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

[User] ELI5 Why are camera lenses always circular?

[Assistant]
Camera lenses are not perfect. They don't focus all light colors the same way. You get tiny rainbow effects on your photo.

The further from the center light goes through, the bigger the flaws. A circle is the ~~optional~~optimal shape with no corner outlier points further away from the center.

Google Chromatic Aberration and look at images to see examples of what happens at the edge of a lense.


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

[User] Why do energy drinks cause you to "crash"?

[Assistant] Let's say you have 100 points of energy to use. A whole bunch of different factors will cause you to use more/less energy and gain/lose energy. Food/drinks will add energy, activities will reduce them. Your body tries to conserve that energy because it needs it to survive. Energy drinks "trick" your body into using more energy than it wants to with drugs like caffeine. This is very useful if you need more energy for a short period but it throws off your body's system for making sure it doesn't run too low. When it realises you're now lower on energy than you should be, it tries to stop you from doing even *more* things by making you very tired.


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

[User] Eli5 how could an electromagnetic impulse, say from the sun for example, disable a whole power grid?

[Assistant]
Lets say you have a high voltage transmission line going between a power station and a city. These can be hundreds and even thousands of miles long. So if you get a powerful electromagnetic wave hitting it then it will act as an antenna and the wave will create a current in the line. Since the line is so long you can get a huge current in it from this electromagnetic wave and more then likely some part of the line will not handle the current and melt. The power grid is made up of these transmission lines all connected together.

But even if these transmission lines will fail, hopefully it will just blow all the fuses, it will be an easy fix that would take no more then a few days for linesmen to go around fixing all the issues. The real problem is with the more sensitive equipment like switches, transformers and generators. In addition to being much more complex and therefore much harder to fix they also tend to be enclosed in an oil bath to prevent short circuits in the extremely high voltages they operate in and also to cool the equipment better then air. So not only do you need to unwind a huge coil to get to the part of the wire that failed and then wind the coil again but most of the coil will not be there any more as the oil have burned it away. If you get any of these high current events in just a fraction of the transformers it will cause huge issues for the grid as you can not transfer power from the power stations to the cities any more. And it is not like you can just order a new transformer station to be delivered the next month because there are very few factories making them in the world as the demand for new power grids is relatively low.

The current plan for dealing with such an event is to be able to detect it early using space probes that have been installed between the Sun and Earth. When we have detected a wave of charged particles from the Sun strong enough to damage our power grids we will shut it all down. Turn off all the power stations and disconnect all the switches. It will probably require linesmen going out and manually disconnect huge disconnected or even cutting some of the lines intentionally. This means that when the electromagnetic pulse arrives we will not have one huge grid but only small pieces of lose wires around and these will not build up as much current as the longer lines would. Most importantly sensitive equipment like power stations and transformers will not be connected to the grid.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] I am a muggle that's aware of the wizarding world. If I want to open a business in, and possibly live in, a wizarding community, such as Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, what would be the process?

When we were teenagers, I was visiting my cousin's house one day when I caught him using magic. I had crashed my car and he said he was going to have his mechanic friend take a look at it, but when he thought I was sleeping, he went into the garage and used a Reparo charm to fix the damage. The problem is that I walked in on him mid-spell. His parents must have had some connections at the Ministry of Magic, because they successfully lobbied for me not to have my memory wiped. Anyways, my cousin filled me in on the wizarding world so I know pretty much everything now.

Now that I'm an adult, I have realized I want a change of scenery. I have a boring 9-5 job as a dish washer in a restaurant. I really want to be a chef though, and I have an idea for setting up a business selling muggle snacks. My cousin is pretty well off now, and is willing to front me the Galleons to set up my business as well as buy a house/apartment in the community of my choice (since I don't have wizard money, of course).

What exactly is the process I should go through if I want to move into and start a business in one of the wizarding communities? Are there wizard contractors to build the business, a permit process, or anything else I'm missing? I'm hoping it won't be just a flat out "no". Since the MoM allowed me to keep my memories from all those years ago, it seems like there's at least a possibility.

[Assistant] The law is pretty clear, unless you're a Squib (which is entirely possible since you're related to a wizard, unless they're a muggleborn) you can get fucked, mate. Being allowed to remember magic at all is likely as close to the wizarding community as you're going to get without marrying into it, so if you're really desperate ask your cousin to set you up with a nice witch/wizard.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect] How do we properly prepare for the Reapers?

Say that the Council heeds Shepard's warnings about the Reapers, instead of shrugging them off with, "Ah, yes, 'Reapers'. We've dismissed that claim."

Say that all the Races in the galaxy agree to take action and prepare for the Reaper invasion. How would they go about doing it efficiently and properly?

[Assistant]
Well, the biggest single thing they could do would be psychological, not physical.  They have to get all the cultures of the galaxy into the state of mind that they are:

A.  Already in a war
and
B.  On the losing, weaker side

Getting the galaxy on some kind of war footing, where the various militaries are at their highest state of readiness, and getting them organized so they can respond cohesively, is a huge first step.  Beyond that, ship and arms production must be increased.  Military drafts would need to be organized on any planet that doesn't already have some kind of non-voluntary military service already so we can train replacements while we're still able to hold a "homefront." Experimental weapons testing would need to be fast tracked as much as possible - we're only on the inside edge of the detection envelope for the Reapers, so any bigger guns/bombs/tech we can crank out would be vital.


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

[User]
[John Wick] How does one become an assassin?

Is it like a mentorship kind of thing? Are there classes? Or is a la 'Hitman' where kids are taken at a young age and trained? If so who does the training?

[Assistant]
The assassins don't tend to be trained by any sort of assassins guild or such. What tends to happen is that you have various criminal sorts who do petty crimes or steal from shops slowly escalate through criminal organizations and become known as a person you go to to intimidate people for payments or such.

Those people on occasion kill people, and the more experienced ones become assassins for criminal organizations.

The assassins aren't anything super weird and special. They're criminals, and we explicitly see the gangs that have supported and trained them in the films.

The quirk in John Wick is there's a reliable support network for criminal sorts like them, and hotels. Crime gangs are very organized.


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

[User]
How can maggots eat rotting flesh and not suffer from the microorganisms present?

If a human were to a slab of chicken that had been left out for a few days they would surely get food poisoning. yet maggots live entirely on dead and rotting flesh, how do they not get ill?

[Assistant]
Maggots possess a wide array of bactericidal or bacteriostatic agents in the lower regions of their digestive system that are effective against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria (such as E. coli, Salmonella, MRSA). These molecules include:

* Antimicrobial peptides (e.g. defensins)

* Proteolytic enzymes

By the time the food is fully digested, what is excreted contains relatively little bacteria at all. For more detailed information, check out Mumcuoglu, *et al.* 2001.


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

[User]
ELI5: What if Pi terminated eventually

What significant effects(if there are) would it have on mathematics?

[Assistant]
It has been proven that pi doesn't ever terminate.  Never ever.  It doesn't even start repeating and go on repeating forever.

But, since you asked... If we did find out that pi terminates, that would break everything in mathematics.  *Everything*.  Every mathematical statement anyone could make becomes true automatically, even ones that don't involve pi.  If pi terminates, then 1+1=5, 5=10, parallel lines must cross, a^(2)+b^(2)=c^(2) for all triangles (not just right triangles), and on and on and on and on.  *All* of mathematics falls apart if pi terminates.

It's not something special about your question about pi, though.  If anyone were to prove something is true (e.g., pi never terminates) and prove the opposite is also true (e.g., pi does terminate), then you can use that to prove that any statement you want is true.  If something is true and its opposite is true, that's called a contradiction, and those aren't allowed in mathematics.


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

[User]
[MCU] What makes the people of Wakanda so special?

Wakanda is described as having Vibranium, the special herb, and isolation from the outside world. Why is their technology and society advanced as compared to everyone else? Are the people in Wakanda the smartest, most talented people on Earth and because they were left alone could develop in peace?

Are we to assume that would have happened anywhere, that Iceland would also be so advanced if they'd just isolated themselves? Or is there something special about the people in Wakanda? Has the Vibranium had an effect on them which increases their intelligence and creativity, or is it that particular bunch of people are overall the smartest people on Earth?

The movie suggests that white interference in Africa has caused problems for other Africans and that's what's held them back as compared to Wakanda, then why aren't white countries as advanced as Wakanda?

[Assistant]
The first real use of metal in tools started about 5000 years ago, and was critical for the development of early civilizations. Similarly the development of iron, and steel were critical to technological development.

Wakanda was able to develop advanced technology with vibranium, bypassing bronze, iron, steel, and aluminum and producing tools that were significantly stronger, more durable, than other civilizations.

Not only did this allow them to develop mathematics before anyone else, they had a scientific revolution and industrial revolution before anyone else, and never went through a dark ages period.


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

[User] If it were possible to put a pipe straight through the earth, from north to south pole and you dropped a ball down the pipe what would happen?

[Assistant]
Ignoring air resistance and assuming the earth is a homogenous sphere,

The force F acting on the ball while within the earth is described by:

**F** = -GMm/R^(3)**r** where r is the distance from the centre of the earth to the ball.

For those that have studied springs, this equation is of the form:

**F** = -k**r** where k = GMm/R^(3)

Or equivalently:

**a** = -^(2)**r** where ^2 = k/m = GM/R^3

 is the angular frequency of such a system, and is also given by  = 2/T where T is the period of oscillation.

Given those equations, we can calculate T to be:

T = 2(R^(3)/GM)^(1/2) ~= 84 minutes.

That's the time it takes to fall right through the earth and come back to its starting position. Coincidentally, that's also the time it takes to make a full orbit at the surface of the earth (it's not exactly a coincidence, since simple harmonic motion along one axis is simply circular motion projected onto that axis).

Since there is no air resistance, the ball will fall right through to the other side, reverse direction, then fall back to its starting point indefinitely in simple harmonic motion.

If there is air resistance, the amplitude of this oscillation will decay exponentially and eventually the ball will come to a rest at the centre of the earth.


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

[User] [MCU] How is Rhodey both a active-duty military officer as well as a permanent member of the Avengers? Wouldn't the Pentagon need to sign off on his use of the War Machine armor during missions?

[Assistant] The Military likely sees having some official presence on the Avengers as better than none. Rhodey being able to steer the Avengers towards US interests is probably preferable than the Army trying to have a custody battle with the Avengers.


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

[User] ELI5: What makes voices sound 20 vs. 50 vs. 80 years old?

[Assistant] Think of your vocal cords as if they were rubber bands. Brand new rubber bands (like when you are young)  are tight and bounce right back after being stretched. Now think of an older rubber band (like when you are old), having being stretched over and over. It doesn't have the same elasticity it once had.


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

[User] ELI5: the Sun was proven to be a star in the 19th century. Giordano Bruno was killed because he asserted this in the 15th century. So how did Dante get away with it in his final verse of the Divine Comedy "Love that moves the Sun and the other stars" dated 1320?

[Assistant]
Bruno was burned for a whole list of heresies.  The sun being a star (the problem was not calling it a star,  but saying it was an ordinary star in an infinite universe) was not the worst one.  He also denied the Trinity, transubstantiation, and the virginity of Mary.  Bruno was a preacher with a following,  and was considered dangerous.

Dante was a poet,  so he could always hide behind the excuse that his ideas were part of a fiction.  It should also be noted that Bruno was active during the counter-reformation, the Church's response to Martin Luther,  when they became very strict about heresy and opposition.   Throughout the middle ages, the church was actually much more permissive of free thought than you might expect.

But when it comes to the sun thing,  he wasn't saying the same thing as Bruno.  When he says "the other stars," he actually means the planets.  Before the telescope (Galileo) the planets looked just like stars, except that they move independently.  They believed that the sky consisted of nine rotating spheres, containing (in order of distance from the earth) the moon,  Mercury,  Venus,  the sun,  Mars,  Jupiter,  Saturn,  and the "fixed stars" (the other planets hadn't been discovered yet). The stars are "fixed" because they all move together--now we know it only looks that way cause they're so far away.  Galileo was the first one to observe that Venus went through phases like the moon,  therefore the planets were solid bodies reflecting the Sun's light,  not producing their own.  He also discovered that Jupiter had moons, and he noticed Saturn's rings,  though through his telescope it looked like it just had one fixed moon on either side.


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

[User]
Why don't people have different natural hair colors like blue or green?

Are there any natural hair colors besides red, black, brown, and blonde?

[Assistant] Mammals main source of coloring is melanin, which produces browns, blacks and shade of tan.  Other animals such as birds have multiple types of pigment along with melanin including, carotenoids which produce red, orange or yellow feathers.  Also Porphyrins, an amino acid that can produce red, brown, pink and green colors.  The source of these pigments comes from many of the foods that birds eat.  So the way a birds body digests and converts these substances is another thing that our bodies did not evolve to do.  The forth material that produces colors like blue and green is keratin.  Our hair is made up of this same material although the way keratin is used in other animals is a bit different.  The structure of the keratin reflects certain light waves which makes it appear blue. The color of the keratin isn't blue itself. A birds feathers on a microscopic level can have a structure that reflects blue light.  Butterfly wings also work in this way.  Our hair doesn't have this complex structure to do the same.


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

[User]
[DC] Let's say someone swings a baseball bat at Clark Kent. Straight at the head, perfectly inaccurate. If a human gets hit with that, their brain is getting dissolved and they're going down. Would he dodge? If by chance, you did hit Clark--would he be unphased, or would he feign a concussion?

Perfectly accurate\* not innaccurate

For reference, I mean Clark Kent as in Superman while acting as a human.

[Assistant] This is a thing that Clark Kent struggles with. He generally tries to dodge if it makes sense for a human to do so, "tripping" or "falling" conveniently. If he can't, then he will try and fake being unconscious to protect his secret identity, but conveniently recover very quickly, claiming that it must not have been as serious as it appeared.


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

[User]
[Jurassic World] Why Did Corporate Think The Public Would Want To See A Dinosaur That Didn't Really Exist?

A key part of the parks attraction was seeing 'real dinosaurs' as they actually existed in their native habitats right? (or rather as close as could be done, in expanded materials it's said they were having trouble getting the avian-esque dinosaurs to have proper feathers)

What made Masrani and company think that people who came to the park to see dinosaurs would show up to see what is essentially an elaborate and expensive Circus Freak that couldn't survive in the wild? I'mreferring to Indominus of course,.

[Assistant] Why wouldn't they? People don't go to the park because they have degree in paleontology, they want to see dinosaurs. If a zoo has a liger in it, you would go see it, right? Even though ligers don't really show up in the wild that much, since not many habitats have lions and tigers together. \[Or at all, since wiki says that ligers exist only in captivity\]


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

[User] ELI5: How do voter I.D. laws discriminate against minorities? If the reason is the cost of the I'd to the voter, why does the state or federal government not provide I.D.s to poorer people at little to no cost?

[Assistant]
Cost isn't just measured in money, it's also measured in time.  Let's say you a) live in a city that isn't as dense as NYC or Chicago, and b) don't own a car.  So you ride-share with your neighbor to get to the bus route you need to ride back and forth to your job.  This basically has the effect of turning your 8 hour work day into a 10-12 hour work day.  Now you need to find time during normal business hours to get to a state-authorized agency for issuing ID, and god help you if you don't have a copy of your birth certificate because now you need to go to another state agency only open during business.

Now if you're high school or college-aged, getting this time isn't necessarily a huge drain on your resources.  But if you're a single mother with two kids who also need to be watched during the day, visiting a couple of state agencies for a couple of hours of potentially wage-earning time is a huge deal.


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

[User]
[Fringe] Major spoiler question inside. Don't read unless you've watched the whole thing.

At the end of the show, Walter and the anomaly go into the future to prevent the creation of the Observers. We then see Peter and Olivia with Eta in the park, etc.

However, going way back.....

Right after "our side" Peter died, Walter was watching Walternate in the lab. September arrived on the other side and distracted Walternate at the exact wrong moment so that Walternate didn't notice the result of the cure he had made; he didn't know it worked, but Walter (watching through the window) did.

As a result of this, Walter travels to the other universe with the intent of curing the other Peter. Things go wrong, and Walter brings Peter to "our side" and never brings him back. This starts the degradation of the other side. Once Walternate finds this out (via Olivia), he attacks "our side" and the Pattern ensues.

But this all started with an observer distracting someone. If the observers never existed, Olivia and Peter never would have met; they never could have met, as they lived in different universes. So how are they chilling with Eta at the end of the show?

The main plot arc of the series hinges on that event (September distracting Walternate)....so how did it still happen after the observers are no more?

The same could be said for any post-Machine episodes. Peter was erased from both sides; no one remembered him. IF he had never been taken, the degradation and war would never have happened.

[Assistant]
So there are 3 Universes at play here.

Blue, Red and Orange for Prime, Alternate and Altered.

First, it should be noted that the Observers (other than September) are not seen in the Red verse; this is probably due to it not having a future at that point, so other Observers not being interested.  While Blue did have a Future even if it was black holed, and its all so very complicated.

In Orangeverse though we do see they are able to travel to the alternate at will; but notably not the original Red universe, the altered red, which we should probably have another name for, Magenta or something.

However a key assumption here is that the observers from blue and from orange are the same future people.

Take this, what if the reason the Blue observers are so interested in Septembers mistake and are watching the events at Fringe divisions so greatly is because it is the destruction of their future.  They are not an advanced team from the future of an upcoming invasion, they are literally watching their future fall apart.  Them standing on the lawn the moment Peter disappeared was the final act of watching their peaceful future wink out of existence with a rough idea of what was to come.  Everything they ever did, every action they ever took, was winked out of existence.

At the moment the Orangeverse was created, the Orange observer future was created.  We see that events played out differently in the Orange, so why not everything we know about observers.  Yes several threads that seemed set up be Blue observers were picked up by Orange observers; but that is only because the Orange also had actions back that far.   Orange September, is not technically the same as Blue September; however their actions mirror each other almost perfectly.

So Orange September has a kid, and Walter takes them to the future to stop Orange observers ever happening and show there is another way.  This other way created a peaceful future, where people travel to the past only to observe it.  Essentially it created Blue Observers universe again.   This is why they did nothing about Blue universe ending.  This is why they didnt stop September.  Their existence is a contained time loop that continues forever.

Blue September knows to go to the lab and distract Walternate because he knows Orange September did.  And Orange September goes to the lab, because Blue September did.  But how did they know of each others actions you ask?  They didnt.  However they can see timelines and probabilities of things happening.  They both saw a moment in time where whole universes were created and are destroyed, where whole timelines and different future people are created and then disappear.  They see the spark of Walters threatening to tear the universes asunder. They can see in that moment the intersection of the Blue and Orange universes.   It fascinates them because both are so different and yet similar; and its such a small act.


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

[User]
Where does the neutron in the nucleus of
deuterium come from, knowing that deuterium is
produced by the fusion of two hydrogen atoms
which only contain a proton?

[Assistant]
The weak nuclear force can turn protons into neutrons and neutrons into protons. Normally the process of turning neutrons into protons dominate completely since it requires adding energy to turn protons into neutrons. But in the early universe the typical energies of protons and neutrons was much higher and both interactions were balanced. Some of the neutrons reacted with protons to form deuterium. When the universe expanded and became cooler all the free neutrons decayed to protons. But the neutrons inside deuterium stuck around.

If you look closely at the details there are a few other ways to produce deuterium, but most of it come from the early days of the universe.


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

[User]
What if we discovered the big bang was not the "birth" of the universe?

How would our understanding of the universe be affected if it were discovered somehow that the big bang was just an event (albeit a big one) in our universe and did not signal the "birth" of the universe?

I would assume that the age of the universe would be thrown into question, but would anything else be affected? Like quantum mechanics, any of the string theory variants, standard model, etc?

[Assistant]
It wouldn't change anything. For most cosmologists, the Big Bang is a strange event but nothing proves it was the "birth" of the Universe. Many "pre Big-Bang" theories are being developed, in the context of speculative theories (string theory, quantum loop gravity).

On the other hand, a lot of religious people ("concordists") would be really annoyed...


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

[User] ELI5: when an insect lands on a Venus fly trap. How does it close its mouth without muscles?

[Assistant]
It's one of the marvels of nature. We don't fully know the mechanism just yet, but we have a good idea about how it works from the evidence. Here it goes:

It functions in a snap mechanism, like for example, if you have a convex hard but flexible lens, if you push it with enough force, it can snap into concave shape. So it's not really an active process like muscles that flex over the time course of the action but rather they the system has two stable energy states, and it flips between them.

Now how does this flipping work? Well these traps have hairs inside. The hairs are somehow linked to electrical stimulation, bending them likely opens some molecular ion channels that allow for the Flux of ions thereby changing the electrical charge of the cells. The inner cells of these traps have a high pressure of water, not sure how, and the outer cells have less pressure. This forces the "leaf" to bend inwards so both sides bend inwards causing them to stay open. As soon as one hair is bent, some electric current takes place, but not enough. These ions that came in, have a decay (the electricity decays) over a period of half a minute. So this means, another hair or the same hair has been trigger in addition to the first bending. If another trigger takes place, the electric stimulation surpasses a threshold. This is a mechanism to ensure that only live prey triggers the trap, not raindrops of falling leaves, because only a living prey has a high chance to trigger twice in 30 sec due to moving.

When the threshold voltage is reached, voltage gated water channels open up (also unknown how) allowing water to diffuse out reducing the water pressure gradient and allow the "leaves" to bend the other way, snapping into the other state and closing. This closing is not complete, the cilia or hairs on the periphery don't fully interlock. This mechanism is to allow small prey to escape since the plant doesn't want to waste energy digesting a small meal. But if the fly is big, it can't escape, and it will start running back and forth inside, if it triggers five more hairs, the trap tightens forming a semi closed environment where enzymes are secreted to digest it.

tl;dr they have hairs that upon bending induce a change in water pressure via electrical current that makes the trap snap closed.


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

[User]
Work place bullying

I am a victim of workplace bullying. My tormenter is my Director.

She calls me in her cabin, closes the door and starts with her destabilization tactics. Character assassination and demoralization are her tactics. Many people have put up with her harm either by teaming with her or doing work for her.

She starts by telling me how pathetic my work is and devalues all my publications, even if it was published in Nature.

She will deliberately remove me from allocated responsibilities and tell the evaluation committee that I am not doing that job properly during my evaluation, while the committee doesnt know that she has already removed me from that job responsibility.

She keeps reminding me of all the blunders that I did when I initially joined the institute.

I am tired of her persistent attempts to demoralize and destabilize me.

But yes, she protects sexual predators at workplace, just because they have cut a deal with her.

I hope I find a new position some where else. Unfortunately, she is there in every academic recruiting committee in my country.

What should one do when a woman leader bullys, harasses and torments another woman who is her subordinate?

Why are there no #metoo movements for women bullying women? She micromanages everything and everybody, who should I ask for help in such a situation. Everybody is terrified of her, tries to avoid a confrontation or a dialogue with her.

I am at the verge of a breakdown now.

[Assistant] If it's of any  ... hope, there are definite moments of female bullies taken down by #MeToo and adjacent activities.  The dissolution of the Astronomy Institute at ETH Zurich was a fairly public example.


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

[User]
Why is there such a strong anti-nerd culture in the US? How prevalent is it in other countries?

Growing up in the US in the 80s and 90s, we were treated to characters like Urkle and Screech, and being a nerd was one of the least cool things. What accounted for this culture being so huge here? Is it less prevalent these days? (Mostly wondering because of the 21 Jump Street movie, where they make jokes about how being a nerd is cool now.) Is this anti-nerd thing prevalent in other countries too?

I mean I can imagine some basic reasons like cognitive dissonance making you put down someone with talents you don't have or something, but is there research on this?

[Assistant] The phenomenon of anti-intellectualism in the U.S has been well documented by both native and foreign writers for hundreds of years. The most famous account is probably in Tocqueville's Democracy in America, that in many ways is just as relevant today as it was 200 years ago when it was written. More modern accounts would be Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" "The age of American Unreason."


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

[User]
If the earth is protected from radiation and stuff by a magnetic field, why can't it be used on spacecraft?

Is it just the sheer magnitude and strength of earth's that protects it? Is that something that we can't replicate on a small enough scale to protect a small or large ship?

[Assistant] It is possible but such a magnetic field would require a lot of energy which means you need either nuclear power, which is has its own set of challenges for a human rated spacecraft, or a lot more solar panels which adds weight, lots of cost, and complexity. If you want to protect a deep space spacecraft the most economical radiation shield would be water since you're already carrying some with you.


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

[User] If an electric motor is supplied power but restricted in turning (like holding back a ceiling fan) what is happening which would cause it to 'burn up'?

[Assistant]
When a motor is turning, that rotation generates a voltage, a 'back EMF', that acts against the flow of current. It is this voltage, not the resistance of the coils, that restricts the amount of power the motor draws. And as this is an impedance, it doesn't generate heat. The power - the current in the motor pushing against this voltage - is what turns the motor.

When the rotor is locked, there is no back EMF to impede the flow of current through the motor. All the electricity flowing through the motor is converted to heat by the resistance of the windings. This quickly overheats the wiring, melting insulation, creating shorts, reducing the resistance and further increasing the current, until some wiring melts and blows.


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

[User]
If all carbs break down into glucose then why does it matter what you eat?

I know that diabetes can't handle a super quick load of glucose and would benefit from startch etc, but for a normal person, if they just need to get their calories in, and eat about 3 to 4 meals a day, then does it really matter?

What about those trying to gain weight through lifting? Why does it matter what form of carbs you are getting?

[Assistant]
Some carbs are more easily digestable than others, ie they take longer and more initial energy to break down. Glucose for example is really quickly available since it is the substrate of glycolylsis, as you may know. Other monosaccharides like fructose are also immediately available since thy can be converted into gluccose quickly most of the time. Polysaccharides like starch (amylose and amylopectin; long glucose chains) are a little harder to digest since you need a good amount of enzymes to even break the glucose chains into smaller chainlettes until you end up with disacccharides called maltose, for which you need yet another enzyme to break down into glucose monosaccharides. The body needs a little time and energy to produce these enzymes, so that procedure takes a little longer. The amylopectin part of starch is even harder to break down because of glucose side chains, rendering about 30%-40% of starch practically undigestable (comparable to fiber).

The slower release of glucose from starch vs the immediate availability of glucose from direct consumption (or from disaccharide sources like saccharose or lactose) does not only have an effect on blood sugar, but also on satiety (or the lasting of satiety). The immediately available glucose is used up way quicker while the glucose that is getting slowly released lasts for longer.

From a dietary and psychological perspective it is favorable to eat food products that satiate for a longer time without you developing food cravings and succombing to those in the end. From a sport perspective, you need different products depending on what you are trying to achieve: endurance athletes (eg marathon, long-distance) need fatty and starchy products since their most prevalent muscle fiber type (type 1) can and will use those high-energy, but slow release energy sources, while strength sports athletes (eg lifting) benefit from a starchy and more sugar rich diet because of their muscle fiber type (type 2b and 2x) and their dependence on immediately available glucose from the circulation and the muscles glucose deposit, glycogen (which is chemically very similar to starch). To effectively build muscle you also need a protein rich diet of course.


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

[User]
CMV: Developing country should focus more on Vocational Education rather than General Education.

Most people in these countries receive general education but go to work in fields that do not these knowledge like working in various factories, workshops, etc. So Government funds should be diverted from general education to vocational education to create more skilled workforce.

General education is not useless but in these developing countries it seems rather waste of resource for people living under poverty line to get waste years of their life when they can start earning by working. Besides various sectors that require higher education are still not developed here so they usually have to go abroad which most people can't afford.

Edit:

Thanks for all the inputs. I'm also doing my own searching and reading. I would also appreciate any dense material if any of you guy can refer. Some of you are thinking that I wanted to fully abandon general education thats not the case. I want more priority over General Education. I think the fact that most people in these countries cannot afford years of general education instead they send their child to work as child labor should be taken into consideration. If more focus was on vocational they might get more incentive to educate them as they may earn more. I'm not an elitist who thinks poor people should just work. so please don't try post sarcastic or one-liner comments by making strawman instead be nuanced and actually contribute.

[Assistant]
>  So Government funds should be diverted from general education to vocational education to create more skilled workforce.

This is a sucker's game in the long run. A broadly educated citizenry is how you start taking control of your own economic destiny rather than being controlled by external forces more wealthy than you. If you focus on meeting current market demands for work, you're letting the external market control the fundamentals of your workforce.

A better strategy is for state-funded education to focus on general education as citizens, and make companies coming in from the outside pay for the vocational training.


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

[User] Do sound/light waves literally travel in a sinusoidal wave pattern or is that just how we depict them mathematically?

[Assistant]
The oscillations of the electric and magnetic field of light *are* sinusoidal (or equivalently cosinusoidal).

Typically we deal with only the electric field part out of convenience.  We *more often* express an optical field as a phasor E e^i(kr-wt+phi) , you can think of this as representing a vector spinning around the origin of an axis.  The measured electric field is then the projection of this phasor onto the real axis.  If you think about the shadow cast by this vector onto the x-axis of coordinate system, you may be able to convince yourself that it is cosinusoidal.


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

[User]
Could someone explain what Neutrinos are exactly?

What are Neutrinos in the simplest of terms and how will further research of them be beneficial to the world?
Thanks!

EDIT: thanks for all the great responses!

[Assistant]
Neutrinos are fundamental particles like electrons. They have no electric charge, so they do not interact with normal matter as readily as other particles do. This is why you often see people referring to neutrinos passing through solid matter easily.

Neutrinos do interact though, mainly through the weak interaction which is why they still rarely interact with normal matter.

The immediate importance of neutrinos is most obvious in the case of nuclear reactions. These reactions release less energy than we expected, and we discovered the missing energy went into neutrino production.

Our standard model also predicts neutrinos to be massless, but due to something called neutrino flavor oscillations, we know that it can't be true. So to formulate a proper theory of everything, we need something that corrects that error.

Learning something by studying neutrinos might not affect the world directly, but this knowledge of the interactions neutrinos participate in might help us understand these interactions better when applied in other cases.


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

[User] How does a scent occupy space? Example: in cigarette smoke, is the smell of the smoke bound up in the smoke itself? Can you only smell it as long as you are in proximity to some trace of the smoke?

[Assistant] When you smell something, you are having little bits of whatever you are smelling go into your nose, where they hit receptors for various chemicals, which gives you the sensations of different smell. So, it is the smoke itself you are smelling.


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

[User]
Is suicide rational?

Hi.
I was wondering if you guys think that suicide is always irrational ie it is impossible for a rational person to commit suicide.
In mental health community,  it is widely accepted that suicide is always irrational.

I personally disagree.  My reasoning is simple.  Let's say the total amount of suffering till this instant is x.  If you choose to continue existing (till natural death) ,  let's say you are going to get y amount of suffering, and gain z amount of happiness.
If z-y>0, then it makes sense to endure suffering,  otherwise suicide is justified from a negative utilitarian perspective.

Perhaps you think that suffering can't be measured (it's subjective),  the kind of math that i present above is fallacious and leaves out the human aspect.  If you think so,  wouldn't you agree that any justification of continuing/ending life should be left to the individual and not dictated by the society.

PS: I am not planning suicide.  I just want to have an unbiased discussion about it.

[Assistant] If your life from this point on is going to be horrifying torture, then it may make sense to comitt suicide. The reason that medical health care professionals say such is because in the circumstances normally facing suicidal people are not ones where it would make sense to.comitt suicide. Even if your life is not presently worth living, it is quite possible for your life to become worth living.


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

[User]
[WH40K] Me and my ancestors have been living under violent warmongers for centuries, what makes this new 'emperor' any different?

How would the population of holy Terra react when the person later known as 'the emperor' revealed himself for the first time?

[Assistant]
Well... For one, his Thunder Warriors blew the head off the local Warlord and didn't immediately start raping people. That was a plus. The Emperor's people then started handing out food. Plus, he's all glowy and shit.

Really, considering the horrible violence and oppression they were used to, the Emperor's more progressive and gentle approach would have been embraced by the masses rather quickly. Especially after his Thunder Warriors annihilated all the Mad Max esque gangs and raiders.


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

[User]
CMV: It does not matter that Ariel is black.

Disney recently cast Ariel a black actor and I don't think it matters.

Ariel is a fictional cartoon character who has no ethnic/racial ties to a specific group of people with a certain skin color. Additionally, race is not a key element of her character (i.e. you could replace all the characters in the original film including Arial (and those related to her) with darker colored actors and it wouldn't change the film a bit (other than slightly visually).

Sure it might be pandering, but if you don't like it don't see it. Disney is free to cast who they want in their films and the mere fact that a cartoon character happened to be white in a film 30 years ago does mean that the character needs to be white today.

I also think it's disrespectful to simply assume that the black actor is unqualified/worse than other potential white actors (simply because they are black and happened to get the role-but that is a different point).

To further clarify, I don't particularly think she should be black. I just don't care what her complexion is and don't think it's important/relevant to the story/plot.

[Assistant] The original Hans Christian Andersen story describes her skin as "fine and transparent" and "clear and delicate like a rose petal", her legs as "white", and her arms as "white". The Little Mermaid is a national icon of Denmark and an important cultural symbol. It would be appropriate for Disney to be as respectful of the Danish version as possible since they are profiting off of the stories of another culture.


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

[User] ELI5: What happens when a state passes a law that contradicts with the Constitution in the United States?

[Assistant] Good question :) This is actually one of the main functions of the US Supreme Court. It is their job to interpret the Constitution to decide if a given law is unconstitutional. Once they make a decision state governments are obligated to adhere to their ruling.


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

[User] [LotR] If Arda is Earth, what happened to the other races (dwarves, hobbits, goblins, etc.) in the Fourth Age? Why aren't they here now?

[Assistant]
The Elves largely left for the undying lands, the rest have successfully remained invisible or simply died (and thus returned to the Undying Lands via the Halls of Mandos).

The Hobbits have ways of remaining unseen by the big people if they wish to remain unseen, so they probably have a small hidden community somewhere in Europe.

Goblins/Orcs have either fled into the depths of the earth or simply died out.  Without a strong leader in the 4th Age they wouldn't be able to stand up against the nations of men in any meaningful way.

The Dwarves were already on a slow decline due to deaths and low birthrates.  They are either extinct or have a small, tight-knit community somewhere underground away from human eyes.

The Ents have most likely gone tree-ish to large degrees or been cut down due to large scale deforestation.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can you buy glasses for Long-sightedness off a shop isle but not glasses for short-sightedness?

Why is it that you always need a prescription for short-sightedness but can walk into any pharmacy or supermarket and buy glasses with Positive power?

[Assistant]
The glasses you buy in a pharmacy (reading glasses) aren't actually for short-sightedness per se, but for an issue with similar symptoms called presbyopia.

Short(near)sightedness and long(far)sightedness are both due to the outer portion of your eye being slightly misshapen causing items to focus on the back of your eye poorly.  Think of it like holding a magnifying glass at a slightly off distance from what you are trying to look at.

Presbyopia is the hardening of the lens inside your eye.  The lens inside your eye is has a level of elasticity and can be stretched to fine tune focusing on small or very up close objects.  As we get older the lens loses this elasticity and the reading glasses help compensate.

Fun fact: Being nearsighted is almost like wearing reading glasses non-stop.  Many people who have laser vision correction for nearsightedness notice afterwards that they need reading glasses where they did not before.


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

[User] Why, when you have bad breath, can everyone smell it except yourself?

[Assistant] Your lungs compress when you exhale. Your sense of smell is largely dependent on your ability to inhale (which you generally can't do while you're exhaling). You therefore never really have the opportunity to smell the breath that comes out of your mouth.


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

[User] ELI5: Why when my phone is dead and I plug it in it takes several minutes to come back to life but if my laptop is dead and I plug it in, its ready immediately?

[Assistant]
Simply put, a laptop is designed to be able to bypass the battery. Try it: when plugged in, you can safely remove the battery of your laptop without it shutting down.

Your phone, on the other hand, doesn't use such a bypass. It always feeds straight from the battery. In order to work, you need at least "some" power available, which is why you need to wait a few minutes to get some initial charge going.


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

[User] ELI5: how can phones be waterproof when they have so many holes (charging port, headphone jack, etc)?

[Assistant] Any holes, like the charging port and headphone port are sealed so water cannot get into the body of the phone.  The seals are fairly thin which is why they are only good to about 5 meters, to much pressure will allow water to seep through.


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

[User] Why do we sometimes confused feeling cold with feeling wet?

[Assistant] There is no sensory receptor for "wetness" in humans. It's not 100% clear how our brains form the association, but feeling wet is a combination of signals from thermal and tactile receptors, so in the right conditions a cold surface can feel wet.


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

[User]
ELI5: If our cells are always dying and being replaced how does a tattoo last forever?

I've read that over a period of every 7 years or so that every cell in our body has been replaced by a new cell. If you're dying or painting or doing whatever to skin/dermis cells for a tattoo, how does it remain after the old cells have died?

[Assistant] The ink is injected in to the dermis layer which contains nerves, blood vessels, lymphatic and various other tissues. This layer is not only much more inner than the epiderms (outermost layer), it's also heavily inundated by immune cells ready to fight foreign infections. When the tattoo ink is injected into the dermis layer, immune cells such as macrophages will immediately want to eat up or phagocytose these droplets because they are foreign in nature. The simple way of understanding it is that these immune cells cannot eat up the ink droplets due to their size in nature and will start to aggregate around the ink droplets. The ink then becomes trapped in these aggregates of immune cells that will almost indefinitely stay in the region. These aggregates will continue to stay in the region despite cellular proliferation around them. Laser removal of tattoo works by shrinking these ink droplets to small enough sizes such that they can be phagocytosed by immune cells and excreted from the system.


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

[User]
Why "matte" surfaces feel smoother than smooth surfaces?

How come matte surfaces such as matte monitors, frosted glass, antiglare screen protectors and such feel much more smooth to the touch than smooth glass?

My understanding of matte surfaces is that there's a lot of tiny minute irregularities on the surface which scatters light thus causing the translucent look.

Because of these irregularities, matte surfaces would be less smooth than plain glass right? How come plain glass feels less smooth and more friction-ous?

Is it because of sweat? How do matte surfaces prevent sweat from making our fingers stick then?

[Assistant]
Due to the texture involved (which makes matte finishes not reflect light in a uniform manner like smooth surfaces; in essence, exactly what makes 'matte' what it is), the nerves on your fingers interpret the feelings differently. "Smooth" surfaces tend to catch our fingers more than "matte" surfaces, and don't allow as much airflow under your finger... This may cause a sort of 'stuttered' effect when you drag your finger across something smooth. Think of running your finger over the mirror right after you get out of the shower.

With matte surfaces, air can get under your finger, which makes this 'stuttering' virtually impossible, so therefore it feels smoother, even though on a small enough level, it's not smooth at all.

Edit: Also, the nerves on your fingers are only so sensitive, so they can't perceive the actual texture involved with a matte finish, just the overall impression.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it easy to read something you're holding and almost impossible to read something someone else is holding?

Hands shake in both cases, but they seem extra shaky if someone else is holding the paper or phone.

[Assistant] Hand-eye coordination. Your brain knows when and how your hands shake, so your eyes can easily keep up with that movement as it happens. If someone else is holding something, you're relying solely on visual cues and trying to react to them.


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

[User] ELI5 - why does time slow down as you approach the speed of light?

[Assistant]
When Einstein was first thinking about relativity, he came up with a thought experiment using a a loop of metal on a train travelling near the speed of light. He wanted to see what Maxwell's equations (which describe all of electromagnetism) would say if you ran a current through that moving loop.

The math behind that experiment showed that if Maxwell's equations were true, then Einstein's thought experiment would create infinite energy. Einstein thought that this couldn't be true - Maxwell's equations must hold for everybody no matter how they are moving.

The only way to resolve the infinite energy problem and keep Maxwell's equations in tact is if the speed of light (i.e. the distance it travels in a certain amount of time) is the same for every observer. Applying more maths, the only way that the speed of light can be the same for every observer (when you change the observer's speed) is for the distance light travels and the time it takes to travel it are DIFFERENT for every observer.

Specifically, the math shows that if an observer is moving close to the speed of light (or is watching someone else moving close to the speed of light) they will see that everyone else is moving slower - time is slowing down.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Does Dumbledore have a monopoly on last minute points?

At the end of Harry's first year, Slytherin had won the house cup. Until Dumbledore  stands up and awards Harry and co a load of points for being brave idiots.

Question is, what's to stop Snape standing up and declaring "well, I award Draco Malfoy 11 points for having such an amazing hair do" and turning the whole thing in to a pissing contest?

[Assistant]
[](/raritydress) Some things are just simply not done. Dumbledore himself wouldn't intervene except in a case like *the Dark Lord Voldemort possessing a teacher and trying to murder a student,* and since it was obviously such a special case none of the other teachers felt it worth challenging the Headmaster over.

So technically Snape *could,* but even in the wizarding world a certain level of professionalism is expected. Unless you're Dumbledore and the Dark Lord Voldemort possess a teacher and tries to murder a student.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are movies shot at 24 fps?

Especially when we have the technology to shoot them at 60 fps, which looks arguably better.

[Assistant]
Early film was expensive, and not very sensitive. You needed a lot of light to enter the camera to get a good picture.

You can solve both of these problems by running at a low frame rate.

The lower the frame rate, the longer the shutter is open and the more light you can get into the camera. At the same time, low frame-rates mean you use less of that expensive film.

This is why the film industry settled on 24 fps. 24 fps is pretty much the slowest frame rate that the human eye interpenetrates as motion. If you go slower than 24, viewers start perceiving each frame as a separate still image instead of a moving image.

24 fps has very distinctive look and feel. Even though we have technology that allows for much higher frame rates, it changes the character of the image. A movie filmed at 60 fps doesn't look like a movie. The look of 24 fps is just so engraved in the minds of movie goers that anything else just looks wrong to them.


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

[User] [Star Wars] If Naboo is an elective, term limited monarchy...why on earth did they elect a child to be their Queen?

[Assistant] Naboo culture considers youthful innocence and enthusiasm to be very positive traits. Many on Naboo believe that a young ruler will be less inclined to corruption than an older, more cynical one. The role of the more experienced Royal Advisory Council and the Governor (during the reigns of Amidala and Jamillia, this was Sio Bibble) is to balance this out with maturity and experience, as well as to handle many of the day-to-day administrative functions of ruling. Most of the monarch's duties are more ceremonial in nature, although they are still head of government according to the constitution and retain final veto power.


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

[User] So if everyone on earth was quarantined in their homes for one month could we eliminate the common cold?

[Assistant] very unlikely, because some animals would still be carrying the disease, and when everyone is released, someone is most likely going to catch it from an animal. Plus, it's pretty much impossible to "kill" a disease. You can suppress it, like polio or the plague, with medicine, but you can't kill it.


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

[User]
What happens to meat when it cooks?

On a molecular level, what happens?

[Assistant]
Proteins, which are molecules that generally speaking are specifically folded up chains of amino acids, denature and become tangled.  Fat deposits in adipose tissue, and oils and stuff stored in vesicles like liposomes, melt and are released as their containers fail and get squeezed out by the meat shrinking.  The meat shrinks probably from a combination of protein denaturation, cell breakdown, and dehydration as water is driven out.

Most meat is muscle tissue with a bit of adipose, and muscle is very enriched in strands of protein involved in motion, so these strands in particular would become disordered. dehydrated, stick together more, etc.  At a larger scale, muscle is also a collection of oriented cells that form fibres, and the connective tissue that holds together these fibres made from muscle cells breaks down, making the meat easier to break apart.


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

[User] [DC] What kind of music do the main members of the justice league like?

[Assistant]
Batman has diverse tastes; a lifetime of the high life has given him an appreciation for concerto's and classical recitals, but down in the batcave he's probably listening to some hardcore Industrial.

Superman's the opposite, a man of simple pleasures. He likes his country and rock n roll.

The Flash is obviously into speed metal.

The Green Lantern is probably into fairly normal stuff; typical chart music and popular music from the last couple decades.

I see Wonder Woman being a bit femme punk; Siouxsie and the Banshees, Blondie, etc.

Aquaman likes Whale songs.

Martian Manhunter exclusively listens to J'inglezz B'elzz, an ancient and sacred form of Martian hymn.


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

[User]
Does language affect learning and studying?

What I mean by this is do different languages explain concepts better and can you learn something better in another language.
Say person A is equally fluent in 2 languages and the person is studying something which has specific terms and concepts. Is it better to study with one language than the other. Could it be different when studying in different ways(viewing, listening).

[Assistant]
Yes. For example, studies have shown that people who's language does not have words to describe spatial relativity have a very hard time learning spatial concepts. They even do poorly when tested remembering where something is in a room.

Conversely, people who speak languages with more words for the color blue have been tested and are able to differentiate between similar blue colors with significantly more accuracy than English speakers.

So yes, language does affect how we learn, study, understand, and even perceive the world.


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

[User]
[Marvel/DC] What hero and villain could become good friends/a couple under the right circumstances?

Think Batman and Catwoman, or Diamondback and Constrictor.

[Assistant] The list is a long one given the number of villains who may have led normal and/or good lives if not for something that sends them over the edge.  For example, Richards and Doom, Spider-Man and Doc Oc, and Xavier and Magneto have complicated relationships precisely because of how close they would otherwise be to being friends.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Why didn't Yoda and other surviving Jedi join the Rebellion after Order 66?

[Assistant]
At first there really wasn't a Rebellion, it took a few years for it to gain momentum. And by then most Jedi had been hunted down. As for those remaining, the ones that didn't join had personal reason. Yoda seemed depressed and was in self-imposed exile for his self-perceived failures. Kenobi felt that it was his duty to protect Luke.

But some Jedi did help the Rebellion. Ahsoka Tano helped found the Rebellion and Kanan Jarrus eventually would join as well. Though for spoiler reasons they wouldn't be around to help Luke.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is blue cheese safe to eat with mould on but other cheeses aren't?

[Assistant]
Many cheeses, such as blue cheese, deliberately use mold to give it distinctive texture and taste, and these molds are selected with human consumption in mind, meaning that these are types of molds that don't produce toxins harmful to humans.

But if you have cheese - any cheese - that grows some random airborne mold from sitting in the back of your fridge too long, you have no idea what kind of mold that is or what effect it would have on your body.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the purpose of the 'Press Start" screen at the beginning of almost every video game?

[Assistant]
It has two purposes, one modern and one more historically.

Right now the main reason of the start screen is to identify the player (in case of more than one controller connected). The player is the one that presses the start key. It also gives an opportunity to ask which storage device should be used.

The second reason is that console manufacturers require the player to have an input before a certain time frame has passed. This to ensure that the game is being started properly. The press start screen is a perfect opportunity to do this since it doesn't require many resources to be loaded yet.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] What would have happened if Spock's body had not been left on the Genesis planet in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?

This is really kind of a STII and STIII arc question.

I haven't seen the movie since earlier this year so I'm not able to quote directly. But Sarek (Spock's father) asked Kirk why Kirk left Spock on Genesis. His body was dead though having been damaged saving the ship.

The story as we know has the regenerated body from Genesis taken to Vulcan in Star Trek III. What if Kirk had not left Spock's body on Genesis and had instead taken the damaged body to Vulcan? Could Spock have still somehow been resurrected?

[Assistant]
It's very probable that Spock only died of radiation poisoning due to the horrible condition the Enterprise was in following the battle with Khan. If the ship had been crewed by anything other than a bunch of cadets, and the systems were in better shape, a medical team could have gone into the engine room and saved Spock. Or at the very least revived him soon after he fell unconscious. Granted, if the systems were in better shape, it's unlikely Spock would have had to sacrifice himself in the first place.

Kirk left Spock behind because he saw "no future". No chance of even a miracle in the best-equipped medical facilities the Federation could offer. If he had even the slightest bit of hope, he would have kept Spock on board.

So in your hypothetical, if Kirk kept Spock's body, it's possible he saw some avenue of reviving him. Or at the very least Sarek would have gone through the pains of having Spock's Katra reunited with his body via the fal-tor-pan ritual.

Either way, the outcome is likely identical. Spock was coming back no matter what, it just took a little longer due to Kirk's decision to leave his body behind.

In the worst case scenario, where Kirk brought Spock's body to Vulcan, but there was still no way to bring him back, Sarek would have likely had Spock's Katra transferred to a katric ark. Sort of a burial urn-meets-SSD, where the Katra can be stored almost indefinitely. Even though Sarek was fully Vulcan and lived his life accordingly, his human wife and half-human son had a profound affect on him, and he would have done anything to preserve Spock, or at least his memory.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Is the dark side natural or not?

Ive seen people on this subreddit say that the light side is the default state of the force, while the dark side is its cancer, or corruption. However, on TCW, theres a being (the Son) who embodies the dark side. Its established that he and the Daughter (e.g. the light side) balance each other. On top of that, theres a cave in ESB in which the dark side is naturally occurring. How is this possible if the dark side isnt natural?

[Assistant]
There's no direct answer, unfortunately. Currently it seems that canon assumes that Dark Side is a perversion and corruption of "natural" state of the Force. There's not many sources on this, since there are no books focusing on Luke yet.

In old canon Force is more complex thing, with light and dark definitely being a thing, but also other traditions interpreting it in their own ways, some believing in pure light, some in pure dark, and some considering it an entire spectrum.

Although in both canons one of the sentiments goes that Dark Side primarily comes from the darkness within the person in question.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does it seem to be the case that there are so many more MtF transsexuals than FtM transsexuals? [NSFW]

Could get ugly in the comments, but just for the record I'm honestly curious. No underhanded intentions on my part.

[Assistant] We actually don't know for certain if there are more MtF than FtM transsexuals. Some studies say yes, but it is important to note that these studies generally base themselves on who gets surgical transition. Most trans people do not actually get surgery (and if they do, it is often only top surgery) and bottom surgery for MtF trans people is much much easier than bottom surgery for FtM trans people. So we cannot say if we are actually measuring a differences in the amount of MtF and FtM transgender people, or if we are just measuring a difference in the willingness to get surgery.


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

[User] ELI5: How does Google search the whole internet for something in a matter of seconds or even less?

[Assistant] Google spends all day every day searching the web with bots. Websites and their data are catalogued in a database and when you search, it is the database that is being looked through.  It's also not the whole Internet. Lots of sites have code that prevents them from showing up in the search engine.


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

[User]
imposter syndrome is a blast

Can we talk about imposter syndrome and navigating academia in STEM as a young woman? I feel drastically under-qualified doing nearly everything my mentors encourage me to do. I do the things anyway, but the discomfort doesn't seem to dissipate the further I get.

But also, I am a second year grad student, highest degree BA, presenting at a medical conference in November, presenting among all other MDs. How the fuck am I supposed to feel about this D:

[Assistant] Bad news - it's not going away. It doesn't matter how much you will achieve it will be with you. Good news - everyone feels it. So don't worry too much, it's normal, one step at a time, you'll get there.


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

[User] ELI5: What does a producer do in a movie/tv show?

[Assistant]
A producer on a TV show and Movie actually do two different things, despite the same name.

On TV the show is the producer's baby, he lives it, breathes it everyday and is responsible for everything going on overall as well. He hires a director to do the shooting and technical stuff, but that person is just a hired gun for the episode, and has little input on anything, he just shoots what the producer has for him/her.

In Movies the director is king. So a producers job is to maintain the films artistic integrity, money making ability, overall just to keep the movie in track to the director (and studios's) vision for the movie. He is mixed on both the creative side and business side and has inputs but not final say in both.

Another comment mentioned executive producers. You shouldn't care about who they are, even if its say Steven Spielberg. Because they have little to nothing to do with the project, usually they just got it up and running with money or deals and are given a credit to show this and bolster their (or the projects) reputation.


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

[User]
Why are lemon seeds seemingly randomly distributed about the center of the lemon?

Lemons (which I buy from the market) have a high degree of axial symmetry.  Rotate them around their major axis, and they're usually pretty similar from all angles.  Cut one in half along the minor axis, and the segments are each about the same angular size.  The albedo is pretty circular and uniform, too.

And then, the seeds.   There are usually fewer than one per segment.   And when that's the case, you just have 1 in one segment, another in another, and they jut off in seemingly random angles.

Why the absence of azimuthal symmetry for seeds?

[Assistant]
The seeds that you see are the ( ova? baby seeds? idk) ones that were fertilized while it was a flower.

it starts out in a neat pattern when they are small and inside the flower but the ones that get fertilized are random ( due to pollination ). So, once the it drops its flowers and starts building its fruit ( in order to spread it seeds ) only the ones that are viable offspring grow larger.


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

[User]
Why are bubbles always spherical when blown?

Whenever bubbles are blown, they appear to always be in a spherical shape of different sizes. Why not cubes or other shapes?

[Assistant]
There are primarily two forces to consider: pressure and surface tension. There is an outward force due to the difference in pressure between the inside and outside of the bubble, and there is an inward force due to surface tension.

The force due to the pressure gradient is trying to increase the volume but the force of surface tension is trying to decrease the surface area. These forces reach equilibrium at the shape which minimizes the surface area for a given volume: the sphere.


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

[User]
Offered on-campus interview for a TT position, but candidates must cover their own travel costs to the interview. Has anyone encountered this before?

I was selected for an on-campus interview at a SLAC I had applied to. However, they mentioned that all final candidates were responsible for getting themselves to the interview. Which for me, would mean a round trip plane ticket, car rental, and two nights in a hotel. This seems extreme, has anyone had a school do this to them?

The only reason I'm even entertaining the thought is because earlier in the year I was a finalist and had a campus interview at another school, but wasn't selected. So the wound is still fresh. However it seems strange to require the candidates to provide their own way.

**UPDATE:** I contacted the school today to clarify things, and as thought, candidates were responsible for travel and accommodations with no reimbursement. I was polite, thanked them for their interest, but let them know that I would be removing myself from consideration for the position.

I do have an interview next week with another school, so I'm hoping that turns out well. Thank you to everyone for your insight and advice.

[Assistant]
Some places do reimbursement, which is shitty enough (since not everyone is financially well-off enough to be able to front their own travel, especially with the potentially super-short notice of interview scheduling).

But places that want you to pay for it **without** getting any reimbursement? Fuck no--not worth it, at least IMO. It's a clear signal that you'll get shafted for all manner of stuff after you get hired, too, and you likely won't have much, if any, financial support for professional development (e.g., travel, startup funds, etc.).


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

[User]
CMV: Physical appearance is not the biggest barrier to finding a partner, who you are on the inside is

I have seen many posts on several subreddits where people (mostly men if I am honest) say their incapacity to find a partner is due to their height, weight, ethnicity or some other physical feature (I know that ethnicity is more than a physical feature, but the way they bring that up, is that looking to be part of a certain ethnicity hinders them to find a partner).

I do think that, while possessing some physical characteristics which are more in accordance with the beauty standards of the place you live, allows you to have more potential suitors, a better chance of not being rejected, every single person can find at least another person who will be attracted to them physically, if the person is interesting in the other person eyes.

However, someone who is decent looking or even attractive looking can have the bad luck of being extremely boring, with no sense of humour, incapable of connecting with other people, or debilitating mental health issues and in some cases those characteristics cannot be changed. And while a person like this can, yes, end up having a few dates, especially if that person is attractive, finding a long term partner who wants to share a day to day life with them is almost impossible, as everyone wants to share their life with someone they will connect with, be able to share good moments, interesting conversations, banter and laughs.

[Assistant]
Finding a partner is like landing a job. The most competent worker will have a hard time getting an interview if their resume is in an unappealing font or is poorly formatted. Everything the hiring manager sees in their initial assessment is going to be tainted and they'll latch onto justifications to reject the resume to confirm their bias. If they do give them an interview, the resume matters less and they can let their competence shine.

Like a resume, appearance controls how well you can get through the door. Once you're in, what's on the inside matters more, but what's on the inside doesn't really matter if you're getting screened on initial physical appearance.

Assuming appearance and personality are independent of each other, statistically, physical attractiveness can make a major impact on likeliness to find a long term partner.


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

[User]
As a country that is vastly spread out, why does the U.S. have very few passenger trains?

I've been wanting to experience a train ride but all we have are really awful (and slow) passenger trains. It would take me 3 hours to drive from Houston to Austin, and the train ride estimates 7 1/2 hours.

What happened to trains as transportation in America?

[Assistant]
Trains are less effective in the US *because* we are spread out.

Trains work really well when a lot of people at point A want to get to point B on a regular basis.  In Europe, the population is denser and more centralized.  A train going from Paris to Brussels connects about 30 million people.  Houston to Austin is about the same distance, and connects maybe 8 million.  On top of that, Houston is far more spread out...you might be travelling an hour just to get to the train station.

Spread out means more stops to service fewer people, and that's when trains stop making sense.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why is there one section of the audience at Obama's State of the Union that never stands up or applauds when everyone else does?

Edit: Thank you all for the quick responses! This was really puzzling me.

[Assistant]
There are three groups in the chamber:

The democrats - they will rise in support of anything the president says, that they agree with (which is pretty much all of it)

The republicans - they will rise once or twice when Obama is talking about something they agree with

The supreme court - they will not rise for most of the speech, so as to remain impartial towards anything that could come before the court.


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

[User] ELI5: If all of the cells in our bodies are replaced within a matter of years, how are tattoos permanent?

[Assistant] Imagine a bucket filled with ping pong balls. That's your skin. The ping pong balls are your skin cells. Now imagine filling the bucket with some water. That's the tattoo ink.  You can replace any or all of those balls, and they might take some water with them, but that water is pretty much going to stay in the bucket.


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

[User]
[LOTR] How long can you be a ring-bearer for before you're permanently damaged?

Frodo needing to go to the west to heal makes sense, since he went through a massive ordeal. But then Sam gets to go too, after carrying the ring for a few days.

Is any amount of time with the ring going to do permanent damage? Can you pick it up for 5 seconds, leave, and have a happy life?

[Assistant] Sam is allowed to go as he was a ring bearer and essential to their victory not so much due to the rings toll it took on him. In the books he is offered a spot and denies it because he wants to have a life with his wife and kids, he later sails across the sea after his wife dies.


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

[User]
[Arkham Knight] Why don't the military get involved?

So from what I've seen from the trailers and such, it is basically Batman vs all the rogues gallery and a huge military force.

Wouldn't this be seen as a takeover by the Military of the U.S.A? Why don't they come to the aid of Gotham?

[Assistant]
Each one of the Arkham games takes place over the span of a single night. No reason to believe this one won't as well. Which means there would be barely enough time for the military to know what was even going on, with all the confused reports that would be coming out of the city, much less mobilize any sort of force to counter it.

Though, to be fair, it isn't like the government hasn't simply abandoned Gotham to it's fate before. No Man's Land comes to mind, where Gotham gets wrecked by a giant earthquake and rather than provide relief and try to rebuild the government just evacuates who they can and says "Fuck it" to the rest.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why Airplanes don't rotate wheels before landing to reduce the effect of friction?

I used to watch a lot of airplane landings and take-off. My favourite moment is when airplane tyres touch the ground. Friction produces a lot of heat and hence, smoke.
But i wonder, why not pilot start rotating wheels before landing and match the speed of wheels such that it doesn't cause any friction.

[Assistant]
To do this would require some type of motor on each set of wheels.

This would add weight, cost, complexity, maintenance and one more system that could fail and increase risk.

More frequent replacement of tires is simpler, cheaper, lighter and safer.


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

[User]
If they pointed the Hubble telescope back towards the Earth, what's the smallest thing it could see?

In other words, what kind of detail could it pick up?

[Assistant] The Hubble telescope has an angular resolution of 0.05 arcseconds and an orbital height of around 350 miles.  Pointed straight down at the surface of the earth, this translates to a spatial resolution of around 10 centimeters.  However, the telescope itself is optimized to look at things that are very far away, meaning they don't move very fast relative to Hubble's field of vision.  As a result, objects on the surface of earth are moving too fast for the telescope to "track" - so you can't actually get an image of the surface of earth using Hubble.


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

[User] [ELI5] Schrdingers theory.

[Assistant] Schrdinger was actually making fun of Quantum Mechanics.  He was trying to show how ridiculous the quantum ideas were by applying them to the real world. But the truth is that quantum mechanics is unlike anything we've ever discovered before and does not behave like classical physics.


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

[User]
ELI5: Do authors/poets actually think of the "metaphorical meaning" when writing, or are teachers just over-analytical?

It seems as if every piece of writing can be given some "metaphorical meaning", but I've always wondered whether the writers have actually thought about it to that extent.

[Assistant]
Yes.

Sometimes writers want in advance for there to be metaphorical meaning. (Dr. Seuss explicitly intended the butter battle book to be a metaphor for the cold war). Sometimes writers realize it as they're writing and lean into a metaphor (Maybe originally an item in the story was just there for plot reasons, but half way through the author realizes the item can be symbolic).

And sometimes the "metaphorical meaning" comes only from the reader's mind.  But that's alright and it's not (necessarily) over analytical.  The beauty of a work is that it exists separately for each reader, and sometimes it can really add to a work when you see whether it may contain themes and metaphors that even the author didn't realize.

And, though it may seem that way in English class, the point of all this analysis isn't to figure out what a work "really means," it's too give you the tools to figure out on your own what a work means to you.

It's like when whoever was originally modding Warcraft III realized that the came contained Defense of the Ancients.  The developers at Blizzard didn't realize it, but they'd created something that contained multitudes.


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

[User] ELI5: Does a company like Lego charge so much because they are paying for the license to certain brands? If Lego is the pinnacle of brand recognition shouldn't it work the other way around?

[Assistant]
Lego nearly went bust. They avoided it by licensing brands that kids were in to.

Its more of a relationship where Lego and the brands both win.

Lego could go back to how it was before, but kids just arent into it as much because they have other things to play with.


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

[User]
[Fantastic Four] Has Ben ever been with a woman sexually?

After seeing a little joke on a discussion involving John Carpenter's Thing being able to mate with humans, it made me think about this.

Edit: Post-Transformation, of course.

[Assistant]
He probably had sex before becoming transformed into the Thing. He was a star football player and a popular guy, so it's a safe bet he got laid in college.

After becoming the Thing, he has had love interests, and we've never seen what his dick looks like. So it's entirely possible he can still have sex post-transformation--presumably as long as he's very careful.


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

[User]
Why has RESTful become the accepted way to handle data rather than stateful?

In typical web programming / app development, its coming for the backend to be mostly RESTful. But why is that the case? It seems that WebSocket based (or something similarly stateful) should have become an accepted use by now, but I dont see it the proliferation.

I get that theres a cost to keeping a WebSocket alive, but it must be very small, no? With something more WS based, your web / mobile app can instantly request the data it needs and get back only that.

Apps (web and mobile) are increasing dependent on state - in fact a core React hook is called useState. So Im curious why more isnt being done to promote stateful backend interfaces.

Thanks.

[Assistant] REST for example is great when it comes to scalability, because if you do it right, you have no dependencies between your service instances (i.e. all the state you need to handle the request is part of the request), so you can just chuck in new servers without having to worry about a central bottleneck.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it legal for companies to import products that have been the result of workers working in illegal conditions for that state?

Many companies move their production to countries like China. The condition that the workers work would be illegal if the same condition were used in the importing country.

why dont they bring the same conditions in the importing country in order for the workers to have the same chance in earning the bear minimum?

[Assistant]
What is legal is not always moral. The rich will always find new people to exploit in far away lands, far from the prying eyes of the public.

The longer answer is, every country has resources the other needs. If we were to wait until everyone agreed on labor conditions, civilization would collapse before a resolution was had. There are some restrictions, like no slave-labor, but even this is hard to enforce.

The best we can do right now, is try to expose countries and companies that treat workers poorly and encourage people to not buy from places that treat their workers in such a manner. As well, find out where the materials that made your product are sourced from. You will be surprised by how difficult this is to do.


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

[User] Eli5: Why is AC current used to power houses instead of DC?

[Assistant]
You can change the voltage of AC power using a hunk of iron and coils of wire

Every other explanation is skipping around past this core bit, it was *the* deciding factor in the selection of AC over DC.  DC is actually better for transmission but harder to work with

Power lost in transmission is based on the square of the current flowing through the wire but power delivered is the current times the voltage so if you step up the voltage to a high value you don't have to send much current and therefore don't lose much energy in the power lines.

The ability to step up DC voltages wasn't available until a few decades after we settled on our power grid standards.  Without access to transistors or at least vacuum tubes(though these would be inefficient) the only way to take one DC voltage and change it to a higher/lower one is to hook a motor to a generator and spin it up.  This isn't great for transforming voltages for every home

These days we are slowly converting some big cross country lines into High Voltage DC (HVDC) lines because AC is actually *less* efficient to send long distance at a given voltage than DC.  There are some losses due to the Alternating part and switching to DC removes these.


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

[User]
Wouldn't the machine in the Schrdinger's Cat thought experiment be "observing" the state of particles, therby collapsing their superposition before doing anything to the cat?

I don't know a whole lot about quantum physics, so sorry if this question just reveals a fundamental lack of understanding :D But it always seemed to me like the obvious answer to why the cat is not simultaniously dead and alive. Observation in the Copenhagen interpretation doesn't require a human being to read the data, does it?

[Assistant]
Yes, and that gets at how the thought experiment would actually work in real life. The box does not completely isolate the cat from the rest of the universe. There are still irreversible interactions going on constantly, where the environment (the rest of the universe besides the cat) is essentially measuring the state of the cat.

This means that the state of the cat cant be described as a pure quantum state. Instead, you need to have a density matrix describing the cat, coupled with a density matrix of the environment. When you trace out the environment, because were only interested in the state of the cat, what remains for the cat is no longer a pure superposition state, but rather a classical mixed state. That means that the cat is either alive or dead; the results of a measurement are already predetermined, you just dont know the answer yet. Thats fundamentally different than a pure superposition state, where the cat is really alive **and** dead, and the results of the measurement are not predetermined. In the case of the pure superposition state, you have all possible knowledge about the state of the cat, but still cant predict the result. In the case of the mixed state, you have incomplete knowledge about the state of the cat, even though its predetermined, and that lack of knowledge is why you cant predict the result.


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

[User]
I think the word "Pansexual" is a meaningless term for people who need to feel special. CMV.

I am a very sexually open-minded person, so do not think I am a bigot here. I myself am bisexual, so I have experienced prejudice in the LGBT community and society at large, so I can understand the judgment non-heterosexual people face, so understand that.

However, especially as someone who is bisexual and is attracted to males and females, I do not see the point of being "pansexual". I do not see the difference between bisexuality and pansexuality. I know the definition of the word, as in gender not being a factor in your decision making process in finding a mate, but in practice that is literally no different from bisexuality.

I am bisexual, and I do not actively seek a male or female partner specifically, I choose someone based on who they are, if we get along and if I am sexually attracted to them. I do not see how that is different from being "gender blind", as pansexual people claim to be.

To me, it seems people who are "pansexual" simply need to feel special and different. It may be confirmation bias, but every person I have met who has identified as pansexual has fit this mold. For me, it just seems that pansexual is a term for when bisexual is too mainstream.

I am an open-minded person and would like to hear different opinions and obviously have my views changed as I have many friends who identify as pansexual (even my significant other does) and I would like to understand it better.

Thank you for your time.

[Assistant] The term pansexual is meant to be even more inclusive than bisexuality because it encompasses sexual attractions to trangendered and genderqueer people, thus going beyond the binary/dioecious model of sex phenotype.


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

[User]
[DBZ] Why didn't Future Trunks travel to New Namek after defeating the Androids and Cell to wish back the Z-Fighters?

From what I know, Porunga can wish people back no matter how many times they died. It would have taken Trunks a long time to get there but I think with the help of the present Goku, instant transmission could easily solve that.

[Assistant]
Trunks couldn't find New Namek without Goku, who was able to lock on to the ki of New Namek. By the time recruiting present Goku became an option, the status of the world had been the status quo for so long it was best to just rebuild instead of bringing everyone back to try and make it how it was when Trunks was an infant.

It's like, using time travel to kill Hitler is a popular idea, but then do you stop every single massacre that's ever happened? Every bad event at all? You gotta draw the line somewhere, and whenever the Z-Fighters used the Dragon Balls to undo horrible things, it was always immediately after. The atrocities of the androids had "settled" so to speak. An entire generation came to age in that world, and all governing bodies had been non-existent for the same amount of time. Hell, the dead people were probably perfectly happy living it up in heaven by that point.


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

[User]
Why isn't water used in hydraulic applications like vehicles?

If water is generally non-compressible, why is it not used in more hydraulic applications like cars?

Could you empty the brake lines in your car and fill it with water and have them still work?

The only thing I can think of is that water freezes easily and that could mess with a system as soon as the temperature drops, but if you were in a place that were always temperate, would they be interchangeable?

Obviously this is not done for probably a lot of good reasons, but I'm curious.

[Assistant]
1. Water is not a lubricant.
2. Water Rusts metal.
3. Water has a high freezing temperature and a low boiling point
3. Water has a ton of impurities.  Some systems that use water must use RO/Deionized water.  This would be very dangerous in the field.
4. Water will be quickly contaminated by the environment as it is a solvent.
6. Water cannot sustain much vacuume before boiling.

This is why water is almost never used as a hydraulic fluid in machinery.


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

[User] ELI5: How do some charging cords claim faster charge times?

[Assistant]
The original USB spec only allows 0.5 Amps of power at 5 volts. That's not a lot for today's power-hungry phones.

The latest USB spec allows for up to 3 Amps, so a device could charge up to 6x faster.

In order to take advantage of the latest standards and get all of those juicy 3 Amps to your phone, you need (1) a charger that supports the latest standards and (2) a cable that supports the latest standards, and (3) a device that wants more than 0.5 A.

Without all three of those, it will fall back to less power, because it doesn't want to accidentally deliver too much power and fry your device! It's safe to plug an older device into a newer charger with a newer cable.

So, compliant charging cables are faster than older standard USB cables. But USB 3.0 cables from any brand will be just as fast as from any other brand.