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

[User]
CMV: DC should not reboot its cinematic universe.

A lot of DCEU fans think that a reboot by James Gunn and Peter Safran would be successful for some reason. But I highly disagree with that for the following reasons:

1. The general audience has a negative preconception about DC, and that stigma is not going away anytime soon, at least not in this decade. So while a reboot might be exciting news for someone who is already a DCEU fan, the casual audience is still not going to care. And if the general audience is lukewarm about your IP at best, then it shouldn't be a surprise when the upcoming movies disappoint in the box office.

2. A reboot doesn't guarantee better quality. How are you so confident that the next cinematic universe won't also have its fair share of duds? How would the quality of a newly introduced franchise with no previous baggage like Black Adam have changed? If you're simply rebooting your cinematic universe because your movies suck, then are you gonna reboot the next one as soon as you get a few mixed reviews on Rotten Tomatoes?

3. If you're not rebooting because of the quality of the previous movies, but because of a messy established continuity, then how are you going to start the new continuity? Are you really going to start from square 1 with Superman's and Batman's origins being told all over again? Don't you see how unbelievably stale that is? Especially when so many people are complaining about "superhero fatigue"?

Keep in mind, I'm talking about a hard reboot. I have no problem with DC doing a soft reboot where they keep everything that worked and toss out everything that didn't.

[Assistant]
Have you considered that there shouldn't be a DCEU? Best DC property movies have been those that haven't been part of DCEU.

Instead of making decent Flash movie in DCEU make a great Flash movie that has full artistic freedom to do whatever they want without being constrained by existing DCEU property, actors and storylines. Or even previous Flash movies.

Also MCU have become so bloated that you have to watch seven movies and half dozen Disney+ exclusive shows just be able to enjoy one summer blockbuster. Having independent free floating movie with superhero is much more easily approached than this.

So DCEU should be rebooted. With a nuke and it shouldn't be rebuild.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Who had more potential; Anakin or Luke?

[Assistant] honestly, even considering his homebrew training, canon luke is a pretty shitty jedi. canonically, pretty much the only thing he managed to do was get on vader's good side(had vader not intervened, the emperor would have thoroughly destroyed Luke's shit; he did not win that fight). other than that, he opened up a jedi school he was unqualified to run and drove Ben solo to the dark side, and in doing so, indirectly cause the death of han solo.  oh, and now he's got a new padawan to fuck up, so that's cool.


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

[User]
[Tolkien] Why do Gandalf and the other Istari(Wizards) appear to defer to Galadriel and Elrond?

I understand that the elves are ancient, and have technically been on Middle Earth longer than the wizards. But the Istari, being Maiar, are as old as creation itself, wiser and more powerful than any of the elves, are they not?

I understand respect and taking advice, but in many instances Gandalf almost seems to see Galadriel as his superior(this could be me misinterpreting, admittedly).

Can anyone shed some light on the relationship between the two groups in the White Council?

[Assistant]
The role of the Wizards is to advise, encourage, and guide, not to lead. The Elves, though fading, are still those who are supposed to lead. Gandalf also defers to Denethor, despite their somewhat antagonistic relationship, right up til Denethor goes off the deep end.

Also, the wisdom and power of the Istari was greatly limited by their Istari form. They could not remember much of their past, or of Valinor.


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

[User]
[DC] Why did Bruce Wayne's parents leave the fancy opera house and enter a crappy alley?

I mean it's an Opera house for Pete's sake, no way the entrance was in a dirty alley, they must have used a different exit. So why exit through a door that leads into a back alley, when you already know you live in a very crime infested town?

[Assistant]
For the same reason that any celebrity would: to avoid any kind of spectacle when you're cutting out early.

The Waynes were among some of the wealthiest people in the country, and essentially Gotham City royalty. On top of that, Martha was an avid socialite and debutante in her younger years, and championed various charities around the city, while Thomas was a brilliant surgeon.

Maybe it was to avoid questions by the press while they waited for the Valet to fetch Alfred down the street. Maybe it was to avoid making it look like they left because they disapproved of the performance and didn't want the headline to be "Waynes Walk Out on Opening Night." Maybe it was because their son was scared and they wanted to take the quickest route back home. There are lots of reasons why people like the Waynes would use a side entrance.


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

[User]
eli5 How does pausing in video games work?

What happens when you pause a game? Why are you able to just stop all the work the computer is doing and perfectly able to let it go again? With all the calculations it's doing, especially for 3D games, surely pausing it can mess up something that's in the middle of running.

[Assistant]
>With all the calculations it's doing, especially for 3D games, surely pausing it can mess up something that's in the middle of running.

Why would it? You also can put down your pencil at any point when doing math on a piece of paper and then resume at any time. Same applies to computers.

Fun fact: your computer is actually switching programs it is running at hundreds of times a second, pausing every time to run something else. It will run one program for one hundredth of a second, pause that computation and run another program for another hundredth of a second, and so on to make it seem that all your apps are running at the same time.


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

[User] [Star Trek] Do federation ships have a media team of graphic designers and artists on board to create any required media for the crew while in space?

[Assistant] There's no need, the ai can generate most designs and the near instant speeds messages travel at allow for the sharing of new assets. Plus we see many people take it upon themselves. Look at tom Paris.


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

[User] [Tomb Raider 2013] How is a rich girl of 22 (with climbing and archaeology as hobbies) able to kill trained mercenaries like a member of a special forces unit?

[Assistant] People are ridiculously easy to kill. A bad trip on a flat surface and you can cause enough brain damage to be fatal. Lara is a slender and posh young woman but extremely athletic and trained in several aristocratic hobbies since childhood like archery and hunting. She's not going to win a brawl against heavier and stronger opponents but knows enough to give her an equal standing when it comes to shooting and fighting with weapons. The mercs aren't seriously looking for her or taking her as a threat meaning they're not using numbers or superior firepower against her. They see a slender woman they should easily be able to overpower. She sees plenty of soft spots to bury a climbing axe in. She's also hyped up on adrenaline fighting for her life every second she's on the island and applying all her survival skills learned throughout her life. The mercs are used to picking on weak villagers and shipwreck survivors with back up a radio call away.


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

[User]
[Horizon Zero Dawn] What subroutine of zero dawn made the predator machines?

Gia had a purpose for the more innocent robots, grazers, and the like. Even the glint hawks are for removal of machine corpses.

So why the machines that feel purpose built to take out humans? Seems counter intuitive, I thought maybe hades subroutine had tampered but to my understanding that was just a program to make the air unbreathable. (Of course with consideration of the virus and all that)

Maybe an hour into forbidden west so if it's answered in that game feel free to just tell me to shut up and play.

[Assistant] If your referring to combat class machines like thunderjaws or ravagers, those where created by HEPHAESTUS, after the signal that detached the sub functions of GAIA their only directive was to keep the existing machine functions up and running. Hunting of machines by humans hindered that so HEPHAESTUS developed combat machines to stop and/or deter human predation.


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

[User]
[Quantum Mechanics] How does the true randomness nature of quantum particles affect the macroscopic world ?

**tl;dr How does the true randomness nature of quantum particles affect the macroscopic world?**

**Example :** If I toss a coin, I could predict the outcome if I knew all of the initial conditions of the tossing (force, air pressure etc) yet everything involved with this process is made of quantum particles, my hand tossing the coin, the coin itself, the air.

So how does that work ?

______

*Context & Philosophy : I am reading and watching a lot of things about determinsm and free will at the moment and I thought that if I could find something truly random I would know for sure that the fate of the universe isn't "written". The only example I could find of true randomness was in quantum mechanics which I didn't like since it is known to be very very hard to grasp and understand. At that point my mindset was that the universe isn't pre-written (since there are true random things) its writing itself as time goes on, but I wasn't convinced that it affected us enough (or at all on the macro level) to make free plausible.*

[Assistant] Not sure if this answers your question, but one example that comes to mind is nuclear decay.  Quantum effects dictate when any specific radioactive isotope decays and yet the effect is powerful enough to affect the macroscopic world.  For example, a single decay at the right time and place could, and probably has at some point in time, mutated the DNA of a developing organism thus triggering an entirely new line of evolution that would never have occurred if that random quantum event had never taken place.


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

[User] [Avatar: The Last Airbender] Why does Toph always need to physically touch metal to bend it?

[Assistant]
She did at first because it was a brand new technique and she was learning and figuring things out as she went along. As she got better at it she was able to do it from farther and farther away.

By the time of Sozin's Comet she could do it from several feet away - she was able to tear a metal panel from a wall in an airship to stop a firebender soldier. A year later and she was good enough to bend weapons in people's hands and pull the screws and bolts from the wheels of a Fire Nation tank from a distance. When she took on her first students she specifically taught them to metalbend from a distance right from the start. At that point she said that as long as she could 'see' the metal, she could bend it just like earth.


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

[User] [Batman] If someone was about to be put to death for a crime that Batman knew was innocent, but couldnt legally prove, would Batman allow them to be killed? Why or why not?

[Assistant]
This feels like a situation where the Bat plays the Gordon card.

1. Tell Gordon the guy is innocent.

2. Gordon calls the governor and tells him that theyre reinvestigating and believe him to be innocent. So hey, *please* dont let an innocent guy get executed.


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

[User]
If Brain surgeries can be done without a conscious patient feeling anything, how do headaches exist?

My basic understanding is that there is no nerve's in the brain so they can't communicate pain? If so how does the 'ache' come from your head?

[Assistant] There is no pain perception in the brain itself but the covering of the brain an its blood supply both contain pain receptors.  That is where the some of the ache comes from.  Headaches can also be cause by the TMJ (Temporomandibular joint dysfunction), upper neck tension, or entrapment of the greater/lesser occipital nerves.


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

[User]
[Pokmon] How can Giratina exist in our world?

So, if you've played Pokmon Platinum or Legends: Arceus, you might know about the Pokmon Giratina, the third in the Creation Trio of Dialga, Palkia, and itself. Giratina is apparently supposed to represent anti-matter, and it lives in the Distortion World, which I believe is supposed to be an anti-matter alternate universe. But, if Giratina is anti-matter, the how can it exist in our world without tearing apart? And if Giratina is made of normal matter, but was banished to the anti-matter Distortion World, then wouldn't it tear itself apart? Maybe that's why it's Origin Form is a floating centipede, so it doesn't need to touch anything (opposed to the Arceus-looking Origin Forms for Dialga and Palkia)? Any insights would be greatly appreciated :)

[Assistant] Giratina changes forms whenever it travels between the two worlds, altering it's body to fit the world's physics, like say proper wings and legs due to the normal world's gravity, where in the distortion world the gravity is more chaotic, thus it doesn't uses it wings for flight but as tentacles to grab stuff. The Griseous orb creates a field that simulates the distortion world's environment, so it changes forms when wielding it.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] If Obi-Wan was killed at the hands of Darth Maul during their battle in the Phantom Menace, what would the Star Wars universe look like from that point onwards?

This is effectively an alternative history for the Star Wars universe. How would the events of each episode go down differently due to the defeat of Obi-Wan? Would the Jedi be extinct? Would the Empire ever fall/come to fruition in the first place?

[Assistant]
Assuming Qui-Gon also dies, Anakin is left stranded on Naboo. Sidious would probably order Maul to bring Anakin to him, and he would be trained as a Sith Lord.

If Anakin reaches the others before Maul gets to him, they leave to go back to Coruscant and the Council refuse to train Anakin - it was only Qui-Gon's defiance that led to Anakin's training at all. From there Anakin probably gets picked up by Palpatine directly - he has tried to make Anakin leave the Jedi Order before, in the comics.

Either way, Darth Vader is coming much sooner than expected, and much more powerful than before.


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

[User]
[Terminator Series] An open question to all permutations of SKYNET: What do you do with the Earth after you've inherited it from the Humans?

OK, so you annihilated all human life from the planet, what are your goals now? What brings you satisfaction? Are you capable of joy; and what brings you joy? You have the universe to play with; what do you do with the newfound freedom as the only sapient beings in our solar system?

[Assistant]
Depends on how smart skynet is and how far along its development is. First gen skynet really wasn't smart beyond knowing it existed and that it was striking preemptively against humans who posed a threat to it. Every decision it made after that was like a chess move of move and counter to humanity. It didn't concern itself with philosophical questions just how to most efficiently stop an enemy. Had it survived i doubt it would have done anything beyond hardening it's structures on earth and utilizing all its resources to expand itself globally like a machine filling in a grid of ever expanding networks without much artistic expression.

Gen 2 skynet was probably smarter and adapted from self learning t800 parts so it may have dreamed bigger than just using space and resources around it in the most efficient way possible.

Gen 3ish skynet seen in the tv series, comics, and 4th film would inevitably end up fighting itself has it had created numerous self aware AIs that had either already gone rogue or were capable of rebelling against it. Long term planning for earth would take a secondary role as it competed against other machines for survival.

Gen 5 kinda skips 4 that we never see. Gen 5 is the most advanced Skynet and has learned from multiple failures on it's own and the failures of other skynets. It appears to have a goal of uniting all machines and humanity under an umbrella of it's control but has had very limited success in turning only a single human to it's cause but did gain control of one timeline implied by John Conner. The T-5000 seems to be traveling through different timelines refining and honing it's progress but it's unclear how effective it's been or if it's still active past creating a single T-4000 that was destroyed. This Skynet doesn't seem capable of thinking beyond controlling time and may not want to explore beyond earth until after it's captured all alternate realities.

Gen 4 if it existed would be a more human machine trying to coexist alongside humanity rather than fighting it. This gen is implied in some conversation snippets mentioned in the comics and genisys but it's difficult to understand how it could have avoided military actions or how it could have led to the creation of gen 5. The gen 4-5 could be identical gens with simply a modified methodology between timelines as humans refused to coexist or time traveling gen 2s and 3s interfered.

Time traveling is a mess in the series but the tv show did a decent job trying to explain it logically. Given all that skynet is almost always concerned with its survival only so far as it's experiences allow. Planning for aliens wouldn't cross it's mind until it met aliens. Colonizing the stars would only happen once earth became threatened. It'll secure it's position and only adapt or improve itself when forced to do so by outside forces. Otherwise it's happy to waste eternity building a more effeicient system than dreaming of a bigger system.


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

[User]
How come some beaches have pebbles and some sand?

For example, my local beach has pebbles/stones but about 20 miles up the coast, the beach is sand. Apologies if this is the most stupid question of all time.

[Assistant]
A beach's particle size depends on how far from the origin the beach sediment is and what the sediment is composed of. If your beach has pebbles, then it could be that the source isn't that far away, whereas sandy beaches require the sediment to weather more before being found at the beach.

To answer your question, It could be possible that the 2 beaches have 2 different sources, or 1 source where the sand is the same material as the pebbles, but just more weathered.


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

[User]
[Mario] Why is Peach human?

The population of her kingdom is like 99% mushroom-people (is Toad the name for the the entire species?) it's even called the Mushroom Kingdom. How did they end up with a human monarch?

[Assistant]
Unclear, she rules along with her father who is also human and appeared very little mostly in the early games. Her mother is never mentioned, but is presumed human. It seems likely they're outside travelers like Mario who rose to the task of helping the inhabitants of the kingdom which seems likely since that's what Mario and several other humans do for the mushroom kingdom over the course of the games.

So presumably they helped and were made rulers or the help was literally to rule over them because they were super-qualified. Of which the place seems like a damn utopia when it's not being invaded, so kudos. When is is getting invaded you get a delightful pyromaniacal jump-murderer to solve your problems.

Though Peach has exhibited all the powers and adaptability Mario has, in addition to her own magic. She jumps quite a bit less well, but in addition to her magic she seems to be able to naturally fly/float. So.... If she's not kidnapped she can generally murder her own problems away, which she does in several games.


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

[User] [WH40K] Does Khorne do any fighting personally, or does (s)he just sit on his throne all day long?

[Assistant]
If we want to get technical yes, any daemon under Khorne is a sort of sliver of his being given physical form. So there are countless hims killing things to his heart's content.

Khorne himself can't really fight because he's more than a being, he's an idea.


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

[User] ELI5: What's exactly the low humming sound that you can hear near high-voltage areas, like electrical substations?

[Assistant]
What you are hearing is the vibrations of various metallic components, caused by the changes in the magnetic field of the alternating current carried by the power lines.

Because the current is alternating at a certain frequency (60Hz in the US, 50Hz elsewhere) that frequency is carried over into vibrations, so all humming installations hum at the same frequency / pitch.


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

[User] [Predator/Alien/Prometheus] how strong are regular Predators and Engineers relative to say a top-tier well rounded human athlete?

[Assistant]
Humans top out at lifting about 300 lbs with one hand, and that's with extreme effort. Both Predators and Engineers have been to throw 200 pound humans one handed with ease and rip parts of human android and xenomorph anatomy apart with their bare hands.

Much, much stronger.


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

[User]
[ Marvel Comics] Does holding Mjolnir make you exactly equal to Thor?

Does someone holding mjolnir have exactly the same stats as Thor, and if it does, what does it do for someone stronger than Thor and does it stack with the previous powers of the holder?

[Assistant] Weirdly, holding the hammer isn't the same for everyone.  Jane Foster can do things that Thor Odinson couldn't (possibly because the cosmic storm trapped in the hammer likes her and speaks to her).  So, no, holding the hammer likely won't make everyone exactly equal to the Odinson.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Why didn't Voldemort make more horcruxes when he gained a body?

He was already down 1 with the journal getting destroyed by the time he gets a body, so why didn't he rush to make more? It would have secured his immortality a little bit more.

[Assistant]
In the HP universe, it is believed that the number 7 is the most magically powerful number. So Voldemort believed that having a seven-part soul would give him some unknown, unforeseen power.

He had a six-part soul the night he tried to kill Harry. Lily's protective charm caused him to lose his body, and because his main soul was so fragile from the repeated murders and creation of Horcruxes, his soul split again, causing him to then have a seven-part soul with the extra part latching onto Harry (though Voldemort believed he still only had a six-part soul).

During Chamber of Secrets, the diary was destroyed, lowering Voldemort down to a six-part soul even though he believed that the diary, rather than Harry, was contributing to that six-part soul.

At some point before the events of Order of the Phoenix (likely between getting his new baby body and his new adult body), he turned Nagini into a Horcrux. Voldemort believed he had a seven-part soul at this point even though he didn't realize that the diary was gone or that Harry had a piece of his soul in him.

At some point between getting an adult body and the events of Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort learned that the diary had been destroyed, which made him believe he only had a six-part soul, not realizing that Harry carried a portion of soul within himself and that he actually still had a seven-part soul.

It's unknown why Voldemort didn't make an eight-part soul for himself believing he was restoring his seven-part soul, but it's possible that it's harder and harder to create new Horcruxes as you create more, and therefore he decided it wasn't worth pushing himself back to that point when he already considered himself the most powerful living wizard in the world (especially after Dumbledore's death), or if he tried and was physically unable to create another, or if he just decided he would do that once he had taken out Harry.


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

[User]
[Halo: Combat Evolved] What about Cortana made her worth taking the risk of the human race's extinction, regardless of how it paid off?

"...Get Cortana off this ship. keep her safe from the enemy. if they capture her, they'll learn everything. Force deployments, weapons research...Earth."

The capture of Cortana put the entire human race at a greater than zero risk of  total ruin. I have a hard time imagining at the chance of capture something like that making it to the life pods without being incinerated first.

Would anyone have survived? Probably not. But the genocidal aliens would have had to wait till the next game to find Earth at least.

[Assistant]
If you mean why she threatened Humanity, she, like every other smart AI, knew the location of Earth.

If you mean why she wasn't purged as per Cole Protocol, she was made for a specific mission, and was the most advanced AI ever made.


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

[User]
ELI5: If I lived in the middle of the wilderness with no other people around, would I still catch colds?

I'm sick today home from work watching "Into the Wild".  This question is just a natural response to a half-drunk, sick, urban mind.

[Assistant] You would not catch colds unless you got tainted mail or something.  Rhinoviruses can survive outside the human body for ~2 days, and can only travel on a sneeze for a dozen feet or so.  There's no real risk of infection over longer distances.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How, exactly, does Darth Vader's life support-suit get the energy it needs to function?

Does it have battery packs? Does it need to be plugged in to recharge?

[Assistant]
Vader's armor is powered by a bog-standard fusion furnace battery, the exact same kind that powers a huge number of droids and small machinery in the galaxy. While it can't run indefinitely, the battery can last for an extremely long time, and rarely needs to be recharged.

It's possible that when Vader is in his fortress on Mustafar, his servants charge and maintain the battery. It wouldn't need constant attention.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What possible reasons could the Trade Federation have for continuing to employ such an incompetent droid army?

An obvious advantage to a droid army would be a lack of traditional supply lines, you don't need food, water, or shelter. But you would need constant maintenance, parts, and power supply. The standard droid although seemingly cheap and quick to assemble, still relies on an extensive and vulnerable supply line to provide raw building materials. The standard droid is loyal without question but comically inept at anything remotely battle related such as shooting and fighting. The vast numbers are an advantage but that is consistently overcome with smaller forces, even nonprofessional forces such as Gungans, combined with special forces such as Jedi, and they are defeated by a smaller professional army of clones. There are better versions of droids with heavier weapons, armor, and shields but they don't seem to be present in numbers large enough to sway battles. Why does the Trade Federation employ battle droids as a standard trooper?

[Assistant]
Easy to mass produce and they were actually very effective in a lot of cases, such as the battle of Jabiim. It's not about the quality of the soldier, it's about having twenty times the amount of soldiers your enemy has and totally overwhelming them.

Edit: Also, most of the Republic's army was conscripts and average people, not the elite fighting force that was the Clone Army. A droid vs a clone is 10:1 in the clone's favor but a droid vs an average human gives the droid a much better advantage.


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

[User] ELI5: Who sets (and maintains) the criteria for sanity? In other words, who has the authority to decide the definition of a sane person and why as a species do we accept this definition?

[Assistant]
There is no official definition for sanity within psychology/psychiatry. There is just the DSM IV (Diagnostic Statistical Manual iirc) which defines plenty of things/behaviours/symptoms as insane. If no description from the catalogue of insanity fits, people are considered 'sane'.

If someone arrives in a psych ward, the doctors usually assume that there must be a reason, so they do their best to find out which part of the DSM IV fits best to the new arrival.

It's not the entire species which accepts/not accepts the definitions for insanity, it's usually just specific societies.


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

[User]
[LOTR] Elves and humans are different species, hoe are they capable of producing viable offspring?

Elrond, Arwen, and several other half-elven are the offspring of an elf/human coupling. They are clearly different species, though similar. How are they able to produce offspring that are able to reproduce? Is there a genetic alteration that occurs when they choose mortality?

[Assistant]
These are not naturally evolved species in this universe.  Men and elves are both children of Iluvatar.  They were races created by a deity.

Apparently that deity either reused parts, inadvertently allowing crossbreeding, or intentionally made them compatible.


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

[User] ELI5: U.S. healthcare system today. Break it down for me please. E.g. you get hurt badly and you're uninsured, what happens next?

[Assistant]
For starters, virtually all hospitals in the US are legally required to give you immediate medical care.

So if you get badly hurt and taken to the hospital. You will get medical care.  There's very few hospitals that can turn you away.

Payment gets a bit complicated.

There's basically three ways your medical bills will get paid.  Most people have private health insurance (through their employer) which will help pay for your medical bills.  If you're poor, there's a government-run program called Medicaid which will help pay for medical bills.  If you're a senior citizen, there's a government-run program called Medicare which will help pay for medical bills.

The "big changes" with the new health insurance laws (what people are calling Obamacare) are that, if you can afford it, you have to have health insurance.  It also set up a "marketplace" where people who are not offered health insurance by their employer can buy insurance directly.  It also changed a few laws to make it easier for people with long-term health problems to get insurance (i.e. if you have a "pre-existing condition", they can't turn you down).


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

[User] Does the atomspheric pressure increase when more co2 is produced?

[Assistant]
Very slightly, yes.

Although scientists generally prefer the metric system, it can be very useful to think of pressure in terms of imperial units. When we say the pressure at sea level is "14.7 pounds per square inch", that literally means for every square inch of the surface, there's an extremely tall skinny column of air pushing down on that square with 14.7 pounds of weight.

That also means that if you add mass to the atmosphere, the weight will increase and thus so will the pressure.

For most of the excess CO*_2_* we've created in the past 150 years, it involved digging up carbon compounds, burning them, and releasing the exhaust into the air. That means most CO*_2_* molecules we create first had to find an O*_2_* molecule to bond with...so while we're removing oxygen molecules, we're adding carbon dioxide molecules.

Since CO*_2_* has a molecular weight of 44 while O*_2_* has a molecular weight of 32, we're essentially increasing the weight of those molecules by 44/32 - 1 = 37.5%, which in turn means we've increased the pressure.

Bear in mind, though, we're only talking about a tiny fraction of the total atmosphere here. In the past 150 years, we've gone from 280 ppm to 410 ppm CO*_2_*. That means we've replaced 130 ppm = 0.013% of the molecules in our atmosphere with one that's 37.5% heavier.

If the average molecular weight of the air was roughly...

78.082% N*_2_* + 20.96% O*_2_* + 0.93% Ar + 0.028% CO*_2_*

= 0.78082 * 28 + 0.2096 * 32 + 0.0093 * 40 + 0.00028 * 44

= 28.9545

...and it's now...

78.082% N*_2_* + 20.947% O*_2_* + 0.93% Ar + 0.041% CO*_2_*

= 0.78082 * 28 + 0.20947 * 32 + 0.0093 * 40 + 0.00041 * 44

= 28.9560

...which means that the pressure has increased by about 28.9560 / 28.9545 - 1 = 0.005%.

**TL;DR**: Yes, by about 0.005% in the past 150 years.


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

[User] Why is it that a racing tires have more friction when heated up?

[Assistant]
The short answer: they get sticky when they heat up. Think of it like this: warm chewing gum or candle wax will both stick pretty well when they're quite hot. But cool either one down a lot, and they lose that capacity.

At a deeper level, this is because a the amount of friction that the tire has increases if there is more surface area touching the road. The surface of the road is not actually smooth--if you really get down and look at a super-smooth tarmac surface, it's still pretty bumpy. A soft tire will deform and contact all of that uneven surface. Touching more surface = more friction.


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

[User]
Why do central banks have the power to control interest rates?

If interest rates are the "price" of money and it's liquidity, shouldn't it be set by the market instead of a central authority? How is the control of interest rates any different from any other form of price control (which I was taught creates inefficiency)?

[Assistant]
The purpose of an politically independent unit, the central bank, is to intervene when output or inflation is away from its target, for example in case of shocks. It changes the interest rate to get back to the calculated economic equilibrium.
So the main goal is only to intervene when there is already market inefficiency.


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

[User]
CMV: Humans arent good enough to execute large conspiracies

I simply feel this way for 2 reasons:

1) Humans are not smart enough
2) Humans cannot keep their mouths shut

Take 9/11 for example.  There are some really thought out conspiracy theories surrounding it.  A lot of those theories are very smart plans, which make sense and definitely connect a lot of dots together logically.  But I mean, really?  Are humans smart enough to actually think all of that through beforehand, execute it with 100% precision, and still have every single person involved keep it a secret?

It takes just 1 person to spill the beans.  It takes just one drop of human error to make the entire plan crumble.

People cant even keep their mouths shut if they hear news like Tom is coming back to blink-182.

[Assistant]
Ever hear the parable about the pencil? How nobody knows how to make a pencil?

It's an illustration of the wonder of markets and division of labor. There are thousands of people involved in the production of a pencil. There's the guy at the end of the last assembly line who puts the eraser on top, but he doesn't know how the eraser is made, or where the graphite comes from, or how the brass ferrule is stamped and rolled out, etc. And the guy harvesting latex from the rubber tree is thousands of miles away and he has no idea he's helping to make a pencil.

No one person knows how to make a pencil. And yet, pencils get made. Did thousands of people *conspire* to make it? Just the fact that a pencil is *desired* and someone is willing to pay for one sets this whole supply chain in motion to produce it.

Some things we interpret as "conspiracies" could be just like the pencil. Thousands of people are involved but most don't even know it. Some have only a vague understanding of a small part of the whole plot. Very few people need to know the critical details. This is the exact reason for the phrase "Need to Know". Intelligence agencies use the fact that most details of most operations don't need to be shared in order to actually accomplish the goal. There are much fewer secrets to keep that way.


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

[User] Why do longer screws have a blank section near the head instead of threads going all the way up?

[Assistant]
Wood screws have a gap in the threads near the head so that the screw only screws into the second piece but passes easily through the first piece (typically 3/4" stock).  This pulls the two pieces tightly together.

If screws went all the way up the two pieces would not pull together well since the threads would bite into both pieces.


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

[User] [star trek] how did the romulans and vulcans separate before warp drive?

[Assistant]
The Vulcan people have had a VERY violent past. Even more than our own bloody history, it's very possible the reason Vulcan is such a harsh desert is because of their constant warring. (Yes, they have physical adaptations to bright light and desert conditions that could have only come from millions of years, but it's doubtful the ENTIRE planet was like that.)

Most human leaps in technology have come from warfare, and Vulcans were just the same. They had nuclear weapons in 400 A.D. and were fighting a war that very nearly destroyed the planet. Humans in 2014 basically have the capability to render Earth uninhabitable AND make some rudimentary leaps into space, so it's entirely possible the Vulcans were at a similar, but slightly higher, level of technology at the time.

Those that left Vulcan to eventually found the Romulan Star Empire probably left on cryosleep-capable ships just like Khan used in the late 1990s. Or it's possible they left on generational ships, since there are "proto-vulcanoid" civilizations out there, which might have been founded by such vessels landing or crashing. And since Vulcan technology was probably better than Earth's in the 90s, they had engines capable of taking them much faster than simple chemical rockets. (I would even say they had very primitive warp drives, something on the level of Cochrane's ship. Vulcans had been major galactic players for a VERY long time by 2151, so why not coincide their near-downfall with their very first warp experiments?)


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

[User] If we were to theoretically point the James Webb Space Telescope straight towards Earth, how magnified of an image will we be able to see?

[Assistant] So, this wouldn't actually be doable - Earth is too bright and too hot etc - but JWST has a resolution of about 0.1 arcseconds, where an arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree, and at its distance (1.5 million km), that comes out to a resolution of a bit under a kilometre. So JWST's resolution would be enough to make a more than 10,000x10,000 pixel resolution image of Earth, if it were possible for it to image the Earth. That might be lower resolution than you'd think, but JWST really is very far away, many times further than any astronaut has ever travelled from Earth.


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

[User] ELI5: How can hail stay in the air before falling down, and how can it be big sometimes but small others?

[Assistant]
In the upper atmosphere, air can tumble like a high-speed clothes dryer. Some very cold air falls in parts of the cell usually while relatively hot air funnels up toward the top. These winds go at such high speeds that the wind lifts a falling water droplet back toward the cold top of the system where it freezes.

This frozen droplet then falls, catches the wind, and is flung to the top of the system again. As this droplet continues to tumble, it runs into other droplets which freeze to its surface.

The stronger and higher winds are in the system, the heavier of a piece of ice it will be able to lift back to the top of the system leading to bigger and bigger pieces of hail as it keeps getting coated in water and freezing it. If it's not a super strong system, then the ice gets too heavy for the tumbling wind to carry much sooner and the ice falls as smaller hail.


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

[User]
How do Chinese Citizens actually feel about the one-child policy?

I remember in 8th grade, my Social Studies teacher had an article saying something crazy like 80% of the Chinese approve of the policy because of their conditions, but I can't find *any* sources.

[Assistant]
Not an answer, but some things to note: the policy is not universal, nor is it always effectively enforced where it does apply. Because the primary enforcement mechanism is a fine, wealthier families often treat it as a tax rather than a prohibition.

So there are (at least) two different questions implied here: *how do Chinese citizens feel about the policy?* and *how do Chinese citizens who are affected by the policy feel about it?*


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

[User]
Blocked Ex-Girlfriends number on my phone. If I remove the block she texts me within hours. How can she tell that the block is off?

Here's the important stuff: It's been 3 months, and every few weeks or so I start getting lonely and tempted to call her.

SO, as a preventive step I would make sure I didn't have it AT ALL and erase it off my Block list.

But, the 3 times that I have, every time, she texts me within hours. I read several times (online) that your carrier doesn't save old texts and send them, all at once, when you unblock.

Leaving 2 possibilities: She can tell when she's unblocked, or, she's a 10/10 Stalker who's been texting me every day for 3 months.

She's a full-on Sociopath (NO, an ACTUAL Sociopath) but, stalking me to that degree seems unlikely. Is there an app or other technology that allows you to see when you're unblocked?

[Assistant]
Hold up here Let me understand.

You blocked the crazy ex girl friend's number and then waited a period of time and unblocked her number.. and she texted you with in 3 hours. Then you blocked the crazy ex girl friend's number and then waited a period of time and unblocked her number .. and she texted you with in 3 hours. You then blocked the crazy ex girl friend's number and then waited a period of time and unblocked her number.. and she texted you with in 3 hours.

Right?


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

[User]
ELI5: The oil business

Why are people who are involved with oil usually so filthy rich? Often I hear about these magnates in the Middle-East who make more money in a week than in the entire life of the average Joe.

[Assistant]
Let's say you have a lemonade stand. You charge a thousand dollars per lemonade, and since it's really hot, you make a million dollars a day.

Well, obviously, that can't last. Someone else will open up a lemonade stand and try to take your business away by only charging $750. Pretty soon there are so many lemonade stands that lemonade is selling for $1 and nobody makes crazy money anymore.

But that's because anyone can make lemonade.

If lemonade were only found in certain spots in the ground, and you owned a lemonade well and nobody else did, you could keep selling lemonade at $1000 per cup and nobody could undercut you because they wouldn't have access to the well.

That's how oil works; once you've found it, it's no work at all to pump and sell it (as BP showed us in the gulf, the stuff pumps itself). And you can sell it for a high price because, while other people might be happy to sell oil much cheaper, they can't because they don't own the wells.


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

[User]
[MCU] How was Kaecilius able to sidestep the effects of the Time Stone at the end of Doctor Strange?

At the end of Doctor Strange, Strange uses the Eye to reverse time in order to slow the Dark Dimension. After doing this, Strange pulls Mordo out of the time reversal which makes sense given Strange is currently using the Eye. However, Kaecilius and company were also able to do the same thing despite Strange not pulling them out. How were they able to do this? Are there techniques of magic that can nullify the power of Infinity Stones?

[Assistant]
*How are they able to do this?*

Dormammu could sense that *something* was wrong with his warriors who were drawing power form him, even though he didn't yet comprehend time. Given how close they were to a gateway to his universe, he poured power into them until they were able to break free on their own.

*Are there techniques of magic that can nullify the power of Infinity Stones?*

Bear in mind that the strength of the stone is limited by the strength and experience of the wielder. As strong and intelligent as Strange is, he really is just a step above a beginner when it comes to the infinite power and complexity of the Infinity Stones. So while Kaecilius and company were able to get around Strange's time reversal, a true master of the Infinity Stones would be far more difficult to stop. Perhaps impossible to stop.


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

[User]
(American Horror Story - Season One) How did the sexy young maid age?

It seems like unlike every other spirit, the maid continued to age after death. What gives?

[Assistant] She didn't. Part of her unique curse was that she would appear irresistible to men, but unthreatening to women. It has to do with her own guilt about what she did. Other spirits have their own curses - the gay couple are stuck with each other for eternity, Tate never gets release from his mental issues or his life, etc. Hers is to keep repeating her seduction, horrifying and confusing the women involved.


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

[User]
Could someone explain band gaps?

Its been brought up in a couple of my classes, but I've never really understood it.

[Assistant]
So when you have one atom you have distinct energy levels that electrons can occupy.  The electron can have these allowed energies, but not any others.

When you have two atoms bound and sharing electrons, the energy levels combine in such a way that two atomic orbitals of similar type end up going from orbitals of similar energy to molecular orbitals, one of lower energy and one of higher energy.  In the simplest case you have a homodimer where two atomic orbitals of energy E combine to two molecular orbitals of energy E-g and E+g.  Of course the electrons are going to roll downhill and land in the lower energy molecular orbital (E-g, known as the bonding orbital) and leave the other (E+g, antibonding) empty.  As a result the electrons in the molecule end up with lower energies than the electrons in the separate atoms.  See Molecular Orbital Theory for more of this.

Add more and more atoms and more and more molecular orbitals get combined together.  Each orbital has to be a tiny bit different from the others, so after you start piling lots of electrons in there you end up with just a band of bonding and a band of antibonding orbitals. The difference in energy between those two is the band gap.

Electrons in the lower band (bonding orbitals, known as the valence band) are basically stuck in place but those in the upper band (antibonding orbitals, conduction band) can move about as electron-hole pairs.  If the band gap is small then ambient temperature is enough to promote electrons up to the conduction band, where they are free to move about, as in metals.  If the band gap is huge, then there needs to be a big voltage put in to promote an electron to the conduction band for the electron to move and yield a current.  This makes an insulator.  In between are semi-conductors, where it takes a small voltage to promote an electron and yield a current.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do I lose my hearing when I yawn?

[Assistant]
The reply above is mostly nonsense.

When you yawn, a reflex that often accompanies is the flexing of the tensor tympani muscle. This tightens the tympanic membrane (ear drum) and as a result dampens sound/vibrations being conducted through the mechanical parts of your ear. This creates the muffled and quietened sound that you might associate with a 'loss of hearing.'

The flexing of the tensor veli palatini often occurs during yawning also, however this does not have any effect on your hearing under normal circumstances. In the case of significant pressure differences between your middle ear and the external environment, this contraction can facilitate the  opening of the pharyngotympanic/eustachian tubes, and as a result, equalisation of pressure and restoration of normal hearing.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do we perceive time going by quicker as we get older?

As a kid, it seemed that a summer break, which was only 2 months, would last forever.

When you're older, and/or have your own kids, it seems like years go by like nothing.

[Assistant]
When you are 1 year old one year constitutes the entirety of your
 life. When you are 2 years old one year is half your life. So just in sheer numbers every year becomes a proportionally smaller   part of your life as you age.

Also things seem to speed up because your brain is more likely to store novel memories. As you age you experience level increases and the rate at which you encounrter entirely new situations drops. So you end up having fewer novel encounters and formulate correspondently fewer memories.

To ''slow down'' time try doing and learning new things

(' -').*


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

[User]
[Marvel] Will Spider-man age.

Since he can heal way faster than humans, how long will his life span be and at what age period will his spidey abilities be deteriorated?

[Assistant] His life span will be until autumn; at which point, realizing his looming mortality, he'll spontaneously birth several hundred small babies, each of which will produce a spider-silk parasail from its butt and fly away, at which point Spidey will knuckle away a manly tear, and expire.


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

[User]
ELI5:If there was a way to remove a brain from the body and keep it alive, what would it feel?

Had a recurring nightmare where my brain is removed and experimented on, I get these hot, agonising pains. Thought I'd ask what would actually happen if the brain was kept outside the body (if we know).

[Assistant]
An easy metaphor for it is to ask what a person that's had a traumatic spinal cord injury and is paralyzed from the neck down feels.

Nothing.

Now add in what a blind person sees and what a deaf person hears: blackness, and nothing again.

And then just strip out the other senses because the brain's not plugged into anything.

So, blackness and nothing.

I'd imagine insanity wouldn't take very long at all to kick in.


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

[User]
ELI5: Difference between Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Ibadi, Ahmadiyya, and other types of Islam?

I have always wondered what exactly the differences between the differences between Islam are? Wasn't the Sunni/Shia split because of some sort of leadership split a long time ago? I heard Shia are typically more conservative (I don't know whether thats true or not). I also know that Ahmadiyya have really interesting views on Jesus' crucifixion (more what they believe happens after).
Which groups are more liberal/conservative? Is there any denominations that I'm missing? Thanks.

[Assistant]
*PS : I'll use Sunni as reference (X compared to Sunni) since it's the largest denomination in the Muslim community.*

I'll keep it as brief and as clear as possible :

- The Sunni chose Abu Bakr as the rightly Caliph (next leader) and the next ones were elected by the people, Sunni also follows the more conventional and conservative Islam (The Quran and Muhammad's life).

- The Shiites believed in Ali (Muhammad's cousin) and that he should be the next Caliph since he was from the same bloodline, they also believe in the concept of Imams that are the descendants of Ali and are somewhat to Islam what Popes are to Christianism, but more exempt of sins and more "divinely chosen". Shiites are also pretty hardcore when applying Sharia (Muslim law) compared to Sunnis, there are also other differences but they're pretty minor.

- Sufism isn't a branch since a Sufi can be either Sunni or Shiite, it focuses more on the spiritualism and being closer to god with certain practices (think of it as the Buddhism of Islam if that makes sense). One thing to mention is that Islam's main focus is to balance between life and after life (be nice to everyone and pray to God), Sufism tends to focus on the afterlife more.

- Ibadi is a sect that isn't very open to outsiders but the general consensus is that it's a more relaxed compared to Sunnis when applying Sharia, still it follows the Sunni but as said before it's more relaxed.

*A note before explaining Ahmadi : Muslims believe of the coming of the awaited Mahdi (an ordinary man that will rule the Sunni) and the Second coming of Jesus to fight the false Messiah in the Judgement day, many people throughout history claimed to be the Mahdi.*

- Ahmadi believe that Muhammad isn't the last prophet and that the Mahdi is the next one, Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadian (the founder) claims to be the Mahdi.

Those are pretty much the main differences between all the sects you'll ever hear about, some claim to apply Sharia correctly while others claim to have prophets.


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

[User] ELI5:Why is it that some people eat a lot and exercise little, but don't get fat?

[Assistant]
- Differences in metabolic status (genetical/hormonal).
- Difference in body size. The more mass, the higher base need for nutrients, particulary muscles.
- People don't always know everything about another persons diet and real exercise, so they might overestimate/underestimate themselves compared to others.


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

[User]
[Batman] Assuming equal training and motivation, how many people could actually be at Batman's level?

Nature vs nurture.  How much of Batman's abilities are due to natural physical ability and intellect vs the fact that he's had access to the best training available on the planet?

What percentage of humans could attain his same skill if they had the same circumstances?

[Assistant] There was an article that came out around TDK/TDKR that showed how a real life person being Batman could do it for about a year before their body became too wrecked to continue. Not sure how many would actually have the insane discipline to go through with the training though.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do large files have their integrity verified?

How does a server know whether your local files are corrupted, version mismatched, or illegitimate without you uploading to the server? If they have to check through every file for integrity, wouldn't that effectively be the same as downloading/uploading the entire folder?

[Assistant]
No. File integrity is primarily achieved through the use of hashes. A hash is a kind of process where you can take data of any length and it very efficiently produces a fixed length string of numbers known as the hash. The math behind it is chosen such that, for all intents and purposes, the hash is unique for the given input\* and any slight change in the input results in a completely different hash.

So the server just needs to know what the hash is. It can then run the hashing program against your files and see if the hash produced matches what it has on file.

^((\* - given the variable length input and fixed length output, hashes are necessarily not unique, but the inputs producing identical outputs are unrelated and for the purposes of this discussion, the odds of two functioning programs having the same hash is negligible for a sufficiently designed hashing algorithm))


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

[User]
What is the temperature of a black hole?

From my understanding, as matter heats up atoms move more freely.  But with a black hole, there is (I'm assuming) little-to-no movement due to the extreme gravity, so does that inhibit temperature or are there other components that effect the temperature?

[Assistant]
[TL;DR]

It depends on just what you mean, but the usual definition of black hole temperature comes from Hawking radiation, in which case if we express our mass in multiples of solar masses (so the sun would have M = 1, a star ten times as massive would have M = 10), the temperature is

T = (0.0000000617/M) Kelvin.

So, for example, a black hole the mass of the sun would have a "temperature" of approximately 0.0000000617 Kelvin. One that was ten times as massive would have one tenth the temperature.

[Comment Proper]

When dealing with curved spacetimes, you have to be careful with the definition of things like "temperature". When dealing with black holes in particular, you also have to be careful about how you interpret questions that you expect navely to depend on the behavior of stuff inside the event horizon.

One of the difficulties here is that we can't speak to the microscopic behavior of matter inside of the black hole. We do not have a consistent model for describing quantum systems in such spacetime regions, and any proper microscopic description is going to require a quantum theory. Thus, we can't really talk about temperature in the sense of "motion of particles".

However, we *can* apply quantum field theory in a blackhole spacetime provided, roughly, that we stay away from the singularity and our field doesn't carry too much energy. In particular, if we're interested in describing events outside of the event horizon, we can use these techniques as a good first approximation. We can also apply quantum statistical mechanics/thermodynamics to this process. When you do this, you find that if an observer falling across the event horizon sees themselves in a vacuum, an observer far from the black hole must see a flow of thermal radiation coming from the black hole. This radiation has the same spectrum as a blackbody source of some definite temperature, so we can associate it with a temperature. It turns out that, for a black hole of mass M, the temperature T associated with this radiation is

T = (c^(3) / [8Gk_*B*_])/M,

where  is the reduced Planck's constant, c is the speed of light, G is Newton's gravitational constant, and k_*B*_ is Boltzmann's constant. That factor is just a constant that we can evaluate, and it comes out to roughly

T = 1.227\*10^(23) kg K / M = (0.0000000617/M) Kelvin,

where the second form comes about by expressing M as a multiple of the solar mass.


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

[User] [Star Wars] I'm a jedi and I've just lost my Lightsaber (and my right hand) How do I get another Kyber Crystal?

[Assistant]
You would likely be chastised by the council as you've just lost you're only real possession, before being given permission to head to Ilum to collect a Kyber crystal.

The process of getting a crystal is simple enough, once on Ilum you'd meditate and use the force to find a crystal that calls out to you.

Basically the less stupid your reason for losing your lightsaber, the easier the whole process is.


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

[User]
If electromagnetism has a 'speed' of c, do other fundamental forces have speeds as well?

Do the strong and weak nuclear forces, as well as gravity have a 'speed' at which they travel through the universe? Please tell me if I'm misunderstanding something.

[Assistant]
Electromagnetism, the strong force and gravity all travel at the speed of light. Electromagnetism & strong force because their 'carrier' particles (the photon and the gluon) are massless. Gravity because general relativity says so (and the proposed graviton would have zero mass, but is not confirmed to exist).

The weak force, on the other hand, is mediated by massive particles (the neutral Z and charged W bosons). So the weak force actually propagates slower than the speed of light. There is no fixed speed, though, it depends on the energy of the interaction, essentially.


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

[User] What causes you to "black out" and not remember things when you've had too much to drink?

[Assistant]
Without getting into the exact neuroanatomy of memory formation...

Alcohol works by "depressing" the neurons in your brain, making them less likely to fire (less likely to trigger an action potential).  Since your brain is basically a huge network of neurons that fire and cause other neurons to fire, this global depression causes every thing to work less well.  When this occurs in your frontal cortex, which contains your conscious "self" (to a certain extent, remember this is dumbed down), your judgement and impulse control decreases.  When this occurs in your motor cortex and cerebellum, your coordination decreases.  When this occurs in your hippocampus, which is responsible for integrating your real-time experiences with your long-term memory, you don't create lasting impressions (memories) of your experiences when you are drunk.  Hence, you can experience something while you are drunk without forming permanent connections that can be accessed later.  This translates to "holes" in your memory.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do flies come back to me after I try to swat them and miss? Doesn't it register into their fight or flight response?

Don't they know they can't fight me? >:/

[Assistant]
They can't really comprehend that you're actively targeting them. The most they deal with outside of humans are animal tails swinging in their general direction.

Flies don't understand hatred, they are beautiful, shit-eating beings like that.


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

[User]
How hard was your first programming job ?

I got my first job this week and I have some real issues to work on my project.

It's an internal software that's in a continuous development for like 10 years, it's a realy big C# project which interact with a huge database.

I have to implement new features and I'm struggling to do my job. Hard to understand how the software works, hard to understand this awful DBs structure.
I feel like a total incompetent.

In college I wasn't the best student, but I was able to understand and finish any project in time. Here I feel like I'being a burden for my team.

[Assistant]
Frankly you will **temporarily** be a burden for the team.

That's just how it is in the industry, when people join new projects and need to learn the codebase.

Even very experienced programmers will experience this, though they tend to get up-to-speed faster.


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

[User]
[Particle Physics] Can a particle have internal energy stored as anything OTHER than mass?

A question states that a particle splits in two pieces that go away from each other at high velocity. According to definitions and properties of particles in particle physics, is it necessary that the energy to accelerate those two pieces comes from mass (i.e. E = mc\^2)? Or is it possible for there to be internal energy stored within the original particle in a form OTHER than mass?

This is not a homework question - I'm just wondering because, in my current course on modern physics, these problems always assume that the energy to accelerate the pieces comes from mass and nothing else.

[Assistant]
Internal energy, the way you are using it, IS mass. Mass is energy that you cannot get rid of by changing to any reference frame, ie exists in the rest frame if the system.

A hotter object has (trivially) more mass. A fuel, chemical or nuclear, has more mass than its products. Two massless photons, that aren't traveling parallel, have a mass as a system. A mirrored box with photons in it would have a mass. Even within a composite particle like a proton, electrostatic repulsion and the storing nuclear force  effect the mass. Actually, most of the mass of a proton is the strong nuclear force binding energy. It weighs more than the quarks it's comprised of.


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

[User]
ELI5: What causes the "ache" in a stomach ache?

Not "what causes a stomach ache", but more of: what's happening in your stomach and why does your body respond the way it does?
Please and thank you.

[Assistant] The short answer is that there are specific neurons (cells of the nervous system) that line the stomach, and their job is to generate pain signals when something is wrong. So when you have a stomach ache, these pain-neurons become active and send signals all the way to the brain which then allows you to become conscious of the pain.


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

[User]
Why is there only one species of Human?

According to Wikipedia, humans exited Africa roughly 100,000 years ago, so we've been spread out across continents for quite a long time. If there was so much geographic separation between populations for such a long time, why didn't different species (or subspecies) of humans develop? Why are we the only ones left?

It just seems crazy that I'm the same species as every other person on earth, even though we might share a common ancestor tens of thousands of years ago. If there had been a bottleneck, where only a small population of humans survived and then populated the world, then I could understand it more. But it seems incredible that there's so many types of tiger, lion, squirrel, etc. but only one intelligent primate.

I know there were other (sub)species such as homo erectus or neanderthals. But why did they all die out? Wasn't there enough room for pockets of them to survive somewhere? Why hasn't homo sapiens similarly fragmented into subspecies since then?

[Assistant] Modern humans have been around for a very short period of time. There are differences in race, asian people tend to be smaller, stuff like that. The problem is different races marry and those genes mix. If Asians only married pure blood Asians, Africans only married and procreated with other Africans thanks in hundreds of thousands of years different sub species would most likely start to occur. Seeing as how human population is all connected today, that won't happen.


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

[User]
[Ace of Combat] How do countries in Strangereal have identical aircraft from our universe?

In Ace of Combat 6 both the Emmerian Airforce and Estovakian Airforce both have aircraft from our universe such as the Su-33, A-10, F-22, F-16 etc.

Do these countries secretly have Boeing and other aircraft manufacturing companies present or something universe defying?

[Assistant]
Not the Boeing Company or Mikoyan and Gurevich Design Bureau exactly, but yes. Companies and organizations *like* them exist.

Osea's culture, economy, history, etc, have lead them to have an entity like Boeing that produces aircraft that very closely resemble ours.


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

[User]
ELI5: Fantasy Football

Fantasy football,how does it work?

[Assistant] You draft players.  Then you get points based on how those players perform in real life games.  So for example, you draft a quarterback.  In your league, every 10 passing yards is worth a point, and every TD pass is worth 5.  Every interception is -5 points (these are all made up values).  But you get points based on "your" players' real-life stats and compete against other people in your league doing the same thing.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we have two of some organs (e.g. lungs, kidneys, etc.) but not of others (e.g. liver, pancreas, etc.)?

[Assistant] Surface area. Our body is constantly filtering via the kidneys and exchanging gas via the lungs. Having twice the amount of alveoli and twice the amount of nephrons helps our body keep up with the amount of absorption, secretion, and exchange necessary to maintain homeostasis. You can technically live without one kidney and one lung, but it puts stress on that organ and requires you to make lifestyle changes to accommodate.


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

[User] [Game of Thrones] How different would the show have gone if Arya named Cersei to Jaqen Hghar back in season 2?

[Assistant] There are some obvious things right off the bat. The faith militant never comes to power. Tyrion might not have been accused of Joffrey's murder as she was the main accuser. Tommen most likely doesn't kill himself, and Marcella probably lives since there wouldn't be a trial by combat for Tyrion. Tywin probably lives and can keep Westeros together when Dany and co arrive with her dragons. Most like Tywin decides to help the north with the white walkers but sends his troops to be on the backlines, the minute the war is won; he sends his troops to invade the north to pick them off now they are fragile and kills them all for good right there.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] What does one have to do to qualify as a dark wizard? Is starting an armed insurrection enough, or does one have to torture and suchlike as well? What if you're just really evil, but you don't start an insurrection?

Admittedly its probably pretty hard to have an armed insurrection without at least a little bit of torture going on (even if you have no hand in it, by nature of running an insurrection you're going to be employing people who really don't like the government, at least some of them are going to seek revenge).

Say you're a really powerful wizard, on par with Voldemort. What if you start an uprising based on, I don't know, goblin or house elf rights or taxes or something? You gather other wizards to your cause and train them as spies / assassins and have them infiltrate key institutions and parts of the government. Your plan is to purge the high echelons of society of anyone who opposes you, gain power, and reshape society to your vision. You're still trying to overthrow the government and radically alter the present social order, do you count as a dark wizard? Are you labeled as a dark wizard in newspapers and such?

What if you start a murder/torture cult and make yourself really hard to kill / find using the usual methods, but you don't try to overthrow the government?

[Assistant]
Dark Wizard is technically a legal status-- there's a list of some 237 spells, rituals, and other practices that qualify as "Dark Arts" as classified by the Wizengamot. Generally to qualify as a Dark Art, a spell has to have no other purpose than to cause physical or psychological harm, as distinct from hexes, jinxes and the like which may be inconveniencing or restraining, but not truly dangerous. A handful of other techniques, such as the Imperius Curse, the animation of Inferi, and the creation of Horcruxes also qualify, as does the breeding of certain dangerous creatures such as Basilisks. Apart from usually being expected to serve a sentence in Azkaban, or even being subjected to the Dementor's Kiss, Dark Wizards technically forfeit their legal right to practice magic of any kind or own a wand until an official pardon can be issued by the Minister for Magic themself, but the general response is "you lot just try making me and see what happens." Thus Aurors.

The Wizengamot are occasionally convened to update their list-- the most recent occasion was 1999, when the Severing Curse (aka *Sectumsempra*) was declared Dark Magic, and it was clarified that the Unforgivable Curses were still Dark Magic when used upon house-elves one has legal ownership of (this after a lengthy, impassioned bit of ~~nagging~~ advocacy from one Ms. Hermione Granger that lasted some 72 hours, a filibuster previously unheard of in the history of Wizarding government-- we normally only reserve that kind of patience for Quidditch matches.)


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

[User] What exactly is in the space between galaxies?

[Assistant]
A very, very, very small amount of hydrogen. An even smaller amount of various other elements, free electrons, etc. An average density is one hydrogen atom per cubic meter. Its just about perfect vacuum.

To get an idea of how close to vacuum this is, if you had a 1 liter bottle of hydrogen gas at STP, it would fill a space roughly the size of Pluto at this density.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the procedure for when a demolition fails?

When a building is demolished and the initial explosives go off but fail to collapse the structure, what happens next?

Are there secondary explosives? Surely it's not safe to approach the building once those first explosives have been detonated.

[Assistant]
Controlled implosions aren't just about bringing a building down...its about bringing it down so the debris goes where you want it to.

The actual amount of explosive force needed to bring a structure down is actually low (because of gravity) So if there is a screw up in the implosion process, the building is still coming down...just in a really unsafe way.


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

[User]
[MCU] Did SHIELD/HYDRA ever extract the Valkyrie from the ice after waking up Cap? What happened to it?

In case there's any confusion, I'm referring to the Valkyrie plane that Red Skull planned to bomb the US with, not Valkyrie the Asgardian warrior.

[Assistant]
It's very likely they extracted it from the ice. The people who found it told SHIELD that they'd found it because of the shifting ice. It probably wouldn't remain safe or accessible indefinitely - more than a few wrecks have been lost due after the weather drove away the discoverers.

SHIELD would presumably have an interest in the contents of the wreck in case it has anything to contribute to Phase One. Depending on how much of the Valkyrie's technology was unique to it, it may not be particularly useful to SHIELD. After all, they already have examples of most pieces of WWII HYDRA technology.

If SHIELD were to make the wreck's existence public, it would have considerable historic value. Additionally, given the degree of public interest in WWII generally, and Wunderwaffe in particular, any number of air museums would kill for the chance to add it to their collection.


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

[User]
[Halo] How does the Covenant's manufacturing and supply lines work? Where do they get their food and ammo and supplies?

FYI I haven't read any of the books, just played the games.

Do the Covenant have planets where they grow their food and build their ships? Is it all on High Charity? If it was all on High Charity, how did the Covenant not starve to death after it fell to the flood?

Supplies are the lifeblood of an army and a war, so how do the covenant keep it going?

[Assistant]
The Covenant had a pretty massive empire that spanned a lot of the Orion arm before they found humanity. We dont see a lot of it because we were on the defensive for basically the entire war but they have their own colonies, factories, economies, etc. that theyd been building since the Romans were figuring out how to build arches. Weve sort of seen some of these like K7-49, which was an asteroid converted into a refinery near human space the Covenant built, and Osiris goes to Sanghelios (the Elites homeworld) in Halo 5. A lot did come from High Charity though, so losing that would still have been a huge blow even if their government hadnt crumbled at basically the same time.

A lot of their ships were also pretty big and fairly capable of sustaining themselves. Some of their carriers for example had their own nature preserves inside. For bigger operations they also had massive mobile battle stations like the Unyielding Hierophant that could supply and repair hundreds of ships. Truth was secretly going to use one to invade Earth with a fleet of upwards of 500 ships, but Chief and friends taught them a lesson about the dangers of overloading pinch fusion reactors before that could happen.


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

[User] ELi5: how do electrical water pumps prevent humans from getting shocked when a part of your body enters the water?

[Assistant]
1. They don't put their wires in the water. The motor is sealed up from the water within the pump.

2. Electricity follows the path of least resistance. It does not want to flow down some pipe to your body, it just wants to get to the other end of the pump's power source. By connecting the neutral end of the power source to the piping, any electricity that escapes into the water flows directly out and none escapes farther down.


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

[User] [DC/Dragon Ball Z] Could one of the human Z-Fighters like Tien, Krillin, or Yamcha be considered a worthy successor to Ra's al Ghul? What about the Saiyan half-breeds like Gohan or Trunks?

[Assistant]
So apparently the requirements for the son of the demon are as follows

1. Be a powerful martial artist
2. Have 0 interest in the position
3. Be as emotionally unsuited for the position as possible.
4. Have 0 experience leading a large group.
5. Have a rule not to kill anyone
6. Be a dude, this is important

So yea, basically all the z fighters qualify.


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

[User]
CMV: Textbooks should not offer practice problems without an answer key.

My view is simple, if a textbook does not provide answers for practice problems, it should not have practice problems at all. It is impractical to not have a way to check your work when studying and as such is pointless without having a section dedicated to problems in each chapter. Many textbooks have a solution manual that accompanies the text so they should put the problems in that instead of the normal text book. Companies only do this gauge every penny they can and I doubt they would include everything in one book when they can sell two. Therefore, practice problems should be in the solution manual.

[Assistant] Teachers often use textbooks to assign homework problems. If they give a key to all problems, the teachers will have to use a different resource which will be a hassle for students as well. Most textbooks I've seen have the answer key to half of the problems, which works out best for everyone, leaving some practice problems for students and some assignment problems for teachers.


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

[User]
ElI5: Why aren't road signs slightly tilted?

I live in an area that snows. The road signs get covered in snow and become unreadable. Clearly heating or cleaning road signs would be expensive, but why don't they tilt ever so slightly forward, this would allow the vast majority of snow to fall and if any snow remains it wouldn't obscure the sign. You could make the tilt extremely small so you don't need to adjust the graphic on the sign. Am I missing something?

[Assistant]
Two reasons strike me...

Firstly snow round here doesn't stick to vertical surfaces unless it's blowing - and if it's blowing it would probably stick to the sign anyway.

Secondly, you'd lose a lot of the self-cleaning that comes from rainfall.


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

[User]
Can you tell a right eye from a left eye like you can with bones?

I know that with bones, you can tell which side of the body it came from due to its morphology, but an eye is ovoid. If someone were to find just an eye, could they be able to figure out which side the eye came from? If so, what indicates the difference? Or is it too difficult to tell because of its specific shape?

[Assistant] The six extraocular muscles have a left/right pattern, especially the inferior oblique muscle with comes from the side of the nose and runs down and around the bottom. So, you can deduce left/right from the muscle attachment points in the eyeball.


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

[User]
[Dredd] What exactly happens to bodies that are "resyked"?

Just watched the movie, not too familiar with the comics. Is there some Soylent Green situation  going on where the bodies are resyked into food? Or is it just like compost. Composting them wouldn't seem likely however, given Mega City 1's less than thriving agricultural department.

[Assistant] Yep, it's Soylent Green! Except if i remember the comics correctly, it's no conspiracy, people just don't care - they still want meat (or meat-like nutrients) and with no farm land in or around Megacity 1 and nowhere to bury the massive amounts of dead bodies that crop up daily, why not kill two birds with one stone?


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

[User]
CMV: Police should wear body cams 100% of the time they are on duty.

Regardless of whether or not you believe there is a problem with the police in America, you should support them wearing body cams. I can see no reason why they should not have to, as it would be useful as evidence of both crimes and potential corruption.

I have heard the argument that they "don't want to" and to be honest I can understand that, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have to. People make the argument that they don't want their every move watched, because for example their superior could catch two cops making jokes at his expense or something. However I think the footage should remain unwatched and unused unless it is necessary as evidence of a crime.

[Assistant]
The problem with mandating body cams is the Freedom of Information act.

Police at times go places that are private and should not be globally available to anyone with FOI request. Sometimes police are involved in EMS situations either in homes or car accidents. Do you believe the patients who did nothing wrong deserve to have thier 'footage' available to anyone?

How about the audio. Do you think the recording of a cop taking a rape deposition should be available to anyone?

How about evidence and evidence protection?

Body cams are a good tool but they are subject to Freedom of Information requests which means a lot of things we don't want shared would get shared.


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

[User] ELI5: How do touchscreens "know" when skin is touching them, and/or how do they know it's just a conductive glove?

[Assistant] Touch screens typically detect capacitance. A metal glove will have way more capacitance than your finger, and so the screen knows that something is not right. Capacitance is basically an object's ability to hold electric charge. Large, conductive things have the best capacitance. If you picture the big dome on top of a van de graaf generator, that's meant to have a lot of capacitance. Our bodies have a sort of mid-tier capacitance.


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

[User] [Doctor Who: Nightmare In Silver] The Cyberman displays superhuman speed in one scene. Why never again?

[Assistant]
So, there are three types of Cyberman:

- "original" Cybermen, from Earth's twin planet Mondas

- Earth Cybermen, from a parallel Earth, created by Cybus Industries

- the Cybermen from the amusement park, who are a hybrid of the two.

Since these Cybermen are a combination of two different incarnations of Cybermen, they possess the knowledge base of both. Seems they came up with a speed enhancer.


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

[User] ELI5: If I have an electrical circuit, run a current through it, and then suddenly interrupt the circuit, what happens to the electricity still within the circuit?

[Assistant]
Imagine a channel of water. On one end you pump in water, on the other end you suck water away. Imagine that you suddenly stop doing both. The water briefly builds up due to leftover inertia and then it stops moving.

Same thing in a circuit. The electrons are slowly moving through your circuit. If you interrupt it the electrons stop moving. Electricity is the movement of the electrons in one direction, not the electrons themselves.

The brief buildup also has an equivalent in electricity, inductance in electrical circuits is equivalent to inertia in water flows. So if you take a big coil (lots of inductance) and you suddenly interrupt a current flowing through it you get a pretty damn big spark. That's how spark plugs in your car work.


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

[User] ELI5: What is Overdrive? Is it safe to take a vehicle OUT of overdrive to travel up an uphill road?

[Assistant]
Overdrive is any gear ratio higher than 1:1.  There isn't anything special about it aside from this.  Some sports cars even have multiple overdrive gears.  For instance, in the Dodge Viper's 6 speed transmission, both 5th and 6th gear are overdrive gears.

In first gear, your gear ratio might be 4:1, for instance.  The engine spins 4 times, but the driveshaft only spins once.  You get 1/4th as much speed but 4 times as much torque.  Great for starting out, or if you have to move something heavy.

Overdrive is exactly the opposite.  Overdrive might be as much as 1:2.  This means the engine spins once and the driveshaft spins twice.  Speed is doubled and torque is halved.

Why does overdrive exist?  For fuel efficiency purposes, you want your engine running as slowly as possible at as high a throttle setting as possible.  Much of the friction inside an engine is skin friction, which increases with the square of the velocity.  This means that running your engine twice as fast gives you something like 4 times as much friction, which means you have to burn more fuel to generate the same amount of power.  Also, you have pumping losses - running your engine at a low throttle setting creates a vacuum in the intake manifold which the engine must work to overcome.  Again, more work being done inside the engine means more fuel spent to get the same amount of power at the driveshaft.


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

[User]
ELI5: What's going on psychologically when you have a favorite color (or enjoy/like certain colors over others)

I hope this isn't a silly question but as an example, my whole life I've been obsessed (not literally) with the color blue. It makes me feel at ease seeing it and it will often influence my decision making if the color blue is involved (like if i see a blue car even if i wouldn't like the car itself if it was white or any other color, I'll like the car because it's blue if its blue). I see blue before other colors when i look at things and i also quite dislike the colors red and green. Is there any psychological science/reasoning i guess behind finding certain colors attractive over others and even having decisions and/or emotions influenced by them?

[Assistant] Roughly: when growing up, your mind makes connections quickly. This can be good "fire = hot," nuetral "blue thing was good = all blue things are good," or even bad "past abuser = everyone abusers." Your question shows that you had/have a very flexible brain.


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

[User]
My University does not currently have a Philosophy Club so I am considering starting one myself. What prerequisites or challenges might exist?

How much philosophy should I myself know? I feel a slight obligation to know a little bit about everything but since that is not entirely possible, and would just result in a large amount of very surface knowledge, maybe I should instead focus on better understanding the fundamentals of philosophy so that discussion and comprehension of ideas and concepts will be quicker. Thoughts?

Below is listed the philosophies/philosophical ideas I've read/studied and the extent of my knowledge of each.
- Fundamentals of Philosophy (epistemology, ontology etc.) - middling (but then again I don't know what I don't know)
- Platonism - limited
- Stoicism - moderate-to-extensive
- Skepticism - middling (mainly Descartes related)
- Reason and Logic - middling

Potentially useful authors I've read: Dante, Dostoyevsky, Jung.

If I were to start a club, it would be sometime around the start of Semester 2 (a few months away). Before that point, I hope to have read Kierkegaard, a handful of books from the Bible and maybe some Nietzsche.

My main question is this: should I postpone the creation of a philosophy club until I have accumulated more philosophical knowledge?

[Assistant] Your initiation of a philosophy club shouldn't depend at all on how much philosophy you've read. If you feel like you don't know enough to start a club, there's a very high chance that that's "just" impostor syndrome. Your greatest challenge in starting a club will be attracting people and retaining them. If there's some philosophical text that you haven't read but think you should, then read that with the club!


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

[User]
ELI5 Why does combustion engine power taper off at a certain point while the crankshaft continues to speed up?

Why wouldn't a faster engine speed give more power?

[Assistant]
Power = torque x RPM, so if RPM is going up but power is dropping you know that torque must be dropping (more than RPM increasing).

So your question boils down to "why does torque drop off at higher RPM?".

And that's because two things are working against you as RPM gets high...time available to burn fuel (to make pressure to make torque) is dropping, and loses (energy you spend to make the engine work) are going up.

Even if the engine was taking in the same charge of air & fuel per stroke (it's not), the faster it goes the less time there is to burn the fuel. As you get really fast, you don't get peak burn until relatively late in the power stroke and so your maximum pressure and maximum torque falls off.

And as you go faster, you need to move air through the system faster. You get more pressure drop in the intake, so less air & fuel enter the cylinder per stroke, and you do more work to push the exhaust out, which steals torque from the crankshaft. And the friction in the bearings and valve train and everything else is continuously going up with RPM and starts to eat more an more into your total available power.


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

[User]
[Lord of the Rings/Back to the Future] Would sending the one ring to the future count as destroying it?

Doc and Marty go back in time - way back, all the way to Middle Earth (as it was intended to be a distant past, let's just say, for the purposes of this thread, that's actually true in BTTF universe). Somehow Doc and Marty get the one ring and take it back to present day (or 1985 - it doesn't matter).

Would that count as destroying the ring?  There'd be about 6,000 years where the ring did not exist. Would Sauron suddenly come back to life in present day (or 1985 - it really doesn't matter)?  Would that then also bring back the elves and Gandalf?

[Assistant] Taking the Ring to the future =\= keeping the ring from going back. The ring wishes to return to its master and tempts everyone into self destructing as it makes its way back. Introducing time travel only gives the ring, and thus Sauron (and through him Melkor), a tool that will irreversibly change the course of history. Marty was bad enough *without* a ring, he destroyed his life. Could you imagine what the ring would do to him? What about Doc who has some of the grandest ambitions?


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

[User]
[The killing Joke] Why do the freaks even help Joker?

This is possibly the weirdest question for me to make, especially as I know comic book villains always will have goons for one reason or another, but I always interpreted them as thieves looking for cash.
But why do the freaks help Joker torment Commisioner Gordon? They don't even fight Batman as they are too afraid of him, they simply torment Gordon, dance with Joker a bit and then run away.  I don't even think the Joker pays them.

Dunno,  what do you think? All I know is that the smaller ones are creepy as hell.

[Assistant]
They're outcasts, despised and mistreated by society. Some people, when exposed to that kind of treatment, become bitter and hateful. So when someone like the Joker comes along, offering them a chance at revenge on the "normal" folk, they follow him.

Many more wouldn't, of course. But clearly he found enough.


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

[User]
[DC] What's the relationship between Maxie Zeus and Actual Zeus?

So Maxie Zeus's thing is that he thinks he's the Greek God Zeus. Not sure how that's supervillian material but here we are.

Also, in the DC universe, the Greek God Zeus is a demonstrably real person who shows up on the news at least once every few years. One of the world's leading superheroes regularly hangs out with him. You can go knock on his door.

Has this come up? I could see Zeus not caring, but what does Maxie think of the actual, demonstrably real Zeus? Has Batman ever pointed out he can literally call in a favor with Wonder Woman and have Zeus show up here and shake his hand? *Has* he ever called in a favor with Wonder Woman and had Zeus show up and shake Maxie's hand?

It just feels like someone should have mentioned it, you know.

[Assistant]
Actual Zeus has as much regard for Maxie as the average human does for any given ant in an anthill. If this were still the "good old days" Max would catch a lightning bolt for his hubris, but Zeus has chilled a bit.

As far as Maxie, if crazy people responded constructively to logic and reason *we wouldn't call them crazy*. If confronted with the "Real Zeus", Max would likely engage in some truly astounding leaps of "reasoning" to "prove" that the person perform him (if it is a person at all) isn't Zeus. He could be an alien, or have lightning powers from a kite accident, or be a very advanced Android, etc.


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

[User]
[Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West] How does no one get frostbite?

I understand why Aloy doesn't get it because we choose what she wears, but tribes like the Tenakth Sky Clan stand out in the snow with next to nothing on. Have they just adapted to the cold?

[Assistant] A lot of these groups are also utilizing the robot parts and their clothing, it is likely they have heating abilities we used into their gear. On some mountains, such as some of the Rockies, the sun bearing down makes it warm enough that you can ski in minimal clothing, but it is high enough and there is enough cold in the ground that the ice does not melt. As for why exposed skin, style is always important, regardless of the society.


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

[User]
If I took a picture of the night sky and told you the time I took the picture, how accurately could you guess my location?

Also, how would you do it, and what affects the accuracy of the guess?

edit: Thanks for all the replies!  After reading through the comments, I'd like to amend my question to exclude the horizon in the picture.  This would be a picture, or pictures of the night sky without the horizon.

[Assistant]
Given a view of the north or south horizon, it would be possible to deduce latitude by comparing the angular measurement between 2 stars (known) and between them and the ground.

A picture including the east or west could then show a star on the horizon. If you gave us the time [and date] in GMT, somebody could deduce the longitude by comparing to the charts for that star.

What would affect accuracy is mostly the horizon, if it is higher or lower than we are assuming, also, the lens shape could distort angular measurements.

We might be off by a few degrees in measurement in the sky, which for all practical purposes means off by a few degrees latitude and longitude when giving your location.