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

[User]
[D&D General]How to deal with murderhobos?

Ok, here's the thing. Last year was the worst harvest the Kingdom have seen in recent times. And with an Undead Horde bearing down from the North, we had to raise taxes on everyone, including the clergy. I've found out the Church hired some murderhobos from the East to deal with "tyrants", namely us. Now, these murderhobos are well-known to be so-called "heroes" and did all kind of shit in their previous adventures. How do I keep them from lobbing my head off and actually pay attention to the state of the Kingdom.?

[Assistant] Murderhobos care only for loot and prestige. Toppling you will give them both. Offer them something richer and stronger to topple, like the Lich Lord of the Church (of course, they don't have to know he's a normal human being)


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

[User]
[X-Men First Class] How come Emma Frost seems to outdo Charles Xavier at almost every meeting?

I thought Professor X was supposed to be the most powerful telepath on the planet. Why does Emma Frost, someone Cassandra Nova called "strictly bush league" in another life, manage to outmaneuver him almost constantly until their final confrontation in that house in Russia?

[Assistant]
Because Charles was much younger. He uses his powers mostly to show off and hasn't spent the years he would eventually spend, training and improving his abilities until he became the most powerful telepath on earth.

Emma Frost on the other hand seems to live a life where her powers are in constant use, an excellent method of training.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Are there any Force/Light Side abilities that someone would lose access to if they gave in to the Dark Side?

[Assistant] In current canon mind trick maybe. In legends animal friendship, lightside lighting (I don't remember the proper name), and the group ability to take the force away, along with many others could potentially be lost.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does one rationalize the following two statements: 1) Space is infinite and 2) The Universe is expanding?

How is it that something that is infinite can get larger?

[Assistant]
When we say the universe is expanding, we mean that everything is getting further away from everything else (at least before gravity gets involved and pulls nearby things towards each other).

Take the infinite number line, and move the number 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 3 to 6 and so on. The resulting line has the same amount of numbers on it as the original, and is infinite like the original, but any two numbers are now twice as far apart as they were before.


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

[User]
CMV: Aang is to blame for the failure of the Day of Black Son invasion

So if you have ever seen the show Avatar the Last Airbender you should know the main character is Aang a person who has control over the element of air and is the Avatar a human who has the ability to learn and master a four of the elements which are Water,Earth,Fire,and Air. One of the Avatars' ace in the holes is the ability called the Avatar State where Aang basically synchronizes with all the past Avatars to ever exist and then has near God-like control over the elements becoming damn-near unstoppable. Now the Day of Black Sun was a small invasion of the bad guy Fire Nation with the hopes of ending the war then and there since the Black Sun represents an eclipse a time where all fire-benders lose the ability to fire bend. Long story short the invasion fails and it's because of Aang and his inability to truly want to win by killing.Aang could have teamed up with all the waterbenders and flooded the entire island drowning all fire nation soldiers and the Fire Lord (main bad guy) Aangs reluctance to ever consider killing since he was a monk put his entire group in danger and resulted in a massive failure.
TLDR: Aang had the power to win the war if he would have just drowned the island with the help of all the water benders but choosing not to put others in danger and in real life would have gotten some killed
CMV.

[Assistant]
For one you're overestimating the power of waterbenders. What you're describing is a feat that we've nevery seen a waterbenders capable of pulling off. Furthermore, if memory serves, there were not that many waterbenders. Members of the Water Tribe, yes, but not all of them are capable of  waterbending.

An Avatar State Avatar might have had the raw power to do that, but Aang literally did not have the Avatar State.

Finally, if memory serves, the coast was on a steep hill, not a flat sursurface and had plenty of raised walls. It would take a ton of force and a suit ton of water to even pull off what you're suggesting.


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

[User]
CMV: Putting deaf and hard of hearing students through the main-stream education system does more harm than good.

First off, let me state that this view stems from personal experience as a student in a school in which deaf and hard of hearing students are put in the same classes as hearing students. My reasons are as follows:

1) Deaf students require an interpreter; this inherently slows down the class. I cannot tell you how many times a class has had to be paused because the interpreter can't keep up. This is doing a disservice to maybe 20-30 other students; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

In addition (this may be on a case by case basis), deaf students may have other needs, such as a microphone the teacher must wear, that further slow down the class. When students are talking, the mic is passed around, and it simply does't make sense to me that this is really the fastest way for the class to progress.

2) Deaf students have a very hard time socializing with other students. A major caveat that many interpreters have made to me is that the deaf students are more "touchy" than the rest of us; they tend to tap, bump, or even slap those they are communicating with. In deaf culture, this is seen as normal, but when mixed with hearing students it ultimately causes the hearing students to look down upon the deaf students because they tend to almost slap their peers.

3) At least in my experience, deaf students tend to have a problem wherein they misjudge the volume at which they are speaking. Whereas others may nod in agreement, deaf students tend to let out short phrases of acknowledgment, a "Yes" or something like that. In doing this, they cut off the teacher.

4) Deaf speech is almost always incredibly hard to understand, which inadvertently causes the other students to look down on them. It's very easy to judge deaf students based on their difficulty speaking.

In summary, i think that keeping deaf students in all deaf classes would benefit both hearing and deaf students.

Change my view.

[Assistant] Schools exist not only to teach students the "3 Rs" and other coursework, but to prepare them to function in the world around them.  In the "real world", there are people who function differently than the mainstream.  Students will have to work with, or at least interact with, non mainstream individuals at some point in their lives beyond school.  By having deaf, and other non mainstream learners in the classroom, students learn valuable lessons in working with differently enabled people.  They might also learn valuable lessons in patience and compassion along the way.


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

[User] [Marvel/DC] Why is acid always stored in giant open vats?

[Assistant]
The overwhelming majority of the time, hazardous chemicals used in large quantities are stored quite safely; you only really end up hearing about the few isolated incidents where they aren't and some accident results. The fact that they exist at all is a result of substandard working conditions in most low-paying factory environments and complete lack of safety compliance in illegal operations, the two situations that result in the largest number of accidents, particularly the latter amongst vigilantes and other superhumans.

Nobody writes a news story about a manufacturing plant's safe working conditions. Doesn't sell papers.


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

[User]
When the Apollo astronauts prepared to leave the surface of the moon, they discarded their EVA life support backpacks by tossing them out of the LM. How did they do this without exposing themselves to the Moon's vacuum?

With the LM's hatch open, its interior held no atmosphere, so the astronauts had to enter with their EVA backpacks attached and operative. Were they able to disconnect them, toss them out, close the hatch, and repressurize using only the residual oxygen in their suits, or did the LM have the necessary hardware to provide their suits with oxygen until the backpacks were discarded and the LM repressurized?

[Assistant] They only tossed the backpacks out, not the whole suit. the PLSS backpack was exactly that, a backpack that connected to the space suit via hoses and electrical connections. When inside the LM, the astronauts simply connected their suits to the LMs life support system, negating the need for the backpack.


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

[User] eli5 Why is it common for people who work manual labor jobs to have their bodies "worn out" after years of work but weightlifters and athletes are considered to have healthy bodies.

[Assistant] Many manual labor workers suffer from repetitive movement injuries/breakdown from doing the same movements for hours a day for years. Weightlifters and athletes have specific routines and train in a way that helps reduce repetitive stress injuries. Additionally, professional athletes generally retire from competition in their 40s, while manual laborers often continue needing to work into their 60s.


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

[User]
Why is Internet priced by speed, but cell phone priced by amount of data?

Illuminati? I dunno. Someone tell me.

[Assistant]
Different infrastructures. Cell companies incur a lot of costs from power required to pump signals to your equipment. Less data usage, less signal needed, less money spent.

Cable companies incur costs from trunk line maintenance, the faster the speed, the more trunks needed, the more costs incurred.


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

[User] [Warhammer 40k] was the Chaplin erebus alone responsible for every event of the horus heresy?

[Assistant] He was responsible for Lorgar going heretic. Lorgar was responsible for many of the others going heretic. If the other heretic primarchs didn't listen to Lorgar the Horus Heresy would not have been as catastrophic.


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

[User]
Why do some materials conduct electricity while others do not?

I've heard that it is related to the energy levels of electrons or the lattice of the material among other things, but I do not have a good answer as to why some materials conduct electricity while others do not. It is quite difficult to find information relating to electricity on the atomic level.

[Assistant] When you have a bulk material like rubber (insulator), silicon (semiconductor), and copper (conductor) the electrons energy levels of the individual atoms form energy bands when considering the bulk properties of the material. To move electrons through a material you must promote them from the valence band to the conduction band, in an insulator the band gap is large it takes a lot of energy to promote an electron, with a semiconductor the band gap is small taking only a little bit of energy to promote an electron, and in a conductor the valence band and conduction band are touching so only a very small amount of energy is required to promote an electron.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why are Adderall, Ritalin and other medications with side effects used to treat dopamine deficiencies rather than dopamine itself?

And by that I mean, why use medications that attempt to cause the production and modify the uptake of dopamine rather than using dopamine itself as a medication and directly supplementing a person's dopamine levels? I mean, sure, you'd have to ensure that the release of the dopamine is gradual rather than all at once, but it's not like that's nonexistent technology; patches and a bunch of other things exist to allow for that. And yes, I'm aware there's some talk about whether common dopamine deficiencies are the result of norepinephrine deficiencies instead of dopamine deficiencies, but that leaves me with a nigh-identical question.

[Assistant] Dopamine itself cannot cross the blood-brain barrier.  You can shoot someone full of dopamine via an IV all day long, but it will not do anything to affect the dopamine levels in the brain itself.  So, the best thing you can do is either stimulate the brain to produce more itself or limit its reuptake.


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

[User] We know that mass can become energy. Is it possible to turn energy into mass?

[Assistant]
Sure -- this is how particle colliders work.  The kinetic energy of colliding particles produces new particles with a greater mass than the particles you started with had.

For example, the (apparent) Higgs boson, was produced in a collision of two protons.  The mass of a proton is less than 1% of the mass of the Higgs.  So how was the Higgs made?  The protons were moving very fast and had a great deal of kinetic energy; some of this energy was converted into the mass of the Higgs.


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

[User] ELI5 what is the THE GREAT FILTER (Fermi Paradox) ?

[Assistant] The Ferm Paradox is that there are probably billions of habitable planets in our galaxy alone, and yet we dont see any signs of sentient life up there in the sky. The Great Filter is one possible explanation of that. It goes that while there are many life-supporting worlds out there, there exists some barrier that is killing off alien civilizations before they can get to the scale where they would be detectable from Earth. For example, it could be environmental disasters caused by the civilizations themselves, or self-destructing nuclear wars, or something else entirely that we cant foresee. The idea is somewhat frightening because humans as a civilization might be fast approaching that barrier.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do humans not remember being babies?

[Assistant]
infants do form memories. But they forget quickly:

* 6 month => 24h retention
* 9 month => 1 month retention
* 20 month => 1 year retention

So human (babies) remember being babies. But human (adults) dont remember beeing babies.

Baby brains grow fast. From birth to the age of 2 they triple in size.  During this change in size, neurons grow, they test connections and prune themselves. The part of the brain "responsible" for storing memories of events keeps making new neurons fast, even far into adulthood (but much slower). by forming new connections with memory circuits, the masses of new neurons may disrupt existing networks of already-formed memories. So babies learn fast, and they forget fast.


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

[User] [MCU] Rocket has no idea what a "Raccoon" is, since to his knowledge he's the only one of his species. But Drax mentions that he and his friends roasted raccoons on a campfire as children ("they were quite delicious"). How did Drax run into raccoons on his planet?

[Assistant]
Those weren't raccoons. They were completely alien lifeforms that just happen to be identical to raccoons in every way.

Notice that many of the inhabitants of Xandar are identical to humans in every way. That doesn't make them human.


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

[User] ELI5: why do only some materials work on touchscreen, and what is in touchscreen gloves that makes them work?

[Assistant] The basic difference is conductivity + surface area. A needle will not work because it has very little surface area that can directly touch. A cotton glove will not work because it is not conductive. A glove with a bunch of flexible little conductive fibers WILL work.


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

[User] [Harry Potter] does polyjuice potion have an expiration date after brewing and if not what happens if a take a persons hair and make the potion when theyre 20 but dont drink the potion until theyre 40?

[Assistant] Apparently you can't just brew one big batch or Not-Moody would have done so. Snape said that someone kept stealing his alchemy ingredients and not that somebody had wiped out his stock in a single heist.


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

[User]
Could you help me understand this excerpt from "The Myth of Sisyphus?"

> In its way, suicide settles the absurd. It engulfs the absurd in the same death. But I know that in order to keep alive, the absurd cannot be settled. It escapes suicide to the extent that it is simultaneously awareness and rejection of death. It is, at the extreme limit of the condemned man's last thought, that shoelace that despite everything he sees a few yards away, on the very brink of his dizzying fall.

I don't quite understand what's meant by that last sentence. It seems that the shoelace represents a glimmer of hope for the condemned man, but I don't see why.

[Assistant]
The condemned man here is the mortal human - in that you are condemned to die at some point in the future the moment you are born.

With that in mind, suicide is confronted and considered by the condemned man, but said man decides instead to continue living until his death with the knowledge that suicide is an option.

So what you have with the shoelace isn't representative of hope, but rather of the recognized but disregarded alternative to the "dizzying fall" that is a life lived until its natural end. There's a sort of human pride associated with continuing on and not taking the shortcut - staring death in the face, as it were.


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

[User]
Why doesnt the minimum wage increase with inflation?

I dont want to argue on whats an acceptable federal minimum wage, but doesnt it make sense to increase it yearly?

[Assistant]
Because the existing minimum wage legislation wasnt indexed to inflation

Theres no particular reason why it is or isnt currently other than that.

Indexing it to inflation has been suggested with recent minimum wage legislation, but that legislation isnt getting passed with a 50/50 senate. Maybe it was proposed last time but got cut in order to pass cloture, Im unfamiliar with how the last one went down.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Was Vader even worthy of being deemed a "Sith"?

Darth Vader, at least the few comics I read and the films, never really dabbles or studies the dark arts. The guy pretty much carried over his Jedi experience and now likes to choke people more, that's pretty much it. Is he really a "sith"? Isn't he more like a broken man who's always pissed off and intimidating?

Compare him to Sidious, Sidious seems like the kind of guy who'd be sacrificing younglings to appease some ancient deity. I read in some old comics, probably non canon, but Sidious was collecting holocrons of previous sith lords to gain their dark side knowledge. So I'm wondering, did Vader even care about being a sith? Is he even a pure sith? He's just an....evil Jedi, no?

It's kinda like adopting a religion but never practising it.

[Assistant]
Worthy?  What's worthy?
Literally the only other Sith in the universe said Vader was a Sith.  Mind you this is the guy who wiped out the Jedi, overthrew a thousand year old government, and took over the galaxy.  If that dude says you're worthy, you're worthy.


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

[User]
[Rick and Morty] Are Jessica and Morty getting somewhere?

It doesn't bother me that despite all the surreal things humanity has witnessed every episode restarts like it wasn't that important of a historic event, because it's kinda the nature of the show.

But with Jessica, it feels different, from season one to four it seems like there's a growing relationship between both of them and at the same time in other episodes it feels like they barely know each other...

It should be pretty clear for Jessica that Morty has a crush on her, but sometimes she seems to be completely unaware despite all.

It's every episode is on an alternate reality or is Jessica just ignoring the signs?

[Assistant]
In many instances, it definitely is an alternate reality.

In "the vat of acid" episode, we see Morty can not only be placed in alternate dimensions without his knowledge, but that Rick purposely does so to teach him lessons. There's no telling what personal history is consistent from Morty's point of view, and that's not even considering that we may be looking at an alterate-Rick and Morty already.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the purpose behind the common "crescent" shaped ice cube?

Is it more effective in any way or is it no different from the traditional "cubes" from trays?

[Assistant] Crescent-shaped ice cubes are easy for a machine to remove from the tray. After they're done freezing, a mechanical arm swings in a circle and pushes them out of the tray. Cube-shaped trays are a bit harder to automatically remove the ice from them.


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

[User]
[Westworld] What's preventing guests from assaulting other guests? or worse?

There seems to be no rules or boundaries at the park. I understand the guns have tech to prevent guests from getting shot, but what happens when a guest decides to assault another guest with their fists or a knife? What happens when they decide to sexually assault another guest? What even distinguishes the guests from the hosts? Can't a guest confuse another guest for a host and then attempt to harm them? Has this ever happened?

[Assistant]
The Hosts, and the constant surveillance of the park administration. Consider when the Man in Black was dragging Teddy all around creation, and had a conversation with Ford, and pulled a knife on Ford. Despite being nearly comatose, Teddy reacted instantly to stop MiB from even threatening violence against Ford.

Same system operates with normal host-guest interactions. A Guest attempting to do harm to another Guest would be stopped by the nearby Hosts.  This is, of course, why it's a very bad thing for Logan when William kills all the Hosts near them...

Similarly, Park Security is on-hand for (almost; see the Logan-Billy moment above) Guest-Guest interaction that might get out of hand. In all but the most inaccessible parts of the park, the company has constant perfect surveillance on everyone and everything. Even more than just seeing them, in fact. So it's basically the same thing that stops most violence at, say, Disneyland.

As for a Guest confusing another Guest for a Host, that's generally easy to figure out: Hosts don't break character. Guests are just people having a good time. Being violent with the one is part of the story. Being violent with the other often leads to more violence, and then some nice men in black clothing walking out of a secret door in the wall and tossing you out of the park.


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

[User]
[Watchmen] Why aren't there more Dr. Manhattans?

Seeing as the accident that converted a normal scientist into a god was highly publicised (at least, according to the movie) why haven't more people, or at least some of Dr. Manhattans colleagues, or maybe even Communist spies attempted to replicate the accident for their own benefit?

[Assistant]
They did try, but the circumstance that led to the birth of Dr Manhattan is unique. For one thing, Dr. Osterman had the scientific knowledge, being the son of a watchmaker, and the will to return to his girlfriend, all allowing him to slowly reconstruct himself.

Plus, if the Soviets were in fact feeding people into an intrinsic field generator to create another Dr Manhattan, these "volunteers" wouldn't have all of the combinations of traits embodied by Dr Osterman. They would need to find another guy who was taught the methodological method of putting machines together, have a good background in quantum physics, and an emotional tether. Plus, there might be a completely random element involved that no one knows of.


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

[User] ELI5 if you tell me your name, I forget immediately yet I remember every lyric to 1000 songs on my Ipod?

[Assistant]
You have heard those songs 100's of times and the music helps you remember plus the singer is filling in the blanks helping you remember too.

Where as a name is just one word with nothing for you to connect it to, to help you remember it.


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

[User]
Please take time to learn how to answer a question

In response to this front page post, I felt it important to give the other side.

Yes, it is absolutely important to learn **how to ask** a question.

However, no matter how you try, if you're asking that likely means that you need help and aren't really knowledgeable in the area.

So, as long as you aren't asking hard/impossible to answer things like "why isn't my code working?!?", we should assume the best of you.

So, for those of you answering questions, I wanted to create a convenient guide to help those who really are trying their best, despite many gatekeepers making them feel inadequate with how they ask.

1. Assume the best of the asker. They likely don't know any better and need your help.

2. Don't gatekeep. If your intention is to arrogantly come in and say that a beginner should have a mastery of awk and sed, don't respond to the question, you clearly don't have as good of a mastery as you think that you do. I have met world masters in coding and they are as humble as they are smart. Strive to be like them.

3. On that note, if you couldn't teach a child  in their terms how to do what you think that know, then you might opt to not answer questions until you have a better understanding and mastery of that given area of programming. A true master can communicate concisely and clearly even to someone with little to no knowledge.

4. Assume that the person has tried their best to solve the problem and has already searched around for help. My best buddy and I have been coding since the early 90s and we almost never ask for help because we focus super intently on solving it ourselves. This is not normal. Assume the best of your asker.

5. Above all else, remember: **If you don't have something useful to say, don't say anything at all.**

6. Remember what it was like when you were there. Also remember that the ritualistic hazing that you went through sucked and was unwarranted. Don't perpetuate that toxic culture.

This is not a comprehensive guide, it is up to you to apply empathy and sympathy or just not respond.

I distinctly remember how terrible and exclusive the bash scripting communities were back in the 90s and 00s and I only succeeded **despite** their jabs and demeaning responses, not because of the

Lastly, if you don't like the message in here, look at point 5.

^(Who am I to say this? Self-taught Silicon Valley programmer from the 80s-now. I taught myself everything from basic to JavaScript, PHP to python, and so much in between. However, I also teach, and I realize that the community puts the blame on the askers instead of getting better at answering. It is actually both sides that need to improve, with you experts among us needing to humbly lead the way.)

Edit: hotfix - this post isn't perfectly worded but the recommendations in it apply to it too. If you're confused, please feel free to ask any questions for clarity. If you just want to showboat or be opinionated, gatekeep or be arrogant, please go enjoy another place. This post is meant to help those who want to be better question answerers. If you don't fit into they category, it's ok, but I ask you to not try to answer questions from new people, they need help.

Edit 2: Two important notes -

1. I apologize for my writing. I was never good with written communication. My strength lies in oral communication and I'd happily do a youtube video in place of this post and comments.

2. I fully agree with you all - learning to adequately ask AND answer is important. That is quite literally why I was quick to put up this post in response to the other one.

Edit 3: Final addendum - looks like my monday morning script ran. I'll come back and clean up the content her so that hopefully it's more clear. Honestly, I bet that with your help we could make matching guides for "How to ask" and "How to answer" that would help a lot of people on both sides of the fence.

Thank you all for the comments, input, opinions, and experience!

[Assistant]
> Assume that the person has tried their best to solve the problem

That's a bad assumption.  There are many questions on the programming subs where it is obvious the asker has not thought about or worked on the problem whatsoever.

You can usually tell though - so assuming one way or the other isn't necessary.


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

[User] ELI5: how do lotions that you wash off immediately(in the shower or in the sink) work if theyre on your skin for such a short amount of time?

[Assistant] The lotion is made of two main components: an oily phase and a watery phase. When you apply water, the watery phase will dissolve and wash away while the oily phase will resist the water and remain stuck to your skin, providing the moistness.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Count Dooku was the head of state of the Separatist Alliance, and yet he regularly went around the galaxy with a red lightsaber, training apprentices and acting as a Sith. Was the general public aware he was a Sith lord? Why didn't the Jedi Order make this publicly available information?

Training Grievous (and Ventress and his other apprentice in the Clone Wars tv series), using force powers, giving direct military orders to generals, and so many other things Dooku regularly did seem to make it inconceivable that at the very least, the Separatist leadership wouldn't know he was a Sith. Did they simply not care? How could his relatively open use of the dark side of the force not cause issues for the separatist cause, even in just a propaganda sense?

[Assistant]
To the vast majority of the galaxy, "Jedi" and "Sith" are merely two diametrically opposing philosophies about life and the nature of the universe. Think of Christianity and Islam in your own world. They both believe in the same consciousness, whether you want to call it God or The Force, but believe different things about it.

Even if Count Dooku identified himself as a Sith, 99.99% of the galaxy is going to go "meh" and move on. So he follows a hokey ancient religion and holds a certain set of beliefs, who cares? The Jedi certain care, but simply holding a set of beliefs isn't a crime, and Count Dooku could parade up and down the streets of Coruscant while waving his red lightsaber, and the Jedi couldn't do anything about it.

They've certainly tried to defame Count Dooku, and even went as far as to stage a coup against Senator Palpatine because of his beliefs, but that's just what one large religious force did, and it certainly doesn't represent the entire galaxy's views on the subject.


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

[User] ELI5: Can someone explain the new discovery on how humans respond to oxygen (Nobel Prize in Medicine)?

[Assistant]
We already knew that our cells variate their oxygen uptake. These cell biologists now found the protein that measures the oxygen level within our cells (and decoded its structure). Now we can work on manipulating this protein to fight different illnesses like cancer.
Cancer cells as an example need much oxygen because they want to grow fast. If we could now tell the cells around the cancer (by manipulating our new protein) that they have a high oxygen level, so dont take up that much, the cancer cells wont get enough oxygen by teir surrounding tissue and therefore slow down in growth.


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

[User]
[Mr Bean] What on earth is wrong with him?

He is obviously highly intelligent as he is capable of finding novel and effective solutions to certain problems, and apparently gains a pretty good knowledge of trigonometry at one point. On the other hand, he is sometimes vindictive and seems to enjoy upsetting children and sick people, he is obsessive about finishing his mini-golf game and his way of making a sandwich is time-consuming and ineffective. So what's his problem? Why does he have certain blind spots?

[Assistant] Mr Bean is a fallen angel. He has an intelligence beyond humans, but he has odd personality quirks, and his idea of amusement is a bit off. You'll note he has a few 'encounters' in church. He likes to mock God for tossing him out over what he considers trivial matters.


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

[User] [Lord of the Rings] Why don't the Orcs stab the horses that Aragorn and Theoden King were riding when they were leaving the castle at the end of the Battle of Helms Deep?

[Assistant]
At first, because they were moving. A moving horseman is a terrifying thing - even when going slowly, the weight of horse and rider give it massive inertia; impact with any part of them can cause injury even before you factor in the blades the riders were carrying.

(One of those things that Hollywood frequently gets wrong: The whole point of fighting from horseback was constant movement. A moving horse adds immense power to your attacks; a stationary horse just makes you a bigger target)

Once they were brought to a standstill, they should have been dead in minutes or seconds - but the uruk-hai held back, either out of a desire to draw out the joy of slaughter that little bit longer, or out of fear of the extremely lethal warriors on the horses' backs. Sure, the second orc to charge would be able to hamstring the horse and drag down the rider, but the *first* orc to attack would get a sword through his skull.


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

[User]
ELI5: what is the logic behind letting someone go if you love them ?

wouldnt you rather have them stay ?

[Assistant]
The issue is that if you love someone, and genuinely love them, you want the best for them. Even if the best for them isn't you. You care about them enough that you just want them to be happy, and though  it'd make you happy to have them with you, you know that you aren't the one who can give them the happiness and joy they deserve.

True love is putting the needs of someone else above your own. If you really love someone, then you'll make the decision that is best for them, even if it makes things hard for you.

Don't mistake love with infatuation.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does taking a warm bath when you have a fever feel so cold?

[Assistant]
Because - in order to slow down viral multiplication - your body increases the thermostat of your body. So what normally feels comfortable suddenly feels cold.

Update: That's also why you sweat when you're recovering. The body lowers the thermostat back to normal temperature. Everything feels more hot as when you were sick.


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

[User]
[Punch-Out!!] Is there any trainer, fictional or real, that could fix Glass Joe?

Anyone? Man has the heart for fighting a hundred bouts despite losing 99 times but he's just so fragile. Is there anyway someone could improve him?

[Assistant]
In the Wii version, he comes back in Title Defense mode with some better training and wearing a helmet.  While he is still the easiest fighter of the mode, he is actually somewhat of a challenge to beat this way.

So, canonically, the answer is yes.


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

[User] ELI5 what is rollback in fighting games and how come it makes it feel like there isnt really any lag?

[Assistant]
When you play online it takes time for control inputs to get from player A to player B and vice versa. In a rollback scenario, player B's computer is constantly trying to predict what input it will receive from player A and animates the game based on the predicted inputs. When correct, it appears lagless. When incorrect, the game basically skips a small amount to correct the mistake.

So for example:

Payer A presses X (punch) at time 0.00s

Player B's computer predicts player A pressed Y (kick) at time 0.00s. So now player B's computer starts to animate a kick.

At time 0.1s B receives the command player A pressed X at time 0.00. Player B's computer "rolls back" the game 0.1 seconds, works out what would have happened if a punch was thrown over those 0.1 seconds, and then skips forward again to adjust the game for the actual input. From player B's point of view, half way through a kick, it changed to a punch. However player B was able to press block, which is equally valid on a punch or a kick, so in this case the incorrect cue from the prediction algorithm was still helpful.

When lag is low (say 30ms) this isn't noticeable, but when high, the quality of the predictions becomes important and artefacts like teleportation become apparent.

To further improve things some games include a small amount of input lag, say 20ms. This lag is always there, and it's always constant so you're used to it. This 20ms input lag gives the game a little window for the game to "catch up" in during a rollback event.


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

[User]
What's the best response to the problem of evil for Christianity?

I'm aware that philosophers and theologians like Augsustine, Leibniz, and Plantinga have offered responses, but are any of their responses (and others) considered strong or satisfactory? What's the best of the bunch? I've read the SEP article but honestly it feels like a paper written from a starting point of 'none of these arguments work, and here's why', rather than any real attempt to defend the counter-arguments.

Also, how does Plantinga respond to the problem of natural evil?

[Assistant]
Okay, so the standard argument from evil looks basically like this.

1.  If God exists, then there are no pointless evils.
2.  There are pointless evils.
3.  Therefore, God does not exist.

Standard theodicy approaches will reject the second premise by claiming that there are no pointless evils, i.e. every evil has a point or purpose.

What's popular these days is to take a different, more subtle approach to premise two.  Instead of being "atheistic" about pointless evils ("There are definitely NO pointless evils!"), the strategy is to be "agnostic" about pointless evils ("We don't know either way if evils have a point.")  This approach is called Skeptical Theism.  It basically argues that since we really have no way of knowing whether or not evils have a point, we have no reason to accept the second premise of the argument.  The burden of proof is on the atheist to show that the second premise is true.

Now, regarding Plantinga and his free will defense with respect to natural evil, what (I think) he does is to argue that it is possible that natural evils are the also caused by individuals with free will (e.g. demons or whatever).  Thus, this possibility is enough to show that the logical problem of evil (i.e. the existence of God is logically incompatible with the existence of evil) is unsound.


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

[User]
ELI5: If the color white reflects light (and black absorbs it) why does a lighter skin tone easier get sunburned?

Why does the body produce melanin to absorb light? Shouldnt it be possible to just reflect the light and thus avoid getting sunburned?

[Assistant]
Dark/black colours "absorb" light turning it into heat. Light/white colours bounce it. That is true.

The sun's visible light doesn't cause that much damage to skin, and heat isn't the concern. Ultraviolet (UV) light damages DNA and that's what really causes a sun-burn. That layer of skin dies and that's why it peels off. That's what you're really protecting yourself against.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is bailing(releasing suspects from jail for money) allowed?

I think it is a very stupid question, as everyone else seems to understand it, so I posted it here.

I know that the suspects are no released completely, only until the court, but why should the wealthier people get more advantages? Also, do they release anyone, even the most potentially dangerous suspects?

[Assistant]
>why should the wealthier people get more advantages?

They don't.  The bail amount is set by the judge based on multiple factors, such as perceived danger to others, and possible flight risk.  One of those factors is the financial situation of the accused.  If you're filthy rich, your bail is going to be much higher.


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

[User]
Based on statistics from countries which currently do not allow legal abortions, if the US were to make abortion illegal, how common would illegal abortion be? What would the health risks be?

I'll try to word this in an ideologically neutral way.  I might not succeed.

I've been seeing a lot of coat hanger imagery coming from the (American) left as the abortion debate returns to the media, arguing that shutting down abortion clinics will result in dangerous back alley abortions.  However, it seems like a visceral/emotional argument, rather than one backed by data.

Since there are currently countries that do not allow legal abortions, can we use those as a predictive model?  Do these countries have a high rate of illegal abortion procedures?  Are there any statistics on the rate of injury/death resulting from these procedures?

And if there are are statistics available, is it fair to compare them to the US?  For example, in Ireland, if it's easier to just travel to the UK rather than seek an illegal operation on Irish soil, would Ireland only be a useful predictor of those parts of the US that are about an Ireland-length away from the Canadian border?

Is there data to support the fear that anti-abortion legislation will result in a rash of dangerous, illegal abortion procedures in the US?

[Assistant]
A question to the OP.  In countries that do not allow legal abortion, how likely is it that any estimates of the actual abortion rate are reliable and non-noisy?

You are better off comparing states in the US who border each other, where both states had policy X at time t, and at time t+1 state 1 had policy X and state 2 had policy Y,  This would be a simple difference in difference , or boundary condition study.  Likely, you'd want to have data on abortions per birth or abortions per women for the counties that are on each side of the border (more likely to be similiar demographics)

I would caution using other countries to base predictions on what happens in the US.  Wayyyyy to many different rules, laws customs , etc.


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

[User]
Why arent home prices crashing?

It seems like prices have remained the same since pre-covid. Shouldnt prices fall?

[Assistant] It takes time to adjust. Especially in a market where transactions are much higher in value and they happen more infrequently. It's just the first month of the slowdown. Home prices going down means that is a sudden surge in offer that can be caused by more houses being foreclosed. But for that to happen, you have to miss the payments for at least a few months.


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

[User]
What were the evolutionary steps for the blowhole on whales and dolphins?

I'm watching a dolphin show live right now and I'm wondering, that if they're mammals, did they develop from an earlier form of gills? When in the chain of evolution might have it developed and are there any other mammals that have a vestigial remnant of this feature?

[Assistant] The blowhole evolved from the nostrils, which migrated to the top of head and (in some whales) merged to form a single opening. Some whales still have two blowholes, while the sperm whale's blowhole is its left nostril, with the right nostril not having an opening.


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

[User] ELI5 what the Right to Repair fight is about with Apple?

[Assistant]
Imagine you buy a car.  Let's say a Chevy Cruze cuz why not.  Now, Chevy has all sorts of reasons to want you to only use Chevy certified mechanics and official Chevy spare parts because they can make money from that service and maintain quality control.

On the other hand, you as a consumer wants to find the best deal for repairs that you can and since you own the car, should be able to do so.

Chevy says that they only provide parts to their guys and if you want a repair you're just stuck with a Chevy mechanic, sucks to be you.

The right to repair is basically saying that you as the consumer should have a choice in who fixes your property.


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

[User]
[Game of thrones] where are all the other Giants?

Did they just not ally with the Wildlings?

[Assistant]
There are probably some still left north of the Wall, surviving in the ice as they have done for countless centuries. They are adapted to survive in those cold climes, but they face other threats - the White Walkers are on the move, as they have not been since the Long Night, and these last few giants may become their first victims.

... Imagine a Wight, twenty feet tall. Unkillable except by fire, and so massive that it can keep fighting for hours even as it burns, bringing fire to all around it...


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

[User] How Much Of A Difference Is There Between Philosophy Of Religion And Theology?

[Assistant] The primary difference would be that theology operates within the confines of a particular religious tradition, applying many of the tools of philosophy of religion but assuming certain non-philosophical premises.


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

[User]
ELI5:So we are seeing the Sun as yellow but why are we seeing it's reflection from Moon as white?

Hey guys, so right now it is an almost commonly known thing that The Sun is white but we are seeing it as yellow. I wonder why this is not happening to the Sun's light reflected from the Moon's surface.

[Assistant] Moonlight actually appears slightly bluish to the human eye due to the Purkinje effect, which basically states that at low illumination levels the eye is slightly more sensitive to blue light. The reflected light however is white, the same as sunlight. The sun appears yellowish due to a combination of its blackbody radiation output peaking around the yellow portion (that is, it emits more yellow light than red or blue light), and various atmospheric scattering effects.


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

[User]
[The Office US] How in God's name has Michael Scott not been fired?

From 2005-2007 *alone*, Michael Scott somehow got away with:

- Leaking news of a downsizing
- Telling the entire office they were being closed down before it was finalized
- Carrying on a secret affair with his boss
- Outing a gay employee
- Kicking a ladder out from under his warehouse manager
- Countless insensitive racial jokes
- Countless instances of sexual harassment
- Wasting company time with his weekly "Movie Mondays"
- Vehicular assault of an employee
- Kidnapping said employee
- Firing an employee who had literally just said "I quit," costing the company severance

All of that is just off the top of my head. How in the flaming fuck is this man still employed?

[Assistant]
His branch was the highest performing in Dunder Mifflin by a wide margin over Utica and Nashua. Hes extremely loyal to the company and had been working there forever. He was an elite salesman before he became manager, and when he steps into making sales himself he does very well. He never asked for a raise until Darrell came forward and realized Michael, as manager would be making less than him.

All of this causes his superiors to keep him in his position and overlook his shenanigans.


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

[User] ELI5: how do car dealerships make money when they claim the markup on new cars is only a few hundred dollars?

[Assistant]
They can make money three ways when they are selling you a new car, the dealer markup, and any hidden incentives from the factory.
The second way is what they offer you for your trade in.
The third way is through financing of the vehicle.   They secretly get kickbacks from certain finance companies depending on what rate they offer you.   Say, hypothetically, you qualify for a 3% rate, but the finance manager will offer you a loan for 4%, so then the dealership gets a kickback of $500, and if he gets you on the hook for 5%, the dealership gets a kickback of $1000.

So the salesperson will usually chat you up and try to pull details about what you want out of the deal, they find out what your "hot buttons" are, and lets say you demand to get $5000 for your trade, when it's only worth $4000, well then they can jack up your interest rate by two percent and make that back up.
Or, lets say you demand a certain interest rate, so they agree to that, but the amount of money they will give you on your trade-in just went down.
Since usually people only have one hot button, it's easy for them to find out what that is and then structure that accordingly.
So it's all a big shell game.   You ask for something, they concede, but make it up elsewhere.


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

[User] What happens to a photon after it has been seen by our eyes?

[Assistant] Our eyes "see a photon" through the response created in our visual system by the absorption of that photon (or more realistically a stream of such photons) by the biological dyes in our eyes. Since the photon is absorbed, its energy is transferred to the molecules that constitute those biological dyes, and the initial photon ceases to exist.


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

[User]
CMV: Poor people shouldnt have kids

This is obviously incredibly controversial, but hear me out. I live in South Africa which is one of the most unequal countries in the world, I grew up middle class and started working in unprivileged communities and was blown away by how ill equipped their parents were to parent them and how despite being ravished by poverty by poverty they continued to have more kids.

Ive done a bit of research on this and it turn out that poverty affects brain development, childrens health and academic success. Poor children are more likely to witness violence and experience it than their wealthier counterparts. Poor parents are generally uneducated and less likely to support their childrens educational development or give them access to better educational opportunities. Poor parents are under more stress and are generally harsher, inconsistent parents and emotionally distant. And poverty is generally transmitted from generation to generation.

I worked in two schools one in an underprivileged area, the other in an affluent area. The kids in the underprivileged area were 12, the kids in the affluent area were 6, and when I tell you that the 6 years olds were able to handle conflict amongst themselves adequately with very little adult involvement, they were able to regulate their emotions.years old. The 12 years old always handled conflict through violence, they were unable to regulate their emotions. The difference was stark.

My mother came from a poor family and she broke the cycle of poverty, so Im aware there are exceptions to the rule, but Im also so aware that poverty can lead so many traumatized children, feeling they arent in control of their lives, thereby perpetuating the cycle they find themselves in and further entrenching themselves in poverty. So poor people should have kids.

[Assistant]
Do you believe non-existence is preferable to a life in poverty? Do you think most poor people would agree it would be better if they had never been born?

Also, do you think that corporations and governments who exploit the poor have any responsibility for the conditions the poor live in? Or does the responsibility mostly lie with poor peoples parents?


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

[User]
CMV: Nearly everything I did in school was a waste of time, money and effort.

I'll start by saying that school teaches a few useful things. Driver's ed is one; just about everyone needs to know how to drive. Reading and writing are essential, as is basic math. Some vocational and technical electives like computer programming were useful. However, most of what is required in a typical k-12 curriculum and even in college is not worth the time.

Take chemistry for example. Everyone in my public high school needed to take chemistry in order to graduate. We paid a significant amount of attention to valence electrons. I'd happily wager that hardly any of use remember what valence electrons are now. I can provide a vague definition, but the only time when I needed to know it was in another chemistry class that I took in college.

I took several years of Spanish classes. Today, I don't speak Spanish. I can form a few barely coherent sentences in Spanish; all of them are about extremely simple topics. It's hard to see how I'm better off today because I had conjugation tables in Spanish memorized years ago.

I could list more topics like this, but I trust your ability to see the pattern. I went to school, memorized some stuff, wrote it down on the exam, and forgot it. After forgetting this material, I have not seen it again in a practical setting.

Some people will tell me something along the lines of education being good for it's own sake. The truth is that most people in these classes find the material rather boring and don't care about it. As I said, they will forget it and be no more educated than they were before taking these classes.

One could also tell me that employers reward people for having degrees. This is true. I'd argue that it's because the ability to finish a degree says certain things about you. Employers do not care about the existentialist philosophy course you took to meet the humanities requirement.

I'd love to be wrong about this because it would mean that most of my childhood wasn't wasted. Someone please prove me wrong.

[Assistant]
> One could also tell me that employers reward people for having degrees. This is true. I'd argue that it's because the ability to finish a degree says certain things about you. Employers do not care about the existentialist philosophy course you took to meet the humanities requirement.

This is entirely true and it shows why school *wasn't* a waste of time. Economists refer to it as the "signaling" value of education. By graduating from high school, it proves that you can show up on time, follow instructions, complete boring tasks within a given time limit, solve basic logical reasoning problems, and read/write somewhat coherently. Graduating college shows that you have an even more advanced command of these skills and a basic understanding of your major field of study.

It's very hard to prove that you can learn *how* to learn, that you are diligent, and that you are worth the time and money it takes to train and pay you. That's why people with degrees can earn higher salaries on average than people who don't (regardless of the amount of time in school).


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

[User] [Vampire Lore] why does blood taste so good to vampires? And what is the human equivalent of how good it tastes?

[Assistant]
"The blood is the life!" Dracula (1992)

It's like mother's milk for a baby, alcohol for an alcoholic, or cool water for a profoundly thirsty man. It's sweet, it's wholesome, and *it's what you need.*


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

[User] ELI5: What is chapter 11 bankruptcy and how and why would it help Toy "R" Us?

[Assistant]
Bankruptcy: You owe so much money that you can't possibly pay it all. Imagine you own a company that's not doing well. It now owes a total of $1 million to various people: rent, electricity, suppliers, employees, clients you've not delivered product to.

Chapter 7 bankruptcy: Everything the company has gets sold, and the people you owe to (creditors) get a piece depending on their priority. They likely only get a part of what you owe them, or nothing. After that your company ceases to exist.

Chaper 11 bankruptcy: You promise that if you're allowed to keep operating, you can get back on your feet and it will do more good that way. Perhaps some event really screwed you over, but if given a chance you could still recover. So you enter a process where you pay who you can, keep operating under supervision, and try to get the company back on track. If it works, congratulations, your company survives. If not, you go to Chapter 7.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is happening when a game is loading?

If a game can render the scenery and objects as you're moving through the world, what's the point of waiting behind a loading screen?

[Assistant]
So imagine a fast food place that can make burgers really fast, on demand. This is like the game when it's loaded and running, it's rendering stuff quickly and on demand.

In the morning someone has to open the fast food restaurant, warm up the grills and get the ingredients out and prepped for rapid burger making. This is the loading screen, when the computers loads up all the information it will need to render at full speed and gets it ready. It does all of that upfront so it can just churn out burgers later without worrying.


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

[User]
I believe any working individual should make a living wage. CMV

US citizen here, if that matters.

I've spent the majority of my working life making a wage that put me well below the poverty line. When I was in high school this made sense because I wasn't full time, nor was I in a high-skill position. I'm now a college graduate with a good deal of experience and myself and my fiancee to support. Up until my current job, I never made enough to live on my own. I couldn't even afford a crappy 1-bedroom apartment, much less food or other necessities to furnish it with.

And I certainly don't see myself as a bad case. There are people with multi-child families making less than I was. I believe it's a failure of our system to provide working individuals with the means to support themselves. Now should you be able to support a wife and 4 kids working full time at McDonalds? Of course not. But you should be able to live comfortably by yourself without any outside assistance.

IMO it is a social obligation to provide a decent wage to those that are willing to work. CMV.

[Assistant]
The United States establishes a minimum wage of $7.25/hr (higher in some states).  The 2013 poverty level is $11,490.  Income at that level is tax-exempt.

Therefore, to be above the poverty line you need to work about 30 hours per week.  You claim you are "well below" the poverty line -- how many hours less did you work?  How many hours should a person work before they're entitled a "living wage"?

Minimum wage at full time provides $14.5k/yr, or $1200/mo.  Any medium-sized city or smaller has places to rent for half that or less.  Power bills in such places can easily be kept at $120 or below; water and sewage if not included is about $50.  That leaves plenty of room for groceries, cheap internet, and an economical cell phone.  Or, in other words, it's a living wage.

How long is the "majority" of your working life?  How long have you been in the job market?  What is your degree in?


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

[User] ELI5: Why do Hindu dieties have more than 2 arms/multiple faces usually?

[Assistant] Hindu {and some associated with some schools of Buddhism) have multiple arms as a symbol of their capacity for actions (how much more could you do if you had more hands and arms?) and multiple faces/heads to show their all seeing natures.


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

[User] ELI5: How does exercise actually reduce the risk of diabetes? And how does too much sugar in a diet cause a person with no diabetes to get the disease?

[Assistant]
Type two diabetes is effectively caused by having a higher than normal blood glucose level for a prolonged period of time.

When you eat, most carbohydrates are transformed into glucose and absorbed into the bloodstream. Simple sugars are digested and absorbed into the blood very quickly, causing large spikes in blood sugar.

Insulin is released by the body to control blood glucose levels, and to enable cells to absorb and use glucose. Higher than normal glucose levels needs more insulin to control it. This ends up causing insulin ineffectiveness/resistance, which means tat your insulin is less able to control blood glucose levels. In response, the pancreas creates and releases higher and higher levels of insulin. This effectively makes the cells that produce glucose run out. Simple sugar is one if the things that causes this.

Exersize does two beneficial things. Firstly, it reduces your blood glucose. It helps you control it without relying on insulin. This reduces the strain on your insulin and can prevent insulin resistance and diabetes. Secondly, exersize makes your insulin more effective. Combined, this reduces the chances of getting diabetes.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why do planets tend to only have one enviroment?

For example:

Tatooine and Jakku = Desert

Dagobah = Swamp

Kamino = Ocean

Naboo = ~~Lush forest~~ idyllic paradise.

Hoth = Antarctic
There are more examples, I just can't recall their names.

[Assistant] According to legend many of them were terraformed by the Rakata. It's also worth mentioning that just because the area of the planet our heroes visit consists of only one enviroment doesn't mean the entire planet is the same (although that's usually the case).


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

[User]
ELI5: How come I don't see metal ore anywhere when I walk around in the nature, while extracted metal is so abundant and cheap? How did humans even find metal ore and think of extracting metal out of it millennia before what looks like very basic inventions?

This one has always confused me. Metal is so omnipresent that you'd think you'd often run into it in nature, I mean, does all the metal I see around me, in my house, my car, really come from deep underground mines? And if so, how did early humans figure it out, I mean, in the New World, somehow, nobody had thought of building something as basic as a *wheel*, but somehow they found metal ore lying around and thought of heating it up at high temperatures to manufacture metal? It's always baffled me.

[Assistant] Early ore was either meteoric or formed in bogs. So this would be on the surface. People would pick up what they thought was just another rock and use it to surround their fire. Tin can melt at fire temperature so they'd find this shiny substance after their fire died. It's not too much of a leap to figure out that certain rocks put into a hot enough fire create metal.


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

[User]
If the immune system "learns" and "remembers" viruses, how and where is this information created and stored?

My understanding of vaccines is that we take "dead" viruses, and inject them into the body so that our immune systems can learn to fight them before we first get them. My guess is that somehow the white blood cells (?) adapt to the virus somehow, but in what way?  Do they unzip parts of DNA like cells do when they replicate? What would they even do with these pieces of DNA or whatever information they learn? ie. how does that information help them kill the virus? Do they then go and hide out until later waiting for the next infection?

[Assistant]
To simplify greatly, there are immature immune cells present in your body. Certain types have "hypervariable" regions which, for complex reasons, are able to develop with incredible diversity on a molecular level. Enough diversity that virtually any complex protein (which are absolutely essential for life but are incredibly complex and based upon certain patterns) can be matched to a hypervariable region of some small subset of immature immune cells.

When a certain antigen (epitope technically, but antigen is a word most people know) is widely present in your body (like during an infection), this induces the clonal proliferation of immune cells which have hypervariable regions which are able to respond to that antigen. This proliferation has a far greater degree of mutation than normal cell division, which ensures that new cells which are best able to respond to the antigen are selected for. The cells with the best response to the antigen thus reproduce the most.

Most of the cells produced to combat a given antigen die off quickly if the antigen is no longer present. However, a select few remain which do not directly combat infection, but retain the affinity for that antigen. They stick around, and if that antigen is encountered again, they quickly begin clonal proliferation, ensuring a full blown infection will not occur.


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

[User] ELI5: How did people/society deal with depression, burn-out-like symptoms and therefore an inability to work in times before modern psychology?

[Assistant]
Before psychology what we refer to as depression was called "melancholy" or "The melancholy". We understood in general that certain people would feel certain ways and not be able to recover from it. We didn't understand what exactly caused it but we understood that it was a real thing.

Often times it wasn't treated. Many turned to drugs or alcohol to self medicate. The most popular drug was opium as it stimulated the pleasure centers of the brain. It wasn't until 1909 that opium other than for medical use was banned in the US.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do you see shapes/colors when you rub your eyes when they are closed?

[Assistant]
You are stimulating your retina and causing the cells in it to send errant signals to your brain, which your brain interprets as bursts of color.

The retina is a complicated structure with cells that basically take light and turn it into images your brain can understand. When you physically put pressure on those cells it can cause them to fire off some image signals to your brain without light.

Those cells also require a lot of oxygen and when you put pressure on your eye you may also be cutting off their oxygen supply for a second or two. The brief lack of oxygen can also cause them to fire off image signals to your brain without light. That's why you often see colors and shapes whenever you get a bout of low blood pressure to your head (e.g., when you stand up too quickly).


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

[User] Has teen acne been around since prehistoric times? Did cave-dwellers have zits? Or is it related to modern eating, exercise, pollution, etc.?

[Assistant] Based on responses here it made me wonder, are there cultures in the world that have more or less acne than others?? Like if you compared the average teen in USA vs the average teen in India, would one have more or less than the other??


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

[User] [RPGs] I just spent the afternoon walking around beating monsters to death with a club but for some reason I seem to have improved unrelated skills like bartering and lock picking... How does that work?

[Assistant]
While engaged with monotonous physical activities, sometimes the mind wanders, reflects on past experiences, and explores the possible answers to lingering questions.

I imagine you rehearsed some conversational skills in your head and gave serious thought to the engineering behind popular locking mechanisms of the time period.


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

[User] If dimples on a golf ball increase distance, and denticles on a sharks skin decrease hydrodynamic resistance, why are barnacles bad for ships, aside from weight?

[Assistant]
The dimples on a golf ball create turbulence which normally increases drag, but in the particular circumstance of the golf ball, it actually reduces drag. The reasoning is totally not intuitive and easy to explain, but it has to do with the turbulence allowing the air flowing around the ball to detach (stop being laminar flow) early which creates a barrier that allows air outside the turbulent layer to flow more optimally, in the shape of a boattail. This in turn reduces the drag.

This trick of adding additional turbulence to reduce drag only works in very specific circumstances and conditions. You can't add vortex generators to any circumstance and expect it to work better than without.


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

[User] ELI5: Why it's so difficult to make Xbox 360/PS3 emulators for PC.

[Assistant]
Well first off an Emulator for a game console is a software that is replicating the hardware that is being used in the console and its operating system.

Old machines we're easy to do this with such as the GameCube and N64 because they we're inexpensive and simple machines.

Microsoft and Sony however have spent money and time protecting their software and hardware and actively do so. This makes it difficult for someone to accurately replicate their safety precautions and encryption data.

Once the 360 and ps3 have lost their spotlight and support, the hardware and software will stop receiving updates and will be easier to replicate.

Also microsoft and sony lawyers won't be so quick to threaten anyone who tries ;)


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

[User] ELI5: How much truth is there to the idea that the United States invaded Iraq for oil?

[Assistant]
Practically none. Iraq was invaded because the neocons thought they could remake the Middle East into a region of free-market democracies by toppling dictators. The easiest one to topple was Hussein, but the only clear excuse they could all agree on to do so was the WMDs. Everyone thought he had them, even if there was no proof, so they "stovepiped" intelligence - pushing raw, dubious intel up the chain without critical analysis in order to bolster their weak argument - and supported intelligence they probably knew was phony. They believed they would find WMDs, we would be welcomed as liberators, we would reshape the Middle East in our favor (which has too many benefits to list, control of oil being only one), and we would remind the rest of the world that our military is still number one and we can use it where and how we wish to enforce our will (the subtext there is, after the end of the Cold War, the neocons were worried the military-industrial complex would lose its relevance and, therefore, its bottomless well of money).

TL;DR: the money to be made from Iraqi oil is nowhere near as important as the money to be made from the US military-industrial-security complex.

Edit: forgot about Curveball.


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

[User] ELI5: What were we actually hearing during the classic dial-up sound?

[Assistant]
The modem is communicating over the analogue telephone line, normally used to transmit spoken language.

Computers only speak binary though. What you are hearing is actually pure binary in the form of an analogue square wave, where each "up" is a 1 and each "down" is a 0 (or the other way around, can never remember).

Since modems use standardized "phrases" to identify themselves, shake hands and other steps needed to establish the connection, the actual sound made is generally the same or at least constructed of the same chunks of sound each time you connect.

Typically these "soundbites" start with a slow and easily readable greeting that even superslow modems on the other end can handle. This would be the "beee-booo-bi-beee" part in the beginning. Then, after they have agreed on the maximum speed both parts can handle, it switches to that speed and that's when you instead hear the white noice kind of sound "pschheeoooiiaauuaa...".

Finally, when it's all set up and ready for communication, the modem switches of it's speaker so you don't have to keep listening to the noice. It is however still sending said noice over the line.


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

[User]
[LOTR]Why did the technology level of Middle-Earth remained the same throughout the ages?

I mean, in 3000 years we evolved from fighting with rudimentary swords and shields to nukes,lasers and drones yet the people of Middle Earth still used the same weapons and lived the same as their ancestors.

[Assistant] Right, but in 200,000 years we went from spears and bows and arrows, to... spears and bows and arrows. Remember, at the point in Middle Earth we're shown, Saruman was just getting around to gunpowder-level tech. So it's probably within reason that sometime after the 3rd Age, they are primed for an Industrial Revolution.


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

[User] ELI5: What is String Theory? Has it been proved wrong? Whats the current replacement theory/idea?

[Assistant]
There are four fundamental forces in the universe, gravity, the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force.   We can describe so of these forces with two models, general relativity can be used to explain gravity, while the standard model explains the three remaining forces.  These theories are immensely successful, however they are both incomplete, and we would like to have one theory which explains all for forces.

 Actually combining these forces turns out to be really difficult.  For one thing, gravity is incredibly weak compared to the other forces and we have no clue why.  Another problem is that if we attempt to describe gravity using the same math as we do for the other three forces we end up with a theory which isn't predictive.  We want theories to be able to make predictions, so if a theory isn't predictive this is a pretty big problem.

String theory is one way of having a theory which explains all four forces.   However, it's incredibly mathematically complex, and so far we don't have any way to test it using current technologies.


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

[User]
Do you also happen to get sad because you simply will never have enough time to get the knowledge you want to?

I was wondering if other people also get kind of sad because it is simply impossible to have enough time to learn everything you actually wanted to learn by a certain age/stage in life. Like idk, completing that list of books with important authors in your field which gets longer and longer while keeping up with the recent findings in your field. Or learning that additional programming language or further practicing the one your familiar with. Or learning one more additional language. And all of that on top of the workload you already have.

Sometimes that makes me really sad because there are just so many things I am interested in and curious about but the more I study the things the longer the list of things I want to learn more about gets. Idk if you can relate but I just wanted to share this and I would be really interested to see what you think about this!

[Assistant]
I never thought about it but now that you mentioned it... Yess!!!

Its kind of like when you read a review paper and they cite many other original research papers, and you wanna get through all of them but you dont have the time to do so.

When you do attempt to get through them, you find yourself going down a rabbit hole. One paper leads to 10 other papers and each of the 10 papers lead you to another 10 papers... IT NEVER ENDS!!

Then the timer goes off, you gotta run back to the lab to change whatever solution you've got your tissue incubating in. And those papers that you've found will be left as tabs on your browser, never looked at again (but never closed too). Until one day, your computer freezes up and you gotta force shutdown your computer.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are high powered graphics cards needed in cryto mining?

The reason that I am having problems understanding this is because when I imagine crypto mining, I imagine basically an infinite command prompt constantly running. In my uneducated mind I dont seeing this as a graphics drain I see it as taxing the gpu and ram. I am below beginner in my knowledge of computers. Thanks in advance!

[Assistant]
>I see it as taxing the gpu and ram

Assuming you meant cpu here.

The thing to understand here is that computing graphics involves doing loads and loads of the same set of relatively limited calculations. GPUs are optimized for this in their architecture. Think of it as wanting to solve a million simple math problems -- who would complete the total workload faster, a decorated maths professor or several classrooms worth of high schoolers? The high school students win, because despite being less versatile their sheer parallel capacity gives them the edge. That's the CPU and GPU respectively.

It just so happens that crypto also involves loads and loads of the same calculations, so GPUs are very well suited for it.


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

[User]
[The Culture series] What is the Culture's plan for the Heat Death of the Universe?

Sure, it's a long way away, but it is guaranteed to happen eventually.

[Assistant] They either sublime, which may shield them from the effects of entropy, or pass through the Grid to a younger universe. The ability to do this has so far eluded them but was demonstrated to be possible in *Excession*.


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

[User] ELI5:Why are diseases that have been eliminated kept in labs.What if the labs get contaminated and the disease spreads again?

[Assistant] they are kept in case some country or terrorist group has an unregistered secret culture (a viable or dormant preserved form of the disease) that they may use for biological warfare. If, say, smallpox was released to the public in a terrorist act, everyone born after the 1970s when they stopped vaccinating would be susceptible to the disease. The idea behind keeping cultures of these diseases is to allow the quick and workable design of a new vaccine for a hyper-mutated weaponised strain in the event of attack, to eliminate loss of life. However the debate behind keeping these cultures is rife and the potential risks may outweigh the benefit. Basically, they should probably just cook the cultures and be done with it but we can't be sure that someone isn't harbouring the disease in some secret place.


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

[User]
ELI5: Where did the ongoing do a good deed and the mayor of the town congratulates you with the key to the city in movies & shows come from? Was that ever a real thing?

Im watching family guy & Peter found a missing kid and as a reward the mayor gave him the key to the city (or town hall?).
Ive also seen this happen in a few other movies.

Was this ever a real thing? Is this an inside joke Im not aware of?

[Assistant]
The "key to the city" comes from serfdom, where it was originally called the "freedom of the city," meaning that the honored person was to be treated as a free person, not a serf, while they were in the city. The "key to the city" derives from the custom of walled cities closing and locking their gates up at night; if you wanted to enter, you'd either have to wait until morning or convince a guard that you had an important enough reason to open the gates. However, if you have a "key" to the gates, that meant that you could open them whenever you wished; you had the freedom to enter/exit the city as you desired. Hence, the "key to the city" phrase replaced "freedom of the city".

It is entirely symbolic/honorific. Since serfdom is long gone, there are no privileges or protections to be gained by not being a serf, so getting a "key to the city" is just an indicator that the city government appreciates something you've done.


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

[User]
[The Matrix] Where did they get the memories/files/whatever they needed to upload things like kung fu or helicopter pilot to people's brains?

Did they have to liberate someone who knew kung fu, or hack the brain of someone still in the matrix? And does that mean that all the free people know the same kung fu, and thus have the same weaknesses that could be exploited?

[Assistant]
Since the machines are the ones that truly created Zion, along with the last few iterations of the city, we can assume they provided the new "free" humans with all of the technology needed for them to thrive in accordance with the Architect's design.  This includes memory files for Kung Fu and flying helicopters.

All free humans will have the same baseline set of skills, but will be differentiated by the presence of human free will.  Something that transcends programming, and unbalances the Architect's equation.


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

[User]
ELI5 Why we have two types of screw heads/drivers?

While putting together a piece of furniture recently, I constantly had to switch back and for between a Phillips head screwdriver and a flat head screwdriver. Why do we have two types and not just one. If we could have just one, wouldn't the Phillips be the best?

[Assistant]
Flat heads are easy to use by humans, they have 2 downsides.  The first is that the bit slips horizontally and falls out of the screw.  They tend not to strip very easily, both bits and screws are simple so they are cheap to manufacture

Phillips heads exist because the flat head does very poorly when you have a machine turning the screws.  These machines tend to be very powerful and the flat head screws would get over tightened and break.  So the Phillips was designed so that the bit would slip out if it reached that point.  The down side is that this "feature" works fairly shitty when it's a human doing the work by hand or using a low power consumer drill.

tl;dr The bits exist for different applications.


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

[User] How do deep-sea fishes not get crushed by the tremendous pressure of the ocean, at the sea floor?

[Assistant]
Marine Biologist here!

This is a pretty interesting topic. The reason that us humans cannot withstand the great pressure of the deep sea is simple: the pressure difference between the environment and our bodies. This is why oil rig divers are kept in pressure chambers throughout the duration of their placement - to make an attempt at equalising this pressure, diminishing the effects of depth.

Because deep sea fish have evolved in the deep they have the same pressure inside their bodies as is outside in the environment - this however means that true deep sea fish cannot migrate to shallow waters as to do this would be to comprise the integrity of their cell membranes (which have evolved to contain high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids to cope with the extreme pressure) and risk the expansion of gas vacuoles, which would essentially cause them to explode (which is why many deep sea fish look kinda funny when you bring them up quickly to the surface).

Evolving to cope with extreme pressure is not much different from evolving to cope with cold or any other extreme environmental conditions - just like you wouldn't put a polar bear in the desert because it's evolved to live in freezing environments you wouldn't put a deep sea fish in surface waters.

Deep sea fish also have a bunch of other adaptions to cope with the harsh conditions of life below 4000 meters or so, such as reduced muscle masses and slow metabolism.


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

[User] ELI5: When Bill Gates makes those adds saying we're THIS close to wiping out Polio but just need more donations, why doesn't he just donate the rest?

[Assistant] There is unlimited demand for funding campaigns. So he spends his money on less publicity-prone projects and asks for world wide funding to campaigns that are simple to understand and close to finishing. Doing this is an effective way to raise even more funding to these campaigns.


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

[User] [Stranger Things]Is it wrong or unhealthy for Mike to try & build a romantic relationship with 11 on foundation that he was the first person she ever met who expressed concern for her for reasons other than her powers or presumed helplessness?

[Assistant]
Mike and Eleven are both 13 years old. They're having *young love*, which is an experience every kid goes through as they try to understand and fit all of their new pubescent feelings and thoughts into the conceptual framework of *love* and *dating*. Essentially, they're trying to figure out how to be what they think everyone expects them to be.

Maybe their infatuation will last. Maybe it won't. Maybe they'll learn how to effectively communicate and reciprocate feelings. Who knows? But as long as Hopper is there to be the Dad we all know he can be, nothing bad should happen.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do they show flashes of someone's skeleton when being electrocuted in cartoons?

This does not really happen in real life does it?

[Assistant]
Doesn't happen to people in real life, no.

I always assumed that the cartoon version was a joke along the lines of turning the person into a light bulb and showing the bright bones like the filament of the light, glowing brightly.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What is the purpose of slave leia' s sexy outfit/sleeping with jabba?

Is Jabba sexually attracted to her? Are they genetically compatible? Is there cross species sexual compatability in the star wars universe?

[Assistant]
It's a dominance ploy. It's not about Jabba being particularly sexually attracted to Leia, it's about Leia being placed in a degrading/subservient position.

Jabba gets off on having a powerful human reduced to a piece of visual candy / pet at his... uhm... tail.


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

[User]
CMV: News should have a stricter criteria for how theyre able to report on things

I remember when breaking news came in it was always something urgent and important. Like theres an active shooter here, or OJ Simpson is on the run from police, or theres a tornado about to hit Alabama. I believe it was after 9/11 that news stations began using the term breaking news on a constant basis. Now they use the term breaking news go every little thing sometimes theyre be reporting on the same breaking news for days.

Also the phrasing of things. You can report on anything as long as you phrase it as a question. Donald trump on cocaine? Find out at 10.

Then theres quick reporting over accurate reporting. News stations will try to report on a story first without having accurate information then update it as they go. For example  when Kobes plane crash happened 5 news stations were reporting 10 different things all changing every few minutes and I dont even think his wife knew. This was not something that needed to be reported in urgently and it couldve have waited until the facts were verified

Overall news seems to be less about reporting on facts and more about entertainment, creating emotional content and alarmism and I think this is part of the reason stress is increase in America. Some stations do it more than other (FOX)

While I dont think the what the news reports on should be censored, how they report it should be better regulated.

[Assistant]
>how they report it should be better regulated.

by who?

by the government?

Freedom of the press is an essential liberty.  Its a liberty that exists to protect against the risk of tyranny.  Today Trump says that all the new media is lined up against him.  The more radical people call it a media coup against the president.

And they aren't really very wrong.  The media does exist in part to keep the powers that be in check.  The president has to answer to NBC's fact checking and ABC's opinion pieces, etc.

Maybe you're a trump supporter and maybe your not, it doesn't matter, if you give the government power to regulate the media, eventually that power is going to be wielded by a person you don't like in a way that you don't like.  rules can be selectively enforced.  Violations that benefit the rule enforcer can be ignored.  Violations that hurt the rule enforcer can be more strictly enforced.  Does biden do Cocaine?  That's a fair and honest question, the american people deserve to know.  Does Trump?  That's a gotchya journalize and a violation of the rules.

You don't want the government regulating the thing that regulates the government.

Otherwise you are spot on.  If we had a regulatory body that was incorruptible, i'd agree with you.


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

[User] ELI5: who and how do they determine how many calories are in a particular item of food?

[Assistant]
A calorie in your food is the amount of energy that is needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius.
This is done by burning the food in something called a bomb calorimeter. That is a box within a box. A sample of food is put on a dish in the inner chamber of the calorimeter, fill it with oxygen and seal it. In the outer chamber a measured amount of water is filled. An electric spark in the inner chamber ignites the food. As it burns it raises the water temperature in the outer chamber. The amount the water heats tells us how many calories are in the food. If the the temperature of the water goes up one degree it has one calorie.


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

[User] If there are billions of stars in the sky and their light is hitting earth, why does it ever get dark?

[Assistant]
This is a very good question. Such a good question, in fact, it has a special name. It's called "Olbers's paradox." After a guy named Olbers.

The answer to the question wasn't fully understood until just a few decades ago. It was once thought that (a) there's dust and junk in the way that scatters the starlight, or (b) light is capable of "canceling out" through destructive interference, but both of those are quite wrong.

The right answer comes in two parts: the finite speed of light, and a phenomenon called "redshift."

The universe is infinite in extent; this was suspected basically forever, and confirmed through observation in recent years. Since the universe is also *homogenous* that is, pretty much the same pretty much everywhere  that means if you draw any imaginary line out from the surface of the Earth, that line *will* sooner or later intersect a star.

But the key phrase there is "sooner or later." In point of fact, a random imaginary line drawn outward from the surface of the Earth almost certainly *won't* intersect a star in less than about fifteen billion light-years. If you extend the line farther than that, yes, you will certainly hit a star *eventually,* but within about fifteen billion light-years, you are not likely to.

Why is that fifteen-billion-light-years figure important? Because points that are farther away from us than fifteen billion light-years *cannot be seen,* because the universe is less than fifteen billion years old. Since light crosses one light-year in a year, light from farther away from us than fifteen billion light-years hasn't yet had time to get here.

Does that mean that if we imagine an impossibly distant future, many hundreds of billions of years hence, the night sky *will* be blindingly bright because the light from those unimaginably distant stars will have had time to reach us?

No, because of the other thing: "redshift." For reasons that are too complex to explain here, light from distant things looks "redder" to us than it would if those things were closer. For *very* distant things, things ten billion light-years away or more, those things are "red-shifted" to the point where we can no longer see their light at all; their light is now in the infrared part of the spectrum, or even farther down into the microwave band.

Even more distant things  stars a hundred billion light-years from here would be even more greatly dimmed by redshift, even if the universe were old enough for that light to have reached us.

So that's why the night sky is dark. First, because there simply aren't enough stars in the universe that are *close enough to us* to be seen in the night sky, and second, because anything that's really distant is too dimmed by redshift for us to see it with our eyes.


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

[User]
[Batman] why doesn't batman camouflage his whole face?

If stealth and his secret identity is so important, shouldn't he camouflage his jaw? It would make him harder to aim at and obscure his skin tone.

[Assistant]
People have given good practical answers here, but theres another element to it as well: the answer Batman gave to Joker when he asked the same question-to mock you.

Batman is supposed to be a terrifying force of nature to the cowardly and superstitious criminals, those who would prey on the innocent and harm the weak for their own benefit. But to those in need, the people of Gotham Bruce is trying to protect, the exposed jaw shows them that hes not a demon or monster, but a person who wants to help and save those who need it. To Joker, someone who believes in the inherent evil of humanity, seeing this contradiction of punishing avenger and compassionate hero, a dark knight trying to save the city by fighting evil on its own terms, this is a spit in the face to everything he believes.


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

[User] If a computer runs at 1 Hz, how fast will it count through an empty for-loop?

[Assistant]
Assuming 1 Hz is the clockspeed... No clue.  That's going to depend on the IPC of the CPU in question.

Most languages the answer would be "none, the compiler optimized the empty for loop into oblivion"

If you managed to remove the optimizations for C, and assume 1 for IPC, the assembly generated would be add and jump statements, so approximately 2s per iteration.


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

[User] [Deadpool] If he can heal, could he burn his entire body and have his skin regenerate back to normal?

[Assistant] no, because his skin is a byproduct of his multitudes of cancerous tumors. his tumors are overcharged by his healing factor giving him, essentially SUPERCANCER. burning off all his skin wouldn't do anything because it wouldn't cure his cancer.


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

[User]
[The Walking Dead] Is the humanity doomed?

He don't see any real signs of survival of anything else than a small group of people. No planes/helicopters.

Sure, we also don't know about other countries (and perhaps some US states, because there's no much information about these places).

The walkers don't seem to "disintegrate" over time, as should be expected. The last survivors seem to be dying off, and they are usually so few of them...

Is there's any sign of hope?

[Assistant]
Nah, humanity as a whole will survive, though in greatly reduced numbers. The group has run across enough other groups of survivors to establish that there are probably significant settlements elsewhere. In colder regions, zombies will freeze, or at least substantially slow down, and their numbers will thus be much thinner. Islands, plateaus, and other areas with naturally defensible terrain will probably be the major areas of concentration for these surviving settlements.

Humanity will have to have a major culture shift if the whole "you come back no matter how you die" thing continues in to subsequent generations. Also, the end of industrialized civilization will obviously result in huge cultural shifts.

All told, humanity will continue, but it will probably be on a level more akin to the pre-industrial age after a few decades.