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

[User]
[Altered Carbon season 2] Why is double sleeving not only illegal, but highly illegal?

I understand why the Protectorate doesn't want anyone to have their own army of like minded individual just through sleeving themselves again and again. I mean, I sort of do.

But why is it such a taboo? >!Why, during season 2, when Kovatch meets Kovatch, he tells himself they'll rd them for double sleeving? Kovatch is at this point a member of the wedge, at the top of the Protectorate pyramid of power and secrecy.!<

Surely someone like that would be above such petty crime as double sleeving. What makes it so taboo, that even at the top of the Protectorate, it's still forbidden? Why doesn't the Protectorate allow itself to make copies of its best soldiers, engineers and scientists?

[Assistant]
1] Just because it's 'highly illegal' doesn't mean it doesn't happen.  If there's a word for it, someone is doing it.

2] It's a legal nightmare.  Married lady doubles, who is her husband?  Who is the real mother?  Not even getting into finance.

3] Crime.  An assassin doubles, sends himself out to do a murder, then unsleeves.  Who is guilty?

For a mild taste of how bad it can get, look at the legal fight against VCR's back in the day.


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

[User]
CMV: with very few exceptions, Nationalism in Western society today has nothing to do with loving ones country and is all about worshiping the State, to the severe detriment of humanity.

Part of the problem is that chauvinism, the most extreme kind of patriotic zeal, has become so normalized post-9/11 that its difficult to divorce xenophobia and hypervigilance from conversations about major national issues.  There are plenty of examples of how this affects society: pre-2001 NFL players stayed in off-field during the anthem, until the government sent a memo directing teams to be on-field in a show of patriotic solidarity.  Now, a player is a magnet for hatred and vitriol for kneeling in symbolic protest, despite the fact he has repeatedly expressed his love for his country.  There are far more examples of this, and its worth noting that aside from the US, nations throughout the world are suffering due to the regressive and ultra-militaristic fervor inherent to chauvinism.  The consequences of this are manifold: the over-expansion of government influence and trampling of human/civil rights, for one.  The disintegration and polarization of American society.  The resurgence of fascism.

[Assistant]
The debate over the kneeling for the anthem was kind of a proxy debate. It wasn't actually about patriotism - it was about race. Then later it gained steam and was about Trump.

The whole ordeal was very dramatic but ultimately pretty harmless. Nobody really got hurt from it it was just all over the news for a while. Can you give an example of what human rights are being violated because of patriotism?


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

[User]
ELI5: When lifting weights, why is it easier to do the last few reps if a spotter places a finger under the bar?

Is it actually the miniscule amount of weight they are taking off or is it a placebo effect thing?

edit: Thanks guys for all the great answers.

[Assistant] Physics. The weight of the bar is applying a downward force, and your muscles are pushing a force upwards. If the force you apply upwards is greater than the weight pushing down, the bar will accelerate upwards. The last few reps, we find it harder and harder to recruit the necessary muscle mass to accelerate the bar, so often times you'll have the bar start losing momentum at a certain sticking point and possibly stop in it's path. For that moment the force you're applying to the bar and the weight of the bar are equal, so the bar will hover at that sticking point. The spotter can come in and place a finger under the bar to apply just enough extra upward force to start accelerating the bar out of that sticking point. Remember, the forces at the sticking point are equal, which is why the bar is not moving, so only a little bit of extra force applied is necessary to give the bar upward momentum. It is much easier to maintain momentum, than to accelerate a stationary mass - this is also why paused sets are much more demanding.


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

[User]
Why do I get so confused over my code?

I'm new to python and i seem to enjoy the process of writing and designing a program,but the only problem i always stumble upon when I'm writing a long program is getting confused over my code.

I just can't keep up with it and i get really confused over it. How do programmers cope with this issue if they experience it in any way and how can I since i find this very demotivating.

[Assistant]
Well, you're new to this, so no wonder you're confused.

You can deal with this in a couple of ways:

* split code into (small) functions (and classes, if necessary). This will mean that once you write a function that does its _one_ task _correctly_, you can safely forget about its implementation and focus on the bigger picture. Then you can write another function that uses a couple of these smaller functions. Once you get that new function working too - it's relatively safe to stop caring about how it works and start focusing on the bigger picture! And so on and so forth. Same thing with classes: if you need to, create a class that does one thing _well_ and build something more complicated on top of it.
* split code into modules. Same thing, modularize everything. If your code is getting really big, maybe it's possible to factor out a chunk of it into its own module. Make sure it works fine and "forget" about its implementation and start focusing on the bigger picture.
* draw on a piece of paper. Translating ideas straight into code can be challenging, so it may be easier to draw a kind of UML diagram of your class, or a graph that describes your algorithm. You'll probably end up with a bunch of messy paper, but hopefully you'll have a better idea about what you're actually doing.
* write more code. As always, practice makes perfect: today you're intimidated by your own code - tomorrow you're hacking at the Linux Kernel with ease.
* use `assert` to make sure that your code isn't running on invalid data. If you want the argument of some function to be positive, `assert argument > 0` at the beginning of the function - then you won't have to worry about passing an invalid argument as much, because if you do pass an invalid argument, Python will raise an error and tell you where it came from.


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

[User] [Star Wars] What kind of Jedi was luke by the end of episode IV? Could he easily take on a Jedi master? What was his stance on the force?

[Assistant]
By the end of IV, Luke's not at all a Jedi.  He's barely realizing his connection to the Force.

By the end of VI, he's learned enough and resisted temptation enough to call himself a Jedi Knight (he does).  Still though, he was only able to beat Vader by giving into rage momentarily, and was utterly at Palpatine's mercy until Vader saved him.  Definitely a Knight, definitely far short of a Master.  Standing firmly on the Light Side, though perhaps not as unwaveringly as Obi-Wan or Yoda.

Still though, Legends has him as the most powerful Force user ever, greater than his father, Yoda, or Palpatine.  If that's kept in the film continuity, then it's possible that Luke in VII will be a wise and incredibly powerful Jedi Master.


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

[User]
[Star Wars]Does the Force exist in our galaxy, today, and could Earth humans use it?

I've only seen the main 9 movies. I've never read any books and haven't watched the other films or TV series yet.

Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a distant galaxy. Obi-Wan describes the Force as "an energy field that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds **the galaxy** together." He didn't mention whether he believes the Force extends beyond the Star Wars galaxy to the entire universe. I'm not even sure if the Star Wars characters believe there is life outside their galaxy?

If the Force exists in the universe, could Earth humans use it today, being light-years apart from the Star Wars galaxy and probably millions of years later?

I don't know whether the prequel trilogy's idea of midichlorians is restricted to the SW galaxy and whether the organisms could exist in Earth human blood?

[Assistant]
At the peak of the most widespread Force-using tradition in Galactic history, there were around 10,000 Jedi in a galaxy of quadrillions.

So odds are that our planet, with its less than 8 billion inhabitants, may not have even *one* person currently living on it that's strong in the Force.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do boats allow propeller shafts to rotate while ensure water is not coming into the hull?

I image if the shaft can rotate, it means the connection to hull is not 100% sealed. If it is not sealed, then water can come into the boat. There has to be a part in the boat where the water is completely stopped from reaching but still allows shaft to rotate. How does it work?

[Assistant]
There are various forms of devices called "shaft seals". The simplest means is that there is something called "packing" in the space between the rotating shaft and the stationary tube around it. The packing is often much like string, often with something like graphite dust or wax added, and then compressed into that open gap with something called a "packing gland". It's very much the same as how you can use a tap or bib for a garden hose without water shooting around from around the stem (the axle on which the handle rotates).

More complex seals will sometimes involve arrangements like a series of rubber barriers, each of which fit rather snugly around the shaft. This can allow in some leakage, but it's simply pumped back overboard.


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

[User]
[ATLA] Can a fire bender be burned by their own fire?

Whenever they bend its very close to their bodies,close enough that a normal person would still be burned. For example if a fire bender held a flame he was bending in one hand and held his other hand over said flame, would he burn himself?

[Assistant]
Its possible, but unlikely. The creators have come out and stated that the only way bending can directly kill is if the bender is intending to do so, and therefore puts enough power into it-note how Toph used the same attack that Long Feng did on Jet to Zuko after he accidentally burned her feet-but Zuko was still alive, only in pain. And firebenders are regularly shooting flames at people, yet they only seem to have concussive force and them disparate. So you have to deliberately want to kill in order to do the same. At the same time, Avatar humans seem to be a lot tougher than we would be. All the people who get thrown into rocks or water should probably have their bones crushed and internal organs ruptured, yet they only are hurt afterwards.

So a firebender could be burned by their own fire, but they would likely have to actually put effort into it in order to hurt themselves.


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

[User] ELI5: IF I use a laser thermometer to take a temperature through glass, does it give me the temperature of the glass or the object past it?

[Assistant]
The laser isn't taking the temperature, it's just there for aiming. The device is measuring the incoming infrared radiation emitted from the object in the direction of the laser. Just because glass is transparent doesn't mean it doesn't emit infrared. So you are taking the temperature of the glass.

That said, infrared can somewhat go through glass, not as easily as visible though. So a really hot object behind the glass that the laser is pointing at would have some of it's infrared radiation go through the glass and fool the thermometer into saying the glass is hotter than it is. It's also somewhat reflective to infrared too, so if you have a really hot object in the direction of the laser reflection off the glass that would also throw off the temperature reading of the glass.


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

[User] Why do so many animals have yellow eyes? Does the color of an animal's eye indicate anything about the eye's structure?

[Assistant]
Yes. Eye color is a combination of structural (reflects some colors away, and some directly back) and absorbent (reflects some directly back).

In humans the structure of the iris reflects as blue, and melanin absorbs to reflect as brown. All other colors of the iris are on a spectrum between the two. That is, except for albinos, which have red eyes as they lack the structure in their irises to hold pigment and so light reflects off of the retina.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do large piles of corn cobs spontaneously combust?

I was watching a tv show recently talking about using corn cobs to make things like football and bike helmets. They said that if corn cob piles weren't moved every so often they would begin to smolder from the inside and combust.

[Assistant]
Large piles of any plant material is capable of spontaneously combusting given the right conditions. They produce and retain heat as they decay and are warmed by the sun or air. If they are dry enough and that heat high enough they will combust.

This also happens with grain in silos, hay if the bales are too big, and even stacks of wood given the right conditions.


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

[User] ELI5: Why some insects hold their position for hours?, what are they doing or not doing?

[Assistant]
Conserving energy. Life is a struggle to maintain a balance of energy in/energy out, and many animals spend much of their time doing absolutely nothing until they need to eat again.

Snakes, for example, may only eat once every few weeks and spend the rest of their time not doing much of anything. Other species, like hummingbirds, need to be moving around looking for and consuming food almost constantly to stay alive.


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

[User] Why is the lifetime of a Muon (~2 microseconds) so much smaller than the lifetime of a Neutron (~15 minutes), even though they both decay due to the weak interaction?

[Assistant]
Great question. If you look at the Feynman diagrams for muon decay and neutron decay you'll find they're essentially the same. Hence the *dynamics* of the decays are not any different, but they have a different lifetime due to their *kinematics*.

The muon is roughly 200 times heavier than the electron to which it decays. In computing the lifetime, we can therefore regard the decay products--an electron, a muon neutrino, and an electron antineutrino--as being effectively massless. On the other hand, the neutron is just slightly more massive than its decay products, because the proton is almost as heavy as the neutron.

In computing the lifetime of a particle, we integrate over the "phase space" of the decay products. Essentially, this means we have to sum over all the different possible configurations of the momenta and energy of the outgoing particles. In the decay of a neutron, most of the energy (i.e. mass) of the neutron is needed to supply the rest mass of the proton, so you only have a little bit of leftover energy to distribute among the decay products. In a muon decay, you have a lot more kinetic energy (about a hundred times more) to distribute among the decay products. There are many more possible configurations of the momenta of the outgoing particles and hence the lifetime is shorter.

To clarify this argument further, take a limiting case. Suppose the proton was heavier than the neutron. Then, by conservation of energy, the neutron would not be able to decay. So you know that if the neutron is only slightly heavier than the proton, the decay is suppressed and the lifetime is long.

Ninja edit: you can read more about this in a particle physics text, such as Griffiths' Introduction to Elementary Particles, chapters 9.2 and 9.3.


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

[User] [Comics] What happens if Rogue gets into a fight with the Hulk?

[Assistant] We'd find the limit of Rouge's powers. Assuming he doesn't just crush her with a bus straight out of the gate. He grabs her. She starts absorbing his powers weakening him and strengthening her. Only, we've seen that her taking powers is somewhere between painful and stressful and would make hulk angrier. So he would just get more powerful. This would continue until Rogue's powers maxed out at which point the hulk would be slightly stronger still.


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

[User]
Why does "e" come out as "x" for the maximum "y" value for the function of f(y) = x^(1/x)?

This question is tied to a fact that, while I had a little fun with tetration (in the x\^x\^x\^x... form), I noticed that there is a region that does not go to infinity, while the number of exponents go to infinity. So I started searching for the max "x" value where this happens.

Long story short, I arrived at  y = x\^(1/x) as the function I need the maximum "y" value of.  I was lazy, so I homed in on the "x" any "y" values simply by using a calculator and trying numbers. After about 20 steps, I got  1.44466786 as "y" and 2.71815 as "x".

I was really surprised that I homed in on "e". This also means, that for infinitley many tetration of the same value as in x\^x\^x\^x..., the maximum finite value is "e", and the "x" value where this happens is e\^(1/e). Which is very interesting.

So my question question again: why does f(y) = x\^(1/x) has it's maximum at x = e?

I'm a third year physics bachelor student, so I can handle higher level math if it's needed for the answer.

[Assistant]
In general, a^b = e^[b\*ln(a)]. You can prove this yourself by setting a^b = e^(X), and solving by logging both sides.

This is your first hint, because any power can be expressed quite naturally as something with e and a natural log in it, so it shouldn't be a surprise that an e might drop out at the end.

So we have:

f(x) = x^(1/x) = e^[ln(x)/x]

To find the extremal points (including the maximum), we want df/dx=0. So we differentiate e^[ln(x)/x], set that to zero, and solve. Using the chain rule and the quotient rule, this gives us:

[1-ln(x)]/x^2 \* e^[ln(x)/x] = 0

This is zero when 1-ln(x)=0, i.e. x=e.

You can go further to prove that this is indeed a maximum etc.


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

[User]
[Pacific Rim]Why do pilots experience force feedback when walking a Jaegar?

It seems that for a majority of the distance required to get to the Kaiju it would make sense to conserve energy for the fight and not walk all the way. I understand that during a battle feeling where you step is very important, but we can see that even walking is a strenuous task for the pilots (especially when walking through water). Why not have a seated autopilot mode until the Jaeger reaches its destination?

[Assistant]
I believe it's at least partly due to the nature of the Drift.

You see when they first initialize a Jaeger the pilots go through an entire calibration routine designed to bring both their bodies, minds and machine into sync together. Once this sync is established it is most likely counter-productive to "break sync" and have the machine automatically do it's own thing, since combat may be required at a moment's notice and the time taken to re-establish a sync later potentially leaves them vulnerable in that type of situation.

The exact quote used is: *Two pilots, our minds, our memories connected.  Man and machine become one.*


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

[User]
CMV: Transgender definitions of a woman (or man) use circular reasoning so dont make sense as a definition

I know trans posts are overdone here, but I think part of it is because the idea just doesnt make sense to a lot of people on a fairly fundamental level and people are trying to square that.

I understand transgender people are in a lot of pain, confusion and distress and I earnestly hope they get the treatment they need.

The problem for me is that the proposed definitions just dont make sense so it is hard for me to say someone is *actually* a man or a woman when they clearly just arent.

So to get to my main point, which is purely just about philosophy/linguistics, the general transgender ideologys definition of a woman is a person who identifies as a woman. But that doesnt make sense? You cannot have the word in the definition too. Its circular reasoning. What is the meaning of the woman then that the person identifies as? I really want to be convinced of this as its the only hurdle I cannot get over.

(Also I will only be convinced by arguments that dont bring up extremely rare exceptions like XXY people or someone born without a certain sexual organ. Categorisation (in language) is never 100% but in this case it applies to 99.999% of cases so is pretty tight. A few exceptions do not break the rule. It would be like saying a human cannot be categorised as having one head because there are conjoined twins.)

[Assistant]
>my main point, which is purely just about philosophy/linguistics

It's a very surface level understanding of both philosophy and linguistics.

Linguisitically speaking, does the concept of "being transgender" exist in the spoken and written language? **Obviously it does.** It exists as much as being a Catholic, or being American, or being psychic, or being white, or being an aristocrat, or being cisgender.

Philosophically speaking, what does that mean? Well, not much. That the language creates subjective labels, and it is not really an essential revelation of "things that exist" in a material measurable sense, is a very basic observation.


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

[User]
[General] What are some examples of time travel wherein the character travels to past and simply waits to get into present?

Like Dr Doom traveled thousands of years in past to learn magic..... and simply waited to get back in 20th century.
Or in DC Legends Mick got stranded in 1942 and was put in a stasis till being woken up in 2016.
What are some similar examples?

[Assistant] Marvin the android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was subjected to this so much that he actually ended up becoming subjectively older than the rest of the actual universe by the time he was done .


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

[User] If we weren't counting, would there be a way to tell how old we were?

[Assistant] Sort of. If you want an exact age, that can't be determined unless you count. However, your DNA contains a region called the telomeres this region resides on the very beginning and very end of each DNA strand. Over your life time the telomeres become shorter and shorter. This is due to the way our DNA replicates as the proteins involved need a certain number of nucleotides to grab onto the DNA. Because of this a few nucleotides are not replicated each time. So based on telomeres length you could determine someone approximate age give or take a decade. Let me know if you need any clarification.


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

[User]
[WH40K] How does the invulnerability of Terminator armour work?

Terminator armour, in addition to being as durable as a tank in its own right, is capable of turning blows that should reduce even it into slag. This is because the armour offers some form of energy or spiritual shielding, but how does this shielding work? Is it the armour's first line of defense which becomes depleted, like with Halo's MJOLNIR armour, or is it more of a random chance to disperse any attack?

[Assistant]
It's an on-board shield generator, and functions very similar to what you'd see on the Mjolnir armour, but far more powerful. Terminators have reliably been shown to take Lascanon shots, which would vaporise a Spartan.

Imperial armours also contain a Crux Terminatus, which is said to contain a sliver of the Emperor's armour, and is supposed to ward off damage... But frankly, given the fact that Terminator Armour has been just as durable before the Emperor's fall, AND that it remains durable for the Traitors, i think it had little to no impact on it's resilience.


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

[User] [Marvel] Deadpool has always seemed like he's aware he's in a comic book. Has he ever expressed happiness/annoyance at the situations that his current author puts him into? How about existential angst that his life and decisions are governed by a comic author?

[Assistant] An alternate universe version of Deadpool (Earth-12101) once lost the "yellow boxes" part of his mind that had made his meta-awareness bearable. He proceeded to murder nearly every living hero and villain in his universe, then escape into the multiverse in an attempt to kill the beings who created him. When that failed, he attempted to destroy the very narrative structure that the multiverse stood on, by traveling to the "Ideaverse" and killing the archtypes that gave current stories their shape, but was ultimately defeated. His final attempt ends with an encounter with Earth-616 Deadpool, who is able to kill him and stop his attempt to kill every iteration of himself across the multiverse, believing that will allow him to finally, truly die.


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

[User]
[Game of Thrones] Why has Tommens' character became so uncaring towards his family and mother?/How did he become so brainwashed so easily?

I am now almost the point of assuming he has just gone completely crazy.

When he went to see Margaery in her chamber, utterly battered, he just said, 'I hope you're OK', or something, and just looked completely out of touch with reality. She was clearly in distress, but he refused to see it.

He even spoke with his Mum like 3 episodes ago and said "I want to be strong, help me", now he is basically sentencing her to death.

Can someone explain why someone like Tommen has allowed all this to happen in the first place?

Let me explain, the main argument here is,'Why didn't he just burst in and wreck everyone after he found out about his Mum and other things?', Which some will answer with" He fears for their safety".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if he FEARS for their safety, he surely knows that these guys are highly dangerous people? And therefore, shouldn't be taking time bonding to 'two pillars' of the world, and save his mother and wife?

That's my problem.

Could he be possibly playing along like Margaery? I really want this to be true, but it's surely too late.

Even Joffrey was better than this clown.

[Assistant] He's nowhere near as aggressive as his brother and he is genuinely scared for his wife. Could he be faking? Possibly. But keep in mind he is just a kid and children's minds are more easily accepting of indoctrination.


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

[User] [Dragon Ball] How did Bubbles and Gregory die and end up with King Kai?

[Assistant] They didn't die, at least not until GOKU BROUGHT FUCKING CELL THERE. They always lived there. Considering that King Kai is a goddamn god, he might have as well just created them along with the planet, or they might be some other kind of celestial beings.


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

[User] [Harry Potter] If Voldemort had been destroyed completely during his first encounter with Harry when he was a child who might have he been raised by instead of the Dursley family?

[Assistant] Nothing would have changed up through the beginning of the *Philosopher's Stone*. Everyone thought Voldemort *had* died that night (aside from Dumbledore). The reasons Harry had been placed with the Dursleys were there were still Death Eaters who would do him harm, his godfather was suspected of murdering Peter Pettigrew (still would have happened as Sirius sought revenge for James), and the Dursleys were the only living relatives (both sets of grandparents were deceased, James was an only child). These still would have happened. We don't see any evidence of Voldemort until *Philosopher's Stone* and the attempts to hide one of the Hallows (Per Dumbledore's suspicion; not first hand evidence) and Voldemort's possession of Querrel.


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

[User]
What causes different materials to expand or contract at different rates?

Recently finished the thermodynamics unit in physics, and wanted to know what causes different materials to expand or contract at different rates? Does it have anything to do with the heat capacity, or are they two separate things?

\(I am aware that it is called the "coefficient of linear expansion" btw\)

[Assistant] Intermolecular bonding energy. Heat is atomic kinetic energy, right? Well, if a material is bonded to itself really strongly (tungsten), it will take a lot of energy (heat) to force them to spread out. If they are weak (plastic), they will spread out a lot further with application of the same amount of energy.


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

[User]
ELI5: What actually is stress and why can it make you ill?

Like what is happening to your brain and stuff?

[Assistant]
Stress in mammals is the brain telling the body to prepare for possible danger. The body then minimize all non-critical body functions, (like reproduction, digestion, healing, immune system) in order to save energy for possible fight or flight. If you may have to run from a tiger soon, you don't want your body wasting energy producing sperm, heal that cut or anything else not directly related to running.

It was not intended for extended period of time. But our human mind can put us in stress mode for months. Then all the non-critical functions your body have been neglecting add up.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why didn't Anakin just leave the Jedi Order? What was stopping him?

I just rewatched Revenge of the Sith and it looked like Anakin really wasn't mandated to stay. In addition, Ashoka Tano just straight up left without any ceremony.

[Assistant] He wasn't mandated to stay at all - but that was his problem. He wanted to stay but also wanted to do everything the council said not to do. And in current canon he expressed leaving as early as just three years after he joined. He never went through with it, but that's ultimately for a variety of personal reasons.


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

[User]
[Skyrim] Why are so many castles and keeps controlled by bandits?

Not only do they represent incredible expense, they're often tatically useful, able to control major choke points in Skyrim.  Just seems odd that so many are 'staffed' by cutthroats and vagabonds.

[Assistant]
They don't just represent incredible expense, they're also incredibly expensive to maintain. If the realm is suffering financially, castles and keeps go with low or few supplies and manpower.

If the lord of the realm can't afford to properly man his keeps, it's no surprise that roaming bands of bandits take over. Most of these structures last for hundreds of years if not longer. That's a long time for something to go wrong and a keep to find new management.

It wasn't unheard of in the real world either. Feudal systems mean that many keeps, castles and tower houses are build privately by those who can afford it. When those people fall from grace... anything can happen and anyone can move in on the keep until such time someone more powerful intends to take over.


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

[User]
ELI5: If Helen Keller was born blind and deaf, how on earth did she learn anything?

I don't even really understand how she wasn't a vegetable, since we learn about how to think and reason and communicate through either listening or reading. Yet she turned out to be a genius. How?!

[Assistant]
She was actually born with both sight and hearing, but lost it to disease at 19 months.

She learned via touch and by having the words for various things spelled into her palm.

She learned to speak by feeling peoples lips as they talked.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is watching a campfire or fireplace burn so relaxing?

[Assistant]
Since fire seems to have been developed by our ancestors at least a million years ago, before they were even human - *homo erectus* was thought to have had fire - the experience certainly goes deep with us.

A campfire was a deterrent to predators who would otherwise sneak in and snatch people.  Fear of fire is an even deeper instinct that goes back to the first land animals, because the high oxygen content of the atmosphere at times made random forest fires an utter apocalypse.  So even the smell was and is a deterrent.

But by whatever process, hominids overcame that and came to use fire as a tool, and the same glow and dancing light that sparked fear in *everything* else became a source of security to the hominid line.  As long as that fire danced and crackled, the leopards would keep their distance.

It's the same thing with the sound of a soft rain.  Sitting at the entrance to a cave mouth with soft rain trickling outside, you were secure that no leopard was going to be out in that rain looking for you or your children.  It was taking it easy somewhere the same as you were, and couldn't smell you even if it was hungry.


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

[User]
ELI5: Is it theoretically possible to predict the future using a super quantum computer?

I was thinking, if you knew every single thing about how the universe started, (which we don't but it's a hypothetical question) and we had an unimaginably powerful quantum super computer that could simulate the universe EXACTLY as it is, then would it theoretically be possible to speed up the simulator and see what happens to earth after the current time on earth. I don't know if any of this made sense but if it does, any answers are appreciated.

Thanks!

[Assistant]
The problem is that in order to simulate the universe, you need to know exactly what it looks like. This includes the computer.

So in order to simulate the future you need to be able to simulate the computer simulating the future, ...


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

[User] ELI5:Why is a crash in house prices a bad thing? As a first time buyer, it would be a benefit to me if houses were cheaper, right?

[Assistant]
It's a buyer's market now, so yes, if you have the money, it's a great time for you.

But, imagine that you had borrowed $100,000 for a house a few years ago. Now, the housing price has dropped, and your house is only worth $50,000, market price. You are paying off a $100,000 loan for an object worth $50,000. You see the problem? A lot of people were expecting the housing prices to stay level, if not rise. They lost money, on top of having to pay their loans.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do cops pull you over then ask you if you know why they pulled you over?

[Assistant]
Because it puts you on the spot.

When you get pulled over, most people hope to get off with just a warning, and part of that is being polite and respectful.  Lying is impolite, and will likely get you a ticket, but leave open the option of contesting it in court.  Telling the truth (assuming you were speeding or something) is a confession, the officer might respect your honesty and give you a warning, but if they don't, it will be more difficult to contest the ticket.

Also, like any open-ended question, it helps gauge your level of nervousness and/or intoxication, to help the officer determine if you are breaking any other laws.


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

[User]
How to move past "pop-philosophy' to actually understanding serious and legitimate philosophical ideas/works?

I just watched a video critiquing Sam Harris's "The Moral Landscape". I had no idea how inept "intellectuals" like Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris are when it comes to talking about philosophy. I am mostly interested in moral philosophy and as of now I generally identify myself as a Stoic, but I feel like i'm missing something. I want to dive deeper into existentialist ideas, but I want to do it properly. I have no idea what post modernism is considering Peterson seems to be way off with his interpretation of it. I don't understanding the difference between analytic vs continental philosophy even after researching a bit on it. I guess my question is, how do I study philosophy "properly" so I can come to understand these ideas and answer this question and better be able to call out weak pseudo philosophy when I see it?

[Assistant]
Takes courses in it, read books about it, listen to podcasts about it -- that kind of stuff.

For instance, if you're interested in ethics, then a natural place to begin would be with an introductory text on ethics, like Shafer-Landau's *The Fundamentals of Ethics*.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] If a Muggle were to accidentally kill the holder of the elder wand do they now master it?

Let's say Dumbledore gets hit in a traffic accident by some hapless muggle...does that muggle now master the elder wand? If not....then who?

[Assistant]
Nah, a muggle doesn't have any magic, so the elder wand can't attach to it. It'd be like a vacated title belt. Can't think of a way for it to go back to being owned by a wizard tho. Maybe it'd attach itself to the nearest wizard at the time of Dumbledore's death?

Or maybe it would go back down the line of owners until it hits somebody that isn't dead.


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

[User] The last time atmospheric CO2 levels were this high the world was 3-6C warmer. So how do scientists believe we can keep warming under 2C?

[Assistant]
Well the reason the temperature in the past was so much higher is that the high CO2 levels persisted for many thousands of years allowing for the progressive accumulation of water vapor in the atmosphere which accelerated the greenhouse effect. CO2 is actually the second most important greenhouse gas behind water vapor, though it is often the trigger for climatic change because it's concentration in the atmosphere is controlled by a variety of complex processes where as water vapor is effectively controlled by temperature and pressure. Over time the increased temperature has a positive feedback with water in the atmosphere allowing for very elevated temperatures. It's worth noting that when we say the "the last time" we are taking a snapshot of a world that had been experiencing those conditions for millenia.

We currently believe we can keep the warming around 2C because we are projecting mitigation and emission reduction strategies that will eventually slow the warming trend. In the short term (geologically speaking) that means a temperature rise of around 2C.


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

[User]
Is it possible to ''reactivate'' inactive genes?

I read yesterday that some animals can get vitamin-C directly from the sun but humans can't even tho we have the necessary genes in our DNA. So my question is as follows: Would it be possible to ''reactivate'' genes like these in the future and what practical uses could it have?

Edit: Wow! Thanks everyone for the response. This was one of my first posts Thank you for your responses!

[Assistant]
It depends on what you mean by 'reactivation.'  The ancestral vitamin-C gene has been subject to a large amount of genetic drift (random mutations).  It would have a large number of mutations in it, and determining what the mutated DNA based should be would not be a trivial task.

It could be possible to take a copy of vitamin-C synthetase from a related organism that has it and insert that into the genome.  Likely it would work in the same way, with some tweaks needed to the regulatory regions.

However, none of this is 'useful' in the medical sense - currently there is no technique to play with the genome of an adult organism.  Whenever geneticists make a mutation or other change, it is always in the early embryo, or the gametes of the parents.  Your kids could make vitamin C, but you likely couldn't.


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

[User]
['The Dark Knight Rises' movie] Is Bane considered a Cultist/Cult leader?

I wasn't sure where to put/ask this. I would appreciate it if someone were to try to explain, rather than simply state 'yes' or 'no'.

  I'm mainly asking because of the (I believe the first scene?) When they hijacked a plane. As they were leaving, one of his crew members was leaving with them, and Bane just said 'No, they'll expect one of us in the wreckage brother', and... He just stayed... no resistance or objection whatsoever, I wonder how Bane managed to have such an effect on someone, in addition to whether or not he is technically a Cultist/cult leader.

[Assistant] Pretty much.  Bane is a brilliant orator with a powerful presence of being.  He takes mercenaries and people down on their luck and molds their minds into accepting his version of the League Of Shadows belief system until they are willing to die for him or commit acts of horrible violence without a second thought. That sounds like a cult leader to me.


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

[User] ELI5: If I take a complete daily vitamin every day, could I essentially live off of bread?

[Assistant]
There is a lot of poor information in this thread.

The short answer is YES. The long answer is: depends on the kind of bread and your desired quality of life. Bread has all the macronutrients your body needs and let's assume the vitamin has the RDA of all the micronutrients. If you eat 2 loaves of Wonder White Bread you'll consume 2600 cals, 30g fat, 480g carbs, 10g fiber, 80g protein. You will feel like crap this way and likely become fat and malnourished.  If you eat two loaves of Bodhi's Sprouted Spelt bread you will consume ~2100 calories, 34g fat, 252g carbs, 112g fiber, 151g protein. This is probably better than most Americans actually eat!


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

[User] ELI5: Why do so many movies tend to cast people in their mid-to-late twenties to play as high school kids?

[Assistant]
Underage actors have far more regulations regarding when they can work and how often; those regulations are intended to protect child actors, but it means that it's just easier to work with older actors.

In addition, older actors just have more experience and and are generally more convincing on screen; think about how terrible the acting is on, say, Disney Channel, where most of the actors are actually about the same age as the characters they're portraying, compared to most movies where you have actors in their twenties playing high school kids.


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

[User]
How are UV bulbs made "low ozone"?

I've purchased several fluorescent type UV bulbs that operate at 253 nm. A person may purchase two versions of the same bulb, regular and "low ozone" bulbs. If the bulbs are at the same frequency, how do the manufacturers decrease the ozone produced? Is there a standard for "low ozone"? or is it just what they feel like?

EDIT: Thank you for the replies. Yes, these are mercury bulbs.

[Assistant] Assuming it's a mercury lamp, it also emits at 185 nm.  This is causing most of your ozone. You need a fused quartz envelope to pass that deep of UV, so using regular glass will absorb it, reducing ozone production.


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

[User]
CMV: Trains will become 100% autonomous before airliners.

To this day, we still pay schmucks to sit in trains. Whether or not they are playing a super active role in its motion or path is varied, and lots of cities have trains which are extremely if not entirely automated, but there are still thousands of humans who are actively playing a role in the piloting of trains.

I believe this is due to the high cost of automating vehicles performing very high stakes human transport, and the powerful grip of unions preventing the loss of jobs in these fields. I believe both of these hold true for the airlines as well.

If weve had close to a century since train travel fell off in the United States and you can still find a job driving one, it will take even longer for automation to replace pilots on airplanes traveling much faster, with more variability in environment, carrying a much higher percentage of the traveling public with more factors affecting safety of the cargo.

[Assistant] Both are already basically automated. The pilots and conductors are there for psychological ease of the public, and emergency actions. But they are both actually capable of functioning without humans currently, they are just not allowed to do so.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Are there more radical Rebel leaders?

So I hate the Empire. Most people in the Rebel Alliance do, and I'm not questioning Leia's commitment to the cause or anything, but I REALLY hate the Empire. Is there any kind of Jacobin Club or Robespierre within our little revolution?

[Assistant]
Tarkin mentions that the Rebel cell formerly based out of Lothal is more principled than most, in that it doesn't seem to have caused any civilian casualties.

We can safely assume that there are some hardcore motherfuckers out there in the Rebellion, some real bad guys who are every bit the terrorist that the Empire claims every Rebel is.

But you'd be hard-pressed to find any names, even among the Legends.


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

[User]
Is there an ancient African philosophy analogous to ancient European or ancient Asian philosophies?

Discussing comparative philosophy the terms, "ancient European philosophy" and "ancient Asian philosophy" were being thrown around until somebody asked, "Is there an ancient African philosophy?"

The presenter talked about the Middle East and ancient Egypt (technically part of Africa), which led me to think that perhaps there isn't a particularly African brand of ancient philosophy, there are just ancient philosophies that took place in Africa, usually Mediterranean countries near Europe and Asia.

Is that mostly correct? Wildly incorrect?

If someone were interested in reading ancient African thinkers other than North Africa, where would you suggest they start?

[Assistant]
A few of Greek Historians (Philostratus and Heliodorus) record a lot of the teachings of the "gymnosophists" (which basically function as the proto-philosophy of both the pre-Socratics and post-Alexandrian philosophy) coming into Greece as coming from Ethiopian priests. In the same way, Plato confidently tells us most of his philosophical innovations can be traced back to Egypt.

That said, there's not much documentation simply because there's not much documentation of the period in general, a lot of the gymnosophists preferred to spread their teaching only by word-of-mouth among dedicated students anyways, and the Greek historians don't always take tremendous interest in sorting out the different strains in the philosophy of the gymnosophists.


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

[User] ELI5: How does adblocker work? How come it isn't commonly circumvented?

[Assistant]
The most popular Ad-blockers (AdBlock, ABP) rely on two principal methods:

>1) Communication blocking, in which communication to ad-servers/ad resources is blocked altogether (the client request does not occur). Example: block all requests to URLs that include "google.adsense".

'

>2) Element hiding, in which certain HTML elements, even if loaded correctly, are still hidden from the page. Example: hide any element with class="Ad".

Ad-blockers use various UGC lists (such as EasyList or Fanboy) to define, customize and widely distribute rules that maximize blocking efficiency for these methods - such rules may be defined per site or in general.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are races run counter-clockwise?

Whether it's a foot race, horse race, NASCAR, or even a baseball diamond.

[Assistant]
The Romans did it that way.  Every time some weird thing doesn't make sense, it's because the Romans did it that way.  Why do we have two twelve hour segments in our day (AM/PM), instead of one 24 hour duration?  The Romans did it that way.  Our months? Roman.

Go watch Ben Hur if you don't believe me.  The chariot race: counterclockwise.


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

[User]
[DC] Before its destruction, did the average Kryptonian know that they'd get superpowers under a yellow sun?

Or was it just something that Superman found out when they sent him to Earth? Like, were they teaching this stuff in Kryptonian science class? Why didn't the Kryptonians make efforts to colonize worlds with yellow suns?

[Assistant]
They knew, but they were technologically advanced enough that they didn't really care.

It seems cool to us to be able to jump tall buildings in a single bound and things like that.  But why bother if you already live on a paradise world with super-technology?  If you want to fly, you can just strap on an anti-gravity belt or something.  No need to move to some crappy planet where they don't even have gold volcanoes or flying houses.


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

[User]
Why is the CMB radiation not only always around us, but ALWAYS with us?

As far as I understand, the CMB is the result of the recombination, that is when the photons could finally travel freely.

If all the photons "escaped" at more or less the same time, why are we constantly "seeing" these photons? Shouldn't they go past us and then be gone to further places in the Universe?

Light from the stars is different because stars are constantly producing this light and that's why we can observe it in a constant fashion. However, the moment of recombination is not constantly emitting light because it is that, a moment. So I am very confused.

[Assistant]
It's due to the finite speed of light, and the infinite (or really big) size of the universe.

Imagine an experiment where you set up a huge array (say, filling the solar system) of flashbulbs set to all go off at the same time.  When they go off, you'll see the flashes from those close to you first.  Then those ones will appear dark, because their light will have passed you by, as you said.  A second later, the light from the bulbs the distance to the the moon (or so; ie a light-second away) will be reaching you;  you'll still see light, just from those bulbs rather than the ones close to you.  And so on, and so on - as each second passes you'll see light from bulbs that were another light-second away.

With the CMB, we're looking out at the inside of a sphere, known as the "surface of last scattering", which a certain distance from us.  That sphere, ie the distance to the "lightbulbs" (really electrons last scattering photons at a particular time in the universe's history, happening at the same time everywhere) we see is growing by one light-year per year.  We're always seeing a little further away as time passes;  the same moment over and over again, as it played out further and further away.


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

[User]
Are there examples of speakers purging synonyms for simply having too many of them?

If I have to elaborate further: Doing away with competing words. Like if two dialects merged, and the speakers decided to simplify.

[Assistant] Language isn't crafted intentionally, like that. It generally evolves over time. "You" used to be a plural pronoun only, but it changed over time to be used as a singular pronoun; it was even met with the same kind of vehement rejection that some have today for "they" as a singular pronoun. There's also plenty of words that are no longer used, like "thee" and "thou." They're still valid words, but they compete with "you," and so people have shifted to using the latter over time.


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

[User] If you took 100 liters of water at 80 degrees and mixed it with 100 liters of water at 60 degrees, would you get 200 liters of 70 degree water?

[Assistant]
Yes, approximately.

You're broadly interested in the heat capacity of water - it tells you how much energy you need to change the temperature of water. While in most real systems the heat capacity does have some small variation with temperature, it can generally be taken to be constant, especially over a small range of temperatures like the problem given here. In this case, assuming constant heat capacity for water and no evaporative or cooling losses, you will end up with 200 L at 70 degrees.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do armies collect their dead soldiers?

I'm just watching "The Pacific" and during the battle scenes, I got to wondering how various armies collected their dead.

[Assistant]
Often, they didnt in places like iwo jima. Those to-the-last-man island fights were brutal and there was rarely a chance to collect the dead.

Many Japanese remain where they fell, or were collected up by the US forces and buried in mass graves.

Most US soldiers were recovered hours to weeks after a battle, and usually repatriated to the US.

Historically, armies would sometimes allow groups from either side to move around openly in front of the guns to collect the dead and wounded, but not often since the 1800s.

And places like the Somme, the dead remain in the ground where they died.


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

[User]
Why do our hair colors change (greying/white hair) when we grow older or are stressed?

I've always wondered about this phenomenon. It seems kind of odd that people grey as they grow older as hair does not seem, to require a lot of energy to maintain.

Can someone explain why this happens? And how does stress factor into people greying faster?

[Assistant]
According to a recent article in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (sorry, no link, subscription site):

Oddly enough, your follicles produce three things simultaneously: melanin, which gives your hair its natural colour, hydrogen peroxide (as part of the follicle's normal oxygen intake cycle), and the enzyme catalase, which breaks down said peroxide into hydrogen and water almost as soon as it forms. As you age, your catalase production decreases, leaving more peroxide hanging around in the follicle, which bleaches out the melanin colouring in your hair proteins. Your keratin turns to its neutral-state colour, which is a semitranslucent silvery-gray.

And btw, psychological stress doesn't "cause" gray hair. Stress can sometimes (rarely) cause *alopecia*, which means the thicker, darker hair can stop growing, leaving the already-gray remainder more prominent, but it won't cause the hair to actually change colour, per se.  Some health issues, like insufficient B12 intake, smoking or thyroid problems may accelerate the graying process. Genetic predispositions also come into play, which is why caucasians generally tend to go gray earlier and more completely than, say, Asians.


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

[User]
Are Positrons Antiparticles or Antimatter?

So: Take an electron. Its opposite is a positron, correct?

A positron is an anti-electron, right? (Yes.... I have read wikipedia!)

Is a positron antimatter? (Wiki says it is.....)

Or just an anti-particle, made of matter, not antimatter? (Again wiki says it is so.... to my surprise...)

If so, what exactly is antimatter? Just oppositely charged atomic & subatomic particles?

Could you have electrons and positrons made of matter AND electrons and positrons made of antimatter?

Or have I misunderstood the whole antimatter thing completely, and over thought / over complicated it?

[Assistant]
"Matter" isn't even that well-defined of a concept, and this carries over to antimatter, so don't sweat it. It's just semantics.

It is an antiparticle, in the sense that the electron is (conventionally, but it's very reasonable) considered the "normal" particle.


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

[User] Why do we windmill our arms when we lose our balance?

[Assistant]
Conservation of angular momentum. If you're standing on the edge of a platform, your angular momentum is zero. If you start wheeling your arms in a clockwise fashion, your trunk will have to start turning in a counterclockwise fashion so that the total angular momentum of your body is still zero. This is what you want, to get your body to rotate AWAY from the edge. So you rotate your arms in the opposite direction.

You see the same thing with dragsters. The wheels start turning clockwise, and so the whole body lifts counter-clockwise.


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

[User] How does the earth make water? Or is there a fixed supply.

[Assistant]
Water is chemically composed of Oxygen and Hydrogen, both of which are found in large quantities on our planet, but not always together as water. The amount of Hydrogen and Oxygen is relatively fixed - discounting the small amount added by meteorites entering our atmosphere, and space craft and the solar wind releasing some back into space.

So there's a maximum amount we could have if all the oxygen and hydrogen on the planet was used to make water, but there would be some hydrogen or oxygen left over, as it's unlikely the mounts match up exactly 2:1.

Life and human activity constantly moves Hydrogen and Oxygen from one chemical composition to another via chemical reactions: Plants exchange oxygen (both ways) with the atmosphere via photosynthesis and growth; animals breathe in oxygen from the atmosphere and combine it with sugars from food and breathe out carbon dioxide and water vapour produced in respiration. On top of that, the human activity of burning wood and fossil fuels also produces carbon dioxide and water (among other things). Other industrial and natural chemical processes also produce or consume water.


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

[User]
[Game of Thrones] If Robb had won the war, how would he deal with the other threats?

Let's say the red wedding never happens. He lives. How does the rest of the war play out? who ends up sitting on the Iron Throne? and how does everything play out with Jon bringing wildlings through, Daenerys, and The White Walker threat?

[Assistant]
Are we assuming the only difference is the Red Wedding?  If so, he never steps foot in the South again after reclaiming Winterfell.  Robb left the River Lords behind to guard their own lands and took his northmen north.  All the Iron Throne has to do is convince a few River Lords to switch sides, which won't be hard since Robb hasn't done a ton to keep the River Lords loyal.  Bracken will happily turn on Blackwood and the Freys have every reason to spit on the Young Wolf too.  The River Lords fracture and turn on one another while Robb works on driving out the Ironborn.  He is moderately successful, assuming the Bolton's don't try anything right away, but he can't easily slip past the Twins once the Freys turn on him, so he's never returning to the south to reunite with the River Lords.

Stannis finds the North more or less closed off to him.  He may even decide not to head North to save the Night's Watch, since there's little enough hope of winning them to his cause with Robb still being a factor.  Hopefully Robb gets his stuff sorted quickly enough to ride to the Watch's aid, because if not, the Wall will be breached and Wildlings will flood into the Gift and surrounding countryside.

With Robb cut off from the River Lords and them fighting among themselves, the few holdouts more or less bend the knee pretty fast.

Up north, the big question is will Robb go through with making Jon his heir or not, because that will certainly influence a ton of what happens with the Wildlings after.

Assuming the Boltons stay in line, eventually Robb would probably be swayed by Jon and the Night's Watch to try and do something about the Others, probably to no more success than Jon himself has had.  But Robb's dominion over the Riverlands was broken the second he forswore his oath to House Frey and let Theon off the leash to go to the Iron Isles.  Those two factors put him in a no win scenario.  He can't ask his northmen to stay in the south while the Ironborn run amok in the north, and he can't ask his Riverlords to go north to fight them away, so no matter what, his fledgling Kingdom is broken, even if he doesn't die at the Twins.  With the Twins having no reason to hold faith with him or House Tully, their turning of their cloaks is inevitable.


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

[User] [Judge dredd] how did dredd survive staring into judge fears eyes?

[Assistant]
The inuniverse reason is that judges are trained to put aside all fears in the pursuit of justice.

Of course, most judges can't *really* do that. They can suppress or power through fear, but there'll be some doubt or fear or anxiety for Judge Fear to grasp onto.

A judge genetically cloned to be a perfect judge, with training ingrained into his brain and raised with no life outside the academy, though? That's a different story.


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

[User] ELI5: How does a digital camera turn light from a lens into a series of 0s and 1s?

[Assistant]
The sensor in a camera is made up of millions of tiny capacitors that can hold an electrical charge.

Light from the lens is turned into a charge in the capacitor, with more charge building up the more intense the light is.

Circuitry in the camera then is responsible for shifting that charge off of the array, where it converts into a voltage. Those voltages are then sampled and stored as a sequence of 0s and 1s for later display.


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

[User] [General Fantasy] I made a deal with a demon for unlimited wealth, but I had to give up my firstborn son. I am childless now, but if I never have children have I outsmarted the demon?

[Assistant]
The firstborn son is part of the deal. If you don't produce a firstborn, then you are in breach.

I suspect, if you look at the fine print above that blood signature, you'll find all sorts of unpleasant results that come from your failure to make good on the bargain.


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

[User]
[Zombies] Are brain-eating zombies more polite than flesh-eating zombies? If I were to turn into a zombie, how would I know proper etiquette?

Brain-eating zombies, it seems, are more likely to *ask* for what they want then flesh-eating zombies.  "Brains... more brains..." and the like.  Flesh-eating zombies seem to just take what they want without asking.  What's up with that?

In case I get turned into a zombie, I wanted to make sure I was acting 'properly.'  If I were turned into a flesh-eating zombie and went around saying "Flesh..." would the other zombies look at me funny?  If I were a brain-eating zombie and just went for a living person's brains, would the other brain-eating zombies stop inviting me to their parties?

[Assistant] Seems brain-eating zombies are a shade smarter than flesh-eating zombies. Now, the smartest undead-type zombies are the ones from *They Hunger.* Not only do they know what they're feeling ("We hungerrr,") but they're also self-aware enough to question things. ("Why do we hungerrr?")


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

[User] [Nolanverse] We've only seen Batman's story. What are other superheroes/villains like in this more realistic universe?

[Assistant]
Green Arrow is probably a lot like the first season (only) of the CW show.

There's a detective in the Midwest named John Jones. He's so good at reading people it's almost like he's psychic.  He's also excellent at going undercover and a master of disguise.  On the force his nickname is The Manhunter.


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

[User] [Naruto] How did Hidan become immortal and why don't most main antagonist use his religion to become immortal?

[Assistant]
They explain outright his immortality is the result of the Jashins' secret techniques and experiments. Considering the overall plot of the series revolves around people who can use science to become literal superhumans, bend reality to their will, ten demigodes and one nigh omnipotent god, immortality isn't too hard to belive.

As for why the other antagonists don't follow Jishinism. Immortality isn't exclusive to Hadin. His partner Kazuku achieve immortality in a round-about way and Orichimaru created more than one technique for immortality. Which proves in the world of Naruto, immortality is completely possible but comes at a cost, a cost not every is willing to pay.

On top of that, Jashinism firmly believes anything other than destruction and death is a serious sin. Considering pretty much every villain ever encountered wants more than that, there's really no motivation to join the relgion.


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

[User] [Batman] Selina Kyle's identity as Catwoman is well-documented, as is Catwoman's relationship to Batman. Wouldn't Selina's wedding be a blatant announcement about Bruce's secret identity?

[Assistant]
It would be if the idea of Bruce Wayne being Batman was not such a ludicrous concept.  That useless playboy?  He's good for making an arse of himself at swanky balls and donating money to the charity du jour.  That's it.  Him as Batman?  No way, you'd have a better chance of convincing me Selena Kyle's moonlighting as Batman during her downtime as Catwoman.

Clearly Catwoman prefers to keep her private life and her, uh, professional life separate.


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

[User]
R136a1 is most massive star but UY Scuti is the largest star. Why are they different?

What is so fundamentally different between these starts that one is so heavy being so small, and other one is so large being relatively less massive.

UY Scuti: 7-10 solar masses, 1700 solar radii.

R136a1 : 265 solar masses, 28-35 solar radii.

[Assistant]
In short, stars are in an equilibrium between gravity pulling matter inward and radiation pressing matter outwards. UY Scuti is an evolved star that has already hit helium fusion, which means it produces more energy than a star of the same mass in the main sequence (stars only fusing hydrogen). This increase in produced radiation causes an expansion of the hull of the star, thus it becomes so large.

R136a1 is a young star, yet it probably won't grow as large as UY Scuti, because stars of such extreme mass are very unstable and short living. It is more likely that R136a1 will evolve over various stages to a Wolf-Rayet-star witha bipolar nebula surrounding it. Though, in the LBV stage the star will probably larger than it is today.


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

[User] When an animal is eaten whole, how does it actually die? Suffocation? Digestive acid?

[Assistant] It varies depending on the species and what their specific eating mechanism is. But generally speaking if the animal is swallowed whole while still alive it will suffocate first and then be broken down by the digestive system.


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

[User]
High-intensity ultrasound is being used to destroy tumors rather deep in the brain. How is this possible without damaging the tissue above?

Does this mean that it is possible to create something like an interference pattern of sound waves that "focuses" the energy at a specific point, distant (on the level of centimeters in the above case) from the device that generates them?How does this work?

[Assistant]
Yes. There is often a combination of two effects: the shape of the transducer and electronic steering.

Shape: imagine that each part of the transducer is a point source of ultrasound. Then, each element generates a spherical wave of sound. If two elements are equally far from a target, then the sound will reach the target at the same time and overlap.

 Then, forming a sphere of sound elements around the area of interest will cause sound waves to reach the center of the sphere at the same time, so that spot is much louder than everywhere else.

Electronic steering: You can fake the position of point elements by making them generate sound a little bit before or after the other elements- if you delay the element it seems further away. Go early and that element seems closer. You can use this to pretend to have a sphere/hemispheric shape.


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

[User] ELI5: How does a police officer prove his radar reading was specifically for your car when there's hundreds of cars whizzing by on a busy highway?

[Assistant] They point it at your car. They can observe you are moving faster than the other traffic and they stop you under their own judgment. In court their judgment is generally considered to be reliable evidence that a particular motorist was behaving incorrectly.


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

[User]
Kants Meaning by Nature

Kant uses the term nature extensively in the CPR and Prolegomena. Since we are to avoid all considerations about knowledge of noumena as a result of Humes arguments, then how exactly do we understand Kants concept of nature with no ties to things in themselves?

I feel like this should be easier to grasp... Though its like trying to remember the word for something I never knew in the first place.

[Assistant] For Kant the application of the law of causality to phenomena constitutes nature. Nature, consequently, is the world of determinateness and necessity as opposed to morality, which is the sphere of freedom.


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

[User] Why can I see my LED lightbulbs flicker when I see them in my periphery, but not directly?

[Assistant] The critical flicker frequency, as in what ~~higher~~ lower threshold frequency something must flicker for the eye to detect it, is not the same over the whole retina. The peripheral retina tends to be able to detect higher frequency flickering than the central parts of the retina because the outer parts of the retina has a higher proportion of the light sensitive rods (as opposed to color cones) than the central retina and that makes it better at detecting changes in light intensity.


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

[User]
Can metals be gases? What would it look like?

As we know, everything has a freezing, melting boiling point etc, but when a metal boils does it turn into a gas? If it does, what does it look like?

[Assistant]
You are probably familiar with at least one example of this, which is the sodium vapor commonly used in street lamps.  However, rather than boiling the phase change is sublimation -- solid sodium to sodium vapor.

There are two aspects of color that you have to keep in mind as being separate when you think about this sort of thing.  One of them is the black body color and the other is the color associated with the frequency of changes in energy level associated with a transition in energy level.  Something like a hot poker in the fire glows like a black body, which is a smooth, single-peaked distribution of wavelengths whose apparent color is determined by temperature.  Something like mercury or sodium light bulbs let off specific wavelengths, however.  You can actually observe the spectral fingerprint of one of those lights with a homemade spectroscope.  Google paper towel roll spectroscope if you feel like a DIY time sink.


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

[User] ELI5: What are neural networks? Specifically RNNs.

[Assistant]
The little league team you coach just won the big game, and you ask them if they want to go out for pizza or for burgers.  Each kid starts screaming their preference, and you go with whatever was the loudest.

This is basically how a neural net works but on multiple levels.  The top-level nodes get some input, each detects a certain property and screams when it sees it...the more intense the property, the louder they scream.

Now you have a bunch of nodes screaming "it's dark!", "it's has red!", "it's roundish!" as various volumes.  The next level listens and based on what they hear they start screaming about more complex features.  "It has a face!", "It has fur", until finally get to a level where it is screaming "It's a kitty!".

The magic part is no one tells them when to scream, it is based on feedback.  Your little league team went for burgers, and some of them got sick.  Next week, they might not scream for burgers, or might not scream as loudly.  They have collectively learned that burgers might not have been a great choice, and are more likely to lean away from the option.

A neural net gets training in much the same way.  You feed it a bunch of kitty and non-kitty pictures.  If the net gets it right, the nodes are reinforced so they are more likely to do the same thing in similar situations.  If it is wrong, they get disincentivized.  Initially, its results will be near random, but if you have designed it correctly, it will get better and better as the nodes adjust.  You often have neural nets that work without any human understanding exactly how.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is cancer common in organs like the prostate and breasts, but is not in other organs such as the heart or stomach?

[Assistant]
The cells in some organs work very differently than in other places. In your heart for example, the cells stop dividing very early in your life. This is why the heart is pretty much incapable of healing any injuries it gets. The cells increase in size as you age, but new ones arent created.

Since cancers come about as a result of mutations arising during cell division, it makes it extremely difficult for a tumor to form in your heart. and the majority of times it does get a tumor, its the result of a tumor somewhere else in a nearby organ spreading to it.


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

[User]
How is it that different breeds of Canis lupus familiaris (domesticated dog) can develop to be so different in specific individual populations around the world, yet not be subject to speciation?

Distinct breeds exist that vary in size, shape, and other physical qualities greatly, and have evolved that way in specific populations across the globe. Does the way humans selectively bred the species have something to do with it?

[Assistant]
Dogs have likely only existed as a separate subspecies of Canis lupus for ~ 40,000 yrs at max, which is too short a time for speciation to occur from wolves, much less different breeds of dog, even with geographical or other isolation.  Most dogs are not "purebreds", anyway, so there is little chance for genetic drift.

Additionally, most breeds the way we think of a dog breed are relatively recent (the last 50 to 200yrs). Breeds are 100% artificial categories, they are not subject to natural selection and the premises of natural selection do not apply.  Dogs have the potential for huge amount of phenotypic variation and few selective pressures which accounts for the wide array of behavior and appearances.  The end result is that genetically similar individuals could end up looking hugely different.


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

[User]
ELI5 Why is a cross (+) normally the signal for first aid?

Symbol, not signal.

[Assistant]
The red cross on a white background was standardized as a symbol for first aid on battlefields by the First Geneva Convention back in 1864.

It was formed by reversing the color pattern in the Swiss flag. By making the flag primarily white, it was associated with white flags of peace on battlefields. By making the flag resemble the Swiss flag, it was associated with the firm neutrality of Switzerland. It was basically a big flag saying "we're just here to save lives, don't shoot us."


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

[User]
[ELI5] Why do the fret spaces get smaller as you go down the neck of a guitar

My high school physics professor asked me this and I just randomly remembered. I don't think she ever told me why.

[Assistant] To go up one octave requires doubling the pitch, which in turn means dividing the string in half. Each time you divide something in half, you move only half the distance you did last time to divide it in half again. Each fret represents a pitch change proportion of 1/12 of an octave, but the same principle holds. The math behind it involves logarithms, i.e. one half step is 2 to the 1/12 power.


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

[User] ELI5: What causes the "mushroom cloud" after a nuclear explosion, and why is there variation between bombs?

[Assistant]
You don't need a nuclear weapon to create a mushroom cloud, but it helps. First, you need a sudden release of a great deal of heat. This heat gets the air around the explosion to expand and become less dense. The air rises fast  creating a vacuum around it, that sucks more air toward the source of heat, and warms it until it also expands and rises. This phenomenon is the bane of firefighters, as it keeps pulling oxygen into a blaze that might otherwise put itself out. In most fires and small explosions, it just leads to a rising column of smoke and hot air.

Occasionally, though, if the column of air is large enough or comes from a very specific source, the air in the center of the column is much hotter than the air on the edges. It rises much faster than the rest, causing the edges to appear to curl down to form the edges of a mushroom. Sometimes, the air will either be blown or move inward toward the column, be reheated, and rise again making a little central curl. Since an atomic blast is so huge, it's much more likely to form the mushroom shape than smaller explosions.

Finally, and most dramatically, an atomic blast goes significantly higher than any other explosion. The column of hot air that it makes will rise until it hits the point in the atmosphere where the surrounding air stops being cooler and starts being much, much hotter. At a certain level of the atmosphere, ozone starts making its way into the mix, and the solar radiation that ozone absorbs heats it up. The rising air from the explosions is suddenly not hotter or less dense than its surroundings and so instead of rising, spreads out, making a clear cap for the mushroom.


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

[User] ELI5: Why aren't blimps all that popular anymore?

[Assistant]
You need a massive massive building to park/service a blimp.
They go much much slower than a plane.
For all those problems, it still couldn't carry much more than a plane.(especially if you opted for non-flammable helium, rather than flammable hydrogen)

Now there are some niche purposes, like the ability to stay in the air for a very long time, but for taking stuff from point a to point b, planes were usually just better.


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

[User] eli5: how come when your organs are in your body, they need to be 98 degrees, but in an organ transplant the organ is cooled?

[Assistant]
So you're comparing a state in which an organ needs to be actively working to a state where it should not be actively working.

So normally, organs have an ideal temperature that they "work" at. There's a lot of reasons for this from enzymes, biochemical reactions, etc.  to amount of blood required to deliver oxygen for these organs to continue functioning, all which are temperature sensitive.

When you are taking organs out of the body, you are depriving them of blood (and thus oxygen) to carry out all of these metabolic functions. The cells in these organs will slowly start to accumulate waste products, break down, and die as they try to continue these metabolic and chemical reactions without oxygen.

What freezing does is slows down these chemical reactions almost to a halt. Enzymes, proteins, reactions require energy (usually in the form of heat) to work. This reduces the requirement of oxygen and lets organs become viable for a lot longer outside of the body without a blood supply.


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

[User] Why can I rent a new movie on Redbox for $1.50 but a digital rental still costs $4-5?

[Assistant] Because you'll pay the $4-5. It's more about convenience, really. For $4-5 you don't even have to get up, whereas for $1.50 you have to go to the red box, get it, and then worry about returning it the next day.


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

[User] [The Good Place] What does exactly Eleanor mean by calling Chidi "Basic", isn't Chidi totally the opposite of basic, at least compared to Eleanor?

[Assistant] 'Ya basic' is Elanor's catch-phrase, and something she says to put people down.  She doesnt use it the same way most people do to refer to a specific subculture of pumpkin spice ordering Ugg Boots wearing people.  It's not clear if she knows or cares what the word actually refers to.


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

[User]
Looking to hire IT'ers for a project but I have no clue what the terminology is to get the guy I need.

I want to automate the ordering of products of a webshop using existing APIs of the site and then sending the request fulfillment center but how do I describe this so I can make a post to hire someone? I don't even know what part of technicians this belongs to. English not being my first language doesn't make this easier either. Thanks a lot

Edit: thanks a lot for all the replies! Could you guys suggest what language I get everything made in? As you might have guessed I have no clue what language to pick either.

[Assistant] It sounds like you're looking for a web developer. Either one who can handle both the back end (fetching data from the API's to give to the front end) and the  front end (making things look good), or two separate devs working together.


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

[User] Why are there no clear metals?

[Assistant]
Clear metals are a sort of oxymoron.

The characteristic of metals is that they are solids held together not by ionic or covalent bonds but by metallic bonds. In a metallic bond the bonding electrons exist in a delocalized cloud around a large group of atoms. This leads to the characteristic metallic properties including electrical/thermal conductivity, ductility, and shinyness. The shinyness comes because of electrons in the conduction band, they have an enormous number of potential energy levels, which means they can absorb and re-emit photons of a wide variety of energies (wavelengths). Which also what makes metals opaque.

It's possible to make crystalline materials that have many similar properties to metals and are also transparent but true transparent metals aren't realistic.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does gene activation work? Aren't genes mere blueprints? How does a gene "activate itself"?

I tried searching, but all the "polymerase" and similar terminology is over my level. All (I think) I know is that DNA is a double helix (of monomers or something) that gets cut in half when one of the "arms" is needed to make a protein.

[Assistant] You have a master blue print in a safe (DNA in the nucleus). You keep it there at all times because it is fragile and you will need to reference it for a really long time and it is the only copy you have, and it is huge. When certain conditions are met (a stimulus that leads to increased gene expression, there tons of possibilities like an increase in stress hormone in the blood, etc.) you make a more disposable and easier to read copy of just the section of blueprint that you need (the gene), this copy is called RNA. The copy is taken out of the safe and handed off to a team of builders (ribosomes) who follow the blue print to create a tool (protein) that will go out and do whatever job it was commissioned for (lots of different proteins do a lot of different things inside and outside of the cell).


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

[User] How can someone become algeric to something they were not previously allergic to?

[Assistant]
One of the biggest points of the immune system is the ability to adapt to new threats. This is the whole reason vaccines work, that we can fight off diseases we haven't seen, and that there are a bunch of childhood diseases you never get again. The immune system is constantly monitoring the body for unfamiliar things showing up where they shouldn't. On the flip side, there are a bunch of checkpoints to make sure that the immune system isn't flagging parts of you as the enemy, which is important because the immune system has some pretty serious weapons to destroy stuff.

The systems involved in figuring out friend vs. enemy are really complicated, but long story short, they're not perfect. Sometimes, harmless proteins in food get flagged as the enemy, even if you've had it before-- it's sort of a low-risk odds game each time you eat something. Generally speaking, the body is a lot more tolerant of stuff that shows up in the gut as "probably food," but very mad about unfamiliar stuff showing up in the blood as "probably enemy."


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

[User] ELI5: Why is the sinking of the Titanic such a big deal in pop culture?

[Assistant] It was the biggest, most luxurious ship ever built at the time, was billed as unsinkable, and then it literally sunk in its maiden voyage. So the prominence of the ship, the hubris of its builders (didn't even have enough life boats, because why would unsinkable ship need them?), the size of the victim count as well as the famous/wealthy on board because of the prominence of ship on its first voyage.


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

[User]
How do I really use git?

At this point, im just using git to add, commit, and push everything in one fell swoop. This obviously isnt all there is to git, so Im wondering how I can make it more useful for me. Im working on a solo project, by the way.

[Assistant]
Git really shines for multiple collaborators but for solo use you can:

Push
Break everything
Roll back to a previous commit.

Or:

Check out a previous commit elsewhere to see how it worked then.

Or:

Work on multiple features in different directories and keep them both synced up.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do cameras on 0x zoom produce images that seem further away than what you see?

[Assistant]
A "normal" lens is what yields approximately the same angle of view as the eye. It has a focal length about equal to the diagonal measurement of the sensor or film format. To go back to the old 35mm film standard, a 50mm lens is considered to be a normal lens. A shorter lens will yield a wider angle of view, making images look farther away, and a longer lens will bring things closer.

A point and shoot digital camera might mention a 5X zoom. Typically in 35mm equivalent, it will be something like 30mm-150mm. Meaning that it starts as a slightly wide angle lens, and zooms in through normal and on to a maximum of about three times magnification.


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

[User] Why is the Euro collapsing? It seems like such a good idea for all of Europe to share a currency.

[Assistant]
A single currency allows for more efficient trade, but removes monetary policy from the individual nations and gives it to the bank of the entire EuroZone.

As everyone is using and borrowing the same currency, when some countries *cough Greece cough* lie about their finances to get in and then do a terrible job on their own economy, it hurts their currency which is also the currency of everyone else in the Eurozone. This makes it harder for other countries to borrow money, which hurts their economies, and makes it even HARDER for the others (and those initial countries) to borrow money, etc. etc.


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

[User] why are our fingers and toes all different lengths? is there an evolutionary benefit? did earlier humans differ?

[Assistant]
Heres a mind-blower : most mammals have pretty much all the same bones. Its just that each one is a different size and shape depending on how its used. So humans balance their weight on their feet, while the lesser apes grip with their feet and dont really ever balance for long, while elephants just support a ton of weight. Sometimes one species will fuse two bones that a different species will keep separate, and those will of course be different. But they arent really that different as far as fetal development goes.

For human evolution: The shape of the foot is a key part of how anthropologists evaluate hominids (like Lucy, famously).

Taking it one step further, if you compare a 1st trimester human embryo to that of a chicken, it takes an expert to be able to spot any difference on sight. So all living things are remarkably similar. We are all built using the same code, and we all have a common ancestor.

PS: the answers to your first question, then, are GRIP and BALANCE.


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

[User] Eli5 why pores are so visible on the skin of the face, but not visible on the skin covering the rest of the body?

[Assistant]
Our faces produce more oil (aka sebum) than the rest of the skin on our bodies. Our pores increase in size as we age, our pores lose elasticity with time and production of sebum, especially once we hit puberty and hormones change. Since the rest of our skin doesnt produce a lot of oil, those pores dont enlarge.

 Lots of people have fairly visible hair follicles on their arms and legs, which are just hair pores if you think about it.

There are many reasons why face pores can be larger: genetics, age, sun exposure, hormones, environment, skincare (or lack of). Some people hit the genetic lottery and have baby smooth face skin into adulthood, but most of us end up with textured faces, some acne scars, and visible pores.


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

[User]
Does every chemical reaction emit a sound?

There are several reactions/experiments known for making certain sounds, but are other (or just specific) reactions actually silent or does every chemical reaction emit a measurable sound?

[Assistant] Sound is basically vibration. Vibrations that result from some source of displacement. In an abstract sense, even molecular movements like an enzyme changing its conformation create 'sound' in that when the energy resulting in the physical change is released and some of it is displaced outwardly to the environment in the form of mechanical/kinetic 'sound' waves.


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

[User]
If refraction is caused by the absorption and reemission of photons, why don't materials only refract certain wavelengths of light?

It's my understanding that light seems to slow when entering a more optically dense medium because the photons are being reabsorbed and re-emitted by the atoms of the medium, which takes time and results in a lower average speed of light.

However, don't atoms also only absorb photons of certain energies? Wouldn't this mean that only certain photons with the right frequency would be refracted and those with other frequencies would carry on straight through?

[Assistant]
Refraction is an emergent property of a material, that is, it only arises when there is a large number of atoms that the light is passing through. For instance, if you have 5 carbon atoms, that group of carbon atoms will not have the refractive properties of a diamond which is made of carbon.

So, how do large collections of atoms have continuous absorption patterns? Because large collections of atoms have many more absorption methods than simple electron promotion. Collections of atoms can vibrate and oscillate, using two to n atoms (where n is some large number) which allows a nearly continuous absorption pattern as they are many, many combinations.


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

[User] Why is consuming activated charcoal harmless (and, in fact, encouraged for certain digestive issues), yet eating burnt (blackened) food is obviously bad-tasting and discouraged as harmful to one's health?

[Assistant]
As similar as those two things may seem, they are quite different. Activated charcoal is generally pyrolyzed, meaning it is heated to high temperatures around 800 degrees C, under inert atmosphere. This process gives a product which is quite close to pure carbon. Non-carbon elements are almost completely burned out.

In contrast, burnt food stuffs often contain a range of byproducts from incomplete burning, most famously acrylamide. These compounds can be distasteful and carcinogenic, but are also responsible for some of those "smokey" and "grilled" flavors that many people enjoy, when subtly present.

If you would pyrolyze blackened food, it would become charcoal.


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

[User] ELI5: How dogs are able to sense and know when something medically wrong is about to happen in a person before it actually happens?

[Assistant]
This depends on the effect you mean.

Some cancers can be smelled by dogs. There are 'cancer sniffing dogs' that have been trained to detect cancer and are better and cheaper than our imaging equipment.

So they're using their superior senses to pick up on things that humans can't detect.