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

[User]
CMV: (Ukrainian support) Thoughts and prayers, painting something blue/yellow, changing your Facebook frame to blue and yellow or any other method of showing support for the Ukraine that does not involve money is self-focused and bordering on narcissistic.

Thoughts and prayers are the useless whisperings of the morally bankrupt.

It's only about "look at me!" I support the Ukraine. Ok, now what?? What does that do? You are wanting a pat on the back and you know it. If you want to tell people you support the Ukraine, great, if you want to do all of the things I listed, then great, but if you really want to help, donate money or time or something. Otherwise, your efforts only tell me that you need attention and that you are a good person and need validation. Action is what helps. Even if it's something tiny, it's something.

I will certainly change my view, but I don't want the excuse of, "Well, I can't afford it." Everyone can afford a dollar. If you are hanging out on Reddit, gaming, buying a Starbucks, etc., you can afford a dollar. There are many ways to actively help.

I just want some arguments about how tying a blue/yellow ribbon around your tree or praying helps.

Thanks.

[Assistant] By making your support for Ukraine public you let your government know that their is no political risk to increasing the amount of political will and tax money spent on supporting Ukraine . The more people who show public support for Ukraine the more likely your politicians are to do things that actually support Ukraine.


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

[User] ELI5: How games on console runs without being installed!

[Assistant]
Consoles are basically special-purpose computers.

From any computer's standpoint, it actually does not matter *where* the programs the computer run are actually stored. All it matters is that there's some way to load to the program being run to the memory and (usually) that there's some way to access the storage device where the data is stored.

When a game is installed from optical disc on hard drive, that's basically just subtituting one storage device for another. It used to be that many PC games ran off CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs and only installed very small portion of the information on hard drive, because hard drives didn't have the capacity they do these days. But hard drives are usually much faster than optical drives, so it probably makes sense to install it on hard drive.

Console games are usually heavily optimised so that the slowness of the optical drive doesn't matter that much (for example, stuff that needs to be loaded in one go is stored at close locations on disc and not scattered around which would make loading slower). They also usually use non-standard filesystems, which allows the data to be organised more optimally (and also doubles as a form of copy protection to lesser extent, because normal computer operating systems can't read the data).


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are granite countertops such a big deal?

I keep seeing granite countertops listed on real-estate listings, home improvement/remodeling project ads, etc.  Why is this particular amenity so popular and considered such a plus?  What are the alternatives and why are they inferior (at least, inferior enough not to be explicitly mentioned like granite countertops are)?

[Assistant]
they're considered a luxury over the cheap plastic counter tops.  they're much more attractive and durable than plastic counter tops.

and "solid" granite (or other natural stone, like marble, quartz, etc) countertops are extremely expensive.  but a lot of the times the "granite" counter top is just a thin layering on top with the bottom part just wood or other material, kind of like how jewelry has the "gold-plated" variety vs the "solid" gold variety.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did banks keep track of legitimate withdrawals before the electronic age?

It seems that the old paper savings booklet banks used in the past would have made bank withdrawal fraud extremely easy.

How did banks protect themselves against exploits back in the era before electronic banking? And how did your savings information get propagated between various branches of the same bank or even worse different banks?
Could you only ever draw money from your home branch? What would you do in case of an emergency while on holiday for example?

EDIT: added some more info to substantiate the question.

[Assistant]
The savings booklet was just your personal record. The bank's record was the final say in the matter.

Keeping track of deposits and withdrawals before electronics was easier because there was a paper trail and things happened more slowly.

Electronic banking enabled a host of new scams and problems because transactions can happen very quickly and a person exploiting a weakness in the system can do so from a hidden location.

The *only* problem with the old way was the mountains of paper that had to be maintained and gone-through if there was an audit.


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

[User] ELI5:How can prison inmates gain so much muscle when their diet contains low amount of protein and lot of unhealthy food?

[Assistant]
While there's no requirement that prison food tastes good or that it's especially healthy, most jurisdictions do require prisons to serve a required number of calories per day and a specific minimum nutritional need (carbs, proteins, vitamins, etc).  At least in most US states and most first world countries that's the case to some degree.  There's plenty of controversy in the US right now around prisons serving nearly inedible food or shirking those mandated requirements, but in general prisoners are required to be served a reasonable amount of food with specific dietary requirements.

And of course, there can be extra food going around.  It used to be that the #1 item in prison black markets was cigarettes.  Nowadays I've read that it's instant ramen.  Which again goes back to "lots of prisons are serving bad food, so people get more when they can."

But at the end of the day, so long as you're getting the required calories and some degree of protein, you can build some muscle.  And when you're in prison and there's not a lot to do, your daily exercise time probably becomes a big thing.  An hour or two of exercise a day is more than most people take, so a decent regimen over time combined with weight loss - again, as food is only meeting minimum requirements, it might not be easy to stay overweight - would make anyone start to look more muscly.


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

[User] ELI5:is passing out from pain equivalent to a circuit breaker?

[Assistant]
It's a poor analogy, but it works nonetheless.

Many people pass out because of the vaso-vagal response. Their heart rate slows to almost zero, blood pressure drops, eyes roll back, they sweat, get pale, and pass out.

This can happen from something a simple as placing an intravenous line.

Passing out during torture or other horrific experiences ~~I'd~~ is probably more akin to what you're referring to in your circuit breaker analogy.


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

[User]
CMV: Police vehicles should not be allowed to be black with dark lettering

When police cars are black with dark lettering making it difficult to identify the car, to me, it says that police are not there to prevent crime but to catch people in the act of it. I have no issue with undercover police who are in completely unmarked vehicles, but a traffic cop sitting on the side of the road in a difficult to identify vehicle does nothing to stop people from speeding rather only to catch one of the drivers speeding or driving recklessly.

In my mind police cars should be painted bright colors that clearly say I'm here, don't commit crime while I'm here.  Imagine a police officer sitting in a parking lot in an all black vehicle versus a brightly colored one. He could be sitting on his lunch break or writing up a report (or eating doughnuts) and if he was in a brightly colored vehicle it wouldn't matter if he was looking around to see if anybody was committing crime because citizens would know much more easily that police presence is in the area.

Edit 1: I think a common theme I am picking up from people who oppose my view is the assumption that people want to commit crime and would otherwise always commit crime if no law enforcement was around.  I'm operating under the assumption that I want to be protected from crime.  If a crime is to occur I want people to be around to protect me from it.  If police are brightly colored and their presence is known I am allowed to feel safer.  Not only do I feel safer but I would also feel a reduced need to commit crime in order to protect myself.

[Assistant]
The problem is that the goal of the police is to minimize crime as a whole, not just when they are around. This is easier done with more subtle vehicles.

If cars are brightly colored, then you could easily check for them and, when none are around, commit a crime. With normal looking cars you never know if you are safe from the police. These less-visible cars can also easily be made visible with their lights.


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

[User]
Cant quite place the statistical term Im looking for or how to get there. Some sort of coefficient of efficiency

Im a freshly graduated and employed data analyst, and Im having trouble wrapping my mind around this idea that involves some sort of weighted percentage. (This involves made up data just to be used as an example)

Example:
- Doctor 1 has a patient visit completion of 100%, but only has 5 patients in their care.

- Doctor 2 has a patient visit completion of 98% but has 300 patients

- Doctor 3 has a patient visit completion of 89%, but has 450 patients.

I obviously could rank the docs by completion percentage alone, but that doesnt give a realistic picture of who is actually more impactful.

What am I looking for here to rank each Doctor by their impactfulness for lack of a better term, based on their completion %, but taking into account the number of patients? Im having trouble wrapping my mind around this for some reason.

[Assistant]
I think your challenge here is really thinking about what you want "impactfulness" to mean, which is less of a stats problem and more of a business knowledge problem. What are you exactly trying to measure? Maybe it's successfully completed visits over a given time period?

Once you can figure out what you actually want to measure, the statistical procedure will become more obvious.


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

[User] ELI5: If Palm Oil is so bad because it requires rainforest land, why havent we bred Oil Palm cultivars that dont need lots of water or can tolerate lower temperatures?

[Assistant]
Oil Palms can be grown in a sustainable way, and that is actually done. The issue is that unsustainable oil is cheaper because you don't have to care for the future of your plantation and simply buy a new patch of cheap land.

The EU has certified rainforest friendly oil labels.

Breeding a plant to accept a different climate is extremely difficult and tons of work for decades if not centuries.


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

[User]
CMV: Just because Im a white American doesnt mean Im a colonizer

I was in a Facebook argument about something completely unrelated and someone called me a colonizer. I mean, just because my ancestors stole and colonized land doesnt mean im a colonizer, does it? My reasoning is that I never colonized land. I was born in an already colonized country and I live in my parents home. I havent stolen land from people. I reside in stolen land and benefit from American colonization, but does that make me a colonizer? Wouldnt that mean basically everyone in every country is a colonizer? I mean, there were people in America before native Americans (I think, correct me if Im wrong please), so then by that logic wouldnt native Americans also be colonizers?

I guess you might compare this to white privilege. Yes because I benefit from the systems put in place to protect white people, and I get all the other benefits I get for being white, that absolutely means I have white privilege. Yes I have a colonization privilege, but is it true that since I benefit from that, then Im a colonizer?

Just because my ancestors owned slaves and I benefit from the centuries of slavery, does that mean Im a slave owner? Perhaps this is an invalid comparison, if so please tell me why.

Perhaps my perception of what a colonizer is in incorrect?

Edit: in my opinion, a colonizer would be someone who has literally stolen or colonized land from another. The difference for me is that I live on stolen land, but I didnt steal it myself.

Edit 2: Based on what other commenters said, Im taking the word colonizer too literally, it was probably just an angry insult. But regardless, the point they were probably trying to make was that I benefit from colonization privilege, which I agree.

[Assistant] I would suggest taking a more nuanced view. There are many other people around the world that would consider the US to be colonizers right now. You (and me) benefit greatly from extracting cheap resources from third world countries. Its not exactly the same but there are enough similarities that it would be fair to consider what the US does as a modern form of colonialism.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does installing files take longer than uninstalling files on computers?

I had the Anaconda program used for programming platforms like Python but recently uninstalled it. I noticed that the uninstall took < 5 minutes whereas when I first installed it, it took ~20 minutes.

It led to me questioning why installs take far longer than uninstalling programs from your computer, especially if the files are hold data in the GB range.

[Assistant] Uninstalling, or just generally deleting files, is a very quick operation. Instead of actually removing the data from the disk, it just removes the file from the filesystem and marks the space where it used to live as available for reuse. This is why you can "undelete" files. You just have to figure out which blocks on the disk used to hold the file and recreate the directory entry. You have to be quick though because some other file might get written over those blocks.


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

[User]
Would it be any dangerous at all to split even one atom?

How many atoms would you have to split to for example take out everyone in a 1 meter radius?

I remember a SciShow video that said something along the lines of splitting the atoms in a log would would take out a whole city, but there's billions of atoms in one.

Edit: I'm aware that it's gonna be hard to calculate exactly, but is there an estimate?

[Assistant]
Here are some rough numbers to give you a feeling for the energy scales that are involved in nuclear reactions:

**1\. The decay of one atom of uranium-235 releases about 200MeV or about 3\*10^(-11)J.**

For one atom, this is a huge amount of energy, about a million times more than the energy of a photon of visible light. Nevertheless, while this more than enough energy to rip apart chemical bonds in your body, it's far from enough to create much of a bang on a macroscopic scale. To see why, let's compare this energy to something we know for sure can rattle things around, such as a nicely sized ball of TNT:

**2\. The explosion of 1kg of TNT releases 4MJ (4\*10^(6)J).**

In other words, you would need to split ~1\*10^17 atoms of U-235 to get as much energy as you could get from blowing up 1kg of TNT. However the comparison becomes much more favorable for uranium when you make the switch form atoms to mass. When you consider that each atom of U-235 only has an atomic mass of ca. 235amu, you see that:

**3. The fission of ~5\*10^(-8)kg of U-235 releases as much energy as the explosion of 1kg of TNT**.

This mass, which can be expressed in more convenient units at 50 micrograms, is actually smaller than the mass of one human eyelash! Nuclear energy certainly packs quite a punch...


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

[User]
[Futurama] What are the legal ramifications on the city of New New York given that any one of it's citizens can commit suicide on demand via government endorsed suicide booths?

Wouldn't any relatives have a case for the state having failed in it's duty to safeguard it's citizens, some of whom may have been undergoing mental disorders at the time they made their choice and in turn this action affected their family left behind. As in the husband may have been the breadwinner and now the wife has to find the money to pay the rent due to the government allowing her husband easy access to take his life?

[Assistant]
You gonna sue a gun manufacturer for a guy blowing his brains out?

Gonna sue the Hudson River if someone jumps off the bridge?

Here in the 31st Century if you wanna kill yourself that's your business but with MomCo brand Suicide Booth^TM you can do it quick and painless (or, at no additional charge, slow and horrible) without leaving a messy corpse to stink up the joint.


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

[User] How would Superman's cape actually behave if he was flying in space?

[Assistant]
If Superman is "flying" in space, we can remove two of the effects that usually act on a cape: gravity and aerodynamic effects. We're left with the forces on the part of the cape attached to Superman's neck, which will generally follow his flight, and internal friction forces in the material which will eventually damp out any oscillations in the cape, dissipating that energy as heat.

So, let's assume he's going to accelerate in one direction and then just coast. As he accelerates, the same magical force also causes the top part of the cape to accelerate in the same fashion, and the rest of the material will follow suit as the fabric is pulled taut. This will introduce some crazy, unpredictable motions in the cape, but due to the aforementioned internal friction, this motion will be damped out somewhat quickly. Now, we have a cape that is extending straight behind its attachment at the neck with no flapping or movement, much in the same way that a short piece of string held up in the air will swing and oscillate but eventually come to rest along a vertical line.

But this isn't the end of the story, if we assume he's going to stop accelerating at some point. When he does, the force on the neck of the cape stops, and, assuming the cape has some stretch to it, the energy stored in those little "springs" in the material will be released, pulling the material back in the direction in which it was previously being tensioned. This motion will be damped out again, but not before the cape has become more or less rumpled up along Superman's back depending on how springy its material is. Then, it holds that shape until he decides to accelerate again (in any direction).

In the end, Superman just kinda looks like crap, with a rumpled cape that isn't streaming behind him as expected.


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

[User] ELI5: Electricity can't be stored, so when a light gets turned on, the power station must immediately produce some extra electricity. How is this possible?

[Assistant]
As a unit of one, your house's power usage varies wildly and is somewhat unpredictable.

As the unit of your residential city block of 20 homes, the small variations in personal schedules cancel out and power usage is more statistically stable.

As the unit of your neighborhood of 10000 homes and 100 small businesses, the variations are even smaller.

As a unit of your city of a million residents and businesses, the profile of consumer is pretty steady and predicable.


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

[User] [Star Wars]Whats the most heinous act that can get you killed by your own allies for both the Rebels and Empire that doesnt involve treason or gross incompetence?

[Assistant]
For the Empire it's usually just being in the way or being around Vader when he's angry. He doesn't have to be mad at you, but pretty much everyone suffered when he's mad.

Rebels assassinate and kill anyone who might be slightly useful to the Empire. Galen was going to be executed just for being the one guy who made the Death Star against his will.


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

[User]
[Interstellar] [Spoiler] Why did the future humans put the other side of the wormhole in such a less than ideal system?

If they could put one side in our star system then I assume the future humans could place the other side in any known system in the other galaxy.  Can I assume that?  If so, why wouldn't they put the other side into a system with a perfect Gaia world rather than the star system with a gaping black hole in it (who wants to look at that all the time) and the best planet looking like the Mojave desert.

[Assistant]
It's possible that it was never really the goal of the higher dimensional beings to help humanity colonize a new world. Their goal might only have been to get Cooper to enter the Tesseract so he and TARS could get the data needed for Murph to solve the equations Professor Brand considered unsolvable. In which case the wormhole was exactly where it needed to be, next to a massive black hole which served as the gateway into the Tesseract.

IIRC, when Cooper was in the Tesseract he mentions that the higher-dimensional beings couldn't figure out to how communicate with us. They needed someone like Cooper to reach back to specific moments in space and time. And they needed someone like Murph to figure what was being said.

With the equations solved, it allowed humanity to build new tech, like the O'Neill cylinder space station and the small spacecraft Cooper steals at the end of the film. So instead of giving us a new planet, they gave us something perhaps more valuable - a new understanding of physics and new tech to live beyond earth.


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

[User]
Does anyone else commit commented debug code on purpose, just in case you might need it again, even though you are 99% sure you won't - Followed by a "Remove debug comments" commit? Any other techniques?

I am aware of stashing, but I like a clean stash (only temporary stuff in there) and snippets.txt does not make much sense for very specific program-related code, especially when it is not really interesting code but just logging.

[Assistant]
Usually no. If the "debugging" code is simple enough, then just remove it and add it later again if needed.

If it's complex enough, then it should probably be part of a unit testing implementation instead.

Edit: If it's just logging, consider using a proper logging framework that let's you disable debug logging in production without removing the source code.


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

[User]
[Matrix] Why the Machines were constrained to modern-day humanity?

Couldn't just they lie to the humans and told them that an alien invader has scoured the Earth and that they are living in a simulated world because the outside world is lethal? And that machines want to catter for their desires, thus allowing them to choose what utopia they want? Why not make different "matrixes" for people who would like to play into things Skyrim, Fallout, The Expanse, Pokemon or even a yiff themed Beastars one for the realy weird ones? That lie could have allowed the Architect to don't need the Choosen One as all humans would be satisfied by the Matrix. And for those who want to go outside, well, just clean any human trace from the surface, show them the barren moor that Earth is and see how long until they come back to the comfort of Matrix.

[Assistant] Sure but that's a lot of extra processing power for little gain for the machines. It greatly increases the risk of people breaking the matrix by trying to escape or cheat in their reality. Better to gently guide humans to the conclusion the machines want than to try ordering chaos.


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

[User]
[LOTR/Conan the Barbarian] Boromir place in the fellowship is taken by Conan the Cimmerian, how do events deviate from Canon?

Does he fall sooner, later?

Would Arnold's Conan have a different effect to the character in literature?

[Assistant]
Conan never betrays the fellowship, he fights strongly and proudly with his comrades in arms.  They face every challenge head on, cutting through great swathes of Orcs, Men, even the Balrog falls by his might.

However, due to the more aggressive posture of the fellowship, everyone else in the party dies over the course of the journey.

- Gandalf dies in Moria as before, but it occurs in open combat in order to give Conan the opening he needs to strike a death blow.  He never comes back from the dead, this isn't that kind of story.
- Half the party (Let's say Gimli, Legolas, and Pippin) is killed by Saruman or his forces when the fellowship breaks into the evil wizard's tower and slays him.  Pippin gets killed from looking into the Palantir instead of just getting a bit unsettled.
- Frodo dies after being bitten by Shelob.  Giant poisonous spiders have lethal venom in this story.  Samwise picks up the ring at this point.
- Since Aragorn and the men of Gondor aren't distracting Sauron at the Black Gate, they fight a running battle all the way to the slope of Mount Doom.  Aragorn and Merry are killed in the dead marshes, Samwise makes it all the way to the base of Mount Doom.
- Sauron himself, inexplicably having a human body in this story, shows up and kills Samwise before turning his attention to Conan.  True to form, Conan slices the evil wizard in half.  He then picks up the ring, overcomes its influence through sheer force of will, and hurls it into the lava.
- Conan and a beautiful princess they rescued halfway through Mordor fly off on the eagles.

I imagine this is how it would go with both literature Conan and Arnold movie Conan....


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

[User] ELi5: If (most) nocturnal insects are attracted to light sources, why aren't they just out and about during the daytime?

[Assistant] They don't go towards light sources because they like light, they go towards them because they think it is the moon, and flying at a constant angle to the moon will make them go in a straight line. Flying at a constant angle to a lightbulb will either make them circle it, spiral outwards away from it, or spiral inwards towards it. It's this third group that ends up gathered around it, and leads to the misconception that they are attracted to the light itself.


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

[User]
ELI5: Can someone explain the naming scheme behind airport runways?

All the time when watching airliner radio chatter vids and stuff like that, I see runways being referred to by names like 9-left or 27-right, what gives? Is there a specific reason a runway might be called that despite the airport not having nearly that many runways? Wouldn't it just be simpler to have runway 1, runway 2, etc.?

[Assistant]
Runways are numbered off of compass headings - round to the nearest 10th degree and drop a zero and there's your runway number.  That way, when you're working with someone whose primary navigation tools includes a compass, they can quickly ascertain whether they're pointed at the correct runway.

Left and Right only comes into play when there are a pair of runways in a parallel configuration, at which point you really need to know whether you're expected to be on the left runway or the right runway.


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

[User]
ELI5: if plants need CO2 to survive, how are enclosed terrariums able to thrive?

As far my knowledge goes, is my understanding plants need CO2, aside from light and water, how come a terrarium is able to keep itself alive for years without any invention?

[Assistant]
Because your terrarium is going to have bacteria in it, maybe even tiny bugs, or big bugs if you intentionally put them there.

But say you have a plant growing in the terrarium, in the soil there is going to be bacteria. Any organic matter in the soil can be broken down by the bacteria as food, which will then release CO2 like we do, or say even if all that matter is used up, the plant grows, uses up most the CO2, what does that mean? The plant starts to die, the leaves fall off, but wit, now those leaves start rotting and getting eaten by bacteria and the carbon in those leaves gets released as CO2 again.


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

[User] Why does hair grow on your head differently than it does on the rest of your body?

[Assistant]
Your hair follicles grow hair over a period of time, then have a resting period, and restart growth again

When the follicles enter resting, the cells die, or break off, so your hair falls out

The hair on your arms has growth stages of a couple of months, where as those on your head have growth of several years

Because they grow for shorter times and fall out more often, it has a constant low length

Animals such as dogs can synchronise follicle growth periods to make large amounts of hair fall out at once, I.E. shedding :)


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

[User]
[40k] How does the massive weight of the largest Titans affect their tactical deployment?

Surely they can only be deployed on a surface that has sufficient density and strength to withstand their huge mass. The bedrock and above layers would have to be able to handle them stomping about without collapsing in on itself.

This must put severe restraints on where Titans can be deployed. Randomly dropping an Imperator Titan on a planet without doing a thorough geological survey only to see it collapse the ground below it and be buried under megatons of rock.

How is this taken into consideration?

[Assistant]
Titans are among the rarest and most potent tools in the Emperor's arsenal, they are never dropped *randomly*.  They usually arrive as reinforcements, rather than as the spearhead of a new assault, so it is rare that they arrive on a planet that has not already seen battle for many weeks, months, or years.  When this occurs, the local troops are already familiar with the geography of the battlefield, and are able to plan the deployment of a Titan accordingly.

Even when circumstances force them to be deployed in unknown or unsteady terrain, Titans are sufficiently filled with the Emperor's Glory that they have the strength to simply plow through ground that cannot support its weight.  It may seem undignified, but war carries the Emperor's chosen to the dirtiest places in the galaxy so that they might be cleaned of their filth.


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

[User]
eli5: How exactly do photographs work?

How can you freeze an image of reality onto a tangible surface?

[Assistant]
There are certain chemicals that are sensitive to light. When exposed to light they change colors (specifically get darker).

To make a picture with film, you first have transparent plastic that is coated with a chemical that burns depending on how much light hits it. When you expose that film to light for a fraction of a second the parts that were brighter in the image turn darker on the film. And the parts of the image that are darker reflect less light and so the film remains more transparent.

You then process that film thru chemicals that freeze the light reacting chemicals and prevent them from continuing to react. Now you have a sheet of semi transparent film that is an inverted image of the image you wanted to capture.

If you project light thru that film. You can project it onto a sheet of paper that is coated with similar chemicals that react to light (the parts exposed to more light will darken more). If you do this for a few seconds and then use chemicals to freeze the light reacting chemicals again then you will get an image that is an inverse of the inverse of the original image, in other words it looks like the image you took.

This explanation implies a black and white photo. But color film works similarly it just has has chemical that react to different colors of light when they darken.

Digital cameras are kinda similar. The lens, shutter, and aperture can all work the same as film except instead of projecting the image onto a sheet of film it projects it onto a square of a bunch of light sensors in a grid. Each sensor measures exactly how much light hit that spot and records it on a defined scale, for this example from a range from 0 to 255. 0 if it saw no light at all, 255 if it saw the maximum amount of light it is able to measure. For most cameras, each pixel has a filter on it that only allows it to see either blue, red or green light. When you group the data from 3 (or usually 4 with an extra green) pixels that are all right next to each other you can get a value for that tiny square of the image that is recorded like: red = 200, green = 40, blue = 220, which would be a pixel that is a shade of purple.

And when you add all of the millions of light sensors data to gather you can get a list of what every dot in the grid (a pixel). Some image file formats are literally a list from left to right for each row of pixels of how much light each recorded. So when a display needs to show the image it just shows a light with that color hue at that brightness in the location that the sensor recorded it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does it feel easier to go up a set of steps on an angle, rather than straight on? Surely the work required to go up them is the same?

[Assistant]
There are a couple of things at play here.

One, and probably the most relevant, is that you're actually decreasing the angle you have to climb at, by extending the total distance you're climbing. This reduces the amount of work you need to do at any given moment, but doesn't reduce the total amount of work you do by the top of the stairs. In fact, it actually increases the amount of work you do by the top, but it's broken up over many smaller increments.

Second, it allows you to place more of your foot on each stair, which assists you in transferring that work energy from your body to the stair, so it's a bit of a mechanical assist over only using the ball/toes of your foot.

And finally, it slows you down, so that helps in reducing the amount of work you're doing at any given moment. Again, we're not reducing the total amount of work, but we're spreading it out over smaller increments.

It's a lot like trying to pick up a box full of stuff. You might not be strong enough to lift it when it's full, but you are strong enough to pick up each individual item by itself.


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

[User] If there was a bag of 10 balls, 9 white and 1 red and 10 people including you has to pick one randomly and who gets the red ball wins, does it matter what order you all pick, or is it better to go first or last with probability?

[Assistant]
It doesn't matter.

The first person to pick has a 1/10 (10%) chance to win. So he has a 9/10 (90%) chance to not win. That means that the second person to pick has a 9/10 (90%) chance to get his turn (which only happens if person 1 doesn't win), but if he gets his turn he has 1/9 (~11.11%) chance to win. That means his total chance to win is 9/10 * 1/9 = 1/10 (10%).

Person 3 only gets his turn if both 1 and 2 don't win. That means that the chance that he gets his turn is equal to 1 minus the chance that either player 1 or player 2 wins. That means: 1 - (1/10 + 1/10) = 8/10 (80%). At that point, he has a chance of 1/8 to pick the correct ball, so his total chance of winning is 8/10 * 1/8 = 1/10 (10%).

You can extend the same line of reasoning for the other players and find the same outcome, 10%, for each.


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

[User]
[The Office] Why is Michael Scott so poor?

Dwight mentioned once he had a shot at making 100k in commission one year. That would be on top of their base salary of 30-40k. Michael Scott was a better salesman than Dwight and was in sales when business was significantly better.

Adjusted for inflation, he should have been making a six figure salary bare minimum and possibly as high as 150k when he was in sales. But in the show they mentioned that as a manager he makes barely more than the warehouse foreman and that Jan blew threw his savings in a matter of months. Did he take a 100k salary cut when he transitioned into management?

[Assistant]
> Dwight mentioned once he had a shot at making 100k in commission one year.

This was after Sabre bought out DunderMifflin, and Sabre didn't have a cap on commissions. DunderMifflin presumably did.

> That would be on top of their base salary of 30-40k. Michael Scott was a better salesman than Dwight and was in sales when business was significantly better.

Better, maybe, but again, cap on commissions. We know that Michael Scott was the best salesman of his time, but we really don't know how he compares to Dwight.

> But in the show they mentioned that as a manager he makes barely more than the warehouse foreman and that Jan blew threw his savings in a matter of months. Did he take a 100k salary cut when he transitioned into management?

He probably did, but it is pretty blatantly shown (and stated, explicitly) that he sucks at personal finance. He is in loads of debt and over spends his money.


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

[User]
[Pet Sematary] so what is the mechanism by which the Micmac burial ground works? How did it sour?

Was it created by some sort of spell, or did it always exist?

Are the reanimated bodies inhabited by a soul that was summoned into them by the ground?

What caused the burial ground to "sour"?

How sapient are the revenants after being brought back?

How far does its influence actually extend?

Thanks!

[Assistant]
The ground became sour after the indians dug up remains to eat during a very long winter in which they were starving. They were thus touched and cursed by the Wendigo spirit and that burial ground became a cursed an evil place with a will of its own. The Wendigo still roams those parts, you can hear his laugh as you make your way to the cemetery.

The influence of the burial ground extends extremely far..... it made it so that his wife Rachel couldn't make it back home from Chicago to Maine in a number of ways.

Those who come back are not, in any way , shape or form, those who left. The being has their memories and will use them to inflict pain and suffering to everyone around, but it's not them.

The reanimated bodies are inhabited not by souls, but by evil spirits of nature. Devils, demons, pick your term.


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

[User]
[General Sci-Fi] Is there a name for helmets that have no visor or facial glass?

As an example, I'm referring to helmets like the ones in Destiny 2 that don't have any sort of visor, and no glass. They only use optics and an advanced hud inside the helmet.

Another prime example is the helmets seen in Warframe. (I'm aware that those are frames and not suits.)

I am trying to design one of my own but I want to look at lots of pictures of these specific kinds of helmets to get more ideas, and having something that looks a little more UNSC as opposed to the more sooth and rounded versions like we see in Warframe, but Googling "Sci fi helmet with no visor" isn't really getting me anywhere.

I also tried to Google if there was a name for that kind of thing, and sadly Halo doesn't offer a lot of helmets without visors either.

Does anyone know the name of a helmet like that, or a better term for it when searching on Google?

[Assistant]
I think it's just a helmet.

In these Sci-fi universes, they've likely developed materials stronger than bulletproof glass/polycarbonate visors and with the advanced tech, they can fit a wide array of sensors and HUD elements into the viewing screen or project them directly into the wearers eyes, kinda like Google glass did.

End result is full 360 protection to the head with no weak points, and some very useful tech elements built in.

In the Destiny universe, they also have space magic. Im sure the Light helps "enchant" some of the exotic helmets (warlock hoods) specifically. Most of the Hunter Cowls and Titan helms have eyeslits akin to what Tony stark has in his iron man armor, and he also has HUD elements.


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

[User] ELI5: How does our brain know precisely how much strength to use, or not use, when throwing an object a desired distance? We can generally get it pretty close to where we want even if weve never thrown it to this spot before.

[Assistant] Practice. Youve never thrown it to that spot. And maybe youve never thrown that object. But youve thrown other objects at other spots. So your brain makes a prediction that you are able to implement.


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

[User]
Is there such thing as irrational units of measurement?

Such as meters/sqrt(s) or kg/sqrt(m). Is there any use for this?

[Assistant] There is something called spectral density which is measured in  Volts/sqrt(Hz) or something similar, the voltage measured at each frequency. This starts to make sense when you consider that power is proportional to the square of voltage, the power spectral density is in Watts/Hz.


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

[User]
ELI5: The difference between Serotonin, Dopamine, and Endorphins

I understand theyre all pleasure/happiness/reward neurotransmitters (I think?) but whats the difference?

[Assistant]
Really short version:

Endorphins block pain receptors.  They're basically natural opioids and function in a really similar manner.  They produce a similar feeling of euphoria to other opioids.

Dopamine controls how much you are rewarded for a positive action.  It doesn't directly produce a feeling of pleasure but rather increases the desire to perform the action again.

Serotonin regulates mood.  More generally means that you're happier while less tends to mean you're not happy.  It doesn't directly cause pleasure either.

Of course, all of these have numerous other functions but you seemed to be most concerned with brain states.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does it feel warmer when the air is humid than when it's dry?

[Assistant]
>Why does it feel warmer when the air is humid than when it's dry?

Releasing sweat does not have any cooling effect whatsoever. It needs to **evaporate**. It cannot do that well or at all if the air is already near-saturated with water vapor. Your body will therefore have a harder time shedding its excess heat.

The vast majority of body heat is lost in the form of evaporation energy. A liquid requires a certain threshold energy - enthalpy - to change into its gaseous form. That's where the body heat disappears.
While your body also loses heat by other means (heat radiation and simple heat transfer to surrounding materials), evaporation energy lost to sweat evaporation is usually orders of magnitude bigger.


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

[User] ELI5 Why technology is still stuck on 64bits?

[Assistant]
The important number isn't the number of bits, but the number of numbers you can make with those bits.

With 32 bits, you can make around 4 billion numbers. If you were giving out a 32 bit ID to each person, you would not even have enough for each person in the world.

64 bits on the other hand gives you 16 billion billion numbers. If you were giving out a 64 bit ID to each person, you would have so many IDs that you could ID every second of every person's life.


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

[User]
Starfish Prime was the largest nuclear test conducted in outer space, by the US in 1962. What was its purpose and what did we learn from it?

Edit: Thank you all for taking the time to produce such interesting answers!

[Assistant]
Starfish Prime was part of a larger series of high-altitude tests called Operation Fishbowl (a subset of Operation Dominic). As the researcher Chuck Hansen puts it pithily in his _Swords of Armageddon_ (v2):

> The purpose of the FISHBOWL program was to satisfy JCS requirements for weapons effects data about nuclear fireball transparency, growth and rise rates; intensity and duration of atmospheric ionization; missile RV structural response to thermal radiation; radiation flux measurements; electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects and range; nuclear, thermal, and x-radiation output and effects; and radio and radar "blackout" effects (which would bear directly on antiballistic missile targeting and control). Knowledge of these effects was required to evaluate ICBM "kill" mechanisms and vulnerabilities; ABM effectiveness; communications and control; and the value of ICBM penetration aids.

At the time, both the US and USSR were deploying anti-ballistic missile systems that would try to intercept incoming missiles at high altitudes with nuclear warheads, and used radio waves for communication and coordination of their forces. So understanding what would happen when a weapon went off very high above the atmosphere was important for this, especially since many of the effects of a nuclear weapon are somewhat different in versus outside of the atmosphere. And if you imagine lots of these things going off in the upper atmosphere, you get a picture of how "messy" it would be to try and detect incoming missiles and planes, and communicate outside of your home country, in the event of all-out war.

To highlight two of the most important of the above:

* The "blackout" effects pertain to the fact that a high-altitude nuclear weapon will interfere with radar and radio. That means that there is a period after a weapon has detonated at that height that the radars on the ground can no longer see any incoming weapons. Understanding this is crucial if you are really trying to field a nuclear-armed ABM system, because every "hit" makes it harder for you to see any further, incoming missiles, and makes it very easy to defeat (just send a lot).

* The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) was somewhat understood prior to these tests but Starfish Prime in particular highlighted its effects. Because it ionized the upper atmosphere, it produced a massive EMP effect over a very large area. This was of interest for a lot of reasons relating to both defense and attack strategies  if you are able to interfere with electronics on a large scale, that can be useful; if you have electronics you don't want interfered with in that way, you have to design them to be able to resist it.

Starfish was an "effects" test  the goal was to see "what happened" not to learn about whether it would work or not. This is different than, say, Frigate Bird, which was a "systems" test (does the whole system work?) or the other tests in the Dominic series that tried out new warhead ideas ("design" tests).


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

[User]
[Doctor Who] Did The Doctor just leave the surviving Weeping Angel running around 2012 New York?

At the end of The Angels Take Manhattan, we see a survivor of Amy and Rory's paradoxical poisoning at Winter Quay present in the 2012 New York graveyard ready to take Rory and Amy back to live out their lives in the past.

What happened to it afterwards? Sure it was dying, but two helpings of life sustaining human victims instantly topping it up? And such significant individuals at that, getting both Amy Pond and Rory Williams. Surely it can't be *that* close to death now. I would imagine that The Doctor and River would have been pissed at the Angel and might have even tried to kill it, but such an event wouldn't have been glossed over.

If they just fled the scene and assumed it'd die of paradoxical poisoning, did they just stare at it and back up into the TARDIS? Why would they even opt for this plan when it could very well make it to another human in the graveyard, feed off of them and then continue replenishing its health with "fresh stock"?

And they can't have done anything along the lines of removing it from existence, as that would have meant Amy and Rory never got sent back in the first place. Speaking of, why *didn't* The Doctor just drag the Angel in some kind of cage to a crack in the fabric of reality (or perhaps use some Timelord science) to remove it from existence? Amy and Rory would be brought back, and they wouldn't need to worry about not being able to go back and rescue them. I could go off on a tangent about other strategies to save them (vortex manipulator, getting River to put Amy and Rory in some futuristic cryo-sleep then rescuing them in the present, timetravelling back before New York gets all "temporal gridlock-y" or slightly afterwards and then rescuing them), but that's off-topic.

Perhaps The Doctor captured it and is holding it in some secure area in the TARDIS? Bit risky having the Angel *inside* the TARDIS, but granted what else could he have done with an Angel loose in Manhattan?

[Assistant]
If the Doctor was willing and able to simply erase his enemies from existence willy nilly, he'd be doing it more often. This isn't the first time he's lost someone important.

Knowing the Doctor's mo, he probably dropped it off somewhere uninhabited.


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

[User]
Whats the difference between a moral norm and an epistemic norm.

One of the core arguments against something like moral error theory is the idea that if you reject moral norms and their existence, you also reject epistemic norms. From what Ive read, this argument is somewhat fallacious as they are not one in the same.

However, it is never fully explained how they differ, just that they **are different**. Can anyone help me with this?

[Assistant]
Epistemic norms relate to knowledge and belief. Something like "you ought to believe things that are true" or "your beliefs should be sensitive to evidence" might be examples of epistemic norms.

The argument you're referring to generally known as the 'companions in guilt' argument. The thought is that if you are going to reject the existence of moral norms because they are metaphysically spooky, then you also have to reject epistemic norms on the same grounds, which seems much harder to do.

Companions in guilt arguments are (unsurprisingly) controversial, but not easily dismissed.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do highly precise mass scales fluctuate wildly?

I was preparing some samples today for dissolving, and I needed to prepare 0.001g and 0.0005g of material. The scale I was using had 5 decimal places.

Anytime I put a sample on there, it would go something like 0.00118g, then a few seconds later, 0.00090g, then another few seconds, it would even hit 0.0005g. That's over 50% in fluctuation!

What are the machinations of this phenomena? ELI5!

[Assistant] When you are trying to measure that precisely, even small variations in the environment can have a profound effect.  Those scales measure the downward pressure on the plate to determine weight, so even a slight breeze from the labs A/C could put enough pressure on the plate to change the reading (that's the reason they have those sliding doors)


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

[User] With sunglasses on, one of my computer monitors is almost unaffected, only slightly darker, and the other one turns entirely black. What about monitors or sunglasses makes them react differently?

[Assistant]
Most monitors have a polarization layer on the screen that helps to greatly reduce any glare on the monitor. The effect is that light emitted by the screen itself is also polarized in a certain direction. If you then pass this light through another polarizer, such as polarized sunglasses, then depending on the orientation it may cause the light to be blocked (almost) completely.

The reason the other monitor doesn't have this effect is either because it has no polarization layer or because the direction of its polarization lines up with that of the sunglasses.

You can play with this by rotating your sunglasses (or the monitor, but that's less practical). If both the sunglasses and monitor have a polarization filter, then depending on their respective orientation the light from the monitor will be blocked or let through or anything in between.


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

[User]
[Logan] Spoiler: Logan

Hopefully I've got the formatting right. Definitely do not read if you haven't seen the movie.

Okay, so as soon as Charles accepted the invitation to dinner by the farming family, I got nervous about the trio's safety. But when Charles accepted the invitation to spend the night, that's when I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the farmer family was doomed to die a horrible death very soon. How could Charles not see the incredible likelihood of the blonde guy's team catching up to them? What about Logan? He surely knew what could happen, and should have forced the issue. It seems incredibly selfish for such a self-less person like Charles to knowingly sacrifice that family's well-being so that he could have a nice night. What gives?

[Assistant] Chuck is in the very late stages of a degenerative brain disorder. Saying he "knows" anything is a stretch and all of the stuff you are talking about is genre savvy not actual knowledge. From a tracker's POV the ideal place to rest is one that didn't take any money and doesn't report to anyone and that you didn't know before today, since Caliban was dead and wouldn't betray them anyway there is no reason to think that anyone could track them there.


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

[User]
[John Wick] So I'm new to the guild, and it was made very clear that I would be executed on sight for breaking the rules of The Continental, but what if someone tries to kill me first? Can I kill them in self-defense and it not count as 'business'?

I heard that this 'Wick' fellow beat and tied up a fellow assassin who tried to kill him and he had no repercussions for his actions, but he also didn't kill her at the time, so I'm not entirely sure how this all works.

[Assistant] If killing someone in self-defence is your only option, then it wouldnt be business. However, you would be encouraged to disable rather than kill in this situation. Killing is a last option approach, similar to the real world.


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

[User]
ELI5: Can a spider get caught in another spider's trap?

We know that spiders can avoid getting caught in their own webs, but could they get caught in the web of another spider? Consider the following scenarios:

1) The same species of spider.

2) A diferent species of spider.

Would the spider manage to avoid getting stuck or would it be stuck in the stranger's web?

[Assistant] Spiders are not immune to getting stuck to their own web. They lay two kinds of webbing, one is sticky and one is not and they avoid getting stuck by knowing which lines are not sticky and to walk on them. So a spider is very likely to get stuck on a web made by a different spider, and they can even get stuck on their own webs if they step on the wrong spot.


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

[User]
Teaching a stats course this term. Student who rarely attends has asked for detailed walk-through of class activities, beyond the guidelines I already provided. How to proceed?

I'm running a statistics course for the first time. The lecture and tutorial slide include very basic information on the theory behind statistical tests, and on how to run them. I've left a lot of details out of the slides to encourage attendance to lectures. Students who attend class and take notes should be able to use these to practice in their own time and seem to be doing quite well in class activities so far.

However, a student who barely ever attends class has asked me to upload detailed questions and instructions online. I have uploaded some instructions and questions we explored in class, to be nice.

He has now emailed me again to ask for a walk-through of how to deal with data sets, and answers for each dataset. I am reluctant to do this, first because this is stuff I've been doing repeatedly in the last few lectures. Secondly I don't have a lot of time to compile a huge document with all the results we obtained from several data sets in class. Students who took notes should have these results already.

Is it unreasonable of me to suggest to him that he should attend class if he wants a more detailed walk-through? And should I even provide the answers he has asked for?

I would be more understanding if this person would have missed 1-2 sessions, but I have rarely seen this person in my course and as such I don't feel particularly motivated to provide further materials. On the other hand I am concerned about potentially getting a poor rating for this module from him. It is a very small class so a single low rating could bring the average down. More experienced people, what would you do?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Edit: I should add I already offered to see him during office hours in a previous email, but he decided to just ask for more information instead.

[Assistant]
You tell the student to do the following

1. Attend class

2.  Attend office hours

3.  You will not make special accommodations just for them as it is unfair to the rest of the students

4.  Ignore the rating.  If you do your best to teach all the students then it will work out, even for a small class.


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

[User]
How does mercury polish silver?

ive seen it , but i want to know!

[Assistant] Two processes: Mercury dissolves the outer layer of silver in amalgamation, as another poster stated. Also, mercury directly reacts with silver sulfide (the main component of tarnish) to form cinnabar (HgS) and metallic silver, so it directly attacks the tarnish as well.


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

[User]
How does sunscreen stop you from getting burnt?

Is there something in sunscreen that stops your skin from burning? How is it different from other creams etc?

[Assistant]
Yeah it contains one or more ingredients that absorb or reflect UV radiation very effectively. So while sunscreen usually doesn't change how you look in the visible spectrum, at least not much, if you had UV vision it would look like being smeared in paint.

The active ingredients can vary. Generally organic compounds tend to absorb the UV, while inorganic compounds like titanium dioxide tend to reflect and scatter it away.


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

[User] Did early humans have any predators?

[Assistant]
Many. Remember that it wasn't until fairly recently in the timeframe of modern human evolution that most large megafauna died off (well, was wiped out by humans anyway), so for most of that time humans coexisted with a panoply of large predators that did indeed prey on them.

Big cats including now extinct saber toothed cats and cave lions. Wolves including now extinct dire wolves. Crocodiles and alligators including now extinct giant varieties with jaws a meter long. Marsupial lions. Cave bears the size of polar bears and giant bears that weighed as much as a car. Cave hyena that were bigger than most humans. Constricting snakes, such as boas. Large birds sometimes preyed on children and humans possibly had to content with giant flightless carnivorous birds.

We know that early humans sometimes fell victim to these predators based on marks on various human bone fossils. There is also one particular case of evidence of a human skull having been bitten by a saber toothed cat (Megantereon) as the cause of death.


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

[User] ELI5: How does someone like Alex Jones pay victims when he doesnt have the money or assets the jury awarded?

[Assistant]
This situation is basically the same for any judgment against someone which is in excess of their assets.

The first step is forensic accountants will come in to find as much money and assets as possible, including those he has tried to hide (because of course he did). They will pick through the records and it can result in money being reclaimed from other people or companies.

The courts will determine what exactly can be liquidated to satisfy the judgment. So physical assets will likely be auctioned, with some exceptions being things like his personal house and vehicle.

Bankruptcy can discharge some debts but others can be considered non-dischargable. Examples of this include willfully malicious acts like assault... or claiming the parents of a school shooting are actors and their kid wasn't actually killed. In those cases the debt can remain and the bankruptcy court will just decide on a repayment schedule where the earnings of Jones are garnished. Basically for however long it takes to pay off the debt Jones will be sending a portion of his income towards that debt.

The result is that Jones will be able to function in his daily life, continue to work his job and earn a living, but will be paying off that judgment for the rest of his life.


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

[User] ELI5: How do games know if its been pirated or not? How do game developers code in a repercussion to pirating a game?

[Assistant]
It's possible for a game to connect to an activation server and check the key used to activate the game, and if it is blacklisted on the server, it may be a pirated copy.   Most cracks will try to disable this.

In some notable cases, the developer released a cracked copy of the game intentionally, but with a few subtle modifications that would ruin the experience for pirated copies.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Did Palpatine really wish for (pre crispy fried) Vader to surpass him?

I know it's the rule of two but Palps doesn't seem like the type who'd want Vader as anything more than an attack dog. I don't get the vibe he'd really want Vader knocking him off the top spot yet in the fight with Yoda he seems certain Vader will surpass both himself and Yoda.

[Assistant]
I think Palpatines main goal was the primacy of the Sith; with him being the head honcho a *very* close second.

If Vader realized his potential and was sufficiently strong to overthrow him, thats fine, but hes gonna make him *work for it*.

When Palpatine figured out ways of achieving power Vader couldnt match (theres some comics taking place between the movies that explain this), well, all the better for Papa Palpy.


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

[User]
Is asking a fixed-cost project software freelancer to push code to our bitbucket unreasonable?

So we're looking into bringing on a remote freelancer to work on a project for us and we requested that we set up a bitbucket repo for the contractor to push code to throughout the project. Our thinking here was that our dev team can monitor progress and ask informed questions while the project is in dev.

We got this response from the freelancer on our request: " Also as far as bitbucket goes, since it's an end to end project, i'm not comfortable if the intermediate versions of our code is monitored. We can push code to your bitbucket repository once a deliverable is completed, which is pretty much a standard practice in the industry."

Is our request unreasonable here? Are we really asking for something outside of industry practice?

[Assistant] If you aren't paying him 100% in advance, then you don't get code until it's paid for. You are allowed to see a working version to ensure it does what it is supposed to and meets your expectations, then you pay for it, then you get it.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why the Republic did not use droids alongside clones?

I understand that clones are way better than droids as they can think but droids would still be highly effective. Droids can be used for heavy firepower without bloodshed. Clones can command droids while droids can be used as shields, covers, and distractions (like how once R2D2 commanded some droids in Clone Wars). Though clones cannot be replaced by droids, they can be reinforced by droids. Along with battle droids, some utility droids would also help a lot. Given how clones were much more expensive along with other costs like food, space, etc., and with a war going on, money matters. Why the Republic never considered droids then?

[Assistant]
Pre-clone wars the Trade Federation had a private army of droids maintained by themselves, with autonomy from the senate. They owned and controlled the battle droid production facility on Geonosis.

The factory - and means of producing battle droids - was destroyed in the second Battle of Geonosis. If the Republic had taken the factory whole, they could have built their own droids. The fact is they didn't need them due to the Galactic Army, so destroying the factory was the best route to end the Sepatatist supply of soldiers.


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

[User]
ELI5 Why once you start a course of antibiotics you have to finish it?

I understand it has to do with resistance to antibiotics, but why is it not true that the longer you are on the meds, the more resistant some of the bacteria get?

[Assistant]
Every infection has bacteria that have mutations. Some of these mutations provide resistance to a specific antibiotic.

When you take antibiotics to completion the majority of the bacteria are wiped out by the antibiotic and your immune system remove the remaining resistant ones.

If you take a partial course then only some of the bacteria are killed. If your body cant finish of the job then theyll start to build up again. But now the resistant bacteria get to multiply with lots of available resources rather than needing to compete. This is because lots of the non-resistant bacteria have been killed.

Once the bacteria have repopulated you can have a large proportion that are resistant so now the antibiotic doesnt work.

Once this happens a few times you get bacterial strains with lots of resistances. This is a big problem in hospitals.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect] What is it like to be married to an Asari on an Asari world?

They have a very high standard of living, an overall peaceful society, and they've normalised having children with non-Asari to such a degree that the opposite is looked down on. But you're also now living in a culture very different from your own, where even the youngest of young adults are still much older than you. Doesn't it get awkward at all? Do they really not faintly look down on other species?

[Assistant]
I would guess not, since their reproduction revolves around going with different species. They obviously know others dont live as long.

Liara does mention that human male teenagers do have an unhealthy fascination with Asari though. So asari might feel uncomfortable with that.


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

[User]
What are the environmental and safety concerns with fracking that are not allowing for it to progress?

So recently I read in the news that America actually possesses a lot of oil. But because it's not in large pools underground which makes oil easy to obtain, it's actually spread across rocks and other debris underground. So to get access the oil its has to be separated by chemicals, and if it's successful America could become self sufficient on its on oil. So why are we not fracking?

Sorry if my information isn't absolutely accurate, I only have the general idea of the process.

[Assistant]
>So why are we not fracking?

We are fracking. A lot. There's been a huge fracking boom in the US, especially in Pennsylvania and Ohio. From what I've seen, the major problem is that the technology and business have moved much faster than government regulators. The injection wells can be made to be strong enough to not leak into the groundwater, but there are a few cases where oil/gas companies cut corners. There have also been a lot of surface spills of the fracking chemicals. On a fracking site, there are large tanks of chemicals, and due to poor regulations and cost-cutting businesses, they can leak into surface water much more easily than the chemicals that are actually injected.

Finally, unlike traditional drilling, fracking is performed on a smaller, more distributed scale. This means that it is often done in residential areas where people live. In order to frack, you need to have a lot of trucks delivering water/chemicals and constructing the well. This creates a lot of noise and air pollution in residential areas.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why are proteins of meat considered better than proteins of other sources (like soy protein)?

I get kind of confused by this as it seems not very logical.

[Assistant] I beleive it has to do with the profile of the protein. Complete protein has all essential amino acids in one hit. Most animal product contains all essentials to be a complete protein. There are vegetable sorces that also provide them too.


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

[User]
Explain to me, how Trust Funds actually work!

I am very curious as to how they are sustained when initiated, and how they are initiated. So let's take it from cradle to grave (if possible) :)

[Assistant]
It's a essentially a bank account with a babysitter.

Pretend we have three friends: Al, Bob, and Charlie.

* Al is rich and his parents give him lots of money.
* Bob is poor and his parents can't afford to give him any money.
* Charlie is trustworthy; everyone knows Charlie would never steal a dime from his friends.

Al, being a VERY nice guy, decides he wants to help Bob out. So he decides that he's going to take $50 he's saved up and give it to Bob. However he's worried about Bob. Bob has never had money before and if he gives him the $50 all at once, then Bob might blow it on stuff like candy and soda within a week, when what Bob really needs is lunch money for the rest of the school year. Al is also a little lazy. He doesn't want to bother slowly handing the money out himself, so he decides to give the money to Charlie to dole it out for him.

This relationship is called a TRUST because Al TRUSTS Charlie to do what has been asked of him and not steal the money. The money is called a TRUST FUND, because it's the whole point of the TRUST. So now everyone benefits: Al gets to be a good Samaritan without all the hard work, Bob gets money as he needs it, and even Charlie benefits because he'll loan the money he hasn't given out yet to other kids and they'll pay him back with interest, which he'll get to keep for himself!


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

[User]
What's the difference between hard and brittle?

I mean from the molecular (or bond?) standpoint. Why is it that something can be very hard and yet brittle?  It seems like both properties are essentially a strong bond between molecules.

[Assistant]
So lets get some technical definitions in there first:

Hardness is the ability to resist deformation. Brittleness is the tendency to undergo sudden catastrophic structural failure instead of plastic deformation.

While they *seem* to be related, they are in fact not.

Lets talk in terms of metals for discussing hardness. Hardness essentially measures the force required to deform the molecules. From a molecular standpoint, it is how much free space there is in the crystal lattice that can be compressed for a relatively small energetic cost. This can take the form of shortening of every bond in the cubic cell, or the movement of an atom from a lattice point into a hole that is not on the lattice proper (there are other mechanisms in coarse grain materials too). If your metal is made of small hard spheres (like titanium or aluminium) it will be very hard, since these things are very difficult to compress. If your metal is something big and soft like gold, then it can easily be squished and it is soft.

Lets talk in terms of polymers for discussing brittleness. Brittleness tells you how something behaves beyond the elastic limit, when the tensile strength of your material has been exceeded. A plastic deformation is a rapid rearrangement of your material that results in a permanent deformation, a long unbranched polymer will readily undergo plastic deformations, since the chains can rearrange to slip over each other. If your material if brittle then it doesn't undergo rearrangements, it just fractures into smaller pieces to relieve the stress (force per unit area) being applied. Glass is a massively cross-linked amorphous polymer, its chains can't slide over one another, since they are all cross-linked, so it can't deform, it simply shatters instead.

Hope that helps a bit.


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

[User] ELI5 why is water the only (one of the only?) substances in which its solid form floats on its liquid form?

[Assistant]
Water is a polar molecule. That means one side of it is more positively charged and the other side is negatively charged. When water is in liquid form, the energy and movement of the individual molecules is sufficient to trump the effects of these positive and negative poles.

But as it cools and begins to freeze, the molecules lose energy and the electromagnetic forces from these poles takes over, causing the molecules to arrange in a crystalline structure which is less dense than in liquid form. Since it is less dense, it floats.


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

[User]
[The Iron Giant (1999)] What is the least amount of force required to provoke the Iron Giant into "hostile mode"?

Throughout multiple events in the year of 1957, the "Iron Giant" was shown to be fairly peaceful, until it was exposed to any form of weapon, from tanks, to guns, to a child's toy blaster, at which point it would actively seek to remove the weapon by force. Clearly it has some sort of programming that detects a weapon by sight, but apparently not by function.

My question is this:

If the Iron Giant saw a butcher in his shop cutting meat with a cleaver, would that be enough to send it into "hostile mode"?

What about if the creature had landed further north, in the Arctic Circle, and encountered a group of native  people of some sort? Would their less sophisticated weapons, such as bows and arrows, or wooden spears trigger the creature?

Why not a fireman's axe, which in the wrong hands could be used as a weapon, or a fisherman's rod, which is actively used to trap living creatures to be killed?

[Assistant] As far as we know, it's only triggered by guns but it's possible that it's triggered to defend against any threats against him, whether potential or not. Hogarth pointed the toy at him and went crazy. If the butcher was running towards him with the knife or the the native people shot at him, he would probably be triggered. Not so sure about the fisherman's rod since it's not directly a "lethal weapon" but that's just me.


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

[User] [Game of Thrones] Why the Hound saved Sansa Stark from the mob? What was his motivation to risk his life?

[Assistant]
Sandor Clegane has led a miserable and violent life, and has become cynical and brutal as a result, but buried deep inside of him is a small spark of idealism that makes him want to do good with his life, to be the hero who protects the innocent. This spark has been all but smothered over the years, by Gregor and Tywin and Joffrey and even King Robert, but its still there.

Sansa, in her own innocence, in her idealistic visions of romantic heroism, fed that spark, and came to symbolise for him all that was pure and good and needed protecting. And so, when her life was threatened, he found it in himself to play the hero at last - in his customarily blunt and brutal way.


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

[User] ELI5:What exactly do you see when you open a .exe in notepad?

[Assistant]
You are seeing a text editor's interpretation of pure binary code (as well as some actual text).

An exe contains binary numbers representing machine instructions, as well as data, both numeric and text. When the operating system executes an exe, it loads it into memory, then goes to a certain place in the file that is treated as the first machine instruction, and begins execution from there.


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

[User] ELI5: When we take a first bite, and we perceive taste, what is happening between the tastebuds and the brain in order for me to experience that perception? Beyond that, what am I actually tasting - the food item itself, or my brain's reaction to that food item?

[Assistant]
Imagine you have a computer with a sensor. You stick something in the sensor and the computer chemically analyzes it, then tries to tell you what it is based on that analysis.

That's pretty much all your tastebuds are doing; detecting the chemical composition of your food and telling your brain. The "good" or "bad" labels are evolutionary adaptations to help us distinguish between food that's safe to eat and food that isn't.


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

[User] [MCU] If an ordinary person wanted to join the Ten Rings or Hydra would they let them join ? And if so how would they contact them to sign up ?

[Assistant] So there are two answers to this. In the mainstream continuity of Marvel (616) you can absolutely just show up from the looks of it. Deadpool has a well known associate named bob who is an agent of hydra with very few marketable skills aside from a almost preternatural ability to survive Wades hijinks. That being said, Hydra unfortunately does not offer full dental, so you might be better off working for A.I.M. However, in the continuity featured in many recent media projects, it seems that membership is largely oriented to the military and scientific communities and therefore you would have to be recruited out of those fields.


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

[User]
[Discworld] Does the Disc have a mantle/molten rock?

Does the disc have molten rock near the 'middle' layer, or could you mine all the way through and see the Elephants and the Great A'Tuin?

[Assistant]
The disc is a little thicker in the middle than it is at the edge, where it is about 30 miles thick. If you were to go over the edge, or dig through, then yes, you would eventually come to the bottom of the disc and see the Elephants and Great A'Tuin.

It's unlikely that there is any molten core, as it would mean the Elephants might have their backs get too toasty.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can mathematics and physics simulate natural phenomena so closely in thought experiments, calculations and computer programs?

[Assistant] Because mathematical and physics models that do not correspond closely to reality are deemed incorrect and not used, then the scientists get to work trying to fix what is wrong or looking for a new approach. Your question is quite like asking why a car is so good at travelling on roads: because the attempts at building a car that resulted in something that really sucked at travelling on roads are simply not selected for mass production.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do filmmakers get major towns/roads for use in their movies?

After hearing about the filmmakers blowing up a bus on Lambeth Bridge near Parliament, I was wondering how the people who make the movies manage to close off such major roads like Lambeth Bridge, and get permission to do such stunts that could scare people? If it's involving money, which it almost certainly is, is anyone able to provide a rough guide of what they pay approximately? Thanks.

[Assistant]
Oh yeah, it involves money.

You have to buy a permit from the city for permission to close the street, *then* you have to pay an off-duty cop (or for bigger productions, several of them) to direct traffic and enforce the closure.

Many productions actually shoot outdoor/city scenes in different cities, like Chicago or Detroit, and make it look like NYC, since NYC permits are outrageous.


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

[User]
ELI5: How the Universe is ever expanding.

If it is ever expanding, what is it expanding into?

[Assistant]
Imagine that you take a balloon and blow it up a little.  You then get a permanent marker and draw lots of spots on it. You then keep blowing into the balloon to blow it up some more. Looking at the spots, you notice that each spot has gotten further away from every other spot. The *surface* of the balloon is a bit like a 2-D version of our 3-D universe: the surface of the balloon grows in area, but there isn't a boundary on the surface that's moving outwards. The spots are like galaxies, whereever you sit on the surface of the balloon, the spots seem to be moving away as the balloon is blown up.

In fact, our universe isn't quite like the balloon. The balloon's surface is actually curved and periodic, meaning that you can go round the balloon and get back to where you started from. The universe is in fact flat, so a better way to imagine it is as an infinite sheet of rubber with lots of spots drawn on. As the rubber is stretched, all the spots move away from each other, but the rubber sheet isn't expanding into anything - it's already infinite in size.


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

[User] ELI5: why is it bad to cook chicken from frozen even when it cooks high enough to kill bacteria?

[Assistant]
Cooking chicken from frozen is perfectly safe, **as long as it's heated to a safe temperature (165 F) all the way through to the middle**.

The difficulty is that if it's frozen, it takes so long for the *center* to cook through that the *outside* ends up overcooked and dry.

This problem can be solved by creating a cooking environment that stays not too far above 165F for as long as it takes (which could be hours).  This means using a crockpot ("low" for most of them is around 200F), or poaching (as long as you hold the poaching liquid around 180-200F and keep topping it up), or using a sous vide setup.


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

[User]
Would a perfect game of chess end the same way every time?

As it stands right now, there are computers that can play chess, however, they do not play perfect games. If there were a computer playing a perfect game against itself, would the game play out the same way every time and have the same outcome? Would it be some sort of paradox?

[Assistant]
By definition, if a game is "solved" that means that the *outcome* of a game of perfect play is known in advance--where "outcome" means that either white wins, or black wins, or draw.

The exact move sequence need not be the same every time. If chess is solved and it turns out that white wins, what that means is this: At any point in the game (given past perfect play), then *any* move that black makes, white has a response that guarantees victory (given future perfect play). There's lots of different moves that black can take, but none of them will stop white from winning (or even causing a draw). Any game states that could force a draw, white is always capable of avoiding.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why was military unit cohesion doctrine changed so drastically from the Republic to the Empire?

During training, Republic clone trooper cadets automatically failed an exercise when they left a man behind. In the Imperial Stormtrooper Academy, backstabbing and opportunism during training was not only allowed, but also encouraged.

[Assistant] The training and styles of the soldiers reflect their governments. The Republic was "good" so they rewarded selfless and heroic actions in their soldiers. The Emperor on the other hand couldn't care less if his troops were respected and probably preferred them to be feared, so his doctrines reflected that apathy.


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

[User]
ELI5: What exactly is sin/cos/tan?

I get this is kind of an overdone question, but I still dont really understand what it is. I think of math visually, and for some reason, I just cant really get an idea of what sin and cosine look like, just that they are ratios.

Thanks!

[Assistant]
OK, you'll like this:

Get out a sheet of graph paper and draw the good old x and y axes with the origin in the middle. Now draw a circle with a radius of one. If you can, make the circle large, with ten little grids on the radius so that each grid is 0.1.

Okay, now start at the far right side of the circle, where x=1 and y=0. Now just go around the circle counterclockwise. You can stop at any point, and whatever the x value is, that is the cosine. Whatever the y value is, that is the sine. The angle is whatever the angle between the positive x axis and the line from the origin to the point is.

Let's do some simple examples. Starting with the starting point, right there where x=1 and y=0. The angle is zero degrees, because we haven't moved yet. And sure enough, the cosine of zero degrees is 1 and the sine is zero.

Now go 90 degrees around, to where x=0 and y=1. Hey look, the sine is 1 and the cosine is zero.

Now go halfway back down, to an angle of 45 degrees. At that point, x and y are the same, and by inspection you can see they are about 0.7. If you do the geometry with Pythagoras' theorem, you will find that they are both the square root of two divided by two, which is 0.707... and sure enough that is both the sine and cosine of a 45 degree angle.

This works for any angle you try. As for the tangent, it is defined as the sine divided by the cosine. Sometimes that is useful.


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

[User]
ELI5: How can deep sea creatures exist at the bottom of the ocean? How does the pressure not crush them like it would us?

I just need to know, but know like I'm five.

[Assistant] They evolved specifically for that pressure, and can't live anywhere else. Their bodies contain very little gas and contain a lot more water. Similar to taking a water balloon to the bottom of the ocean.


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

[User] ELI5: Why hasn't anyone been back to the moon?

[Assistant]
The infrastructure to land on the Moon costs a lot up-front, takes years to develop and build, and the missions are all very politically risky for those who support the program.

It took a long series of coincidental things to prod the US government into funding and continuing the Apollo program.  It came close to being canceled over and over during its time, but lucky breaks (sometimes tragically ironic ones) kept it going.

Kennedy was looking to cancel it in favor of a joint mission with the USSR that probably would not have been funded, but when he was killed, Apollo became his symbolic legacy that LBJ doggedly pursued.  Then the Apollo 1 tragedy revealed all sorts of technical problems that would have made the schedule impossible if they had been neglected, and added three more bodies to the list of sacrifices demanding completion.

A perfect storm of factors had to occur to make the program work and remain politically on track, starting with a nation with unprecedented surplus wealth feeling insecure enough against a competitor to plow massive amounts of that wealth into achieving victory in a symbolic competition.

It was a lot like what happened in the Renaissance, but on a much huger scale.

Such combinations of factors are rare.


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

[User] [The Truman Show] What do they do on the show when he has uh... relations with his wife. Or during all of his uh, teenage years?

[Assistant]
Marriage: Camera shot drifts slowly to the open window, where a breeze ruffles through the curtains. We hear the sound of kissing and gentle whispering that is slowly phased out and covered with soothing ambient music. Resume shot of couple upon completion, mics reactivated to capture pillow talk.

Adolescence: run days highlight reel when Truman is jerking it.


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

[User]
[General superheroes] during the odd villain team up, who's considered the best super villain to work with/for?

Yes, this was inspired by the worst hero question.

[Assistant]
Marvel: Magneto is generally good to work with if you're a mutant or working to advance the mutant cause. Kingpin is also friendly for the most part as long as you're doing his bidding.

DC: The Penguin, he's just a crime boss he's not insane like the others. Deadshot is also pretty nice as long as you don't fuck things up for him.


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

[User]
[Matrix] Why didn't Neo and the gang carry C4 or hand granades?

That way, whenever there was a change in the Matrix (ie. a window being changed to brick wall), they could just blast their way out.

[Assistant]
Your knowledge of the matrix is based on the rules they've told you. Free your mind. Yes, c4 could blow through a brick wall if it followed the usual rules. But they can change code. They could line the bricks with explosives and shrapnel. They could increase the strength of the materials a thousandfold. All you know is the code changed. You don't know *how* it changed. It's best to stick to what you can *see*. It was easier to run than take the chance.

That being said, how often do you get deja vu? They don't change the code too often.


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

[User] why is it that when i sleep my skin is cold to the touch, however when my gf is asleep she is on fire?

[Assistant] A person with more body fat will lose less heat through their skin and not need much to cover up to keep warm, hence when someone feels you, you will seem cold.  You can test this by touching a part of your body that has little fat under the skin (like behind your ear on your head) and touching your hips, which generally have more fat under the skin.  If your girlfriend has a very low body fat percentage, she loses more body heat because of the lack of insulation, hence she will "feel" colder, but if you touch her she will "feel" warm.


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

[User]
Is quantum entanglement consistent with the relativity of simultaneity?

According what I know about relativity, simultaneity only has a local meaning. What's the meaning of something 'happening at the same' for bodies at arbitrarely large distances and arbitrarely different velocities?
Edit: Maybe I shouldn't have said 'relativity of simultaneity'. Let's say, relativity in general.

[Assistant]
You can describe the effects of measuring entangled systems without using the words "at the same time": you say the the results of the measurements are correlated.

When you measure an entangled pair you're never sure which result you will get, only that a measurement of the other pair is now determined. If two separated friends measure their particles at different times, there will be some frames where the order of the measurements is reversed. This is fine, though, because as is frequently mentiond, this process does not transmit information. The measurements are still correlated with each other even though it's ambiguous which happened "first".


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

[User] [Predator] Are there non-warrior type Predators, like scientists, doctors, janitors, cooks, teachers, porn stars?

[Assistant] There's a semi-popular fan theory that the Predators we see in the movies are a relatively minor subculture of Yautja civilisation. They're the equivalent of those rich douchebags who go around shooting endangered animals from helicopters.


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

[User] ELI5: How do we measure data that can be stored in brains or sperm cells in units like Byte?

[Assistant]
Anytime you can manipulate something to represent two values (e.g. on or off, present or not present, up or down etc.) you have 1 bit of binary information. When you have 8 of these switches you can manipulate, you have the potential to represent one byte of data.

These switches can also be organic in form, such as biological cells. We can look at how we can manipulate or deform these cells to record information using binary values. This could, for example, work by manipulating the base pairs of the DNA code stored in the cell.

So long as you have a way of manipulating it to represent two values, you have a bit of information. If you have a way of manipulating 4 values (e.g. DNA pairs of G-C, C-G, T-A, or A-T) that is effectively the same as 2 bits of information per pair.


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

[User] How do allergy shots work? If you are breathing in the allergens all the time and having a reaction why would injecting even more "cure" you?

[Assistant]
Normally, your body will produce an IgE-mediated immune response to an allergen. This produces the symptoms that you normally associate with allergies: runny nose, itchy skin, asthma, and even anaphylaxis. With allergy shots, there is an attempt to phase shift the response to more of an IgG-mediated immune response. A predominately IgG mediated response will be more innocuous in that it will produce less of the "acute" and exaggerated symptoms (namely, runny nose, etc) and it becomes more of a blood level reaction (where IgG is most plentiful) and hopefully less severe.

There is considerable debate as to how effective this process actually is though...


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

[User]
Are galaxies moving and if yes, is there one "center" of the universe they orbit around?

I mean is there an object that is so dense that it affects all others things in their path?

[Assistant] Yes and no, respectively. Galaxies don't just sit there stationary - for the most part they're moving away from one another as the Universe expands, and then on top of that they have some additional motion as well. But they don't orbit around any common center. As far as we know there is no center of the Universe.


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

[User] [Edge of Tomorrow/ Live. Die. Repeat.] How did they know that the affects of the alien blood wore off? Is there any actual way they figured out they couldn't die and come back, or is it just a guess?

[Assistant]
Rita and Cage made it sound like it was a "feeling". When they were given their blood transfusions, they just sort of "knew".

There's also the point that when assaulting what Cage thought was the Omega in Germany he was not immediately killed by the Mimics. They severely wounded him then appeared to be waiting until he bled out, even going so far as to knock a gun out of his hand before he could shoot himself. We know they are intelligent, and it would stand to reason that there was a tactic in having him bleed out rather than simply die.

I don't think they could test it, because the risk was too great. If they REALLY didn't have the power anymore, they'd just be dead and everything they've worked for would have been for nothing.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does fair skin help people in environments with low sun absorb Vitamen D when the color white reflects light while the color black absorbs light? Does skin work differently?

[Assistant]
Sunlight isn't beaming vitamin D into the skin, it is catalyzing the generation of the vitamin from precursors within the cells of the skin. Pigment in the skin blocks UV light before it can penetrate deep enough to cause that reaction as well as damage skin cell DNA.

The greater absorption of light of dark pigmented skin then doesn't imply an increase in the vitamin D production but rather a decrease.


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

[User]
[Malcolm in the Middle] What exactly does Hal do for a living?

I know he was a Patsy for some illicit dealings at his old company, but later episodes have him taking off of work for large periods of time to take care of Jamie. What does Hal do, exactly?

[Assistant] The only real strong indicator was that he was some manner of expendable office drone; at one point he reveals that he won some Kobe beef in an office Minesweeper tournament (which he admits to playing for a sizeable chunk of his work hours any given day). His later employment was likely in the same vein.