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

[User]
Via what mechanism do free electrons in metal produce thermal radiation?

Since they are free, electrons in metal don't have an orbital to return to. So how do they lose their excess energy? Is it via bremsstrahlung with collisions with other electrons or being stopped by metal ions at the surface? Or is there another mechanism that free electrons can use to de-excite and release light?

[Assistant] Metal atoms do have electron orbitals. However, since the potentials created by individual atoms in the metal overlap, an electronic band forms that essentially provide a continuum of allowed energy states for electrons in metals. As for mechanisms of losing excess energy, there are many possible methods including electron electron interaction and electron phonon interaction. Sorry this doesnt completely answer your question!


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

[User] [40k] Is hitting someone while they aren't looking brutally cunning or cunningly brutal?

[Assistant]
Inquisitorial report: 25454.23
Ordo Xenos
Orkoids behavior pattern

No answer have been found to the common used phrase "Brutally cunning" and "cunning brutal". Even two orkoids from the same group seem to have disagreement on such a issue until a larger orkoid is presented. The larger orkoid makes a statement regarding the issue and the two smaller stops fighting.

Conclusion: It's worthless, the orkoids will disagree on anything just to have an excuse to fight each other, no information of value can be gained. The phrases seems to have a primitive religious meaning but even it can't be put in any notion of order.

The test subjects will be now terminated.

==========][==========

*He who allows the alien to live shares in the crime of its existence.*


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do bullets have curved tops rather than sharp, pointy tops?

It seems like a sharp top would pierce the target better, which is usually what a gun is intended to do, so why don`t they make them like that?

[Assistant] Bullets with sharp points are meant for maximum speed. The power of a bullet comes from momentum, which is a product of weight and speed. A high powered rifle round doesn't weigh much, but goes *really* fast. A blunt bullet is designed for closer range. The blunt tip will have *less* ability to cut through the target, so it will impart all of the energy in its momentum into the target. More energy = more damage. Hollow points maximize that effect by mushrooming on impact and imparting all of their energy into the target.


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

[User] ELI5: How do water towers work? How has technology not progressed to make them obsolete?

[Assistant] It's almost the perfect system. You are only dependant on gravity to make it work. No electricity no problem. Gravity has your back. If you have an extended power outage you only have to get external power to the pump at the tower to make sure everyone has water. As bad as hurricanes, snowstorms, etc are if would be an order of magnitude worse if you did not have clean water. Basically let physics do its thing. If the Fukushima nuclear plant had used gravity instead of electricity as an emergency cooling backup then no one would probably know what Fukushima was.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What is the point of the wings wings separating?

As well as the fins that open on the Jedi's ships in the third movie.

Does this offer anything? Or is it just for effect?

[Assistant] Are you talking about things like the X-Wing s-foils? The flattened out position is more compact and better for storage and traveling. The attack position (when they actually look like an x) is to have the ships's guns as spread as as possible, giving it a wide field of fire.


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

[User]
How do we get visceral fat? Why do some men (and women) have solid fat stomachs that are still large instead of 'jiggly'?

I am in a Personal training course and my teacher was having trouble with this question. What causes the two different types of fats in the body? And what problems does it cause?

[Assistant]
Visceral fat is much more prone to leaking out triglycerides, and because it is in such close proximity to organs, this can result in fat buildup in the liver.  Triglycerides in the liver lead directly to insulin resistance, which will continue to compound the problem.  Metabolic syndrome is now thought to be largely driven by incomplete storage of triglycerides by adipocytes.

Somewhat tangentially, this is why liposuction is absolutely worthless-all they do there is remove subQ fat, which increases the burden on visceral fat to store TG.  Many patients who undergo liposuction actually have poorer metabolic parameters afterwards.


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

[User] [Marvel/DC] if a regenerator/healing-factor person gets plastic surgery, do they eventually return to their pre-surgery state? state? Would fat from liposuction grow back? What about implants? Do the get rejected and migrate out like bad piercings?

[Assistant] Depends on what form of regeneration they have. If it specifically brings their body back to a certain point, like time travel, then yes the surgery wouldn't take. If it's like Wolverine, then it would depend on the surgery. Liposuction would be fine, you could even actually forego some safety measures. But things like Botox wouldn't work, since it's literally poison.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can't our body heal a wound perfectly without forming scars?

[Assistant]
When you get a cut on the arm your body wants to close it as soon as possible so it will stop bleeding and prevent infections. but to do so it needs to fill it with platelet (repair cells) and they begin to "glue" the wound stacking on eachother following a linear pattern (Instead of a regular like the skin) and this makes the visible scar.

the scar it's a strip of skin that formed quickly and in one verse and thus it's very different from the rest of the skin

think of it like if you are spray-plastering a wall with the spray tool. at some point your ladder falls and "cuts" the freshly plastered wall in a point. you don't have the time to turn on the compressor and the spray tool before the plaster hardens so you decide to just give it a fix with your trowel, making a visible difference in the application of the plaster on that zone

EDIT: some grammar..


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

[User]
Eli5: Why are lakes names some times Name Lake and other times Lake Name?

Im looking at a map of Washington State and I see lakes named Lake Washington, Lake Union and Lake Sammamish. And other names are Moses Lake, Deer Lake and Loon Lake. Is there a rationale for why some times the name precedes lake in the title and other times it follows?  Or was it random on the part of who picked the name originally and tradition just stuck.

[Assistant]
In many cases, the order of the name doesnt  meaning anything  its just random. *Generally* speaking, however, most lakes in the U.S. follow the pattern Lake [Proper Noun] or [Adjective] Lake.

So if you see, for example, *Lake Deer*, chances are its named after a person with the last name Deer. If you see *Deer Lake*, on the other hand, it probably got that name because there were/are lots of deer living around it.

On a side note, its usually larger lakes that have a name like *Lake Name*, and smaller lakes with names of the form *Name Lake.* This isnt intentional  its just more common to formally name the largest lakes after an important person or place.


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

[User] ELI5, Why do smoke detectors require batteries, when they are plugged into the wall?

[Assistant] Smoke detectors don't get power from the wall.  In cases of fire or other situations where you would really want your smoke detector to work, power outages are common.  The fire could spread in between your fuse box and the smoke detector and cut off power to it, so it uses a battery.


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

[User]
If one were to throw Deadpool or Wolverine into a star, would they die?

If not, what could kill them?

I'm aware that such a thing has happened to the Hulk and he survived, but his powers and regenerative abilities are obviously very different from that of Wolverine and Deadpool.

[Assistant]
Yes, without question.

It's important to remember the *time* involved in the healing process for both of them; it's not instantaneous. The thermal energy out put by a star is unfathomably powerful, but it is also constant.

Tissue would be burned away faster than it could regenerate.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Why does Darth Maul give up the double-ended lightsaber when he resurrects?

[Assistant]
He technically didn't even have a saberstaff. He had two lightsabers joined at the pommel. Both a Jedi and a Sith construct their own lightsabers to be unique to them and feel "theirs".

Maul had not used a saber in a decade and probably wanted the one he felt comfortable with.


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

[User]
How does a ponzi scheme work? I'm 5 years old.

Is a pyramid scheme the same thing?

[Assistant]
#1. you borrow lots of money, and promise to pay it back at huge interest rates over a long period of time.

#2. you live like a king spending money on whatever you like until the money runs out.

#3. you borrow even more money to pay off the original loans.

#4. repeat this until china stops lending you money.


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

[User]
A 2 strike system should be used for (violent and brutal) rape. The first offense we try and rehabilitate the rapist, the second we execute them. CMV

While it's still rape and very serious, this wouldn't apply to someone who had sex with a drunk girl or guy where consent may be misunderstood. This would only apply to premeditated rape or cases where violence or extreme force was used and the rapist was not under influence of drugs or alcohol.

The part above  isn't to discredit rape when the offender is drunk or under drugs, which should still be severely punished, but execution would be used not as a punishment but to keep dangerous people off the streets so it should only be used against rapists who are likely to re-offend.

The main criteria would be a need for a lot of evidence against the rapist to minimize the chance of innocents being convicted and the 1st strike with rehabilitation is to see whether it was a one time offense or a serial rapist. It would also help protect innocents as the chance of being innocently accused for something twice is lower than being innocently accused once.

[Assistant]
>but execution would be used not as a punishment but to keep dangerous people off the streets

This can be accomplished by life incarceration.

Furthermore, you justify execution on the grounds that it keeps dangerous people off the streets.  Why restrict this to rape?  Shouldn't we do this for murderers, or violent assaults?

>The main criteria would be a need for a lot of evidence against the rapist to minimize the chance of innocents being convicted

It seems like you are looking for a new burden of proof.  We have "probable cause" for civil cases, "beyond a reasonable doubt" for criminal cases, and "no possible way this could be wrong" for this special case.  If a rape conviction meets the second, but not the third level, will the person be sentenced conventionally?


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

[User] What is gauge symmetry? Ive come across the term a few times in the past few weeks. I dont quite understand it and Id like to know more.

[Assistant]
Gauge symmetry is the ability to make a gauge transformation on some physical system, and have the system remain invariant under that transformation.

Classical electrodynamics is a theory of electric (**E**) and magnetic (**B**) fields. The behavior of the fields is encoded in Maxwell's equations.

You can define a set of potentials ( and **A**) by **B** = curl(**A**) and **E** = - grad() - d**A**/dt.

Since the electric and magnetic fields only depends on *derivatives* of the potentials, you can obviously shift any potential by a constant and the **E** and **B** fields remain exactly the same. This is the simplest example of a gauge transformation. In fact, there is an infinite family of potentials which will lead to the exact same fields, for *any* set of fields you can come up with.

Classical electrodynamics (Maxwell's equations) are invariant under all of these gauge transformations, so the theory has gauge symmetry.

Gauge transformations take on a slightly different meaning in quantum field theory, but quantum electrodynamics (a QFT describing charged particles and their interactions with the electromagnetic field) is a gauge theory.

Gauge transformations can be divided up into global gauge transformations, and the more restrictive class of *local* gauge invariance.

Global gauge invariance is the symmetry leading to conservation of electric charge in QED. Enforcing local gauge invariance is the motivation for the theory to have exactly massless photons. Experimentally, the upper bound on the photon mass is extremely small, so it appears that this assumption in the theory is indeed justified.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the point of a fiscal year. Why can't a business year end December 31st like everyone else?

[Assistant]
A lot of businesses will set their fiscal year (FY) ends with the calendar at 12/31. That being said, a business can decide when they want to set their for a variety of reasons, but a major one would be to set it at a slower period in their business cycle.

For example, a university might have semesters starting in September and January with an additional summer session. Setting a FY end in the summer will allow management to see their financial results for the entire school year (operating cycle). If they were to use 12/31 as their FY end, then they would be looking at their financial performance for segments of two different operating cycles.


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

[User] Why is it so common for groups of animals to become unable to breed after being seperated for a few hundred thousand or million years? What kind of changes make breeding impossible across species?

[Assistant]
You're looking at this from a wrong perspective IMO.

The default in nature is death- most random changes in your genome would lead to your death (or more precisely- would NOT lead to any stable life in the first place). The organisms you can observe are the exception to the rule because they found a possible combination of genes that does not lead to death.
Randomly combining mutated genomes from different evolutionary branches has an expected result similair to most random gene combinations-->death.
Usually so early that you'll never even be able to observe any organism evolving from it (not even a fetus).

Assuming only different amounts of chromosomes (but same genes on them)--> unable to split them evenly amonst cells-> something similair to a trisomy/monosomy-->death

(There is a reason you only ever really hear about trisomy 21...most other irregularities in chromosome numbers are not just rare because they're unlikely to happen but rare because any organism with these irregularities would die off right after conception)

Different genes? Some proteins/RNAs might not be recognized by certain other receptors or not be able to perform their specific function because they lack another interaction partner.-->(Edit:potentially...)death

So the short answer is: You will almost always (frequency) have an unstable organism by randomly mixing stuff because almost all (amount/percentage) possible combinations of genes will produce an unstable organism. Thus any random pick is more likely to hit an unstable  combination than a stable one because of that.


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

[User] ELI5: How come batteries can die out without being used just from placing them in a device, but keep their energy stored if not?

[Assistant]
Lots of devices aren't entirely off. They maintain a clock, volatile memory and such. So if you leave the batteries in there is a slow drain on them that isn't present normally.

Of course, batteries don't strictly speaking keep their energy when stored. Single use batteries can hold a long time, but rechargeable often leak away their charge in a month or so.


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

[User]
[Dresden Files] Was Harry weakening his threshold by using his sub-basement as a lab?

I know that his apartment's threshold was weak for several reasons, such as being a bachelor and the fact that he only rented it instead of owning it, but was his lab a contributing factor?

It seems like the fact that he used a big part of his home for research and for his job would take away form the home-ness that a threshold represents. Victor Sells completely ruined his threshold by doing black magic and business out of his house. On the other hand, Michael apparently does some work out of an office in his house, and he has a Fort Knox of a threshold.

[Assistant]
Michael has a lot of things going for him that Harry doesn't, not the least of which are a fiercely loving family, and a fiercely armed contingent of angelic guardians. Michael is a Family Man, and his house is Their Home ... possibly built with his own two hands.

Harry doesn't have a family, but he *does* separate work and home life; his detective agency is run from an office, not his basement. And his laboratory is very much an expression of who Harry is: he's a magic geek, and if (or when) left to his own devices, he'll tinker.

In *Death Masks*, Harry thought his threshold was strong enough to test if >!Susan was still human!<, and it slowed down the >!Toad Demon!< in *Storm Front*.

That being said, there are obviously issues with his wards and thresholds. For example, *someone* had to get in to (Small Favor) >!repair Little Chicago!<.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is deep sea exploration so difficult? We have had the technology for a long time, has it reached some kind of plateau that scientists cant figure out?

[Assistant]
The difficult part is getting the funding. The engineering has been figured out for a long time, but no one has quite figured out how to finance non-military applications of it.

Historically, exploration has been dependent upon either political will or financial incentive. At the moment, both are lacking with regard to deep-sea exploration.


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

[User]
ELI5 why change in sunrise and set do not change equally each day

Looking at the weather I noticed that sunset gets later faster than the sunrise times gets earlier. Is there an easy explanation as I thought it would equal change in the times of the events each day.

[Assistant] They change equally compared to the time of solar noon (when the sun is highest in the sky), but solar noon also varies. Earth's orbital speed varies through the year, and that makes the length of a solar day vary slightly through the year. When the solar day is less than 24 hours, noon gets a bit earlier each day. When it's longer than 24 hours, noon gets a bit later each day.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are lefty pitchers normally slower than righty pitchers in baseball?

[Assistant]
There's less competition, is the short answer. You don't need to throw 101 mph to get a roster spot as a left-handed pitcher. Plus, batters don't see lefties as often, so you already have a bit of an advantage and you don't need as much velocity.

That being said, some lefties do still have high velocity. Clayton Kershaw's 4-seamer averages 94 mph and has touched 99.


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

[User]
CMV: The 24-Hour News Cycle is Ruining the Olympics

NBC, its affiliate stations, and everybody else are so eager to be first with the "breaking news" that it's nearly impossible to avoid spoilers. The winner of the women's gymnastics all-around was breathlessly announced right at the start of NBC's afternoon programming, even though the event itself wasn't going to air until the main evening broadcast. If I've spent the day avoiding sports talk and social media so I could actually be surprised, why would NBC themselves spoil it in a quick blurb hours before I could see the event? What's the advantage of this / how is it good for their ratings?

[Assistant]
Your view was correct about 20-30 years ago, because 24-hour news becoming pretty mainstream, but streaming wasn't a thing yet.  Trying to avoid spoilers was your only option - and it was somewhat easier to avoid before the internet.  You could avoid "unsurprising" results, but "big news" - like Simone Biles withdrawing - would have likely been impossible to avoid.

But in 2020 (really 2021), you have options.  If you really care about not getting spoiled, you can watch essentially any even live - or on demand.  You no longer have to hide yourself in a cave all day waiting for NBC's primetime coverage.  You can watch the Women's gymnastic all around while taking your morning shower, or eating breakfast.  Whenever you want.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do horses need horse shoes?

[Assistant]
They don't, strictly. Wild horses and zebras and the like get along fine without them.

Domesticated horses are normally put under more stress than their wild counterparts, however. Just carrying a rider is a significant amount of extra weight; draft horses have to haul much more, and usually have to do so at faster speeds and for greater distance than wild horses normally travel. That amount of stress would wear through a bare hoof.

Really its the same reason humans wear shoes: it protects our feet and lets us walk or run more than we would be able to otherwise.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How did Dooku beat Kenobi so effortlessly?

Dooku is known to be a great duelist, and yet he wiped the floor with Kenobi. At one point their blades were locked and Dooku effortlessly pushes Kenobi's blade back with a smile. Is this his dark side enhanced strength coming into play?

[Assistant]
>Dooku is known to be a great duelist, and yet he wiped the floor with Kenobi.

I think you accidentally a word here. Otherwise, you basicly awnsered your own question there. "How could this really really great guy possibly defeat this slightly weaker guy!"

Yeah, Dooku was just more skilled and more powerful than kenobi. he is rather old tho, so physically he was probably weaker, but he did like yoda and augmented his strenght with the force.


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

[User] Why are the Great Lakes not salty like the Oceans but the whole area is covered in Salt mines?

[Assistant]
The Great Lakes are freshwater (lacustrine) because they do not sit in an endorheic basin.  An endorheic basin is one in which the only way out for water is through evaporation.  The Great Salt Lake sits in one, as does the Dead Sea, the Caspian Sea, and many others.  All of those are saline.  The oceans are also, in a fashion, an endorheic basin (albeit a *huge* one).  Water flows in from land, but does not flow out...evaporation is the only way it gets back to land.

The salt comes from rocks on land as they are slowly eroded and the salts are dissolved in water.  *All* natural liquid water contains at least minute quantities of salt.  Over time, as water evaporates and the salts are left behind, the concentration of salt in the waters of an endorheic basin increases and what is left is a saline body of water.

The salt deposits in the Great Lakes basin come from an earlier time and a different body of water.  They are found deeper than the lake beds and isolated from the waters by many layers of rock.


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

[User] How do doctors tell the difference between someone with ADHD and someone who just has a poor attention span (unfocused, undisciplined, etc.) ?

[Assistant]
ADHD researcher here. If you are seeing someone who actually knows what they're doing, the process is a lot more intensive. You will go through a semi-structured interview about yourself, and then others who know you well (a parent, long time friend, etc) will be given the same interview about your symptoms. If both interviews come back with a high amount of endorsed symptoms, you will go through a variety of neuropsychological tests at which people with ADHD are known to perform poorly. Actual diagnostic criteria are, for adults, 5 symptoms of either inattentive or hyperactivity-impulsivity, according to the new guidelines set forth by the DSM-V.

In essence, the doctor (probably psychiatrist) will be able to tell if you actually have ADHD or not. Unfortunately, a lot of family doctors, even clinicians who claim expertise don't go through the proper procedures in diagnosis.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are some days of the week named after Norse Gods, and some days named after Roman ones?

[Assistant]
There is only one day of the week that is truly of Latin origin: Saturday, named after the Roman god Saturn.

This is because the Germanic peoples took the Roman days of the week and, as best they could, found the equivalent Norse god to name it after -- this matching of Norse gods to Roman gods was called "interpretatio germanico", "the Germanic interpretation".

For example, the Latin dies Martis was named after Mars, the god of war. The Germanic people had a god called Tr (Tiw in English) who was the god of heroic glory and combat -- and so we got Tiwsdg.

However, there is no Norse god that corresponds to Saturn, so dies Saturni became Sturnesdg.

Not all Germanic languages kept Saturn, though. In the Scandinavian languages it is "Lrdag" (or similar), which literally means "washing day"; in southern German dialects it's "Samstag" which originally comes from "Sabbath" (even though it doesn't look like it), while in northern German dialects it's "Sonnabend" which literally means "Sunday Eve".


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

[User] Why does a 5 mW laser damage the eyes more than a 13 W light bulb if the bulb has over 2,000 times the energy?

[Assistant] If you're standing one meter away from the bulb and your eye is one square centimeter, it is getting about 1/100,000th the power of the bulb (consider what fraction of the light hits your eye). If a beam is the size of your eye, and it hits you in the eye, that is 100% of the power delivered to your eye.


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

[User] If a waterfall is always flowing quickly how does one freeze?

[Assistant] The same way that even though water is constantly dripping from the ceiling of a cave, stalactites can still build up - little by little. A small amount of water will freeze at the very top of the waterfall, and this will provide a point at which more ice can build up on top. Over time, the ice will reach the bottom of the waterfall, giving the impression that the waterfall froze instantaneously.


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

[User]
[Watchmen] Why did Dr. Manhattan kill Rorschach?

I watched this movie three times now and I still don't fully get the scene with the two. I know Rorschach says that Manhattan has to kill him but why???

[Assistant]
Because Rorschach is going to spill the beans, even though he knows it will cause nuclear war.

He can't do otherwise, he CANNOT compromise. Even if it means destroying the world. And he knows it. He doesn't want to destroy the world but he's incapable of doing otherwise, so his third option is to die.


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

[User] ELI5: When your lips are chapped why does licking them make it worse? Why does the moisture in your saliva not help?

[Assistant] Licking your lips will only feel good for a little while since the saliva evaporating takes away even more moisture. On top of that, your saliva is full of digestive enzymes that make healing those chapped lips even harder.


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

[User]
[Lovecraft] Does looking at Nyarlathoteps human form make us go insane?

Looking at any of the eldritch gods makes us go mad, now nyarlathotep can shapeshift, would looking at his human form have the same effect or would it be like looking at any human?

[Assistant]
An important thing to keep in mind is that for most Lovecraftian entities, the order of operations isn't "see beasty -> lose mind", it's "encounter odd phenomenon -> be tormented by phenomenon for extended period -> exacerbate erosion of mental stability due to lack of sleep and food plus isolation -> finally encounter the cause of the torment -> snap from the cumulative strain".

Just being in the room with human-form Nyarly isn't going to break you. In fact, the complete lack of context would be a blessing in disguise, because your ignorance of the full ramifications of their presence would take a lot of pressure off; as far as you know, it is just some weird dude, or a hallucination or a dream that can be dismissed when it's over.


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

[User] How do they detect the direction gravitational waves come from?

[Assistant]
A single detector can't, anymore than a single microphone can detect where a signal is coming from.

They use arrival times between multiple sites, just like how you use your ears, to get location.

This is why when there were only 2 ligo detectors the direction of the wave would be spread across the entire sky in a line.

One they had a third detector ( Virgo ) then they can get a much smaller circular spot in the sky.


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

[User]
How is it I can see through a Diamond, even though it's the densest form of carbon?

When something is more dense, its atoms are closer together. If that's the case, then why do the closer-together atoms in a diamond allow more light through than the further-apart atoms of coal?

[Assistant]
Atoms are not little opaque balls that block light. Rather, atoms are collections of electric charges (protons and electrons) which can interact with light via their electric charge. The color and transparency of a material is an emergent phenomenon that arises from how the electric field in light interacts with electric charges in the atoms of the material. Whether an object is opaque or transparent is not a fundamental property of its electrons or even its atoms. Rather, it arises from how the electrons are bound in atoms and how the atoms are bound to each other.

Light that encounters a material can either get absorbed, transmitted through, or reflected back. A material is transparent when most of the light that encounters the material is transmitted through. This happens when there is not a strong mechanism in place to absorb or reflect the light. Since light travels forward on its own even when no material is around, transmission is the default behavior for light, i.e. transmission is what always happens when absorption and reflection are poor. Strong absorption and reflection of light by a material usually happen when the electrons in the material couple strongly to the oscillation of the electric field in the light, and are therefore able to redirect the light. The transparency of a material is therefore a function mostly of how strongly or loosely the electrons are bound to one place in the material, and is not a function of how close the atoms are. An extreme example is metals. Metals contain a sea of electrons that are very loosely bound to one place (the conduction electrons). As a result, the electrons are free to respond strongly to the waving electric field in light. Therefore, metals have high reflection and high absorption, and therefore low transmission. In contrast, all the electrons in diamond are very strongly bound, so they cannot interact much with light, so diamond has a high transparency. The whole story is a lot more complex than this because there are so many different ways electrons can form bonds and behave in a material, and because atoms are really quantum objects, but this is a good starting picture.


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

[User]
[Saw] Why did Jigsaw leave Adam to die when he passed his test?

Lawrence was supposed to kill Adam by 6 o'clock, but he didn't because he cut off his foot and escape. So Adam survived his test because he didn't die. So why did Jigsaw leave him to die. Also why didnt Lawrence try to get Adam out?

[Assistant] Adam was screwed over by the female assistant. She purposely rigged the test to fail. Lawrence for his part was taken by jigsaw and groomed to be another assistant leaving Adam to die for his inability to save himself. Jigsaw even left the puzzle with multiple solutions so his assistant meddling with one didn't make the test a failure. Adam could have saved himself by cutting his own limb off but chose not to and let Lawrence do it. To jigsaw it showed he didn't have as strong a will to live as Lawrence did and left him to his fate.


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

[User] [Vampires] If a vampire who cannot enter your house without permission, but is also a police officer, can he enter it with a warrant?

[Assistant]
You're not going to get a single correct answer because "Vampires" isn't a single, cohesive genre of fiction. Given how popular vampires are, you are going to find examples of this limitation that cross the spectrum:

No Invitation Required - Twilight

Invitation can be implicit (Fright Night, Buffy) or Explicit (True Blood)

Applies to any building, but also anyone can invite in (What We Do In The Shadows) or only privately owned residences (Fright Night)

Invitation is Permanent (Buffy) or can be revoked (True Blood)

The invitation might be restricted to owners, occupants, or anyone that happens to be there.

In the Dungeon's and Dragon's module "Curse of Strahd" one of the unwritten loopholes is that the Vampire Strahd is the feudal lord over all the land and is technically the "owner" of every residence there-in (the people are merely his tenants) and he doesn't need a formal invitation.

The main issue with your scenario is if whether the eminent domain most countries implicitly retain over all property within its borders would count as "permission" or "invitation."


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do semi trucks in the United States have front wheels where the lug nuts protrude past the edge of the tire while each subsequent wheel has recessed lug nuts?

Currently on a road trip from southern to Northern California and all the trucks we've passed so far have this pattern. Is this an industry standard? Or does it relate to safety in some manner?

[Assistant] It's because the front wheels are single (like on your car), while all other wheels are dual. Because of this, the centers of the wheels extend past the edge of the rim. This means you can put two wheels face to face, and bolt them together to the hub. When you look at a set of dual wheels mounted, you see the concave side of the outer wheel, so you see the lugs as being recessed. Since the front wheels are single, they mount them the same way they do the inner wheels of each dual pair, meaning with the convex side facing out.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is the EUR falling for the past 6 months? Why is the USD getting stronger?

The EUR/USD went from 1.355 in June 8 2014 to 1.200 January 3 2015.

Last time this happened, it was in 2010, when the EUR went from 1.4  (December 2009) to 1.19 (May 2010).

[Assistant]
The European Central Bank (ECB) are (or rather have already have been) cutting interest rates to try and boost inflation. This hasn't really worked, so they are printing money. The President of the ECB has just in the last few days confirmed that very soon (probably in January) they will enter into full-blown quantitative easing (QE) in the same manner as the Bank of England, the Fed and the Bank of Japan have done. This increases the amount of money in circulation which in theory will hopefully increase inflation. Increasing the amount of money in circulation weakens that currency.

Conversely, the U.S. Has been experiencing a faster than expected rebound to economic health and cutting back their QE programme, ending it completely in November. Improving US data, especially in wages, employment and GDP has meant that the likelihood is now that they will have to raise rates this year, which increases the attractiveness of the currency as it pays a higher yield.

The result of the above is a falling EURUSD rate.

Also worth noting that the US dollar is what is known as a safe haven currency. It is seen as a safe place to keep your money, so in times of global turmoil (Ukraine, Israel, Greece, Russia, even Ebola to a certain extent) funds follow a flight to safety and the US dollar gains from simple supply and demand economics. Other safe havens include the CHF and JPY.

<edit>Safe haven stuff.


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

[User]
[Earth-616] How smart is Otto Octavius compared to other super geniuses?

He must be really damn smart. Guy has Ai controlled arms and could create a mini sun etc. Is he at the top ten?

[Assistant]
He is not in the top 10.

Mr. Fantastic, Doctor Doom, Hank Pym, Iron Man, Beast, Bruce Banner, Amadeus Cho, Black Panther, Leader, Beast, and Valeria Richards, Mister Sinister, High Evolutionary, and Spider-Man are all smarter. He's a genius no doubt, but the Marvel universe has its share of geniuses that make Doc Ock look like nothing.


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

[User] ELI5: what happens to all of the new cars that aren't sold? Every dealership you drive by has new cars, but all of them aren't sold. I'm curious how the supply of cars gets recycled with new cars filling up dealerships every year.

[Assistant]
New cars are owned by the dealership and paid for with borrowed money. So the cars *have* to sell. The dealer might occasionally pay off the loan intending to keep a car, or if the dealership fails their bank will repossess.

But they're not allowed to make some car payments and let others go to repossession. The bank either gets *all* their interest payments or *takes the entire inventory.* Yikes!

Once the dealer orders a new car, it *will* sell, even if the dealer takes a loss.


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

[User] ELI5: What makes people get horny?

[Assistant]
Guys: An attractive female, or thoughts of one, or the idea that there may be one nearby or on TV, or simply the idea that an attractive female exists.

Girls: The world may never know.  There are rumors of rare specimens that experience arousal and desire on a regular basis, but none have ever been proven to exist.  There are rumors, much like those surrounding the loch ness monster, bigfoot, and the abominable snowman.  But all we have to go on are fuzzy stories and half remembered tales of "that one crazy girl from college."


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

[User] ELI5: Compressor surge.

[Assistant]
A compressor surge occurs when the discharge pressure is higher than the pressure the compressor can put out, literally causing a backwards flow/possible seizing of a compressor. This can cause immense damage to a compressor and/or turbine and is why they require surge protection valves.

Imagine a shallow stream flowing gently... Now hit it with a firehose pointing upstream. You've interrupted the flow with a higher pressure and potentially caused damage to the stream's structure.


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

[User]
Where does Coruscant's oxygen come from?

Seriously.  The whole planet is one gigantic city and from what we have seen there do not seem to be any large wilderness preserves that would generate oxygen via plant life.

Considering the utterly massive population of the planet where is the oxygen coming from?

(thx to 'Bill the Galactic Hero' for inspiring the question)

[Assistant]
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Earth's oxygen is not produced by trees in forests. It's produced by phytoplankton -- microorganisms that use photosynthesis to produce food and oxygen.

On Coruscant, food is made from processed biomatter grown in tanks at huge food production plants. The primary sources of that biomatter? Yeast (for protein) and phytoplankton. Coruscant is a huge city, but there's enough food production going on there to produce oxygen for the entire planet.


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

[User]
[Lord of the Rings] Do the events of LOTR change much if Thorin survived the events of The Hobbit?

Prior to the Battle of the Five Armies, Thorin gifts Bilbo a Mithril vest. Bilbo instead decides "you know what, *you* have it for the moment. You are about to enter a battle, after all.". The Mithril saves Thorin during his duel with Azog, and Thorin survives the battle. He gifts Bilbo the Mithril vest once more, remarking that Bilbo was right to refuse it at first.

Does much change from this point? Would Thorin be involved in the events of LOTR or would he remain in Erebor restoring his kingdom?

[Assistant]
In the grand scheme, nothing would change.

During the war of the ring, dwarven and human forces were besieged by easterlings until they had to fall back to the very gates of Erebor. It was there that superior dwarven defenses and natural choke points allowed the defenders to hold off the easterlings long enough for them to retreat. Ultimately they withdrew from the field, and the ring's destruction ensured they never returned. Dain was killed in the fighting, so it's likely that Thorin would have also perished if he were in charge.


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

[User]
[Pacific Rim] How were they able to give the Kaiju appropriate names without seeing what they looked like first?

It seems that they assigned codenames to the Kaiju as soon as they appeared on their tracking systems, but they couldn't have known what they looked like until the Jaegers got there and saw them up close and personal. So how do they know to name them things like "Knifehead"?

[Assistant] They had incredibly detailed scanners on the Rift at all times giving them live feeds of the things coming through. This is how they immediately knew the classification of each kaiju. They'd also get silhouettes from multiple angles right off the bat, allowing them to model the creature immediately.


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

[User]
ELI5: Is it more profitable for a music artist to have a song in the number one spot for a short while, or to have a song in the charts for a lengthier amount of time?

What i mean is that the number one song quickly fades out of the charts if the title is not clear enough.

[Assistant] It depends the number sold and length of time. You can sell 100,000 albums in a month then fall off the radar, or slow burn to 100,000 over a few months. Also, unless the artist is self publishing, they're not making all that much off album sales, at least initially.


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

[User] ELI5: Antilag systems in turbo cars.

[Assistant]
A turbocharger works by using air pressure from the exhaust to compress the fuel/air mixture going into the engine increasing engine performance. Unfortunately, there isn't always enough exhaust pressure to run the turbo at the beginning of the acceleration, so there is a delay (lag) between when the accelerator is pushed and when the turbocharger starts doing its work.

Antilag devices solve this by increasing the exhaust pressure even when the engine isn't doing much work. The essence of how these things work is by burning fuel outside of the engine and sending that exhaust through the turbocharger.


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

[User]
ELI5: how is time relative? I understand the human aspect of it but how can time pass slower near the speed of light?

Wouldn't assuming time passes slower near the speed of light be assuming that time and light are related? That assumption seems wrong as time still passes in the complete dark.

[Assistant] You are always moving at the speed of light in 4 dimensional spacetime. Your speed in the 3 space directions plus your speed in the time direction always add up to c. Normally all of that speed is in the time direction, but if you move really really fast you take some speed from the time direction to go in one of the space directions so you slow down in the time direction.


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

[User]
When I listen to a song, do I hear one sound wave, or a bunch of sound waves (i.e. for each instrument)?

Is there a separate sound wave for say, guitar, voice, piano, bass, etc., or are all of the sounds combined into one wave? Is this even a relevant question or am I missing the whole concept? Does the mastering process have any bearing on this?

[Assistant] All of the waves from the different instruments add together into a single wave. It's actually kind of interesteing that even though they're all just added on top of each other our ears and brain are able to pick the different sounds out from the mixture. Mathematically you can see how this disentangling is performed by a fourier transform.


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

[User]
Is there a name for the phenomena of a person assigning 2 different values to the same asset?

So I was speaking with my friend who recently just got tickets to a sporting event. I asked him what the current market price for the tickets were and he said they were hovering around the $100 / ticket point. I asked him if he there was a high enough price point where he would consider selling the tickets. He responded with "No" because he really wanted to go to this event. I then asked him if he would have been willing to buy these tickets at the market price of $100 / ticket and he also responded with "No" since he would not spend that much on these tickets.

This seems to be a somewhat of a paradoxical economic situation: my friend would clearly rather have the ticket instead of selling it for $100. On the other hand, my friend would also rather have $100 dollars rather than spend them on the tickets.

I definitely think there are be many different reasons for this situation, but I'm sort of interested in the following possible explanation: it seems that there is a "psychological inertial" when it comes to transactions where we sometimes prefer to "hang onto" the asset we currently own, even if the transaction occurs at a price point we deem as fair/favorable.

My question: is there a term/name for such a phenomena? I believe this might be something studied in Behavioral Economics and I would love to learn more about it, if at all possible. Sorry for the longwinded post, but I would love any insight or resources anyone could share :)

[Assistant] The specific effect youre looking for is the endowment effect, which describes the tendency of people to assign greater value to something they already own than they would assign to the same thing if they did not own it.


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

[User]
Wouldnt UBI devalue the currency?

Currency is a form of exchange. A form of trade. I trade my service or goods for that currency. But the reason I trade is because I believe there is value in that currency. And I find value in that currency because it is not easy to come by and I need to work hard for it.

This especially made me think of people who vouch for UBI as AI becomes more prevalent in our society and certain jobs become more automated and people are unable to work. At that point when UBI is given out, what is the point or even value of money. Its like the government giving out pieces of paper to its people and tell them to go buy stuff if no work is being put into obtaining it.

[Assistant] The answer is no, unless the UBI is implemented stupidly.  If the government just prints up money and hands it out as a UBI, then yes, that's what would happen.  If the government raises taxes, and pays for it out of taxes, then that wouldn't happen.


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

[User]
How can we keep a human employed in the future when robots can do everything for cheaper?

I figure that if robots/automations become cheaper than paying for human workers, then why hire people at all? Also, you dont have to worry about things like liability in high risk jobs. What are robots going to do to the job market? What will keep humans from becoming completely reliant on them? I see obvious potential for computer science/engineering/robotics jobs, but it seems like we are on our way to letting robots take the wheel so humans dont have to lift a finger.

[Assistant]
There are a few basic scenarios:

- Post-scarcity economy:  As pointed out before, robots do all of the work.  Everything beyond what is needed to live is strictly optional.  Economics will consist of things which are artificially scarce (intellectual property), innately scarce beyond the need for labor (front seats at a concert), or produced purely to say a human produced it (art, handmade tools, organic produce).  Jobs will consist of computer scientists and roboticists creating new robots, performance art, producing things by hand because people will pay for that, etc.  Everyone will be able to live the lifestyle of what we consider today to be the idle rich, similar to how the modern-day welfare recipient still lives better than most kings did a thousand years ago.

- Mass die-off:  Suppose the oligarchs in control of existing wealth decide they don't want to provide the fruits of their robots labor for free.  Huge swathes of the population can no longer gain useful employment because there's no demand for their skills.  The wealthy have no obligation to employ these people, and don't even need them to exist. Either Charity, family support, and existing public institutions allow them to exist until they die, or they starve to death in the streets.

- Revolution\Militarization:  People don't like the idea of dying in the streets, especially when roboticization means they don't have to.  They violently oppose the policies of the wealthy, and take control of the means of production.  Down with the Bourgeoisie, up with the proletariat, revolution!  Revolution!


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

[User] [WH40K] Say Horus is never injured, the Heresy never happens, and Horus decides to integrate willing xenos species into the Imperium after contact with the Interex. What does the galaxy look like now?

[Assistant]
You're essentially asking a Best-possible scenario... But I'll bite.

Without the Horus Heresy, the Imperium continues to spread, solidifying the Emperors control over the Galaxy. Invasion of the Webway increases Human FTL and trade, but bring the Imperium more in conflict with the Dark City.

Realising they have no choice, many Eldar join the now more tollerant Imerium, their technology and that of other Xenos causing tension with the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Emperor is forced to enact his final solution and anihilates the Machine Cult. This heavily damages Imperial production, but Eldar and Interex technology quickly closes the gap.

The use of the Webway, and the psychic knowledge of the Eldar rapidly accelerates humanities Psyker manifestation, making Psykers far more common and safe.

The increased stability and peace weakens the Chaos Gods. The stability of the Eldar may even cause their gods to re-exert themselves, tearing Slaanesh appart from within.

The Eldar warn/manipulate the Emperor into at striking against the sleeping Necrons. The Rogue C'tan are hunted and destroyed. The Necron Dynasties are shattered before they can awaken.

The Tau may not ever come to exist. If the Eldar and Interex can convinced the Imperium to spare them, they may develop and one day join the 'Galactic Imperium'.

The Orks cannot be erradicated, but they are once again contained.

When the Tyranids arrive, they find a far stronger, though also far more populated galaxy. They arrive in greater numbers than before. The enevitable outcome is still uncertain.


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

[User]
[Batman] I Want to get Piss Drunk With The Joker

I asked this question about Darth Vader, and now I'm asking again. So I want to get drunk with The Joker. How do I get him to drink with me, and more importantly, how do I survive?

[Assistant]
Well, Jokers nigh-immune to toxins, so alcohol wouldnt phase him.  Not sure if that would make it too boring for him to agree or an incentive to join.  However, he finds pain and suffering at the expense of someone other than himself hilarious, so be prepared to get embarrassingly, humiliatingly, violently drunk and hungover.  Pray youre a funny drunk, but not in the way of cracking jokes and being the center of attention; he hates having someone else try to steal his thunder.

As for how youd stay alive, theres really no hard rules for situations in which the Joker might spare you, so good luck.

But on the off chance you happen to be Batman (the real onehell know if youre not), youve got this in the bag.  Itd be such a chaotic and unorthodox thing for Bats to do that Joker could never resist enabling it.


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

[User]
What does a grad student gain by having me present a poster of their work at a conference?

(Social psych) Beginning of last spring I began assisting a graduate student in one of my labs with a project. All I've really done is fill out and submit the IRB, create some study materials, and put together the survey. I've done some background reading, read her project proposal, and I definitely understand the purpose of her study and her hypotheses. Months ago, when I started working with her, the intent was for me to be able to present a poster of her work at a national conference. This was framed as her helping me out, giving me some presentation experience, and having something to add to my CV. I would be first author on the poster.

Since then, over the summer I had the opportunity to do my own work in a different lab on a completely different topic... that I am actually interested in. (I guess I should mention that I have no actual interest in her project, and I think she knows that, it was just about her having some assistance and me getting some experience.)

Now, with my own project done, I would really rather not present her work - I would like to present mine. However, this grad student has been really helpful throughout my time in the lab, I like her as a person, and me working with her was for the purpose of having me give a poster of her work.

How rude would it be for me to not present her work? This probably seems obvious to a lot of you... but as an undergrad I have NO IDEA how SHE benefits from having me present a poster of her work. I hinted in an email about presenting my own work instead, but she basically ignored that I had mentioned it.

TL;DR
Grad student wants me to present a poster of her work, but I would rather present my own work. Is this rude?

EDIT: Everything worked out fine. I asked her and she was super warm about it. I'm pretty sure I was just getting weird vibes from her because I was giving off weird vibes. I'm presenting my work at a regional conference, and hers at a national conference. (Although I am going to try and present two posters at each.)

[Assistant]
She's a co-author on the poster of her work. Is she a co-author on the poster of your work? If you present her work she gets a new item for her CV. If you present your work (and she's not on it) she gets nothing despite investing time in you.

If you want to present your work submit an abstract with your work. If it's too late to do that, it's also too late to change the presentation topic.


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

[User]
[Superman] Is Clark REALLY weak to magic, or is his brain merely limiting his powers?

Clark has mental blocks in place on his powers. Is it possible that one of these blocks causes his weakness to magic?

[Assistant] Superman is "weak" to magic not because his powers have some special interaction with it but because magic (especially in DC) tends to not factor in physical durability at all. Magic often describes the end effect rather than the process that achieves it. For example, a spell that causes everything to burn as if it were made of paper would burn Superman to a crisp, but a spell that heats things to 500,000 degrees wouldn't harm him because that amount of heat wouldn't normally harm him.


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

[User]
[MCU] How exactly did Strange keep track of fourteen million possible outcomes while ensuring there were no duplicates?

He didn't have pen and paper or a computer, so how did he even count that exact number, much less know he was trying something completely different each time?

A million alternatives is probably impossible to keep all in your head no matter how good your memory is.

[Assistant]
1. He had the power of an infinity stone, the time stone to be precise, so human limitations don't matter.
2. It doesn't matter if some of the outcomes are duplicates, he only looked for one where *they* win, everything else was obviously a failure for him
3. He is a sorcerer, he does magic and maybe there is a memory spell?


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

[User] ELI5: Why do some .gif files take longer to load than a better quality, even longer, video?

[Assistant]
Ok, so first you're going to need to know a bit about compression. Say you had a text file that's full of nothing but the letter A over and over, for like a thousand A's. You could represent that in a lot less space by writing "A x 1000".

In a GIF file, it's stored sorta the same way. Instead of going "green pixel, green pixel, green pixel, blue pixel", it stores it as "green pixel x 3, blue pixel", saving big patches of the same color as one big block of that color, instead of recording each pixel individually. This works really well for simple, cartoony images, with large sections of the same color, but it doesn't work very well for photographic images with lots of shades to them. GIFs are just plain bad for photographic images, which is what high quality videos are made from.

On top of the fact that GIF is bad at photos, proper video codecs are optimized not only for photographic images, but they can compress images through time. In a GIF file, each frame is a separate picture, compressed individually, and no matter what's on the next frame, it compresses the same, whereas video codecs can compare similar frames, figure out which parts are moving faster than others, and not have to store parts of the background for each frame.


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

[User]
[Hitman] How come no one ever suspects you with the tattoo?

47's signature barcode tattoo seems like it would be a very obvious tell of who was 47 when he's wearing a disguise - head covering obviously excluded.

[Assistant]
If we assume that 47 is good at his job, he is probably getting Silent Assassin on every job. In-universe, this would be making every job look like an accident or just not being outed in whatever disguise he is in.

Let's give a hypothetical from the hotel mission where 47 hits Jordan Cross. Let's say you are the receptionist. This is a classy hotel. You're used to seeing guys who don't look the part, but they're dropping big bucks, sometimes even tipping you with good money. You're not getting paid to criticize or bother guests, plus if one of these guys complains, you're out of a job because it is easier to replace you than to replace the guest.

So a middle-aged white guy comes in. He's bald, blue-eyed, has a funny tattoo on the back of his head, but he speaks the language well and wants to be left alone while he is here. Fair enough, you've met a hundred guys just like him, except for the tattoo.

Now you have to make sure the bellboy takes his luggage to the right room. Oh, and room 410 wants a meal from room service. It technically isn't your job, but your job is to keep the guests happy within reason, and it isn't too hard for you to pass the order to the kitchen. Now room 316 needs more towels. Now 241 is going to be late because his flight was delayed. 136 is complaining because his window faces east and it is waking him up early every morning. Someone from Jordan Cross's entourage is bothering you again, asking if there are any messages for him. Then Jordan Cross's body falls from the roof about 15 feet in front of your desk. You look up to see how he fell and you can barely make out a black shirted dude, the shirt is sleeveless and has a floral pattetn, he has a satchel, and he's wearing a hat. He reminds you of that guy Jordan said was coming. You took notice because he told you several times to let the guy in. He runs off the top of the atrium and disappears.

Now tell me, do you even remember 47 checking in to the hotel after all that? There would be no reason to connect that guy to Cross in the first place, let alone make the mental leaps required to pin it on 47.

I mean, sure, there are better arguments that some people would remember his face andwhat not, and there are missions that are less-convenient for this narrative, but it really boils down to, if you, as an average citizen see a nondescript white dude and a local important person dies on the same day, guess which event you are remembering?


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

[User] ELI5: How is the height of very high mountains measured accurately?

[Assistant]
Today they just go up there with a GPS receiver or scan the earth with a satellite based radar.

Prior to those technologies you could triangulate the height. Create a triangle using the peak of the mountain as one point, and two fixed and known points on the ground as the other two.

So long as you have the distance between the two known points, and can measure the angles it's simple trigonometry.


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

[User]
[Fury] Isn't there better ways to attack a non-moving tank?

What the hell happened? It seems more like an elaborate german suicide ritual than a competent army.

Why would the germans attack an inmobilized tank from the front? Or set up machine guns? against a TANK.

And for that matter, why would a whole batallion approach a tank that hasn't been checked out? Isn't that the whole point of having scouts?

Edit 1: what would be a realistic strategy for the germans?

I'm thinking of halting the main army while a small squad throws smoke bombs from the forest line and use the cover to fire their shaped charges.

[Assistant]
Yeah, well like with the earlier Tiger scene there's a lot of tactical oopsies.

Machine guns were regularly used to attack tanks, tanks aren't fully encased and actually there are little slits for the crew to see out of which is what the machine guns would be aiming at per doctrine. This might necessarily kill the crew but it could prevent them from looking out and seeing what was going on. It definitely would have been more practical to send up a small force equipped to deal with the downed-but-not-out Sherman but through plot required awesome the crew of Fury were just so bad ass they could take care of all of these guys.

Real life they probably would have just ditched the tank, something which often happened to disabled tanks.


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

[User] [DC] Batman has contingency plans for every member of the Justice League. Does he have plans that will do the opposite? (Amp up each hero in case of a SERIOUS threat)

[Assistant]
I don't think so.
When anyone needs an amp, they usually amp themselves.

Batman has a fuckton of mech-suits.
Superman just flies into the Sun.
Green Arrow gets his big arrows.
And so on.


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

[User]
[Halo] On High Charity, where are the archived Forerunner artifacts kept?

As I understand it, the Covenant have tons of Forerunner (and some human) gear stored. These range from Sentinels, to malfunctioning ancillas (or the semi/non-functional remnants of ancillas they've discovered over the centuries), and no doubt a range of other artifacts the Covenant couldn't crack or didn't know the purpose of, such as old suits of power armour, medical machines, specialized sentinel subvariants, monitor shells, personal craft and other miscellany.

Presumably there's a single, heavily-guarded location where these objects are kept in case they prove useful down the track? Where on High Charity were these artifacts physically kept? On-board the *Anodyne Spirit*, the Forerunner Dreadnought? Specially-reinforced vaults underneath it, or in the upper city area?

I've trawled Halo lore, I can't find a definite answer. I guess it comes down to opinion or extrapolation. Your answers are greatly appreciated.

[Assistant] At the very core of the Forerunner Dreadnought that High Charity was built around. In *Halo: Contact Harvest*, there was a San'Shyuum named "The Philologist" who was in charge of categorizing and studying these artifacts.


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

[User]
If you placed a drop of warm water in the core of infinite mass of ice kept at exact freezing point temperature, would the water freeze or the ice melt?

Assuming the pressure in the system stays constant and the temperature of the ice isn't lower than freezing point.

To clarify: It's a sealed system. The ice is not actively kept at the same temperature, but the total sum of energy in the system stays the same.

[Assistant] There wouldn't be enough energy in the drop to cause a phase change over more than a very small quantity of the ice. So you'd get a little localised melting, and then the droplet and surrounding water/slush would re-freeze as their excess energy was transferred away and averaged out across the mass of the ice.


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

[User] [Pokemon Anime] Does Ash still have Pikachu's pokeball?

[Assistant]
Yes.  There is an episode where Pikachu gets taken by some flying thing. Ash tries to return it to its ball with the return beam thing but misses.

There's also other things like he needs to hold onto the pokeball to ensure Pikachu stays "his" and registers in the computer system which allows him only 6 pokemon.


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

[User] [LOTR] How was Saruman able to breed orc hybrids?

[Assistant]
It's probably not too difficult, though unpleasant to think about.  We don't know exactly where or how Orcs came into being, but it's likely that Men and or Elves were twisted into Orcs or used as inspiration in some way (4th wall break: Orcs from twisted Elves is a common misconception.  Tolkien never decided on a firm origin for them).  Orcs breed like Humans/Elves/Hobbits, and if Men and Elves can interbreed then it stands to reason that Orcs and Men can interbreed.

Any more specifics are best left out I'd assume.


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

[User]
Why can I touch tin foil the moment it's removed from the oven?

It doesn't seem to get hot when shoved in a 200C oven while covering a tray and food which do get hot. What gives?

[Assistant] It does get hot from being in the oven, and aluminum (not actually tin) is very efficient at transferring heat. The thing is, it's so thin that there's just not that much total heat there to be transferred to anything else. It cools pretty quickly on contact with air when you remove it from the oven, and even faster if you touch it with your skin.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are electric cars able to deliver power instantly, but gas engines take more time to build up power?

[Assistant]
Electric motors drive like Iron Man flies. He just turns on the engines and he goes.

Combustion engines drive like Thor flies. He has to spin up something heavy to a certain speed before he can use it to carry him forward.


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

[User] [Legend of Zelda]Why is Hyrule's topography constantly changing?

[Assistant]
The versions of hyrule that you know are actually spanned across several points in time, and across several timelines.

IIRC, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess we're both the chronological future of Ocarina of Time, yet one timeline had a massive flood.

Geography can change significantly over centuries/millenia, and when major catastrophes happen/don't happen.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do I enjoy certain types of music, and dislike others?

[Assistant] Music is largely pattern recognition so listening to the same songs over and over again will increase the chance of you liking it. Once familiarity is established, similar melodies, chord progressions, instruments will also become more appealing. That's why you'll tend to like genres that are closely related or melodies that are similar.


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

[User]
ELI5:How do rockets move and change direction in space?

I asked a science teacher this years ago when I was in school and he just said 'they have thrusters on the side'

So every action has a equal and opposite reaction right? So how can a a machine in space (mostly a vacuum with atoms floating around) change its course if there is nothing much to push against?

[Assistant]
Because there's no friction in space, once a spacecraft is moving it keeps moving on its own. The effect of earth's gravity keeps it in an orbit around earth (or around whatever other body it's orbiting).

In order to change it's path, though, it has thrusters, as your teacher said. The thrusters eject gas out of the spacecraft. Gas accelerates one way, so the spacecraft accelerates the other way. So yes, as you say, equal and opposite actions.


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

[User] ELI5: What's an OLED display and how is it different than a regular LED one?

[Assistant]
A real LED display is like what you see on billboards, where the display is made up of thousands of individual LED lights. An OLED display is sorta similar, only on a much smaller scale. Each pixel is an individual LED that gives off light, but they're "grown" in that a chemical reaction deposits a matrix of tiny LED pixels.

Any laptop or TV marketed as having a "LED display" though, is really just a marketing term used for LCD displays that are backlit with LEDs. The way LCD displays work is they're a sheet of glass that can be made opaque when voltage is applied to it. So, you have a bunch of lights behind it, and the color and brightness of the pixels is determined by how you block out that light. Back in the day, they used fluorescent bulbs for this, but they had issues like flickering, dimming, and outright dying. They weren't replaceable, so when they died so did your screen. That's why LEDs are better for backlights.

Since LCDs are blocking out light you can't get really dark blacks. Since OLEDs are actual bulbs that turn on, when they're off they're 100% pure black. LCDs are far cheaper to manufacture, especially for large panels, which is why you mostly only see OLED used on phones not TVs.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we count down from 3? And why do our brains like the rule of thirds?

[Assistant]
I believe its cause we need three numbers to establish a pattern.

1...0 isnt clear when the zero will come

2...1...0 is still tough to predict because we dont know for sure that the gap between 2 and 1 will be the same as 1 and 0

3...2...1...0 is helpful. If the time between 3 and 2 is the same as the time between 2 and 1, then we have a pattern and can infer the amount of time between 1 and 0.  Using three numbers allows us to know when 0 is and thus when the event or action will occur.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Getting R2D2 to speak...

Was it ever possible for Anakin or Captain Antilles to add a voice vocabulator to R2 or is his droid model not compatible?

[Assistant] It's possible to add one. The problem is most r2 units are very limited on space so it's a choice between keeping potentially valuable tools or giving the galaxy's most foul mouthed droid a voice to scream obscenities with.


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

[User]
[The Princess Bride] Why doesnt Westley reveal himself to Buttercup upon rescuing her from Vizzini? Why continue to pretend to be the Dread Pirate Roberts instead of her true love?

Westley basically takes the opportunity to fuck with Buttercups head a bit before revealing who he was after she pushed him downhill. Why put his true love through that? Especially when she already thinks *hes dead.*

[Assistant]
He says it in the movie. Did she wait a week before moving on after she learned that he was dead or overnight? Did she truly love him? Or can she really love at all, and is just using the Prince for power?

By staying in character, she won't put on an act for him. If she was only pretending to love Wesley, and he revealed himself to be Wesley immediately, then she would just pretend again. Since he is supposedly someone she hates, she has no problem telling him the truth.

She believes the Prince, asshole that he is, will rescue her, and that she is only in a moderate amount of danger (she believes she's being held for ransom or bargain, otherwise they just would have killed her at the beginning), thus there is no reason to lie to yet another kidnapper.

He gets the truth from her the moment he's distracted by the Prince on the horizon, and the next moment he's rolling down a hill.


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

[User] [LOTR] During the third age, were there enough Dragon breeding pairs to continue the species?

[Assistant]
Yes.

Dragons existed well into the Third Age. They mostly lived in the northern wastes around the Grey Mountains and the Withered Heath. They fought the Dwarves that settled in the Grey Mountains after the fall of Moria, and later drove most of them away.

Smaug was the last of the "great dragons". We don't really know how that separates him from other dragons. He was probably bigger and smarter.

So yes, it's highly likely that dragons even existed into the Fourth Age. We can probably assume the Dwarves ended up wiping them out at some point, considering they lived closest in proximity to them.


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

[User] What is happening when you get helicopter car? (Popping noise when you open car window)

[Assistant]
The air in your car is resonating. You know how when you blow across a bottle you get a specific tone? The same sort of physics is happening, but now the bottle is your car. The analogy actually generalizes pretty well - a more full bottle has a higher pitch, and a more empty bottle has a lower pitch (i.e. coke bottle vs milk jug). The car is like a giant bottle, so the pitch is really really low, which makes that miserable popping. Since it's a sound wave, you're really just experiencing wide swings in pressure, which is why you can really feel it in your ears.

There's an easy way to get rid of it too - crack a window on the other side. It's like drilling a hole in the bottom of your whistling bottle. If you've got a hole on the other side of your car the pressure can equalize, and you can't set up that resonance.


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

[User] ELI5: What image quality do our eyes see in? Is it possible to give this a value in pixels? If not, how does our brain process each tiny piece of colour?

[Assistant]
Your highest angular resolution is about 1 minute of arc(20/20 vision), and your vision spans 114 degrees so that's roughly 6840 "pixels" wide, but you don't get this  resolution across the whole field of vision. You have really good central vision with far worse resolution and color sensitivity on the peripheral vision so the real resolution will be more along the lines of 4000 wide with it being much better in the middle.

Your eye has rods(light/dark sensors) and cones(color sensors). Each cone only sees one color and is grouped with other cones of different colors so you can treat each triple group of cones as a pixel. Each rod is a pixel on its own but generally doesn't function in daylight. Rods are very sensitive to light and tell you if it's light or dark but in bright lights they get overwhelmed and stop.

Your brain receives signals from all your rods and cones and processes it into an understanding of your surroundings, ignoring things it finds not helpful (a closed eye or the side of your nose)


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

[User] ELI5: how can my cellphone flashlight damage some art piece while their always on 100 W halogen laps pointed right at the painting dont do anything?

[Assistant]
Cell phone flashes which are glorified LEDs probably aren't that damaging, but the rule of "no flash photography" originated from a prohibition against true camera flashes. Those flashes are very powerful, to the extent of if you colored a piece of paper with a black sharpie and flashed it point blank you could start a fire!

Establishing that rule makes a lot of sense because those kinds of flash will indeed cause more damage over time than the 100 watt halogen lamp. The museum doesn't want to try to bother explaining the difference between different kinds of flashes or trying to draw a sensible line between damaging flashes and those which are probably safe, so the ban is universal. Besides, the 100 watt halogen lamp is probably enough that you don't need a flash anyway.


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

[User]
[Pokemon] Is the water from Water Type Pokemon drinkable?

Im sure youve all seen the meme where theyre in a desert somewhere without water and its like So? You have three Water Types, just use those! Is that something they can actually do?

[Assistant] You could feasibly drink it, but you probably wouldn't enjoy it at all. Coming from the body of a pokemon, it should be full of all sorts of bacteria. It might be a last resort type thing, like drinking someone else's urine.


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

[User] ELI5: When my stomach "rumbles" what's it actually doing?

[Assistant] Your stomach and intestines are constantly working and therefore moving. When your stomach is empty the only thing it is moving around is air. Moving air inside a resonating body (your empty stomach) results in sound.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] What are the Room of Requirement's limitations?

The room was able to add a route out of the castle and in to hogsmeade for Neville Longbottom and co, so what if I walked pasted to with a desperate need to get to somewhere in Spain?

How big can it get, what are the limits to what it can create, etc?

[Assistant]
I think the more magic and difficulty of accomplishing a task, the room requires you to have an equal amount of need for it.  So to get to spain you would probably REALLY need to.

Also it might cheat with things like that.

Need to get to spain? Here's a broom and a map.
Need to get laid? it doesn't provide a ho but a book on how to woo women and the RoR turns into a gym.


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

[User]
CMV: Sometimes pirating content is fine

I recently tried to play a version of The Elder Scrolls Oblivion (not the PC release) released for old, Java flip phones. This game is next to impossible to find, set up the emulator for J2ME, and actually play. I had to run the emulator within a Linux VM just to get it working at all. It was released in 2006 for around $5. For those who don't recall, the "app stores" of the time were run by the cell provider, not Google or Apple or Microsoft. Any purchases you made would be added to your phone bill. And none of these stores are operational today. So finding most of the stuff that was put on there is essentially impossible. I can see an argument for why Nintendo/Sony would not want people emulating old games, since they may want to release it on a Virtual Console type platform. But in this case, this game is never getting released. It is an obscure game, in what was at the time an obscure series, released for what is now an obscure platform. I could literally not give them my money if I wanted to (which I absolutely do).

[Assistant]
It's using someone's intellectual property without their permission. It might not negatively effect, but it's still using someone's intellectual property without their permission.

You can try to justify it all you like but the real reason that you're ok with it is because you get what you want and are unlikely to get caught.

It's stealing. Just accept that you're ok with stealing sometimes.


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

[User]
Could one bend light with magnetism?

Since light is an electromagnetic wave, it stands to reason that it would be affected by a magnetic field.  The problem, it would seem, is that the magnetic field oscillates, which I presume means the light is alternately repelled and attracted by a static field.

But what if one were to oscillate the magnetic field at the same frequency as the beam of light?  Would that then either attract or repel the light and thus alter its course?

And if so, would it even be possible to do this with current or forseeable future technology, at the frequencies at which light operates?

[Assistant]
magnetic fields exert forces on *charged* particles *in motion* and the force is proportional to the velocity and charge and field strength and directed perpendicularly to *both* the field lines and the velocity direction.

Light is not charged, and thus is not affected by magnetic fields at all.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are western nations criticised if they don't take in refugees, but others aren't?

In light of the refugee crisis in Europe, I'm wondering why it's expected that Europe should take in migrants, but other wealthy countries seem exempt from criticism, specifically countries like South Korea and Japan, and to a lesser extent China.

I'm not against immigration, particularly since I come from a country where emigration has been a feature for centuries, but when these kinds of crises occur, it seems 'the West' are the ones that are expected to open their borders while similarly rich countries are exempt. If a European country or the US/Canada had the same immigration and naturalisation policies as say Japan, they'd be widely criticised by the UN and others as racist and xenophobic.

[Assistant] In addition to the other comments, countries like China have a terrible track record on human rights and so no one is surprised when they don't step up to the plate to help out at a humanitarian crisis.


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

[User]
[General JRPGs]Has there ever been a good explanation offered for why the quality of equipment for sale at a shop scales with the shop's distance from the protagonist's home town?

Why doesn't the high end stuff get exported every where?

[Assistant]
Generally, the protagonist starts off in a hum-drum town and goes to bigger places. It makes sense you could get better stuff in a major city then a small town, and better equipment then that in a magical pocket dimension of enlightened elves.

Generally you only get high-end weapons in weird places in the endgame. At that point, the planet is usually visibly ending so the demand for powerful weapons suddenly went *way* up everywhere at once.


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

[User]
Why do we not cough in sleep?

Hello! First post here so bear with me.
So, ever since I recovered from covid in May 2021, I've had this long covid wheezing and coughing it's not extreme just a little bit don't worry, anyway I was thinking, I just woke up from a night's sleep and I was coughing last night and now this morning. Why do we not cough in our sleep? Does coughing require consciousness? Or is it something else, maybe it could be related to our breathing patterns? Like when you try taking deep breaths to stop wheezing but cough bad while you exhale? Idk, I don't have anything near a biology background.
Thank you in advance!
Ps:This may or may not be a stupid question so again, bear with me.

[Assistant] Since body movement, or rather nerve transmission down the spinal cord, is inhibited during sleep, you can't cough or sneeze. Your body does, however, enter a wakeful state very briefly to cough/sneeze but you won't remember it happening.


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

[User]
eli5 - how come EU countries have plug sockets and light switches in bathrooms?

I'm from the UK, and in a UK bathroom you can only fit a socket for an electric shaver, and a light switch from a pull cord.

When traveling I always wonder why it's ok to fit an EU style plug socket cms away from a sink in a bathroom, or have a standard wall mounted light switch in the room?

Is this a case of tighter safety standards in the UK? (I find it especially confusing as all UK sockets have an earth and sometimes EU sockets don't.)
Or is this just more legacy bullshit we have to put up with.

[Assistant] The reality is that UK kinda has some unnecessary protective safety standards for plugs. As long as you use a RFI (also know as GFCI) outlet anywhere near running water, then the chance of shock is very low.


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

[User]
[Ace Attorney series] So does the crime of perjury not exist in this universe?

One of the central features of the series is finding contradictions in witness testimony and pointing them out to show that their testimony is false.

Sooo, what happens to these witnesses who willfully lied? Are they charged with obstruction of justice or allowed to move on with their lives?

[Assistant]
According to Wikipedia:

>Despite a tendency of American perjury law toward broad prosecutory power under perjury statutes, American perjury law has afforded potential defendants a new form of defense not found in the British Common Law. This defense requires that an individual admit to making a perjurious statement during that same proceeding and recanting the statement. Though this defensive loophole slightly narrows the types of cases which may be prosecuted for perjury, the effect of this statutory defense is to promote a truthful retelling of facts by witnesses, thus helping to ensure the reliability of American court proceedings just as broadened perjury statutes aimed to do.

Since they always cop to their lies in the end and the setting is ostensibly America, it seems like they get to go unpunished.


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

[User] How do they provide astronauts with oxygen on the ISS?

[Assistant] They fly it there with re-supply missions. For practical reasons it is flown up as water, which is ~90% oxygen by weight and much easier and safer to store than compressed or liquid oxygen. Some additional water is recovered from the sweat and urine of astronauts, but they also need water to drink, so that's not a net gain. On the ISS the water is split into oxygen and hydrogen. Some oxygen can be recovered from the CO2 the astronauts exhale. Doing that needs hydrogen (the carbon becomes methane, CH4) - and, conveniently, that is the waste product of the other oxygen source.


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

[User] Why isn't it possible to speed up the rate of radioactive decay?

[Assistant]
It is possible in select circumstances.  These are in decays that go by internal conversion.  Since the decay depends on electrons, changes to the electronic environment can change the half life.  This has been seen in numerous isotopes.  U-235m is an example.

The reason why this is not true for most decays is because the decays depend on characteristics of the nucleus.  It is very hard to change aspects of the nucleus that matters for decay because the energy levels involved are usually in the keV to MeV region.  Those are massive shifts.  That is unlike shifting electronic shells around, which have energies in the eV region.  So intense magnetic or electric fields can easily change the shell structure and thus the rates of electronic decays.


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

[User]
[Stargate SG1 and Atlantis] Why are so many planets' Stargates in areas that look extraordinarily like British Columbia?

It just seems a bit odd that the Ancients would choose areas so oddly specific. Is there something particularly advantageous about the climate?

[Yes, I know it's because they filmed it there.]

[Assistant]
At least in the Milky Way galaxy, at least some planets were terraformed by the Goa'uld, specifically to create suitable climates for human slaves to live in. Although the Goa'uld don't much care if humans die, sending a few thousand slaves to a planet where they'd die within a few days isn't going to result in much nahquadah being mined. Terraforming is therefore in their best interests, and you can always rely on the Goa'uld to act in their own self-interest.

Temperate woodland is ultimately a good climate for humans to live in, being neither too warm nor too cold. People *can* live in a variety of climates, but temperate areas have the advantage of mild summers *and* winters, which is ideal for cultures that don't have access to air conditioning or central heating. It's thus a suitable climate to terraform a planet into, or else a sensible place to position a Stargate when the planet doesn't need terraforming. There *are* Stargates in the middle of deserts or ice fields, but those are less likely to have nearby settlements, so there's less reason to send the SGC's/Atlantis' flagship teams to investigate. We do nevertheless see SG-1 exploring planets with other climates on a fairly regular basis, when there's something interesting there for them to investigate.

It's also highly likely that the Ancients purposely put Stargates on worlds that were similar to Earth, and specifically in temperate areas, for pretty much the same reason - the combination of mild summers and mild winters. They wanted planets where people could live comfortably, It is, after all, worth remembering that British Columbia isn't the only place on Earth with that particular climate. There are places in Europe and Asia with similar woodlands.


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

[User]
Why are there almost no volcanoes in India?

Compared to other plate boundaries, the Himalaya and the rest of India seem awfully quiet when it comes to Volcanism. Sure there are a few small ones and some further north in Tibet, but compared to the Pacific Ring of Fire, Italy or the East African Rift, contemporary India seems almost dead in that regard.

[Assistant] That is because in the Himalayas, a continental plate is pushed under a continental plate, while in the ring of fire, oceanic plates are submerged. These are much heavier and sink deeper, thus melt easier. The composition of the material, including a lot of water, then makes the molten surface of the submerged oceanic plate rather 'volatile' (for the lack of a better word), so it ascends and forms volcanoes. Continental crust is pushed rather flat under the upper continental crust since both crusts have a rather light density, so the surface is not heated up as much and does not sear through the layers above.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does power saving use grayscale?

Companies such as Samsung use grayscale but doesn't that use more power than RGB? I thought so as gray is made up of all three elements but blue is just using the blue led? Why is this?

[Assistant]
LCD screens have white backlights that are filtered through basically tiny colored foils.

If you want red. You shut the blue and the green subpixels.

And since the whole light comes from the backlighting, you basically shut out 2/3 of the generated light.

With greyscale, all subpixels are opened equally and you get the most of the backlight, alowing to dim it and save power.


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

[User]
Will learning logic tech me how to reason?

Will logic teach me how reason (better), if so how will it do that and where should I start in learning logic?

[Assistant]
Formal logic will help you reason *better,* but it won't finish the job. The main thing it's going to be doing for you is helping you learn how to evaluate an argument's structure and the force of that argument. To be really useful, that reasoning needs to be backed up with some wisdom, like recognizing what are good sources to use, who to trust, how to interpret things contextually, and so on.

Traditionally, logic is the first thing you need to learn in philosophy. The first books on logic ever written by Aristotle were later called the "organon" or "tool" because that's how logic was treated. Logic is a tool that you bring into other disciplines to help figure them out. Now the exact status of logic as a mere "tool" can be disputed itself since logic will often get mixed up into metaphysical problems (e.g. if future statements are true or false, does that mean determinism is correct?). Still, logic certainly *is* a useful tool for wherever you plan on using it, and learning it first seems like sound advice.

I would start with syllogistic logic, then propositional logic, and then maybe symbolic logic. You could even read through Aristotle's original works if you want, although that's not necessarily the easiest user-friendly method.


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

[User] How does a tiny spider bridge a 3 foot gap between trees to build a web? ( and in the process infuriate me on my morning dog walk)

[Assistant]
Ever seen a spider hanging vertically on a single thread? That's the beginning, it's waiting for some wind to blow it to another tree (or anything) where it can attach the end it's hanging onto.

I read that some spiders do it the other way around - they sit still on the tree and hanging a sticky empty thread down, waiting for it to attach to something randomly (I guess larger spiders do that, as they will not blow far in the wind).


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

[User] [DND/General Fantasy] I've been sentenced to death. If I were to be magically resurrected later, is my sentence considered served or does justice demand I stay dead indefinitely?

[Assistant]
Depends - were you sentenced to *death* or *execution*?  Most places where resurrection is cheap have some sort of precedent or policy for what to do with resurrected criminals (generally, the trick is to destroy the body so they can't resurrect later).  In places where resurrection is generally unknown, or considered a miracle, the justice system would rule on a case-by-case issue.  Some polities deliberately refuse to set policy on the issue, because resurrection spells are so rare and expensive that only the nobility can afford them, and they don't want to close the loophole in case a member of the nobility needs to slip through it.  Rank has its privileges, after all.

Just to give one example:  in the Dragaeran Empire, resurrection is cheap and reincarnation is a known fact.  There are three levels of death penalty - killing the body (resurrection allowed, penalty ends with execution), final death (no resurrection allowed, body sent down the river to the halls of the dead), and the annihilation of the soul.  This last penalty is considered so loathsome that it's only used, in general, on lower-ranking people who have deliberately destroyed someone else's soul (nobility and their servants get a pass, because, again, RHIP).