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

[User]
[Dragon Ball Super] What is ultra instinct?

I asked this in the ELI5 sub and was directed here. I train a lot of mma and there are times I feel "in the zone." Like a switch in my brain where my body just reacts and my brain doesn't think. Normally at the start of a match I think and analyze constantly, however about 25% into the match my brain stops. Wonderboy Thompson said in an interview, referring to dragon ball super, that it's his ultra instinct. Does anyone have an actual name for it? And what is actually going on in my little brain at that moment?

[Assistant]
It's reacting the moves your opponent is about to make, before they even make them, and doing it without even needing to think about it.

Being "in the zone" in athletic terms (which you already described) is part of it, the other part is combining what chess masters do, predicting the game many many moves in advance without needing to actually process every single possible move.  Doing either of those things are hard.  Doing them both at the same time is *wild*.


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

[User] ELI5: If copper is self sterilizing, why doesn't every hospital make door handles, and other frequently touched objects, with it?

[Assistant]
A couple of reasons.

1. Copper is very expensive compared to other materials.

2. Sanitizing cleaning solutions are relatively inexpensive, and even with self sterilizing surfaces, these areas would still be cleaned regularly.

3.  In order to properly self sanitize, it usually takes a minimum of around 2 hours.  Something like a door handle is going to be touched more often than once every two hours, so its effect isn't going to be as helpful as properly sanitizing the handle or hands.

Really though, the cost is the largest reason.  While KingPupPup is right in the copper oxidizes, frequently handled copper will not because the constant friction will wear away the patina.


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

[User]
[Armageddon] Why would NASA hire some random drillers instead of a giant corporation?

They are literally trusting the fate of the world in some dude with poor impulse control and his band of misfits.

Wasn't Exxon or Shell available? Or some other giant corporation with drilling operations all over the world.

They could have provided a drilling machine where every last bolt is accounted for and a professional team following mountains of procedure and documentation.

[Assistant] It gets glossed over but is the entire reason they chose that team. Bruce Willis designed the drills they were bringing into space. NASA stole his patented design and altered it. Unfortunately the alterations caused numerous failures and mechanical issues. They assumed bringing in Bruce he would be able to fix their engineering issues without much fuss. He deduced the entire NASA design was faulty and irreparable. It would be easier to train his own people how to go to space and use a drill they're all familiar with than to retrain NASA astronauts on how to operate a previous generation of drill.


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

[User] ELI5:What's actually making those ticking noises when your car cools down after being shut off?

[Assistant]
A lot of it is because metal likes to expand when it gets hot and contract when it cools down. The borderline microscopic expansion and contraction make lots of little stress points while the material essentially fights itself to either push itself out or pull itself back into shape, and they go "ping" and "tick tick tick" sometimes when the pressure is suddenly released, kind of like canning jar lids you can press the tab in and out to go "clack clack clack" as it flexes.

It makes popping and pinging noises while it's warming up, too, but you don't hear those because the engine is running and you're driving. Wood burning stoves, furnaces, pretty much anything with drastic heat cycles will do this, too.


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

[User] Are we born with our personality, or is it something we develop through experience?

[Assistant]
The majority of it is developed through experience. However, genes also play a role, so a part of it is defined at birth. Both of these claims are proven by twin studies. Twins with the same genes have vastly different personalities. On the other hand identical twins, who are reared apart, have more similar personalities than randomly chosen pairs of people.

A minor addition is that there is some possibility for prenatal environment to affect personality. This can also be considered to fall under the category of personality defined at birth.


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

[User]
Why do some bowls/cups pour clean off the edge, while others run down the side?

Edit: Im stoked. You guys are alright, man.

[Assistant]
It's a balance between gravity and surface tension. One is trying to get the liquid out quickly, and the other is trying to keep the fluid molecules together and stuck to the walls of the container.

So it really depends on how fast you pour (gravity), the shape of the rim (smaller area to stick to, and more water pressure), the material the cup is made from (changing how sticky it is), the texture of the cup (changing the surface area that the fluid can stick to), and the fluid itself (again, changing the surface tension).


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

[User]
Why is it that brake rotors don't technically warp but cylinder heads and blocks can and do?

I'm a mechanic by trade and I went to school for it for many years at night while I was in the early stages of my career but I just recently found out in another sub that brake rotors don't actually warp due to heat. I did some research and it appears from the few minutes I looked into it that brake rotors develop high and low spots due to uneven brake pad wear which causes the pulsation you feel as the driver if there is a problem. According to the research I did because the brake rotors are manufactured at extremely high temperatures they are impervious to the heat generated by the act of braking meaning that if there is an issue causing a pulsation it must be due to something other than a warped rotor. I like many other mechanics have been describing this issue incorrectly for my entire career according to what I read. That aside I got to thinking, why is it that brake rotors can't warp from the act of braking but cylinder heads can warp from overheating? The typical temperature of the coolant in the engine during normal operation is about 200 to 240 degrees Fahrenheit the actual temperature of the metal in the engine I'm not sure of but I would guess it's in the 300-500 Fahrenheit range. I would also guess that during a severe overheat the temperature might double or triple but not reach the temperature of the manufacturing process. Can someone explain how a big chunk of metal can actually warp due to an overheat condition but not a small brake rotor.

[Assistant]
A cylinder head (or block) is a big chunk of aluminium alloy with a great deal of very uneven stress on it. Parts of it are extremely hot, but most of it is nowhere near hot enough to effect its structural integrity. The uneven heating (and thus thermal expansion) and stress have more to do with warping one than softening due to temperatures outside of the region very close to the cylinder. They are also engineered close to tolerance for weight reasons. There is also even more stress if the engine overheats due to water trying to turn into steam.

A brake rotor is a single piece of high tensile steel (much harder and more heat resistant than alloy), engineered to have a great deal of surplus strength because safety trumps weight. It is heated fairly evenly and the stress is relatively even in one direction. By the time they are hot enough all the way through to warp due to getting soft with this stress, you are doing things like boiling your brake fluid, and you have some serious brake fade going on. It wouldn't surprise me if rotors **do** warp under race conditions or if people persist when going down a mountain range a long time after they start to fade, but this is not typical use, and it would also require some asymmetric pressure. Also if they buckled then the car would stop immediately, you wouldn't see them warp a half mm.

Finally, i have seen a slightly-warped brake rotor, but it was on the front wheel of a motorbike that did somersaults through a paddock. It was the massive blow (which completely wrecked the forks and bent the frame) which misaligned the rotor a tiny, barely perceptable amount.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it easy to type without looking but challenging to recall the specific order of keys on the keyboard?

[Assistant]
Muscle memory.  The specific brain-to-nerve-to-muscle connection required to press the B key is seared into your system from thousands of repetitions, but it doesnt also link to the part of your brain that half-assedly remembers that keyboards start with QWERTY.

Youll see this in most physical skills.  Try to describe in words how to run or how to swallow.  Its something your muscles just do without invoking other parts of the brain, and those other parts will struggle to articulate how it works.


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

[User] ELI5: If particles never touch each other, how are things sticky?

[Assistant]
When we say touch we usually mean electron clouds run into each other. Just because theyre not literally touching doesnt mean they cant interact. If the interaction has high attraction, we call that sticky.

Actually touching is bad. Thats nuclear fusion.


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

[User]
[ST] How can anyone speak another language with the UT translating?

for example, the characters like to show off that they can speak Klingon, especially when speaking *to* Klingons, but didn't the universal translator have them hearing klingon the whole time?

[Assistant]
They can turn it off to show another race that they have spent the time to learn their language. This is a huge mark of respect in a time where such a thing is unnecessary. It's the difference between buying someone a car and giving someone one that you built from scratch.

I can't remember the race off-hand but there was one time where the Enterprise D was on a mission and it was very important that Picard greet the alien race in their own language with perfect inflections and pronunciations or it would have been a huge diplomatic *faux pas*.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are there warm and cold spots in bodies of water when out swimming?

What causes this. Was out swimming today and I have always wondered but have never been able to figure it out.

Edit: I was swimming in a lake.

[Assistant] Not an expert, but any chance you were swimming in a lake? There is a phenomenon known as "lake turnover" where the deeper (colder) water rises to the surface. This mostly happens in the summer because of the differences in density between the hot surface water and cold stuff down below.


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

[User]
[Aliens] Why did Ripley believe that "If even one of those things get down here it's all over!"

Why did she expect a single xenomorph to be a threat to an entire planet?

[Assistant]
Because a single Xeno in theory could create an egg (e.g. deleted scenes in the first movie) and from there expand to a queen, more eggs...

Imagine a Xenomorph dropping into the desert in say America, low population density and little military presence. Give it 10 months the Xenos will be established, give it 10 years and mankind will be fighting a way on multiple fronts.

It's an exponential growth pattern with the possibility of going undetected for weeks at a time being extremely aggressive and smart. So yeah... A single Xeno could do a lot of damage if it gets established.


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

[User]
ELI5: What happens if you split a proton?

(See title)

So just before I was reading another ELI5 about Nuclear Energy and the topic of fission. So if fission is splitting the bonds between atoms, what happens if you actually split or slice the particles the atom is actually made of?

Thanks in advance!

[Assistant]
It turns out that quarks - the pieces that make up protons and neutrons - can't be out on their own. A lone quark has so much potential energy in its efforts to go stick to another quark that it can actually spontaneously create other quarks to bond with out of nowhere. It's called *quark confinement*.

So if you input enough energy to blast a proton apart - which is possible and has been done in particle accelerators - you'll create a slew of new quark-based particles out of the energy you put in (but not, for any significant period of time, solitary quarks).

[seriously, the forces sticking quarks together are *insane* - a single pair of quarks are pulled with enough force to suspect a one-ton object against Earth's gravity]


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

[User]
[Doctor Who] How effective are the Dalek ground forces?

They have made themselves terrifying arsenal, yet they still send down lots of ground forces in the events of invasion. Their gunstick is deadly and their armor is very strong, but they also aren't that agile and they see in the lowest camera resolution ever. Aren't there planets with inhabitants that can easily turn talking trashcan with whisker hand upside down, or  vicious predators that strike down their prey from their blindspot?

[Assistant]
Look at Daleks as miniature tanks.

Lots of animals are faster than a tank, more agile, hunt in the shadows but a leopard will never ever be able to damage the tank in any meaningful way.

So sure sneak up on an Abrams and hit it as hard as you can with a rock.


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

[User]
Why is the atomic mass of say, Chlorine-35 known to be about 34.96885 amu, if both one proton and one neutron weigh more than 1 amu?

It doesn't make any sense to me as a math student. I am aware that the atomic mass unit is defined by one twelfth the mass of one atom of Carbon-12, and also that a neutron weighs slightly more than a proton, but since Carbon-12 weighs 12 amu, and it has 6 neutrons and 6 protons,  protons should weigh slightly less than 1 amu, and neutrons should weigh slightly more than 1 amu, should they not?

[Assistant] The reason is that a stable nucleus has less rest energy than its separated constituents (in relativity, the rest energy of a system *is* its mass). You have to spend energy to separate the protons and neutrons inside a nucleus, and that energy is what makes for the difference in mass.


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

[User]
How were the first supercontinents formed?

I was just reading about Pangaea and the supercontinents before it. Was there a particular event that caused land to rise from the water?

[Assistant]
The land did not rise from the water, per se. The land masses had already begun to form by the time there were oceans on earth's surface.

Very close to earth's formation, it was a giant ball of undifferentiated molten material. As it began to cool, that material started to separate based on its density, with the heaviest stuff sinking to the planet's center and the lighter stuff bobbing to the top. The lightest stuff is what makes up the continental landmasses.

Those landmasses aren't static, however. Earth's crust is fragmented into a bunch of tectonic plates that sit atop the outer mantle. This mantle is somewhat plasticky (think a wad of silly putty), and so it flows in a manner of speaking, dragging the tectonic plates around with it. Sometimes the plates collide, scraping off bits of continental crust onto each other.  When all of the continental crust just happens to be accreted together at one time, we call the landmass a "supercontinent." We have good evidence that there have been seven such supercontinents in earth's history. Pangaea was the most recent, occurring about 300 million years ago.  It split apart as the tectonic plates underneath it started flowing away from each other, ripping the continent asunder and creating the Atlantic Ocean.

Source: Second year geology student.


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

[User] Eli5: How is it possible that deserts are super hot at day time and below freezing point at night time?

[Assistant]
Water is an excellent heat sink - it absorbs tons of heat during the day and then releases it at night, cooling the days and warming the nights in most of the world.

But what if you have no water?  No lakes, oceans, puddles, or even plants with water in them?

Then youre relying on the much lower heat capacity of sand, barely 1/5th that of water.  This leads to wild temperature swings as the sun boils the surface during the day and all the heat escapes into cloudless nights.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why our palms don't get pimples

If our hands are so oily and one of the dirtiest parts of our body, why don't they get pimples or acne, like faces do?

[Assistant]
Acne forms as a result dirt and oil build up in hair follicles.  The palms of your hand are one of the *few places on your skin* that don't have hair follicles.

Edit: Fixed random bit of side info that people seem to be getting hung up on even though its already been corrected by others.


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

[User] ELI5:How does insurance assign value to the body part of a musician?

[Assistant]
Insurance is always, ultimately, based on the value of what will be lost.  In the case of a musician, what's lost is the revenue generated from sales of their albums or music, or wages from playing gigs.  This is actually pretty similar to how insurance handles a totaled car - a used car doesn't have a specific, set value, it depends on the exact condition of the car, the mileage, the make, model, and year, the area you're in...a thousand factors.  But they can *estimate* the value based on how much similar cars have sold for.

Likewise, insurance companies can look at the past sales (or wages) of that musician and compare it to similar musicians and estimate how much the insured musician *should* make during the course of their career.  That's how much they pay out in the event of an injury.  Really, when you hear that a musician's arm or throat, they're insuring their *career* which is dependent on that body part.

Based on the projected payout and the likelihood of having to pay out, and based on the income from other people paying into insurance plans, the company has a baseline price to use for negotiation.


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

[User]
ELI5: In mathematics, why are squares of numbers used so prominently in formulas?

I mean, why the square so useful?

[Assistant]
In general, because thats how geometry works.

A square is a common and easy shape. A right-triangle is half a square. A circle is related to a square via , or to a right-triangle via sin/cos. Coordinate systems are either based on squares or circles.

Almost every 2D geometry formula will involve a square. And a huge number of physics problems will have squares in for the same reason.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is everything gigantic on Mars?

So Vallles Marines, I just read, is ridiculously huge, spanning some 3000kms. In comparison to that, the grand canyon seems like a little crack. Also, Olympos Mons is several times as large as Mount Everest. Is there a reason, like tectonic plates or lower gravity or something, that would explain basic landmarks to be so much more gigantic than they are on earth?

[Assistant]
Mars has no active tectonic-plate-like activity. While this means that mountains will not form through new activity, it also means that there's no movement of the surface that would over time equalize it as the vertical features are "shaken" to be more flat. With tectonic activity, valley systems would not be so deep and remain stable.

Another effect is what keeps planets mostly round: gravity. Gravity imposes a limit to the height of a structure over time. Mars has a much weaker gravity, and can therefore have taller mountains remain stable over time (Olympus Mons).

There's also no significant erosion to smooth out features like Valles Marineris.

So, no tectonic activity + low gravity + no erosion = vertical structures are more long-lasting and stable. It also means no new features being formed to erase the old ones.


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

[User] [Dexter's Laboratory] Where does Dexter get all the money for his stuff!?

[Assistant]
We first heard from Dexter in 1996. He stopped broadcasting in 2003 with a change in his broadcasting in 2000. That very suspiciously lines up with the rise of the dot-com bubble in the mid 90s, its burst in 2000, and its decline through the end of 2002.

Seems pretty obvious to me that Dexter bet big on the tech industry, won big, lost big, and ran out of savings before it could recover.


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

[User]
Does the Hippie/New Left movement of the 1960s have any parallels to the modern rise of Leftism, from the rise of Bernie Sanders to loosely organized movements like BLM or Antifa?

So since Black Lives Matter began to become popular in the last few years and since the philosophy of Anti-fascism (Antifa) is facing a resurgence in the wake of Donald Trump, I began notice some patterns that are similar to what happened in the late 60s and the early 70s. Not only is the backlash to Trump similar to the backlash to Nixon when he was elected in 1968, and I noticed parallels with Black Lives Matter with organizations like the Black Panthers and the Civil Rights Movement in general. I was wondering if there was anything else similar to the New Left of the 60s?

[Assistant]
Michael Rosenfeld in "The age of independence" argues that social protests are more common when you have an unusually high number of people in the 'young adult' life stage.  This is the life stage (that he calls "The age of independence") when people move out of their parent's home but have not yet settled down with their own partner, don't have kids, may not have a career yet. People are most likely to protest at this stage because they are outside their parent's social control but also don't have a lot to lose if things turn south.

The connection between the 1960s and today is that in the 1960s there was an unusually high number of baby boomers (born 1945-1963) who were in that "independent life stage" and therefore more apt to protest.  Then they had a bunch of kids, which used to be referred to as the 'baby boomlet' but that generation is now called "millennials."  Millennials are now age 20-35, so square in that "age of independence."


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

[User]
How do you move past "Its subjective" in conversations about art & music?

"Its subjective" or "that's just your opinion", are common answers that come up in conversations about music where disagreements occur.

How do you move past it in your dialogues?

[Assistant]
You don't. This is the topic of Kant's third critique. The idea is to shift the frame of the question: aesthetic judgment is precisely that specific arena in which individual experience is the final arbiter. This nonetheless doesn't exclude characterizations of aesthetic judgments (e.g. the sublime) and it's arguably the first appearance of subjectivity _per se_ in philosophy.

The point is that subjective matters are still real and communicable. If they weren't, we would have a problem.


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

[User] [MCU] How come Dr Strange has to learn how to use the time stone from a book whereas Thanos can adeptly use each infinity stone the second he gets it?

[Assistant]
Thanos has been on this quest for decades, evidence that he already knows what they are. Chances are he's done his research.

Strange is new to magic and sorcery when we meet him.  Everything is new to him and he's just learning.


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

[User]
[General ghosts] If ghosts are stuck in a never ending loop of doing what they did before they died, then is there a way I could kill my employees to work forever for free?

Ghost don't sleep, don't drink coffee, don't poop on the job (do ghosts poop?). Do they need to die in a specific way so they never move on?

[Assistant]
Ghosts are generally stuck in a loop of doing whatever they *felt they were unable to finish* before they died. If your employees didn't care very much about their work and instead had regrets of, say, not watering their plants on their last days alive, you're not going to have a very effective ethereal workforce even if everyone dies on the job.

...Actually, that's a pretty useful self-selection tool for workplace morale, ensuring that the only souls which stick around the office after death are those who are truly devoted to doing good work.

Still, a single-task loop is often going to be rather pointless. For example, the ghost of a hard-working journalist may keep trying to put the same article on your desk day after day rather than writing new material. Some jobs just aren't going to be replaceable with undead labor.

Therefore, I'd suggest finding the hardest-working janitor you can, then burning him alive while he is in the middle of a routine cleaning of the premises. Turn the top section of his mop to ash, char the middle part, and leave the bottom untouched, creating a smooth transition from nonexistence to material. This should allow the ghost to carry his now-partially-intangible mop around the place and do his job, with his mop having enough physicality to beat the tar out of an unwelcome guest if necessary.

Most other jobs are likely to fail due to their everchanging nature. In fact, your unchanging janitor is extremely unlikely to notice and clean any new rooms that you may add to the office later, and surprising table rearrangements may result in cleaning collisions and broken half-ghost mops.


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

[User]
CMV: probability and statistics should be part of the high school core curriculum.

**Edit - we're done here:** It's been demonstrated convincingly that statistical literacy is generally unrelated to the underlying problem, and that it would be much more effective to teach "some very basic philosophy, rhetorical critique, and the underlying psychology of believe".

**Edit - major change:** A better approach would be "specific tasks that encourage further analysis, such as debates, research and other such projects. If you teach that desire for further inquiry and a healthy sense of skepticism, then people don't need specific prior education in stats at all."

I think basic statistical literacy is important to basic functioning in a world that has tons of data flying around on various important topics.  When a lot of important arguments hinge on statistics, it's difficult to critically evaluate the points made without understanding the math.

One example is that people are prone to comparing the risk or benefit of [action] to nothing, not considering the risk or benefit of [inaction].  This problem runs deeper than being acquainted with the math, but I think having some training in thinking that way would encourage thinking it through properly.  For a more immediate association, it's also pretty common for people to compare proportions of [thing] by population without considering the size of the respective populations.  Both of these have prominent current examples, but I want to avoid the distraction of bringing up specific political controversies here.

Not a particularly in-depth argument, but I think it's fairly obvious that a lot of people aren't equipped to reason about important statistics, and I don't see a major downside to trying to change that.  That said, I haven't given it a ton of thought, so I'm open to the possibility that I overlooked something obvious (e.g. evidence that it wouldn't work).

To address "what class would this replace?", I think it would work fine in place of an existing math class.

[Assistant]
We have it as part of high school here in France, it doesn't make the situation really better.

Proper explanation of the scientiffic method is a start, sure. But a bigger problem is the public trust in institutions. After a while of being bombarded with conveniently presented statistics (when ot outright lying) you start to not care anymore and assume that whatever data was already manipulated to fit a speciffic narrative.

It's already a lot of work to even recognize the bias involved, and it require way more than basic knowledge in statistics.


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

[User] Why does fresh prepared rice, nice soft rice, dry out when sealed immediately and refrigerated?

[Assistant]
There are two kind of starch in rice: amylose and amylopectin. Amylose is a long, straight starch that rigidifies when it cools. Amylopectin is stockier and branched in structure, and it gelatinizes under heat.

 Long grain ricethe rice most prone to hardening in the fridgehas a high proportion of amylose. The shorter the grain, the less amylose and the more amylopectinwhich is why shorter grains are used for risotto and sushi.

There's a Good Eats episode that does a good job of explaining this.


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

[User] ELI5: Why isn't alchemy possible? Isn't it just protons, neutrons, and electrons that move from one atom to another?

[Assistant]
I'll have to find the article to confirm it, but the Large Hadron Collider has the capability to produce 250 atoms of pure gold per second.

So yes, "just" rearranging subatomic particles is possible at this point, but it's prohibitively expensive:

To yield one mole of gold (about 197 grams) it would take around 7.61x10^13 years of continual operation and at a cost of over one billion dollars for each one of those years .

You would get a much better return in your lifetime by investing in a slave army and mining for ore with shovels.


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

[User] [Stargate] In the movie why didnt the researchers just do process of elimination to guess the 7th symbol? Why did they need Jackson ?

[Assistant] Everything about it implied only 6 chevrons were needed. IIRC there's 32 symbols and thousands of combinations. Going through them individually was taking too long so they asked dr Jackson to give it a shot. He got lucky and them picking abydos was even luckier. Though the movie implies only a single destination for the gate and abydos being in a seperate galaxy unlike the show.


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

[User] [Hunger Games] What exactly were the apocalyptic events that caused the world to be what it is today, and how long ago was it?

[Assistant] It's difficult to say exactly because most of the records from before Panem was created are closely guarded by the Capitol. The most likely event based on what we know about early 21st century (which is perhaps the last known era of global stability) a nuclear war broke out that rendered most of the planet inhabitable and barren. I'd hazard to say that a couple hundred years have passed since then...


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

[User]
Why do I feel better immediately after eating even thought the food hasn't been digested yet?

I know the food hasn't been processed, so my body hasn't had any real benefit from it yet. So why does my body feel so satisfied? Is there any benefit from my body reacting this way?

[Assistant] Well, eating (and sometimes even thinking of eating) releases endorphins into the blood and increases parasympathetic neuronal activity so that your serotonin uptake receptors will be more active and your body will be in a more relaxed state. This will end up making you feel happier/more content so that your body is prepared to begin the digestive process by releasing more saliva. Digestion begins with saliva, so your body does begin to break down starches very early, but absorption will not happen until your intestines. Hope this helped a little :)


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

[User]
[The Matrix] What exactly does the Red Pill do?

When Morpheus gives Neo the pill, Neo wakes up in the real world after ingesting it in the Matrix.
What kind of code would allow for a person to just get out of the system like that? Were any of the ancient programs (I. E. The Oracle, The Architect, The Merovingian) involved?

[Assistant] IIRC it contains a trace program that allows the Nebuchadnezzar's crew to pick up Neo in the real world. The  way he's unplugged (thrown down a sewer-like chute) tends to indicate that it fools the Matrix into thinking that he's dead and should be recycled.


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

[User]
Why do we need to urinate such large volumes of water, rather than retaining it and drinking less frequently?

If our body needs so much water to function, why do we constantly urinate it out? Could we not retain more of the water, and urinate a smaller amount of more concentrated waste?

[Assistant]
Many desert dwelling mammals do produce smaller volumes of more concentrated urine. However, there is a price paid in energy for that transport. Everything is a balancing act between energy and available resources.
To an animal that lives in a climate with plentiful water, there is a disadvantage to spending energy concentrating urine for no real gain. When starvation is a bigger danger than thirst, energy conservation wins, when water is the limiting resource, and stillsuits are not available, conservation of every drop is more essential than conserving every calorie of energy.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40K] The Inquisition Vs The Adeptus Arbites

It seems to me that the roles of these two organizations overlap somewhat, with perhaps the deciding difference being accountability  Arbites do actually follow laws and codes and consider things like legal precedent and whatnot in their actions.

Despite their reputation, the Arbites also has investigative ranks, such as detectives who investigate possible crimes as well as chasteners who extract information from suspects.

The Inquisition focuses most of its efforts inward, effectively trying to identify and destroy covert incursions that obviously already run afoul of Imperial law.

For instance, the black market trade of xenos artefacts will attract the ire of the Ordo Xenos (or Ordo Hereticus) just as it would the Arbites.

As well, at the highest level, a Judge of the Arbites holds nearly the same powers as an Inquisitor.

So why are there two organizations?

[Assistant] Arbites are law enforcement, their duty is vigilance in ensuring life goes according to Imperial Creed. The job of Inquisitors is to deal with the enemies of the Imperium in a capacity beyond standard warfare. They root out cults, exorcise daemons, manipulate xenos, on a level far more complex and far reaching than the arbites.


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

[User]
What happens to water that is put into freezing temperature but unable to expand into ice due to space constrains?

Always been curious if I could get a think metal container and put it in liquid nitrogen without it exploding would it just remain a super cooled liquid or would there be more.

Edit: so many people so much more knowledgable than myself so cheers . Time to fill my thermos and chuck it in the freezer (I think not)

Edit 2: Front page?!?!?

[Assistant]
One of two things happen:

The container fails and leaks (this happens when you put a beer bottle in the freezer for too long).

The water forms an exotic phase of ice with a different crystal structure that can only exist at high pressures.

The first is more likely.


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

[User] [Star Trek]Remember The planet where everyone is a clone of one of the same five scientists. How do you decide who does the shit jobs if everyone in your society is the clone of a PHD?

[Assistant]
Im not familiar with that planet but Id offer the following general options:

* Have a lottery where everyone can be drafted to do a few years of shitty labor, so it becomes something like jury duty.

* Assign everyone X number of shit job hours, and then let people trade them around so it becomes a form of currency.

* Lie to those assigned to the job telling them that they are defective copies.


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

[User]
If a potential PhD student asked to pay you a visit before application, what do you expect from the student during the visit?

I was emailing a professor a while back if I could come visit her and her lab as I want to apply to her lab for PhD. She agreed. Now I'm scared and lost as I don't know what she expects from the visit. What should I do to impress her? Is it okay to be brutally honest*? Can you give me questions that a PI would ask? Any advice would be highly appreciated. Thanks!

*My research experience is kind of all over the place. They're all about one research topic but they're not like a flow that aims to achieve one thing. They're all good and valuable experiences but it's like they don't make up one story or they're different beginnings of different things. It's not my fault. I can't freely do what I want to do due to a lot of things, mostly funding and shitty equipments. And also my current PI keeps changing her mind.

[Assistant]
>  They're all good and valuable experiences but it's like they don't make up one story or they're different beginnings of different things.

That's fine; you're not a grad student already so you're not expected to be pulling together huge amounts of disparate work to form a big cohesive thesis.  A variety of skills is good; a potential supervisor will be looking more at whether you have some idea of what research is like (so you know what you're getting into), whether you're reliable/interested/take initiative, and whether you have good references.

Use this visit to try and demonstrate these things, and to find out whether you're a good fit for each other in terms of management style and research interests.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Was C-3PO a kit or already partially assembled or something or did Anakin really assemble a fully-functioning artificial intelligence out of spare parts?

[Assistant]
Anakin built him out of spare parts, but one of those spare parts was a functional droid brain.  Also 3P0 units were an existing line of droids.

So basically Anakin was showing some good skill as a mechanic, but not necessarily programming or engineering.  He didn't have to do any design work, just assembly and maybe a little bit of improvisation due to substandard parts.


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

[User] How do swept wings differ from straight wings in performance?

[Assistant] Swept wings increase Mach crit. Basically the aircraft can go faster before supersonic flow starts to develop on the wing. They produce less lift and have higher stall speeds. Stalls will start at wingtips and work inwards where your standard Hershey bar will stall at the root and work out.


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

[User]
Why does it seem animals not only suffer less muscular/skeletal injuries (with less warming up, stretching, etc) - but when they do suffer an injury seem to heal up ridiculously fast, without the aid of medical treatment?

So basically, why do lions, gazelles, cheetahs, etc never really get hurt despite sprinting all out without warming up or stretching?  To boot, when they do get hurt they seem to heal up even faster than humans can with the added benefit of medical treatment.

[Assistant]
Well, for one, stretching before exercise has been shown to have no improvement on injuries, and may even make some worse. It's purely a (spurious) human development.

Now, the other thing to note is that animals live harder, shorter lives than we do. Oops, no predators! So remember that you're looking at younger animals usually... and younger humans are quite resilient. In an adrenaline rush, humans can easily shrug off a sprained ankle, and a youngster will heal it to the point of walking (albeit painfully) in less than a week.


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

[User]
Why are red blood cells safe from natural killer cells?

I'm currently reading Philipp Dettmer's excellent book, *Immune*. In it, he explains that unlike other immune cells, natural killer cells identify infected/corrupt cells by (among other things) detecting the absence of MHC Class I molecules on the surface of the cell, which are normally in abundance on all healthy nucleated cells in the human body.

In a footnote, he explains that infected red blood cells are safe(r?) from NK cells because they don't have MHC Class I molecules anyway.

What's not explained (as far as I can tell; I haven't quite finished the book) is how the NK cell knows the absence of MHC I on a red blood cell is normal. Is there some other marker that says "I'm a red blood cell" or is there more to activating NK cells than the reduction of this molecule? Or can the NK cells simply not trigger apoptosis in red blood cells for some reason?

I'm not sure if I am missing something or my understanding is just fundamentally incorrect and I should go back and re-read a few chapters.

[Assistant]
So the way that NK cells function is by responding to activating signals and inhibitory signals through their activating (NKG2C, KIR-2DS, 3DS)  and inhibiting receptors (NKG2A, KIR 2DL, 3DL). The inhibitory receptors recognize MHC I, which recruits protein phosphatases (SHP-1 and 2) and inhibit signaling. The activating receptor induces phosphorylation and activates the killing function of NK cells.

Erythrocytes lack both activating and inhibitory signals, so the NK cells are not receiving a signal that tells them that the RBC is stressed and needs to be destroyed (no activating signal to tip the balance towards destruction). There are also many other signals that help the immune cells distinguish between self vs. non-self; the one that is usually referenced is CD47.


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

[User] Is there a word for when organisations or political movements change ideology but retain the same name?

[Assistant] In classic organizational theory there are the dual concepts of mission creep, where organizations change focus in response to external pressures (e.g., Zald and Denton 1963), and goal displacement, where change results from internal pressures (e.g., Selznick 1943). For a great example of this sort of thing, take a look at Messingers 1955 paper in the American Sociological Review on the Townsend Movement.


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

[User] ELI5: Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be remarkably easy to get people arrested by carrying a usb stick with child porn and dragging it onto other peoples computers?

[Assistant]
That's the easy part. The hard part is enduring having your shit tossed, when the accused starts listing all the people who had access to their computer.

Crimes against people you know are hard to get away with, because people have motivation and that is usually easy to determine and trace.

If you're talking about picking random people, I'd have to say it's a lot easier to get away with, but also requires you to be a pretty sick puppy in the first place. Generally speaking, people don't gain anything from sending someone they don't know to jail.

---

Your point is valid though. Even a couple of decades into the general availability of personal computers, most people have no idea how to responsibly secure them, or are too lazy to do so, because "login passwords are a pain"... and they wouldn't know how to disable USB boot in their BIOS, if you offered them a million dollars. Some general regard for the technology is needed. Perhaps in another 20 years, tech and technical literacy will come together a bit more.


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

[User]
[House M.D.] Why was Foreman made the Dean of Medicine?

Surely one of the department heads would be more qualified, and I imagine the hospital would have been trying to disassociate with House as much as possible. With that in mind, why pick one of his long time team members?

[Assistant]
House's reputation was basically untouched by his stint in Prison/the psych ward. What were people going to do, think less of him? Everyone already knew he was an asshole, and most people were aware he was an addict. PrincetonPlainsboro (mostly Cuddy) had already decided to ignore this in favor of the results he could give them. He lost 15 patients during his career at the hospital (Doylist: 177 episodes, assuming 1 patient per episode is a 92% success rate, which is fucking absurd)

With that in mind, the board deciding to promote Dr. Foreman doesn't seem as bizarre. He had learned from the absolute best in the field, and had experience handling the worst. (coincidentally the same person) After Cuddy's departure the board probably decided they needed someone a bit rougher around the edges to get shit done.


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

[User]
Why are the primary colors for light different from the primary colors for paint?

In light, all colors come from green, red, or blue. In paint, all colors come from yellow, magenta (almost red), or cyan (almost blue). What is the reason for this difference?

[Assistant]
The difference is that light is additive, while paint is subtractive. I'll try to explain.

If you mix all the colors of light, what do you end up with? White light. But if you mix all the colors of paint what color do you end up with? Black paint. This is the primary difference. With light, you are mixing wavelengths together, adding them up to some color. With paint, you are removing colors. For instance, red paint absorbs all wavelengths except for red. And if you have green paint, it will absorb all wavelengths except for green. So, mixing them together, you will absorb all wavelengths.

This is why with light you want to use the primary colors- colors which are a single wavelength, while with paint you want to use secondary colors- colors which reflect multiple wavelengths. For instance, yellow reflects red and green, while magenta reflects red and blue. So, mix yellow and magenta together, and you'll get red (since yellow absorbs everything but red and green, magenta everything but red and blue, leaving only red).


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

[User]
[Fallout New Vegas] How was Benny going to get into the Lucky 38?

When we arrive, House just lets us in, but this courtesy isnt offered to anyone else, especially not Benny, who House already distrusts.

How was Benny planning to get past the giant metal doors and army of securitrons? Even if he got that far im sure House could have just shut off the elevator, which is seemingly the only way to the penthouse.

[Assistant] He was working on a backdoor patch into the network from his suite.  Plus he would have had total control over the securitons from the bunker under Caesar's camp to threaten Mr House with.  He didn't know all the details of Mr House's plan but he knew enough that getting the chip would have given him a major bargaining chip to blackmail house with.


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

[User]
Confused on how mutation in evolution works?

I am 15 years old and just get getting in to depth in evolution and have one question: How does the body know (also if it knows) how and when to mutate to do something. Example: How the Giraffe formed a long neck to eat leafs off trees. Thank you (sorry if I asked the question wrong).
Thanks everybody!!!

[Assistant] You're looking at it wrong. Something doesn't decide that it needs to adapt and then sets about changing itself. Mutations happens and the ones that confer an advantage to the organism remain (because in some way they increase the chances of breeding) and get passed on and so it continues.


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

[User]
What was the point of Snape killing Dumbledore?

So, dumbledore's plan was to have Snape kill him, since he was dying anyway, cementing Snape's position with Voldemort and making him a more effective spy.

But a spy isn't much good if they don't have anyone to report to. And since dumbledore didn't let anyone else in on this plan, no one on the 'light' side knew of Snape's true allegiance. What did Snape actually achieve after Dumbledore died, besides trying to soften the effect on Hogwarts?

[Assistant]
There were three points to it. One was to secure Snape's position with Voldemort so he could continue to help the "good guys" from within. The other was the Dumbledore was in quite a bit of pain from trying to destroy one of the horcruxes and would have eventually died from that curse anyway. Snape was ending his suffering. This also had the benefit of preventing Draco's soul being damaged from murdering Dumbledore.

The final, and most important was to make sure the Elder Wand lost all its power. Dumbledore believed that if Snape killed him and he was ready and willing do die, it would not count as a magical defeat to the wand, and thus transfer ownership to Snape or anyone else. Dumbledore hoped that if he let himself die, the wand's immense power would just fade away. Unfortunately, Draco had disarmed him just before, so the ownership transferred to him unknowningly.


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

[User]
[Legend of Korra] How did Amon learn the "remove bending" technique?

Avatar Aang used the "remove bending technique" in his Avatar state to stop the fire lords bending. I always thought of it as more of a spiritual technique since bending has spiritual origins.

But, in legend of korra it is said that Amon used his bloodbending to remove bending from his victims. Does this mean that the avatar uses a specific form of blood bending to take and give bending to and from benders. Or does it mean that Amon was spiritually connected and could emulate what Aang did 70 Yeats ago just from hearing a story his dad told him.

This is really the only thing that bugged me about the series. Also, legend of Korra season three premieres on June 27th!!

[Assistant]
Amon wasn't doing the same thing as Aang at all. Aang bent the energy within a person - the most ancient and fundamental form of bending, and something that can only be done by creatures with strong connections to the spirits. Amon merely used bloodbending to block the person's chakras. We know that these chakras can be manipulated physically because Aang's seventh chakra was locked when he was shot in the back with lightning, and it was unlocked when his back slammed into a protruding rock during his fight with Ozai. Thus, a very skilled bloodbender like Amon should be able to block the chakras concerning bending by causing some minor but precise internal injuries or redirecting blood flow.

As for where he learned this technique, he likely invented it himself. In the time between leaving the Northern Water Tribe and showing up in Republic City, he must have studied bending in depth and learned about the chakras. Perhaps he got the idea after reading about Aang's chakras getting blocked. He probably would have experimented with benders in remote villages to avoid alerting the authorities that such a technique existed before it was ready. Or perhaps he used animals - some animals are capable of bending, after all.


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

[User] [Red dwarf] wouldn't there be loads of stuff left over from the cat civilisation everywhere?

[Assistant]
The cat civilisation evolved in the sealed cargo holds, so everything was contained in that area and it was rare for Lister to take a trip down there.

Kryten probably sees it all the time as he goes foraging through the holds, looking for any supplies that the cats didn't eat, but Lister has little interest in a civilisation whose greatest accomplishment was a combined hair curler/dryer.

The Cat couldn't care less about the old stuff, as soon as he got out of the hold, he began the long process of claiming everything else on board Red Dwarf and making sure everyone knew it was his. It would be rare for anything from that civilisation to make it up to the sleeping quarters where Lister and Rimmer lived most of the time.


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

[User] I was just learning about tensors and came across the fact that all scalars are not tensors. What is an example of a scalar that is not a tensor? (Same with vectors, what is a vector that's not a tensor?)

[Assistant]
A tensor algebra is constructed from a vector space V over a field F. If a tensor space is constructed from a vector space V over a field F, then all vectors of V are by definition tensors of rank 1 and all scalars in F, by definition, tensors of rank 0. In that sense every vector and scalar is a tensor.

One can of course think of more elaborate situations, where several vector spaces or fields are involved. In this context if you only construct the tensor algebra of one of these, it might then be reasonable to say that not all vectors (or scalars) are tensors.


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

[User]
I don't believe lobbying is ethically or morally right. CMV.

I understand the basics of lobbying (specifically in the United States), but I don't believe it is *ethically or morally sound. I do believe lobbying should exist though, just somehow in a different form.*

Let's take the United States recently passed "Obamacare" for instance. The insurance companies were lobbying to have the bill passed. These insurance comapnies obviously have quite a bit of capital to hire the best of the best to lobby for them, so how is this right? The "Average Joe American" could be against the bill, but how can he voice his opinion in a prominent way that's on par with the insurance companies?

I feel bills are passed based on the opinion of whoever throws the most money out for ads, lobbyists, etc, and therefor silences those who have opposing view points. CMV

*edited for clarity*

[Assistant]
I don't think you *do* understand the basics of lobbying. Most people don't. They conceptualize lobbying as some kind of magic process, where money goes in the hole and, if you've put enough money in, the result comes out.

But in reality, lobbying is just talking to politicians to try to convince them that what you want is right. How can it be immoral for lobbyists to talk to politicians, but not immoral for *you* to talk to politicians?


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

[User]
[Animorphs] Why don't the Yerks start their invasion of Earth hot?

I get that they prefer the slow, Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style takeover, but it seems to me that they have more than enough resources/manpower to run a quick, effective campaign.

It looks like European settlers trying to politically coup the Iroquois.

[Assistant]
Its revealed that the Visser (the Yeerk form of General or Warlord) who had discovered Earth and first infiltrated the society had fallen in love with another Yeerk, and using their hosts, reproduced sexually instead of the normal method of fission, where a Yeerk would die to create hundreds of offspring from its corpse. The Yeerk who would be known as Visser One fell in love with the children (there were twins), and feared deeply that an active hot invasion involving open warfare would result in the death of the children. As such, the Visser organized a valid way of covert infiltration that came to be known as the Sharing, a social organization that was in truth a front for discovering voluntary hosts. With multiple recordings to serve as proof-of-concept, Visser One showed this to the Yeerk Ruling Body, the Council of Thirteen.

Though other Warlords such as Visser Three wanted open warfare, the Council overruled him and kept the covert infiltration as the method of warfare due to Visser Ones proof and fears that open warfare would result in an escalated war where their main enemies, the Andalites, would destroy the new Host race, the Humans, just like they did to the Hork-Bajir once they discovered how important the Humans were to the Yeerks. The humans were special not because they were physically exceptional, but because there were so many of them. There are millions of Andalites, a powerful galactic power. There are billions of humans. Keeping this race and its importance secret was paramount.

Ultimately, both Visser Three and the Council were correct. When Visser Three started open warfare, his forces dominated Earths military and he quickly set up Yeerk pools to get thousands of hosts infested at a time. At the same time, the Andalites had caught up to the Yeerks plans and indeed decided to destroy all humans to keep the Yeerks from such a great victory by igniting Earths atmosphere with their weapons, killing the vast majority of humans. Only the Animorphs kept the Andalites from destroying humanity at the end of the war.


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

[User] [Judge Dredd] Has Dredd ever shown uncharacteristic compassion/turned a blind eye or even let off a perp?

[Assistant]
In the movie *Dredd* (originally billed *Dredd 3D*), Judge Anderson objectively failed her field assessment by losing her Lawgiver to a perp, but Dredd passed her regardless.

In that same movie, there was a vagrant sitting in the entrance to Peach Trees, and Dredd told him to not be there when he got back, rather than sending him directly to an IsoCube. Though this could be simply because Dredd had more important things to worry about at the moment.


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

[User]
What's happening in our brain during that time when we try to remember something?

When I know something but am not able to remember it my brain sometimes needs seconds/minutes/hours to "find" these information in the "archive". Do we know what's going on during these process and why we have to think some time, cause the information is already somewhere available.

[Assistant]
Memories are stored in the strength of the synapses between neurons.  When you have a hard time remembering, it's because a particular pathway in the brain isn't very strong, and so when you try to connect to that memory, you end up going down the wrong route, and you end up thinking of something besides what you were trying to remember.  If you continue to try to think of it, you just end up reinforcing the wrong pathway, which makes it really difficult to find the right one.  Since these neural pathways for short-term memories lose strength over time, a lot of times you may have to wait for these "wrong" pathways to weaken, before you're able to access the right one.  Either that, or until your brain effectively stumbles upon this memory by accessing it via a different route.

That's also why meditation is useful as a means of clearing your mind; it can allow you to clear out the temporary pathways from short-term memories, and makes it easier to access long-term memories.

That being said, there's still quite a lot we don't know about the human brain, so it's hard to say too much about it with any certainty.


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

[User] [Discworld] Why was Lord Vetinari so terrified of mimes?

[Assistant]
I don't recall him being terrified. Just... unforgiving.

The Assassin's guild, where Vetinari was trained, was right nexto and in fact shared a wall with the Clowns Guild, and in many ways familiarity breeds contempt. But consider what Mimes are in relation to clowns:

Clowns are noisy, sloppy, graceless, tragic parodies of humanity, in general. They exist to be laughed at, not with. They are the lowest common denominator in any room, including rooms that include Foul Ole Ron.

Contrast, if you will, with the mime. Mimes are silent, precise, and graceful. In many ways, they represent the highly educated and highly trained assassin, but lower all of that elegant precision to *clowning*. They are an affront to the sensibilities of a master assassin with a Linguistics major and a waste of the training the represent.


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

[User]
[GTA V ONLINE] Are all mutes psychopathic?

Hate to label people here, but walking through Los Santos it really seems like it. And all the heists in the news-done by mutes! Coincidence?

[Assistant]
This was actually made a point of study. After thorough psychological research by the University we discovered that it's the opposite effect - psychopaths tend to be mute. It's an unusual and clearly local phenomenon as it's a symptom not observed in most cases outside this city.

The leading theory is that these individuals suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder, known commonly as Psychopathy. This disorder is associated with higher risk of arrest and violent crimes. (Although it's not guaranteed - many corporate CEOs score quite high on these same tests.) Unusually for the disease, in San Andreas and particularly Los Santos we see that the disease progresses to a point that the sufferers no longer see other people as real. For them, it is as though we were all fictional characters. They see no point in talking to "fake" people and so do not except when absolutely necessary.


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

[User] [Warhammer 40k] Is the Emperors psychic power manifesting as gold energy a thing unique to him or do all psykers have their own colors when their powers manifest?

[Assistant] Ravenor shows us that spirit projection and displays of psykana are under the control of the caster - he can choose the colour and form of his powers. Now, this may not be the case for lesser psykers, but for at least the Alpha+, it seems to be a choice.


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

[User]
[Stargate] How does the Stargate know when to close the wormhole?

Sure sometimes they shut it off from the base. But often it shuts off by itself at exactly the moment it needs to.

[Assistant]
With a DHD it won't shut down while there's still matter travelling through it so you can hold a wormhole open by sticking an arm in it and staying still, at least until the 38 minute hard limit without extra power from something like a ZPM.

A dialing computer can override the normal DHD safeties (or it just wasn't programmed to respect them in the first place) but they still tried to implement as many features as they could, so unless someone specifically orders it, if you send a shutdown command when people are retreating through the wormhole from another stargate it won't actually shut the wormhole until they all exit, not a second sooner or later.

Also note that a lot of the time we do hear "thunk" noises of enemy troops materialising into the iris because it didn't shut down conveniently when our heroes finished materialising and the iris had to be closed quickly to prevent already in-transit enemies coming through alive and in fighting form.


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

[User] ELI5 If our stomach acid is so strong, why do things that make us sick/give us food poisoning not get destroyed during digestion?

[Assistant]
Your stomach acid isn't very strong (or more properly, concentrated), in the scheme of things. Much of the work is done by enzymes, in conjunction with the acid. Furthermore, the acid is produced as needed. You don't walk around with half a litre of concentrated acid sloshing around.

The acid is produced by special cells. Some people, like me, have over active ones. We take drugs known as proton pump inhibitors, so we don't make too much acid (protons).


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

[User] [Star Trek] Why is there horrible lighting on DeepSpace 9 in the evil, mirror universe? Are Evil People opposed to clear, good lightning, which is fairly cheap and promotes productivity among your slaves?

[Assistant] Cardassians do not like bright lights, and handle darkness much better than humans. The mirror universe station is in the hands of the Cardassians, therefore it still uses their lighting style. When they retook the station from the Federation as part of the Dominion's advance, the same thing happens. They also amp up the humidity and temperature, but that's something you'd only notice if you were there in person.


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

[User]
[ELI5] How to internet service providers, manipulate how fast or slow your internet connection is without any of their software on your device?

I've noticed some local ISPs have different rates for different speeds. How do they do accurately choke your internet connection without having to do anything to your device?

[Assistant]
Imagine a water hose.  On one end is connected a garden sprayer.  The other end is connected to the water faucet.

If you squeeze the handle, you can control how much water comes out the sprayer.  But the guy standing at the faucet can begin reducing the amount of water coming to the sprayer.  If he reduces the water enough, it doesn't matter how much you squeeze the sprayer.

The water is your internet speed.  You and your sprayer are all your internet gear (modem, router, etc.). The guy at the faucet is your ISP.


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

[User] What are the functional differences between a Universal Basic Income, Negative Income Tax, and a Guaranteed Minimum Income?

[Assistant]
Sometimes those terms are used interchangeably.. and sometimes each type has different models of how it operates..

But generally, Universal Basic Income is a flat amount granted to every individual regardless of income..
For example, every citizen receives $1000 per month..

With Negative Income Tax people below a certain level get a stipend that is based on a percentage of the difference between a threshold amount and ones income level..
For example, if the threshold amount is $20,000 and someone earns $10,000 and there is a negative income tax rate of 25% that person would get $2500 added to their income..

Guaranteed Minimum income is a lot looser to define and can entail many different kind of strategies. Ultimately there is some kind of minimum level of income identified and only people who qualify in some way receive the benefit/transfer or whatever you want to call it.


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

[User] eli5: Why does the U.S. need to import oil when we are the largest crude oil producer in the world?

[Assistant]
I have seen many partial answers to this here, largely because this is a very broad question. Trying to wrap this up into one. There are three main reasons with individual complexities:

1) Existing infrastructure was designed to use specific combinations of oil. Not all crude oil is the same, and the chemical properties vary significantly depending on which basin it was produced from. America produces primarily light oils while Canada and Russia produce heavier oils. American refinery infrastructure (the massive chemical plants that break the crude oil into gas, gasoline, diesel, heating oil, solids, etc.) was designed to refine a blend of lighter and heavier crude oil. Replacing this infrastructure, especially in the current American legislative environment, would be *extremely* expensive.

2) The Jones Act: it is generally illegal to ship things from one U.S. port to another unless the vessel is domestically owned and flagged. Because the vessels must be owned, operated, and flagged domestically, the cost of operation increases dramatically to comply with environmental, labor, and safety laws. This is for a number of national policy reasons, but it does limit domestic transport of oil to rail, pipeline, or truck, all of which are more expensive than by water. If, however, the vessel is carrying oil from a foreign port, it does not have to comply with any of these regulations. It is important to remember that transportation commonly accounts for anywhere from 20%-80% of the total cost per unit depending on the consumer.

3) Strategic underproduction: unlike almost every other major oil producing nation, the energy industry is not nationalized in the United States. As a result of this, private companies must lease the mineral right from either private or public land. The federal government has long been cautious to limit how much development of federal land they allow each year in order to ensure that America is the last nation to run out of oil. The vast majority of American oil lies offshore in federally managed waters, meaning that the government determines when and how quickly to lease out plots. All lease auctions stopped for during the first year-ish of Bidens presidency in an effort to encourage the transition to renewables, but the Inflation a reduction Act partially resumed this process to curb rising oil costs as Russia continues to harm global economies, ensure that companies continue to invest in infrastructure so that there is still domestic expertise, and ensure that there would be enough support for the bill.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does putting a wet paper towel around a can in the freezer cool it so fast?

[Assistant]
The water transfers cold into the can faster than air. Or, said more correctly, the water draws heat out of the can and into the surrounding (freezer) air faster than the aluminum is able to do it on it's own.

Think about it like this. If you have a wet paper towel that's been sitting out on the counter all day (so it's room temperature), and you put your hand on it, does it feel colder, warmer or the same as putting your hand on the (dry) counter or a room temperature soda can? It feels colder because it can extract the heat from your body faster. Same reason a marble kitchen table or leather couch feels cold even though they're the same temperature as everything else.


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

[User] Eli5 how did Germany become rich after ww1 and ww2 debt?

[Assistant]
WW1 debt and WW2 debt are 2 totaly different things.

After WW1, Germany was forced to pay huge amounts to the victorious nations.

inability to pay these amounts led to huge economic downfall in Germany

Which in turn, resulted in the rise of the Nazi's.

People in Germany felt treated unfairly and resented countries like France and England for it.

and of course, a lot of the anger was focused in racial hate, mostly towards jews.

After WW2, the western allies wernt eager to repeat that mistake.

So instead of forcing reperation payments on Germany, they invested in the country.

The Marshall plan was focused on rebuilding Germany as a stable, secure country.

Dont forget that after WW2, a lot of leaders were already nervously eyeing the USSR.

Nobody knew exactly how far they would try to push their expansion.

So investing in Germany was also investing in a strong border against communism.

So especially the US invested heavily in Germany.

To make it strong and safe, AND of course to make it an economical partner. Since the US had huge amounts of production and Germany had a huge need for just about anything the US could make.

Investing in Germany was also economically sound, since they would spend that money on American goods.


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

[User]
Do astronauts on the space station get sick?

If astronauts go up with no illness (quarantined beforehand), could the common cold manifest itself on the space station when there is no contact with anyone else?

[Assistant]
I just did a research paper on this subject! While it doesn't happen too often, some dormant pathogens can become active after the body is exposed to the stresses of being in space.

Edit: Space is a very stressful place and it takes a toll on our immune system, this allows for dormant pathogens as well as normal bacteria to "take hold" and cause illness. Though, because of the regulations in place there's never really been a medical issue from it.

So, in short yes it is possible and happens.


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

[User]
Why can't nuclear power plants be scaled down more? Or, if they can, why arn't people doing it?

Specifically, If i wanted to build an MSR in my backyard, to power my house or something, what would stop me from doing it? Is it just too cost prohibitive, or is there something about the nature of these devices that makes them only viable at large scales?

Edit: Thank you all for your responses, I am currently playing around with Genetic programming, and was wondering if it was going to be a waste of my time to try and simulate a more efficient system. I'm starting to think it might be.... Oh well, Learn something new every day.

[Assistant]
The amount of neutrons that will escape from the surface of a reactor will be higher for a smaller reactor, and so you need to do various things to counter that if you are to keep your reactor in a critical (operating) state.

The cost of getting a reactor design & a reactor build location certified doesn't really scale, and so you'd have to pay the same to build a tiny (lets say, 5 kW) reactor for your backyard as Westinghouse or GE would for a new 2 GW one. The US is particularly bad for this type of inflexible regulatory scheme, but the same is generally true elsewhere too. This is why one a company has secured a license to build a reactor at one location, they will generally build 4 or so all together.


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

[User]
How do we know what exoplanets look like?

If the planets are hundreds and thousands of light-years away, how do we know what they look like and their characteristics? Also because of how long it takes for the light to reach us, is there a possibility that we are looking at a planet that may not exist in present time?

[Assistant] By in large we don't know what they look like, just an incomplete combination of the orbit, mass, and radius. For a limited number of planets, we have some idea of the atmospheric composition and/or cloud cover. Are you thinking of artist's representations?


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

[User] [Spider-Man] How have Spidey's villains combated his Spider-Sense power?

[Assistant]
Misdirection, brute force, speed.

Spidey's spider sense is really nothing more than a sensitivity to incoming danger. All you need is to create false positives to distract him, enough brute force that it doesn't matter he sees it coming or be faster than spidey.

Villains like the lizard have given spiderman a sound trashing on occasion simply because he's bloody fast himself and he can give spiderman such a battering that it hardly matters that spidey feels it coming.

Doc Oc occasionally simply overwhelms spiderman because even if he feels 2 tentacles coming, that still leaves Oc with two hands and two more tentacles to attack with.

Mysterio can create a ton of illusions that all distract spiderman leaving him unsure of what is real and what isn't.


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

[User] ELI5: How do plot twists work? How do authors hide it from us and why can't we "unsee" it afterwards?

[Assistant]
A good plot twists hides the important things in the details. E.g. on the first day the narrator walks a trail and takes 10 mins, the next day they start walking when the bell strikes 3, then barely made it in time at the end of the trail to a 3:30 tea party. The author could make some spectacle at the tea party to distract you from the time. They've hidden the fact that the narrator must have done something in that 20 mins in the story without drawing your attention. Once you know what happens in the 20 mins,  that 20 mins will stick out like a sore thumb because now you know to look for it.

A bad plot twist just comes out from nowhere and is a deus ex machina.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does lightning strike in a zig-zag pattern?

What causes lightning to strike in zig-zag patterns instead of just a straight line? Be it cloud to ground or cloud to cloud, what causes the direction of the lightning?

[Assistant] Lightning will follow the path of least electrical resistance to reach the ground. However, that path is not always (practically never) straight down. Some patches of air will have slightly more electrical resistance than other patches at the moment the lightning strikes, and the charge will flow along the path of least resistance.


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

[User] [The Elder Scrolls] When Nords die, they go to Sovngarde. Where do the other races go?

[Assistant] The dead enter Aetherius, the Immortal Plane. It is a common belief that the soul of a dead person, assuming they are not earthbound for some reason, goes to Aetherius, to continue on as a spirit. The Nords have Sovngarde. The Redguards, the Far Shores. For the Khajiit, the Sands behind the Stars. However, if you're one of the Daedric Cults, your soul is forfeit to their corresponding Daedra Prince in return for their gifts.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does vicks vaporub actually work?

Well i've been sick for a while, and ive been rubbing vaporub on my chest to get better (also drinking a lot of tea and some pills). My question is how does this sort of cream helps you relieve cough symptoms since its not something like a pill that you can swallow, or a tea that you can drink... I remember as a child i used to put it inside my nose because i thought thats how it worked, but now i know that you should just rub it on your chest, so how does this work?

[Assistant] The smell is a mild irritant to your nostrils. When irritated, your nostrils try to shrink back from the irritation in order to let air go past and clear it, and this loosens trapped mucous, allowing you to breathe.


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

[User] [Marvel/DC] Which company exerts more power politically/financially OSCORP or LEXCORP?

[Assistant]
LexCorp has, at various times, owned most of Metropolis (the planet's biggest city), launched multiple private satellites with their own private space program, had their CEO be President of the USA, and still fund Lex's zany multi million dollar shemes year after year while still coming out in the black.

OsCorp, on the other hand, mostly just does military tech and civilian chemical contracts. Not even as many as Stark Industries or Reed Richards. LexCorp is the more successful by far.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do better car brakes improve braking?

Brakes in pretty much all maintained cars (even with cheap brakes) are strong enough to be able to lock all wheels on dry surface while putting the pedal to the floor - at least from my experience. The car doesn't need to be a new one.
If that's the case then how does installing better brakes actually improve the braking?

[Assistant]
Bigger pads and rotors can slow a wheel to a stop faster, although thats not necessarily the goal.

When discussing performance *brakes* you have to remember that theyre being fitted to a performance *car*.

This isnt 25mph gently down to 0mph at a suburban stop sign - its 125mph violently down to 55mph coming into turn 6.  Then back up to 132mph down the back straight.  Then heavy braking into the hairpin, which youll take in second gear.  On sticky slick tires that dont lock up easily.

The brakes are going to do this over and over and over, with mere seconds to cool off between push-you-into-the-seatbelts stops.  Heat buildup is intense.  At higher tiers of racing its common to see the brake rotors glowing red hot through corners.

Your typical road car brakes arent built for this, and theyll warp or fade quickly under the abuse.  If you plan to make a fast car stop, you need something designed to handle the heat and the incredible traction of racing tires.


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

[User]
I don't understand virtue ethics at all. Why is it considered an ethical theory on its own and not a supplementary psychological theory to consequentialism and deontology?

MacIntyre in After Virtue wants to illustrate virtue ethics by the example of a child playing chess. If it's just after the reward (e.g. a candy for winning), it will have an incentive to cheat. However, if it's genuinely interested in playing chess, it would only rob itself by cheating, instead of playing properly, learning from its mistakes and becoming actually good at the practice which is playing chess.

But... once the child is very good at chess, shouldn't it be able to make rules and recommendations like "If your opponent does X, then doing Y is the optimal choice" or write a book about chess playing incorporating many strategies which would, if applied, make one as good as the child player or at least better than before?

Heck, even the claim that there's cheating at all seems to imply that there are right and wrong things to do in chess and if I want to get good at it, I need to respect these rules and not cheat. But if that's the case for virtue ethics and I can only become virtuous (good at chess) by acting virtuously (respecting the rules of chess), then how do I know how to act to become virtuous in the first place (how do I learn the rules of chess? How do I know if I'm cheating or playing right?).

It seems weird that people just accept it as a brute fact that virtuous people can't articulate the reasons why they do the things they do to non-virtuous people (do they? Are they?). Who makes the decision when someone is considered virtuous? What's the underlying principle? Why can't it be passed on to other non-virtuous people, so they can start acting morally without the trouble of trial-and-error a virtuous person seems to undergo? How does the person wanting to become virtuous even know that an act was not virtuous but vicious and that he shouldn't do it again?

How is the dialogue of A saying "Torturing others for fun is not a thing a virtuous person would do." and B saying "But it totally is!" or C saying "There's no telos and thus no virtuous person insofar as it would be a person who has realized his telos" different from A' saying "Torturing others for fun is wrong!" and B' saying "But it's totally right!" or C saying "There's no wrongness!". How is it less arbitrary, so that MacIntyre can actually argue that it would solve the "culture of emotivism" which modern moral philosophy caused?

I would get virtue ethics if it would simply state "By acting like an ethical principle is correct, I will internalize its tenets and my desires will be reshaped accordingly, so that eventually I'll actually desire what's morally right (= virtuous?)". It would be a simple psychological recommendation for people struggling to reconcile their desires with their moral intuitions. But virtue ethicists don't seem to view their theory as merely such an psychological supplement and tool for other ethical principles but as its own beast. So... what is it?

Please no links to the SEP without further explanation. I've read the article. I've read Nussbaum's article. I still don't understand it. That's why I'm asking you.

[Assistant]
>Who makes the decision when someone is considered virtuous? What's the underlying principle?

This seems to be your underlying question here. For virtue ethics, it's based off of what Aristotle calls the 'function argument', which illustrates a key concept in virtue ethics: *telos*, a term for the end sought by an act/the end to which an act is directed/the meaning and goodness of the act. Teleology is an approach which considers the *telos* of things.

If virtue is a disposition to act according to right reason, then Aristotle's function argument utilizes *telos* to determine what the 'right reason' is. He gives an example of a shipbuilder. The *telos* of shipbuilding is to build ships. So if you build a ship that sinks, you did not fulfill the *telos* of shipbuilding; you failed. If you have *habitus* of building sinking ships, you do not have a virtue of shipbuilding; you have a vice of shipbuilding, because you aren't building ships according to right reason, but contrary to it. Perhaps you keep drilling holes in the bottom of your ship; no one is going to hire you to build their ship, because you really suck at it.

But if you build ships well, and you do so consistently, then people will consider you to be a good shipbuilder. You'll have a virtue of shipbuilding, because you have a *habitus* of building ships that fulfill their function: they float on the water, they don't sink, they have sails and rudders, etc.

Similarly, Aristotle applies this to all categories and kinds of human acts. Take eating, for example. The first question to ask is always: what is the *telos* of this kind of act? The end sought by eating can be considered in several ways: biologically, it's clearly to obtain the nutrients and such which the body needs. We might also consider social functions, such as family bonding over a meal. But for now, let's consider the biological function.

If the function of eating is nutrition of the body, then one vice would be eating too little (anorexia) and another vice would be eating too much/having an imbalanced diet (gluttony). And vice perpetuates itself: if you eat too much junk food and your body still needs more nutrients, you continue to be hungry, so you end up eating more the next time, but your body still hasn't gotten what it needs, so you get hungry, and the cycle continues. Same is true with other vices: since a vice fails to satisfy its *telos*, the desire for the satisfaction of that *telos* remains, so it prompts you to engage in that actand thus that vicemore.

There's a lot more that can be said, but suffice it to say that teleology is at the heart of Aristotelian virtue ethics, which is why MacIntyre talks about teleology in *After Virtue*, mentioning how the rejection of teleology in modern times has caused the present moral problems that Anscombe mentioned in *Modern Moral Philosophy.*


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

[User]
From a utilitarian perspective, how far do the consequences of an action extend?

If one person was killed, how far would the negative consequences be calculated? You could factor in the utils lost from their friends, and people immediately close to them, people who find out about the death, but how far could it go from there? Would you factor in the happiness the person wouldve felt during their lifetime? The happiness of the descendants they could have created? Is there really a limit to how many factors are involved in calculating  the utility of a single action?

[Assistant]
Right - *every* consequence matters. To give a full accounting, you would need to consider the entire history of the universe causally downstream of the event you are evaluating.

Of course, it's impossible for anyone to know all of that (not just practically impossible, but likely physically impossible). So it's impossible to know for sure what the value of an act is.

Utilitarians don't recommend doing the calculation itself to figure out what to do - the calculation is what a hypothetical spectator with the perspective of the universe would do to figure out which acts really were good or bad. They just tell us to try to do the things that will come out well on this calculation. We likely won't always succeed, but we can develop some rules of thumb that will help us guess decently well. In general, killing someone is usually going to come out negative, as is injuring someone, and usually killing more people will come out worse than killing fewer.


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

[User]
[Elf] Why was Buddy not given a human-sized bed, desk, and other furniture?

They're all expert craftsmen, and his clothes are custom built for him. Santa also has extra-large furniture built for him. Buddy has to sleep on two beds wedged together in a room with too low a ceiling. After all those years nobody thought to give him bigger things? It's obvious he always knew he was bigger, making his things bigger would have been of no issue to them and wouldn't have clued him in to his human origins.

[Assistant]
Maybe the Elves and Santa just never thought of it. They're obviously caring individuals and collectively selfless; so some theories:

Buddy's life is fleeting to the Elves. They are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years old and just plain didn't notice how fast Buddy grew up. Couple this with the fact that their entire focus is on getting ready for Christmas it easy to imagine that it just simply slipped their notice.

Darker: They don't think it's worth the time distracting from their work because Buddy will be dead in a relatively short amount of time.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do dogs decide where to pee/mark?

I understand that dogs are marking with pee to claim territory (or whatever they dofeel free to correct me) but what exactly makes one place better than another.

Ive seen dogs start to pee and then get distracted by some other better pee spot. Are they trying to overwrite some other dogs mark?

Is there something special about fire hydrants/walls/poles? Or is just easier to pee on something vertical?

[Assistant] The same way people decide what posts to comment on online - except dogs' social media is largely made of smells. The amount of information dogs can get about other dogs by smells is amazing! Leaving their own smell is like leaving their comment on a (sometimes literal) post. A fire hydrant collects a lot of smells and so becomes the place to go to get and leave that information. A tree in someone's yard is like some random dog's blog. A fire hydrant is like Facebook.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why does Count Dooku put up with Gevious?

So I have been getting into the 3D animation Clone Wars show and it has been pretty good. I mean its a little off putting with the anthology storytelling but the episodic serials is what inspired Lucas in the first place so I'm not complaining about that.

No, my gripe is the relationship between Grevious and Count Dooku. Why in the shortcut of Kessel Runs does this Sith put up with that metal lunchbox of rotten sandwich meat? Every arc he fails over and over again to the Republic. Wasting countless "expensive" troops and equipment. I don't even know how Grevious even got away with losing the Malevolence. I know its a kids show and they got to have the whole "I'll get you next time, Gadget" formula but if I was that Sith, I would have kicked him to the galactic curb to sit on my lightsaber and spin. Especially after he lost their super secret, super powerful and super expensive capital ship. Guy couldn't even hold a senator without tripping over himself. But that's the end of my rant and I hope to hear your thoughts.

[Assistant]
> Every arc he fails over and over again to the Republic. Wasting countless "expensive" troops and equipment.

It's almost like they want the war to go on and on with no clear winner, wasting the resources of worlds on both sides of the conflict.


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

[User] Is it possible for two planets to be in the same orbit path?

[Assistant] Even if the orbit could somehow be stable they wouldn't actually be *planets* by the latest definition. To be defined as planet a body should: orbit a star, be heavy enough to become round by it's own gravity and **dominate it's own orbit and clear it up**, this is also why Pluto is no longer defined as a planet.


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

[User] ELI5: How come most of the time we do things like blink and breathe subconsciously but we can also control them consciously?

[Assistant]
This is a good question, but hard to answer definitively. Regarding blinking, it can be a reflex, like when you get something in your eye (autonomic); or conscious, say you walk in on your mum naked (conscious). The autonomic type is a lot quicker, as it's a reflex.

Breathing on the other hand is controlled by your brain stem (among other areas), but you need conscious control over that. For instance, say there is a foul, potentially toxic smell, and you decide to hold your breath to prevent injury or death. This was probably evolved through natural selection.


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

[User]
ELI5:With the amount spent on superbowl ads, why don't they keep the ads on the air for a longer time period - say, a few more months?

It seems like these ads are pulled off the air too quickly.

[Assistant]
Some DO run longer. The Volkswagen commercial with the little kid dressed up like Darth Vader, for instance. In fact, many Superbowl commercials play for a good while after you've initially seen them, unless they were specifically designed with a football or Superbowl theme when they were shot. Then they're only relevant for that short time.

The reason you *think* they don't play very long is because your brain lies to you. You're extra attentive to commercials during the Superbowl because...that's what the marketing apparatus has conditioned you for. After the Superbowl, commercials are just another opportunity to get a beer, take your dog out, or check on your hostages. They get lost in the background noise. They lose their novelty, and they're just another obnoxious interruption of CSI: Middle Earth.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What if Anakin was given the rank of Master but not given a seat on the council?

Yes it's a little memey but, what if? There were dozens of masters not on the council so wouldn't giving Anakin the rank without the chair work just as fine if not better than when he was given a seat on the council but not the rank of master?

[Assistant]
Anakin wasnt made a Master because he hadnt earned it. His reputation as The Chosen One made him very arrogant. He thought he deserved everything.

But all that is besides the point. We should ask *Why* he wanted the Rank of Master. More importantly than ego, Anakin wanted access to the Masters Only section of the archives, where both deeper Jedi *and* Sith teachings were held.

There he hoped to find a way to save padme, a solution hed never find because he refuses to accept the answer. Which is *people die, Bro. Its natural. We all return to the Force, homie*


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] why dont different Quidditch positions favour different brooms?

For example, while Harry, a seeker might want a broom that employs faster top end speed for diving at a snitch, wouldnt beaters, like the Weasly Twins benefit from something more stable?

I would assume if I was playing Keeper I could sacrifice pure speed for maneuverability, tight turns and stopping on a dime.

[Assistant] Remember that this is a sport in the uk only played by the wizarding community. That is a pretty small population overall, so the number of manufacturers making sport brooms for them is even smaller. With such a small population that plays at a high level, and the relatively minor differences in performance between positions, the product is simply too niche to support the cost of producing even more specialized brooms. There just isnt enough money in the game to justify the high cost of more niche brooms, especially when it is clearly shown that only the rich are able to afford current competitive brooms as is.