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

[User] [Star Wars] Why is it that Han Solo doesn't believe in the Jedi or their powers although, in the prequels, everyone knows all about them?

[Assistant] While those of us who have seen the documentary holovids are very familiar with Jedi and Sith, we have to understand the average being in the galaxy is very much not. The Jedi Order was a few thousand beings in a galaxy of trillions. The average being would go their entire life without ever being near a Jedi. Now, sure, there are stories about them, but a worldly guy like Han Solo knows you can't believe everything you hear.


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

[User] ELI5: why does my body need various metals like zinc, iron, manganese, etc? How does my body process these metals?

[Assistant]
What the layman understands as 'metal' with 'metallic' properties (a certain look, feel, taste, electrical conductivity etc.) only exists when there are large quantities of the specific metal atoms that form special metallic bonds.

In the body, where metallic atoms are required in very very small quantities ('trace elements'), they are usually present in single-atom form and thus do not show any 'metallic' properties. As single-atom elements, they perform duties much like any other element that you need to survive: Because of their specific properties and interaction with other elements, your body uses them in the construction of specific proteins with specific forms and functions. An iron atom, for example, makes it easier/possible for a protein to bind/unbind oxygen atoms, therefore iron atoms are used in the construction of hemoglobin, the protein that transports oxygen in your blood.

Because our supply of trace elements usually comes in the form of other organic material, they are already present in single-atom form, so the body has no need for mechanisms or enzymes that break down metallic matter (although some exist). That's why metals aren't considered foodstuff, and you don't crave for them, even though your body needs some of the atoms they are made of.


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

[User] [Batman & Robin] Mr. Freeze wants to cover the world in ice. Poison Ivy wants to cover the world in plants. Those two plans seem incompatible, why are they working together?

[Assistant]
They both see Batman as a threat, and neither of them see each other as a problem. Once the Bat is out of the picture, they're both planning to betray each other as soon as they get a chance.

Mr. Freeze thinks he can get rid of Poison Ivy whenever he wants, because he can freeze her out. Poison Ivy is counting on the fact that underneath the suit, Mr. Freeze is a man like any other. And that means she can manipulate him now, and betray him once she's gotten what she wants.


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

[User] [SUPERMAN] If Supes starting eating his sadness away and became fat, would he still have super strength ?

[Assistant] Superman doesn't have the need to eat like humans do.  He is entirely powered by solar radiation.  Food that he does eat is reduced to atoms by his atomic digestion.  So he can't get fat in that manner.  He has become fat thanks to red kryptonite poisoning, and he retained his abilities then, so I'd assume if for some reason he was able to eat into obesity, he would still retain his god like strength.


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

[User]
[General Fantasy] If humans didn't exist and were instead a fictional race, what would our "hat" be?

You can probably imagine the standard fantasy setting, with elves and dwarves and halflings and centaurs and orcs and satyrs and minotaurs and dragons and the like.

While people like subverting the expectations, most people have an idea of what these races are like (dwarves are gruff workers, elves are ethereal and wise, etc). Their "hats", if you will.

This even goes into clarifying what a good or evil example would be like (an evil orc is a brutish thug, while a heroic orc is usually a "noble savage" type, for example).

If humans were a fictional race in this standard fantasy setting, what would our "hat" be? If an elf or halfling author wrote a "fantasy" novel featuring humans, what would we be like?

What would a "good" human character be like?

What would an "evil" human character be like?

[Assistant]
Humans live short explosive lives. They have a strong tendency towards ideology: politics, religion, philosophy, economics (or combinations thereof). Humanity's natural enemy is other humans (of contrasting ideological affiliations). Good and bad humans alike are notoriously willing to fight and die for ideas.

At their worst, humans are so possessed with their ideological fixations (e.g. profit, sin, racial purity) that they harm themselves, their environment and their neighbours. At their best, this same ability to collectively devote themselves to novel ideas (combined with their short lifespans and rapid generational turnover) allows humans to build mighty empires, world changing philosophies, prosperous economies, as well as rich and diverse cultures.

From the perspective of the older races, humans are zealots, for better or for worse.


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

[User]
ELI5: How has acting (especially in movies) changed over the last 50 or so years?

There is a noticeable difference between the acting style in classic and modern cinema.  I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but it seems obvious enough that most people would be aware of it.

What changed?  Was this a conscious change, or did it happen gradually?

[Assistant] Well, screen acting originated from theatre. Early screen acting was very much influenced by stage acting, but also limited by technical difficulties (like silent films). So actors exaggerated emotions and acted in specific ways because they were trained to do that as stage actors. Recently, though, filmmakers have become more and more interested in treating films and screen acting as an entirely different medium than theatre and stage acting. They realized that a film can be produced much differently than a play because of camera techniques, sound, editing, etc. So now there's a division between screen acting and stage acting, based on the differences between film and theatre.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why did the banks "need" to get bailed out after the 2008 crisis?

And why, when there is talk of bank insolvency today, is there still talk about "bailouts", but when other major companies look to be financially unstable, the same doesn't seem to apply?

[Assistant]
With the exception of Country-Wide, US banks weren't really "bailed out" during the 2008 crisis - and CountryWide was bailed out by Bank of America, not the US Government.

To understand what happened in 2008 you have to understand how banks operate.  Banks need to have a total amount of assets that is equal to or greater than their total amount of deposits.  Most banks meet this requirement by holding a combination of cash, loans, bonds, and stocks.

In 2008 the crisis caused the value of those assets to temporarily drop - by a lot, and that drop meant that most banks temporarily had less assets than the value of their deposits and thus were insolvent.  But it was understood that the drop in asset value was very temporary, if the market stabilized and the asset values returned to their true market value, every bank except Country-Wide would be solvent.

To alleviate this, the Fed essentially suspended the solvency rules around the banks.  But for a variety of reasons the Fed didn't want to say that they were doing so.  Instead, the Fed made a bunch of very short term loans to the banks and allowed them to count the cash from those loans towards meeting their solvency requirements.  But most of those loans lasted 24 hours or less and no money actually changed hands.  Again, it was just a fancy way of suspending the solvency requirements without saying thats what they doing.

You can imagine it like an apartment complex where everyone who lives there is required to have a net worth of $10,000 at the start of every day or they get evicted.  Everyone in the apartment complex has much more than that $10,000, but they keep it in the stock market.  One day the stock market collapses, which means that the next day everyone has less than the $10,000 required to live in the complex.

The apartment owners realize that if they rigorously enforce the $10,000 asset requirement and evict everyone that they will go bankrupt.  The apartment also realizes that if they just wait a few months the stock market will go back up and everyone will once again meet the $10,000 requirement despite not having actually done anything.

The apartment doesn't want to say they're suspending the $10,000 asset limit, because that would make their tenants look bad.  So instead they tell the tenants that if a tenant is going to fall below the $10,000 requirement, said tenet can get a check from the apartment complex which will allow them to meet their $10,000 requirement on the condition that said check cannot be cashed and has to be returned once the tenant's stock returns back above the $10,000 limit.

That's basically what happened with the US banks during 2008 which isn't really a "bailout".  The exception being Country-Wide, which was long term insolvent.  But Bank of America stepped in and bought Country-Wide before it could outright fail which is very similar to a government bailout, albeit paid for entirely by BoA.  One thing to keep in mind from this is that when you see all the internet rage at how BoA isn't being punished for fraud at Country-Wide - this is the reason why.  No one really wants to punish BoA for having very selflessly saved the US Government from having to make a difficult choice as to what to do with Country-Wide even though technically BoA is liable for the crimes that Country-Wide committed by virtue of the fact that BoA bought Country-Wide knowing full well that Country-Wide had engaged in widespread fraud prior to 2008.

When you hear about bailouts nowadays its typically in reference to European banks.  Those banks are actually long term insolvent.  They have far less assets than they have deposits and they will never return to solvency on their own.  So what is going on in Europe is largely that the EU is just giving those banks money, which is understood will never be repaid, so that they can continue operating.  They're doing that because if say, every bank in Spain were to suddenly fail that would destroy the Spanish economy and possibly cause severe damage to other countries within the EU as well.  Its also not practical, for political reasons, for the EU to take an ownership interest in those banks in exchange for the money, so the money is essentially being given away for free.


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

[User]
Why is an Alpha particle denoted as a Helium atom?

How is it that we aren't getting cancer after inhaling large volumes of helium gas to change our voice as kids?

What makes an alpha particle highly ionizing but not helium gas?

[Assistant]
An alpha particle is a helium-4 nucleus resulting from the alpha decay of a radioactive nucleus. The typical amount of kinetic energy carried away by an alpha particle after an alpha decay is around 5 MeV. That's why alpha particles are ionizing radiation.

Atoms in helium gas at STP have typical kinetic energies on the order of 0.025 eV, so they are not ionizing.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does hot water hurt the body? What about intense heat hurts the body so much?

[Assistant] Hot water heats your body. Our cells only work in a fairly narrow range of temperatures. When it gets too hot, lots of proteins start breaking down, and proteins are necessary to live, so any cells that get that hot start dying. Our body doesn't like its cells dying like that, so it sends pain messages to the brain to get your hand away from the hot water.


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

[User]
[Frankenstein in general] Why didnt Victor Frankenstein just bring back a single corpse instead of using multiple corpses to construct his monster?

If the experiment was to give life, then wouldnt it have been easier to use a single corpse instead of making a man from scratch?

[Assistant]
The important thing about Frankensteins monster is that is *new* life. A completely new person born of nothing but science. Portraying it as a reanimated version of someone who already lived and then died misses the point, and was never Franksteins goal in the original.

Its worth noting that in the original novel its never explicitly said he makes the monster from corpses. he says he spent a lot of time in  dissecting the dead to do it but that doesn't necessarily mean it is made *of* those parts. It may well have come from a vat or something.


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

[User]
CMV: Republicans gaining control of the Senate won't affect the country much.

First of all, the president has the veto power.  There needs to be a two thirds vote to override the veto which a 52-55 republican senate bloc cannot do.  Even if republicans have both houses, they still wont be able to have any partisan laws enacted

Second, gridlock has already been at an all time low.  It cant get much worse.  In order to pass a bill both the senate and house have to agree on it.  As its been the republican house for the past 2 years has already denied obama-championed legislation.  Sure, a bicameral republican alliance will make it tougher but it was never feasible for obama to get any of his agenda done in the first place.

[Assistant]
Now instead of a gridlocked house, it's going to be Obama vs the house. Obama came into the presidency saying he was going to cooperate with republicans. Either Obama will make more concessions than before, which will affect the country, or he will make none and there'll be so much scope for making him and his party look bad. For example they could introduce a bill that seems good but is actually terrible in the fine print (for example, some kind of highly corrupt business appeasing emissions trading scheme). This happened in Australia, where the Green party rejected a very dodgy emissions trading scheme with a hard, unchangeable 5% target back in 2009, and they're still reeling from the bad PR that rejection generated.

When that kind of bill comes along, Obama will either have to pass it, or personally stop the bill. Imagine how it would look if Obama was the only person stopping a good looking bill from passing.

This sort of thing could pave the way for a Republican president getting elected in 2016, and that's going to make a huge difference.


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

[User]
not sure how to title this but the question is about the affects of an oxygen deficient environment on the body?

 if a person went outside in an environment with little to no oxygen so they had a oxygen supply for breathing what effects would the oxygen deficient environment have on the body?

[Assistant]
You would need to have your oxygen supply also cover the eyes, because the cornea depends on absorption of oxygen directly from the air.

Otherwise there shouldn't be any effect in the short term. Maybe there would eventually be effects from changes in your external microbiota (different bacteria would be able to live on your skin etc).


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Hitting comm badge without saying a name--where does it go?

For example, Julian Bashir just hit his to say, "emergency, emergency. Intruder alert."

Does it do a general page to everyone with a badge in a certain radius? Usually after hitting the badge the person says "x to y" so I'm curious as to who would get a notification without that voice command.

[Assistant]
The Federation does have intelligent computers. They generally work out the context and send it to the necessary individuals. From there, it's like a radio channel.

So when Doctor Bashir says "Emergency", all on-duty emergency personnel are pinged. When someone calls for "Security", all on-duty Security personnel are pinged.


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

[User] [Harry Potter] Other than Dumbledore, who would be considered the Newtons, Einsteins, Hawkins, etc. of the Wizard World?

[Assistant]
From the Chocolate Frog Cards, these are some wizards famous for magical research:

**Bridget Wenlock:** Determined the arithmantic properties of the number seven.

**Falco Aesalon:** First Animagus. (semi-canon, depends on how you treat the games)

**Herpo the Foul:** Discovered how to create basilisks and Horcruxes.

**Ignatia Wildsmith:** Invented Floo Powder.

There are also important thinkers known to Muggles who were wizards: Agrippa, Paracelsus and Ptolemy.

Oh, and don't forget Merlin, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are brands and celebrities always able to get short usernames that were definitely taken before? What happens to the previous owner of the username?

[Assistant]
It depends on the platform involved.

In the U.S. most User License agreements include a clause that the service provider can stop or refuse services at any time for any reason. Whether that is legally ok or enforceable is another matter. EULA's tend to include lots of clauses that aren't legally enforceable, but most people don't have the resources to fight them.

So a platform can sometimes just notify a user that they have to change their username. Doesn't matter that the user got to it first. So long as they preserve the user's content the user won't have much standing if they haven't built a revenue stream using that name that allows them to demonstrate real harm in a court case.

Or the celebrity/brand can reach out to the user and ask for it. Possibly offering money for the release. They would work with the platform to swap the username without transferring any content over.

Or the platform can look at the account to determine if its still in use and just delete the old one and reissue to the new requestor. Say if the account hasn't been used in 5 years or something.

At the end of the day the service platform is a business created to make money. They are going to take the route that does that.


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

[User] [The Thing] How could the Thing take over the Earth if it only possesses one entity at a time?

[Assistant] The Thing can split, or so the documents we've recovered state. An American arctic research station and a Norwegian one both encountered the entity.  In both cases The Thing was killed only to surprise the surviving members of the outpost by re-appearing. The Thing must only inject even the slightest bit of its biology into our own and then it begins the rapid process of biologic conquest.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does 25 MPH on a bicycle seem so much faster than in a car?

[Assistant]
You feel like you're going extremely fast on a bike because you *feel* more.

Cars have very well developed suspension systems that "even out" the bumps on the road. As long as you're not dealing with a serious pothole or a speed-bump, the car's suspension is going to face-tank most of the shock so that you don't have to. Larger tires can also take some of the shock out of the road, but it's not as effective. Bikes generally *don't* have awesome suspension, and tires of *comparable* size. That means that you feel every bump in the road, or close enough to every bump in the road as not to matter.

Beyond that, cars are enclosed capsules. Your body's perception of "speed" relies on three things: what you see with your eyes, what your inner-ear feels, and what your skin feels. When you're on a bike, you can feel the wind running over your body. That allows you to "feel" your speed when you aren't accelerating or slowing down. Your eyes give you a sense of speed, but the brain is pretty good at filtering out unwanted implications from the eyes.

> Side Note

> The Inner Ear mostly just registers acceleration, for the purposes of this conversation. It picks up when you speed up, or when you slow down. It's also a part of your sense of balance, but that's not too crucial to note in this situation.

It's basically a combination of being able to feel the wind, and the poor shock-absorption.


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

[User] ELI5: When food goes stale, does it also become less nutricious?

[Assistant]
Generally, yes.

It isn't just "staleness", but any process that takes food away from its original composition makes food less nutritious. It depends on the food as well, as things like fruits and vegetables rapidly lose their nutrition after they are cut or processed.

A lot of the healthy nutrients are "trapped", in a sense, inside the less reactive environment that the food provides. There are molecules (enzymes) which interact inside fruit and vegetables which seek to preserve the health by various processes, such as bruising. Bruising, cutting, frying or anything else causes these responses, which changes that stable environment; consequently using the nutrition reserve.

Not all nutrients are lost this way, and it is usually specific to the vegetable, fruit, grain, or whatever. Some nutrients, such a minerals, can stay reasonably in-tact during these processes. Vitamins and proteins are often the first to go, as those are what the veggie/fruit/grain uses to protect itself, along with other organisms taking advantage of this "broken" environment.

When we look at why we taste as we do, it is to extract as much nutrients from our food as possible. Stale, rotting, or processed food are far down the path towards "unsustainability of their microenviroment", or "potentially less nutritious" which is determined by our brain to not taste as good.


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

[User] Is it true that putting a turbo on a car can make it achieve better fuel efficiency. If so how does this happen and if not how does it not happen?

[Assistant]
Simply put, a turbo charger uses the exhaust air energy to compress the intake air.  What this does is provide more oxygen in a unit volume.  When this compressed air is put into a cylinder, more fuel can thus be added to combust with all the extra oxygen. This allows for more power and more energy per piston cycle.

Adding boost to an engine uses energy.

The reason turbos are even more efficient is because when you *don't* need extra power, then the engine runs on *low* boost, in such a way that it uses gasoline more efficiently than naturally aspirated (non turboed) engines.

Mathematically, turbo charging an engine has zero downsides for efficiency. A properly tuned turbo will always increase efficiency.


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

[User]
[Vampires] Would a communist vampire be able to bypass the invitation rule?

Title says it, Imagine you are running away from a Vampire, he's speeding and about to get you when you jump into your house and lock the door.

You relax because you remember how vampires work, but he kicks down the door shouting "abolition of private property!"

Would this work for the vampire?

[Assistant]
Lore dependant, as vampire questions always are, but no, this wouldn't work.

The metaphysical protection that requires invitation isn't based on you owning the place, it's based on it being your home.  Even in a communist system, people still have homes, and invitations are still required in order to enter them.

It's also not the beliefs of the vampire that are important, it's the beliefs of the victim.  The only people lacking the invite-protection are those people who do not feel that they have a home, any space they can call their own.  If you have some little nook somewhere that you live, and if a polite person would ask your permission before entering, you're protected.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why is Force suggestion not a Dark Side only power? Seems way more invasive and abusive than simply shooting lightning.

I mean, it's one step away from mind control. What makes it OK for Jedi to use it so casually?

[Assistant]
Because it's **not** mind control.

It's exactly what you said it is - a suggestion, not a command. And it doesn't work on the strong-willed at that.

You're basically just temporarily making the person you're trying to influence think you're the most charismatic person in the room.

So telling a down-on-his-luck drug dealer to rethink his life is okay, because hey maybe he might actually be able to make something of himself besides selling narcotics in a nightclub. Maybe he actually could go back to university and get an education and a good career.


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

[User] [startrek]if there are any still around by 2161 would the prim-directive apply to Uncontacted groups on Earth?

[Assistant] Unlikely. Human colonies are excluded from the Prime Directive regardless of their level of technological development. This would presumably include Earth itself. This doesn't mean that it's open season, however. There are most assuredly other laws that deal with contact/observation of less advanced or isolated human societies, whether on Earth or other worlds. It just isn't the Prime Directive.


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

[User] ELI5: How does disney still own the rights to Mickey Mouse? Shouldn't it have expired a long time ago?

[Assistant]
Steamboat Willie (1928) was subject to the 1909 Copyright Act granting protection for 56 years.

With 1984 approaching, the Walt Disney Company (and others) lobbied Congress to alter the copyright act to be consistent with western Europe (author's life plus 50 years).  For corporations (which do not die) the copyright was extended to 75 years.

With 2003 approaching the Walt Disney Company again lobbied Congress to alter copyright law.  In 1998 the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act established copyright protection for author's life plus 70 years and 95 years for corporations.

Under current law, Mickey Mouse enters public domain in 2023.


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

[User]
ELI5: Can a generic vacuum pump bring a large volume (air-tight room) to a certain pressure if it is left running long enough?

For instance, if you have a vacuum pump with a set VAC power can it bring any amount of volume to a certain air pressure if it is left on long enough, versus bringing a small volume to a very low amount of air pressure?

[Assistant]
Yes. The residual pressure is determined by the leaks in your system. If you assume a perfectly sealed volume, then the only leakage will be back through your rotary pump.

No, if you consider pumps that pump by depositing gas on a surface, like ion getter pumps, kryo pumps, or titan sublimation pumps. Those will saturate and need to be cleaned when "full". That means the volume to pump is limited, by the size of the pump. Getter and kryo pumps are cleaned by "baking", heating the whole volume, releasing the deposited gases and pumping it away with normal pumps, rotary or turbo. Sublimation pumps by sublimating a fresh layer of titan on the surrounding walls from a filament.

Why use these other pumps, if you need normal pumps anyway? Because you can close off the pumps, that leak back into the system, pump to lower pressures and most importantly these pumps work without moving parts. If you are sensitive to vibrations this is what you need.


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

[User] [Gladiator] "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius" yada yada yada. "Decimus" means he was the 10th child. What happened to his 9 elder siblings?

[Assistant]
Decimus may mean that he is the tenth child - in which case it is entirely likely that thee of his elder brothers and two elder sisters died in childhood (since child mortality was phenomenally high in these times), whilst the surviving sisters married and his remaining elder brother died on campaign.

However, the name also seems to have been inherited as a family name at times - so it may have been his grandfather who was actually the tenth child, and for whom he was named, regardless of his birth order.

Alternatively, it seems that the name may also have been used for those born in the tenth month of the Roman calendar.


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

[User] Eli5: Why are some fermentations considered healthy (kimchi, kombucha etc) and others are not?

[Assistant]
Firstly, why is fermented food healthy. Food is fermented by tiny creatures (bacteria, fungi and yeast). These creatures need vitamins and nutrients to be healthy like us. Some of these creatures can create vitamins which people can only get via food. Therefore fermented foods with these creatures still present tend to be more healthy.

These creatures also need energy to do their work. They extract this energy from the food. This causes the food to contain fewer calories than the original food. This is why yogurt and buttermilk have less sugar than regular milk.

But why are some fermented foods unhealthy? In some fermented foods and drinks, the healthy nutrients are overpowered by unhealthy stuff like alcohol. These substances are bad for you in large amounts. Also, some of these bad things damage your body when they are broken down. Alcohol gets broken down to a thing called 'acetaldehyde' which can cause cancer.

Some creatures may also use more healthy vitamins and nutrients than they produce, thus reducing the healthiness of the food.

Whether a food or drink is healthy depends on which creatures are used in the fermentation and how many healthy substances are produced as opposed to unhealthy substances. Foods with a lot of alcohol tend to be pretty bad, but in the end most fermentation is done for an improved taste and for preserving foods without a fridge.


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

[User] [Attack on Titan] Were the buildings within the walls built before or after the walls were built? If after, how did they build all of those buildings in less than 100 years? If before, why do they look so ancient, being that the story takes place 2000 years in the future?

[Assistant]
The 2000 years in the future is just a theory. The title of the first episode is sometimes translated as 'To you, 2000 years in the future' and sometimes its translated as 200 years in the past. Because of this, and until it is explained in the story who the title of the first episode is talking to and who is saying it, we do not know whether it is past or future.

And the buildings were assumed to be built after the walls. And building 8 cities when you have to house several million people immediately wouldn't be hard.

(Anime SPOILERS coming up)Due to the way the walls were built, the cities could not have been built by the same people who built the walls.


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

[User]
CMV: Downfall of News Networks is a Good Thing

News thrives off fear mongering which has been detrimental for America. For instance stranger danger caused kids across America to be locked indoors which isnt great for development and mental health because the fear of some van taking them away, while the likelihood of your kids being kidnapped is actually extremely low. Same thing with tough on crime that went overboard causing mass incarceration and lengthened prison times making America have the biggest prisoner poppulation in the world. News talk about How were more divided than ever but theyre probably the biggest contributors. Its important to know whats happening but global networks such as CNN and Fox are too sensational for me to support. Should I feel sad theyre dying?

[Assistant]
Please don't refer to 24/7 entertainment networks as "news".

The Associated Press is news.  Reuters is news.  NPR is news.

CNN and Fox are opinion and analysis sponsored by commercials, with the occasional news thrown in in order to pretend it's anything other than entertainment.

The downfall of interest in news is not good.  A public awakening to the difference between news and ad-supported opinion pieces, on the other hand, is welcome.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it that when I'm sick my voice gets so much deeper?

[Assistant]
As phlegm covers your vocal chords (or they get inflamed from coughing, etc) their resonant frequency is lower--like the thicker strings on a guitar have a lower pitch at he same tension--because they vibrate more slowly.

Since the vocal chords determine voice pitch, that pitch lowers.


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

[User] [MCU]If Black Widow put ALL of Shield's documents online how come none of the Avengers know Coulson is alive?

[Assistant]
Are you kidding?  It's Nick Fury.  The classification isn't "levels" it's compartmentalized with no one person (including Fury) having access to every compartment.   SHIELD is essentially modeled after an insurgency because Fury's assumption was that the enemies he was facing would vastly outresource SHIELD and thus SHIELD had to have the capability to revert to a cell structure and fight as an insurgency to retake the earth itself.  In terms of structure don't think "US military" think "French Resistance" (or "Al-Qaeda" if you're not feeling generous).

There is no master access, there is no master key, there is no "everything" that Shield has.  Fury assumed anyone could be compromised, including himself.  Romanoff dumped a LOT of SHIELD's data.  She thought she had all because she thought she had the master key, but she only had a very good key because there is no master.

The closest thing to a master is Toolbox and Romanoff didn't have that.  Not that Fury would have completely trusted Coulson either.


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

[User] ELI5 : Why is it so rare for humans to have twins and triplets but animals have them all the time?

[Assistant]
Well women usually release one egg per cycle unlikes a lot of female animals where multiple eggs are released, like in cats.

From an evolution point of view, it also make sense, human babies have a huge head making birth very difficult, before modern medicine the maternal mortality (dying while giving birth) was pretty high. And that is just for one baby.

Imagine giving birth to triplets in middle age europe without the techniques we have today.


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

[User]
Is it known what caused the current monkeypox outbreak?

Do scientists and medical experts know what has caused the current monkeypox outbreak? Have there been mutations which have caused it to spread so widely? Was there a superspreader event that's causing it to snowball? Have changes to society made it more likely that a disease such as this will infect more people? Something else?

Thanks!

[Assistant]
Its not really known why monkeypox is spreading exactly *now*, but it's presumably a combination of factors:

* Increased population susceptibility. Smallpox vaccination protects against monkeypox, but since smallpox vaccination stopped an increasing proportion of the population is susceptible to monkeypox; and even smallpox immunity from the vaccine gradually wanes. This is probably the most important overall factor
* Increased global connectivity. Monkeypox outbreaks have been happening for decades if not centuries, but it's not a highly transmissible disease, and in a small local community it will burn out fairly quickly. Today's communities are generally not small or local, so there are more opportunities for the virus to keep spreading
* Entering a highly connected community that offers specific chances for this virus's transmission, in the MSM community.

You can think of it as a situation where for hundreds of years, sparks have been jumping into piles of leaves. Most sparks just burn a leaf or two, and die out. Even if the flames spread to a neighboring few leaves, if the piles are small and well separated, the fire will never get too big. Even a big pile of leaves won't burn easily, if it's soaking wet (smallpox vaccination).

But for the past couple decades, the leaf piles have been getting bigger and bigger, and drier and drier. Finally, several sparks have set off long term, persistent fires.

(Note that there are multiple transmission chains being identified -- it's likely that once the right conditions were reached, several sparks were able to set off fires.)

There's no evidence that there are transmssion-enhancing mutations. While the circulating viruses do have more mutations than you'd expect, these mutations don't seem to be beneficial -- they're the result of human defenses that drive lethal mutation in viruses. You can think of the mutations as scars, evidence that the viruses have been circulating in humans for some time, but not enhancing that circulation.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Were there massive intelligence differences between the sapient races in Star Wars?

Is there some natural cap on intelligence in the Star Wars universe preventing some aliens [droids excluded] from being super geniuses that can think circles around others?  Do the super-intelligent ones just stay in academia and avoid politics and that's why we don't see them?  Are all of the aliens *really* in the same, narrow intelligence band, or are there really huge differences in intelligence that simply never come up?  I'd *assume* humans must be near the top if there is one, just judging by their dominance in politics and well, everywhere.  But I never really get the feeling that there are some species that just can't compete intellectually, in the same sense that a child can't against an adult.

[Assistant] Certain species do have a higher capable intelligence than others. This is usually offset by physical limitations or artificial enhancements. In limited fashion many aliens like the Duros will find gainful employment as data analysts and such but usually xenophobia and other issues keep them from expanding further. A lot of naturally gifted races can be matched or even surpassed by droid brains or cyborg enhancements making it a moot issue in developed areas of the galaxy. And on the opposite side theres aliens with extremely low intelligence that still flourish in the galaxy. Being intelligent or unintelligent doesn't matter too much in star wars. Machines can match natural intelligence and physical abilities can make up for a lack of it. Humans are considered to be average with races like the duros and bothans at the more intelligent end and species like Gamorans and Geonosians at the lower end. In general it's safe to remember a computer can outthink you and a blaster bolt doesn't care how smart you are.


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

[User]
Is there an actual reason the Sun and the Moon are the same size in the sky?

In school, I was taught that it was just a coincidence that the Sun and Moon are the same size in the sky but it seems like such a rare coincidence, there'd have to be a reason, wouldn't there?

[Assistant] It is a coincidence. Both of them fluctuate in apparent size throughout the year, so they're not always the exact same size (which is why there are different kinds of solar eclipses). The moon is gradually getting farther away and the sun is gradually getting bigger, so eventually they won't be as close in size.


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

[User]
ELI5 how a computer can read 5.6 billion ones and zeros and turn it into The Big Lebowski or Reservoir Dogs?

A typical downloaded movie is about 700Mb. That's 5.6 billion bits. How does a computer interpret a massive sequence of ...01011001110... and play it back as an entire movie with colours and sounds and frames and everything? I don't understand how data can be turned into media.

[Assistant]
Divide each frame of the movie into a grid.

Say 640x480

Now assign a number to each color that the computer can display... let's say there a 16 million colors with black being 0 and white being 16 million. In each box of the grid number the color. Now you've got every frame of the movie as a number.

Now for the sound. Sound is made by the speaker going in and out. Let's measure that distance and give it a number. Say 65536 for out as far as possible and 0 for all the way in. Let's do that measure like 48000 times a second. Now if we make the speaker go in and out based on the number we have... sound.


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

[User]
[Joker 2019] How in the world did Arthur Fleck...

...bring a gun on the Murray Franklin show without getting caught beforehand? Sure, I imagine security threats are not much of a problem when you're interviewing famous celebrities that have a lot to lose. But when you're bringing on some random guy from the street, one painted in clown makeup no less, wants to be introduced as "Joker" and seems obviously mentally disturbed, one would think a frisk and/or metal detector would at least be in order.

[Assistant] As others have said, it was the 80s. Actual hard security checkpoints to get into public areas really weren't a thing back then, especially for invited guests in backstage areas. Metal detectors and the like were expensive, specialized hardware, and chiefly limited to real "high security" areas, like courthouses and airports; a random TV studio likely isn't bothering with that sort of hardware.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do the numbers on my digital alarm clock or similar digital numbers bounce and move when eating crunchy foods but nothing else in my vision does?

[Assistant]
Everything else in your vision is there the entire time you're looking at it.

The digital numbers (like many electrical displays) are operating at a specific frequency of being lit and unlit so are not entirely present the entire time you are looking at it. Normally you don't notice because your brain paints over the gaps and sees a constant image, but when you eat crunchy food, the subtle shaking of your head removes just enough spacial information for your brain to do a good job guessing the position. So it looks wobbly.


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

[User] ELI5: why are most suburban houses in the US built with wood, instead of bricks and mortar?

[Assistant]
Wood is cheap, plentiful, and easy to build with and transport. Very good strength/weight ratio compared to masonry.

A full masonry structure is enormously heavy and much more costly.  Even most brick houses in the the US are masonry facade with a wooden frame.

You can get some cinderblock construction in hurricane bullseye zones along the gulf coast, other than that its almost entirely wood frame construction in the US.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Why do the Fantastic Four have superhero names?

I mean Reed Richards is one of the most famous scientists on the planet, everyone's heard of him. Is his ego really so fragile that he had to give himself that absurd nickname? Stephen Hawking doesn't go around calling himself 'Mister Handsome-And-Amazing'.

Johnny Storm is the only one that makes sense to me. He actually *does* seem like the type to give himself a silly title, plus it was probably inevitable that he'd be compared to that old WW2 android, so it's better to nip it in the bud early on.

Invisible Woman and The Thing on the other hand just sound like weird nicknames for respected heroes. The former massively downplays Sue's more impressive forcefield abilities, and the latter is just insulting. Ben Grimm always seems kinda uncomfortable whenever his skin-condition is brought up, like he thinks of himself as a monster, yet he still introduces himself as "The ever-loving blue-eyed Thing". What's up with that?

[Assistant] It was the 60s, all those marvels of science, magic, and technology got names by the press. And boy, that Baxter Building four were pretty fantastic when they showed up. It was before your time, kid. You wouldn't understand. Back before a guy would show up with shoulder spikes and a voice modulator calling himself ARMAGEDDON or some such.


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

[User]
[General Fiction] Why aren't warp drives weaponized?

For example, take the alcubierre drive, in Star Trek (or whatever it was) it compresses space in front and elongates it backward, making a warp tunnel and allowing the ship to "ride the wave". Why haven't we seen them launched at vessels and ripping massive holes with specially shaped bubbles?

[Assistant] They're expensive to build, why waste them?  There are plenty of pretty effective weapons already.  Missiles and torpedoes do their job if you're at close range, and at far range, you could just dodge.  You don't want to blow up a warp ship every time you need to attack a ship, you'll run out of ships before your enemy does and now he can get to you.  Having your ships should be as much a deterrent to future attacks as they are weapons to attack with.


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

[User] Will the Voyager Space Crafts eventually reach intergalactic space? Or are they forever bound, interstellar, by gravity to the Milky Way?

[Assistant]
They're definitely bound to the Milky Way.

The faster of the two is Voyager 1, at about 17 km/s relative to the Sun. The Sun, meanwhile, is in a roughly circular orbit about the center of the Milky Way, moving with a tangential velocity of about 200 km/s.

One of the basic equations of orbital mechanics is that to gain escape velocity, one must move sqrt(2)=1.4 times faster than the speed of a circular orbit. Thus, at the Sun's distance, one must move at 280 km/s to escape the Milky Way. (Note this assumes a point source gravitational well, which the Milky Way is not. In actuality, the escape velocity will have to be considerably greater as one's orbit encircles more mass further out.)

So even if Voyager 1 was headed directly along the Sun's path (which it's not), the final velocity would be 200 + 17 = 217 km/s, still significantly less than what's needed to escape the galaxy.


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

[User] ELI5: The difference between Islamic Banking and Conventional Banking.

[Assistant]
Charging interest isn't allowed in Islam. So banks offering loans suitable for Muslims must make money in other ways.

For example there are Islamic mortgages. With a normal mortgage, you borrow money from the bank, use that money to buy a house, and pay it back with interest. With an Islamic mortgage, the bank buys the house, you pay the bank rent plus payments towards buying the house off them. So you don't technically own the house until your mortgage is paid off. The bank has made money, but they haven't charged you interest.


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

[User]
ELI5: The difference between GSM, CDMA, 3G, 4G, LTE, etc.

I know GSM is what ATT/T-Mobile use and CDMA is Verizon/Sprint, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. I'd actually prefer an explanation like I'm 21 and not an engineer. Thanks!

[Assistant]
To things are needed for a cellular network:

1) How to get many people to share a piece of spectrum.

2) How to send data from cell towers to phones and vice-versa.

GSM and CDMA are two different ways to accomplish the two things.  LTE is newer.

The way GSM solves (1) is by something called TDMA (time division multiple access).  When you're in a phone call, you're phone is scheduled a bunch of time slots when your phone either sends or receives data.  These exclusive to your phone and different from other phones in the cell so there's no interference.  This way, multiple phones can talk to the cell tower (seemingly) at once (the bursts of time are super short so you don't notice them).

CDMA deals with (1) in a completely different way.  It breaks up the channel into codes/signals (Code division random access).  This is a little hard to explain without some math, but there's a notion called orthogonality.  If two signals are orthogonal you can pull one signal out without getting interference from the other.  Every user is assigned a different code/signal and these are (approximately) orthogonal to each other.  This is a more advanced technique and generally thought of as advantageous since there isn't as much waste (TDMA needs little bits of extra time between users to make sure there's no overlap, for example).

The way (2) is accomplished is also very different.  In fact there are many different ways it is done even within GSM or CDMA.  The way data is sent along depends a lot on how good the quality of the radio signal and other factors.  That's a whole other thing.  But the options for GSM and CDMA differ.

3G and 4G are kind of marketing terms that come from "3rd generation" and "4th generation".  They refer to families of standards, but not specific methods to accomplish (1) or (2).

LTE is a 4G standard that uses OFDM to do (1).  This is kind of like TDMA but instead of time, it's in frequency.  But they do some clever trickery to make it work really without needing gaps between users' frequencies.

I can explain more, if you'd like, but it gets really technical really quick.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does a radio receiver discriminate between different signals?

If there are lots of different radio signals with the same or very similar wavelengths, how is it possible for a radio to pick up just one signal?

[Assistant]
In general, it can't.

If two signals over lap, both will be received and will, generally, garble the message. While frequency - the number of oscillations of the carrier signal - is important, bandwidth - the "width" of the information in hertz - is important, too.

For example, a radio station on 101.3 FM actually extends from 101.2 to 101.4. This spacing prevents signals from "clipping" into one another when adjacent channels are co-located. 101.1 doesn't go past 101.2.

With two stations at the same frequency, they're usually spaced far enough apart that the power of one broadcast is significantly weak within the area of reception of the other station, thus interference is avoided.

Propagation phenomena changes with different frequencies, though. AM broadcasts can travel farther at night, and some stations are required to reduce power at these times to reduce interference.

Additionally, it's possible to encode transmissions to be dug out later. This is not uncommon in things like radars, where a code is embedded in the phase of the transmission and returns can be discriminated from interference despite being at the same frequency.


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

[User]
I think that withholding sex while remaining in an exclusive committed relationship is as serious as a transgression as cheating is. CMV.

First let me define what is and what isnt withholding sex is, for the purposes of this discussion.

withholding sex is where partner A decides unilaterally/indefinitely without consent from partner B, that they (both partners) will not have sex, but at the same time expects partner B not to pursue or have sex with anyone else.

Withholding sex is not, refusing to have sex if partner A is sick (physically or mentally) or has had a surgery and cannot have sex per doctor orders, or has a diminished desire and is trying to correct this issue.

I am of the opinion that willfully withholding sex from an exclusive partner in a committed relationship is or can be equal in terms of harm caused by cheating on a partner in a committed relationship.

I am not stating that withholding justifies cheating, nor that cheating justifies withholding because you still have the option to leave the relationship without causing further emotional damage either way.

 Now, Change My View.

also, my 1st time posting here, how do i do the delta award thing?

[Assistant] If the problem is that you don't get enough sex to your liking, then break up. End of story. Nobody owes a person sex just because they're in a relationship. Some people don't want or need much sex, if any at all. If your quota isn't being met, leave. Discussion over.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do countries need a gold reserve? For instance, america seems to have 8k tons of gold. When would they ever need to use it? Also, do they gradually buy and sell it?

[Assistant] They no longer need gold reserves. Countries having them was a hold over from when countries used the gold Standard to back their currency. No country currently uses the gold standard so all gold reserves are just a point of investment now.


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

[User]
ELI5: What would it be like navigating through an asteroid field

Ive seen a handful of SciFi movies, and people flying TOWARD an asteroid barely dodging it just seems weird. They make it look like asteroids are slow moving.

What would it really be like?

/sorry if this has been covered.

[Assistant] In reality, most asteroids are thousands of miles apart, and detectable from a long range. So it would be very boring. The only time you would see a densely packed field like in the movies is a debris field, which is also detectable from a long range.


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

[User]
ELI5: How are there not more high profile assassinations?

It seems like there's no shortage of guns, crazy people, and available public figures.  Even if Hollywood and video games have led me to believe sniper rifles are more accurate than they really are, you'd think there'd be more attempts at least.

[Assistant]
The biggest thing is that there's no point in it.

In the west, if you assassinate a politician or business leader, somebody is going to step up and take their place and **keep doing the same shit**.

On top of the incredible amounts of security - even if they *did* manage to get a kill off, it's almost impossible they'd manage to get away without getting caught.

So... virtually guaranteed capture & imprisonment to kill somebody that's not going to change anything.  Anyone crazy enough to try probably isn't of sound enough mind to pull it off.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do hurricanes hit the U.S. East Coast so often but never on the West Coast?

[Assistant]
In the northern hemisphere the ocean current circulates clockwise.

Hurricanes form in the warm southern tropics.

Therefore hurricanes generally move east to west and eventually south to north.

In order for a hurricane to hit California it would have to form near Mexico, travel west to around Hawaii and then north before turning back east towards Cali. That part of the pacific is really cold and the hurricane will die out.


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

[User] When two waves destructively interfere, where does the energy go?

[Assistant]
Destructive interference occurs either at some moment of time or at some point in space.  In time, if two waves meet each other and
destructively interfere, then a few moments later they will have traveled some additional distance and will constructively interfere.  In space, if two waves produce a dark spot at some point then there will be a bright spot at a different point.  The energy canceled out by destructive interference is always compensated by the energy doubled up from constructive interference.

EDIT:  There seems to be some confusion as to how this works.  The superposition cos(kx + vt) + cos(kx + vt + pi) = 0 represents two waves propagating in the same direction which cancel everywhere, which is a trivial solution to the wave equation. It means nothing was emitted in the first place.  If you reverse the propagation direction of one of them, they will not cancel everywhere.  This is what is meant by interference.

EDIT 2:  The reason this probably seems surprising is because wave interference is usually taught by considering only the spatial variables for simplicity.  Using only spatial dependence means you have selected one particular moment in time.  But apart from the trivial solution discussed above, *total destructive interference cannot occur at all positions at all times*.  And this is the whole point of the question.  If waves could simply disappear, energy would not be conserved.

EDIT 3:  sin(kx - vt) + sin(kx + vt + c) = 2sin(kx + c/2)cos(vt + c/2), where c is the phase shift.


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

[User]
[Doctor Who] Could you kill a weeping angel with a chisel and hammer?

When you look at the angel it turns into stone, so when its in its stone state, could you destroy it?

[Assistant] Sadly, you're mistaking what your eyes see for the reality of the situation.  What you perceive as "stone" is actually the quantum locked state of an alien being.  When they're in this frozen form, you could drop them into a black hole without hurting them (they'll survive, they simply can't unfreeze or escape.)  Based on a detailed search of the most comprehensive records available to the Time Lords, they quite simply cannot be destroyed in the conventional sense of the word.  You can stall them, delay them and (with a bit of cleverness and good timing) trap them, but they cannot be destroyed.  Since they subsist on the stolen temporal energy of their victims, they are immortal to the point that only the unraveling of the time vortex will truly end them.


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

[User] ELI5 - Why are all the bottoms of clouds have a flatness about them while the tops are very non uniform?

[Assistant]
Think about a bubble bath. All the foam is very irregular on top, but flat on the bottom.

The same happens to clouds. When the air parcel reached a level where it can exist (defined by pressure, temperature and humidity), then it condensates and the clouds is formed. The interface separating the "here you can exist - here you can't" is the flat bottom. Same as the bubbles can't exist below the water, but exist above, and the interface is flat.


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

[User]
Why do spaceshuttles take off vertically and not like planes?

Why don't space craft take off like traditional aircraft reducing the need for such huge initial acceleration?

[Assistant]
Airplanes travel horizontally because their lift comes from air moving across the wings. A plane's engines don't have nearly enough thrust to counter the effects of gravity and accelerate the plane upwards; the engines are used to get air moving over the wings. These aerodynamics make sense for a plane, since the ultimate goal of the plane is to go forward anyway; it only needs to generate enough lift to maintain altitude at cruising speed.

A rocket needs to accelerate at least to the speed of low earth orbit, which is about thirty times faster than a typical airliner. Furthermore, at that point the craft no longer needs to generate lift, because it is going fast enough to orbit the earth, so there's no point in bringing wings along. The launch trajectory is actually an arc designed to get to orbit as efficiently as possible by taking advantage of the earth's spin.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Did they really need to destroy all the horocruxes first?

It took nearly 14 years for Voldemort to come back the first time. If he died again couldn't they have just destroyed the remaining horocruxes after?

[Assistant]
The thing of it is, Voldy's already done all the heavy lifting for coming back with a real body. He's got a field-tested technique and an army that isn't going to scatter to the winds because they know he's coming back. You just kill him without touching the horcruxes, he's back inside of a year. Only get some of the horcruxes and he's back in 2, one to actually revive and another spent fortifying the remaining horcruxes against further assault.

Strategy wise, destroying all horcruxes is the best move. In essence, Dumbledore is taking a page out of Sun Tzu's playbook; Voldemort *thinks* he has a sure-fire exit plan of escape, and will commit himself to any battle, including a doomed one, without realizing his escape route is really a trap. Which is exactly how he meets his end, overcommitting at Hogwarts because he doesn't recognize that the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army are running a plan more sophisticated than "stand and die on a matter of principle".


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

[User]
ELI5: Glass Steagall Act

On the heels of the Democratic debate, can we get a thorough yet simplified explanation of the Glass Steagall Act, why it was implemented in the first place, what it's repeal in the 90s meant, any possible connection to the Great Recession (partisan politics aside), and other things American people should know about this act.

[Assistant]
Glass-Steagall was part of the Banking Act of 1933, which was a congressional reaction to the great depression. It was created to enforce separation in the financial system between commercial banks and securities trading. The intent of this was that commercial banks that provided essential functions to citizens (holding money, giving out loans) would not be engaging in riskier financial activity and thus putting its depositors at risk.

Over time, the protections in place from Glass-Steagall were eroded, with heavy advocacy from commercial banks. One of the main arguments was that banks in the USA could not be competitive with international banks that did not face the same rules.

In 1999, Congress passed the GrammLeachBliley Act with heavy bipartisan support. Commercial banks had been lobbying heavily to remove the remaining restrictions for a couple decades. Some opponents warned that this would have negative repercussions, and that commercial banks would consolidate large amounts of power with the ability to have their arms in investment banking and insurance. But mostly, those critics were dismissed. Given what we now know about the Great Recession, this issue has once again become controversial, although the banks are so heavily reliant on investment banking now that it would be difficult to change.


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

[User]
ELI5: Are food products that say "consume within 7-10 days after opening" basicslly a food poisoning gamble after day 7?

Why not just say consume within 10 days if there isn't a slight risk after day 7? If there is a risk after day 7, why not just leave it at 7?

[Assistant]
usually, that is a freshness date and not a you will die if you eat it after  date.

If properly stored and packaged, most food doesn't have germ risks before you open it.

But  something like a cookie could lose its taste or firmness or whatnot.

Once you open something all bets are off. You have to be really careful to keep it at the correct temp.

Like if you leave out cheese dip for hours it can get germy. If you eat it again later you could get sick.


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

[User]
CMV: I think Iron Man/Tony Stark was right in Captain America: Civil War [MCU]

To be clear here I genuinely want my view to change and my friends have tried with little success, and so part of me thinks maybe Stark was wrong and I want him to be wrong but I'm just not convinced yet. And second I don't think his actions specifically relating to Bucky are justified and don't want that view changed, he was rattled and not thinking clearly, I'm specifically discussing signing the Sokovia Accords.

I think that as a normal person in the MCU I would want the Avengers to answer to the UN in some way especially after these tragedies and Sokovia/Ultron, and looking at real life it's hard to trust private paramilitary groups with no oversight of any kind.

As an outside observer its very easy to say Captain America is right because we as the audience know that Steve Rogers is objectively a good guy with his heart in the right place and the same can be said for his allies, but in real life checks and balances are important because we can't know for sure. And yeah sure sometimes governments can be wrong or slow or corrupt but that's a lot better than completely unchecked power (I'm not going to find any libertarian anti-regulation arguments very compelling in this regard; see Gary Johnson being booed for supporting the concept of drivers licenses).

Tony himself even said the Accords could be changed to add more safe guards and Cap was on board until he got mad about the unrelated fact that Wanda was being kept at the Avengers compound by Vision. I just think it's hard to agree with Cap on this one.

Edit: I was reminded that I want to make it clear I am aware of how the comics did Civil War and specifically wanted to only discuss the MCU for reasons I think are pretty clear lol.

[Assistant]
Part of the point of the movie was that neither side was completely 100% right. However, there were very legitimate problems with the Sokovia accords:

1) They required a superhero registry: This would mean that any superheroes trying to keep a secret identity could be found out and likely that powered people who choose not to be superheroes would also have to go on a registry

2)  Oversight speed. While with virtual technology now this one could probably be fixed, what of you need to do something in the moment but have to wait for permission.

3) Who's giving oversight? The UN has difficulty with this problem because certain countries have veto power. So in the end the Sokovia Accords become problematic for the same reason the Avengers are: humans are fallable and can be manipulated.


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

[User]
[Halo] Are there canonical reasons for the Plasma Rifle being called a "rifle" & its very low projectile speed being considered practical/worthwhile by the Covenant?

Been curious about this for a good bit. Thank you!

[Assistant]
Well, it's not a pistol, is it?
Obviously the traditional concept of rifling doesn't apply to plasma weapons, but the general parlance of weapons being divided into handguns, rifles, and what not is still convenient.
So while the plasma rifle isn't actually a rifle in the technical sense, calling it such makes it easy for troops to understand where it fits in the order of battle.
Projectile speed is intrinsic to the weapon design, and isn't actually considered to be that slow by Covenant standards, given that they haven't seen a high-velocity chemical propelled slug for many thousands of years.  Even then, such technology is considered primitive and unworthy, despite projectile velocity.


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

[User]
CMV: It should be illegal to add additional costs to an advertised price.

Why is it that we allow for sales company to advertise non-final prices in things?

* Gym membership advertised price: Low low cost of $49.99 a month!!
After taxes + Annual fees comes out to like $60 a month.

* Car sticker price: $5,000 down!! *Of a $30,000 car which after taxes, doc fees, etching, etc, is more like $35,000.

* Go into ShopRite, this candy is $5.00! After taxes more like $5.50 or something.

This is mainly an issue for big purchases such as automobiles, houses, etc. However, the point still stands for anything else really.

These examples are not numerically accurate but it has been my experience that advertised prices are never really what you end up paying in most states.

I understand there's economic advantages for this system, and people could simply adjust to expecting additional costs. However, it seems to me that everyone would be better off if I see a house for sale, listing it at $345,000 post taxes, I should in turn expect to pay $355,000 at most, after accounting for variable costs such as closing fees and gap costs.

Maybe there is a reasonable explanation as why this practice is so acceptable here in the US beyond, "Low prices entices customers."

[Assistant]
I appreciate that tax is not included in the price of items because its a good reminder of how pervasive taxes are.  It would actually be unfair if a government required tax to be hidden in the price because it would allow the government to increase the tax without bearing the responsibility of rising prices.

Aside from taxes, usually the add on costs  are additional things that are not specifically required and may be declined or negotiated away.  This is especially true when buying a car.


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

[User]
ELI5: In U.S. political debate, what does "globalist" or "globalism" mean?

This is a term that's been in the news a lot lately, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. Usually it's placed in opposition to "nationalism" and "nationalists," but it seems to be more than just "the opposite of nationalism."

[Assistant]
Globalisation is the phenomenon where increasing free trade and ease of international travel makes the economy less and less local. It is based on the theory (it's essentially proven to be true) that tax-free borders benefit both countries and is true of every two-country combination. It's problem is that some individuals in both countries lose their jobs, as people in the other country are either better or cheaper at it.

For example Costa Rica is better at Banana Farming than America, but America is better at building computers than Costa Rica. This means American Banana farmers lose their jobs to Costa Rica, but America gets all the Costa Rican Computer manufacturing jobs.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40,000] Are there non-Chaos insurgencies?

Apparently, all uprisings and subversions we hear of in mainstream material are somehow related to Chaos worship. This is sort of surprising, there's so many concerns people could have that wouldn't make you look at Chaos worship as a solution (in fact, Chaos only very rarely seems a plausible thing to worship).

Are there ever any uprisings or subversions for entirely mundane reasons or ideologies? Are there communist uprisings on Industrial Worlds? Peasant revolts on Feudal Worlds? How about some backwater planetary governors declaring independence for non-Chaotic reasons of personal ambition or because of not wanting to sacrifice their son or daughter to the Black Ships?

How about insurgencies that follow religions that have nothing to do with Chaos? Is there an Islamic State in some system? Is a future version of Al Qaida sitting on some desert planet, plotting to bomb the Imperial Palace?

If not, why no?

[Assistant]
I do believe the Siege of Vraks began as more of a political scuffle, a religious figurehead seeking to accumulate power before trying some sort of shenanigans. Chaos filtered in slowly there.

An important thing to consider, lots of Insurgents may not openly understand they're using Chaos at all, it is kept secret from the population. Also, many of them may start out as secessionists or revolutionaries, but when times get desperate.. well, you take help where you find it.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it that spicy condiments like sriracha and brown mustard are at their full spiciness when you first open the bottle but, over time, they lose their punch?

Like, right now, I cracked open a bottle of spicy brown mustard and it's clearing out my nasal passages. But, three weeks from now, I'm not going to get that same burn. Is it me adjusting to the heat level or the condiment losing its burn?

[Assistant]
capsaicin and sinigrin, the spicy components in chilis and mustards respectively, can oxidize when exposed to oxygen and lose some of their spice.

edit: for a little more detail, capsaicin binds to very specific neuronal receptors in the body that are related to pain and heat. When the capsaicin molecule binds, it acts like a key opening a lock. The action of opening the lock causes your brain to experience it as heat or pain, because that is the specific type of lock (receptor) being opened (activated). When the capsaicin molecule is exposed to excess oxygen molecules for extended periods of time, its structure can change, thus the "key" may no longer fit into the "lock" and you experience less pain/heat.


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

[User] ELI5:What is the difference between a triad and a tong?

[Assistant]
Tongs were largely based in America, and had their heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most of them started out as community centers and fraternal societies for immigrants living in Chinatowns, though many of them became involved in organized crime. The ones that are still around today have largely gone legit as trade unions or Chinese-American cultural groups, though they're still suspected of having shady ties to the criminal underworld.

Triads, however, have a connotation of being almost exclusively organized crime groups. They're largely based in mainland China, Taiwan, and Han-majority former European colonies like Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore. They're still going strong today in the criminal field.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do horses (versus other animals) have to be put down when they break a leg?

[Assistant]
1. Horses have very gracile (fine) legs, and through evolutionary processes, they have gotten rid of the excess weight. This means that while they are still strong, they are thin, and so when they break, they often shatter. With this shattering comes the risk of pieces of bone piercing the skin, causing further issues, and the bone moving during the accident can cut the equally fine blood vessels, stopping bloodflow to the rest of the leg below the break.

2. Horses hooves are attached directly to the bone, via a thin layer of tissue called a laminae. They are well adapted to sharing the load of the body across all four hooves when not in motion. The problem arises when there are just three to share it with. The laminae will quickly become inflamed, and incredibly sore - to the point where not even painkillers can properly manage the pain.

3. It is nearly impossible to leave them in a sling to heal. Racing horses weigh in at around 500kg, and so develop bed sores very quickly, and there is also a risk of pneumonia aswell.

On top of all this, racing horses are continually being bred in order to have finer bones, stronger muscles, and more performance. This is artifically selecting weaker genes, and weaker bones in the horses - we are essentially breeding glass race horses. Unfortunately, we are going to see more broken legs the further into the future we get.


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

[User]
If the friction coefficient is independent of the surface area, why are tires on race cars so wide?

This question was posed at the end of one of the MIT physics lectures, but there wasn't any resolution.

[Assistant]
Nice question, had me register to answer...

True, friction coefficient is not depending on the surface area, but in this case it is not the limiting factor. Just look at what happens when a tire *does* slip on the road: You see that it is not the friction between road and tire that is too low, but the "friction inside the tire", between rubber and rubber. You see that part of the tire still sticks to the road as a skid mark. It is the shear strength of the rubber that is not high enough, so a thin layer of it is sheared off and stays on the tarmac. Now, the shear stress *is* depending on the area.
Thus, a 20cm tire has the same friction on the road as a 40cm tire. But the 40cm tire has twice the surface area on the road, so they can spread a given shear force over twice the area, so their shear stress is half, so they fail (skid) later. Or, they can transmit twice the accelerating/deceleration/cornering forces.


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

[User]
CMV: George Floyd doesn't deserve to be immortalized as he is

Context: I'm bring this up because of Obama's comment on Floyd in response to the Uvalde shooting recently, and I used this as an argument in a comment that I believe deserves it own post.

First off, I don't think he deserved to die. I believe any death of an individual during detainment or while in police custody must be performed by an outside agency (the FBI being an obvious choice).

Second, his criminal record shows a past of drug abuse and violent crime.

While a tragedy that any life is loss, George Floyd didn't live the life of a saint. Fentanyl abuse, robbery, breaking and entering, threating a pregnant women with a pistol to her stomach. The list is decently long.

My view isn't that he should've died, nobody's life should be taken away unless they are found guilty of an extremely heinous crime (for me that's crimes against children, specifically sexual crimes, but that's off topic). My view is that he shouldn't have become a martyr for BLM.

Edit: I do have a wacky sleep schedule, and I will try to respond to as many top level comments as I can. All views are welcome, and thank you in advance for your inputs.

[Assistant] I dont know why you mentioned drug use twice in here, do you think theres something about someone using drugs that should make their murder less sympathetic? Its not like he was killed in a drug deal.


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

[User] [Waterworld] Why did Mariner's water filter make his urine potable but not sea water?

[Assistant] The sea water of the time was absolutely filled with pollutants, as a result of all of the submerged cities underneath. Lead, mercury, radioactive isotopes and god only knows what else. You're better off drinking purified pee, seeing as how you can be reasonably sure that it hasn't had any of those poisons in it since you gathered it from a relatively safe source.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect] Transitivity of "species" definition over Asari

Since in biology "species" is defined as "members of which can produce fertile offspring together", and Asari can produce offspring with every race, does that mean that technically, every living being in the galaxy is of the same species, by transitive property over the Asari? Or does "species" mean _every_ member has to be capable of mating with every other member (of a different sex)?

What would a more appropriate definition of "species" look like, in a galaxy where "can create fertile offspring" is not transitive?

[Assistant] The asari don't truly mate. Rather, they use the biological data of their partners, of any species, to randomize their own chromosomes when they reproduce. Their species is reproductively parthenogenic. They just take "mates" to improve the chance their children survive, but the "father" does not enjoy the benefit of seeing his genes passed on.


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

[User]
[DC] Are there Amazons in the Amazon Forest?

The one in South America. Are there mythological Amazons in there?

Whicj comic were they first introduced?

[Assistant] I feel compelled to point out that the Amazon Rainforest (or more accurately the river that flows through it) was named by a Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana after his camp was attacked by indigenous peoples led by women warriors.


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

[User]
ELIF: How is the US the richest country in the world, yet we seem to be in trillions of dollars of debt?

I've heard both of those statements said before, by the same people. I don't understand how we can be rich if we owe other countries so much money (like China).

[Assistant]
A nation's 'wealth' isn't defined by how much money their government has on hand.

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a measure of ALL of the nation's wealth, including both government and private. US industry and business make more money than any other nations.

Also government debt is not the same as government income, and US tax revenue is pretty stable and large.


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

[User] [Mad Max: Fury Road] The majority of the Citadel's military capability and warboy population was just destroyed in the course of a few days. Can they survive invasion by their neighbors? Can furiosa maintain hegemony over Gastown and the Bullet Farm?

[Assistant]
The leadership of Gastown and the Bullet Farm was killed. And they also contributed soldiers who died.

There is so much chaos between those 3 towns that Furiosa should have a bit of time to consolidate power.


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

[User] ELI5: Why smartphones can't capture decent pictures of the moon/stars.

[Assistant]
There are two main characteristics of a camera. How much light it collects, and for how long. In mechanical cameras, these are aperture size and shutter speed, respectively. Smartphone cameras do not have a shutter, but likely have something analogous.

When the cameras are designed and manufactured, the engineers have to decide on a blend between ease of use and versatility. Your average person isn't going to want dozens of settings. They just want something they can point at an object and take a picture. They also are unlikely to have a background in photography, so even if those settings were there, they wouldn't really be able to take advantage of them.

So the designers basically make a camera that will do fine under most normal situations, but taking pictures in extremes of light are mostly outside the realm of what these cameras are able to handle. It's a trade off between cost and expected use.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is the word "'nother" so typically said after "whole"?

Would the proper expression be "a whole another noun" or "a whole other noun"? If it's the latter, why is it so generally accepted to add an "n" to "other"?

[Assistant]
This is an infix, a word inside a word to add emphasis (compare with prefix and suffix). It is placing "whole" inside of "another," a-whole-nother.

The only other common infix in English is "fucking," e.g. abso-fucking-lutely and god-fucking-dammit.


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

[User] ELI5: what is the big deal With stradivarius violins, can't the just make an exact clone of it by analyzing it?

[Assistant]
They're made of denser wood due to the "little ice age" which took place during their construction, and this supposedly gives them an unique sound.

In reality, the effect comes from their name. In double-blind tests they perform just as well (or worse) as your average violin.


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

[User] Why do men experience a 45.7% increase in testosterone after specifically 7 days of not ejaculating?

[Assistant] The purpose of this study is to gain understanding of the relationship between ejaculation and serum testosterone level in men. The serum testosterone concentrations of 28 volunteers were investigated daily during abstinence periods after ejaculation for two phases. The authors found that the fluctuations of testosterone levels from the 2nd to 5th day of abstinence were minimal. On the 7th day of abstinence, however, a clear peak of serum testosterone appeared, reaching 145.7% of the baseline (P<0.01). No regular fluctuation was observed following continuous abstinence after the peak. Ejaculation is the precondition and beginning of the special periodic serum testosterone level variations, which would not occur without ejaculation. The results showed that ejaculation-caused variations were characterized by a peak on the 7th day of abstinence; and that the effective time of anejaculation, is 7 days minimum. These data are the first to document the phenomenon of the periodic change in serum testosterone level; the correlation between ejaculation and periodic change in the serum testosterone level, and the pattern and characteristics of the periodic change.


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

[User]
[Diablo/SCP Foundation] Would Diablo, Mephisto and Baal be successfully contained by the SCP Foundation?

Like as Keter class objects that need some powerful quantum shield to prevent the Prime Evils' spirits from going anywhere should their incorporeal spirits escape the Soulstones (Soulstones apparently function as temporary containment systems for these entities)? Mephisto, the Lord of Hatred, was able to brainwash the Zakarum priesthood even within his Soulstone and brainwashed the head priests into becoming minions of Mephisto (with Sankekur becoming an avatar of Mephisto).

[Assistant] They are contained. At the moment, the Type V Tartarian entities known as "Diablo," "Mephisto," and "Baal" are currently contained within a metafictional construct, maintained by widespread paratechnology secretly implanted in personal computers in the late 1990s and the sacrifice of thousands of hours of life by a dedicated player base. While these entities have attempted to free themselves via the metanarrative, Taskforce Epsilon Mu Epsilon ("Hell's Snowshovelers") and agents embedded at GoI-616 (Blizzard) has been successful at reinforcing the narrative of the "games" that keep them from directly influencing our reality.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Do all Jedi reach the rank of Master when they're old, and do all old Jedi eventually retie?

Generally speaking, bar the occasional order 66 that forced them into early retirement.
Edit: Misspelt **"Retire"**

[Assistant]
There are many Jedi who peak at Knight, and some who do not even become padawans.

Jedi do not retire. They are in the order for life. In fact, in legends there were only 20 Jedi Masters who left the order peacefully.


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

[User]
ELI5: How can we reverse the effects of Global Warming?

With the recent climate talks, I understand that we have to reduce our carbon emissions. But how is it possible to repair the effects of Global Warming, I mean what are we going to do about the millions (or billions?) tons of Carbon Dioxide released into the atmosphere already?

[Assistant]
The only way would be to figure out some technology to remove the *excess anthropogenic* CO2 from from the atmosphere. We would need some sort of atmospheric scrubber or sequestering machine - on a huge massive global scale. A couple of things:

1. We don't have the technology

2. Coordinating something like this on an international scale would be nothing short of a miracle

3. We would need to make sure we don't take out too much CO2 because greenhouse gasses like CO2 keep our Earth comfortably warm. The only difference between a nice Earth and a global-wide frozen wasteland are greenhouse gasses like CO2. So we can just suck all the CO2 out, or we would go too far the other way and we would all freeze to death.

Anyway, such an endeavour is more science fiction and fantasy than reality. The best we can do is reduce our emissions today, take as many data points as we can to create the best climate models possible and then plan and mitigate according to those models. At this point we are locked in for a few degrees warming, its up to us to decide if we would like to remain at these few degrees, or if we would take a more risky move and try for a few degrees more by continuing to emit in the manner that we have in the past.


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

[User]
ELI5: What prevents a television show that no longer airs to sell its rights to Netflix or some other streaming service?

I was just thinking about shows I watched as a kid.  Clone High, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Undergrads, etc. and was wondering what the incentive was to not have them highly accessible.

[Assistant]
It may be stuck in licensing purgatory, or someone else still owns the exclusive rights.

In some cases it's no longer really clear exactly who owns what percentage of the content.  TV shows use licensed music, have multiple actors on different contracts, and have various production houses, publishers, and distributors that may all need to agree on a deal depending on how their original contracts were worded.

This can get cumbersome fast and shows that have multiple organizations with veto power over a new deal can get tied up in licensing talks for years.

It's also possible that a single entity has already taken the steps to consolidate all that into a single deal and is working on their own service or simply is asking too much fron Netflix.


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

[User]
Why are American aircraft carriers flat, while British aircraft carriers sloped upward?

Surely there must be an internationally agreed upon method for launching an aircraft into the air from a very short distance, especially with the aircraft being so similar? What explains the disparity?

[Assistant]
British carriers are designed for Harrier jets which can take off under their own power off a sloped deck. Their engines can be turned downward to assist takeoff.

US aircraft are launched off the carrier with a catapult that accelerates the plane from zero to flying in 2 seconds. US carriers can fly a range of aircraft using this system.


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

[User]
Theoretically, if you had a chunk of dark matter and put it on Earth, what would it look like?

Would it have a certain colour? Would it reflect light like a mirror? From my extremely limited knowledge, I think that dark matter is able to bend light due to its gravitational field. Does this mean that its ability to bend light depends on its mass? Using what we know so far, what would give the best visualisation of what dark matter looks like to the naked eye (which then poses the question, would we be able to see dark matter with the naked eye)?

[Assistant]
The basic idea behind dark matter is that it's basically like normal matter, *but more boring*.

Matter interacts with other matter through the four fundamental forces: the weak and strong nuclear forces, gravity, and electromagnetism.

The nuclear forces hold atoms together and control nuclear fission and fusion and radioactive half-lifes and so on. This is hard to notice in our day-to-day lives because nuclear forces are so strong that atoms tend to be very stable: you don't get nuclear fission happening when you drop a banana. You do get a slow nuclear decay of some of  the potassium etc, but it's weak enough that you need special equipment to notice is.

Gravity on the other hand, is a very weak force. It has to add up over very large amounts of mass, which means it tends to be only really be significant on big scales, and tends to be fairly smooth and featureless. This is why galaxies end up with simple geometric shapes - spheroids, discs, etc. It's why gravity is close to uniform across the surface of Earth - it just pulls you towards Earth's centre from everywhere.

But the *electromagnetic* force is different. It's a strong force, and can be attractive or repulsive. This means you can build up really complex structures with molecular bonds, and even with intermolecular forces. Electromagnetic forces are how the ground holds you up, how the table stays in place, and even how your computer works. They allow a huge amount of complexity, enough complexity to produce life itself. Electromagnetism is the most important force for normal life (gravity is second place). Light is an electromagnetic force too. Sound is transmitted through electromagnetic interactions between nearby atoms. Touch, sight, and sound - all of our senses - are based on electromagnetism.

But not every particle interacts with all these forces! Neutrinos don't interact electromagnetically, for example. We have to detect them via nuclear reactions. Neutrinos can't form complex molecules, and you can't touch them, or see them. They just flow straight through things, occasionally having a nuclear reaction with an atom.

The idea of dark matter is that it's made of particles that are just like neutrinos, but more massive. So you can't see it or touch it. Gravity causes it to form big galaxy-sized blobs, but there's not a lot of complex structure - there's just blobs in blobs.

Dark matter also doesn't do anything special with gravity. A kilogram of dark matter has the same gravity as a kilogram of potatoes. So unless you have a huge amount of dark matter you wouldn't see light bending around a concentration of dark matter either. On a *galactic* scale we can start to see "gravitational lensing" though. But even for a whole galaxy, it's still considered "weak lensing". It's only when you get up to a whole *cluster* of galaxies that you get lensing that's strong enough to see with the naked eye.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does Meth flourish in rural areas?

As opposed to cocaine or people growing pot? You always hear about towns in states like Kentucky, Alabama, West Virginia and Tennessee when the news starts talking about Meth. What accounts for the popularity? Is it the availability of the ingredients? Because its easy money? Or is it because there's nothing better to do?

Explain like I'm five please.

[Assistant]
Meth is a drug that requires less energy to produce then many other organic drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, or heroin. All the above drugs are usually synthesized (created) from plants which ether require a large open area exposed to sun (And thus are easy to spot from the air.), or a system of lights to provide energy for the plants to grow. For industrial drug production (I.E. not your own little pot plant.) the cost of setting up the proper production scheme is relatively expensive to get to make it worth your wild. Also there is strong competition from other drug distributors that can produce more of the drug cheaper (Cocaine for Columbia, Heroin from Afghanistan, Marijuana for Canada and Mexico for instance)

Crystallized Methamphetamine on the other hand is relatively cheap to produce for it's value because the drug is created from entirely chemicals means. The chemical required to produce it are relatively cheap, and available and the chemical process while dangerous, requires far less energy then growing a plant, and can be completed in a far smaller time allowing the individual to make his money back faster.

As such Crystallized Methamphetamine is simply the most economical drug to start production of in a rural area. In an urban area or place with access to international distribution they would just buy drugs from other countries. But as most rural area are land locked and don't have access to other countries to buy their own drugs then they have to produce their own and Crystal Meth is the cheapest to produce while costing the most to buy.


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

[User]
[Marvel] [Harry Potter] Could Wolverine or Deadpool survive the Killing Curse?

If either Wolverine or Deadpool was hit with the Avdra Kadvra curse from Harry Potter, could they survive/heal from it?

[Assistant] No. The Killing Curse does no physical damage so there would be nothing for their bodies to recover from. The Killing Curse simply breaks the connection between body and soul, allowing the latter to move on. Neither of their powers are capable of "soul healing".