. (1998). Juvenile Crime and Punishment. The Journal of Political Economy, 106(6), 1156-1185.

Do prisons reduce crime through incapacitation? Yes.
> Barbarino, A., & Mastrobuoni, G. (2014). The incapacitation effect of incarceration: Evidence from several Italian collective pardons. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6(1), 1-37.

>Buonanno, P., & Raphael, S. (2013). Incarceration and Incapacitation: Evidence from the 2006 Italian Collective Pardon. The American Economic Review, 103(6), 2437-2465.

Do sentence enhancements have an incapacitation effect? Yes
> Owens, E. G. (2009). More time, less crime? Estimating the incapacitative effect of sentence enhancements. Journal of Law and Economics, 52(3), 551-579.

Do longer sentences deter crime? Yes.
> Bell, B., Jaitman, L., & Machin, S. (2014). Crime deterrence: evidence from the London 2011 riots. The Economic Journal, 124(576), 480-506.

> Drago, F., Galbiati, R., & Vertova, P. (2009). The deterrent effects of prison: Evidence from a natural experiment. Journal of political Economy, 117(2), 257-280.

Are there diminishing returns to prison use? Yes, probably.
> Buonanno, P., & Raphael, S. (2013). Incarceration and Incapacitation: Evidence from the 2006 Italian Collective Pardon. The American Economic Review, 103(6), 2437-2465.

> Liedka, R. V., Piehl, A. M., & Useem, B. (2006). The crime-control effect of incarceration: does scale matter? Criminology and Public Policy, 5(2), 245.

> Johnson, R., & Raphael, S. (2012). How much crime reduction does the marginal prisoner buy? Journal of Law and Economics, 55(2), 275-310.

Are private prisons worse than public prisons? No
> Dolovich, S. (2005). State punishment and private prisons. Duke Law Journal, 437-546.

Is prison recidivism a serious problem? Not as much as people think.
> Rhodes, W., Gaes, G., Luallen, J., Kling, R., Rich, T., & Shively, M. (2014). Following Incarceration, Most Released Offenders Never Return to Prison. Crime & Delinquency.

Does swift, certain punishment deter crime more than severe uncertain punishment? Yes
> Kleiman, M. (2009). When brute force fails: How to have less crime and less punishment. Princeton University Press.

Does prison gang membership increase recidivism? Yes
> Dooley, B. D., Seals, A., & Skarbek, D. (2014). The effect of prison gang membership on recidivism. Journal of Criminal Justice, 42(3), 267-275.

Do larger prison populations increase prison gang activity? Yes
> Skarbek, D. (2014). The social order of the underworld: How prison gangs govern the American penal system. Oxford University Press.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does the captain go down with the ship?

[Assistant]
They dont. Its basically seafaring tradition that the captain accepts responsibility over the safety of everyone aboard the ship.

It doesnt mean that the captain must die if the ship sinks, it means that the captain has a responsibility to ensure everyone elses safety before his own. So if there are passengers trapped on the ship, the captain is expected to do everything including risk his life to get them to safety.

But if the ship is evacuated and everyone else is safe, the captain may then leave.


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

[User] [Kingsman:TSS] How practical are Gazelle's Prosthetic Leg Blades?

[Assistant]
You can sharpen a prosthetic limb. If the person using that prosthetic is a gymnast and gets whirling around fast, you could kill someone with it. It's unexpected and strange. Even trained guys wouldn't be expecting it. It would take a lot of practice and work; you'd essentially have to be self-taught. But you could do it.

The problem is... everything else *except* killing. Walking on any kind of soft ground would be an undignified mess; on hard surfaces the tiny contact patch of the blade tip would skid and scratch. It would be like wearing spike heels with a ball bearing on the spike. Not to mention the bizarre drawback of the sharp point leaving tracks in hardwood floors and vinyl, enabling enemies to know where you've been.

tl;dr, they're practical in that you could kill someone, but walking around on sharp points has a lot of disadvantages.


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

[User]
Eli5: How does stretching affect the body?

Animals and humans alike seem to enjoy a good stretch when first waking up or after being still for a long time. What affect does stretching have on the body that makes it so instinctual?

[Assistant] Stretching does a few different things. First, it helps to align the tissues that connect your muscles to your bones. Second, whenever you move a muscle, the muscle will send signals communicating how long it has been extended. If it extends too far, it will receive a message telling it to contract  the purpose being to prevent injury. This message can be overridden by stretching correctly, granting a higher range of motion.


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

[User]
Eli5: How does our body absorb creams? Which parts of our skin do they go to?

Or oils or things like cocoa butter. I put coconut oil on my face every night but I just realised that  am not sure how or why it even works.

[Assistant] Hey there, pharmacist here. The most general way to understand the skin, drug absorption, lotions, and so forth is to think about how oil and water don't (easily) mix. To cross the skin barrier from outside of your skin to the inside, generally any molecule has to cross an outer lipophilic layer (which likes fat), then through a hydrophilic layer (which likes water), and then through an inner lipophilic layer. Some transdermal (across the skin) delivery systems can even increase the permeability of the skin, making it easier for molecules to get across. To address your initial question with creams and lotions, remember oil and water. The goal is to increase hydration or rather, to avoid moisture loss. So lotions on a basic level restore water. And if you put something occlusive (a lipophilic barrier like a layer of Vaseline, creams which have oils and fats in them to do the same, a bandage, etc.), you basically trap water in your skin. This is why lotions and creams work better if you put them on when your skin is still damp from a shower or bath - you trap more moisture. Hope this helps!


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

[User]
Interview questions for faculty position?

If any of you serve on hiring committees, can you help a sister out and share some of the more commonly-asked questions when you interview people for full-time faculty positions? The only "real interview" for a faculty position that I've ever had was a phone interview with a hiring committee, and I can't remember any questions they asked off the top of my head. If it helps, I would be teaching biology and public health courses if I was hired by this particular school.

Thanks!

[Assistant]
These are slightly edited questions we've asked on skype for an instructor position. When you are face to face you should also feel comfortable repeating answers from one person to the next (they don't compare exact notes so it's not like it's "cheating" to re-use your good answer to professor 1 with the same question from professor 4). You'll also be surprised how many of the professors will treat this as an opportunity to talk about their favorite subject: themselves. (e.g., "you must have talked about yourself a lot, what questions do you have about ME"?)

	Why are you interested in a faculty position (Instructor, 9 month) at the University of X?  How could this opportunity help you achieve longer-term career goals?

	What courses would you like to teach in the XX program?  Why?

	What are your plans to optimize your effectiveness as a teacher?

	Since this is a 9 month teaching position, what opportunities would you want to pursue during the summer months?

	Describe your teaching and mentoring experiences, particularly with undergraduates.  What motivates you to be a good teacher?

There are similar questions if you would be doing research - where would you get funding from, who would you collaborate with, where do you see your program in 5 years, what experience do you have in proposal writing or project management.

Good luck!


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

[User]
[ELI5] When bears hibernate, do they really spend months in a constant state of unconscious sleep?

I am just curious about this.

[Assistant]
No. Bears goes into a different state called torpor. They can be woken up and their body temperatures remain fairly high. Most bears give birth during the winter months and don't necessarily sleep the entire time, they do refrain from eating though.

Hibernation involves dropping the body temperature down incredibly low and animals in this state can't be woken.


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

[User]
[DC/Batman Begins/Batman] In the film, Gordon brings up the idea of "escalation", that Batman's existence merely causes the bad guys to become more dangerous to match him. Is that really true?

You know that scene in the end,

 BATMAN: Gotham will return to normal.

GORDON: Will it? What about escalation?

BATMAN: Escalation?

GORDON: We start carrying semiautomatics, they buy automatics... we start wearing kevlar, they buy armorpiercing rounds...

BATMAN:  And?

Obviously within the events of the film, Joker and Bane followed, so yeah, things DID escalate heavily. But within the general Batman lore how much truth is there in Gordon's concern? Basically, by becoming Batman, does he create his own enemies and gangs within Gotham? Had Bruce not become Batman would the city have all of Batman's rogue galleries anyways?

Was Gotham better off in the end without the Bat?

[Assistant]
>Was Gotham better off in the end without the Bat?

Definitely not. It would have been destroyed along with the rest of the planet and the mutiverse if not for Batman. In the main continuity at least.

The TAS episode Trial explains why the idea that it's Batman's fault that these villains all act up is silly quite nicely.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is left behind underground after oil companies pump billions of gallons of oil out of a reserve?

Is it a giant cavern? Will the Earth's crust be in danger of collapsing when we're finished pumping?

[Assistant]
At first the oil is under the pressure of all the rock above it pressing down.  That's how you get the iconic gushers you see in movies.  The cavern doesn't empty at that point, it is combination of the oil expand as pressure is relieved, and the rock around it deforming.

After that, the best way to get the oil out is to pump water down to force it back up.

> Will the Earth's crust be in danger of collapsing when we're finished pumping?

No, the total volume of oil is minuscule compare to the entire crust.  It is possible for those changes to create local seismic activity.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why are false accusations not more punishable by the law?

I always hear stories of people being accused for crimes that, could and often do, ruin the lives of the defendants whether they are innocent or not.  Why is it that when the defendant is found innocent without a doubt do we not punish the accuser to the highest extent of the law?

The obvious argument is that we do not want to be putting innocent victims in jail if they are unable to prove their accusations. But, isn't putting innocent people in jail for crimes they never committed just as bad? Should we not have more consequences for false accusations to try and prevent people from making them?

[Assistant]
Making "false allegations" are punishable now, through existing laws on stuff like perjury, abuse of process, malicious prosecution, etc.

The issue is that false allegations, while a major deal when they truly do occur, are SOOOOO hard to prove that they're false.  People are allowed to press forward on claims that are long-shots, that's the way our system is set up - people get to sue or get to contact the police/prosecutors about a criminal matter, and the system sorts out what has merit and what doesn't.

Plus, think about how making it easier to punish people whose claims end up not winning will really hit certain populations hard and unfairly.  Domestic abuse victims, for one.  "No one will believe you" is already a powerful deterrent to reporting that the abuser hangs over his victim.  "No one will believe you AND you'll go to jail for making a false report and never see your kids again?"  Can you imagine?


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

[User] What makes type O- blood so special?

[Assistant] Type O has neither antigen A or B which is actually a particle that lays outside a red blood cell. Type A donors can not give type B acceptors their blood because your body recognizes the new blood is type A and your body begins the rejection process. Type O has no antigens on the superficial layer means all antigens can be donated.


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

[User]
ELI5: how, physically, does a calculator process and calculate answers?

Can you explain physically how electrons or electrical current pulsed through the transistors can calculate, for example, what 9 X 9 is? I think what Im asking is - how do transistors physically come up with mathematical solutions from an input? Ive read about how processors work, but I still dont really understand.

[Assistant]
At the lowest level (almost), it runs due to the actions of transistors. Transistors in digital logic circuits are used mostly as switches. You want the transistors to be either all the way OFF (no current flow) or all the way ON (lots of current flow). And you can use the output of one transistor to control the input of other transistors, so you can construct a complicated circuit by wiring them up in certain ways.

Using just a few transistors, you can build very simple logic circuits to implement binary digital logic (called "Boolean" logic after the guy who invented it).

For example, imagine a light bulb hooked up to a battery through a switch. Switch on, light on; switch off, light off. Now imagine that there are two switches in a row, A and B. The light is only on if A and B are both in the on position. This is what a digital logic AND gate does! If you hook the switches up differently, you can just as easily make an OR gate (A OR B turns on the light). Label a switch backwards and you have a NOT gate.

It turns out that you can build any digital logic function with a combination of just a few simple circuit types, such as AND/OR/NOT (you can actually do everything with just one, but no one really does that). By combining those simple circuits, more complicated circuits can be made (such as an adder, a multiplexer, etc.). You can use those circuits to make even more complicated ones. Like a computer.


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

[User] [How to train your dragon] What evolutionary purpose do the retractable teeth on a nightfury serve?

[Assistant] This feature probably developed to accommodate for the nightfury's unique fire breath.  The mouth of a nightfury is quite small compared to most other dragon species and it doesn't seem to open as wide.  If its teeth got in the way when the dragon breathes fire, it wouldn't be able to shoot the projectile fireballs that it's capable of producing without opening its mouth much wider.  Since the nightfury fires these projectiles while flying at a much higher speed than most other dragons are capable of, opening its mouth that wide would potentially cause problems and 'misfires' due to the large volume of air it would be involuntarily inhaling.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k] How does the Imperium integrate new worlds?

Say the universe decides to throw the Imperium a bone and they rediscover a system with a habitable human-occupied world and the local population doesn't or can't fight the occupation. How would they set about establishing planetary governors, local arbites, ministorum tithes, development of necessary stellar infrastructure (Starports and the like), etc?

(Disclaimer: I'm mostly asking from a pre-fall of Cadia perspective, as I kinda dropped off from 40k around the time The Gathering Storm was released and I haven't kept up with much of the lore past that.)

[Assistant]
>How would they set about establishing planetary governors, local arbites, ministorum tithes

They don't need or care to. As long as the system's religious beliefs aren't outright heretical, it's cool with the inquisition. Just add a little footnote at the end of their sacred texts that say "oh and by the way every time The Great Ancestor Spirit is mentioned, it actually means The God-Emperor of Mankind", and bam, their religion is within the acceptable variance of the Imperial Cult. So that's religion sorted.

For governance, they can govern themselves however they want. Republics are fine, tribal systems are fine, feudal systems are fine, corporate systems are fine, as long as the Imperium is recognized as the final authority above whatever is at the top of the chain of command on that planet, it's all good.

Same thing for the Tithe. If they have a reasonable amount of psychers, regiments, resources and manufactured product to give to the Imperial ships every time they come into the system, they'll be fine.

Reorganizing the whole system's political, religious and administrative system is only going to fuck with the industrial output of the system, and nobody wants that. Don't worship the ruinous powers, humor Imperial Administrators whenever one shows up, and pay the Tithe every time a starship comes, and nobody will ask for anything more.


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

[User] ELI5: How is it possible that a VPN can actually reduce your ping time / speed up your connection?

[Assistant]
It could come to the fact that VPN Points of presence are located at the edge of the internet backbone. Which means that the route taken by the VPN packets are more direct than the packet routed by your ISP thru the entire internet.

The analogy is the car vs train. The packet is the passengers in the car and if you need to go downtown NYC from downtown Washington DC.
Your ISP (to save money) use the highway only, thus you have to take a car for the whole trip( that includes congestion, re-routing if an accident is there, etc...)
On the VPN case, You just take the Train, then take a non-stop , non-congested route from Central Station in DC to Central Station in NYC.
This works the same for Internet Packets.


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

[User]
Is tobacco smoke uniquely carcinogenic, or only so dangerous due to nicotine's addictiveness?

I feel like I stumble onto a lot of debate on the topic of the dangers of nicotine, cigarettes, and how they compare to the risks of cannabis smoking.

The common consensus is that cigarettes are far more likely to give you cancer. But is this true, and why? Does smoke from tobacco contain more carcinogens than smoke from cannabis? Or is the increase in danger due to nicotine's higher addictive potential, resulting in the average cigarette smoker inhaling far more smoke than the average cannabis smoker?

[Assistant]
During curing, tobacco-specific nitrosamines form in the tobacco leaves that are carcinogenic. These compounds make tobacco smoke more carcinogenic than other plant's smoke.

They're also present in dipping and chewing tobacco, but in lower amounts. They're only present in trace amounts in snus(non-cured tobacco), which is why snus users have lower rates of oral cancer than dipping/chewing tobacco users(still higher rates of cancer than non-users).


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do businesses have to pay tax? The owners are taxed anyway.

I'm aware that through the dividend imputation system (in Australia), any company tax paid is credited on the individual and therefore only counted once.

And companies have been known to change locations, at least on paper, to seek the lowest tax rate (Ireland, various small island nations).

So why tax companies at all and not just tax the individual owners. It would save a bunch of work for the companies and the tax agency and remove the incentive for companies to relocate based on tax laws.

[Assistant]
There are two main reasons.

First, businesses provide benefits to employees that are hard to tax on the individual level. For example, it's hard to include the value of having a well-furnished private office on someone's personal income tax. If businesses are not taxed, these benefits escape taxation altogether, which actually undermines the idea of taxing personal income.

Second, it is much easier to tax businesses than individuals. Corporations have detailed account books whether they pay taxes or not, as these are crucial to the running of a business. Since they are semi-permanent entities existing in public, it is hard for them to dodge taxes in the way an individual can (by going into hiding, on death, etc.). The cost of administration becomes much lower.

Does point number 2 sound unfair? It is in a sense, but we see this in many taxes. Sales taxes have no social benefit, and indeed have negative social effects, because they overly burden the poor (who spend more of their income on consumption). But it's really easy to levy a sales tax compared to personal income. People have long argued for sales taxes to replace income taxes for this reason. Similarly, property taxes arose as a means to tax the wealthy, because it is much easier and less invasive to assess the value of real estate than it is to inquire into someone's income.

It's worth noting that in most countries, businesses do not pay taxes on the profits that they reinvest. So the tax does end up being primarily one on the owners' income, and not a drag on the actual business activity.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Why did Hermione Lie?

Why did she lie when she was attacked by the troll in the first book? She just had to say that Ron and Harry went there to warn her, but the troll was already there so they had to fight. It's an acceptable explanation, they wouldn't get in trouble because of that, so why did she lie about it?

[Assistant]
She was crying in the bathroom because of something Ron said. Instead of saying that, she claims she was dumb enough to go after the troll intentionally.

It makes her look worse and Ron and Harry look better. Instead of them coming off as bullies who came to her aid out of guilt, they're her friends who protected her from her mistake.


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

[User] Why does the hair on our body seem to stop at a certain length while the hair on our heads grow continuously?

[Assistant] All hair grows for a certain amount of time, stops for a period, then falls out.  The cycle repeats.  Changing the amount of grow and dormant times gives you the difference between scalp hair and arm hair.  This basically gives all hair a maximum length and the hair that remains a constant length has a short enough growth period to show you that average length. That and the fact that you don't cut it.


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

[User] Eli5, Why do turn signals flicker quicker when they are broken?

[Assistant] They're designed to do that to warn you (and maybe others on the road?) that there's something wrong with your turn signals and you should get it checked. Usually it's a busted/burned out bulb. Park your car, turn on the signal on the side that's flickering quickly, and check the bulbs to find out which one is out.


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

[User] ELI5: How are internet ads still profitable, considering there're so many of them and no one pays attention to them?

[Assistant]
You seriously overestimate the number of people who use tools like Ad Block.

It's a similar argument I've heard about internet censorship, such as the Chinese Great Fire Wall. Invariably some twenty-year-old will come along and proclaim that the censorship program is easily bypassed with a VPN or some other tool. Guess what? The government doesn't care, because the low barrier they've put in place works for 97% of the people.


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

[User]
[General Fantasy] What ecological niche do dragons fill?

In low fantasy settings where dragons aren't depicted as demigods, they must eat food to sustain themselves. Given they are depicted as quite large, they would have to consume a large amount of food each day, on the order of multiple large mammals. Game of Thrones season 8 mentions that >!2 dragons ate 18 goats and 11 sheep between them, just for lunch, although the logistics of how they manage to spare that much food is a question for another time!<.

An apex predator like this would struggle to maintain a large population, particularly as humans would be scared to keep livestock in the open and firebreathing would cause unneccesary damage to ecosystems, advesly affecting the food chain further up.

Also, would some dragons diverge and fill other niches, with smaller ones living off insects and fruit and the large ones hunting grazing mammals? What other dragon types could we see this way?

[Assistant]
Look up monster hunter.

The answer is that you need the whole ecosystem to be faster growing and more resistant to environmental changes. Then you get all sorts of interesting niches like Valstrax which has essentially evolved jet engines in its wings to let it scour oceans and divebomb sea life near the surface. Diablos, an aggressive desert herbivore that stakes large territories to ensure it has enough food. The whole thing is filled interesting beasts and actually gives some focus to their ecology.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do cars use a visual measurement for the engine's temperature rather than degrees?

[Assistant] This is a classic example of good instrumentation design. Must people don't know what a "good" temperature is, so showing the actual number requires them to learn and think more. A gauge that reflects meaningful analysis like cold, normal, hot,  and "too hot" is actually more useful to most operators.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do babies of one dark skinned parent and one light skinned parent, land in the middle generally? Is skin color not a dominant/recessive thing?

Ill try my best to elaborate: if you have a blue eyed parent and a brown eyed parent, you arent born with blue-brown eyes generally. Or if one is blonde and one is darker haired, obviously the dominant gene shows up. So how does melanin mix and create a child with skin somewhere in the middle between the parents? I guess its hard for me to understand  skin is neither dominant nor recessive and how a mixed child is neither fair nor dark. I dont know if this makes any sense lol. I have a white dad and black mum so Im brown, and dont get how my dna determines to make me brown instead of black or white.

[Assistant]
There is no single gene for skin color. There are multiple genes that encourage production of eumelanin. Multiple genes that encourage production of pheomelanin. Genes that inhibit eumelanin. Genes that influence how melanin-producing cells are distributed throughout the body. Genes that influence melanin precursors. All of these genes interact with each other.

The whole dominant/recessive thing, a simplification in the first place, just does not work when you are talking about complexity on that scale.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why aren't polygamist rights treated similarly to gay rights?

Alright, I'll first start this off saying I am a supporter of equality for the LGBT community and support the legalization and recognition of gay rights.

So, I was wondering, why isn't polygamy given the same treatment, where people should be free to multiply marry if they would like to. I'm guessing it is because of the sexist, usually male-centric, and cult-religious association to polygamy, but if it allowed a woman to have multiple husbands, or for homosexual/mixed polygamic relationships (5 guys, or 5 chicks, or 3 dudes and 3 chicks, for example), then why isn't the issue given similar treatment.

[Assistant]
Polygamy is a far more complicated change - to make polygamy work, you have to rewrite every law about what a marriage is, what the rights connected to it are, and so on.

For example, if A, B and C are all married to each other, what happens when they divorce? Does each get 1/3 of the household income paid to them in alimony? What if C wants to divorce B but stay with A? What if C wants to marry D as well as A and B, but B doesn't want to marry D?

Who gets the visitation rights in hospital? Or healthcare benefits? Or child custody? How do you tax them?

With gay marriage, all you're doing is changing the list of people who can get married, you're not changing the nature of the legal relationship as you would if you add more than two parties.

Note, that doesn't mean that we _shouldn't_ do it, or that it's morally wrong or right to have polygamous marriage, only that it's not the same as allowing gay marriage and it's much harder to actually implement the changes.


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

[User]
[Dragonball] If Ginyu's body switch is permanent, why didn't he switch bodies with Frieza?

Title. Realistically, he should have had plenty of chances to do it prior to the main characters getting to Namek.

[Assistant] Its shown to not be perfectly instantaneous, hence the frog switch, and theres a good chance Frieza could react faster than Ginyu and grab Zarbon or someone to the same effect. Then Ginyu would be killed and Zarbon would have Ginyus body.


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

[User] If a person is allergic to domestic cats, would they also be allergic to wild cats (lions, bobcats, etc.)?

[Assistant] Allergies are reactions to specific proteins. There are some proteins that are common to all cats and there are some common to particular species. An example of this is persons with shrimp allergy. Some are allergic to both shrimp and prawns and some are not allergic to prawns because of one of the  exact proteins that shrimp have and prawns do not. So the answer to your question depends on which exact proteins from domestic cats the person is allergic to.


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

[User]
ELI5 Carbon dating

Please explain carbon dating to me.

[Assistant]
Carbon is plentiful in every living (and therefore dead) thing.  So people, object made from natural fibers, etc...all have carbon in them

There are a few different types of carbon.  One is stable (Carbon-12) and one is unstable (Carbon-14).  The unstable Carbon slowly decays and becomes Nitrogen as it is affected by the environment.  However, it is constantly being replenished as you eat or otherwise live.

So once something dies, or ceases to exist in a normal state, the Carbon-14 no longer replenishes itself, only decays.  So we compare the amount of Carbon-12, with the amount of Carbon-14 left in the object and compare that with the known rate of decay for Carbon-14.  How much has decayed tells us how long it has been decaying, and therefore how long it has been since something died.


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

[User]
[General] What are the different magic sources?

For example:

In WoT it is the One Power, true words in Eragon, wands in Harry Potter, etc.

What are all the other ones? Like Kingkiller, LotR...

[Assistant]
In Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, all 'magic' comes from the Warp/Chaos.

In Warcraft, magic is... weird. It all seems to come from the Twisting Nether, but exists as multiple energy-forms therein, with the most dangerous being Fel. It's like the difference in Wavelengths.

In the Sorcerer's Apprentice, 'Magic' is just a manipulation of universal phenomenon, particularly electric and quantum, without the use of technology.

In the standard D&D setting, 'Magic' is a pervasive force of creation used by gods and mortals, which takes on different effects dependent on how it is channeled. Divine magic is channeled through a god (who collect is naturally as part of their being) whereas Nature magic is channeled through living things.

In TES, Magic is again fueled by the basic stuff of creation. Magicka is a distilled form of creatia, filtering in from Aetherius through the holes left by the flight of the Magna'Ge. Other, more 'pure' magics tap directly into the source, including the Dragon Language and the Dawn Magics of the Psijic Order.


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

[User] Does fatalism contradict success?

[Assistant]
I think this question presupposes success as something you have to work for and achieve having overcome.
Instead, fatalism rather redefines success. Success is not overcoming failure but the function of existence, success is what happens.


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

[User]
This may sound dumb, but why when a human gets shot in the brain its an instantaneous death?

I understand a bullet to the brain would kill u very fast but why is it immediate and why can't surgeons retract the bullet and cauterize the vessels as any other part of the body? I'm not looking for answers like "because it's the control center". I would appreciate a detailed answer. Thank you.

[Assistant]
It's not necessarily instantaneous death, but it can very well be. The difference is in the degree of disruption.

A bullet passing through the skull imparts a great deal of its kinetic energy on the substance of the head. Depending on the closeness of the gun, expanding vapors may also accompany the bullet. The brain itself is very gelatinous and not all that sturdy. A bullet dumping a great deal of its kinetic energy into the brain, and into skull fragments that get dragged through the brain, will disrupt the structure of the brain pretty badly. Even apart from the actual bullet track, pressure waves traveling outward from the path will disrupt white matter tracts in the brain. Excess pressure will also have an overall negative effect because the skull presents an essentially rigid structure. What's more, the brain is very metabolically active and the lack of blood from damaged vessels can lead to irreversible injury in a matter of minutes.

In the end, what constitutes death is a fraught question. In places where brain death criteria are recognized, it's irreversible death of the whole brain. Getting shot in the head, unless with a projectile that essentially obliterates the entire brain, is unlikely to cause instantaneous death of the whole brain. Brain stem cells, for instance, would likely survive for some time. But consciousness is typically lost because the wide-scale projections of the ARAS (ascending reticular activating system) are disrupted, and the injury itself may lead to rapid death of most of the brain, herniation of the brain stem, and other effects, leading to an irreversible loss of function.

Some people do survive the initial gunshot. I've seen them in the neurosciences ICU. They do surgery, remove dead tissue, possibly leave the skull open in the event of swelling, and do aggressive intracranial pressure monitoring in the unit. The people who survive are often fairly devastated because of the brain that they lose.


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

[User]
[Batman]Why are the supervillains "created" by batman

I think it's almost accepted that the villains are drawn to the batman.  But what's stopping them from all showing up even without the Bat.  Two-Face most likely still would've gotten his face disfigured.  The penguin would still be around.  Riddler would still try to show everyone how smart he is.  What makes the Bat the final piece to the equation?

[Assistant]
Batman isn't responsible for his rogues.

By and large they were set on the path to villainy completely independent of him.

Every time the "Batman inspired his enemies" argument pops up in the comics, it's the villains making really obvious attempts at trying to absolve themselves of responsibility for their crimes and cheat their way into clemency.

Or it's an auxiliary character made a basic 'correlation = causation' error by assuming that the person who became Batman did so on a whim, and assumed that every villain who appeared after must have just been a nobody who saw Batman in the newspaper one day and decided to drop what they were doing to follow his lead.

Bruce's transformation into Batman was never a casual decision. The pre-existing criminality which has been festering in Gotham since long ago, set him on a long and arduous transformation into the costumed vigilante.

The rogues similarly faced various personal trials and tribulations of their own over the course of their lives, which put them on the rails of criminal behavior, regardless of Batman's presence, and usually in a timeframe parallel with Bruce's transformation.

If there is a shared thread of causality between Batman and his rogues, it's Gotham City itself. The environment was always destined to produced people of extraordinary and eccentric character according to the many glimpses of the city's history prior to Batman's first outing.

And if we consider versions of Gotham which exist in a shared universe where other superheroes and supervillains are running around as a pretty common phenomenon, it's even less plausible to blame Batman, since there is pretty much no good reason for Gotham to not develop supervillains or superheroes, regardless if Batman exists or not since they're running around in just about every other city of note.

I think the Nolan-verse Batman movies did the most to further the idea, because of Gordon's speech at the end of Batman Begins regarding escalation, but taking it at face value ignores a important story details clearly present across the continuity of those three movies:

Escalation of criminal influences in Gotham was already an ongoing process before Bruce became Batman. As Ra's revealed in the first act of Batman Begins, Gotham was already a target for the League of Shadow's supervilliany ways back when Bruce's parents were alive due to the city's status as a pinnacle of modern civilization and the perceived decadence it represented to them.

The LoS attempted to destroy the city through indirect means by using their influence to cause an economic depression, but Bruce's parents used their assets and influence as benevolent plutocrats to unknowingly fight back against the LoS, before falling victim to the fallout of the LoS's orchestrated depression themselves, which is what prompted Bruce on his transformation into the Dark Knight in the first place. Bruce isn't the cause of escalation in Gotham, but a result of it.

Even when he actually returns to Gotham, we see that people like Victor Zass and Jonathan Crane have already been preying on people to suit their deviant whims, as well as that Ra's plan to destroy Gotham via ninja invasion and doomsday weapon were already in play.

In TDK, we do get the most credible argument that Batman 'causes' supervillains with that continuity's version of the Joker's appearance in Gotham and his subsequent rampage. No denying that he's attracted to Gotham because of Batman, but at the same time, it doesn't mean that Bruce created the Joker, only that he caused Joker to target Gotham specifically. Who Joker was, how long he's been around as the Joker is completely left in the air. But even then trying to blame Joker's escapades on Batman, is basically blaming a person for having a crazy stalker rather than the stalker for being crazy in the first place.

The next time this version of Gotham sees any supervillains it's Bane and Talia in TDKR, but being agents of the LoS, their motives are pretty self-explanatory. Talia is there to avenge her supervillain dad, and Bane is there to assist her (at least in the comics he came to Gotham with explict purpose of wanting to play king of the hill against Bruce). Batman's only contribution to their motives was letting Ra's die while preventing him from destroying the city a decade-ish earlier.


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

[User] ELI5: What are the major differences between Canada's Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party (NDP)?

[Assistant]
It depends if you're talking from a historical perspective or more recently (e.g. this election).

Historically the Liberal party has been more centrist and the NDP has been a much more progressive (you could even say socialist) party. The NDP has traditionally been labelled as far-left (too left to appeal to the moderate/centrist vote, and for that reason, for decades it was thought the NDP could never rise above third place).

In this election in particular, the party platforms were almost reversed. Not quite reversed, but the Liberal Party action plan involves some very progressive changes that are quite left-wing and some could argue socialist in nature whereas the NDP has moved much more toward the center, almost on the conservative side on some aspects.

Some notable examples from the Liberal party plan include: a major government spending plan (a large increase in the deficit over the next few years) to do things like improve infrastructure and transportation etc. and government services, reducing taxes for middle class families, increasing taxes for anyone earning $200,000 or more per year, eliminating many tax 'loopholes' that benefit wealthier people and corporations, reducing (restoring) the allowable Tax-Free Saving Account contribution per year (TFSA mostly benefits wealthier families), eliminating income-splitting tax breaks (income-splitting mostly helps wealthier households).

In sum, the Liberal plan is very aggressive and involves a large redistribution of wealth so that wealthier Canadians pay more taxes, middle-class Canadians pay lower taxes and the whole country invests a ton more into infrastructure and services.

The NDP party this election looked almost conservative in comparison. Their fiscal policies anyway were much more center-right on the political spectrum and involved creating a balanced budget without plans to make great increases in government spending. The NDP also wasn't planning on making such drastic changes to the taxation system and benefits, but they certainly still proposed some changes.

Compared to the Liberal Party, the NDP still has more of a focus on environmental issues and they have some differing opinions on things like whether to legalize or decriminalize marijuana, whether to ratify or reject the TPP agreement, and whether Bill C-51 should be amended or repealed completely.


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

[User]
[General] Vampires seem to often have a natural charisma. How does this come about?

I heard it mentioned in the Monogatari series and I realized it's hard to think of a vampire (at least higher vampire) in fiction that doesn't have a high charisma level so to speak.

Is there a "magical" element to this, or is it purely them having nice skin from drinking blood?

[Assistant]
Depends on the universe it's taking place in. If vampirism is caused by a virus, then it usually just makes you skinny and gives your face sharper features which is usually considered attractive. There's also some Darwinism to consider as vampires that are unattractive, despite having the virus, won't be as successful without going for the brute monster route.

If it's not so much a virus, but a curse, then it is indeed magical. Vampires are social predators that lure their prey into a false sense of comfort in order to more easily get them isolated so they can drink their blood or whatever. They're kinda like Djinni in that sense, as they promise to grant your every wish when they actually just suck out your life essence while giving you good dreams.


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

[User]
How much time will it take for the CMBR to cool to radiowave frequencies? Won't this have an effect on free electron spins?

If free electron spin is affected by radiowaves, then won't they be affected by what is at some point a cosmic radiowave background radiation?

[Assistant]
There isn't really that sharp of a line microwaves and radio waves - the EM spectrum is a continuum.

CMB peaks at 160 GHz, RF generally speaking extends from 300 GHz down to a few kHz. In this sense, the CMB is already 'radio waves.'

But maybe if you want to call anything above 3 GHz a microwave, then you'll have to cool the universe by another factor of 50ish.

Let's make a really rough estimate for how long this takes, assuming a constant expansion rate. It took 13 billion years for the universe to expand to its current size, so it will take another 13 billion to double in size, thus cutting the CMB temperature and (frequency) in half. As an approximate rule of the of thumb, this means that every time you double the age you cut the frequency in half.

Since 2^5.5 ~ 50, then we will need to wait about 5.5 times the current age of the universe for the CMB to shift down by a factor of 50. That's an ~70 billion year wait. Don't hold your breath.


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

[User] ELI5: I live in Utah. This state always votes Republican in every presidential race. Is it a complete waste of time for me to go vote for the next president if I chose a non-republican candidate?

[Assistant]
Election results can affect party policies as well. If there is a swing to the left, Republicans may moderate their policies to try to recapture those voters, for example.

It doesn't look like it's worked all that well in recent years in the US, but it's still worth trying.


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

[User] [Witcher] Can't Geralt use magic to cure those scars on his face? Those things look red and nasty and infected. I'm legit worried.

[Assistant]
Due to the nature of their mutations, Witcher are immune to such things as plague, illness or infection. It allows them to fight undead monsters and not die after one scratch.

Also, the magical healing is expensive and Geralt is one of those heroes that has problem keeping money.


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

[User] Why does Water evaporate at all when not boiling?

[Assistant]
The temperature of a substance as we describe it is more or less an average of the energy in all the molecules polled within a region.

Particles at the surface of water are actually at equilibrium with the air, with water from the air adding to the surface and some water on the surface being bumped free into the air.

Through collisions an individual molecule can get enough energy to break away no problem even if the average temperature it too low.

Because air is typically very unsaturated with water and dry, the equilibrium involves much more water escaping than returning. As temperature rises so does the "forward" rate of the equilibrium (where forward is evaporation and backwards is condensation).

The Arrhenius equation can be used to model the rate of evaporation using an activation energy to represent how energetic a molecule must be to escape, the temperature, and a constant to refer to the substance in question (water).

Edit: Surprised nobody called me out on "temperature of a temperature".


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

[User]
CMV: We should stop worrying about lowering the number of unemployment and instead focus on creating a universal minimum living allowance

I know this is not a popular view, but hear me out. The more technology we create the less we're going to NEED people to do certain jobs. As it stands right now unemployment raises because we (I'm speaking mostly about the United States) outsource jobs to other countries or to our technologies. This is a battle we are never going to win because technology increases exponentially. Also, population is on the raise. Meaning, we will reach a point where there will be far more people than traditional jobs. If we set up a universal minimum allowance then we can "fix" poverty and "fix" the unemployment problem. Will this allow people to be lazy? Yes. But will it also give people the freedom and choice to go after jobs they enjoy?  I think so. For example, I work retail and I actually enjoy it.

Some countries are already trying something close to this out. And as far as "how will we pay for it?" I believe those countries are converting their welfare programs into this new system.

Why am I wrong?

Edit: I don't think I gave this issue enough thought. Several of you have made really good points and pointed out that my reasoning was flawed. Thanks for the comments, I think my view has been changed.

[Assistant]
Yes, new tech replaces jobs. Why do you think this is a problem? This is nothing new. It has already happened before. People did not end up being jobless, they discovered new things to do with their freed up time and invented whole new fields of work.

Less than 2 centuries ago, more than 90% of the population was engaged in farming. Tractors destroyed those jobs, but people did not become jobless. They started new industries instead.

Our current jobs will get replaced with tech. But there will be new jobs that you can't imagine, just like a farmer 2 centuries ago couldn't imagine computers and IT industry.


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

[User]
What is the thermodynamic process that makes hot metal "tick" as it cools?

I understand the basic concept of materials expanding and contracting as they heat up and cool, but I do not experience an audible signature of this process commonly except when a hot car begins to cool rapidly. Is it the level of heat? The type of metal or material? How rapidly such materials cool?
Thank you Askscience!

[Assistant]
You hear stoves and car engines ticking as they cool (and as they heat up, actually), as the result of metal expanding or contracting due to the heat.  Specifically, the ticking sound originates at seams between pieces of metal that are bolted or otherwise fastened without being welded together.  There is static friction at these points, and, as the metal expands or shrinks, the friction gives way briefly, resulting in the ticking sound you hear.  That's also why you don't hear a muffin tin or cookie sheet ticking after you remove it from the oven - there are no seams.

You can make the same basic thing happen by pressing your finger hard on a surface and attempting to slide it.  Instead of starting to slide smoothly, your finger pops out of place, jumping to the next spot and stopping before the force of your push makes it overcome the friction to pop out of place again.  Nails on chalkboards, squealing tires, a bow being drawn across a violin's strings and a cooling car engine or wood stove all rely on static friction to make their sounds in this way.


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

[User] [DC] Is Oswald Cobblepot/Penguin a great swimmer?

[Assistant] Penguin's nickname comes from his tendency to wear black-and-white tuxedos. This, combined with his long nose and portly stature, gives him a penguin-like appearance. He has nothing to do with penguins outside of that.


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

[User]
ELI5: What's the process from pressing the gas pedal to your car moving?

I'm a 26 year old guy, and I have no idea what anything under the hood is or does. I was driving today and imagined a little gate opening wider the more I pressed down on the pedal which releases gas into the engine to do... something. Or maybe it stokes a fire to cause the gas to... fuck, what happens?

[Assistant] Pushing the pedal down opens the throttle, a butterfly valve which allows more air into the engine. The pedal is either mechanically linked to the throttle or linked to the engine management computer which commands the throttle to open. The Carburetor or fuel injector try to maintain constant fuel/air ratio so pump more gas into the engine to balance this extra air. More fuel and more air means more combustion which makes the engine do more work, causing the car to accelerate.


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

[User]
ELI5: why are dermatologists and doctors so hesitant to remove moles?

Why is it that doctors and dermatologists are so hesitant to remove moles? If moles can't turn cancerous anytime why would you not just remove them as a preventative measure?

[Assistant]
The first rule of medicine is "do no harm." If a mole is benign (non cancerous) then it would be more harmful to remove it.

Most procedures are a 30 minute removal but are also expensive. The risk of infection is always possible no matter how routine the procedure is. In the case of a benign mole, the risk outweighs the benefit.


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

[User]
Why does a Mosquito bite not transmit certain blood borne diseases?

Mosquitoes can transmit a wide range of nasty diseases, malaria being foremost on my mind. But what mechanism prevents a mosquito from transmitting other diseases such as hepatitis, HIV, colds, and the flu?

Or put differently: Why do mosquitoes transmit certain diseases but not others?

[Assistant]
While mosquitos are great vectors of disease, there are certain limitations that prevent them from spreading all pathogens. Two immediately come to mind:

* Appropriate host environment: the bacteria/virus/parasite must be able to not only survive inside the host, but also reproduce. In a single bloodmeal, a mosquito won't necessarily take up a large amount of pathogen. To complete the cycle and spread it to another host, the mosquito must provide a suitable environment.

* Virulence/toxicity: the pathogen cannot kill the host outright, nor can it significantly hamper its ability to feed. If the mosquito is unable to feed normally, the chances of the pathogen being spread become quite small.


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

[User]
[Deadpool] When Deadpool uses a speech bubble as a weapon, what does that look like to the people around him?

Does he just pull a random flat white blade with words on it out of nowhere? Or is the meta element of the comic still invisible and it just looks like Deadpool is beating them with an invisible weapon. Do people think his power includes conjuring speech bubbles?

[Assistant] They see a 2x4 or metal rod or sledgehammer. Basically whatever Deadpool is actually hitting them with. (Not sure if the rest fits the sub theme but Deadpool is kinda meta anyway). What we see most times is Deadpool's view and perspective of things and he is crazy. So when he grabs a "health bar" like in mvc3 he is most likely grabbing something real but imagining it as something 4th wall breaking.


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

[User]
[DOOM] How did the Doom Guy live after everything was over?

He blew up, plasmaed, chainsawed, shot and punched to death countless monsters and zombies and travelled through two types of hell. Will he suffer from extreme PTSD and take his own life, will he turn into a psycho, will he marry his high-school crush, father a cute daughter and get her a bunny named "Snowball"?

[Assistant]
As a Space Marine, he was never expected and never personally expected to live a "normal life". He was born in a facility as a genetically engineered soldier clone, speed-educated and trained with the knowledge of his deceased predecessors (we call it *montaging*), equipped for this mission, and not expected to live through it. He is expected to progress the clearing of the facility, and after his inevitable death, another montaged clone soldier will be dropped in at the last memory-upload point to continue.

Only one may enter the facility at a time; in groups, they tend to massacre each other and quickly turn "zombie-like". His solitude keeps him marginally sane. The fact that he has survived when so many did not, is a combination of sheer luck and his clone-brothers' prior efforts, which he remembers in detail. He is the living monument of their heroism.

He will be uploaded and decommissioned. Next time one of these incursions happen, his knowledge will be given to the new clones.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k] In the lore/novels, have the Orks ever had a "Wile E. Coyote looks down" moment?

I realize that the Orks have a power over reality where their tech works because they think it will.  This got me wondering if there has ever been a case where they realized something *won't work* and it fell apart.

[Assistant] That'd require the xenos that disbelieve to outnumber those that do, and the idea that that many coherent greenskins could exists at the same place and time is heretically hilarious. Might as well suggest that an Eldar and a Dark Eldar can be in a room together for longer than a heartbeat.