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

[User] [Dark Souls] Is living in an age of dark an absolute nightmare, or pretty much the same as living through an age of fire, aside from the fact that it's always dark outside?

[Assistant]
So there are a couple of things that we need to establish here before we dip into this answer.

First, is that the world of Dark Souls goes through two phases. An age of Fire and an age of Dark. The Age of Fire is also known as the Age of the Gods, because the Gods were empowered by souls. Or at the very least fragments of a Lord Soul, which was pulled from the First Flame. The Age of Dark is also known as the Age of Man, because unlike the Gods, man is in possession of a Dark Soul, also known as Humanity. Humanity is an inherently corrupting force, and we've seen what too much of it can do to something(see: Four Kings, Artorius, Abyss Watchers...) The Abyss is the most extreme example of this, being composed of infinite humanity.

The second thing we need to establish is exactly what man is. Though this is a difficult thing to answer. There is evidence to suggest that the true form of humans in this world is that of the hollows, because that is the form of the Furtive Pygmy when he first pulled the Dark Soul from the First Flame. Humans are now permanently tainted by the Dark Soul, however, with each human being born with one, making their "natural" state seemingly normal to us. It doesn't seem like hollows are able to retain their human form with normal souls, however, requiring Dark Souls specifically to do so.

So this brings us to our final point. The Age of Dark comes when the First Flame can no longer hold back The Abyss, and it overtakes the world. This new surge of humanity through the world effectively makes humans the dominant force in the world, unlike the Gods during the Age of Fire. What this means is suspect, however, because if humanity is corrupting, then it is completely possible that soon anything and everything will become warped by the infinite humanity and become shapeless horrors. However, we visit the past in multiple occasions in the Souls series, and even traverse the abyss and meet people unaffected by it. So it is very possible that whatever corrupting power the Abyss holds only applies during an Age of Fire, and Fire is instead the malevolent agent.

Some people believe that Bloodborne takes place during an Age of Dark, citing that the Cleric Beasts and other monsters you fight bear a striking resemblance to those corrupted by humanity in the Souls series. Though really, we have no way of verifying that, unless you believe that the painting at the end of the Ringed City DLC was intended to be  Yharnam. After all, it was a painting born of blood. The blood of the Dark Soul, specifically.

tl; dr The flow of time is convoluted in Lordran.


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

[User]
ELI5: If I eat a bag of 500g potato chips, will my weight gain be definately more or less than 500g?

Let's assume I've used up all the calories I've taken in today, then I eat this bag of 500g chips, will my weight gain be definately more or less than this 500g?

My instinct tells me that it'll be less than 500g because the human body can't absorb everything that's in it, am I right? Or are there gonna be some more complicated chain reactions that's gonna happen?

EDIT: Based on most of the answers, it seems gaining weight is a bit harder than I think. But I feel I gain weight easily if I don't watch my diet. Maybe I easily and constantly eat junks all the time when I'm not careful lol.

[Assistant]
For the sake of simplicity let's say you are able to eat the chips in a single bite. In that instant you will increase in mass by 500g.

As soon as you eat them you will begin losing weight because you're breathing contains water and other gases, each breath makes you lighter.

You begin to digest the chips which takes energy, and breathing, heart beat, maintaining temp etc. also takes energy, so some of the calories will be used in these processes. Unused absorbed calories  (if there are any) will end up being stored as fat.

At some point you will excrete the undigestable components of the chips along with a portion of your gut bacteria which will also reduce your mass.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do horses and cows never share the same pasture or enclosure?

It seems to me it should not pose a problem since both are herbivores and so I guess would leave each other alone.

[Assistant] Horses don't graze in quite the same way that cows do, in general cows just bite the top of grass, horses eat all of the grass except that which is close to manure which horses avoid eating near. In addition some diseases can spread from cattle to horses and some medication given to cows in their feed can be deadly to horses.


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

[User]
[Star Wars: the Clone Wars] what happens to Ahsoka Tano?

I just finished the last season and with almost no mention of her in it I'm wondering what happened to her.

[Assistant]
A great idea for an Ahsoka story would be if, during her exile, she heard about Order 66 and Anakin's "death," so she sets out to take her revenge on Vader.

Imagine the confrontation between the two...


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

[User] Why am i cold inside at 66 degrees F, but very comfortable if not warm outside at the same temp?

[Assistant] There are a variety of factors.  One is the sunlight; sun shining on you directly delivers thermal energy through radiation, which can warm you enough to make a noticeable difference.  Another is activity; you are likely to be doing more intense activity outside (even if it is just walking, you are probably walking longer distances and at a quicker pace than inside).  Then there's also the fact that you're likely wearing more clothing outside.  Finally, there is a simple psychological element, especially when the sun is shining.


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

[User]
[Fallout] How does a Pipboy work?

I mean you just select things from an interface and it appears on you and where do they go if you put them back?

[Assistant]
The pip boy isn't some magic 3d printer, the inventory section is simply a document the player uses to keep a record of what equipment they have with them. Most of the items will be stored in a pack that isnt shown in the games because it would be obtrusive.

If the Pip boy was a storage device then the idea of the strength stat letting you carry more would be mad.


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

[User] [Robocop (1987)/Batman] How effective would the Dark Knight have been in combating crime in Old Detroit if he had been based there prior to the creation of Robocop. What about during the period of time after he went online?

[Assistant]
I don't think either Batman or Robocop are equipped to fix the underlying problems with OCP's Detroit. This isn't a city that's drowning, it's a city that's being actively shoved underwater by big-money interests with a massive stake in watching it die. And unlike the League of Shadows, not only does OCP get to act like this in full view of the public, but gets to write it off on their taxes as they do. Crooks like Boddicker aren't the disease, they're just the symptom of the real disease, OCP's "Delta City" project.

In this case, Batman isn't the hero the city wants or needs. Bruce Wayne is. The various branches of the Wayne empire are much better equipped to fight OCP on even ground, both to obstruct the progress on the Delta City program and to help relieve the conditions on the ground that made Delta City seem like a good idea in the first place. Among other things, Wayne Enterprises could block the privitization of the Detroit Police and it's following willful mismanagement, or even buy out the Police themselves; even if they don't lend their resources to the cops, just running the police without ulterior motives would be infinitely better than how OCP treats it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does 100% humidity not mean water everywhere?

[Assistant] Atmosphere, which is a collection of gasses (including water vapor), has physical properties (temperature, pressure, etc) that let it hold a certain amount of moisture. Anything past that limit, and you can't add more moisture to the air. It's holding as much moisture as possible. So 100% doesn't mean you're walking around underwater, it just means the air is fully saturated with moisture.


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

[User]
[DC] How do speedsters not get bored when running long distances.

 This isn't a "how do speedsters see the world in general" thread I'm talking about speedforce speedsters running long distances, how do they not get bored when they run like around the world in 2 or 3 seconds.

[Assistant] They can alter their active senses and run on autopilot to some degree. The Flashes have all shown instances where they run thousands of miles but they don't narrate every little thing they pass, or struggles to run on certain terrain, only "it takes me X amount of time to pass from Location A to Location B."


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

[User] ELI5: What is the US dollar backed by?

[Assistant] It is backed by the belief of the US gov't's continued stability, the US economy's continued growth and productivity, and that other people who view the world rationally also have the same belief (and therefore accept the US dollar as payment).


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

[User] When I boil water, I don't see any steam coming off until AFTER I turn off the heat. Why is that?

[Assistant]
You can't see water vapor (aka steam), it's a gas, so the "steam" that you see is actually water droplets of from steam condensing and forming a fine mist.  When the water is boiling the temperature directly above the pot is hot enough that the water vapor doesn't condense, so you can't see it. By the time it's cool enough, it's traveled far enough that it is too diffuse to form large enough droplets to refract light, so you still can't see it.

When you turn the heat off, the temperature drops, and the water vapor can condense in a more concentrated location, making larger droplets which can be seen visually.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does sodium chloride dissolves in water but not in ethanol, when both are polar compounds?

[Assistant] NaCl does dissolve in ethanol, just not very much.  Water is far more polar and and the small molecular size would allow for more interactions with Na+ and Cl-.  With more ions being supported by the solvent, more ions can be accepted/dissolved in the sovlent, and so salt has a higher solubility in water than ethanol.


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

[User]
[DS9] How do Odo's eyes/ears work?

Does he need to mimic a humanoid eye shape in order to take in information from the visible spectrum of light, or are all the parts of his "body" potentially photosensitive (i.e. can see in all directions at all times)? Same question for ears and hearing.

The changeling "infant" seemed to recognize Odo, and Odo reported recognizing his... *trainer*(?)... without eyes or ears, so I don't think the sensory organs are necessary. However, I'm pretty syre Odo has been snuck up on from behind by enemies.

What's the story?

[Assistant] I would surmise that changelings are capable of perceiving audio and visual stimuli when in liquid/gel form, otherwise they likely not survived long as a species. Odo on human form may be snuck up on due to process of assuming human form or a lack of understanding on how to remain aware of his surroundings as he is in liquid/gel form. It us important to remember that Odo is less skilled as a changeling when compared to the Founders.


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

[User]
[DC/Marvel] Given their origins and powersets, why aren't Superman and the Hulk sources of radiation themselves? Or if they are, why don't they give nearby people radiation sickness, or eventually cancer?

I'm fairly certain they don't make others sick, I'm just not sure as to why. Superman absorbs radiation from the sun. And Hulk was created from gamma rays.

Bonus question: is there a comic character that does what I'm describing?

[Assistant]
Superman absorbs sunlight, which is relatively harmless. Most people stand in large amounts of it all the time. He is occasionally mentioned as being a bit warmer then a normal person, but he's not going to do anyone harm.

The Hulk *does* give off gamma radiation, but in fairly small doses- most of it remains inside him. He's essentially a living nuclear reactor and, like all nuclear reactors, is well shielded. Long term loved ones might be in danger, but they're mostly gamma mutates themselves, and there's been occasional mentions of radiation risks where he's been seriously injured, but you can avoid those. Bystanders will be fine.

Also, of course, if you're a bystander in a hulk comic, you tend to have a much higher mortality increase then a 3% increase in cancer rates over the next decade, which tends to wash out the radiation risks.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do people kiss?

I understand why mommy and daddy have sexytimes - survival of the species, offspring, etc. But why do we kiss? When you step back and think about it, it seems like a fairly weird (and unsanitary) thing to do. Yet it's a very natural, instinctive action for most humans. I haven't noticed any other animals "kissing" like we do, nor do I know of any people or cultures where kissing doesn't happen.

[Assistant]
We don't know.

One theory is that it's a way of testing blood types/immune systems - someone with a more compatible blood type or immune system will "taste" better than someone whose blood type will cause reproductive issues.

Some say it's a bonding exercise, that because it involves gazing into each other's eyes for lengthy periods of time along with extreme trust (closing of eyes and shoving a tongue into someone else's tooth-masher is a pretty trusting thing) and as such will further cement the relationship between the two.

Some say we humans just like shoving our whatevers into whatever hole we can find.

Bonobos also kiss.  But then, they fuck as a handshake or because they get bored, so there's that.


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

[User] If a person is right-handed, does such dominance include all voluntary muscles? For example, are the muscles in the larynx also somewhat right-dominant?

[Assistant]
Yes.  The entire side of the body is both better developed and more dextrous.

Trivia - one leg's stride is a little longer than the other.  Because of this, people in a flat desert, with no referent to direction, who think they are walking strait, will walk in a huge circle.


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

[User]
If we ever build a space elevator, would I be able to climb into orbit without making escape velocity?

This has been bugging me for a while.

Pretend we built a space elevator. Pretend there is a ladder on the side in case of emergencies. Pretend I am in good shape and want to climb the ladder cause it'd be a hootenanny of a good time.

I know the shuttle needed something like 26kmph to reach escape velocity to leave the earth and get into orbit.

If I just slap on a pressure suit and commence to climbing, would I be able to get to the top of the ladder without having to increase my speed, or would I get yanked off due to centripetal force of the ladder flinging itself around the planet the same speed it's currently travelling in space?

Or, would I end up dying somewhere on the ladder due to something that I have completely overlooked? I know the materials must be under a huge amount of stress, so is there a chance that would somehow get transferred to me and I'd go flinging off into the sunset like a live action Wile E. Coyote?

[Assistant]
For starters, you'd have to climb 22,000 miles to achieve orbital velocity (this is the altitude of geostationary earth orbit).  Jump off any lower and you _will_ fall back to earth.

The earth is spinning and the space elevator with it.  As you climb the ladder, you get further from the center of the earth so you travel further on each revolution.  With each step higher you are gaining horizontal velocity despite only moving yourself vertically  relative to the elevator.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do people think there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll?

This conspiracy theory must have originated from somewhere. Is there any validity to it or has it been debunked? Thanks.

[Assistant]
Very simply put: The film depicting the bullet striking the President in the head appears to show him being shot at an angle that does not marry up with the Book Depository, which is where Lee Harvey Oswald was when he fired his shot(s).

It's theorised that had the round been fired (truly) from the Book Depository that the President would have suffered different wounds.


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

[User] ELI5: What Is Poststructuralism?

[Assistant]
Post-structuralism is a branch of theory and you need to understand "theory" and "structuralism" to begin to understand "post-structuralism."

**Theory**

(via Jonathan Culler in *Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction*) "The genre of 'theory' includes works of anthropology, art history, film studies, gender studies, linguistics, philosophy, political theory, psychoanalysis, science studies, social and intellectual history, and sociology. The works in question are tied to arguments in these fields, but they become 'theory' because their visions or arguments have been suggestive or productive for people who are not studying those disciplines. Works that become 'theory' offer accounts others can use about meaning, nature and culture, the functioning of the psyche, the relations of public to private experience and of larger historical forces to individual experience...**Theory is often a pugnacious critique of common-sense notions**, and further, an attempt to show that what we take for granted as 'common sense' is in fact a historical construction, a particular theory that has come to seem so natural to us that we don't even see it as a theory."

**Structuralism and Semiotics**

Structuralism is a branch of theory that seeks to understand cultural phenomena by looking at the underlying structure, which is examined by applying theories of structural linguistics. This is related to "semiotics," or the studies of signs.

The idea of a "sign" comes from the structuralist linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and describes what we understand as a word to be a bringing together of a sound and a concept. It breaks down like this:

Sign = signified (concept of a cat) / signfier (the sound you make when you say "cat") \[signified is positioned over the signifier\]

The important thing here is that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is *arbitrary*: the sound you make by saying the letters c-a-t together in english have a similar relationship to the signified as the letters c-h-a-t have to someone who speaks french. The relationship between *sound* and *concept*which produces the *sign*is culturally determined.

Structuralist thinkers take this relationship, extend it, and apply it to cultural artifacts and behaviors which seem "natural." An example of this is Roland Barthe's book *Mythologies*, which takes everyday objects like "soap," "professional wrestling," and "wine" and looks at the way they function in culture.

He extends a sign in this way:

\[First-order signification\] =>  Soap powder = concept of soap powder / sound of "soap powder"

\[Second-order signification, or "Myth"\] => Soap powder's cultural meaning = Soap powder / Associations of cleanliness/whiteness/hygine

The cultural meaning of the sign can then be used to reinforce certain values: "The relations between the evil and the cure, between dirt and a given product, are very different in each case...Powders, on the contrary, are selective, they push, they drive dirt through the texture of the object, their function is keeping public order not making war. This distinction has ethnographic correlatives: the chemical fluid is an extension of the washerwoman's movements when she beats the clothes while powders rather replace those of the housewife pressing and rolling the washing against a sloping board." (from *Mythologies*)

**Post-structuralism**

Post-structuralism takes those tools and ideas of structuralism ("natural" things as cultural constructs) and turns it back toward itself. Here, things like the whole idea of systems of knowledge or the idea of a stable, singular self are under scrutiny as being historical constructs. "Post-structuralism" is sort of the umbrella under which several different discourses (Jacques Derrida's "deconstruction," contemporary feminism, etc.) fall. Examples:

**Michel Foucault** showing how the modern self is the product of a combination of different discourses, which limit our ideas of ourselves in different ways and to different ends. Knowledge is not neutral but is instead always tied to power.

**Judith Butler** showing how the body is a historical idea and gender is imposed on a person while also being something that you *do* and participate ina performance in relation to a historical moment.

**Roland Barthes** destabilizing the idea of a singular meaning of a text in "The Death of the Author" in favor of a multi-dimensional space in which meanings are teased out. The author's intent is only one voice among many.


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

[User] [The Revenant] If you shoot a man, stab him a few times, chop him with a hatchet, then drag him into a frigid mountain stream in the middle of winter, miles from civilization and just upstream from a hostile band of Indians, can you honestly say you've left vengeance "in God's hands"?

[Assistant] If a man is deathly ill, many miles into the wilderness, and you have the mission to take him to safety but instead shoot his companion, steal his possessions, and then abandon him to die, did you murder that man?


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

[User] ELI5:If we can build massive telescopes to gaze into space why can't we build massive microscopes to gaze further into the sub-atomic level?

[Assistant]
Telescopes use light. That is a simple statement, yes, but it is important. Light is a particle, and it reacts with things as if it had a physical size - it's wavelength.

That wavelength is a few hundred nanometers. Trying to see atoms with light is like trying to see marbles by throwing basketballs at them, and seeing how they bounce off. We need smaller things - higher energy light, for instance, like X-rays, with shorter wavelengths, or tiny particles like electrons. With these, we can produce images of atoms and molecules.

TLDR: Light is too big. In order to see something, we need something smaller than it to see with.


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

[User]
Why do people tend to explain "dark matter" as some exotic form of matter never seen before?

We recently have found many brown dwarfs we didn't even know existed very close (in interstellar terms) to our own sun. Wouldn't it be more plausible that there are hundreds of billions or more of such objects, planets, comets, and other such massive objects that we just simply cannot see, because they do not glow? That would go a long way to explaining the much of the "missing mass" in the universe.

[Assistant]
The "missing mass" on galaxy scales is not simply a matter of mass quantity, but is also a fundamental difference in mass **distribution**.

The Milky Way (as with most spiral galaxies) is made up of a central bulge and a flat disk. If normal matter was the only contribution to gravity, then stellar orbital velocities in the disk would behave the same way as planets in the Solar system; i.e. the further you are from the centre of mass (the galactic centre in this case), the slower you orbit.^* However, disk stars show no change in orbital velocity with radial distance (so-called 'flat rotation curves').

If dark matter was purely made up of undetectable regular matter (brown dwarfs in your question), then the total mass would be increased, but the mass would remain within that star's orbit. So, stars would orbit a little faster than expected from detectable mass, but orbital velocities would still vary with distance from the Galactic centre.

In order to reproduce the observed orbital velocities for disk stars, the dark mass must be distributed fundamentally differently to the stellar matter. Specifically, dark mass density must drop off proportional to 1/r^2 and extend significantly further than observed mass. However, since brown dwarfs (and black holes etc.) have the same formation history as stars, they should be spatially distributed the same way.

Thus, conventional (but undetected) matter cannot be the sole (or dominant) contributor to dark matter.

^* - This is the case when all mass is contained within the orbiting body's orbital radius. This approximation is realistic for stars a long way from the Galactic centre (like the Sun).


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

[User]
ELi5 Do humans experience more childbirth difficulties than the rest of the animal kingdom?

Seems to me that even with our advances we suffer from an excessive amount of complications for a natural act.

[Assistant] Yes. Humans have evolved to do a lot of really cool things. But having an easy childbirth is not one of them. This is primarily for two reasons. The first reason is that we have big heads to house our big brains. The other reason is that we have relatively narrow hips. Bipedal movement requires narrower hips, so we can keep our feet underneath us. The net result is we have a big head that needs to fit through a small opening. We even evolved to give birth very early in the  gestation process. If we give birth earlier the baby is smaller and less likely to kill the mother. This is one of the reasons human babies are so useless when born.


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

[User] If Superman can fly around the earth so fast he can reverse time, why can't he go back and save Krypton from destruction?

[Assistant] Because then he would never have known Earth, never been Superman, and been able to help all the people here. How many times has he saved Earth from destruction. Really he's too selfless for his own good.


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

[User] ELI5: Did our ancestors experience vision loss similar to how we do? If so, how common was it and how did it affect their day-to-day survival?

[Assistant] Nearsightedness is largely a disease of urbanization and industrialization. populations like the Inuit went from like 0% nearsighted to like 50% nearsightedness in one generation due to urbanization. So our ancestors likely did not have that vision issue. But presbyopia, which is difficulty seeing near, starts around age 40 no matter the population, in most people.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do people tap their glass on the bar before taking a shot?

[Assistant]
The cheers and clinking of glasses together is well documented as having come from medieval times and the sign of trust that your drinking partner didn't slip you deadly poison. But what about the tapping of the glass after the cheers? The reasons for this are simple...

Firstly beer, wine, and liquor, i.e. distilled spirits, were safer to drink in "olden times" than water for purity reasons. We also know that the common man, soldiers and knights, and other lower nobility drank beer because wine and liquor were expensive. Also, back then, drinking was some of the only entertainment to be had and so games and thus traditions that have been carried on to even today, were started by people who drank beer.

So what is the fundamental, and provable, point of the "tap"?

1. After you "clink" your mugs/glasses/pints/etc you cause the head, or the foam, to rise. Tapping it on the bottom causes the head to fall so that you can chug/swill the beer with less of a problem, especially in a drinking contest setting.

2. If you are in a drinking contest the sound of your cup hitting the table, before you drink, and not when you start drinking is usually what the "judges" go by, as to when you started. That is also why the cup is slammed down afterward, to signify the end of your drinking "round".

Where did this tradition come from? Well probably sometime early on when beer became extremely popular as a drink for the masses. Sometimes these obscure traditions and games grew slowly over time and were altered from generation to generation and spread around until we have what we have today. It's like asking about the invention of the game of "Quarters"... but we'll get to that some other time.


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

[User]
[Pokemon]How dangerous are Pokemon to the average human?

In the beginning of several of the games you're specifically told NOT to enter the tall grass until you have a Pokemon. In Ruby/Sapphire for example you have to save someone who is being attacked by pokemon.

Obviously, running into an Onix while mining, could be an issue.

But how bad are the less obvious pokemon? Are rattata spreaders of disease? Does Zigzagoon dig through trash cans for food? Has a Houndoor ever gotten rabies and bitten someone?

[Assistant]
Pokemon demonstrate a great capacity for intelligence, and also live basic animal lives. They seem to be violent towards humans only when their animalism is threatened. They don't seems vengeful, with some exceptions.

On the other hand, their animalism makes them territorial, untrusting, and quick to attack. Perhaps that's due to fear more so than conscious decision-making.

Certainly, they are capable of great violence and destruction, if they used their powers that way.


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

[User] [DC/MARVEL] Of all the heroes who dont kill, who do you think is the most brutal?

[Assistant] Daredevil dropped Bullseye from a wire to break his spine and psyched him out with a fake game of Russian Roulette, and later carved *a* bullseye into his forehead while screaming that it was for when he decided to kill himself because Matt wasnt going to do it for him, so


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

[User]
Is IQ a useful measurement?

So a buddy and I got into a debate IQ on whether IQ is a useful measurement (I know useful is an extremely general term). Both of us are not psychologists, (we are engineers). I've always understood IQ as a an extremely general and misunderstood statistic that had limited applications, but was given extreme importance (Similar to BMI vs Body Fat Percentage). He disagreed and shut it down by saying I didn't psychology.

I have a STRONG backing in math, specifically in Statistics (was the only stat tutor at my first college for a year). So I tend to sift through a lot of stuff if I'm not satisfied with confidence intervals or if I think the p-value is based on subjective criteria, etc. I just wondered if there are any perspectives that would change my mind and what other people think.

Edit: Great answers so far. I should add more to what the useful portion implies. It was for determining intelligence and as a recruitment tool for schools amd businesses.

[Assistant]
It might help to have a quick definition of IQ: all measurable cognitive abilities (from the ability to solve logic puzzles to pure reaction time) are correlated with one another. Someone who does one mental task well is likely to also do other mental tasks well. What we call IQ is just a general estimate of a person's cognitive ability across a variety of tasks.

As you mention in your post, the answer to your question depends on what you mean by 'useful.' You need an IQ test to validly diagnose a whole variety of neurocognitive disorders (learning disorders, intellectual disability, ADHD, etc.), and it can be helpful when doing other psychological assessments as well. IQ is also interesting in that it correlates with all kinds of positive outcomes. That is, people with higher IQ tend to be healthier and better educated, they tend to commit less crime, and they tend to make more money. Whether that's a useful thing to know depends on what you're trying to do or learn.


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

[User]
How does the body turn sugar into fat?

How are sugars, such as glucose, turned into lipids?

[Assistant]
Acetyl-CoA is a high energy compound. During sugar metabolism, the sugars are broken down and enter the citric acid or TCA cycle which culminates in the electron transport chain which generate ATP which is a usable energy form for cell functioning. The TCA cycle will move Acetyl-CoA from the mitochondria into the cytosol. This is where fatty acid biosynthesis occurs. Acetyl-CoA is a two carbon units and after a priming step, loading condensation reduction dehyrdation and reduction repeat until the fatty acid is at the appropriate length. Unsaturation and elongation can occurs after the synthesis and fatty acids can be phosphorylated to make phospholipids or can be esterified onto a molecule of glycerol to create a triglyceride.

Long story short:
Excess high energy carbons from sugar breakdown are linked together as fatty acids which can go on to be triglycerides.


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

[User] ELI5: If the air is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, why do we say we breathe in oxygen but not nitrogen?

[Assistant] You actually use the oxygen--you absorb it, and emit carbon dioxide. The nitrogen is inert and does not get used by the chemical processes of your body. As much as you breathe in, you also breathe out. But you need the oxygen to live.


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

[User] A healthy human inadvertently inhales a small bug such as a fruit fly. What happens to the fruit fly if it does not get coughed or exhaled out?

[Assistant] Generally, debris that is inhaled and not otherwise expelled gets trapped in the mucous produced by the respiratory tract.  Microscopic cilia then act to move the material to the throat, where it is either expelled through eg. coughing, or swallowed to be disposed of via the digestive tract.


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

[User] ELI5: in the age of the internet, how come thousands of great magic tricks remain secret? If they're not, where do I visit!?

[Assistant]
Even in the age of the Internet, there's one additional secret magician are hiding: they're guarding an empty safe.

The secrets to most tricks are either uninteresting in and of themselves, without the flair and presentation, or so technical that there's no point in studying it unless you're actually going to put the hard work in to actually learn, perform it, and dress it up with showmanship.

As Drakeytown so succinctly put it, the secrets themselves are little more than a few keyword searches away. What really protects them is the fact that really isn't that much to discover once you get there.


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

[User]
[Archer] How are Pam's family such unbelievably hard-ass fighters?

Even Pam's sister is a beast.  I pretty certain Pam could beat the crap out of Sterling if she got fired up.  What gives?

[Assistant]
The Poovey Farm raises Holstein cattle, which at birth typically weigh up to 45kg and when fully matured up to 580kg. They're also about as tall as the average American female, around 150cm (about 60 inches, or five feet tall).

She and her sister would've grown up man-handling calves to feed them, and hauling equipment regularly to help the family out. Given their family's predilection for "robust" physiques we can presume they are likely from mixed Norwegian or German stock. Having larger bone density, larger frames, and the opportunity to develop significant muscle mass and tendon strength throughout their developmental period enabled Pam and her sister to learn the limits of their bodies' strengths as well as how and when the employ brute force to achieve what they wanted.

Pam, especially, learned this on an unconscious level as she was teased regularly by her sister. From this dynamic, we can assume that Edie is (or was) the dominant sibling and that a consequence of Pam's difficult family life - hardships of a farm, zero tolerance for emotional weaknesses, and a highly-developed mental and physical tolerance for pain - which helps explain why she chose to enter a career that attempts to settle conflicts and bring people together.

However, her unconscious mind yearned to break free of the bonds of civilized society; to assert itself physically, now, in the only way Pam knew: brute strength. Pam began to fight as child, mostly with her sister, but as she grew older she found the cows could take a punch or two as well. So could the boys in the next town. And the men at the biker bar. She began to seek it out, the violence, to boost her confidence and give her the control, the dominance, and the recognition she so desperately wanted from her sister, and her family.

Fast forward, years later, Pam has been a regular member of various underground fighting rings. Always under a different name, she dips her wick in many styles, many arenas, many rules, all for the same outcome: to win.

In her mind, though, she was always fighting Edie. Maybe a few stubborn cows, but mostly Edie.

Edit: Couple of words.


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

[User] ELI5:Does leaving the charger in mobile technologies (i.e., laptops, tablets, phones, etc...) really degrade the battery life significantly or is it just some tech myth?

[Assistant]
Trickle charging does have an effect on a batteries life-span. But, it's not that much of a big deal. Granted, you would notice a difference if you had 2 laptops, one that was constantly trickle charged, and one that was not. The trickle charged battery would, over time, hold an inferior charge.

Realistically though, you probably won't notice a difference.

tl;dr Yes, it does, but the degradation is quite minor.


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

[User] [John Wick Universe] Is John Wick *the* best assassin? Are there assassins who can, in terms of both reputation and martial skill, match John on his best day? Or is Baba Yaga considered the best there is, bar none?

[Assistant]
It's hard to say that anyone is the best in the world at *anything* bar none, but it's clear that John Wick's talent is legendary.

I think the best example of this is in the first movie, when Viggo asks Aureilo why he struck his son. Viggo is a Russian crime lord, and striking his son is the kind of insult that gets people killed. Aureilo replies: "Because he stole John Wick's car and killed his dog."

And Viggo simply responds, "Oh."

That sentence changed everything. Viggo, the kind of guy who pays men to kill men, the kind of man who responds to an insult with death, knew that crossing John Wick was the absolute last thing you would ever, ever, *ever* want to do.

But, Wick isn't *so* good that people aren't willing to face him. There are plenty of random idiots who want to take their shot at $14 million, sure, but there are also a lot of trained professionals who think Wick can be taken down. People like Cassian, a seasoned professional, believe that Wick is mortal.

This might just be because Wick retired. Maybe they think he got slow. Maybe they think he lost his edge. But lots of people believed that they would be the one to take Wick down. He's a legend, absolutely, but he's not *so* good that people believe he's unbeatable.


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

[User]
What does string theory does differently that current theories do not when dealing with singularities?

From what I gather, in string theory we naturally unify QFT and GR, so does it solve the problems that we encounter at a singularity? If so, what explanation does it offer when particles are broken down to their fundamental bits inside a black hole. Please shed light on how our understanding of black holes, and singularities would further if string theory is indeed true?

[Assistant]
In string theory, black holes are actually p-branes. Normal particles are instead strings. When the strings are very close to the brane, it becomes possible for them to interact in a way that leads to no infinities. The interaction is the result of the contribution of all possible histories (as it's normal in a quantum mechanical theory) which can involve strings splitting or joining, string endpoints getting attached to the brane or detaching, some other things and all combination of this building blocks. The outcome is always finite because outcomes in string theory always are.

To give an intuition, the "regulator" that prevents the singularity from being truly singular is the finite size of strings which cuts the divergences short - intuitively the string cannot see things smaller than the string length. Instead a particle theory (such as local quantum field theories like the standard model) has point particles and will lead to infinities when placed near a singularity.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Has anyone ever / could you use the soul stone instead of the mind stone to create something like Vision?

Could anyone or has anyone ever used the soul stone as the mind stone was used in the MCU to create Vision?

How might this new soul stone Vision be different?

[Assistant] With comic version of the Soul Gem it would be trivially easy, since it explicitly allows to create souls from scratch. In fact, this is how latest crisis was resolved - Adam Warlock used the Soul Stone to grant each Infinity Gem a soul, able to make choices for itself, scattering the stones across the universe.


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

[User]
House of Cards' Frank and Claire Underwood are the best possible example on how a marriage should work. CMV (SPOILERS)

1) They enjoy each others company (smokes, runs, meechum)

2) They are completely honest about themselves and about what they do (open relationships)

3) They are open to each other's ideas. (constant communication all over the series)

4) They support each other on their goals (tricia manipulation, fundraisers)

5) They respect the decisions each other makes (open relationships, Claire not backing Peter Russo bill, Claire coming out on rape, abortion)

6) There is no pettiness, no jealousy, no lies, no manipulation (All over the series)

7) They trust each other entirely. (Meechum, open relationships)

8) They understand the needs of the other and don't stand on the way of the other, unless it's explicitely something that will go into confilct with what they're after. (Claire's funding from Sancorp Vs Pushing the two congressmen to support Peter Russo's bill)

9) When big differences arrive, they do what they feel its right, and once it's been solved they don't look back. (Claire goes to Adam, Frank doesn't question it)

There are many others, that's off the top of my head.

CMV.

[Assistant]
The one big factor that allows them to pull this off is that they don't have any children. Risking their own reputations as adults is an easier ask than doing it when a child would get saddled with that fallout as well- should it come.

Btw, loved the line about Meechum in 1)


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

[User]
Has anyone ever gotten Cancer then beaten it without necessarily knowing about it?

Could be a dumb question- but i wondered it there has ever been case(s) where a subject discovered at some point they *had* cancer and beaten without knowing it themselves?

Is this something that could occur? Just curious.

[Assistant] While you may not consider this to be a satisfactory answer to your question, cancerous cells actually develop fairly frequently in your body. However, they are almost always killed by the immune system quickly. (If they are not, it can lead to spreading of the cancer, tumors, etc., "cancer"). In this way, it could be argued that everyone gets cancer and beats it.


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

[User] ELI5: What's special about postage stamps? How are they different from any other square sticker? Are there safeguards against counterfeits like printed currency?

[Assistant] Postage stamps are not that difficult to counterfeit, but can be detected by automated equipment in the postal centers. More importantly perhaps counterfeiting them is a federal crime punishable by fines and up to five years imprisonment. Considering how much they cost the worth of such a scam is questionable.


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

[User] Can I decarbonate a soda by repeatedly freezing and thawing it?

[Assistant] No, assuming the system is closed then the amount of gas dissolved in solution will be dependent upon a number of variables, including ambient temperature, volume of the liquid and the head space above it. See Henry's Law for more detailed information. Generally, the colder it gets, the more gas would be dissolved into solution, and therefore a decreased pressure in the container. If the temperature increases, less gas will be dissolved into solution and more gas will exist in the head space, increasing the head space pressure.


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

[User] Once I delete a file from the recycling bin, is it gone forever?, is there any way I can get my files/pictures back?

[Assistant]
The bits are still stored on your hard drive, however the hard drive "forgot" where you data is stored. It's not linked anymore and Windows will think that there is free space. New data will eventually overwrite the old bits.

You should immediately shut down your pc and boot to another hard drive / from a Linux USB stick / from another pc and connect your hard drive. Then use a data recovery tool to scan for files on your hard drive.

Do not download or do anything that modifies your hard drive's state! Do not write any new data to it as you could potentially overwrite your old data.


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

[User] ELI5: Why a coder can't simply "decompile" an executable to get perfect source code for reverse engineering a piece of software?

[Assistant]
Because the compiler preforms many irreversible changes to the code. At the very least, comments and variable names are removed, names of private functions are obfuscated, and the code is optimized to make it run faster and better.

However, certain programming languages, such as Java and C#, are compiled into a intermediate language which is similar to the original source language, and these indeed can be decompiled fairly successfully (just lookup Java Decompiler or .NET Decompiler).


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

[User]
If a neutron is more massive than a proton, and a proton turns into a neutron when shedding a positron, does that mean that a positron has negative mass?

When atoms shed a positron from the nucleus, one of the protons changes to a neutron, and the reverse happens when an electron is shed. If the latter reduces the mass of the atom by the mass of an electron, since the mass of a proton added to that of an electron equals the mass of a neutron, then does an atom that sheds a positron gain mass?

[Assistant] The positron has the exact same mass as the electron. A free proton cant decay into a neutron, because it would violate conservation laws. Beta^(+) decay is only possible for **nuclei** with A > 1. And in this case its not any one individual proton decaying, its the nucleus as a whole. Because of the nuclear binding forces within nuclei, it can be energetically favorable for the process to occur, even if a free proton has less mass than a free neutron.


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

[User]
CMV: Racism Cannot Ever Fully be Eradicated as Long as Individual Races Have Unique Cultures

As we continue to address the issue of racism, one of the biggest issues I have found among these attempts is the unwillingness to acknowledge the cultural differences among that exist between races living in the the same nation.

Now, I do not intend this to be a critique of the specific cultural norms that exist among race, nor do I mean to address the outside contributing factors that have molded these cultures in the first place.  However, it is foolish to not realize that there are marked cultural differences between white, black, Asian, Hispanic and other racial/ethnic groups, particularly in the US.

I see so many posts on Reddit that boil down to imagine hating another person because of the color of their skin.  And while that is a valid criticism of the insanity of racism, in my experience racial prejudice has very little to do with skin color, and much more to do with perceived cultural practices of different races.  Now, these perceptions of what X races culture actually are may be based on a false premise or innate prejudice, but that doesnt stop them from existing.  And they will continue to exist as long as ethnic and racial communities congregate and share cultural practices specific to them.

What is the solution for this?  To be honest I dont really know.  When taking into account what we know about disparities in healthcare, business, and other industries, people receive better outcomes on nearly all fronts when interacting with someone who looks like them (e.g the same race).  This is why the message of diversity in all areas is championed to the degree it is today.  Representation is key to bettering the lives of the most people as possible, and I think that is a great goal.  However, as long as we continue to see these differences in outcome based on racial interactions between the provider of a service and the customer, then we can presume racial divides are alive and well.

So CMV guys!  Cant wait to hear it.

[Assistant]
Prejudice will never be eliminated. It's human nature. What matters is that we work to reduce it within ourselves and society at large.

One issue with criticism of culture is you have to be careful to not use it as a proxy for race. Can you see where that might happen in your examples above?


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

[User] ELI5: Why do swarms of gnats follow you around?

[Assistant]
Speculation: Ive read that insects like ticks can detect the carbon dioxide we breathe out, signaling them to drop from branches, hop off tall grass, etc..

Maybe there is a similar mechanism at play.


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

[User]
ELI5: Where does the sound go in space?

Title might sound stupid, but if all sounds are vibrations moving through the air particles, Without them in space, We have no way of Transferring that vibration from one place to another.

When a action that would cause a sound on earth is made in space, Where does the energy that would be the sound go? And if it doesnt go anywhere does the energy/vibration ever cause a problem for anything?

[Assistant]
The short answer is "it turns into heat or velocity".

On the ground, sound is a two-part mechanism where a source, such as a hammer impacting a metal surface, causes a "shockwave" that goes through the air, and than that shockwave impacts your eardrum which is set up to tell your brain "BONNNNNGGGGgggggggg".

So let's put that hammer-impacting-metal situation for a metal plate on a satellite in vacuum, and then in a pressurized room in the ISS.

In vacuum, the hammer hitting the satellite transfers all of the sound energy into the hammer, the satellite, and possibly whatever thing is holding the hammer, because that sound energy has to go somewhere and there's no air to receive it. The hammer blow may push or spin the satellite a bit (the velocity part), but its vibrations only flow through the structure of the satellite and bounce around until they're absorbed and their resulting energy is transformed into a very tiny increase in heat.

In the air-filled ISS, the same thing happens, except the air works the same way as it does on Earth. Eventually the sound is absorbed by surfaces and, again, transformed into a very very tiny increase in heat.


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

[User] [Star Wars] When does one say "Darth Vader" vs "Lord Vader"

[Assistant]
Darth is a Sith honorific, not much used by non-Sith. Some Imperials refer to Vader as Darth Vader, mistakenly thinking "Darth" is his name.

Lord Vader is more like a nickname, Vader is not really a Lord of anything, but since his actual rank is pretty nebulous (arch-general, vice-chancellor, director Vader? ), they stick with Lord.


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

[User]
ELI5: How is it possible for something moving the speed of light to experience no time.

I was recently listening to star talk and Neil deGrasse Tyson noted that light is simultaneously at its starting point and its destination because something moving the speed of light experiences no time.  I can't really get my head around this.  We can measure the fact that it takes light 8 minutes to get from the Sun to the Earth.  How can that 8 minutes be different from the perspective of the light?  I would assume (wrongly I suppose) that increasing speed only changes the distance you travel in an amount of time and shouldn't change how much time you feel like that takes.

[Assistant]
The concept at play here is called Special Relativity; it's one of Einstein's greatest achievements.

The ELI5 is that time slows down for *all* moving objects.  You don't notice this on a day to day basis because you're moving *really* slowly; you need to be moving at a nontrivial fraction of the speed of light for the effects to become noticeable.

But, for example, if you were to get in a spaceship and go at .99 times the speed of light and take a 1 lightyear trip that ended up back at Earth, we on Earth would have to wait a year for you to return, but it would only seem like about two months to you on the ship.


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

[User] ELI5: What makes Sharpie and other markers permanent?

[Assistant]
First, let's talk about non-permanent markers, and how they work.

The ink in a dry-erase pen isn't _just_ ink. Usually, they contain coloured ink, a solvent to keep the pen from drying out, and binding agents that make sure the ink and the solvent are mixed properly. When you write with them, you leave a trail of ink and solvent mixture, but since the solvent has a much higher vapor pressure than the ink, it quickly evaporates. This leaves a trail of dry ink particles on the surface - colour.

The reason you can erase a dry-erase marker is that there's nothing in particular keeping the coloured particles in the ink stuck to the surface you're writing on when they're dry, unless the surface itself is porous like wood, or skin. Not so for permanent markers.

In addition to ink, solvent, and binding agents, permanent markers contain resin. The resin is also dissolved by the solvent, but when the ink dries, the resin hardens, leaving a protective coating of resin on top of the ink. This protective layer keeps the ink in place and prevents you from erasing it. The resin also sometimes makes permanent marker ink feel sticky, when it's dry.

Add more solvent, and you'll dissolve the resin again, which will make it erasable. This is why you can use a regular whiteboard marker to erase permanent marker with, as they usually contain the same solvent. In theory, you can use anything that contains organic solvents - acetone or nail polish remover will work, as will vodka or another strong alcoholic beverage. I've used sunscreen once.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does touching tinfoil with your teeth, especially when you have fillings, hurt so much?

[Assistant] When your metal fillings meet tin foil, the bodys weak electrical impulses create a closed circuit and you have essentially form a weak battery.  Remove the foil and it stops.  You arent electrocuted but you will feel a slight buzzing.  Your fillings must be pretty close to the nerve in your tooth so that would explain the hurt.


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

[User]
Can you 'russian-doll' pressure vessels, one inside another, in order to reduce the design requirements on each?

I work with high pressure gas infrastructure (>1000 bar) where we use very strong and *very* expensive pressure vessels to store the gas at high pressure.

A colleague came up with a 'novel' solution to this gas storage problem which in my gut I feel isn't plausible but i'm struggling to make the argument against it. I'm hoping you guys can either help me debunk it, or even prove me wrong.

His suggestion is as follows: Lets say you have a pressure vessel containing gas at 300 bar. You put this 300 bar pressure vessel inside a second pressure vessel which contains gas at 200 bar. And you then put THAT pressure vessel inside a third vessel containing gas at 100 bar. You now have a russian doll pressure vessel system. His theory is that each pressure vessel will need only be designed to withstand 100 bar of pressure since the delta between each layer is 100 bar.

Supposedly this theory would extend to 1000 bar and beyond.

Purely based on theory and ignoring the practicalities of transferring gas in/out of the tanks - is this true/not true and if so, why?

[Assistant]
Sure, it's basically the same concept as the difference between gauge pressure and absolute pressure.  If you can nest every part of your system like that then you can reduce the stress on each layer.

Why isn't this the normal way of handling high pressures? Imagine having to build it.  Imagine having to modify parts of the system once it's built.  Imagine having to inspect the system.  It's an absolute nightmare at every level.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it easier to "hold" urine when you're walking around as opposed to sitting or standing still?

[Assistant]
Urinating is both a conscious and a subconscious action.

When our bladder fills, it sends signals to our brain, and the brain interprets those signals into how badly we need to pee.

But, if we dont need to go immediately, and we are preoccupied with something, then the brain will ignore those signals and the feeling goes away. If you wait longer and longer eventually it will stop ignoring the signals because youre getting to a point where your bladder is really full and needs to be empty or it could get dangerous, which is when you get that I really have to go right now emergency feeling.

This is beneficial because 99% of the time waiting to go to the bathroom isnt a dangerous decision, so the brain ignores those signals when it is preoccupied with something else, like walking or running, which to our ancestors could be foraging for food or running from danger.

The brain ignore the signals so as not to interrupt something that is possibly really important With something unimportant like going pee.

This is also why when you walk up to your front door you suddenly REALLY have to go to the bathroom, your subconscious brain noes that its not at a place that it can rest and be safe and stops ignoring those signals.


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

[User]
[Alien] If xenomorphs are a naturally occurring species, where do they fit in the food chain?

Like, are they on the top of the food chain? Personally, I imagine they'd be like ants, the top of their individual food chain, but tiny in comparison to most of the organisms on their planet and ultimately irrelevant to whatever rules the world.

[Assistant]
Well, they were made as bioweapons so they aren't naturally occurring.

But if they were, it would depend on the planet they are on. On earth they would be s top tier predator.

Bur since they take traits from their hosts, it only take 1 generation and they will then be superior to their hosts, since they take the best traits from their hosts and improve with their own genes.


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

[User] [Jack and Jill (not the movie)] Why is a water source at the top of a hill?

[Assistant] While normally considered to be a well in many illustrated iterations of the story, careful analysis of the text reveals no specificity about the nature of the water source. There is no reason that the water being fetched might not from a mountain creek or natural spring (indeed, mineral springs abound in the regions where the original rhyme comes from). The latter is an especially enticing possibility because mineral water would be much more valuable because of its purposed health benefits - some of which might well be true; springs of lithia water with dissolved lithium salts being especially popular - and a combination of lithia water and a steep descent possibly a reason why Jack fell down and broke his crown.


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

[User]
Why doesn't water become more viscous as it approaches freezing?

As I study for a biochem midterm coming up, the properties of water have totally piqued my interest. I understand that in ice, water forms four hydrogen bonds creating its crystalline structure, and as the temperature exceeds the freezing point some of the bonds sort of fall apart. But then my book says that a "majority of the H bonds in H20 survive the transition from solid to liquid."

So then why the heck is liquid water uniformly the same viscosity across a wide range of temperatures as the amount of h bonds change?

Hell vodka gets thick as it passes below freezing! im scratching my head at this one. Im genuinely curious!

[Assistant]
Actually, water near the freezing point is almost 6 times more viscous than water near the boiling point. Try the following experiment:

- Take two similar pots, fill them with equal amounts of water.

- Put one pot in the refrigerator.

- Put the other on the stove and bring it just shy of boiling.

- Now place the pots next to each other, and tap lightly on the side of each pot. Compare the amount of tiny ripples, and how quickly those ripples disperse...you'll definitely see a difference.


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

[User]
CMV: If one of my co-workers resigns and/or is fired, and I am forced either formally or informally to do parts of their job, I should receive additional pay in proportion to what they were paid for those duties.

If your place of employment loses an employee and requires you to pick up the slack in their place, they should give you more money. They should have the money available after all because they arent paying that person. Why is it fair to make you do something essentially for free that they were paying someone to do before?

To be clear this arrangement doesnt have to be a formal order to officially do the job of the former employee. If your daily responsibilities grow simply by nature of that person being out, then you have a pretty good case for additional pay as well. If there are two cooks in the kitchen and now there is only one it is obvious that the remaining one is doing at least some of the work of the other person especially if the output has not slipped.

In the case of cost-cutting layoffs, all bets are off because obviously, the point of letting the other person go was to save money. The person doing extra work still has a legit gripe, but a different one than in the case of a vacancy because the money is not assumed to be available in that situation.

If you are a manager or a person in a flexible role whose job is to pick up slack then this doesnt apply. But many people are forced to go above and beyond their job descriptions and do tasks that companies have literally already budgeted and allocated money for. That money should be attached to the individual responsibilities in the case of a vacancy, not the person.

[Assistant]
I can think of a few things:

1. Salaries vs Hourly makes this had to quantify. Salaried work in the US usually has very flexible role definitions and you can be asked to do things outside of your typical duties.
2. How would new hires work? If you're making $50k/yr and working your ass off and they hire someone to help and now the work is spread to two people are you OK with suddenly making $25k? After all you were doing the work all yourself, and now you only have to do half the work.
3. This could have implications on revealing the ex-worker's pay to you. What if you make $50k/yr and he makes $100k/yr, and they fire him and you take half his duties increasing your salary +$50k/yr. You would now know his salary.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does lightning zig-zag from the sky to the ground instead of going straight?

[Assistant] Lightning as with any electricity is going to follow the path of least resistance, in this case the zig zag is due to the air and water molecules being ionized in different concentrations not in a straight line causing the path to zig zag as the electrons jump from one ion to the next.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can we tolerate scolding water temps (shower/hot tub) only after easing into it?

You start your shower a little too far to the "Hot" side and your skin feels like it's melting. Yet you start at a moderate temp and can work your way up to maximum heat...

[Assistant]
Your body has a lot of mechanisms to combat temperatures that are too hot. When you jump straight into hot water your body hasn't activated the necessary cooling systems.

For one example, when you are exposed to hot water your body rushes lots of blood to the area (blood vessels open up in the affected area). This brings lots of blood near the surface of the skin to absorb heat - it's also the reason why your skin turns red near when exposed to a lot of heat.

The blood absorbs the heat and can carry it away pretty quickly. When you ease into hot water the blood vessels have enough time to open fully at a rate that 'keeps up' with the rising temp. Essentially, your skin never gets hot enough to hurt because enough heat gets removed by the blood.

When you just jump straight into hot water blood isn't flowing to the affected areas yet. Therefore, your skin temperature rises quickly and may rise above the pain threshold. That's when you shriek out and try to swat the shower handles through a burning hot river of molten water.

TL;DR: Easing into water gives your body time to respond to the heat and prevent skin temperatures from rising into the pain point.


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

[User] Why can't humans use anaerobic pathways such as phosphorylation and anaerobic glyclolysis to stay alive when no oxygen is available? (For example in a drowning situation)

[Assistant] These other processes are comparatively inefficient and building and maintaining all of the cellular machinery to do those other processes itself isn't free. Don't forget that we're extremely large, complex and energy hungry operations compared to most other animals -- aerobic metabolism is almost uniquely appropriate to support these extreme demands. Nowhere is this as true as in our giant, extremely fragile and energy needy brains. If we were a simple little critter without a huge brain to maintain (say, a yeast) then it would be strange if we couldn't run on the equivalent of coal power instead of rocket fuel.


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

[User] ELI5: How are women able to give birth to octuplets ?

[Assistant]
Like giving birth to twins, one at a time, with very careful handling in labour - but there's a lot more risk involved. There 8 placentas so 8 sites for major bleeding, amongst other things.

Typically the children are born around 1-3 pounds so they're born small, but that's mainly because the mother can't eat enough to supply 8 average sized babies, as well as the fact that a mother can't possible carry 8 babies that are all 5-7 pounds.


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

[User] ELI5: Where actually is the Internet? Can the whole Internet crash? Why arent there Internet slow downs like there are traffic jams?

[Assistant]
The internet is everywhere. It is a combination of various smaller corporate and private networks, hence the term internet Interconnected-network

The whole point behind the internet was that there wasn't a single or handful of datacenters running it so that it could survive a nuclear war.

It is theoretically possible for large chunks of the internet to go down. Large datacenters like those owned by Google, Amazon, and Microsoft host large numbers of websites and data that could go offline it such a datacenter were destroyed. But most major websites have copies in multiple locations to protect against such a thing.

The most likely thing to cause a major internet failure would be a failure of the BGP protocol. This is the routing mechanism that makes the internet work underneath and is mostly controlled by ISPs.

Redundancies and protections are in place, but the major Rogers telecom outage earlier this year was an example of BGP failure. The entire ISP went offline for days because it's ability to communicate with the rest of the internet was knocked out.

This outage was the equivalent of someone removing all the street signs in a city within 10 secs and then trying to put them back without any context.

As for traffic jams, those happen all the time but are usually only affecting small segments of the web. This is like seeing a traffic jam on 1 road in the city. When the internet runs slowly or a website goes offline it's often for this reason. Companies are just good at managing bandwidth to prevent this from happening.

A DDoS attack meanwhile is an example of a malicious traffic jam. The internet equivalent of protestors blocking a road with bodies and cars.


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

[User]
[Marvel] what does uncle ben do for a living?

The wiki says that he was a military police officer during his service but not much else about him working.

[Assistant] After his term of service Ben used the GI Bill to go to college and ended up founding a small company that sold rice.  It grew and became one of the largest in the field and he cashed out, selling it to Mars, Inc. One day he met May, a party girl who introduced him to cocaine.  They got married and lived a whirlwind lifestyle blowing their fortune on coke.  They both went into rehab but by then it was too late.  Uncle Ben and Aunt May bought a house on what little money was left and live on dividends from a few investments that remained.  Both will take a little bump to get through the day, but they aren't the coke monsters they used to be.  You see, there's nothing wrong with drug use as long as you moderate it.  Or to put it another way, with great powder comes great responsibility.


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

[User]
[It's Always Sunny] how in the hell are the gang still friends?

I'm only 2 seasons and a half seasons in, but how the fuck are they still friends 12 seasons in?

Like they leave each other to die / plot to kill each other / fuck each other over etc etc everyday all day.

How haven't they just

a) done the job/s already

b)not just broken up and left?

Also, whatever happened to that girl (the gym coaches daughter) that Frank killed/paralyzed?

[Assistant]
Dysfunctional, co-dependent, narcissistic, sociopaths tend to flock together. Perhaps it's unconscious.

Besides, they grew up together, two are siblings, and the father has money which they all need. They also work together, and for better or worse have little choice but to rely on one another for support - even if that support is misguided and fraught with strange consequences.

In answer to your questions:

A. They never do anything. Dennis is far too self-involved, Dee is a broken record of bad life decisions, Charlie is borderline retarded, Mac is lazy and seems to have a mild case of ADD, and Frank is most likely insane. None of them are capable of just doing their jobs.

B. Co-dependent relationships are tough to break. Frank and Charlie are joined at the hip, Dee and Dennis need Frank's money, Mac and Dennis are roommates and, for better or worse, best friends, and Dennis and Dee are the only two nearly sane people in the group. They all need someone else, for some reason, and walking away from that means they (i) face their own shortcomings alone, and (ii) they'd have to actually *do* what normal people do, on a daily basis. Neither of those options are palatable to a group whose entire lives have revolved around scheming and conniving methods of avoiding their responsibilities.

As for the gym coach's daughter in *Hundred Dollar Baby*, we never know what happened. Frank just ran away, so she's either dead or paralyzed. We might learn her fate later on, but it was left open to interpretation. We do know, however, that Frank definitely sees human life as expendable (see: Vietnamese sweat shops).


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

[User] ELI5: Why does milk come in gallons and soda in liters (in America)

[Assistant]
Because the soda bottle was created after the US government went metric, but milk already came in gallon jugs before US independence.

Essentially theres no law dictating what private companies use, but the FDA works in metric, and US imperial measures have to be converted back to the metric standard.  So for newer comestibles, its simpler just to go metric, while older ones are going to stick with existing supply lines and volumes customers are accustomed to.


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

[User] A very hot iron bar will lose its ferromagnetic properties. How is it that the earth's core can be hotter even than molten iron, and still exert such an enormous magnetic field?

[Assistant] The earth's core generates its magnetic field with different mechanism from e.g. a fridge magnet. It is not in fact ferromagnetic. A ferromagnet generates magnetic field by having particles aligned in such a way that their quantum - scale magnetism (long story) adds up to the effect we can see on macro scale. Heating up a ferromagnet scrambles this alignment, destroying the observable magnetism. The earth's core generates magnetic field akin to an electromagnet - it is spinning due to the flow of the molten rock flowing, and it carries charged particles. If a charge flows in a cyclical trajectory, it generates a magnetic field along the axis of the rotation.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why cant people go to the casino playing roulette and bet on black, and if they lose, double what they lost and bet on black again until they win?

If you bet $100, your odds of winning are around 50% and if you lose, bet $200, and so on and so forth until you win, and then cash out with a guaranteed profit. Assuming odds of black are 47.37% as per American roulette, your odds of not winning a single one after 6 tries are 0.02125 (I think) and decrease exponentially after each subsequent try.

[Assistant]
You're right, your odds of loosing 6 consecutive plays at roulette playing black are slim. Yes. But to get to that point you'll have had to lose 5 consecutive plays, which would require you to have bet $100, then $200, then $400, then $800, then $1,600 for a total of $3,100. Then still have $3,200 left over to bet the sixth time.

This strategy is known as the martingale strategy and only works if you have an infinite bankroll, which you don't.

EDIT: And you'd by stymied by the table limit, too.

EDIT2: Some elaboration on the Martingale Strategy based on some comments.

1. Given an infinite bankroll and no table limit, it *is* a valid strategy that is guaranteed to win. What prevents it from being implemented in real life is the lack of an infinite bankroll and the existence of table limits.
2. It does *not* rely on the gambler's fallacy. It doesn't assume that the odds of any given play changes, but rather exploits the fact that any non-zero chance of winning becomes a guarantee on an infinite time line. At some point, you *will* win. And, when you do, your bets are structured as to cover all previous losses plus profit.
3. It doesn't care about the odds of winning. OP already notes the odds are less than 50/50 (because of the zeros on the wheel). But the odds of winning don't impact the validity of Martingale, they just alter how long on average you might have to play to realize that guaranteed win. What *does* affect Martingale is the payout structure. For roulette, the odds are less than 50/50 but the payout *is* 50/50 (e.g. you win what you bet). This is why Martingale says to double. If the payout structure was different, you're subsequent bets would be different (better payouts mean smaller increases, worse payouts mean larger increases).


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What was it like being a Clone Trooper?

It seems like such an odd existence. Growing up surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people exactly like you in every way, taught the same things, with all the same experiences. Was there culture? Friendships? Entertainment? Sex?

[Assistant]
The clones were designed to be the perfect soldiers. Strong, smart, loyal, but most of all identical. Save for a handful of soldiers (commanders for example) they were all trained to do specific things identically. Ex: Pilot Clones would know how to fly a variety of ships, advanced engineering and a very impressive knowledge of astrophysics, whereas a ground trooper would know advanced combat tactics, how to use weapons, how to evaluate a combat situation (only to a limited degree, enough to adapt to changes but not question orders). Commanders were taught advanced battle strategies, how to lead, how to rally the troops so to speak.
As far as culture and friendship and the others, it is difficult to say. It's known that the clones have feelings, this is recorded in recovered 501st logs, specifically referring to Aayla Secura, and the sadness felt by some about her eventual fate. It is not unreasonable then to assume forms of friendships would be formed, however with everyone being literally the same person, with the same everything up until a certain point, it is uncertain the effect this would have on someone.
Entertainment was limited, as there was little time for it. (most were aged artifically to combat readiness, trained, and sent out to die.) During the war the clones saw little downtime, deployed late in the war to areas of near 24/7 (or whatever scale of time existed on the plante) combat.
Sex quite simply didn't happen. It's possible that some clone after the wars survived and reproduced, but at their height, no, never.


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

[User]
What happens to drug money / laundered money after it is confiscated by authorities?

This includes off shore accounts.

[Assistant]
It is forfeited to the gov't.

In some jurisdictions, it goes to the agency that seized it.  This has caused a lot of problems, as those agencies more aggressively pursue causes where they smell money, often illegally.

More often, that money goes to a general fund and is spend like any other money the gov't collects.


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

[User]
If I smell something, does that mean I'm taking the smell away?

If were to smell a fresh baked loaf of bread, or someone's perfume, would that mean there would be less fragrance for someone else to smell? Would the scent become weaker until there was none left?

[Assistant]
To set off your sense of smell only takes a few thousand molecules of an odor or fragrance. A loaf of bread or someone's perfume are giving off literally trillions of individual molecules, and refreshing the output of those molecules every second. Your inhaling a few of those molecules is not going to deplete but a minuscule percentage, in effect, having a meaningless depletion of the total.

So go ahead, and sniff that baked bread.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is hypopigmentation associated with blue eyes, when the complete lack of pigment in albinos causes red eyes?

As the title says, hypopigmentation in humans is ordinarily associated with **blue eyes**, as well as light skin and blond hair.

However, albinism, the complete lack of pigmentation, while being associated with most of the same phenotypes, just to an extreme degree, causes **red eyes**, not blue eyes.

What is the explanation for this apparent discontinuity in iris colour?

[Assistant]
Regardless of our skin/eye/hair color, non-albino people have black pupils because the insides of our eyes have pigment to prevent light from bouncing around. The type of pigment and amount may vary based on our genes but it's enough to keep our pupils black. Extreme amounts of light from say a camera flash can exceed the light absorbing ability of our eyes, making us have red pupils in photos.

Albinos lack this pigmentation so the insides of their eyes don't absorb as much light. This causes light to light up the inside surface which is full of blood, making their pupils look red in normal lighting conditions.

Albinos typically have blue irises due to the lack of pigmentation.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why scientists can date the age of Earth, but not the Egyptian pyramids or the Sphinx?

I read that really old objects can sometimes not be carbon dated, because there isn't any C14 left in the object. Then how come we can decide the age of Earth, which is significantly older?

[Assistant]
Radiometric dating works by comparing the ratio of isotopes in an object now to a known reference ratio at the object's inception. Each element has a different useful range of applicability based on the half-life of the decaying isotope, with increasing error and eventually uselessness outside that range. C14, for example, is only useful out to about 60,000 years. In the case of dating the Earth, it was actually the Uranium --> Lead decay which was used to determine the age, based on the content of these isotopes in the oldest known zircon minerals in rocks found in Australia and Canada.

As far as the Egyptian artifacts go, carbon dating only really works on objects which contain(ed) organic material. Dating the stone used in the construction of the pyramids and the Sphinx would of course tell you how old the rock is, but not when these objects were constructed.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do small birds tend to hop while bigger ones walk?

[Assistant] Most birds that hop are passerine or perching birds. They have a special anatomy in the legs that makes the toes clench when the leg is relaxed, allowing them to sleep while hanging on to branches or telephone wires, or whatever. Birds that don't have this anatomical adaptation walk or strut more normally.


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

[User]
CMV: voluntarily unvaccinated people should be given the lowest priority for hospital beds/ventilators

I firmly believe that healthcare should be denied to no one regardless of their economic or social conditions.

However, what boils my blood the most is that we have so many perfectly good vaccines against Covid that are readily available and accessible in most first-world countries, and yet people refuse to take them.

If you have the chance to take a vaccine and still dont, then whatever happens when you get Covid is on YOU.

YOU are being a burden on an already overloaded (in some places) healthcare system, which could have been avoided by taking a goddamn shot.

To allege that it is all a conspiracy by (insert Fauci, Bill Gates, Communists, whatever other figure the right likes to bash) is irresponsible and poses a danger not only to themselves, but to the community at large (as more cases = more risk of mutation = more new variants = less effective vaccine)

EDIT: I don't think all the obese/smokers/alcoholics arguments work, because:-   fixing all of those conditions entails significant lifestyle changes as opposed to vaccination, which is a one-off event.- they don't directly affect anyone other than that specific person.- they take up a maximum of one bed, as opposed to covid patients, who can infect others and lead to more people taking up beds.

[Assistant] Hospitals operate under the principle that what constitutes urgency is need, not culpability. If two patients come in from a car crash, the responsible one barely alive, ribs shattered, organs haemorrhaging while the innocent party has a sprained wrist and mild whiplash, you don't treat the innocent one first because he's not culpable, you treat the culpable one first because his need is more dire. That way, overall more lives are saved (this principle is the guiding philosophy of triage which is a protocol which saves a shitload of lives) and you remove personal value judgements of blame as a factor in doctor's actions, which is a bias nobody want healthcare professionals to be influenced by.


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

[User] As Per Special Theory of Relativity, Length Contracts and Time Dilates. Does Length Contract in All Three Dimensions?

[Assistant] Two inertial frames in SR are related by a constant relative velocity **v**. An inertial observer in one frame will measure lengths parallel to **v** to be contracted as compared to an inertial observer in the other frame. So, to answer your question: no, there is a single independent direction along which lengths contract. Lengths along the other two directions are not contracted.


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

[User] Why does the skull have indentations at the temples?

[Assistant] The indentations on the skull allow room for muscles which allow us to bite and chew.  If you place your fingertips on your temples while you chew, you can feel the muscles flexing.  If you compare a human skull with a gorilla skull, you can see that the gorilla has considerably larger chewing muscles, which attach to a ridge at the top of the skull.


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

[User]
Is it possible to permanently damage or kill one of your limbs by sleeping on it incorrectly?

Everyone has woken up after falling asleep in a strange position only to find that their leg(s) or arm(s) is tingling and they have trouble moving it for a while until the blood flow in the limb gets back to normal. Sometimes this happens when one is awake and they can quickly shake their limb around to normalize it, while other times it becomes so extreme that one is not able to stand, walk, and/or lift their arm at all until the blood flow gets back to normal. What I'm curious about is, is it possible to cut off circulation to a limb so extremely that the limb suffers permanent damage or one loses complete function of the limb? Does our body have a mechanism to prevent this if we sleep on a limb incorrectly for a long time or is it simply impossible for one to "kill" one of their limbs with their own body weight? If this is possible, has it ever happened before?

[Assistant]
Yes, there are a few ways you can do this.

You can stretch or compress a nerve. This normally will just cause pins and needles and feeling of numbness, but there is a medical phenomenon know as "Saturday night palsy" , where you come home drunk, throw your arm over the chair and fall asleep. Youre too drunk to notice the pain and you essentially just impinge/stretch your brachial plexus nerves. The next day you cant move it. Usually recovers, but if it was severe enough, might not.

I had a patient last year who took a load of heroin and passed out for 30 hours or so lying on his leg. He suffered a reperfusion injury and developed acute kidney injury and needed surgical debridement of dead tissue on his shin. If it had been worse, he could have lost that.

Our bodies normally feel pain however, so these situations shouldnt happen to normal folks.


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

[User] [Marvel] Can Spider-Man dodge a single punch from The Flash?

[Assistant] Probably not. Spidey is fast, but he's not a speedster. Spidey can dodge a bullet with splitsecond warning, but the Flash could watch the bullet move through the air, grab it, move it around, and make it miss.


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

[User]
[Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra]How would the Fire Nation have reacted to airbenders spontaneously reappearing as they did during Harmonic Convergence if they had won the Hundred Year War?

We saw in Legend of Korra that the spirit powers in the Avatar world trend towards harmony. When balance was eventually restored to the world random people who never had bending before became airbenders in every part of the world.

The Fire Nation had originally wiped out the Air Nomads in an attempt to kill the Avatar and break the cycle. Whether the Avatar cycle is broken or not is it possible for Raava's forces to be victorious in the war for light and shadow that only happens every 10,000 years if the Fire Nation wins the Hundred Year War?

Whether it takes 10,000 years or not the airbenders should eventually be restored one way or another. What would the victorious Fire Nations official policy be towards them?

Do the people of the Fire Nation hate the Air Nomads enough after the war that they would persecute new airbenders? Or would they be understanding because it was their family and friends?

[Assistant]
Something to remember about Harmonic Convergence was that it mostly occurred the way it did due to A) Unalaq putting his thumb on the cosmic scales and B) Korra making the call to leave the spirit gates open. This was by no means a guarantee, especially if Phoenix King Ozai won his duel with the Avatar and Republic City was never founded. Airbending could well have remained a lost art for such a long span of time that the Fire Nation would cease to exist as a political entity, and quite frankly if there is no Republic City, no Red Lotus, and no Avatar Korra it likely *would* have remained a lost art.

That being said, imagine being Phoenix Queen Azula and having airbending reappear without explanation in your old age. There probably hasn't been an Avatar in years (a victorious Fire Nation means a dead Aang and possibly a couple other dead Avatars) and earth- and waterbenders have probably also been exterminated, and suddenly the guys your great-grandfather was famous for annihilating (remember, Fire Nation history is warped around this understanding that the Air Nomads turned militant) have suddenly begun to pop up again? Well, it would be something destabilizing for the regime. Whether the average citizen was okay with these new airbenders (and probably earthbenders and waterbenders) would be irrelevant because they'd be ideologically threatening to Azula's regime (or the regime of her children) just by existing. Any surviving ethnic or state groups would (quite understandably) see the return of airbending as a sign that the spirits were on their side, and the event would likely become the catalyst for another war.


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

[User]
If you shine a typical flashlight straight up, will any of the photons manage to escape our atmosphere?

If not, how many lumens would it take? If so, what about the heliosphere?

[Assistant] Nearly all of them would, on a clear day, because the atmosphere is almost completely transparent (it varies depending on humidity and other factors). There is no minimum brightness to have the photons escape the atmosphere - because it is probabilistic, a certain percentage of whatever is emitted will escape, no matter what the brightness. Since space out to the heliosphere is also almost completely transparent (much more so than the atmosphere), if you shone a flashlight straight up nearly all of that light would eventually leave the solar system.


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

[User]
[General] What is the largest army in Sci-Fi?

And second question:

Which Sci-Fi army is the most varied? (E.g., not a billion of the same species.)

[Assistant]
The largest: i'm not familiar with 40K but i always hear how big everything is there.

Most varied: Starfleet propably, although humans are the dominant race. (And don't come at me with *Starfleet isn't a military navy*, because they are)


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

[User] When something goes past the event horizon, does it orbit into the black hole's singularity or does it follow a straight line path?

[Assistant]
This question is somewhat hard to answer if you are unfamiliar with general relativity.

The theory of general relativity states, that gravity is not a force but the distortion of spacetime itself.

According to this theory, energy (to be technical: the stress-energy tensor) bends spacetime, thus changing its topology. Since mass is a form of energy, mass can bend spacetime.
Free objects - those are objects who are  not influenced by a force - travel at a straight line through spacetime. Since spacetime is distorted around energy, the "straight" line through space may appear curved for an outside observer, thus creating the "illusion" that there is a gravitational force.

Consider the following example:
The ISS is in orbit, so no "force" but gravity is acting on it. If we were to place an accelerometer inside the ISS, this accelerometer would indeed tell us, that the ISS is force free. It is in free fall around the planet. This free fall is a straight line, that happens to be curved back into itself by gravitational distortion of spacetime.

Since black holes (primarily) interact gravitationally with other objects, these objects will follow straight lines through spacetime that only appear to be curved to the outside observer.

Thus, the technical answer to your question is: objects follow a straight path.

However, you have to understand, that beyond the event horizon of a black hole, spacetime is so much distorted, that **all** paths lead towards the singularity.


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

[User]
[Umbrella Academy] is "rumoring" someone language dependent?

When Alison uses her powers, she always starts by saying "I heared a rumor" in English.

Is her power dependent on the language?  Does she have to use a language the victim understands?

For example: would she need to say "jag hrde ett rykte" to affect someone who only understands Swedish?

[Assistant]
I think (in the show) it is not reliant on language and saying "I heard a rumor" is more of a mental limitation on her power than an actual requirement. To back that up, very early in S2E1 she uses her power on a few Russians who probably don't know any English and probably wouldn't understand the context of what she was saying even if they knew enough to be conversant.

Edit: She also uses her power on someone later on who may not speak English or Russian.


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

[User]
ELI5: if tornadoes occur nearly everywhere on Earth, why is it that the US has all the largest and most devastating ones?

Why aren't they as large in say Europe or Australia? Or anywhere else really.

[Assistant]
Topography and location.

The US has a large flat area where cold air from the north can battle hot humid air from the south. These conditions create storms, and sometimes potent tornadoes.

The Arctic is a stones throw north of tornado alley, whereas the humid warm Gulf of Mexico is just south. As a result, they tend to collide, producing seriously potent storms.

Europe and other places dont have this setup. Theres no gulf to provide highly humid and warm fronts in Europe, at least not where cold arctic fronts will collide with it. Mountains and landforms impede this exchange, which Europe has in abundance. Australia lacks the climate transition, and has strong topography to further restrict the issue.