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

[User] ELI5: Why is the reflection in the front of a spoon upside down and 'normal' in the back?

[Assistant]
The back side of the spoon acts as a convex mirror and the front acts as a concave mirror.

A mirror works by bouncing light back at you. With a flat mirror the light enters and bounces straight back at you giving an image which is the same size as the object no matter how far away you are from the mirror.

With a convex mirror the angle of the returning light is changed in such a way that the image is expanded and appears to be larger than the object but still at the same orientation.

With a concave mirror the angle of the returning light is changed in such a way that the image is compressed and made a lot smaller than the object. These rays of light all cross at a point called a focal point, if you are between the focal point and the mirror then the image appears to be the same orientation but smaller than the object. If you are just past the focal point the image appears small and upside down. If you are far past the focal point the image appears large and upside down.

The focal point distance from the mirror is determined by the curvature of the mirror. Since a spoon is a small object with a large degree of curvature then its focal point is close to the spoon and you cant get between the spoon and its focal point so your reflection will always look upside down.


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

[User]
ELI5: How has Ebola not killed us all by now?

With the recent outbreak in West Africa - highly contagious, super fatal, it seems like it would be the perfect vehicle for a "The Stand" type pandemic. What am I missing here?

[Assistant]
Combination of killing the Hosts too quickly and having VERY obvious symptoms that make people avoid the infected actually make it rather difficult for Ebola to spread too far.

Folks tend to avoid people vomiting up black blood...


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

[User]
ELI5: What does each part of a computer actually do?

This Summer, with the help of a good friend (genius with computers) I built my own computer.  I have a vague understanding of what each component does, however at the same time, I get extremely confused.

So I'm asking, what does each component of a computer (Ram, Processor etc) actually do?

Thanks!

[Assistant]
Motherboard: Connects everything together.

RAM: Stores information for the processor, reads and writes REALLY fast

Processor: Makes decisions, runs programs. The 'heart' of your computer.

Hard Disk/SSD: Stores stuff when computer is off. Slower then RAM.

GPU: Renders 3d graphics and does parallel computing type stuff. Primarily just Renders 3d graphics.

Sound Card: Decodes sound better then your CPU, also can help provide 3d sound for games that support it. Also gives 'higher quality' sound then your motherboard.

Anything else?

CD/DVD/Bluray: Basically a hard-drive that's even SLOWER but transportable (and shiny).

PSU/Power Supply: Supplies Power.


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

[User]
[The Purge] Why does the annual Purge help thr USA's economy?

In-universe narration says that after the annual Purge was implemented, the American economy is booming (not necessarily those exact words). My question is, how and why?

[Assistant]
Those are the words of a totalitarian police state who have implemented an annual murderfest as an cover for executing the poor and unemployed.

The words might not be entirely truthful, to put it mildly.


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

[User]
ELI5 How come horses and ponies and such have evolved with hooves, but now they need human to tend to them or they'll grow out too much ?

Just saw an ad about abandoned ponies with super long hooves, and asking for money to help them. Sure it's another scam, just got me thinking why wild horses or ponies wouldn't be able to kinda grind off their own hooves, right?

[Assistant]
Wild horses travelled extremely long distances over rough terrain, so their hooves would get worn down naturally.

Domestic horses are kept in stables so they don't grind them down enough and need human care.

Same thing applies to human fingernails/toenails, animal claws, etc.


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

[User]
Is microwaving food unhealthy? Does it change the food in anyway?

My roommate is on an antimicrowave kick, spouting off claims that microwaves cause cancer, etc. Can you shed some light on this subject for me?

[Assistant] Highly unlikely. Microwaves can only generate increases in rotational modes, which relax by giving off heat. You have to get up into the UV before the photons have enough energy to generate electronic transitions that can lead to molecular rearrangements, which is what could potentially cause cancer. Microwaves can't do anything but generate heat.


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

[User] ELI5: How and why did the arbitrary masculine and feminine designations in languages like French and German develop?

[Assistant]
From user Gilles at stackexchange.com

French is Latin mispronounced by proto-Germans. Both Latin and German have three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neutral. Both languages are part of the Indo-European family and derive their gender system from the same root. Given this history, it isn't surprising that proto-French started out with these three genders. Over time, like most Romance language, French largely lost the neuter gender (now present only in a few pronouns, e.g. ceci or a).

The origin of grammatical gender is not fully known. The current theory on Indo-European is that there were originally two genders, animate (for people and personifications) and inanimate (for objects and abstract concepts), and the animate gender split into feminine and masculine. Many Indo-European languages, in particular most modern Romance languages, saw a merger of masculine and neuter.

Although the feminine/masculine distinction in grammatical gender is likely to have arisen from biological gender (feminine to talk about women, masculine to talk about men), the language has evolved considerably since then. Nowadays, in French (like in most other languages with feminine and masculine genders), masculine and feminine usually match biological gender when applied to people or animals, but carries no implication when applied to other nouns: it's just an arbitrary grammatical feature.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do burns blister and why do burn wounds remain warm long after the injury occurred?

Edit: Thanks, this is the first time I ever got more than 100 upvotes on anything. Ever.

[Assistant]
Burn blisters occur when the second layer of the skin is damaged, they occur to protect the underlying skin layers from more damage and infection. You could see it as the bodys/skins natural bandage, so never pop them.

The skin remain  warm because of the increased blood in the area to repair and replace the damaged skin.


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

[User]
[Marvel/DC] How do superheroes conceal their costumes

In most cases you have the flash who sued his suit in
his ring, and Batman who keeps his stored in the bat
cave/ transported by the batwing if necessary, but his
do most heroes conceal/hide their costumes, do they
just wear them under their actual clothing ?

[Assistant]
Many different ways is how:

Green lantern uniforms are made by the ring.

Tony Stark can remote summon many of his suits while some can be a briefcase, built into a helicopter (civil war), or nanotech.

Some are magic. (Moon Knight, Dr. Fate)

Superman wears his under his civilian clothes and likely just puts it in a closet when not used.

I think Captain America is like almost always wearing some form of his suit.


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

[User] [Pacific Rim] Raleigh said in the beginning being Drift compatible is a "Unique skill", just how rare is it?

[Assistant]
In untrained individuals, it appears to be very rare. A mindmeld not only causes the pilots to re-experience the entirety of each other's memories almost instantaneously during the drop, while drifting it also either requires both people to have either a similar mindset, or at the very least a rather deep mutual understanding co-pilot's mindset, as they aren't really going to be functioning independently from the moment they drift. There's also the moral factors that after a drift, your co-pilot essentially knows all of your secrets, and it appears that a brain changes after a meld to become closer to a co-pilot's. (Side note:This can be seen after Raleigh's first meld with Mako when he's fighting with Chuck in the hallway; he's relying less on his own physical strength and instead fighting with a far more technical aspect in hand to hand combat. And this wasn't something that he was consciously thinking about, he was enraged, but still did it as if it were instinct).

That's why close siblings are innately better at drifting; they were raised in the same household with the same values, probably went to the same school, have experienced many things together and with regards to any secrets, they won't pick up on many new ones, and most likely not any big new ones. Essentially, there's a lot less data that their brains have to handle during a drop, so far fewer things that they could get confused by.

Raleigh and Yancy Becket were both veterans from the earlier days of the Kaiju War, where humans were on their heels and as a result it was paramount to get Jaegers and pilots out in the field as fast as possible. Considering that, the fact that they fought the same way, had experienced the same things, knew the same things, and thought the same way put them very high on all candidate lists. Pilots being ready to deploy fast were likely so rare that the Jaegers themselves were custom tailored to their pilots, rather than any potential enemies they might face.

Later, when the Jaegers started winning all over the place, literally dozens of battles in a row, getting pilots out fighting right now became a lower priority, as candidate applications likely skyrocketed and Jaeger production became more streamlined. By then, a more important factor had become to train the candidates optimally, and that's when they could finally start considering their pilot pairings. In this aspect, Chuck Hansen was probably at least partially right; the Jaeger Programme probably failed due to sub-par pilots, as they were simply bringing any pair that could simply just function while melding, not having the luxury of getting the best individual candidates.

A trained drifter, on the other hand knows what memories, emotions and secrets to just immediately disregard and let go, either through training or instinct. Hercules Hansen is experienced enough that he can channel his experience and love to successfully drift with his son after having lost his brother, while Marshal Stacker Pentecost appears to be either so experienced or cold that he can ignore anything his co-pilot might throw at him, while sending very little the other way. That's why by the end of the war, it appears to be so much more common in candidates that have likely been hand-picked from a pool of tens of thousands (if not millions) of candidates, as they were looking for candidates who were good at discarding emotions and memories, whereas they earlier during the Kaiju War were simply looking for any pair of candidates that would fit together in a Jaeger.

It's also likely that drift tech has improved drastically over the years of the war (every other relevant tech appears to have), so perhaps it might simply be better at filtering out data transferred between pilots, or perhaps what is needed to pilot a Jaeger is simply less over the years, as some sort of AI and Jaeger design has improved.


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

[User] ELI5: In a day and age of ~7 billion people, more jobs, and more money than can be assumed in much of recorded history, why is it that everyone I talk who has a job to seems to be "overworked and underpaid," even with the recent raising of employment rates?

[Assistant]
Real wages have been falling for decades. Workers know that the same amount of work yields less reward than it used to. The cause for this are many but in general it has to do with moving more investment out of the world of work and into the world of financial speculation. People used to invest money in companies and expected a nice rate of return over years. The company did well in part because it paid workers well for work done. Starting in the 80's more and more stock holders and financial management companies started to demand higher returns and faster return on investment. This meant companies had to do more with less. Fewer workers and lower pay in order to meet the expectations. Outsourcing and moving production out of the US was also done to meet these ends. Further companies stopped pension plans and made other changes to benefits plans to reduce costs to increase profits. And of course they were in a race with other companies doing the same so it was also to stay in business when other companies were cutting even further by getting rid of unions and hiring less skilled/experienced workers.

We now find ourselves with longer work weeks and more days worked per year than any othr industrialized nation. We have all time high cash reserves in corporate strongboxes. But they are not adding more workers in general because now built into the system are expectations and agreements for pay packages for CEOs that they produce profit levels and returns on investment which can only be met by burning workers.

It does not have to be this way. People like to do good work. People like going to work at a place where sometimes they are running full tilt but at other times they can lay back a bit. But the top level of major companies are taking so much out of the company there is nothing left to hire new help with out affecting their performance numbers.

In the end these practices are destroying the middle class.The way the US economy works is based on consumerism. the middle class does not have enough money to fuel the economy in a good growth curve any more. More and more now spend most of their money on essentials.  You have to have more employees and pay current employees more to fuel the growth of the economy. Thsi also helps our federal and state governments by getting people off subsidy programs.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it easier to get a job when you already have a job?

I've heard this countless times, written in articles and from recruiting professionals.

Every time I've been on an interview, they ask me when I'd be able to start. When I give them a date two to four weeks away, their face always drops and I can tell they're no longer considering me because they need someone sooner than that. I know that my personal anecdote doesn't invalidate something that's known to be true but of the many interviews I've been on, I've only found that having a job already is cumbersome to whoever you're interviewing with.

[Assistant]
It's easier to get a job when to have a job because you're in a stronger negotiating position. You don't have to have the job, you already have one.

Also, if you encounter an employer that is loses interest because you can't start for two weeks, you should feel lucky. You're dodging a bullet. This is an indication that the place has high turnover and they value getting a warm body quickly more than getting the right person.

Then you have to think to yourself... "there must be a reason why they have that kind of turnover." Any reason you come up with is likely to be a reason you'd want to work somewhere else.

No good employer will have any problem with waiting 2-4 weeks to bring on a good employee.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are some body parts more likely to get cancer than others?

[Assistant]
Cancer can develop during the process of cellular replication because a copy of *all* of the cell's DNA must be made for the new cell. During this process, mistakes can be made, resulting in DNA that accidentally codes for unregulated growth (resulting in a tumor).

Certain types of cells in the body replicate very often and are therefore more likely to develop cancer. Examples of this are the lining of your GI tract or the cells of the lung.

Other types of cells, like those found in your muscles or bones, do not replicate very much at all and as a result are more rare.


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

[User] [Blade] If vampires can die by such little contact to silver, wouldn't Blade be more effective if he adapted a fencing style of combat?

[Assistant]
No, the attacks need to deal enough damage to be leathal. In Blade 1 the running joke was that he kept cutting off the bearded dude's hand over amd over and then in the final battle he just cuts him open from gut to neck, killing him. So yes, hd could adopt a style to simple poke vital organs but its like a pin prick of siler to the abdominal section will kill a vamp.

Also he is pretty fast with his current style, so why would he need a faster style?


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

[User]
[Minecraft] What happened to all the humans. Why is everything in ruins?

Also what do they think of spheres?

[Assistant]
The previous civilization was a marvel. Genetic engineering was the norm and granting citizens transcendental abilities via technology was nothing out of the ordinary - but as cool at it was, herculean strength, absurd regeneration and the capability to warp space with a casual thought got boring eventually.

You don't reach that level of technological advancement without an unhealthy amount of curiosity, as you creep up the Kardashev scale and reach a certain threshold in technology you inevitably run into doors you're not supposed to open. There's a reason why it's called the End, after all.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did pirates/navy track down other ships back before radar/sonar?

I wondered this while watching Pirates of the Caribbean and wondered how ships chased each other down?  It's not possible to track steps through ocean.

[Assistant]
they really didnt. But often you knew where ships were likely to be. There are only so many ports, and the bigger a ship the bigger a port it needs to be able to dock. A pirate might wait in the shipping lanes a day or two outside of a busy port and wait for a target. Or he might wait for a ship to dock and become a sitting target in an undefended port. A third choice is to cruise near nautical choke points like between islands or outside sandbars. Large convoys of vessels also usually took predictable routes, there was a range of a few degrees which offered the fastest trip to and from Europe due to trade winds and currents, and ships tried to avoid sailing in storm and hurricane season so there tended to be a good deal of activity when it was optimal for sailing.

Once a ship was in sight it was then just a matter of who was the better seaman, or which ship was to windward, and in many cases some luck. Ships might be in sight but 20 miles away and still be in a chase.


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

[User]
ELI5: The Pirate Bay, and How It's Currently Operating.

So I was reading the Pirate Bay Wikipedia article and I am pretty sure I am missing a HUGE bit of information, from the article or somewhere.  It makes it sound like the creators of The Pirate Bay were fined, and the Pirate Bay was shutdown?  But um..it's still up and running? I have read the entire article, or so I thought, and it repeatedly discusses how action was taken.  It does show that they changed internet providers...but that seems ridiculous the Pirate Bay will be charged millions in court and then just change providers and keep doing what they were just found guilty of doing...

The Pirate Bay: "OH LOL LET'S JUST USE QWEST INSTEAD OF VERIZON"

Courts: "DAMN IT THEY BOUGHT A NEW INTERNET PLAN! CURSES WE CAN'T GET THEM!"

Anyways if it already isn't entirely obvious, I am stupid and ignorant on this topic...so forgive me and explain this like I am 5, thank you!

[Assistant]
Since no one has yet explained this like you're five, let me give it a twirl.

They didn't change their internet providers, they physically moved the servers their site is hosted on.  They have servers in a missile bunker in Russia, they have servers in Argentina, and they have servers in several other countries that are NOT Sweden.

So, imagine you're convicted of manufacturing cocaine here in the US, but your actual cocaine processing plant is in Paraguay, and another one in Bosnia, and another one in Pakistan.  They can convict you of the crime, but they can't really sieze your stash, because it's not in the US, and it's not in US-friendly countries.  Now imagine they convicted you in absentia, while you were in another non US-friendly country, and they're really kind of screwed.  Now imagine that a year before they even tried you, you sold your cocaine plants to another person, but wouldn't tell them who - but you could PROVE that you didn't own the plants.  That's about the legal footing that Sweden has on the Pirate Bay at the moment.


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

[User]
Could somebody explain the difference between Subjective Idealism and Absolute Idealism

Hi all, I've particularly been reading about various schools of Indian philosophy (Advaita Vedanta, Shunyavada, Kashmir Shaivism, and Vijnanavada, to be specific) and I've found many references to schools of Western philosophy to which they are compared. While I do have interest in Western philosophy as well, I'm kinda tripped up over the distinctions they make between the schools of Subjective Idealism (which I have heard is associated with the likes of Berkeley) and Absolute Idealism (which, if I'm not wrong, is Hegel's philosophy). If interested, feel free to comment on their connections with Eastern philosophy as a whole.

[Assistant]
Like most -ism words, "idealism" means a lot of different things to different people. Most western philosophers will associate it with Berkeley-style idealism. By reputation at least, this is the view that what we experience is purely mental, not anything real that exists independent of the minds of those who experience it.

The other two famous idealisms, (Kant's) transcendental and (Hegel's) absolute idealism, have nothing to do with this, and are explicitly opposed to it. For Kant, the word "ideal" doesn't mean "fake" or "purely mental", it means something closer to how the word is used in ordinary english today: the ideal is a standard or goal that you strive for, which striving organizes your activity and gives it sense. Kant argued that many important metaphysical concepts were not concepts of objects, but were ideals in something like this sense. We never have knowledge of traditional philosophical objects like the universe as a whole or the nature of the good, but instead those concepts serve as ideals, and our unending striving to get closer to knowledge of them is that in light of which the rest of our knowledge makes sense, even if we can never actually get there.

Hegel accepts this basic structure but argues that it's wrong to think we never get to knowledge of those ideals. On the contrary, self-consciousness itself *is* knowledge of those ideals; we cannot help but know them insofar as we know anything at all. The best contemporary articulation of a view like this is Sebastian Rodl's *Self-Consciousness and Objectivity*.


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

[User]
Does the initial pressure wave of a nuclear explosion already carry radioactive contaminants?

Let's focus on a ground or low air burst. Nuclear fallout describes the radioactive contamination of particles that got pulled up into the atmosphere by the hot air and fall down eventually and spread out with the wind. But say you were caught at the edge of a nuclear blast and followed basic "duck and cover" procedures. you wait for the pressure and backdraught to pass and immmediately take protecrive measures afterwards. did you get (significantly) contaminated with radionucleids even before the first fallout comes from above?

[Assistant] No the main radiation exposures are the initial flash and the fallout but the pressure wave is ...well pressure...so you are still only being touched by the same air particles that were in your local area before and they are being pushed by the ones next to them etc.  Theres not much transport of particles over long distances in a pressure wave; you need wind to do that, or you need to make things radioactive by direct radiation... Which is possible but not a significant factor if you're far away... which you are because the initial fireball hasn't incinerated you.


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

[User] ELI5:How come when you drive backwards, your car tends to feel like it swerves more when you turn the steering wheel then when you are driving forward?

[Assistant]
When you're going forwards, the back wheels follow the front wheels but a little "inside" of them.  That tends to counteract the steering action a little.  Going backwards it the opposite.  The steering wheels in the back will track "outside" of the leading wheels, tending to intensify the turn.

Also, the same geometry in the front suspension that helps the car go straight when going forward, by "self-centering" the steering wheel, makes the wheels want to turn MORE when going backwards.


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

[User]
[MEGATHREAD]Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker-- RoS discussion belongs here **ONLY!** (spoilers within)

Been a while since we had one of these, huh? I'm sure most of you know the drill by now but let's cover all our bases.

Rise of Skywalker had its premiere tonight and will be in wide release in a few days. At this time, as we do for many high-profile releases, we've posted this megathread for discussion of the final movie in the newest Star Wars trilogy. While this thread is still stickied, which should be for at least a couple weeks after the movie's release, ***please confine all discussion of its plot details, whether question or answer, exclusively to this thread.*** Any discussion of tRoS outside of this thread will be dealt with in the harshest possible terms, and anyone caught deliberately spoiling it will be subjected to a permanent ban, no warnings or second chances.

When this post is no longer stickied, our normal spoiler policy goes into effect-- meaning spoiler tags must be used until **six months** from the film's release. That's **May 20th of 2020**.

[Assistant]
So is this proof that large flagships are completely useless? like 100k of them (???) got completely annihilated by an equal or lesser number of puny ships.

Also what was the point of the death star when a single star destroyer could do the same thing?


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

[User]
[The Boys Comic] SPOILERS FOR BLACK NOIR so technically wtf were vought supposed to do after Black Noir fulfilled his purpose?

SPOILERS DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE COMIC FULLY/WATCH THE SHOW ONLY

So Black Noir is a weapon created by Vought to take down Homelander in the event he goes crazy. So in this scenario we assume Black Noir takes down Homelander basically differently from the original comic(no White House, no army, basically somewhere else) but now Vought is left with a crazier and more powerful version of Homelander. It's basically the same as buying a lion in case your dog goes crazy, but once your dog does go crazy and the lion kills it, you're left with a lion who might kill you because he's hungry. Now your other options are either getting a stronger lion or just put yourself on the dinner plate. Did Vought even have a backup plan for Black Noir?

[Assistant]
Black Noir walked away from the fight against Homeland with his brain exposed and weakened to the point that some marines with armor piercing rounds and an above average supe with a crowbar could take him down. That *was* the plan. They made their contingency just a hair stronger than the original so that killing Homelander would leave him on death's doorstep.

Also, he can't fly. That may not sound like much but it means you can carpet-bomb him to your heart's content until something finally takes him down.


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

[User] ELI5: How are Netflix originals profitable? Since they're released to everyone paying monthly, there is no way to earn money from them, right?

[Assistant]
Simple. They keep people paying and might encourage new people to sign up and start paying so they can watch them.

It's the same as any content made for a subscription service. Make good content, and people will pay the subscription. Making original shows gives them an advantage over competitors because Netflix is the only place you can legitimately watch them.


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

[User] ELI5 the term of Ontology and epistemology? As well as, the difference and its applications.

[Assistant]
In philosophy, ontology is the study of existence, or being. What does it mean to say a thing is, or that it exists? For example, if you catch a fish and eat it, at what point does it stop being a fish? What is it about that thing that makes it a fish, and if you take those things away when does it stop being that fish?

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. What do we mean when we say we know something? How can you be sure? What is the difference between opinions, beliefs, and knowledge? Are there things the human mind cannot grasp? How do you know?


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

[User]
ELI5: In movies, what are actors snorting when they do lines of 'coke'?

It happens all the time in movies, someone will put out some lines of what is supposed to be cocaine and then the actors will snort it.... but what the hell are they actually snorting?

[Assistant] Powdered lactose or vitamin B powder for when they actually go to snort it. When it's being used as a prop prior to snorting, like the actor is cutting it up or making the line, they use cornstarch or some other fine-grained powder that looks good on a close shot.


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

[User] [Death Note\DC] How would Batman handle the Kira case?

[Assistant]
Hm. He would come to the same initial conclusions as L, likely using some of the same tactics. Data analytics, using criminals with fake names on TV, etc.

Once he narrowed down the general area... that's when it would get tough. He would probably realize that Kira was somebody who had access to the police database immediately.  Moreover, he wouldn't be nearly as worried about being able to 100% legally prove who Kira is.

That is, he would bug who he wanted to bug. Threaten who he wanted to threaten. There wouldn't be the same pressure from Light's father, or the need to get clean evidence to take down Kira.


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

[User]
ELI5: A Hostile Takeover of a corporation

title kind of explains it all. How does a guy or group of investors "hostilely" take over a corporation and is there a such thing as a "non-hostile takeover"?

[Assistant]
Shares are traded publicly. In order to control a company completely all you need is to own 50% + 1 share. If a group of investors wants to take over control they can simply go around and try to purchase enough shares to reach that point; ~~it is important to note that there is no requirement that they let it be known they are in cahoots!~~ They would tend to hide this because once they got to 49% for example the other shareholders would try to charge more because they know they really want those last few shares.

The idea of a hostile takeover is that it allows a company to take over another company even if the management doesn't want to agree to a merger or acquisition. For example, suppose "Happy Tom's Puppy Breeders" is being given offers of merger or acquisition by "Uncle Slappy's Potted Meat Co." but Tom's management is turning them down because they don't want puppies to be canned on an industrial scale. Even though the management is against the idea, if Slappy's management decides to start purchasing shares of Tom's on the open market ~~there isn't anything Tom's management can do to stop them.~~ Once Slappy's or a combination of its subsidiaries owns 50% + 1 share of the company they can start replacing board members until they can win a vote to replace the CEO, and then the CEO replaces the rest of the management if needed until succulent puppy meat hits the market.

Edit: See comments below for clarification and better information.


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

[User]
[Judge Dredd] Are the Mega-Cities independent of each other?

So I am asking about how the Mega-Cities deal with each other. I understand that there are like a dozen mega-cities scattered all over the planet.

Are they independent? Do they conduct trade with each other?

What about the areas outside the mega-cities in the wastelands? Are there 'nations', 'countries' or 'empires' that exist in their own global order?

[Assistant]
To all extents and purposes, each Mega-City is an independent sovereign nation, and acts as such in terms of trade, war, treaties, etc. They're generally pretty insular, but all the interactions we've seen them have has played out in the style of nations interacting with each other. There's no higher authority.

As for the wastelands, no, there's not really any major powers there. It's just scattered towns and cities. Occasional attempts have been made to form powers able to rival the Mega-Cities, but all have failed. There's simply not enough resources to sustain anything major and besides, the Mega Cities don't want the competition.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How often do lightsabers need to be recharged?

How often do lightsabers need to be recharged under normal use like deflecting blaster bolts,cutting droids apart and cutting through thin materials like a door/wall/grate?

[Assistant]
Well, that's sort of the thing.  Deflecting blaster bolts, cutting droids, and slicing open doors is decidedly not normal use for a lightsaber.  Normal use is to hang on the belt and stay there.  It's a weapon of last resort.

That said, an activated lightsaber recycles the vast majority of the power it emits if the beam isn't cutting anything.  So you could deflect blaster bolts more or less indefinitely.  Cutting does deplete power, but the power cells are advanced enough that you're looking at many many hours of active cut time before you need a recharge.


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

[User] How small can a gas planet be?

[Assistant]
This is very temperature dependent, the reason planets lose atoms/molecules of gas is mainly due to thermal loss, atoms which have sufficient energy to get to escape velocity and leave the planet.  For small planets the energy required is very low (compared with say, the same thing on the earth) and a high fraction of molecules in the gas have an energy above escape velocity, leading to rapid loss until the "planet" would boil off entirely.

If however the planet was in orbit of a dead star (say a brown dwarf) then it could be at a very low temperature (~3 Kelvin) and very small bound states of gas might be possible, but there is no obvious way these could be observed and probably wouldn't be considered planets anyway but "gas dwarfs".


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

[User]
Woah. Is this normal for a rejection letter?

I've only published a couple other things and have definitely never encountered/heard of anything like this level of contempt in a rejection letter... I mean, *you've already rejected it.*

I feel like the reviewer initially ended the evaluation with KILL YOURSELF before thinking better of it.

Here it is:

>This article is *not scholarly at all*, despite its ambitions.
>
>It jumps about a great deal, touching on everything from Greek myth to Russian romanticism to Alexandre Dumas to the American TV series *The West Wing*.
>
>The author's understanding of literature, and of cultural representation as a whole, is essentially mimetic: i.e. s/he has little or no sense of how literature functions as *literature.* It implies that misrepresentation can simply be corrected by *accurate* representation, although what an accurate representation of the Caucasus would be remains unclear.
>
>The main point the article makes, which is that Edward Saids model cannot be applied to Russian literature, given Russias historically distinct relationship to the Orient and to itself, has been said before and much more eloquently, by people with a real knowledge of Russian imperial history and of Russian literature. There is a vast scholarly literature on the subject.
>
>The author does not reference any Russian sources in Russian, does not seem to know Russian, and offers no close readings of the literary texts which are referenced.
>
>At the end of the article, the author states: "Western scholarship has tended to pass over Eastern scholarship with indifference, as Said knew only too well. In fact the author does not display any knowledge of Eastern scholarship either, except via a reference to Vera Tolz. How Eastern scholarship would change our understanding of the subject would seem to constitute an important aspect of the conclusion, but we are left none the wiser.
>
>There also appears to be a page or a section missing (the transition from pp. 12 to 13).

[Assistant]
Being in a slavic field, this letter reads like the usual frustrations of slavic academics with well-intentioned Americans repeating all the problems and cliches of colonial arrogance while purporting to study it.

Does your essay acknowledge concepts like "internal colonization" and Etkind's seminal book on the same, which basically examines the same argument (how Russian colonialism is different from Western colonialism, being primarily oriented towards the self, rather than an exotic other) or is it literally re-inventing the wheel of Said vis-a-vis Russia?  Why doesn't it involve a single source from Russian?  What is the status of literature here?

These are legit questions and it is outrageous that they even need to ask them. How can a scholar not address these issues before pursuing print?


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

[User]
ELI5: how do birds stay in the trees on really windy days?

I watch my heavy garbage cans blow over from the strong wind but I have never seen a bird blow away! How do they stay in the trees during storms and strong winds?

[Assistant]
They have perching feet that are designed to clamp down harder if something tries to pull them off a branch so they wont get blown out of a tree, but theyre also not that interested in going for a roller coaster ride as the treetops get lashed by wind gusts.

During extreme weather, birds will shelter near the center of trees with good leaf cover or in lower shrubs.

They usually dont try to fly unless necessary, its difficult and tiring to navigate in strong winds.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why so many walking based vehicles?

From what I know of engineering, walking based vehicles don't tend to make it past the planning stage, for many reasons. They're inefficient, they're prone to damage, they're unstable, particularly in combat situations.

Wheels or tracks are more simple and more reliable. In a universe which has those *and* vehicles that can hover, it seems silly that the empire's land forces are reliant on walkers.

[Assistant]
A walker like the AT-AT was designed for one purpose only. Fear.

The exact same payload and armament could be installed on a hover platform. However the sight of something so big, lumbering towards you, the sound and feel of each foot as it thumps the ground passing through you, instills a primal sense of fear in an army. It's not just a tank coming towards you, but it is some unholy hybrid of machine and beast, hunting you down.

That fear goes a long way in wining a battle, and is an essential part of the Imperial battle strategy.

As for why, you have yo remember that this is a civilization that has "solved" gravity and spacetime, and has done so for thousands of years. Litteraly anyone of any economic station, from the rich to the middle class to the dirt poor can own an hover vehicle. Ships that can fly across the galaxy in a matter of days are affordable.

The need to worry about the stability of a vehicle over uneven terrain is no longer nessasary. A self correcting hover gyroscope can solve that issue, and is standard on every vehicle. So a walker is no more likely to fall than a wheeled vehicle is to flip or a hover vehicle is to loose it's cushion.


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

[User]
How accurate is "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin?

I'm just wondering if it still fits with our modern understanding of what evolution is. What did he get wrong? What did he get right? etc.

EDIT: Grammar.

[Assistant] Well Darwin didn't know about genetics , so he had to guess about a heritability system. He also didn't have all the fossils we have now and mentions that the lack of fossils is a problem. But you could see both of those more as predictions that came true rather than mistakes.


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

[User]
Why do we need to sleep?

I know the question sounds a bit silly, but for real: Is it a biochemical necessity? Wouldn't there also be an evolutionary advantage with being able to hunt 24/7? And, consequently, are there any species that do not sleep?

**Edit:** Thank you all for your input so far! Very intriguing, indeed, and certainly a hard nut for science to crack. I've Google-Scholar'ed around a bit and found publications from 1901 to 2005, all saying "while we don't know *why* we need to sleep..." - unfortunately all paywalled so I can't check them out more closely before I get back to work tomorrow...

[Assistant]
Animal species with atypical sleep: whales and dophins can rest their brains one hemisphere at a time. Fishes can swim in their sleep. Common swifts can sleep in four-second intervals while in flight (studied by Emile Weitnauer).

Muscles must rest to restore ATP, brains need energy and oxygen, food needs to be digested It makes sense to align these cycles and have one state where the entire body is resting, and another where it is entirely available.


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

[User] ELI5: What's all this about Stem Cell research and why is it so controversial?

[Assistant]
Human bodies are made of many types of cells, all with their own special purpose. Putting a lot of the cells together eventually creates an organ. A heart is made of heart cells, a brain is made of brain cells, and etc. But because cells are so specialized, they cannot be used for anything else. A liver cell could not be used to replace a skin cell, for example. Cells recreate themselves by cloning, kind of like making a baby cell.

That's what is so special about stem cells. As it turns out, all cells started as stem cells (or are the baby cells of stem cells or their babies). Which means every stem cells has the ability to become any other cell! This is very useful because if a person is missing certain special cells, they can (potentially) use stem cells to replace them!

The controversy comes from two things actually. The first is how they get the cells, and the second is how they can be used.

The first controversy comes from how stem cells are collected. Unfortunately, the easiest way to find a stem cell is to find a human that is young enough to have unspecialized cells. This means using an unborn human fetus. However, there is good news. There have been methods discovered that can revert a specialized cell into a stem cell. This means it might not be necessary to use human fetuses to advance stem cell research.

The second controversy comes from cloning. It is theoretically possible to clone a human using stem cells, since the stem cells can (potentially) change into any form. But there is good news on this side as well. If it is possible to clone an entire human, it is definitely possible to clone a single organ. This means that if someone needs a liver transplant, they can simply grow it using stem cells!


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

[User]
Why is there such strong disdain towards non-physicalist theories of consciousness?

I say disdain, cause I've read a few papers and articles recently and it seems like alongside regular criticisms of stuff like dualism, panpsychism, a lot of people really seem to have these really like....emotional reactions to it. Whether it be throwing insults and buzzwords or being just completely dismissive and scornful towards the mere existence of other ideas.

[Assistant] A lot of these other ideas depend on undiscovered or undetected physics (or some other nature for the universe), for example that the brain is a radio for consciousness, but the argument doesn't make a claim for the medium of transmission or what the underlying nature really is in a physical way at all etc, so this makes it less-well founded under the scrutiny of current understanding. People have very strong beliefs, and argue very passionately or even claim that we can't know anything about consciousness at all.  Coming up against that passion would make anyone salty about the whole thing.  The journey to Physicalism being a natural conclusion is very short for some people today and the frustration isn't always dealt with responsibly or with patience and charity.


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

[User]
[Stephen King's IT] What did It eat before humans?

From my understanding, It arrived on Earth during the time of the dinosaurs, yet humans would not evolve for another tens of millions of years. Was *It* the asteroid that destroyed them? Did It wait hibernating until humans came around? I guess I could believe that, considering I know It is supposed to be some extradimensional cosmic horror from the space between spaces or something. But then again, didn't It *need* to feed once every 27 years? Why would It be cool chilling for literally 65 million years?

[Assistant]
Fear is one of the most fundamental emotions- for as long as there have been animals, there's always been *something* that could feel fear, and is thus a valid food source.

It might not have eaten *well*, raptors and entelodonts probably didn't have the most complex and tasty fears. But it would have been able to survive.

On a side note, this might explain why it's so needlessly cruel to humans, far beyond what it needs to feed- after millions of years of living on nothing but base, bland fears of prey animals, he wants to indulge as much as possible on the first good eating this worthless planet evolved.


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

[User]
Does economics still assume that people are perfectly rational or does it acknowledge that rational choice theory has shortcomings; it's just that we don't know how to fully interpret the (probably incomplete) information from behavioral economics to change the current models just yet?

One of the foundations of modern mainstream economics is the concept that people behave in the market as rational agents who choose what's best for their self-interest, but clearly, there are some goods and services that may still keep being demanded even if they're not in the best interest of the consumers. For blatant abuse, economists would say that the government can step in and regulate it, such as opioids and other drugs. However, there are some cases where the abuse isn't clear, such as companies that uses child psychology to better market their products to children, or social media features that keeps you hooked even though it has negative effects on your mental health.

It's fair to say that, sometimes, people are unable to weigh opportunity costs rationally. What's the current consensus in economics about all of these?

[Assistant]
There are many papers and models in mainstream economics that analyze or take into account deviations from the rational benchmark.

For example Daniel Kahneman and Herbert Simon are Nobel laureates in economics.  Kahneman was awarded the prize for his joint work with Tverski analyzing deviations from the expected utility model. Among other things, they are credited for prospect theory. Herbert Simons work in industrial organization had many behavioural features. Among other things, he is credited for the creation of search and satisficing models.

Behavioural economists also has many applications. For example there is a literature in finance studying how nudges and reminders help people have more healthy use of credit. There is also a literature examining why people buy memberships to the gym that they never use.

Recent empirical work on demand usually considers the fact that consumers have limited attention.

There is a large literature in game theory that considers people with limited memory.

So yeah, we teach perfectly rational consumers in core economics classes. But we often consider more general models.

There are for sure some professors and even departments that dont like behavioural economics, but every top 10 department (MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, Penn, Princeton, NYU, Columbia, Northwestern, Chicago) has large behavioural groups.


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

[User]
[Flash/Quicksilver] Does regular running speed affect super speed?

For example, if Usain Bolt and an average person both got super-speed, would Bolt be faster? If he would, then is the speed additive or boosted by a factor? Sticking with the example, would Bolt be \~20 mph faster, or would his speed increase proportionally to the other guy?

[Assistant] Flash gets his powers from the Speed Force and Quicksilver gets his powers from the High Evolutionarys genetic experiments. Theres no reason to think their normal human speed had any impact on the outcome.


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

[User]
[ASoIaF] Can a woman be knighted?

Say Jaime decides to go through the knighting ceremony with Brienne while they're in King's Landing. Any knight can make a knight, and she goes through a vigil at the Great Sept and is annointed with the seven oils and so on (Jamie threatens anyone who objects). Is she now a knight? If not, why not?

[Assistant]
This is a question of perception and clout - a bit like asking, "who is the rightful king of Westeros?" It depends a great deal on who you ask, and how much power they have to press their claim.

Certainly Brienne is a knight as far as Jaime is concerned, and he's one of the most powerful men in Westeros. And she's physically imposing enough that a lone commoner would be unlikely to vocally challenge her claim.

She certainly enjoys more knightly privileges than she would if, say, her dad had knighted her, or if she were built like Sansa. And she'd almost certainly be treated more like a knight in Dorne than at the Dreadfort.

This is a huge theme of the books: power resides where men believe it resides.


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

[User] How does the compass on the iPhone work?

[Assistant] Non-douchey answer: There's a chip inside that can sense magnetic fields (such as that generated by the Earth) and can use the field to determine the direction the phone is facing. There's really no way to explain simply how the chip works inside, as it uses fairly advanced principles of electromagnetism, but it actually works very much like a real compass, but digitally rather than analog.


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

[User]
[Bluebeard] Why did Bluebeard kill his first wife?

Some say he also told her to not open the cellar but she did anyway and he killed her because of disobedience. I don't buy that. I feel like the reason he killed his next wives were because they discovered he was a murderer and they could expose him, not because they were disobedient. Witnesses to his crime, you know. What did the first wife do that Bluebeard would kill her?

[Assistant] Apparently, it has been suggested that Bluebeard bathed in human blood to try to cure whatever condition caused his hair/beard to turn blue. If this is the case, he might have killed his wife to bathe in her blood just because he was insane and she was nearby. Bathing in her blood didn't cure him, so he remarried, forbade his new wife to open the cellar door, and when she disobeyed him, he decided to try bathing in blood again. Lather, rinse, repeat.


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

[User] [Star Wars] In Force Awakens, how did Han throttle back from lightspeed at the precise moment to be below radar but not crash into the planet? That's maybe a 500m window, so you'd have to come out of hyperspace with the precision of 1/600,000th of a second. Is it just "it was the will of the force"?

[Assistant]
Large objects like planets have a "mass shadow" that forces ships out of hyperspace. The exact point where you drop out depends on your hyperdrive configuration. Civilian ships are designed to drop into realspace on the edge of the planet's atmosphere, to prevent people crashing into planets if they get the coordinates slightly wrong.

Military ships want to drop out later, so they can reach a short way into an artificial mass shadow and surprise an enemy who is trying to jam hyperdrives. If you try to do that on a planet you'll materialise inside the planet's crust, so it's adjustable.

Han tuned the cutoff to the level of gravity that there was 500m above the ground. An incredible feat, definitely only possible by a very skilled pilot who knows his ship like the back of his hand, but it doesn't require microsecond reflexes.


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

[User]
ELIEIGHT: why don't we feel the earth moving?

My daughter posed this question on me, asking why we can't feel the rotation of the earth even if it's going at such great speeds. I gave a weak ass explanation about it probably having to do with gravity. So what is a more apt explanation?

[Assistant]
Because it's moving at (for all intents and purposes) a *constant* speed.  We feel acceleration, not speed.  (Think about driving in a car or flying in a plane--do you feel steady-state motion?)

An interesting caveat to this is the Coriolis effect, which can actually make missiles and planes seem to accelerate when traveling between different latitudes, but that's a different question.


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

[User] Why we are more flexible when were younger? What changes as we age so its harder for us to stretch?

[Assistant]
NAD or licensed professional but am a exercise science major + working under a physical therapist + occupational therapist.

Our bodies lose a small amount of flexibility as we age due to natural aging processes. This can occur due to a variety of factors such as a loss of water in our tissues and spine, increased stiffness in our joints, and a loss of elasticity throughout the muscle tendons and surrounding tissue.
Because the amount of lubricating fluid inside your joints decreases and the cartilage thins as you age, joint movement becomes stiffer and less flexible. Ligaments also shorten and lose flexibility, causing joints to feel stiff.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why they shut down Megaupload and why everyone is extremely happy that "Mega" is now on?

Sorry for living under a rock :(

[Assistant]
The Megaupload service allowed people to upload and share things that made some people unhappy. Some important people decided that this shouldn't be allowed, so they shut it down, but they did it in an unfair way that didn't allow Megaupload to explain themselves and caused the owner a lot of unhappiness. It also caused problems for many people who used the service.

Now the owner has released a similar service and made it in such a way that no matter how unhappy those same people get, it's much harder for anyone to do anything about it.

People are happy partly because they didn't think it was fair on the owner or the users that megaupload was shut down, so it's nice that he's able to try again and partly because many people enjoyed the service and are glad to have an improved version available to them. Also, people are mad at the way the original service was shut down and this feels like the owner is getting a bit of revenge on them, so people are happy about that too.


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

[User]
is the probability of living through a catastrophic failure in a plane better inside or jumping out of the plane?

Let's assume a 737 plane has lost total control of both jets. At this point, as the plane is in free-fall, would one have a better chance of surviving a buckled-in impact inside of the plane or would there be a lesser impact if one were to jump out, assuming he/she knows how to skydive (but with no parachute).

My thinking is lesser terminal velocity = less force of impact. But there's also more structural support from the seat/plane's general make-up.

[Assistant]
Airplanes go into free fall when the wings break off, or they stall. Loss of engines just makes it a very big glider.

A big airplane is made of aluminum and built to survive all manner of crashes. You are made of meat, squishy and can be damaged just by falling a few feet. Which do you think will handle the impact better?

Also: terminal velocity for a human is about 120 miles per hour. You splat. Badly.


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

[User] [MCU] If Thor were wearing the Iron Man suit, could he lift his hammer without breaking the suit?

[Assistant] Assuming Thor is, at that particular moment, worthy of Mjolnir, yes he could.  Thor's arm would be doing the lifting, and the suit's arm would just be going along for the ride, with no force (or minimal force) being exerted from the suit.


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

[User] ELI5: How does rolling reduce falling pain especially in parkour?

[Assistant]
Rather than absorbing the landing through the legs, rolling can dissipate that energy throughout your entire body. Instead of catching yourself and absorbing all your momentum in your ankles and knees, you roll, absorbing some through your legs, some through your shoulder, side, arm, etc.

It also helps maintain momentum, rather tan absorbing it all. You translate the downward momentum of a fall into forward momentum. This means you aren't putting as much stress on your joints, and you don't have to work as hard to move quickly.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the biological advantage of expressing sadness by leaking liquid from the eye sockets (crying) and why do some animals also do that?

[Assistant]
Crying isn't just expressing sadness, although that's definitely part of it. It's a response to stress that releases specific chemicals and actually serves to calm the person/animal down.

Visibly showing sadness or distress can be helpful to social animals though. It lets others know that individual needs help or support in some way. It would really surprise me to hear of any solitary animals that also do it.


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

[User]
[Red Dead Redemption] Why does Ross not shoot Jack with the shotgun instead of dueling?

In the final mission, Jack confronts Ross near a river bank hunting ducks with a shotgun. After a brief introduction, Jack tells Ross he's come to kill him, Ross tries to dismiss him but Jack persists and a duel starts.

Why does Ross not just fire the shotgun right in his hands at the unarmed Jack? It's not like he has any honour, (betraying John, disrespecting his corpse,Dutch's corpse, holding Jack and Abigail hostage etc) and there is no one watching. Why take the gamble with the duel when he could just kill Jack on the spot?

[Assistant] He's hunting ducks, so the shotgun is likely loaded with bird shot.  It probably wouldn't penetrate to any vital organs when fired at a human. And even if it did and eventually killed Jack, it would probably take a while and Jack would have lots of time to return fire with his more lethal weapon.


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

[User]
Whats the best book about the history and theories of Marxism since Marx and Engels?

Im looking for a book thats like the Marxist version of what Mitchell and Blacks Freud and Beyond were to psychoanalysis. The more theorists it covers, the better.

[Assistant] Leszek Koakowskis *Main Currents of Marxism* covers the various historical and theoretical developments of Marxism up to the year it was published (1976). Koakowski is generally critical of Marxism throughout the work, but its still fairly balanced and is about as thorough a treatment youre going to get in a single book.


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

[User]
When gas explodes, why is it a relatively small explosion which doesn't propagate further into the pipes? If all houses in the neighborhood are connected to the same gas line, why don't they all expolde?

Is there some sort of detection of leak which would close a section of a pipe? I am so confused!

[Assistant]
The explosion involves the rapid combustion of the gas and combustion requires a source of oxygen. Gas that has leaked from a pipe into a building has been thoroughly mixed with the oxygen in the air, making for a very combustible mixture.

The gas that's still in the pipes doesn't have the necessary oxygen to ignite.


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

[User]
[Samurai Jack] Why doesn't Aku fling Jack even farther into the future?

So the original portal of time that Aku opened up looked like it was one of his many superpowers, rather than something he owned. What's stopping him from sending him even farther, if only to buy some more time for himself? Hell what's stopping Aku from sending Jack into the death of the universe?

[Assistant] Aku sent Jack to a place where his own word is law and he can have hundreds of bountry hunters go after jack any time he wanted, he made a good choice. He was probably just thinking in the moment as well considering he opened the portal when he was about to be defeated. And either way, big deal that he's in that time...he could just destroy all the time portals if he wanted.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Why didn't Qui-Gon's body disappear when he died?

[Assistant] Preserving your consciousness after death (becoming a force ghost) is not a given. It's actually very hard to do. Qui-gon was actually the first person to ever do it, though he was only ever able to manifest himself as a disembodied voice. He then taught Yoda and Obi-Wan how to perfect the method, allowing them to fully stay themselves after they died.


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

[User] Will it ever be possible to measure the true size of an electron?

[Assistant]
The electron is governed by quantum mechanics, for which we need toss the concept of "size" in the definition we know it traditionally.

Consider the following scenario: Before you've made a measurement on the position of the electron, it's in a superposition of various position states. Making a measurement necessarily knocks out a whole bunch of these states (e.g. we knew it could have been anywhere in the room until we made our measurement, and when we made our measurement we became sure that it was in a small corner of the room), narrowing where we know the particle was when we made the measurement. More precise measuring apparatuses will eliminate more and more of those states in a given measurement until, in the limit of perfect empirical resolution, you resolve the electron to be at a single point in space, and its description becomes that of a Dirac-Delta: zero at all points except exactly where you've measured it. The Dirac Delta is an infinitely high spike and is infinitely narrow, so, to the truest meaning of what we know classically (we've pinpointed the electron to a position, now we measure its size) the electron has a volume of zero!

All subatomic particles, in that sense, have no size.

We could also *define* size to be the full-width at half maximum of scattering experiments, the same way we do with atomic nuclei, but scattering off an electron to determine properties like its dimensions is impractical: what smaller particle are you going to scatter off an electron to determine these properties?

**TL;DR** No, because the question isn't appropriate.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can certain electrical items turn on for a split second when they're not plugged in?

[Assistant]
I've never been able to see an item turn on when not plugged in, but certain ones I've seen remain on momentarily after being unplugged.

Either way, the answer is the same, capacitors. Capacitors are devices that store small amount of electrical energy. They are kinda like really fast charging/discharging batteries, but they hold a very limited amount of energy. A capacitor is essentially just two metal plates separated by a distance. Charge can't cross the gap, but it can build up on either plate. Capacitors have many, many uses.

Many electronic devices have pretty big capacitors in their power circuit. The wall uses AC power, the device uses DC. To convert you from AC to DC, one of the things you need is a capacitor. The capacitor helps smooth out the DC voltage. When unplugged, the capacitor can supply a limited amount of energy before it drains.


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

[User] ELI5: what does Wear leveling and write amplification mean to pc users with SSD's?

[Assistant]
In a SSD, due to the way the controllers work, there are "blocks" of memory (rather larger than a single bit or byte).  You have to rewrite the entire block at once to change any part of it - imagine a notebook where, in order to add a single sentence to the page, you had to erase the whole page and rewrite it with the new sentence added.  "Write amplification" is the ratio of how much total data gets written to the SSD due to this limitation, versus how much data you actually wanted to add or modify.

"Wear leveling" is an algorithm for the controller that tries to evenly spread out writes across all the blocks in the SSD.  This is because the process of writing a value to flash memory degrades it slightly.  It takes a lot of write cycles to make it fail, but it's still ideal if the entire device lasts as long as possible before any individual element fails, so the controller is programmed to try to spread things out instead of always writing data to the same block.


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

[User]
[WH40k] Who actually matters?

Which of the factions / gods / demons actually matter in the grim darkness of the far future? The WH40k universe is fairly static but who would prevail looking at a FFW version of the next 10,000 years? (And who would matter if we removed the Tyranids?)

[Assistant]
They all MATTER but it depends in what context. In the scope of the greater conflict between Order and Chaos? The Imperium, Chaos, and the Eldar are the most important. In terms of whose gonna win in the long run, probably the 'nids or the Orks given that, for all intents and purposes, they already have won. Their continued existence is winning, they have no long term goals other than to keep doing their thing and there is no immediately practical way to make them go away.

The only factions that don't really matter are the Tau, thanks to their small sphere of influence, and the Dark Eldar (who are more or less removed from the galactic conflict on the large scale.).


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

[User] ELI5: What makes a pizza cutter so much better at cutting pizza than the average knife is? Why don't we use pizza cutters for all foods if they're so much better?

[Assistant]
The crust material is bonded to itself with a decent cohesion, and the cheese/toppings on top is bonded to itself with a decent cohesion, but the bond between the two, between the cheese/toppings and the crust, is a much lesser intensity. If you use a knife to try to separate the crust from the crust and simultaneously the cheese from the cheese (a slice of pizza), you'll likely separate the cheese layer from the crust layer (the cheese will move all over the place).

If you use a pizza cutter, there is a vertical force without the horizontal friction, so a separation of the layers is less likely.

So a pizza cutter is helpful when you have layered foods where the layers can separate, and the distribution as a whole on the height axis is important.

Mhmmm, pizza.


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

[User] [Marvel/DC] How do professional sporting events know their athletes aren't using superhuman abilities, either deliberately and subtly or unknowingly using weak natural powers?

[Assistant]
I think if superhuman abilities were real, it would obliterate the olympics. the very idea of sporting is celebrating the human experience with the underlying assumption that we are more or less equal in the beginning and success is a direct result of hard work.

when you put mutants / enhanced humans / post-humans into the equation, this assumption no longer applies and you'd have no way to know at what level anyone is exploiting their powers.

OR, just as every game gets more and more challenging because we as a civilization get better at sports like everything else, this would through passive selection give way to a situation where every participant was a superhuman; exploiting *some* power and creating a relative equilibrium among the participants. this would of course change what it means to be a sports professional; probably changing the entire thing to a purely entertainment practice; a spectacle, like a circus.

OOR, this would be the main premise of a standalone comic book on sporting in a world with mutants, where the screening would be extremely extensive, ranging from pyhsical checks to other more obscure preventive systems like psychic power blockers in the competition area and what not. you know, you might as well have no physical upper hand and yet just mind control other participants to lose.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Does Hulk hate Bruce Banner?

Hulk, whilst already a very irritable fellow, really flips his s\*\*t whenever someone brings up "puny Banner". Hulk is regularly seen whining about Bruce and actively bucking against his efforts to temper him or make him into a force for good.

With that, does Hulk truly hate Bruce, and if so, why?

[Assistant]
Hate's a strong word... but frustrated with perhaps.

Hulk is, well, Hulk.  He's massive, powerful, and domineering.  That's his nature... but he's none of that when Banner is in control of their form.

Yea, by comparison Banner is weak and "puny" and the fact that he can (for a good part) keep Hulk bottled inside is a blow to Hulk's ego.   But Hulk realizes they are symbiotic.  He protects Banner from harm, danger, and even death.  In some aspects, he probably sees that imbalance and would rather just be "on" all the time.  But again... Bruce is the "prime", Hulk is secondary, always.  And that's frustrating to him.


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

[User]
ELI5:How does an antibiotic know how to destroy infections in random places in the body?

How does the antibiotic even find the infection and does it just flat out kill infection?

[Assistant] It affects your whole body.  Some people suffer adverse affects after taking antibiotics because they can throw off your entire system.  We've got plenty of organisms in our bodies that are good for us.  Sometimes, they get caught in the crossfire.


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

[User]
How do we know aliens (if out there) require the same resources we do to support life?

I've seen time and time again in press releases and news articles (most recently with NASA's latest release of the discovery of over 700 new planets) about how "___ number of planets found could support life". My question is, though, what is determining what supports life, and how do we know that aliens would require the same factors to live? Could they not have new biological features that would allow them to bypass that certain need?

For instance, water. It is obviously essential to life on our planet, but what if on another planet, the "common ancestor" of all species did not require water, and instead required a different material to survive? Is this a feasible thought, or is there something in the field of biology that would prevent this from being reality?

[Assistant]
What is usually left out of those reports is "Habitable for life **as we know it**".

What we are looking for is for environments which are similar to that of earth. Since we only have one sample of life in the universe, ours, we can only realistically look for life which is similar to our.

Is it possible that there is life out there that doesn't require water? Of course! But, if we don't know what conditions are needed for that life, how could we even begin to look for it? We can't look for something that we know *absolutely* nothing about. So we do the next best thing and look for something that we know *a little bit* about.

We can look at earth and say "this environment produced life". We can look at other environments and say "we have no idea if this environment would produce life or not". So it only makes sense to look for the conditions that we are *certain* can produce life, those conditions being that of life on earth.


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

[User] [Marvel] Could I rub some of the toxins that blinded Daredevil onto my eyes and receive similar sensory powers?

[Assistant] You would receive the raw capability, but remember that before he was trained by Stick his senses were just a nightmare and not as targeted as they later become.  So without someone training you, you still wouldn't be as good as Daredevil.


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

[User]
How does our sense of taste differ from other species?

I am not just asking about other mammals but even insects, or anything that can taste. Are there any animals that can't taste and just use smell? How about spiciness and sweetness?

PS. let me know if there is a better flair than the one I am using.

[Assistant]
Different species are adapted to detect different chemical compounds, according to the foods they generally eat (and what compounds those food species evolved to produce to avoid being eaten.)

Cats purportedly do not taste 'sweet' things as such- they lack the receptors for it, as obligate carnivores with little need for detecting sugars or starches.

Capsaicin, the main(?) compound for spiciness, was developed specifically as a defense against being eaten by mammals, since our mastication and digestion renders pepper seeds unable to sprout, where avian digestive properties do not. Birds can taste this compound, but have no adverse reaction to it- so the relevance of this example depends whether you consider the burning part of peppers to be part of their flavor.


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

[User]
[DC/Marvel/General Comics] How the hell does a civilization near identical to our own manage to exist along side such an absurd concentration of Metahumans, mutants, mutates, and peak humans that seem to be favored by the gods?

Drop even 1% of the population number of those superhuman individuals in our world and god knows what the result would be, but its near certain that shit would get considerably bad.

[Assistant] Because they basically cancel each other out. The heroes stop the villains from causing destruction on a wide scale, the villains keep the heroes too busy to use their powers to artificially advance society.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why there doesn't seem to be any defense against a DDOS.

I've seen some large companies websites taken down from DDOS, which I've heard is "so simple a child could do it", "The simplest  web attack possible". Why does it seem there is no defense against it to quickly thwart or turn the tables?

[Assistant] So a DDoS would be like me having 1,000 people an hour call your cell phone, constantly, so that you couldn't make any calls and (more importantly) people trying to call you couldn't get through. Though in the computer world it's more like 100,000 or 1,000,000 an hour. The point of the attack is to prevent legitimate web traffic from reaching a site. In that sense, it's fairly easy to do. All you need is enough people to ping a site, either voluntarily or via a botnet (a network of infected computers that will do this on your command). The solution for your phone would be to have another phone number that people knew to call in the event your main number was messed up, but that kind of coordination can be costly and confusing to people. Some websites and companies can reduce the impact of a DDoS by rerouting traffic, but it's not something that's easy to accomplish, especially for commerce based sites.


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

[User]
Experiences leaving the academy? How to even begin changing careers?

I feel simultaneously overqualified and underqualified for everything outside higher ed. How do you even begin to jump ship and find a different field? Anyone successfully leave the academy? Or, what are your experiences with desires to leave? Sticking it out?

[Assistant]
I am seriously looking to leave due to the terrible politics involved in gaining funding. Ironically, in the biomedical sciences there are a number of options to work in non-profits or in government-funded scientific organizations that doesn't involve being a researcher per se, but in assessing and/or managing research grants and proposals (i.e. the dreaded admin), but these jobs are much more secure than those of academic researchers.

I may end up going to the dark side...


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

[User]
ELI5: If MRIs can detect Cancer and early detection is so important then why don't we all go for full body MRI scans every year or so?

Seems at least on the surface that we already have a cure for Cancer and it's early detection. If it's a resource issue then why doesn't the government (or insurance companies in USA) simply buy a lot of MRI machines, seems they would pay for themselves though savings to the medical system.

[Assistant] Another thing to keep in mind is that while early detection is good, yes, MRIs don't just detect cancer early. They detect a whole host of things that are 99% of the time completely benign, however each of those things would still need to be looked into. That means extra cost of running tests, extra stress for the people undergoing these tests, extra man hours for doctors, all to detect something that... wasn't worth detecting.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did the world come to a global consensus on measuring time?

The 24 *hour* day seems like its been engrained into our collective conscience for millennia but my better judgement tells me this a recent phenomenon

The fact that we have different calendars also means that we have different ways to subdivide and conceptualize time, yes?

[Assistant]
The 24 hour day is credited to the Ancient Egyptians who divided the night into 12 hours, the day into 10, and 2 extra hours for twilight and morning.

While the Babylonians were obsessed with the number 60 and are credited with the invention of 60 minute hours and 60 sec minutes. They assumed the year was 360 days (60 x 6) which is also why there is 360 degrees in a circle, because they used degrees to track the stars.

The Romans invented the modern calendar, and the Julian Calendar was used until 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar (today's calendar) which was based on the Julian Calendar but added extra days to fix a bunch of mistakes in time keeping. But famously it didn't become standard for some time, the Russians in particular didn't adopt the Gregorian Calendar until 1918 during the founding moments of the Soviet Union. They famously showed up to the 1908 Olympics on the wrong day because they were still using the old calendar.

As for why The Gregorian calendar became the global standard, the answer is the usual... Colonization.

During the Industrial revolution accurate time became important. Prior to the invention of trains each town kept track of its own time and clocks from one town to another could be widely off. This also didn't really matter as accurate time keeping wasn't nearly as important in a medieval society. You wake up at dawn and do you work, you eat when you're hungry, take your breaks when it's appropriate, and you go to Church on Sundays. The idea of a 9 to 5 job started in the Industrial revolution.

With the arrival of trains suddenly accurate clocks were important in order to maintain the schedules. So accurate time pieces and calendars started becoming wide spread. The problem of standardizing time across Europe was actually a monumental task as it had never been done before.

Pocket chronometers (the ancestors to pocket watches) became important for ships as well because having an accurate clock is key to navigation using longitude.

These inventions were spread by the British Empire along with the Imperial Measurement system around the world.

But interestingly different countries still use different calendars and years.

Japan for example still names it's eras based on the current Emperor. This would be like saying "Year 70 of the reign of Elizabeth II" in England. This actually posed a problem recently as Era's aren't named until they start so when the new Emperor took over and the Era of Reiwa began there was a panic to update the computer systems and Calendars.


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

[User] If we were all completely rational beings with unlimited time to learn and research things, would we all arrive at the same set of beliefs and views?

[Assistant]
You want to look at the debate over epistemic uniqueness/permissivism. That's about (roughly) whether a single body of evidence could support multiple conclusions.

Roger White's 2005 paper is the contemporary starting point, Tom Kelly has some good work on this as does Miriam Schoenfield.


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

[User]
[Friday the 13th] How handicapped is Jason?

Like, we know he's apparently mentally disabled to the point of being mute, yet he's also capable of stalking, killing, and occasionally out smarting his victims. Where does he land on the intelligence scale?

[Assistant]
Really hard to say.  Could have been just physically malformed.

Since he's been living in the woods since his presumed death at 12 or so any only socialized with his batguano crazy mom since then.

But he shows remarkable faculty with all manner of hand and yard implements.  Has survived in he woods since he was a kid.  And had an 1st prize archery trophy. (so he was normal enough to compete as s kid)


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

[User]
I don't understand why many Americans deify their founding fathers, and I feel as though I'm missing something obvious. CMV.

The founders were obviously ahead of their time in many ways, and I think that they should be admired, but I don't understand why what the founders would have wanted (with regard to modern policy and government) should be considered. For reference, I am Canadian.

[Assistant]
American here. Gonna attempt the simple answer.

Really don't know if this is going to help or change your mind, but here it goes.  Maybe the reason is that we glorify our Founding Fathers the same way many cultures glorify their roots. It's a simple story that establishes us as a people, which we all can find common ground in. Think of Rome and the Aeneid. Romans probably ate that shit up. They probably told that story around campfires, and the politicians quoted it in their speeches. We're no different.

It's fun, it's heroic, it's (possibly overly) romanticized, and it's American. That's why we do it.


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

[User] [Spider-Man] How are superheroes like Spider-Man so strong without also having muscles that would allow so? Shouldn't Spider-Man with his strength be at least five times the size of a normal human from a biological view?

[Assistant] The molecular structure of his body is slightly altered to increase it's strength. IRL, the average person only used around 25% of their full muscle strength because using any more on a regular basis would splinter their bones. Spidey not only had his bones strengthened to allow him to tap into his full strength, but his muscle fibres also adopted a stronger structure, giving him much greater strength and durability than he would have otherwise.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do constellations stay in their shapes year after year?

Edit: Thanks for all the awesome answers, you people rock!

[Assistant]
Have your friend stand 100ft away from you and hold their hand straight up in the air. Then, have them move their hand an inch to the right or left. Were you able to see their hand move? Probably not since they were so far away.

Stars are so stupidly far away that they can move hundreds if not thousands of miles an hour relative to each-other, but as far as we can see they don't seem to be moving at all. Eventually the constellations *will* change shape, but it will take a very long time; much longer than humans will probably be around.


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

[User] If studies that are not successful in proving their hypothesis are generally not published, then how do we know what didn't work out. In other words, why don't scientists make the same mistakes over and over?

[Assistant]
1. Word of mouth.  There are scientific conferences, people will shoot the shit and throw out unpublished results, provided they are sufficiently uninteresting that they aren't worried about getting scooped.  "Oh yeah, we tried that, and we couldn't make it work".

2. There actually is a fair amount of duplication of effort.  If something seems like a logical step, probably multiple labs try it.  If they all fail, that's a pretty good indication that the hypothesis wasn't correct.

3. Some duplication of effort is good.  What if someone tried to test a hypothesis, and their experiment failed because it was a bad experimental design, or their reagents were bad and they didn't know it?  It's better that they not tell anyone, because they might scare others from attempting a similar experiment that might actually work.


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

[User]
[ELI5] Aging: how does it work? How does the body/cells one day know to start deterioration instead of growth? Why, when I'm young, can I regenerate tissues faster than I could in 30 years?

Basically just need an explanation as to how aging works, and why it works.

[Assistant]
Have you ever tried using a copy machine in an office or library to make a copy of a copy? The words come out kind of blurry even though the one you put in the machine can be read clearly.

Thats kind of how cells work. Your body is pumping out copies and gets it really close each time, but over years the cells just get a little worse at their jobs since they lose a few words from their instruction manual each time they copy.


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

[User] What is the heaviest element formed during neutron star collisions?

[Assistant] The endpoint of the r-process is still an open question. We know that it reaches heavy enough masses that fission starts to become important, and can lead to cycling in mass (capturing many neutrons, fissioning, and then the fission products continuing to capture many neutrons).


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Does a werewolf transform automatically on nights of the full moon, or do they physically have to have moonlight touch them to transform?

In the book and movie, Lupin doesnt transform until they are outside and the moonlight hits him. This implies he doesnt transform until contact is physically made. Doesnt this mean if someone doesnt want to transform, they could just build a windowless room in their house, like a basement? Or if they have no recourse but to transform on nights that where full moons occur, why doesnt Lupin transform when nightfalls while theyre still in the shrieking shack?

[Assistant]
From what we see of Lupin, it might be a matter of observing the moon, seeing as he did not transform until he gazed upon it. Or at least, seeing the moon accelerates the process.

Otherwise, the Shrieking Shack would not exist, seeing as Lupin could just hole himself up in a sealed-off room for the night, and have a clock to tell the time. (Unless he wasn't aware of that aspect, being effectively a primary/high school student). Thinking about it, that might be part of why he is absent at certain times of the month, since he seals himself in a windowless room, and avoids interaction, just in case.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do games go crazy when alt-tabbing?

When I minimize or switch to a different tab, it just freezes and turns to black before I see my desktop.
When I switch tab back to my game, sometimes it goes back flawlessly (especially when windowed). Sometimes, it takes a full minute before I can see my game again.

[Assistant]
You have your in-game settings configured for Full Screen, which means your video card is only rendering the game and is no longer rendering anything on your desktop for that screen.

When you alt-tab in full screen mode, the video card has to drop rendering for the game and switch to rendering the desktop again, which is why everything goes to black and depending on poor/lazy code in the game, can cause a crash or take an extended period of time.

This is why Borderless Windowed mode exists, the video card continues rendering the desktop behind the game, so alt-tabbing is very seamless while still providing a full-screen look.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do human babies cry so often, but other animal's offspring don't?

To clarify, I understand that there are baby animals such as birds that chirp an awful lot, and especially when their mother brings food. However, I don't see baby horses running around crying up a storm.

[Assistant]
Crying can be both an evolutionary advantage and disadvantage.  If babies can signal to their parents that they need attention, that is good.  But if crying inadvertently attracts predators or warns off prey, that is bad.  So whether babies crying is, on the whole, an advantage, depends a lot on the particular niche a species occupies in the ecosystem.

Humans are kind of outliers in that human babies are just spectacularly helpless compared to the young of other species.  However, humans are also apex predators, and are pretty smart and could figure out how to leave the babies at home during the hunt.


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

[User]
Why does starvation burn muscle and not fat?

When someone starves, the thing Ive heard is that the body will consume muscles instead of fat for energy. Is this true? Why would the body consume muscles that could be useful for getting food by climbing trees or hunting instead of consuming body fat, which is meant to be an energy source?

[Assistant]
It mostly burns fat - the fat is burned directly by the tissues that can, but that's not true of all tissues...

The brain needs some glucose (it can also be partly powered using ketones made from fat), and red blood cells can only be powered by glucose.

The body can make glucose out of the glycerol that is left over when triglycerides are broken down into fatty acids, and it can also make it out of amino acids.  If there's not enough glycerol to meet the needs of the brain and red blood cells, that energy can only come from amino acids.

\*Generally speaking\*, I'd expect that there's enough energy in the glycerol to make enough glucose.

Humans unfortunately don't have the machinery to make glucose directly from fat.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do smaller vehicles not use diesel fuel?

[Assistant]
For a long period of time Diesel was forbidden in the U.S. for new cars because it - historically - released way to much particulate matter into the air.  It wasn't worse as a greenhouse gas (global warming) but it was a disaster for air breathability - cities like LA just had to get smog out of the air.

It never really recovered from a brand perspective and when introduced with improvements the gas stations didn't have much diesel and the "pros" didn't make it worth it for the market to pick it back up.  The simplicity of the diesel engine was no longer valuable as reliability had been achieved on the more complex gasoline engines, and we had moved pas repairing small cars ourselves.  Diesel lived on in industrial settings where it was part of all sized vehicles.


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

[User]
[Dawn of the Dead 2004] is there anyway anyone could actually survive this long term?

Fast zombies seem impossible to survive personally.

As a bonus, what would the walking dead universe look like with the exact same rules (everyone has the virus and comes back after death) but as fast zombies.

[Assistant]
If someone was dug in at a location where a fully functional but bare-handed human couldn't force entry, they've got a fighting chance in the short term. That said, the backbone of American commercial and government logistics has been shattered; anyone not equipped to produce their own food (or take it by force, a la the residents of Fiddler's Green in Land of the Dead) has a ticking clock over their head, and once that clock hits 'zero', their options are A) do something desperate/stupid or B) die.

The people with the best shot at long-term survival are folks with a little patch of rural nowhere, far enough off the general radar that they won't be swamped by people fleeing the cities, with enough natural defenses to either cut off a horde entirely or bottleneck them in a manageable fashion, and enough water and crop growing land to maintain a population. If they can keep their heads above water for a few years, a few hard freeze/thaw cycles can bring the undead numbers down to levels that would permit a re-establishment of outside trade and salvage.

If Walking Dead was done with fast zombies, they'd have to change the name of the show/comic to "The Completely Dead". Rick likely would have been killed during one of his earliest encounters with the dead, and most of the other protagonists wouldn't have done much better.


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

[User]
[Doom Eternal] why is the Ballista the only weapon that sends Doom Guy backwards when he fires it in the air?

Surely the super shotgun or the rocket launcher have a pretty big kick too but they dont push him back at all.

Bonus: how does the chainsaw refill itself?

[Assistant]
Especially in Doom Eternal, a lot of the weapons have some sort of supernatural bent to them.

The physics involved in the Doom Universe dont really conform to our own. Doom guy can manifest weapons out of thin air, refill his ammo and health by sucking the lifeblood out of his slain enemies (not just an in-game mechanic, its also imploded by lore)