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

[User]
ELI5: why aren't gas planets with a rocky core (like Neptune is believed to be) considered rocky planets with a giant atmosphere?

Or why aren't all gas planets considered just floating atmospheres?

[Assistant]
The astronomical definition of a "planet" does not specify whether the body must be only rocky, only gaseous, or some combination of the two.

Neptune's core is much smaller than its atmosphere by volume, so discussions of Neptune tend to focus on its more dominant characteristics, the gas atmosphere and very large ice mantle.


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

[User] [Lovecraft] What would happen if Cthulhu tried to open my phone's face recognition lock?

[Assistant]
Two possibilities.

1. It stays locked--the most likely outcome.

2. It's a close-enough match that your phone unlocks. That odd great-great-grandfather of yours from Innsmouth that no one in the family talks about? I've got some bad news for you.


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

[User]
[Blade Runner] Why don't they make... you know... robots?

Yea they would be a lot less fun to fuck but presumably they can still make robots, just the regular metal kind, that could do most/all of the work, and just use replicants for stuff that needs programming to complex for robots or... you know like... genitals.

This solves the problem that you need to tank grow replicants and that takes a long time plus... it would take longer to make them via fucking... like a lot longer.

[Assistant]
It's a tale as old as time really.  It was all a result legislation and work from lobbyists.  Powerful people had the patents on vat grown parts and the processes involved.  They needed that technology to be profitable and they used the government to do it.  Giving out shares like candy to politicians and letting them create the legislation, tax incentives, and government funding to make the stock prices on all companies involved skyrocket.  Media and news organizations have the public eating out of their hands that synthetic grown replicants are the environmentally sound wave of the future.  Suddenly everyone is getting in on that action and nobody wants this technology to fail.  Regular robot part manufacturing just couldn't compete even if it made a lot more sense financially and ethically.  That leads us to today in 2049.  To even suggest we deviate from the way things are to a more sensible solution is shouted down as the backwards thinking of oligarchs of the past.

tl/dr: fat cats sold a lie to the public to make themselves rich and toss a few crumbs at people to help them along the way.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do many Native American tribes own and operate Casinos in the United States?

[Assistant] Because when we rounded them up and threw them on reservations the land we placed them we handed over to them with a lot of leeway and sovereignty from our laws.  Thus, gambling is not illegal and becomes an easy revenue source for them.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can we look directly at the sun at sunset and sunrise?

[Assistant]
Actually you really shouldn't. There's still enough UV radiation to damage your eyes.

The reason it seems like you can is that much of the visible light is being refracted off, and what's left is filtering through a greater amount of atmosphere at those times.


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

[User] [Matrix] If humans are no longer born but grown, how do the machines manage to match the number of grown babies with the number of babies born in the matrix?

[Assistant] I imagine the number of pregnancies simulated in the Matrix is completely based on how many cyborg babies they produce. At the end of the day they have control over what happens in the Matrix including when people think they are pregnant.


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

[User] Eli5. How come it is bad to rub your eyes?

[Assistant]
If you feel the urge to run your eyes, it is likely because they are dry and irritated.

Touching irritated tissue just makes the irritation worse, because you are very likely to spread the cause of the irritation around (foreign body, dirt, etc)

Also your hands are very dirty and spreading bacteria on your eyes would not help.


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

[User]
Why does tea taste different when adding the milk before brewing compared to after brewing?

I make my tea by adding freshly boiled hot water to a Twinings (other brands are available) Earl Grey tea bag. I usually leave this for about three minutes before taking the tea bag out, adding a small amount of milk, and stirring. Recently I tried adding the milk to the mug first, then the teabag and, lastly, the water. I found the resulting flavour to be distinctively different (a sharper, more fruity flavour, which I prefer but this is completely subjective. All I am worried about is the objective difference in flavour).

Since then I have tried brewing several mugs of tea using both "milking" methods and leaving them to brew for exactly three minutes (timed). I have even tried two blind experiments with my partner to confirm that the difference was not a placebo effect.

I can't think of any reason why the two methods of making tea result in significantly different flavours.

[Assistant]
Milk is an emulsion of proteins and fats (depending on what grade of milk you use), and like any emulsion, it requires some surfactancy to stablize it.

This is the same way that soap dissolves oils, and it is why milk is white, the emulsion particles are large enough so that visible light is defracted.  If you let milk dry out, it dries clear, so the composition of milk is not inherently opaque.

Anyhow, by adding the milk first you are adding a surfactant to the tea, and this can help extract favor components, which are often non-polar in nature, out of the tea leaves.  The added stability of the non-polar flavor compounds in water shifts the equilibrium position between the leaves and the water as well, leading to more flavor being extracted.  More flavor gives stronger flavor (seems obvious eh?) Also, by complexing the non-polar molecules you change the way they settle on your tongue, which affects the flavor you experience, this is similar to eating very spicy food, to "cool off" your tongue it's best to drink milk rather than water because the milk will dissolve the oils that give the hotness better than plain water.

Now, of course, this is really subtle, but we're not talking about huge flavor changes, it still generally tastes like tea with milk.

Why doesn't this occur when you add the milk last?  Generally speaking, the milk is added after you have removed the tea bag, so there is no interaction between the tea leaves and the milk proteins, and therefore no change to the extraction quality, you only get the flavor chemicals that naturally equilibriate into hot water.

TLDR; Milk has natural soap in it which dissolves the flavors out better.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do contracts write all numbers twice? i.e. "No less than three (3) business days' notice"

[Assistant]
Legally, numbers written out in words take precedence over numerals. For example, if you have "four hundred twenty-seven (327)" in a contract, a court would enforce the written out amount.

The reason for that is that it's harder to mess up a written amount by making a single typo. The reason people also include the numerals is that they're easier to read. So written out numbers are a cautionary measure and numerals are for ease of reading.


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

[User]
How can I become very good at Software Architecture/Design?

I am an experienced software engineer and I know object oriented design and design patterns. However I would like to master the art of making easy to extend and easy to reuse applications.

P.S. Get a hobby project is not an acceptable answer. I have seen that as the default answer to these types of threads.

[Assistant]
What are you looking for? Experience is really the only game in town. You cant read a website or a book and get good judgement out of it. Find a mentor, have a project that you are motivated to complete and maintain for years, keep uptime at 99.9%, can handle thousands of users concurrently, can upgrade without user disruption (implied by the three 9s).

Learn about horizontal scaling, automated deployment, automated testing, resource efficiency, and cost efficiency.

To do anything of magnitude, you need other people so work on those people skills too! Learn to be leader, learn to take care of people who work for you, learn to put them first. Good architecture only takes you as far as the people helping you build it are willing and able to help you. Work on teaching others complex concepts with patience, and compassion. Give them opportunities to learn and fail safely.

Being very good at architecture will depend entirely on the project, the users, the budget, and the time you have to deliver it to users. Its not something you can learn in a vacuum.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why are B1 battle droids cowardly?

They seem to be constantly afraid and seem to surrender fairly easily. Why would the CIS program these cheap battle droids to surrender at all? They're not getting them back if they get captured.

[Assistant] The Star Wars *Essential Guide to Warfare* sourcebook has an interesting segment where it explains why the Battle Droids have such comical incompetence. Essentially it was a combination of cheap/bad design and sabotage. The Trade Federation was notoriously cheap in making its droids, and it especially showed with the B1s. This was exacerbated by the fact that the design needed to be overhauled following the Battle of Naboo, which exposed the vulnerability of the loss of the command center causing a shutdown of the army. The B1 was redesigned to be able to operate autonomously, but between bad programming done on the cheap and hardware limitations they began to suffer from more frequent glitches. This was exacerbated by the Republic Intelligence service infecting many of the production lines with malware that while not serious enough to shut the droid down directly (and thereby tip off even the Separatists lax quality control) would cause the droids to have an increased tendency to quirkiness and bumbling.


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

[User]
10 Minute TT Faculty Interview

I applied for a TT faculty position and they asked for a 10 minute phone interview. Isn't that very short? What questions could they cover in that time frame?

Update:

The call really lasted 10 minutes. I could have kept them on longer if I elaborated more. However, they didn't ask for clarification or anything so I guess that's good, I don't know. They asked:

How I would teach a specific course

My research agenda

My teaching philosophy

Then, at the end I asked three questions. It seemed super short and I feel like they really didn't learn a whole lot from me. But, we will see. I sent a thank you email. Now it's the waiting game.

[Assistant]
It's short, but I've had 15-25 minute conversations.

Sometimes the committee just wants to gauge how well you communicate in person, and see exactly how you talk about your teaching/research.

I would plan for very succinct answers (elevator talks) on your teaching and research, and think of some succinct examples to support them.


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

[User]
[40k] Seriously, how have the Death Korps of Krieg not fallen to Nurgle yet?

Their entire specialty is endless, grinding, miserable wars in chemically soaked, dead wastelands. They sound like a perfect canidate for corruption.

[Assistant]
How do Chaos God's fight?

The corruption of Chaos God is not some disease. It's more of propaganda. Enough chaos supporters come together. Perform dark rituals, open portals. And boom, you have chaos infestation. Which only after spreads actually physical corruption.

Now after this happens the forces of chaos generally fight to overwhelm enemy, and it usually devolves into fights of attrition.

Now what does Krieg excell at? Zealousness and siege (attrition) warfare. Not only they are not prone to corruption, they are zealously devoted to the emperor. To the point they will often hurl themselves into suicide situations. They do not fear of death, they embrace it. Chaos have no power over them. The usuall tactics don't work.

Members of Krieg are zealous. So chaos cannot persuade them. They are fearless, so chaos cannot scare them. Chaos cannot beat them into submission. Because they excel at attrition warfare. Chaos cannot infect them with dissease, toxicity, nothing. Nothing works against them.

tldr: Their existence is miserable enough, so Chaos cannot do to them, for what they are not prepared for.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does water make some things slippery while also making other things more grippy?

When your hands are wet, it can make gripping things more challenging, like your feet on a pool deck or your tires on the road, right?. Climbers use chalk on their hands to get rid of moisture/better grip. So why does licking your fingers make it easier to count money or separate plastic bags (sticky)?

Im aware of the terms cohesion and adhesion in regards to water particles themselves but how does that apply to both the slippery aspect and sticky (for lack of a better word) of water against non-water things?

[Assistant] It depends on both the materials of the objects in contact and the amount of force being applied.  With the paper and grocery bag examples, there is little force and lots of adhesion.  Paper and plastic bags are very porous on a micro level, giving the water lots of surface to 'stick' with. Adhesion with water, though, is not strong enough to hold a climber.  The force of holding up a human body is too great. The water molecules instead slide around each other and the surfaces, reducing friction. This is not what you want when clinging to a cliff.


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

[User] ELI5 Why do your muscles hurt when you've got a fever?

[Assistant] The white blood cells that fight off the infection, they produce chemicals called cytokines in the process. That causes inflammation that is also beneficial in fighting off an infection but at the same time, it makes the muscles and joints ache.


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

[User]
What to expect during 30 minute TT interview?

Ive been given an interview for a tenure track position at medium sized, public university. It is for a faculty position in their college of education.

The interview is scheduled for 30 minutes. The few other TT interviews Ive gone to have been all day affairs. I assume this is a screening process.

What should I expect for this type of interview? Just an overview of who I am and such?

[Assistant]
Its just a screener. Public schools usually have some weird state- or school-mandated standardized questions to make the interview fair.

Theyll probably ask you about your research agenda, teaching experience, expertise with grants, experience with collaboration, etc.

Then you have a few minutes to ask them about the position or the campus.

Dont stress, 10+ candidates (for one position) undergo these interviews, so you arent a finalist yet.


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

[User]
Opportunities after completing physics PhD in your 40s

I think I've read nearly every post about starting towards a PhD later in life, but haven't found my particular questions answered.

**My questions are**:

- What paths are possible to move from a lower ranked school in undergrad to a higher ranked school for a grad program?

- If you finish a PhD in your mid-40s, can you expect to be able to work with interesting research organizations, such as NASA, Fermilab, US Antarctic Program, CERN, JAXA, etc? Especially if you complete your PhD in a non-Top-20 university?

**Context (to get a jump on the most common questions asked of OP I see in these types of threads)**:

- I'm 33, planning to go back to undergrad in about 2 years to finish a BS in physics & math (I'll likely take the full 4 years, just to be thorough) and, ideally, move on to a PhD with a goal of working in public research.
- US citizen living in California (but with residency in New York), but have lived abroad long term and happy (eager is more like it, tbh) to do it again.
- My wife and I have no children, and will never have children.
- My wife and I are comfortable with the lifestyle we can expect with me as a 40-something student.
- The tedium/politics/long-hours/etc of academics doesn't faze me.
- My current career is virtually non-existent, and has no relation to STEM.
- I have no interest in using my current skills to go into a field tangential to research, like science journalism, science policy, etc
- I've checked my math skills and they're the same as alwaysdefinitely above average, but not brilliant (and I've worked out a 2 year plan to improve these skills).
- As for where I'm likely to get accepted for my undergrad, I don't expect to be able to go to a Top-20. Maybe a Top-50?

Yes, I have the deep passion to pursue this, but I also don't want to end up >$150k in debt only to discover at the end of things that I won't be able to actually go beyond the degree in a way that's meaningful to me. That said, I have no illusions about working on the next world-changing thing. I just want to at least be some cog in the public science machine.

[Assistant] Is your goal to become a researcher with a permanent position at a university or national research lab? The prospects for this are poor for someone who does their PhD in their 20s, and much worse for you.


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

[User]
[Mount and Blade] Why does every person in a position of leadership seem to have a healing factor?

Every single noble, general, and king in the land of Calradia is apparently immune from death. Get peppered with enough arrows to blot out the sun, get axed in the face enough times to chop a tree, nothing works.

Is there something supernatural going on in this seemingly standard medieval setting?

[Assistant]
Mount and blade is set in a different universe to our earth (except with fire and sword), in the land/continent of Calradia. Here, the humans, and even horses, seem to have much higher durability (highly trained people can take multiple axes to the face before being *'knocked unconscious'*) and relatively strong healing factors, not just the lords/ladies/heroes.

For example, a peasant just picked up from a village can take an axe to the face, and be up and running around an hour later if he's lucky, or if there's someone around who knows what a scalpel is (surgery skill in-game). Similarly, armies are marching effectively 24/7, are able to fight and sustain horrendous injuries, and will be up and walking about within a few hours, ready to march again. Everyone has a healing factor of sorts, it's just not as effective among the common-folk, who need basic medical attention if their injuries are too severe.

So the nobles, and 'heroes', are not in fact that different from regular folk, just with a more advanced healing factor. These are people who are clearly outlined in-game to be special, who can rise far above the common folk. Given the general incompetence of most of these, it may just be an advanced, wolverine-like healing factor which separates the special from the non-special.


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

[User]
Do similar memories look similar in different brains?

Is there any similarity in the way identical things are encoded in the brains of different people?

For example: would things like multiplication tables, scientific formulas, baseball statistics, the feel of silk, the pain of rejection, etc., look identical or even similar in terms of how they are encoded, what the memory structures look like (forgive the imprecise term), etc., if we could pinpoint exactly where in each person's brain these things are stored?

On a more basic level: if we examined a brain under a powerful microscope, could we identify the arrangement of certain neurons (forgive me if this isn't the right term) or even certain molecular structures and say, "look there, that's where the formula *f=ma* is stored." If not now, is it foreseeable that this could be possible in the future?

[Assistant]
Neuroscience grad student studying learning and memory.

No one knows the answer to your question per-se. This is because we lack the power to look at a brain before and after learning and examine what the change is. (The change happens at synapses which are even smaller than neurons).

That being said, we do know that people store things in similar regions of their brains. For instance we have a pretty good idea where sense memories, place memories, and factual memory is stored. And we know that the storage of memories (in rats at least) is NOT stereotyped at the cellular level (to say nothing of the synaptic level). For instance place cell learning, where a rat learns a location in space, happens in many separate cells in the hippocampus, but not in the same cells in each rat. (indeed rats don't have the same number or even a stereotyped number of cells, so this would not be likely). In humans, one of the problems with MRI studies is that left handed and right handed people use the space in their brain slightly differently. Also MRI studies tend to need huge numbers of subjects because each person has a slightly different patten of activation (at the multicellular level of analysis).

From a psychological perspective, we would not think that memories are stored in the same way exactly in each person. As far as we know, most memory builds off connections and perceptions from previous memory. (Why you learn a subject better if you tie it to things you know). Also recall of memories differ based off how people are instructed to store them. (told to look for a pattern vs learning a pattern, explained the rules of task vs figuring it out). In addition, preexisting knowledge helps you gain new knowledge.(Think of how easy it is to learn a new language when you know 2, or how quickly you pick up one video game after playing a similar one. You are probably learning the game by generalizing your previous skill not by relearning it). This implies the memories are not stored in the same way.

TL;DR
No in theory, but we can't yet look at the synaptic level dynamically (in a before and after way, or even really at all) so we don't know perfectly.


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

[User]
CMV: MLMs (Multi-level marketing schemes) such as Herbalife, It Works, and Vector Marketing are unethical companies who should not exist in this market.

After seeing many friends fall down this rabbit hole and the recent ELI5 post, I remain convinced that these companies only provide a disservice to the consumer while encouraging addiction and promoting unethical sales practices.

These companies technically don't break any laws, but they are borderline. For example, they dishonestly advertise the result, they exploit disadvantaged people, and they ultimately hinder the economy by selling unsafe, cheap, and unregulated products to family members, which also harms relationships.

I know that the free market exists, hence the existence of these companies, but I'm asserting that it's wrong that these companies exist in the first place. CMV.

[Assistant]
Is your issue with the advertising of how much the folks that sling their products can make?

Or is it with their products being snake oil?

Would a guy pushing a houseflipping "system" be unethical to you?  That's similar to the first example, but not the second.

Would a normal company selling snake oil weight loss products also be unethical (loads of shit at GNC falls under this column)?


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

[User]
ELI5: does saving water in a wet country help dry countries?

In wet countries (like the UK), does it actually help countries in drought if I save water? The only way I can think is if we sent our excess water to them somehow, but surely this would be single use before it ends up back in the water cycle. What's the environmental benefit of saving water in wet places?

[Assistant] The primary driver for saving water in the UK is during the summer when reservoirs can run low. The rest of the year, it's more of a general desire to save resources e.g. clean water requires energy to produce. so using less water saves energy.


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

[User]
[General videogames] Why are trees so indestructible?

It doesn't seem to matter what weapon or attack you use, trees in most games just simply won't break. What makes trees so goddamn strong, with the exception of trees that are supposed to fall over for story purposes?

[Assistant] Trees have evolved to naturally produce carbon nanotubes, which renders them nearly indestructible. Trees can be poisoned to get rid of the nanotubes, which allows us to cut them down and use them for wood, and sometimes a dead tree can be knocked down, but beyond that they're impervious to conventional weapons.


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

[User] What is actually happening during an overclock on a CPU? Why does increasing voltage increase the speed at which a CPU can work?

[Assistant]
Your CPU's clock is generated using a quartz crystal oscillator.  It is excited and produces resonant periodic output.  That signal is then multiplied by a factor using a control system called a phase-locked loop (PLL).  When you overclock your CPU, you are changing the configuration of this multiplier circuitry.

Say, you have a 1Hz oscillator and a 1x multiplier setting, you then have a 1Hz clock signal.  The output of the oscillator doesn't change, but the multiplier can, so say you overclock it by setting the multiplier to 4x, then you'll have a 4Hz clock signal.


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

[User]
Is there a term for an animal in a social group that is neither dominant nor submissive?

I know of the terms alpha, beta, and omega for members of the group based on their level of dominance or submission, but is there a term for the members of the group that show no active interest in dominating or submitting, or will resist being dominated but have no interest in dominating others?

[Assistant]
I have heard the term Gamma used to refer to psychologically dominant but social independent members of the hierarchy before.
They don't dominate (they are not leaders) but they also do not fully participate in society, thus removing them from the definition of being submissive to others.

Think a lone-wolf sort of person.


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

[User]
why are TV shows so heavily censored? even the late night shows? explain like I'm 5

I don't understand the need to censor every curse word (and some are not even curse words) in every possible program (that is for USA shows, I haven't noticed that amount of censorship in other shows).

so just explain to me (like I'm five) what brought this insane amount of censorship of every possible TV show, because those beeps are getting annoying.

[Assistant]
Religious conservative viewers.  When they get offended by the word "boner" or "tit" they call and write letters.  And they get all their friends to call and write letters. And their entire church to call and write letters.

Sane people don't call and write letters, so no one hears our opinions so we get ignored. The FCC is merely responding to all the call and letters they get.


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

[User]
ELI5 : How come we cant remove the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome?

You can be born missing parts of a chromosome how come we cant just recreate this process and remove the extra chromosome?

[Assistant]
A person's DNA is stored independently in every cell of their body. It is thus impossible to execute any sweeping change after a person's cells have multiplied to the point where they are grown.

Even if you could, they are already grown, and so changing their DNA will not cause their body to magically rebuilt itself.


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

[User]
[Star Wars/Clone Wars] Why was the Republic so hesitant to create a military when they knew the Separatist's have so many battle droids?

Was it because the Federation had battle droids for security and they didn't give it a thought? Surely after they blockaded and invaded Naboo, it would seem like a good idea to get citizens prepared to become soldiers.

They could have had a reserve corps ready just in case. Perhaps have civilians that train once every month or so?

[Assistant]
Individual planets in the Republic have their own militaries so there isn't an immediate threat to all-out war. More importantly, the hope by many within the Republic was that it wouldn't come to war and that hopefully a peaceful solution could come about.

The problem with creating an army is that A) you give a lot of power to the chancellor that he previously didn't have and B) you almost certainly prevoke the war that you are trying to prevent.


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

[User] [Marvel] I live in New York City, and all these supervillain attacks are making me fear for my life. Where is the most secure place in the world that I can live?

[Assistant]
If you want saftey, no superheros and a good quality of life then move to dismal and peacful Latveria.

Here the head of state personaly keeps away almost all threats and single-handedly manages the economy keeping such a tiny nation a world power.   You do have to deal with the occasional crash when America carries out illegal actions against our head of state but overlord VonDoom always returns and gets thing back up and running.

Here we are a tolerant and patient people where racism and most social ills are dealt with in a level headed manner, everyone lives a full and happy life.

Doom himself is not so tolerant or patient so you don't piss off the big man. He's holed up in his fortress saving the world without involving the little folk most days so its unlikely you'll have the chance.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does getting hit in the face (such as during a fight) knock someone unconscious?

I want to know how :
1. The body reacts, causing it to go unconscious.
2. How the body thinks going limp is a good idea when in a fight.

Thanks!

[Assistant]
To answer your 2nd question first, it has nothing to do with your body's idea of what is good, any more than your computer getting rebooted by a brief power flicker of your house is a good idea of your computer's.

Most doctors believe a knockout is typically caused by the brain bouncing around in the inside of the skull. It doesnt necessarily have to be one really hard hit, but a series of hits that continuously cause your head to snap in all different directions with your brain rattling in the inside of your skull like a shake weight.

 Imagine that soft, mushy brain smacking against the inside of your cranium and those thin connective tissues holding it being stretched and torn; that is what causes your brain to shutdown.

When fighters get knocked out by a series of strikes in a fight, its not uncommon that they describe sensations of disorientation: blurred vision, lack of foot coordination, disrupted balance, numbness, etc. As they continue getting hit, these sensations intensify until the knockout hit is delivered and they finally lose consciousness.  Once out, our brains go through a "reboot" process that then leads to waking back up from a knockout.

A knockout strike has more to do with how the skull rotates in response to the strike rather than the power behind it.  Arguably, the most vulnerable point to hit someone and achieve a knockout is the chin and jaw area.  The reason is simple anatomy: The chin is a knockout button because its a leverage point that causes the most head movement when hit hard enough. A good whack on the chin causes the bobble-head effect more so than a strike on any other area on the head/face.  Side strikes, especially to the temple and back of the jaw areas are close runner ups.


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

[User] [Marvel] how practical is Green Goblins Glider?

[Assistant] Impractical for a civilian. Very practical for someone with superhuman strength enhanced by an exoskeleton and superhuman reflexes that allow him to take full advantage of the glider's speed and maneuverability.


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

[User]
ELI5: What's the difference between "quality" gasoline and "cheap" gasoline?

Everyone talks about "quality" gas like Chevron or whatever and knocks "bad" gas like Arco. What's the difference? Is it worth it? Why?

[Assistant]
The difference is the additives in the gas. For example, Shell sells nitrogen enriched gas that they claim helps eliminate deposits in the engine. They advertise heavily by saying that their gas is fundamentally better.

Independent tests have shown that there is no difference in emissions, fuel economy, or performance. There might have been a difference 30-40 years ago, but all gas has to meet strict government standards. Once gas has met those standards, there isn't much more you can do to improve it.

So the difference is mainly advertising dollars.


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

[User]
Why do neutrinos need mass in order to change flavour/identity?

The Nobel-prize laureates in Physics this year, has discovered that neutrinos have mass, because they need it in order to change flavour/identity (tau-neutrino, muon-neutrino, electron-neutrino).

Why do neutrinos need mass to change flavour/identity?

[Assistant]
The argument involves special relativity. Oscillations can be thought of as a type of 'clock' that neutrino carries; every so often it changes from one type to another with some frequency. (The actual situation is more complicated and quantum-mechanical, but the idea is the same.) So, an observer (like us) watching the neutrino go by can use the oscillations to see how fast time is ticking by for the neutrino. And indeed, we observe that faster (higher-energy) neutrinos oscillate more slowly than slower ones.

However--and this is the clincher--a massless particle always travels at exactly c, the speed of light, no matter its energy. And in that limit, any clocks carried by the massless particle *stop ticking*--they are infinitely time dilated. So the fact that we see neutrinos oscillating---ticking---means that they aren't *quite* moving at the speed of light (although they are so close that we can't measure a difference in their velocity). And since they are moving at a speed less than c, they *must* have mass, according to the rules of special relativity.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What time period was Palpatine referring to in ep. 3 when he said "once more the sith will rule the Galaxy"?

Is whatever time period he's referring to even canon anymore?

[Assistant]
Obviously *a* period when the Sith ruled over the galaxy is canon since the movies themselves refer to such a time existing. The details are not currently canon, but I'd say it's a fair bet that it was shortly before the thousand-year period of stability in the Republic that is established to have been ongoing prior to the Clone Wars.

What *is* canon is that at least six thousand years ago they had control of Coruscant and built a shrine at the future site of the Jedi Temple-- so that could also be the time Sidious was referring to.


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

[User]
Is the absence of a belief in something the same as a belief in the absence of that something?

I've always thought the definition of an atheist as a person who does not have a belief in the existence of a God or Gods. Yet sometimes I see self-proclaimed atheists say they believe there is no God. But is that the same thing?

[Assistant]
Yeah those are distinct. An atheist has the belief that there is no god. An agnostic lacks this belief as well as the belief that there is a god, that is they lack a belief either way in the existence or non-existence of a deity.

Edit: you can also think of babies as a nice counterexample. Most babies know and believe very little. A one year old likely does not believe in the existence of the planet Jupiter. They have probably never heard of the planet Jupiter and havent had the opportunity to form any beliefs about it yet. But this doesnt mean they believe that there is no planet Jupiter, again, they havent ever heard of it and havent had the opportunity to form any beliefs about it yet.


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

[User] ELI5: Why aren't Jupiter's clouds all brown from being completely mixed together after billions of years of storming?

[Assistant] Jupiters clouds are in a state of constant flux. The storms dont just mix what we can see, they pull material up from deeper in and push material back down, they swirl and mix. New gases come up that havent been exposed to the radiation of the sun, and chemically change when they do, tidal and centripetal forces keep gases of differing densities separated (the bands). Its a lot more complex than the gases just mixing.


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

[User]
[Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy] How do time-travelling investors affect the economy?

We know that you can pay the exorbitant check for your meal at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe by depositing a penny in your own time and paying with the result of billions of years of compound interest. What are (will be?) (wioll haven be?) some of the other effects when investors started time travelling?

[Assistant]
The trouble is the mechanism doesn't make a lot of sense. Who is paying this interest, and where is that money coming from? What entirely hands off investment is paying dividends right up to the literal end of the universe? What conceivable currency is it paid in?
And if it did, what is to stop someone from doing it twice - invest a penny, travel to the end of time to get your vast fortune, then travel back and invest THAT, and so on indefinitely? It quickly becomes nonsense.

The thing about The Galaxy is that it actively resists close examination, as a feature of reality itself. From the book:

>There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

>There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

This appears to apply not just to physical laws, but to the functioning of society (and by extension, to economics). The Galaxy is *fundamentally* a silly and chaotic place, which paradoxically gives it a kind of stability. Time traveling investors are able to pay restaurant bills and NOT profoundly change the nature of economics across all spacetime *because* that is how it seems like it would work *as long as you don't think about it too much.* Similar to how you can fly by jumping at the ground and missing, but *only* if you don't notice how stupid that is. There are many other examples of similar mechanisms. Thus characters tend to have happy and successful lives in inverse proportion to how self-conscious they are (Zaphod at one end, Marvin at the other).


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

[User] [Marvel]What would happen if you throw mr immortal to a black hole?

[Assistant]
He would survive. It would be briefly painful, but as he reached the centre of the black hole time would slow almost to a standstill.

After about 10^67 years, the black hole would decay naturally, and if the universe hasn't died by then, Mr Immortal would find himself free. He'd also be extremely compact, but he'd be able to reconstitute himself. Then he'd immediately asphyxiate in the cold void of space, his body would frost up, and he'd drift through the unimaginable void reviving and asphyxiating in quick succession until eventually, by the kind of desperately contrived coincidence that only happens in fiction, he randomly drifts into scanner range of a spaceship that *just happens* to contain a time traveller from the early 21st century, or possibly Kang.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can't all these people being sued by corporations in civil court just ignore the lawsuit? (recent example: the cheaper plane tickets guy)

[Assistant]
Well... the fact that they would lose.

If you don't defend yourself in a civil case guess what... the other guy wins.  So the next letter would be "since you didn't bother to defend yourself, we've gone ahead and awarded the other party damages" and a bill for $X.


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

[User]
CMV: Support women's health if you want to prevent abortions.

 If really want to prevent abortions from happening the best way would be support women's health. Make sure that they have the financial, emotional and health system support to enable them to carry a pregnancy to term. Also, provide them with family planning support so that it's something they intended to happen when it happens.

Without financial support carrying a pregnancy to term is a huge burden. Imagine being a single woman who earns minimum wage, employer provides no health insurance and they don't have the support of their family. How are they are supposed to manage?

If they don't have emotional support from friends and family during their pregnacy they are much more likely to seek to have an abortion.

We need a better system in place to make sure that all of them have access to health care. Before, during and after. The system also needs to provide health care to the child.

Just pushing to making it illegal doesn't remove the underlying reasons women seek them in the first place. I frequently see a lot the pro-life people saying they vote a certain way for a certain party because that party is supposedly pro-life. Just wanting it to be illegal is not enough. In order to be truly pro-life they need to be willing to support that life after it comes into the world.

[Assistant] Some anti-abortion activists actually do offer services to pregnant women in the hope that they'll choose to carry a pregnancy to term. If you think of those fake clinics that advertise themselves as abortion clinics but actually obstruct women who are seeking abortions, many of them do offer things like help arranging adoption, prenatal vitamins and strollers, cribs, and diapers etc.


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

[User]
How are quantum computers actually implemented?

I have basic understanding of quantum information theory, however I have no idea how is actual quantum processor hardware made.

Tangential question - what is best place to start looking for such information? For theoretical physics I usually start with Wikipedia and then slowly go through references and related articles, but this approach totally fails me when I want learn something about experimental physics.

[Assistant] In superconducting quantum computing one typically uses Josephson junctions (superconducting tunnel junctions) to make anharmonic resonators that act as qubits. Junctions are made by litography like classical CPUs. Such qubits are prepared by microwave pulses that correspond to rotations on the Bloch sphere. Entanglement between qubits is generated by variable coupling (in the simplest case adjusting current through a Josephson junction changes its inductance and thus coupling). The Junctions are almost purely reactive so no loss is associated with them. Readout is usually done by reflecting a microwave pulse from a coupled microwave resonator and then determining the phase of the reflected pulse (which depends on the state of the qubit). Losses etc. limit the coherence time within which one has to do all the operations. The actual arrangements tend to be a bit more complicated, but that's the general idea. One gets pretty far with the experimental side of things by just doing classical circuit simulation. Understanding the many particle behavior between readouts maybe no so much.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it when I can doze off in a matter of seconds watching tv, but if I immediately roll over and go to bed it takes much longer to go to sleep.

[Assistant]
When you're watching TV, your brain is kind of on auto-pilot; you can't think, because you might miss something (even though you might miss something if you doze while viewing).

When you quit watching TV, your brain starts to process all that TV information you just took in.


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

[User]
[Marvel] I heard that Juggernaut was at one time powered up enought to break dimensional barriers, can someone illuminate me on the subject?

How did he get so strong? How was he stopped? How strong was he? He could break dimensional barriers, is that superboy prime level?

[Assistant]
Ok, first things first, it's important to know where Juggernaut's strength comes from. Despite his association with the X-Men Cain Marko is not a mutant, he's actually the avatar of a powerful God named Cyttorak. Cytorrak's power is stupidly strong, rivaling the Phoenix Force and other similar entities, and so long as Juggernaut and Cyttorak are aligned in thought and deed he's got access to a huge chunk of it.

During the Trion Saga Cyttorak's powers were co-opted by a third party (the titular Trion gods), who used them to power up Juggernaut with nearly the full extent of them. Driven nearly mad and empowered so Juggernaut was able to rampage across dimensions, only stopped when when Cyttorak's powers were forcibly removed from him.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] What happens if a wizard's chosen wand isn't in their local wand shop?

For example, say Ron's 'wand that chooses the wizard' ends up being in Gregorovitch's shop, or some American shop, instead of Ollivander's? Is it the responsibility of Ollivander to provide *everyone* with an acceptable wand, or does he go 'lol nope, you're screwed'?

[Assistant]
The statement doesn't mean there is only one wand for one wizard, otherwise once a wizard's wand was broken they'd be out of luck for the rest of their lives.

It simply means that certain types of wands favor certain types of wizards. Wizards can use any wand (pretty much) but they are more easily able to use the wand they are attuned to.

Walk into any wand shop and a wizard is going to be able to find a wand suitable for them. Maybe not the absolutely perfect wand out of all the wands in existence, but a decent match.


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

[User] ELI5: When you rub lotion into your skin and it vanishes, where does it end up?

[Assistant]
Lotions, creams, and ointments are all mixes of watery ingredients (water, alcohols, stuff like that) and oily ingredients. Creams are more oily than lotions, ointments are more oily than creams.

Generally, the oils are either absorbed and/or stay on your skin as a barrier, and the aqueous components are either absorbed or evaporate. Things that "moisturize" basically add some water to the dried surface skin, then make an oily barrier on the surface to prevent evaporative drying again- water goes in, oils stay on top.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do such a wide variety of animals seem to enjoy human affection?

[Assistant] I don't think any of these answers have gotten to the heart of the question. Animals enjoy touch (mammals especially) for the same reasons people do. But of all the animals in nature, humans have the best appendages for giving massages/scratches because we have such fine control over our hands and fingers. So you take any mammal - a lion, lets say - and if you can convince it to let you get close without feeling threatened, and start giving it a scratch behind the ears .... then it's gonna enjoy the shit out of that.


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

[User]
[COMICS] How can anyone lose with the infinity gauntlet if they are omnipotent.

if they are omnipotent they should know everything thats going to happen. like thanos should of already known nebula was going to take the gauntlet when he beat eternity. and nebula should of known that all the cosmic beings were coming. edit: and why couldn't thanos just erase all the cosmic being instantly?

[Assistant]
Even if you become all powerful and all knowing, you are still limited by your psyche and thought patterns.

If for all of your life you have been thinking of time as a linear concept, and space as a 3-dimensional object, it takes a mental effort to use your omnipotence correctly and at full capacity. So if you are busy with let's say all the heroes of the universe attacking you at once you will fall back into the "mortal" way of thinking because this is what you are used to and you can be surprised with a well-coordinated attack.


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

[User]
How do you deprogram political extremists without triggering cognitive dissonance and defensiveness?

How do you get someone to accept that their beliefs are wrong or that the concept of objective truth is even real?

[Assistant] Im no expert but your question reminds me of Daryl Davis, a black man who has through one-on-one conversations influenced many KKK members into denouncing the organization and their racist beliefs. It seems that the problem with many extremists is they lack exposure to their perceived enemies which makes it easy to dehumanize them. Im sure thats just one possible factor and perhaps others here can expand upon the subject.


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

[User] [Starcraft] What happens to Archons after a battle? What do they do in Protoss society other than being powerhouses?

[Assistant]
> The creation of an archon is a serious affair and is never made lightly, for it requires the reluctant sacrifice of valuable Templars **for a short-term gain.**

From the SCII wiki

Sounds like they arent permanent fixtures and dissipate or go "Poof!" when there is not the anger and rage from battle sustaining them.


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

[User] Why are script languages mostly interpreted rather than compiled?

[Assistant]
First, it's somewhat in the definition of "script language", if they were compiled, they'd likely not be considered a "script language."

Not compiling makes it easier to use and maintain them (no separate source and binary) and makes it easier to port them to other machines. These are all important for the common uses of scripts. (It also makes it much easier to implement `eval`.)

That said, the line isn't clear-cut at all. Python can (and often does) compile scripts to a bytecode form for faster execution.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is your voice deeper than usual when you wake up?

[Assistant] During sleep, the vocal cords sit there unused and "loosen up" a bit because the muscles have been in a resting state so long. The effect is like loosening the tuning screw on a guitar string, the pitch shifts down a bit.


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

[User] is Will To Power (book) any good? i have read most of Nietzsche's work and I'm thinking about reading it. Is it entirely corrupted?

[Assistant]
I don't think there's any problem with going into it already knowing Nietzsche's main published books, and overall philosophical project, and understanding *WtP* as a kind of assemblage of notes which can elucidate some of the indeterminacy of Nietzsche's 1888 works. Not really the *magnum opus* that his sister marketed it as.

If you're interested in Heidegger, though, then you may want to read it as Heidegger's engagement with Nietzsche is through *Will to Power* rather than the published works.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do religions use stories and analogies to explain values and teachings, instead of stating stating them directly, which leads to misinterpretation?

[Assistant] Because humans do not learn well with direct facts and things that are stated directly. We have to be able to personally connect to information in order to learn it. That is why all good teachers give you object lessons, use analogies and parables to help you connect to the difficult concepts of anything that you are learning. It does not matter if it is a moral principle from a religion, or physics class.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it that when you uninstall something on your computer, there are still folders related to what you uninstalled left behind with nothing in them ?

[Assistant]
On Windows, you can't immediately delete a file that is being accessed by some application or service. Consequently, you can't remove the directory that contains this file, even if you don't need it anymore.

Now, you can tell Windows to delay the file's removal until it's closed (no longer accessed). That's why the file will be gone eventually. However, there's no way to tell Windows to delay the directory's removal until it's empty. Hence, occasional leftover empty directories.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How are Corellian Corvettes effective blockade runners if they get caught by Star Destroyers so easily? What advantage do they have if not speed?

Shouldn't they be faster than other capital ships but Wookiepedia says its class 2 hyperdrive was slow compared to many ships of similar size and its speed is 60 MGLT, same as an ISD? Do they have other characteristics advantageous for blockade running?

[Assistant] Because in the early days of the Rebellion, CR90 Corvettes were ubiquitous enough in parts and mechanics that many were modified to have extra speed or have radar jammers to slip through Imperial blockades. Hence, "blockade runner". However, once an Imperial-I Star Destroyer was deployed, individual Corvettes are no match for it unless used as en-massed in a kamikaze attack.


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

[User] [Fallout - Dead Money] With infinite-resource pre-War vending machines, couldn't we have avoided the resource wars of the 2070's.

[Assistant]
Yes.

But!

Much like fusion power (i.e. Fusion Cores), they were discovered too late to alleviate the problems.

In this case, Sinclair rolled them out mere months before the bombs fell, and only in a 'concept design' capacity (like a software beta).

50 years earlier? It could have made a significant impact.


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

[User]
Could Tokamaks be run in a multi-phase configuration?

Tokamaks rely on current in the plasma to produce a poloidal field. Since the toroidal coils can't keep increasing the field strength forever, could tokamaks benefit from being run in a multiphase configuration? Could the decay of one toroidal field drive the production of another?

Are other heating methods sufficient to maintain a toroidal current, or are tokamaks a fundamentally transient configuration?

[Assistant]
You really don't want to operate a pulsed fusion reactor. First, keep in mind that a reactor will be subject to large thermal and mechanical stresses. Cycling these stress on and off, as would happen in a pulsed reactor, will lead the rapid fatigue of the structural elements.  Also the start up phase of a tokamak is very inefficient. You lose a lot of energy breaking you ionize the gas forming a plasma.

For these reasons non-solenoidal current drive is an active area of research. The good news is that there are several promising forms of current drive that could allow us to operate a tokamak steady state. For example there are techniques like electron cyclotron current drive which uses radio frequency waves to drive current. A plasma will also naturally drive a current as you heat it up. Advanced reactor scenarios us these natural bootstrap currents to efficiently sustain the current.

Finally, a comment on vocabulary. The toroidal fields coils generate the toroidal magnetic field. The central solenoid inductively drives a toroidal plasma current which produces a poloidal magnetic field.


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

[User]
ELI5 why is 'Head and Shoulders' shampoo "For men"?

Just marketing, or is there more to it?

[Assistant]
For most 'drugstore' brands of toiletries like shampoo, soap, and deoderant, the only significant differences between the mens and womens versions of products are:

Scent:  since most men don't want to smell like tahitian vanilla and most women don't want to smell like whatever-it-is axe smells like

Price:  you can see this most with razors.  mens products are generally priced lower than womens for the same volume

Color:  most noticeable in the packaging, but occasionally the product itself is colored

Once you get into the high-end 'salon' products, there can be true formulary differences.


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

[User]
[Disney] To what extent can the Disney castle be considered an effective fortification, and against whom does it defend?

With unusual exceptions (e.g. *Maleficent*), I refer to the current Disney castle in the opening credits of each documentary, derived from the *Sleeping Beauty* and *Cinderella* castles.

[Assistant]
Well you see, Disney Castle was designed not to be a fortress. It'd based off of castles built during the 1600s or even the 1700s. After cannons became common field artillery castles were useless as forts. The only reason people built castles were built afterwards were more as palaces, fancy and expensive endeavors with that old Medieval flair.

In other words, absolute garbage as a stronghold.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Why did the Romulans give up on plasma weapon technology?

Just watched Balance of Terror again for the nth time and it just occurred me that by TNG they'd stopped using a weapon capable of disabling the defensive shield of a hardened installation in one hit, then take the base itself on the second hit. Why, if cloaking tech survived to be generally common was plasma dropped?

[Assistant]
Because they were impractical. Similarly to how in the real world nobody used nuclear artillery anymore despite it being super effective while stealth is similarly a bigger deal than ever.

Also plasma weapons still seem pretty common. In games at least they use plasma beams as well as disruptors, and plasma torpedoes are still a thing but apparently either toned down or less effective against more modern defences. Remember that in Balance of Terror that was the first time humanity had seen any of them in like a century and all the while they had been expanding in other directions.


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

[User] ELI5:If we get less Testorone and Estrogen as we age, why do we not get supplements to avoid as an example, decreased bone density.

[Assistant] The problem with those treatments is that they often ruin more than they solve. Take estrogen for example. Postmenopausal hormone treatment (aka, giving women estrogen after menopause to deal with the lose of bone density and the side-effects of going through menopause) has been done in the past. It turned out to increase the risk of uterine cancer. Then they tried estrogen + progesterone hormone treatment, except that increase the risk of breast cancer. It just isn't worth it.


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

[User] Can two stars in a binary system orbit each other so closely that they will heat each others' surfaces and change their spectral type?

[Assistant] Yep! It requires a very high temperature difference between the two stars, though, and for them to be very close to contact. Irradiation effects are common in binary systems with high accretion rates onto compact objects like black holes and neutron stars, where more than several thousand times the energy output of the Sun is emitted in X-rays and heats the inner face of the donor star. In some systems, like redback pulsar PSR J1810+1744, the "day" side is over twice as hot as the "night" side. (That system's irradiation is from strong gamma-ray emission rather than X-ray emission produced from accretion, though.)  Scorpius X-1, the brightest persistent non-solar X-ray source in the sky, also shows evidence of irradiation on the inner face, but the donor star is so hard to see next to the bright accretion disk that it mostly shows up in atomic emission lines originating on the irradiated inner surface of the donor, rather than as a changing spectral type.


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

[User] ELI5: How does an A/C unit cool hot air so quickly?

[Assistant] When a gas is presurized, it heats up. The inverse of this is that when a gas's pressure is reduced, it cools down. An AC machhine forces a gas to compress, which then heats up. It gives heat to the air around it (hopefully outside the space you want to cool) and thus loses total heat. The gas then goes back and expands, cooling down a lot, and *cools* the air around it, which *is* blown into the space you want to cool.


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

[User]
CMV: I don't think that Defund The Police is a good cause

I come from a very progressive mindset family and have held similar views my whole life. I've voted for the democratic party's candidate in every election that I could vote, though I wish I could've voted further left or 'Green'. That said, as someone who aligns with leftist ideals, I don't think that the slogan 'Defund The Police' is a good idea in America.

NOTE: There are logistic problems with the wording of the slogan in my opinion, but I won't get into that because it feels like a semantic debate.

The democratic party has been a proponent for bigger government for a long time, and this seems to me to be a step in the opposite direction. I am for a strong police force that doesn't act like an authoritarian tool for the government. I know that many PDs throughout America do currently have a problem of power tripping, overstepping boundaries, and getting violent or lethal too quickly in a conflict. However, police are a very necessary commodity that us citizens use when things do get unstable to the point of violence.

I vehemently despise the killers that have been excused, pardoned, or let off easy because they were "doing their job," or the victim "had it coming." That is a piss-poor excuse to attack/maim/KILL another person. What I do stand for is a police force that has multiple ways of dealing with conflict, not the current mindset that so many officers are trained to have of "Intimidate until the problem is either deescalated or escalated, then act accordingly."

I haven't been sure how to organize my thoughts or feelings on this for a while, so I'm sorry as this probably reads as a laundry list of loose connections strewn throughout my brain. Allow me to clarify if you have any questions, thank you!

[Assistant]
>The democratic party has been a proponent for bigger government for a long time, and this seems to me to be a step in the opposite direction.

Firstly, democrats have never taken the view of "big government".

Big government is a slogan used by republicans to describe democrat policies. Democrats take a pragmatic view that says that sometimes the government needs to intervene to make things fairer. They aren't just for government involvement for the sake of it, the way the republicans are in favour of withdrawing government support as an ideology.

Secondly, this wouldn't be about withdrawing government support. It would be about redirecting it. Taking money that is used for law enforcement, and instead redirect it to crime prevention. Community support programmes etc that are designed to make people's lives better so that crime doesn't happen.


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

[User] ELI5 why if radio waves and visible light waves are the same thing at a different frequencies, why we cant make radio dishes that beam visible light?

[Assistant] That's more or less how a flashlight and searchlight work(think of the batsymbol). You have a parabolic dish and a sender in the centre that emits EM which bounces off of the disk and "doubles up" on the transmitted signal.


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

[User] ELI5: Why we (United States) promote freedom in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iran, but when it comes to Palestine we veto every single fucking time.

[Assistant] Israel is one of our bestest friends on the playground. Now Israel doesn't really like this Palestine kid. Israel let us know he's just a stinky doo doo head. So we can't like him either, or we're not really Israel's best friend for life.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does spicy food feel "spicier" when you exhale than when you inhale?

[Assistant] Capsaicin triggers your nerves the same way heat does. Your body effectively thinks it's being burned. Exhaled air is warm, and transfers heat to your oral mucosa as it passes by so this effect is amplified. Inhaled air is generally cooler, and removes heat as it passes through your mouth, so it has a soothing effect.


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

[User]
[MCU] Can humans and the Kree reproduce?

Humans and members of the Kree appear to be very similar in terms of their physiology, so naturally them reproducing and creating hybrid offspring is possible, yes?

And when this happens, what sort of benefits does the the hybrid child possess and what downsides?

[Assistant]
In the comics, there are a couple human/Kree hybrids. Actually all "white" or "pink" Kree are mixed blood Kree, the blue Kree are pureblooded Kree, but most of the mixed Kree are not mixed with humans but other alien races. Anyway, the Kree/human hybrids include Ultragirl and (more recently due to a retcon) Carol Danvers.

Genis-Vell and his sister Phyla-Vell are also technically human/Kree hybrids, as their mother Elysius is an artificially-created Eternal, and Eternals are a subspecies of humanity.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are screens measured diagonally?

[Assistant] The first CRT screens used a circular glass bulb as a display, with a rectangular image displayed on it, and the diameter of the circle was given as the size of the screen.  When rectangular CRT bulbs were developed, the diagonal size was used because it was the closest equivalent measurement to the existing circular bulbs.  For a long time, TV screens were all 4:3 ratio with a standard number of vertical lines; so there was little point to changing the measurement standard.


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

[User]
Why do we get hungry if we have excess calories already stored in our body.

If our body stores excess calories as fat cells, why do we get hungry again when our body could instead burn off some fat cells first which would also reduce health problems associated with carrying too many fat cells?

[Assistant] The short answer is evolutionary history - it's only been in the last few thousand years (arguably the last thousand) that we've had an abundance of food.  Before that, we were just like other foraging animals - we had to constantly be looking for food. Because of this, it would be entirely possible that we may have to go days, even weeks with little to eat if the food supply was short.  Essentially, our bodies wouldn't want to "waste" the fat we have stored up - it would be better to save it for when we really need it.  Hunger likely evolved as a way to ensure a constant supply of food when it was available so fat stores could be saved for dire circumstances.


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

[User]
Why is free will good?

When answering the problem of evil, a lot of theists say that one of the reasons why evil caused by humans exists, is that God wanted us to have free will. That seems like a silly answer to me.

Our society has no trouble recognizing that free will is good, but not so good that we allow people to use their free will to kill others. The life of a person is worth more than the free will of a murderer. Yet God would make the opposite call? If we are to take God as an example of perfect morality, why shouldn't we just let everyone kill whomever they want because we are respecting their free will?

Furthermore, personally, I just don't see what's so good about free will. I'd much rather live in a society where everyone was morally infalible and no one suffered because of others, than have free will. If there is a God, this seems like a much preferable option than giving us free will.

What are some answers to this dilemma?

[Assistant] The typical significance of saying that we have free will is recognizing that God does not coercively govern our behavior. So when we choose to murder, the analysis is not the one you've given, where we infer that God must think it's best that we murder, but rather the inference is meant to be that the murder wasn't something God chose, it was something we chose -- we're able to chose things God wouldn't, because he doesn't coercively govern our behavior, i.e. because we have free will.


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

[User]
Eli5: How do bird legs work?

They look so thin and basic. How do they function?

[Assistant]
Like human fingers, there are no muscle groups in them, just tendons. By relaxing or constricting the tendons, they move their joints, just like we move our fingers and toes.

Interestingly, some birds can wrap their claws around a branch and then relax. When they rest, their body weight can push down on the legs, and exert force on the tendons, which causes the tendons to reach their maximum length of stretch, and force the claws to squeeze around the branch.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do I crave food that makes me feel like crap 15 after I'm done eating?

[Assistant]
It depends on exactly what food you crave.  For a very long time, foods with high fat, salt, and sugar content were not the most common thing in the world and in many cases could make the difference between starvation and not.

On a different level it is possible that you crave them now due to a psychological dependence.  Maybe at some point your mind formed a connection between that food and a certain feeling.


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

[User]
[star trek/general sci-fi] how does a post scarcity society deals with human greed?

how people with an insatiable hunger for more would be dealt with in a post scarcity society? like, not only normal greed but also individuals with megalomaniacal intentions in the vein of "i want a planet/solar system/galaxy"?

[Assistant]
Why do they need to deal with them?

You can't take over the world alone, and with no desperate people to exploit and a power structure run by people who genuinely want to help people, the building an army thing is simply not feasible. Steve can *want* to rule the galaxy to his hearts content, but he's not going to spark a rebellion or become unaccountably powerful, so he's can't do much more then sit at home seething about it.

Generally, if they're really dedicated, they leave to other parts of the galaxy more suited to them, and get attacked by starfleet if they make a play for it. But within their borders, someone with an insatiable hunger like you describe is just a pathetic guy with huge ambitions and no way to attain them by virtue of the society they're in.


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

[User]
What were Spinoza's views on God?

I remember hearing an opinion that Spinoza saw God as an entity that was constantly changing throughout all of eternity, but I wasn't able to verify this. What were Spinoza's views on God?

[Assistant]
> What were Spinoza's views on God?

Roughly, Spinoza's concept of God begins with a fairly traditional view: God is an absolutely infinite being, eternal and possessing being through his own nature without dependence nor origination in anything else, unlimited by anything else as regards his power and in any other sense, and in and through which all else that is has its being. He then takes this view in a direction which challenges orthodox theology, by arguing that God's unlimited power implies that by necessity he does all that he can do, which means that he does not refrain from doing anything, which means that he does not exercise a providential concern in enacting a decision to create and a decision of what to create and what not to create. This move rejects orthodox commitments to God's providential interest in creating and creating a certain kind of world, and binds the existence of world in some sense closer to God as a necessary act of his.

As infinite, God, and by a certain extension the world that is his act, may be conceived of having any number of natures, but as humans we can conceive of two: either conceiving of them as extension, in which case we think of the world in material terms, or as understanding, in which case we think of the world in terms of ideas. As they result from conceived the same things now in one way then in the other, there is a strict parallelism between matter and ideas without the one being reducible to the other.


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

[User]
ElI5: Why don't we launch rockets off mountains?

Why doesn't NASA launch rockets off the Rockies or some other mountain range? Wouldn't it save a lot off fuel because there would be less gravity and less distance to travel to get into orbit?

[Assistant] they're not really worried about the 2-10k feet when they calculate the cost of fuel. the effect of less gravity is also pretty negligible. they'd also have to calculate in the cost of trucking all the equipment, payload, and what not up the mountain to launch. the rockies are also covered in snow a good portion of the year, that would add some more difficulties in the form of hostile environments and delays caused by weather.


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

[User] I have a theory: If there is an infinite amount of negative numbers and there is an infinite amount of positive numbers then the total amount of numbers would be odd. Because 0 is in the center. For every positive number there is an negative counterpart. Am I right? Can we prove this with math?

[Assistant]
Why should 0 be the center?

I personally like -18306 to be the "center". And it's clear that it is: There are an infinite amount of integers larger than -18306 and an infinite amount of integers smaller than -18306.

Or maybe there is no integer that's the "center", but instead it's the halfway point between 12 and 13. That means we can pair up numbers based on their distance from the "center": 12-13, 11-14, 10-15, etc... Clearly this proves that there's an even number of integers.

Jokes aside, the integer numbers don't have a "central number" or something along those lines. And the concepts of even and odd apply to finite sets, but fail to make sense when you consider infinite sets. After all, a number *n* is even if there exists an integer *k* such that *n = 2 k*. Similarly, *n* is odd if there exists an integer *k* such that *n = 2 k + 1*. When it comes to the size of the set of integers, there is no finite integer *k* one can find to satisfy either of those two criteria.

In general, many definitions and concepts that we're used to only work properly for finite values and sets and break down with infinite sets. In some cases, one could expand the definition in a fairly natural way to also cover infinite sets, but this isn't always the case.


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

[User]
[Fallout] Vault-Tec Executives

As far as I understand, the vaults were social experiments and not proper fallout shelters. Whatever happened to the CEO and other executives of Vault-Tec? Did they make their own special vaults?

[Assistant]
A lot of them probably never even made it to their vaults, if they were even ready yet. Vault Tec HQ was in the middle of Manhattan. Good luck getting out of *that* city when the sirens turn on.

In Fallout, although the possibility of Nuclear War loomed, the Government/The Enclave/Vault Tec realllllly didn't expect the war to escalate as soon as it did, and when it happened, they really didn't expect it to be as terrible as it was.


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

[User]
CMV: any public political debate (like a US presidential debate) should require that the non-speaking candidate have their mic cut when it is not his/her time to speak.

When the politicians cut each other off and constantly interrupt each other (Trump is worse IMO but Biden does it plenty too) it paints an incredibly childish and petulant image.

If the moderator had a "cut the mic" button for each candidate, to toggle each candidate's mic on and off, the moderator could realistically enforce the rules. Other than that, debates inevitably devolve into bickering and posturing.

I'm open to having my view changed, but I strongly believe that having the option of cutting mics would give a lot more structure to the debates.

[Assistant]
The mic should not be controlled by the moderator to avoid conspiracy theories and corruption.

Heres a solution. Give them each an allotment of time. The mic shuts off automatically. Give them each a button for X number of 15-20 second interruptions and another button for Y number of Z minutes of open discussion possibilities thatll make both sides have open mic for the duration. The candidate has a timer and controls his speaking time.

We should consider what the need for this says about us and the candidates we choose instead of what it says about the candidates themselves.


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

[User]
CMV: I can't stop believing in a palmistry prediction and it's ruining my life

3 years ago, a co-worker who is big on palm-reading, astrology, and other woo stuff read my palm and said "no abroad settlement" among otherwise nice things pertaining to health, money, intuition, luck. I chose to forget all the nice things he said and have been fixated on that one prediction that relates to moving out of my home country. Why? Because I hold that idea so dear to me. I live in a third-world country and for as long as I can remember, I've wanted to move outside to a better place.

Because I've had this living-outside dream for far too long, I've spent most of my life wondering if I'll even fulfill that dream or not. I have spent time worrying and cooking up imaginations about all of it. So, in some ways, I'm just calibrating a prediction and backing it up because of how my life has turned out to be untill now.

For most of the things, I'm quite a skeptic. So it feels very strange to me how I've been unable to shake myself out of this view. The rational part of my head says all of this is bogus, how could a few lines on my hand decide my fate. Even if palmistry is real, it could only suggest my nature. Trust me, I've tried to reason myself multiple times. I've tried to tell myself that every belief is there because it's serving you in some way. I've told myself this belief is not coming from a place of belief in palmistry being true but from a place of belief in my insecurities. I'm literally giving power to my insecurities by believing in something he told me that I already feared.

Yet, despite all of this self reasoning, I end up clinging to the belief that what my co-worker predicted about me will materialize. And that is ruining my life. I don't know if posting this here would help me change my view but here's a desperate try.

Edit after an hour of posting this: I'm overwhelmed by the thoughtful replies. Would be difficult to reply to each and every one of you but I just want to say, thank you so much for helping me see different perspectives. I'm going to copy-paste your level-headed comments to my notes and see how it changes my viewpoint overtime.

[Assistant]
Maybe what they really meant was No! abroad settlement.  Telling you to stop doubting and settle abroad.

Or maybe they meant Noah, Broad Settlement meaning you should seek out a man named Noah as you travel the world.


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

[User]
Where did all the sand in the Sahara desert come from?

I've heard that around 5 thousand years ago the Sahara desert was a tropical forest, full of life. And then, it turned into the wasteland that we know today. Where did all the sand in the Sahara desert come from?

[Assistant]
Sand is weathered rock. The sand in the Sahara comes from the bedrock (most of the Sahara actually consists of exposed bedrock): as the bedrock is altered by the elements and by gravity, its primary minerals (e.g., feldspars, quartz, micas) are slowly transformed into secondary minerals (clays and carbonates) that can be more or less dissolved or transported by the wind, leaving behind grains of primary minerals (the sand).

By the way, the Sahara is not a wasteland! It is rather teeming with life.


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

[User]
[DC] What DC characters are just genuinely not afraid of the Joker?

Other than Batman I suppose. Which characters, aware of the Joker's reputation, knowing he likely has something torturous and horrific up his sleeve, were to stare him dead in the eye, and not feel any real sense of fear?

[Assistant]
Most superhumans have no reason to fear the Joker on a personal level. There is, for example, nothing he could do to harm Superman. But nonetheless, if you told Superman "the Joker is in the building right now", he would be scared - not for himself, but for everybody else. The Joker is an unpredictable homicidal maniac, which makes him frightening to anyone who doesn't have a psychopathic disregard for human life. Even if he's in front of you, immobilised, there would be a moment of fear for what he might have been doing before you managed to stop him.

So in short, I'd narrow it down to the Spectre, the Creeper, and some of the more powerful and evil supervillains.


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

[User] [DC] During one of his crimes, the joker is shot and killed by a GCPD officer. How does Batman react?

[Assistant]
If the cop justifiably shot the Joker to save himself or a bystander, Batman would investigate to ensure the Joker was really and truly dead, breathe a sigh of relief, and start planning for Joker's inevitable return from the dead.

If the cop just shot the Joker because hey, how many chances to murder the Joker are you gonna get, then Batman will treat him like any other murderer and make sure the evidence is gathered and presented in the hopes he'll be put in jail. Then he'll investigate to ensure the Joker is really and truly dead, breathe a sigh of relief, and start planning for Joker's inevitable return from the dead.


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

[User]
ELI5: How was OJ Simpson acquitted in the murder trial but then found guilty in a civil court?

I believe he was found guilty on a 'wrongful death' charge in a civil court, but what exactly is a wrongful death and why did that happen when he was already acquitted in a criminal court?

[Assistant]
A wrongful death means OJ's actions damaged another party and they could collect compensation.

The difference is because there are two standards of proof required for different courts:

* In criminal court, society believes the government has a number of advantages, and they can literally kill you or take years of your life away, so the standard of proof required before they take any action is very high, "beyond a reasonable doubt", which means the accused should be found not guilty if there's any opportunity for some different scenario to have happened or doubt in the evidence put forward by the state/prosecution.

* For civil court because they will only take what's necessary to make things as close to fair as they can, the standard of evidence is much lower, in simple terms a majority of the evidence.  So if one side has slightly more evidence that someone was negligent (even if their negligence doesn't constitute a crime or there's not nearly enough evidence to remove all doubt) one can still be found responsible for the event occurring and be liable for damages that happened as a result.


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

[User]
Do genetic diseases that don't show up until later in life get passed on more frequently?

It seems like they would. Because if a diseases that showed up earlier in life, say while you were still fertile, then there's more of a chance of you dying/becoming incapacitated and not being able to reproduce and therefore not able to pass on the disease.

[Assistant] Yes. Huntington's ~~~chorea~~~ disease usually starts after 30, which is a major factor in its continuing existence. You've already reproduced by the time it starts. When it starts before 20 (juvenile HD), there's much more strictly limited reproduction.


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

[User] [Marvel] Is Thanos widely considered the biggest/most powerful bad guy the avengers ever faced in the comics?

[Assistant]
Technically, no. Because they've faced down the demon god Set, the Beyonder, the Beyonder**s**, various widescale time-travel and dimension-hopping shenanigans, the Magus (during *Infinity War*), the Goddess (*Infinity Crusade*), etc.

However, as a recurring villain, Thanos is generally remarkable in how often he *succeeds*. He collected the Infinity Gems *twice*, he willed himself to godhood with the Cosmic Cube, and it took some serious cosmic shenanigans or Squirrel Girl to defeat him each time he decided to cause trouble. It's probably to their overall relief that he eventually "reformed" and decided obtaining godhood/killing half the universe was no longer something he wanted to do--not because the Avengers were particularly good at stopping him, but because they were so *bad* at it. Generally by the time the Avengers get involved Thanos has pretty much won, or is well on his way to doing so.


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

[User] ELI5: Why when we have a dream and we try to remember it the next day, it seems that the more we try to remember, the more we forget it?

[Assistant]
It's not true that the more we try to remember the most we forget, we just simply forget pretty fast either way. It is possible to train yourself to remember most dreams indefinitely though.

The reason is probably that evolution made us that way, because it's more beneficent for the brain to focus on remembering reality than dreams.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect] I live on an isolated planet with no outside contact with the galaxy, am I safe from the Reaper threat?

(Note: I've actually not yet gotten to playing ME3, so this is more of just a theoretical question, they probably answer it in the game so me asking is stupid but... I'm just curious)

A group of colonists set off into uncharted space, luckily found a planet that was perfectly suited for life, created a self-sustaining colony through hardwork but also have been completely disconnected from the outside galaxy. No external communications, no spaceflight, no nothing.

Will the Reapers come for our planet, or are they unaware of us?

[Assistant]
depends on how big your colony is and how well your spaceships work.

if the reapers find records of your existence, which they probably will, theyll most likely wipe you out once theyre done with the main civilizations.


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

[User] [LOTR] Could Aragorn have just shown up in Gondor whenever he wanted and kicked Denethor off the throne and taken over? How did Denethor get such a position?

[Assistant]
Originally there were two sister kingdoms, Arnor in the north and Gondor in the south. Both were founded by the High King Elendil, a lord of Nmenor who escaped that land's destruction. After the War of the Last Alliance, Arnor was ruled by the descendants of Elendil's older son Isildur while Gondor was ruled by the descendants of Elendil's younger son Anrion. Both nations ran into their share of problems, with Arnor fracturing into multiple smaller kingdoms over succession disputes and having to deal with repeated invasions from Angmar, the domain of the Witch-king. Ultimately only one of the successor kingdoms, Arthedain, was able to maintain the line of Isildur. In the south Gondor managed better, surviving a civil war without completely fracturing and fighting off several invasions.

Eventually King Ondoher of Gondor died without a male heir. His daughter Firiel was married to Prince Arvedui of Arthedain, and they attempted to claim the throne. For one thing, under the old laws of Nmenor, the oldest surviving child was the one who took the throne, regardless of gender. Besides that, Arvedui argued that Elendil had never intended for the kingdoms to be separate indefinitely, and that as the elder son it was Isildur (and his heirs) that were the true royal line in any case. The nobility of Gondor decided against these arguments, saying that Gondor was not in fact Nmenor and that Gondor and Arnor were separate now even if they were originally united. They instead gave the throne to a great general and recent war hero named Ernil, who was a distant cousin of Ondoher and therefore technically of the royal house. Not long after that, Angmar's forces completely overran Arthedain, and while the royal line survived the nation itself perished, and Arvedui's descendants lived on merely as "Chieftains of the Dnedain". Ironically the royal line only lasted two more generations in the south. Ernil's son Ernur was baited into accepting the Witch-king's challenge of a one-on-one duel; he rode off to Minas Morgul with only a small guard and was never seen again.

The office of Steward had been around in Gondor for a while by that point, acting as counsellors, helping administrate the kingdom, and acting as a backup leader in the absence of the king. Because the line of Anrion was basically completely dead at this point, and because Ernur was never technically verified to have died, at this point the Stewards took over rule of Gondor indefinitely. While they insisted they were only ruling "in place of the King", everyone knew the royal line was dead and that the Stewards were monarchs in all but name. Eventually we have Aragorn, a descendent of Arvedui and of Isildur before that. His eventual claim to the throne is basically the same as Arvedui's was, and it's likely that if he'd just shown up one day and demanded the throne that Denethor would have answered him similarly to how Arvedui was answered (i.e. "no, the line of Isildur has no valid claim to the throne of Gondor, go away"). But with Denethor dead, the remaining most powerful people in Gondor (Faramir and Imrahil) being supporters of Aragorn, and Aragorn himself having saved Minas Tirith and helped orchestrate the downfall of Sauron, the circumstances became much more favorable for Aragorn to claim the throne.


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

[User] Does fission occur inside of a star? If so, how far down the periodic table does fission occur inside of a star?

[Assistant]
Fission does not usually occur in significant amounts in stars, at least fission in the exothermal sense (releasing energy, like in a nuclear reactor for example).

However! In the death of very massive stars, rapid fission of the Iron core into Helium can occur in a process called *photodisintegration*. This process is however endothermic, requiring much more energy than it releases. Thus, it only occurs in situations where temperatures and pressures are very high (read: dying massive stars). This process makes the core pressure drop momentarily, causing the star to collapse and become a black hole rather than explode as a hypernova!


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

[User]
ELI5: What exactly is happening when a game is "loading"

I'm sitting here waiting for someone's toaster to complete loading the game, (league of legends) and it got me to wondering what exactly is the program doing while it loads. What does it mean to "load" the game.

[Assistant]
The program is copying all the data it will need from your hard drive (slow but permanent storage) to your RAM (non-permanent storage, but very fast).

The program might be doing more than this, but that will greatly depend on what the program is.


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

[User]
[Sonic the Hedgehog Movie] Dr. Robotnik uses one of Sonic's quills to create a weapon capable of moving as fast as Sonic can. But how can his human brain possibly react fast enough to pilot it?

So at the end of the movie, Robotnik builds a flying weapon that can run about as fast as Sonic once he pushes a specific button. First he tries to corner Sonic with a bunch of drones that all fire missiles, but Sonic moves so quickly that he perceives them as basically standing still. However when Robotnik finally pushes the button, the machine immediately begins moving at a speed relative to Sonic, and a big chase ensues.

But how can Robotnik even pilot this thing? If Sonic moves and thinks fast enough to statue people, he is moving well past the speed of sound, and definitely faster than most people could realistically comprehend a situation much less fly a plane thingy through the streets of San Francisco. It also doesn't appear to be any sort of autopilot, since he is manually moving the controls around during the chase (though he does mention an autopilot later). Robotnik should just be statued inside the cockpit.

Does it somehow increase his own speed in some way? Or is Sonic just not moving as fast as he can during this chase or something? I figure if he can statue people to pull a prank in a bar, he can easily maintain that speed when running for his life.

[Assistant] His machine used the, for lack of a better word, speed force in Sonic's quill to accelerate itself and everything inside it to match Sonic. This applied to all the component parts of the machine as well as Robotnik.