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

[User]
Prof invites me to travel with her for research but unpaid. Should I take it?

Currently an undergrad finishing school at the end of this year.

A professor who has similar research interests as I told me about his trip to country X next year for a research project when I visited her office this week.

I had been wanting to go to country X for a while, was originally planning to go on my own.

The professor mentioned that the cost for living could be subsidized but she have no fundings for my other expenses. Since the country is very underdeveloped, the transport and all other expenses in total are estimated to be around 5k USD for 20-25days.

At the same time. I do have job offers lined up after graduation which could help pay off my 15k in student loans.

Even though the research project really fits with my future endeavors and will perhaps boost my grad school application and resume. A part of me just dont feel right about working for free.

Should i deny this offer or take this as an opportunity?

Thanks in advance.

[Assistant] Before you throw in the towel, talk with the researcher about your concerns, especially if you are really interested. Also, depending on your school, sometimes there are awards or other funding (not loans!) that you can receive to help with living abroad to conduct research.


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

[User] ELI5:How do sports commentators have access to such seemingly obscure facts and stats at all times?>

[Assistant] There was a show on ESPN years ago about a company that gets all the obscure stats for them. Can't remember the name of the company. They did the crazy stuff,  like in baseball when they tell you this is the first time in 17 years a left handed batter has hit a home run off an ambidextrous pitcher in the month of September in back to back games.


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

[User]
[Stargate] Why does Teal'c believe Jack can stand against the Goa'uld?

Just watched Children of the Gods (the first episode of SG-1) the other day for the first time since I was like ten, and despite your typical small/funny incongruities (the guys in tech couldn't figure out the obvious on/off switch on a staff weapon?) it's very solid on the whole.

But there was one scene I really had a problem with: the Jaffa of Apophis, led by Teal'c advance on a disarmed SG-1 and the hapless offerings to the gods they were thrown in with, and Jack says "I can save these people, help me," to which Teal'c responds "Many have said that... but you are the first I believe" (both paraphrased) as he turns on his own men.

Is there a Watsonian explanation for Teal'c's declaration here?

Because it feels like there's a missing scene where Teal'c and Jack speak (perhaps in context of an intereogation) and Jack finds out about Teal'c's misgivings about his gods and his job while Teal'c finds out about Earth's vast population and industrial capacity, or perhaps that Ra died by Earth's weapons and Jack's hand.

But without such a scene, Teal'c has had three interactions with these new people and their technology:

1. Taking a host candidate from Earth, where a small squadron of Jaffa easily defeated a small squadron of airmen with assault rifles, abducting one and killing the rest at the loss of two Jaffa. Reinforcements numbering perhaps twenty arrived but were apparently unwilling to engage the Jaffa, as they and Apophis withdrew unmolested.

2. Taking host candidates from Abydos, where a small squadron of Jaffa engage in a fairly one sided roflstomp of mixed forces of Airmen and Abydonian tribesmen at the loss of one Jaffa.

3. Taking SG-1 prisoner without a fight on Chulak.

None of these strike me as confidence inspiring encounters, and while Earth DOES have other fun things at their disposal that aid them greatly as early as by the end of the episode, none have yet been seen by or mentioned to Teal'c, nor is he, to the best of my knowledge, aware of the circumstances of Ra's death or the defeat of his Jaffa.

Is an explanation ever offered for this?

[Assistant]
About 5 mins before that, Teal'c identifies Jacks watch as none-Goa'uld technology, upon asking where they are from, Daniel draws the gate-symbol for Earths point of origin. Teal'c clearly doesn't want his colleagues to see this as he erases it with his staff.

In the next episode, *The Enemy Within*, Teal'c tells of an old legend of the world of the Tau'ri, the planet in which beings of this (human) form first evolved. Who were enslaved by the Goa'uld until they rose up and overthrew them.

I believe that Teal'c already suspected that these people were the Tau'ri, the humans who once successfully defeated the Goa'uld, now having had thousands of years to develop unrestricted. He didn't have confirmation until Colonel Kennedy informed him that humans evolved on Earth, but the humans with strange technology and that address sure seemed to get his hopes up.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do many things appear darker when wet?

[Assistant]
Because when something is wet, light bounces around inside it more (as opposed to merely bouncing off the surface) before being reflected back to the eye. The more the light bounces, the more of it gets absorbed, the less reaches the eye, and the darker the object appears.

The reason the light bounces more is that the moisture increases the average scattering angle of the light particles. When the photons strike the surface of the wet material most of them bounce forward and hence deeper into the stuff rather than backward toward the eye.


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

[User]
Why does Kant believe that space and time are 'intuitions' and not 'concepts'?

I'm currently making my way through the Transcendental Aesthetic in the first critique, and while I understand Kant's claims that space and time are a priori forms of intuition, I don't understand his arguments that claim that they are intuitions and not concepts.

I'm thinking perhaps the misunderstanding is arising from not fully understanding what Kant means by a concept. If anyone can shed some light on this that'd be appreciated.

[Assistant]
Kant argues for why he thinks space and time are a priori and are originally intuitions rather than concepts in the aesthetics. See around B38 where argument for space being an a priori intuition starts.

For Kant, you can have concepts of space and time, but their "original representations" are intuitions.

For Kant, intuitions (not to be confused with colloquial use of the term; Kant's intuition has almost no relation to the ordinary sense of the word today) are representations that directly (immediately) relate to its objects. For humans, intuitions are associated with sensibility that is the ability to recieve sense matter. "Roughly" speaking, intuitions are more "raw" ("unconceptualized") representations. Concepts, on the other hand, operates from the faculty of understanding at a discursive level through our intuition i.e it doesn't directly related to its objects but relate to them through our sensible intuitions.

For Kant intuition are of particular/singular objects whereas a concept can be somewhat like a universal - it can denote some element which is possessed by multiple representations (for example, the concept "red" can be possessed by multiple colored objects). However, Kant believes concepts themselves cannot contain within itself an infinite representations; whereas intuitions can have a sort of infinity (or unboundness) in it. Kant believes space and time has this sort of infinity. As Kant argues space is singular (there is purpotedly only one space), and it can present an inifnity of spatial objects in it. Kant believes all these fit space being an intuition rather than a concept. There are similar arguments for time.


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

[User] [Death Note] What would happen if you wrote 'old age' as cause of death?

[Assistant]
The death must happen inside 30 days, so if you thought that this would be a nice insurance for a long life, this isn't so.

More likely the body will fail in a manner that can be later determined to have been hereditary (eg. the heart wall had been weak from birth but gone undocumented until the person died due to it at age of 25).


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

[User]
[X-Men Apocalypse] The worshippers of En Sabah Nur.

These people have been worshipping a god whose name is Morning Light for thousands of years. Why didn't anyone try shining some day light on his tomb? With a name like that, you'd think it's an obvious evolution of rituals.

[Assistant] We don't know when they actually found his tomb.  If they had known for thousands of year they most likely would have cleared a lot of the rubble and built something above it more substantial then a vendor stand hidden with a carpet.  Finding the pyramid was probably a very recent occurrence.


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

[User]
[DC] What are the Justice Leagues thoughts on Green Arrows more socially liberal style of crime-fighting? Do they agree with it?

Dinah and Hal are self-explanatory, but what about the rest of them??

[Assistant]
I think the League considers him an important voice and alternate voice to someone like Batman or Question.  He doesn't think all villains are irredeemable and might be victims themselves.  The Green Lantern/Green Arrow series sometimes dealt with drugs and gangs and how crime can be more complicated than punch bad giys.

I definitely think the more compassionate heroes like Superman and Flash value GA's views.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does a rubber or plastic can melt in room's temperature while it has not been used for a long time

Recently I've encountered some strange things while cleaning up my shelves for the move. Somehow the one of the rubber bands stash just some how melted in to one blob of sticky rubber. Same with couple plastics/rubbery parts as well. It has been sitting in the shelve for approximately a year and wasn't touched since I didn't need it at the time. As well it has always been in the room temperature differentiating from 15 in winter/spring to whooping 35 (on super hot summer, perks of living in the damn Western Side of the building)

So ELI5, how the hell this happened.

[Assistant] The material rubber bands are made of are naturally more liquidy and they are treated with chemicals to make them tough enough to be useful, over time this breaks down back into their gooshy state, heat and sunlight speed this up.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the importance of the Iceland Pirate Party?

[Assistant]
The Pirate Party, contrary to popular belief, is not a single issue party. They at one point had eight "spokes" (of their platform wheel), including information freedom, freedom of expression & communication, freedom to share, freedom of knowledge, and government/public transparency. Copyright and patents trounce all over these rights (to varying degree). Copyright maximalists called sharers "pirates", and it became a label that sharers ultimately reluctantly embraced, much like "Obamacare" ultimately was embraced by Obama.

The party is important because it's largely composed of technologically literate people who are devoted to securing the freedoms they espouse in the modern digital age.


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

[User]
ELI5: As someone who has never skateboarded in my life, I don't understand how jumping off the deck pulls the whole board up with you. Every time I see this it's black magic to my brain. How does this work?

EDIT: Wow, thanks for all the info!

[Assistant]
Think of it as though the surface of the board is covered in sandpaper. It's all scratchy, right?

Now, pop a wheelie. The front of the board rises. The front of the board is now higher than the back of the board.

What the skater does next is, he jumps with the foot at the back, and at the same time, slides his other foot forwards. The friction of his foot on the 'sandpaper' surface of the board catches on it. And because of the angle and direction that the friction is being applied in (forwards!), this forces the back of the board to lift to try and be level and move forwards as well.

Get a piece of paper, and have it sit on the ground so that one edge is touching, and the other edge in the air. Now push your hand against the top of the paper in a sliding motion. If you get it just right, you can force the back edge of the paper to lift up so that the paper is flat, before it falls back to the earth.

This is what a skateboarder is doing with their feet.


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

[User]
[I have no mouth and I must scream] How did AM manifest all those tortures in the real world of it's just a computer program? How was it even able to change its victims physically?

Asking this question again and again was the one thing that kept me from having a full blown panic attack after reading this story. That and reciting the Litany against Fear again too many times.

[Assistant] Its a computer program that had taken over the entire resources of the planet. Its dedicated every machine on future Earth on torturing the last humans. So creating new environments and rearranging their bodies is a simple task for it.


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

[User]
[Fraggle Rock] I'm not far into the series... But I have *many* questions. How do the Fraggles all know the songs they sing? It seems almost spontaneous but they all seem to know the lyrics and dance steps quite well.

Also, The Fraggles seem to live in the wall of an inventors shop. But on the otherside of the wall there isn't the world. It's a farm kept by The Gorg family.

Also, do The Gorg rule over actual land? Or are they terribly mistaken? There seems to be just 3 of them and seem to be quite upset by their lack of subjects.

[Assistant]
The Fraggles don't live in a wall, they live underground. The wall just has a hole in it that connects to underground. If you watch the intro, you can see Gobo traveling down tunnels, which wind about underground and many of which are interconnected. The Gorgs live in a land that is connected to one of the tunnels.

As for the songs and dances, they are cultural. The Fraggles live a life of fun and leisure, so song and dance happens often. You see and hear them enough growing up and you'll learn them. Basically, they've been exposed to them since birth and learned through observation like human kids.


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

[User]
(ELI5) If a person is having anaphylactic reaction, could making them bungee jump have the same effect as an EpiPen?

Because wouldn't an action like bungee jumping provide a large amount of adrenaline pumping through the body? Isn't that the whole purpose of an EpiPen? To provide extra adrenaline to the body?

[Assistant] I would doubt it. One of the text book symptoms of anaphylaxis is a "feeling of impending doom". There are not many conditions in medical literature that are described as having a "feeling of impending doom." The stress of such an event would likely cause a massive sympathetic response as your body releases as much epinephrine and norepinephrine it possible can. The fact you're getting hypotensive and going into circulatory shock means the histamines are overwhelming your bodys maximum ability to defend itself through epinephrine release. Epinephrine injections are kind of like you secretly supplying weapons to your adrenal glands so they can tip the scales of the war on histamine.


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

[User] [Metal Gear] What is the context behind the meme speech "why are we still here, just to suffer?"

[Assistant]
In Game: Snake has rescued Miller, but he's lost an arm and damaged his leg, his former organisation that he worked with snake so hard to build (Militaires sans frontieres) has been nearly completely destroyed and numerous friends and allies have been lost.

He's a bit bitter about it.


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

[User] ELI5: Many apps ask you to buy an ads-free version for a couple dollars. Do they actually make more from this $2 sale than from displaying ads?

[Assistant] Depends on your usage. If it is a banner ad, they typically get ~.01-.2 per ad. Video ads can generate 2-10x that. So basically you would need to play less than ~100-20000 ads worth of time for the app to come out ahead charging a fixed upfront price.


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

[User]
[DBZ]How do they enforce the gates of hell?

Sorry maybe my question is answered in some of the anime, my only knowledge of dragon Ball is from the manga. Also, I hope that names I'll use are correct for you, I read them in French and I know some of the names are different:

When Goku dies his first time, while fighting Radditz, he meet King Emna, who decides who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.
He tells Goku that he sent Radditz to hell obviously and even if he put up a fight, he handled him.

Goku is impressed and actually wants him Emna to train him but God tells him that Kao is stronger than Emna.

Kao seems to me to be powerless against Vegeta, let alone Freezer. If Emna is not that strong, how does he forces strong bad guys to go to hell?

I remember something about people in hell not having their old body, but Emna also says something to Goku about him being foolish to risk go to on the "snake road" when he can go to heaven. What I get from this is that people keeps their bodies and strength before being sent to hell.

[Assistant]
We have some examples of how the afterlife handles this, most of them are noncanon though.

- King Kai is able to train Yamcha, Tien, and Chaotzu to the point where they're able to effortlessly handle the entire Ginyu squad in an anime filler segment.  This implies he's either a lot stronger than He lets on, or he's able to train enforcers to be strong enough to handle just about anything.  Remember, at this point the Ginyus are the strongest non-Freeza fighters in the galaxy.

- Even if that doesn't count, Tien puts up a pretty good fight against imperfect Cell in a canon encounter.  This implies he's strong enough to solo just about anything short of an SSJ by this point, and King Kai's training is the only reason that makes sense.

- in one of the movies, a concentrated evil called Janenba shows up and starts wrecking hell.  The gods enlist Goku and Pikuhan who were fighting in an other world tournament at the time for the title of strongest.  Goku was around SSJ3 at this point, and Pikuhan was on the same level, so it implies the Gods are pretty routinely training warriors up to this level, and will enlist them when evil fighters show up and start wrecking the place.


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

[User]
[Star Trek/X-Men]How would the Federation react to the existence of Mutants?

Given their stance on Augments and Genetic Engineering, would the Federation have a negative view of Mutants since they are potentially far more dangerous?

[Assistant]
They'd probably be outcasts.  Not herded into ovens most likely, but kept out of Starfleet and on one of the Federations' unsettling paradise prisons.  Just like augments, it would be a serious challenge to the Federation's humanist/semi-communist philosophy.

But the mutants have a secret weapon, as their leader is also undercover as the captain of the the Federation Flagship, and possesses one of the most powerful strategic, legal, and rhetorical minds in history...


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

[User]
[Grimm] Why do most Wesen act surprised to learn that Nick alongside being a grimm is also a detective?

Granted to the best of my recollection this only seemed to be a thing in the early seasons but the Wesen usually acted surprised or confused to learn that Nick was a detective.

My question is why? It seems almost everyone in the Wesen and Grimm are capable of having normal day jobs or be public figures living ordinary lives. In fact one of the resistance leaders who acts confused upon finding out that Nick is a cop is journalist well known enough that Nick already knew of him. So if everyone else is capable of being a part of society despite who they are why does everyone seem surprised that a Grimm is able to as well?

Granted i've only now just started rewatching this series for the first time since 2017 - 2018 so it's possible they explain this later and I just forgot.

[Assistant] It's only referenced but never fully explained in the series. Most Grimms are members of the royals personal militaries. They don't have day jobs they just hunt monsters full time. At least a handful being the Burkhardts and Trouble's family seem to be freelance outsiders. Nick's family never worked fully for the royals and mostly did nomadic wesen hunting when unexplained murders happened. The idea that a librarian could moonlight as a monster slayer is just incredulous among the wesen community. Nick being a detective is likewise bizarre to them. For the wesen it's like hearing that a hitman works as a bellhop in between contracts. Or that the grim reaper needs to pay bills.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are migrants willing to pay thousands of pounds to get from France to Britain when France is a pretty nice anyway?

There has been a lot on the news about how migrants are swarming Calais to get across the channel and are paying thousands, or even tens of thousands of pounds to be smuggled over. What is so attractive about living in Britain instead of France?

[Assistant]
The bottom line is, the UK spends a lot on welfare for domestic and asylum seekers, and the welfare is more easily accessible compared to other European countries. Also, French welfare benefits have more stringent criteria, and stop after a certain duration. Furthermore, countries like France, Sweden and Germany crack down on illegal immigrants more so than the UK, and although they take their fair share of immigrants, they are more inclined to decline asylum.

Migrants get told stories about how great it is to live in the UK regarding opportunities. They pay thousands for travel and to be smuggled out their country etc. just to get here, and usually end up in massive debt.

At the end of the day. They want a new life, to escape persecution, to be able to live a life they can be proud of, earn a decent living, and give their family a brighter future.  They are not stealing 'your jobs'. They have sacrificed a lot to get here, in the hope of a better life. Not necessarily always legitimately, but it is an admirable feat none the less.

Edit: clarity

For those of you who say immigration is bad. Get a god damn education on the topic before you start making arguments on what you don't understand. Immigration is the bedrock on which the greatest nations in the west have built upon. Granted it needs to be handled, and managed efficiently for sustainability and controlled growth in the 21st century. But it is vital none the less.


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

[User]
Do sinking objects have a constant acceleration?

Do sinking objects accelerate constantly (non-zero)? I had an idea that the displacement of the fluid might be constant, keeping acceleration at 0 after some threshold (kind of like terminal velocity?)

[Assistant]
Objects falling through water will reach terminal velocity when the force of gravity pulling them down (proportional to mass) is equal to the drag pushing them up (proportional to area times speed^2) plus bouyancy (proportional to volume), exactly the same as in air. Speeds vary greatly by density and shape, but for the types of things you can throw, 1-2 meters per second is typical. Most objects will reach or approach their terminal velocity within a few seconds, then fall at terminal velocity for the rest of their trip to the bottom.

Life gets more complicated when you start to include viscous forces, surface boundary layers, added mass, etc., especially for small objects, but drag = gravity - buoyancy will get you pretty close.


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

[User]
Why do some beer bellies feel firm if they're caused by extra fat? Why aren't they soft and squishy like fatty tissue in other areas of the body?

Okay, so odd question, I know. But sometimes when a man gets a beer belly, it can feel kind of firm, like the belly of a pregnant woman. I searched a little online for why, but all I could find were "causes of beer bellies" which, is obviously extra calories leading to extra fat.
What I want to know is why the beer bellies are firm instead of feeling soft and squishy like other fat.
So why is that?

[Assistant]
This is not specifically down to excess fat as a result of calories in alcohol, but down to the difference between subcutaneous ('soft') fat and visceral fat, which is fat stored deeper in the body, which also feels firmer.

For reasons mostly down to genetics, some people divert excess calories to visceral fat, while others produce mostly subcutaneous fat. This is largely responsible for the difference in 'feel'.


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

[User]
Why do flesh, tissue, muscle, bone, skin all heal on their own but Teeth don't?

You break a bone and it will heal. Tear a Ligament or muscle, it will heal. Cut skin, it heals. Why do bad/cracked teeth not heal and go back to normal after a while?

[Assistant]
There are two cell types responsible for making teeth. The ameloblasts and the odontoblasts. The ameloblasts make the hard enamel that protect your teeth and the odontoblasts make the softer dentin that makes up the core of your tooth.

Enamel is deposited on your tooth like frosting. Inside-> outside. This means that the ameloblasts are on the outside of the tooth when it erupts. As a result, they all die, and you lose your ability to generate new enamel.  The odontoblasts live on after eruption, so you can generate new dentin, but it is the enamel which makes your teeth what they are, so if you lose that, you are SOL.


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

[User]
Why does it take longer to delete big files if all we do is unlinking them ?

Hi guys,

It might appear as a stupid question but I haven't found much googling this, just one guy telling it takes lot of time deleting "multiple blocks linked together".

Intuitively, I would have thought that deleting time would be linear with the number of files but I guess what I picture as the address location is way more complex in reality.

Can someone please enlighten me ?

[Assistant]
The time taken to delete a file is proportional to its size, because a larger file means more chunks to delete. You need to go through and delete all chunks, not just the first chunk.

(Obviously simplified, but that's basically it.)


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

[User] When healing from a cut or gash (may or may not require stitches), what happens to the damaged blood vessels? Do they reconnect perfectly, are new ones formed, or do damaged veins and capillaries just have a dead end now?

[Assistant]
Small blood vessels (capillaries) will be stimulated t grow back into hypoxic tissue by growth factor proteins that the hypoxic cells send out.  This is called angiogenesis, and it happens all the time.  For a skin cut, that's about it.

Large blood vessels are more complicated.  This is called vasculogenesis, and it takes a long time, and often doesn't happen at all, leaving you with an ischemic (hypoxic) limb that hurts.


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

[User]
If I had 100 atoms of a substance with a 10-day half-life, how does the trend continue once I'm 30 days in, where there should be 12.5 atoms left. Does half-life even apply at this level?

EDIT: Thanks for the explanations. I hadn't been aware that half-life was a statistical model, so it makes sense now.

[Assistant]
There could be 12, could be 13, or any number from 0 to 100 with a varying probability given by the ~~Poisson~~ binomial distribution.

Continuous probability distributions apply in the limit of an infinite number of atoms, and Avogadro's number is in this limit.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect] What do the volus properly call the quarians?

I know they call most species (planet)-clan and they often call the quarians clanless as a derogatory term, but what is the term the Volus use when they want to be polite? Since the quarians dont have a home anymore.

[Assistant] Probably Flotilla-clan, since that's what the quarians call their collection of ships and it's pretty much their home world now. Or, if they knew the particular quarian well they may say (ship name)-clan, similar to how quarians refer to themselves as "(name) nar/vas (ship name)".


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

[User]
[Command and Conquer] Where did the red tiberium come from?

In Tiberium wars the green tiberium is the "natural" one and the blue one seems to be caused by the alien invasion (at least that's what I got from the GDI campaign) where did the red Tiberium from Tiberan Twilight come from?

[Assistant]
None of the forms of Tiberium are "natural," they're all essentially a tool engineered by the Scrin to assist in their mining operations.  The green variant was simply the first one to appear, with blue being a more mature variant capable of converting more forms of matter to Tiberium (especially water).

I dont think we ever get a coherent explanation for red, but following the pattern of green and blue it would be a substance that can convert still more exotic varieties of normal elements into tiberium.


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

[User] [Blade Runner] Would a psychopath fail the Voight-Kampff test?

[Assistant]
Yes, they would and have done so. Replicants are, in effect, psychopaths trying extremely hard to come off as normal humans.

Naturally, this has caused many legal problems over the years with some human psychopaths being unduely labeled as replicants. For more information, see the Supreme Court Cases of *Dick vs. City of Los Angeles* (2030) and *US vs. Philip* (2027)


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

[User]
Some children, even babies find heavy metal music very soothing/interesting. Is there any explanation as to why that is?

I have a few ideas, but the music seems to be flipped on it's head as far as the intent between an adult and when a child listens to it.

It is rhythmic and a novel sound.  A child will not understand the lyrics or stigmas associated with the music.

But it still seems strange to me.  I've seen videos of babies fall asleep or children gingerly ask about it when it is played.

I find it interesting about myself and the music, but I find it really curious why someone less than 5 say, has such a peaceful reaction to it sometimes.

[Assistant] Psycholog professor here. The short answer is that these babies ROCK!!! A slightly longer potential explanation is that it can be quite loud during pregnancy in a mother's womb. Before birth, children hear their mother's blood flow, bowels work, stomach contract, etc.. So, loud multi-layered sounds feel familiar to them after birth. Also, children are interested in patterns, repetitions and variations of patterns. This interest is probably genetically coded and helps babies to orient in the world and quickly learn about it. In Heavy Metal music, you have loud multi-layered noises and repeating or varying patterns. Perfect combination! A third influence is when the children see that the parents also like the music. Enjoying it then becomes a social experience, which can be very rewarding and thus reenforcing.


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

[User]
ELI5: If nuclear fallout is such a huge concern. How are nations able to test nuclear weapons within their borders.

If it's because it's done in remote places. Does that mean areas far away from major cities likely to be attacked are safe?

[Assistant]
Nuclear fallout is very minimal from standard nuclear weapons, hence how people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki just fine today.

Nuclear tests will often be underground, underwater, or an airburst.  The Japanese bombing was airbursts, which maximize destruction by create minimal fallout.

Regardless, nuclear fallout is not a huge concern except in a full-scale nuclear war or reactor meltdowns.  In that case, thousands of nuclear weapons would be dropped.  It's not something that happens in any significant quantity from a single weapon. Chernobyl is an example of an instance that did cause consider nuclear fallout, and the reactor core is still humming away, buried in concrete underground.


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

[User]
Is there any reasonable argument for the coexistence of both free will and an omniscient higher power/creator?

This is one of the big flaws of Christianity and some other religions that I just can't wrap my head around. I know that with the rigor applied to these religions, I can't be the first one who has struggled with it. So what are the arguments?

If God knows beforehand every single choice I will make in my entire life, and God cannot be incorrect in this, how is it possible that I have any choice? If I cannot ever act outside of God's foreknowledge, in what way is there free will?

EDIT: Wow, I thought this was kind of a silly question. I have very little knowledge of philosophy but it seems there are quite a few in here who disagree with each other. What a fascinating conversation!

[Assistant]
A further question -- does God knowing something some necessitate that God is causing that thing to happen? What about a God who, armed with perfect knowledge, is merely a perfect reasoner who can ultimately predict, but not occasion, every event in the Universe.

That is, your choices are still your free and independent choices, God is just smart enough to use his perfect knowledge of the universe to accurately predict everything you will choose.

(which is just one compatibilist argument. There are many)


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

[User]
[M*A*S*H] When Hawkeye dumps the garbage on the visiting colonel who creates many more casualties by sending troops back to collect already dead soldiers...

Hawkeye has a helicopter drop garbage he purchased from Frank's idiotic camp garbage sale on the colonel.

Assuming the colonel wishes to press charges (and it seems likely that he would), how could Hawkeye have avoided getting locked up?

Klinger was in on it, but I can see him lying to keep Hawkeye safe. Ditto for the chopper pilot. But Hawkeye admits it's his garbage, rightfully purchased including having a receipt, to Frank.

How does Hawkeye wriggle out of this one?

[Assistant]
MASH was largely fantastic, but has one huge grain of truth - MDs can get away with almost anything in the military, even in peacetime.  A trauma surgeon in wartime is an incredibly valuable resource. Proof point: retired and former military docs are routinely asked to return to active duty during wartime.

Hawkeye Piece was not only a very talented doctor, he was a trauma surgeon with significant experience in battlefield wounds. If they court martialed him and send him to the stockade, there was likely **no one to replace him**. Remember, this is the Korean War, 7 or 8 years after WW2 - the entire generation of young men who would have been finishing their surgical fellowships are still in medical school or residency. Or they are dead because of WW2.

It was repeatedly stated that his superiors knew he was sort of a dick and completely unmilitary and they didn't care. Not just his MASH COs, but various Generals.


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

[User]
[Vampire the Masquerade] Is there any reason why you wouldn't want to be an anarch?

The Camarilla seems like a roundly terrible deal for everyone outside of upper management, and the anarchs generally don't seem like they have any huge problems going  on with them except for the Camarilla trying to force them back into the herd. So why wouldn't even newly embraced vampire go straight to the people promising community organization over some kind of highly top down organization structure? Any skeletons in the closet?

[Assistant]
First of all, cam doesn't let people go easily.  They DO have blackmail on you and your sire and his drinking buddies know what buttons to push.

Second, Anarchs have zero stability and aren't as idyllic as you think.  There's still abuse going on.  Kindred will be Kindred.

The main draw of the Cam is the stability.  They generally help you live your daily life.  They control the blood banks, the feeding grounds, and they write you your paycheck so you can rent your apartment and get clothes.  Accidentally drain someone?  They help with the body.  Anarchs generally don't provide that kind of structure.

Furthermore there's no stability in the fact there's no retirement plan.  Old cammies that live long enough get shit tons of ghouls and fledglings to wipe their asses for them.  You'll almost never get that in the Anarchs, even as a Baron.


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

[User] ELI5 What happens to sunscreen? Does my body absorb or metabolize it? Is it stored in some form?

[Assistant] It's absorbed into your epidermis which is a layer of dead skin cells, and reflects UV rays from there.  Trace amounts \*might\* make it as deep as your capillaries if you're regularly using copious sunscreen, but your Kidneys will, in general, make short work of those traces and it will be expelled in your urine.  Most of it eventually wears off through water, sweat or friction as your skin cells shed off.


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

[User]
Why can we see Mercury and Venus in the sky if they are within our orbit?

I don't understand why we can see Mercury and Venus if their orbits are inside of our own? Surely we are looking out of our solar system thus couldn't see them unless during the day but then the sun would make it to bright to observe.

Assuming it has something to do with refraction/geometry.

[Assistant]
The answer does have to do with geometry.

Consider the following arrangement:

         Sun                  Venus

         XXX
        XXXXX
        EARTH
         XXX

Imagine you live at the 'H' on the above diagram of the Earth.  In this configuration, the Sun will not be visible from that spot, so it'll be night time, but Venus will be -- so you'll be able to see Venus in the night sky.

Because Venus and Mercury have orbits inside that of the Earth, however, neither can be seen all night.  At best, Mercury can be seen for about an hour after sunset or for about an hour before sunrise, whereas for Venus, the most is about 4 hours before sunrise or after sunset, if memory serves me correctly.


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

[User]
[Death Note] I enter a ridiculously ambiguous date (04/08/15). How will the notebook decide when my victim will die?

That date can easily be Apr 08, 2015 (mm/dd/yy) or Aug 4th (dd/mm/yy). A sufficiently healthy victim just might realistically reach the next century so Aug 8, 2104 (yy/mm/dd) isn't off the table.

[Assistant]
>    How to Use: XXVII

  >  If you write, die of disease for the cause of death, but only write a specific time of death without the actual name of disease, the human will die from an adequate disease. But the Death Note can only operate within 23 days (in the human calendar). This is called the 23 day rule.

The DN can only set death 23 in to the future at max. If you do not specify the death it will be a heart attack, as of possible death other then heart attack the only one that supposedly works every time is suicide, because every human can theoretically kill themselves they just need to want it enough.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the purpose of the turnable dial around the face of a watch?

[Assistant]
The ring as we know it today on some watches, also called rotating bezel, actually dates to the first diving watches of the 1950's. At the time, using a stopwatch was impossible, because every additional pusher could further compromise water-resistance, so instead they relied upon the bezel as a basic timing apparatus.

Right before a dive, the wearer aligns the zero mark on the minutes hand. The bezel then indicates the minutes passed since entering water. To add security, the bezel can only be turned counter clockwise, meaning that if it were accidentally rotated, the immersion time would appear longer and the diver would be compelled to return to the surface earlier.

During the 1960's and 1970's, the US and British Ministries of Defence also incorporated the bezel into military standard, either to display dive time or hours.


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

[User]
[Stargate SG-1] matter cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed, so what happens to an object or (God forbid) a person who falls back through an incoming wormhole?

In the same vein, what happens to matter in the path of the unstable vortex? Or hitting the iris?

[Assistant]
The matter pattern gets stored in the buffers of the Stargate.

Now if someone could modified the programming of a DHD connected to the Stargate they might be able to save them, sadly in most cases the buffers get whipped clean with the next incoming wormhole and the excess energy of the stored matter is used up in the kawoosh.

In the case of unstable Vortexes, both gates will try to stabilize the even horizon to finish the transport, depending on which state of the transport the vortex got destabilized the pattern will be ether lost in transition or be stored in the receiving Stargate.

The Iris scenario is more clear and morbid, the Iris works by *almost* covering up the event horizon of the Gate. Which means that a wormhole will be established but there isn't enough space for a successful re-materialization, you get, quite literally, splattered against the inside of the Iris one incomplete molecule at the time (that's also why you hear a "splash" sound when someone tries to go through a gate when the Iris is engaged).


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

[User]
[MCU] Why did the Avengers only resurrect the people that Thanos killed with the Snap and not the people he killed when he was collecting the stones as well?

* Such as the Asgardians, Loki, the Nova Corp, etc.

[Assistant] They explained it as not wanting to affect anything that's happened since at the direction of Tony. He didn't want anything they did mess up his new family or jeopardize his new "second chance.". They were all afraid of what the stones could do, so they very specifically only undid the snap and affected nothing else or unmade any people by accident.


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

[User]
Why are most people right-handed?

Is there any instinctual reason for this?

[Assistant]
The reason we have a dominant hand rather than being all ambidextrous seems to be that it saves brain space to only have fine-motor-control in one hemisphere of the brain, rather than needing two. Most tasks our ancestors needed to do could be performed with one dominant hand just as easily as with two dominant hands, so it gave an adaptive advantage.

So why the right hand? If we look at the genetics of it, then we see that there isn't really a 'gene' for left-handedness. Of course, there isn't just one gene governing these things, but lets simplify it for now and say there is just one gene that governs these things. It has two forms:

C is the natural form of the gene that came about first. It doesn't really do anything, and the whole way the brain is organised is left up to the environment and chance (hence the c). It appears recessive, but it may be slightly codominant so I've put a capital letter.

D gives a specific mental schema for the brain. It tells us which hemisphere all the brain functions should go in. This particular schema works well, and so has an adaptive advantage. It also involves putting the fine motor control in the left hemisphere which controls the right hand (d for dexter).

So a person can be DD (right handed), DC (right handed) or CC (either right or left-handed at about a 50% chance). This accounts for the fact that two righties can give birth to a leftie, and two lefties can give birth to a rightie, but it still seems to run in families. It also accounts for why identical twins can have different dominant hands.

If we look at the proportion of left-handers among people of high intelligence, then we find it's about 20% as opposed to 10% in the general population. However, this is more or less balanced by the fact that about 20% of people of retarded intelligence are left-handed too. Having a CC gene means you are more likely to be an outlier on either side because your brain is less normal, and this could work either well or badly. Example: lefties have higher rates of schizophrenia.

But expression of the D gene clearly gives an adaptive advantage to an individual, so why hasn't the C gene been wiped out?

The answer is that in a right handed society where people fight each other, left-handers have advantages. Take playing tennis. A right-handed person normally plays right handed people, and his technique is built around this. A left-handed person also normally plays right handed people and does the same. So when a rightie plays a leftie, the leftie is playing in her comfort zone whereas the rightie is playing out of his. All other things being equal, the leftie will win. Now apply this to physical combat and you'll see that this gives lefties an advantage in a right-handed society (swap the hands and it would be the other way around). This is enough to preserve the C allele.

We can test this by looking at more tribal societies that have higher levels of instability, fighting and combat. They do have a higher percentage of left handers that does not seem to be based on geographical location.

But nobody has isolated the D/C gene, and it's likely it's actually a large collection, so all these are our best guesses more than gospel truth.


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

[User] Just like in supersonic motion, the object that creates the sound can move faster than the waves it produces, is it possible for the E-field or B-field that make up light to move faster than the light?

[Assistant]
The light (i.e., the electromagnetic wave) *is* the E- and B-fields. So the answer to your question is trivially "no"; something cannot travel faster than itself.

But perhaps you mean to ask whether a source of light can travel faster than the speed of that light *in that medium*. So, for instance, can an underwater light source travel faster than *the speed of light in water*. Yes. That's perfectly fine. That particular question is commonly asked and a common example of this phenomenon (called *Cherenkov radiation*) is seen in the typical blue-ish glow of underwater nuclear reactors.


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

[User]
This might sound like a silly question, but what exactly defines a fish?

It seems that the creatures we define as 'fish' struggle to fit into single defining rule to classify them as a distinct group. Not all fish are coldblooded, for instance Tuna, and not all fish are 100% aquatic, such as mudskippers (which brings up additional confusion between walking fish and amphibians).

So that's my question, how are fish defined as a distinct taxonomic group, if at all?

[Assistant] Fish are craniates (animals with a skull and usually a backbone) that aren't tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates inlcuding mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians.) However, this is not a distinct taxonomic group as fish such as lungfish are far more closely related to mammals than they are to ray-finned fish or sharks. Fish are instead a paraphletic group made up of a wide variety of not particularly closely related taxa. Fish is really just a convenient term for describing swimming vetebrates.


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

[User]
ELI5 What is the difference between Web 1, Web 2, and Web 3?

As a business major who has no tech background whatsoever, I find it hard to understand the basic concept between Web 1, 2, and 3, especially from 2 to 3. Most websites that explain these differences dive into the technical/technological aspects with all these fancy words.

[Assistant]
Web 1: The internet is a bunch of static webpages that a user can look up and read.

Web 2: The internet is as it is now, a bunch of dynamic webpages and platforms that you as a user can upload your own content too (think Facebook, Youtube, etc)

Web 3: To put bluntly is largely just a buzzword to make Crypto and NFT schemes sound important and revolutionary. In concept it is that instead of the current platform based systems we have now where ultimate control, ownership, monetization, etc of the uploaded content is held by the platform owners, instead the users will 'own' their uploaded content through the use of Crypto via some hand wavy mechanism and the platforms you uploaded too will be distributed in nature instead of centralized into a few big companies like the current platforms.


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

[User] ELI5: How do medical facilities (hospitals, out patients, plastic surgery facilities, etc) dispose of things like body parts that are amputated, or skin that has been removed etc?

[Assistant]
Often it's incinerated. Maybe the places which don't do it themselves ship the red hazmat bags to a commercial facility which does the job.

I think there are provisions for if a patient wants to retain their tissue, but it's not common except for miscarriage.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is some rain little droplets and some rain are big old fat drops?

[Assistant]
Rain forms when little particles of dust start getting water stuck to them in the cloud. When they get heavy enough, they fall. Sometimes, the wind is blowing upwards and the drops have to be heavier before they fall; this is how hailstones are made, too. Sometimes there's no wind blowing upwards, but the raindrops form way high up in a really thick cloud and keep collecting water as they fall. They don't fall very fast, so they have time to pick up a lot sometimes. When they form close to the ground they don't have enough time to pick up much extra water.

Edit: huh, needed a semicolon for once.


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

[User] ELI5: if 60% of our weight is water, and we are 65% hydrogen and 10% oxygen, then why are we called carbon (18%) based life forms?

[Assistant] In the same way that a house consisting of over 80% air and 15% concrete is still called a wooden house if all the beams are wooden. In our body the water is not the complex molecules that define who we are and make us work, nor is it the fat or sugar. The complex molecules that actually do the work is the protein, DNA, enzymes, etc. And while these may still be made out of a lot of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms it is the carbon atoms that is at the center of their structures and defines their shapes and therefore their functions.


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

[User]
Why do electrons orbit the nucleus? And why don't the molecules touch each other?

Why would electrons orbit around the atom's nucleus since they are oppositely charged, shouldn't the electrons move to nucleus?

Also, when the molecules attract each other (van der waal) why don't they touch each other? What is the force that prevents them from touching? I think its the kinetic energy they have, so is that kinetic energy converted to work done against the attraction? If so won't the temperature decrease?

Thanks for the help :)

[Assistant]
Electrons behave quantum-mechanically. In quantum mechanics, a particle has lower kinetic energy if it's more spread out in space. (and it cannot have exactly zero kinetic energy. But as with classical physics, its potential energy will be lowest if it's as close as possible to the nucleus. So these two forces 'balance out' to give atoms the 'size' they have.

>Also, when the molecules attract each other (van der waal) why don't they touch each other?

How do you define 'touch'? The electron 'cloud' around the atoms is a diffuse thing, so there's no set boundaries. As two molecules get closer and closer, the electrical repulsion between the electrons (in combination with the 'rules' of how they behave) will eventually become larger than the attractive force.


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

[User] [MCU] Prior to Wakanda coming out as a technologically advanced powerhouse, if I were a foreign diplomat invited to visit their country what would my experience have been like and what would I have seen as a part of their charade policy at the time?

[Assistant]
You would likely be entertained in the "Royal Palace," a small, traditional mansion with most modern amenities. You would be given a tour of the country, including "wealthy" areas that house the King's advisors and administrators, and the "poorer" areas where the farmers, herders, and artisans live. These people would appear to live in conditions not dissimilar to the tribes people of neighboring countries and their poverty is apparent, though they do not appear to be hungry or particularly discontent with their conditions. Your visit will be concluded with a dinner with the King, who will primarily discuss Wakanda's textile exports. Questions about Vibranium will not be fully answered, and no Vibranium mines will be shown on your visit. You will walk away with the implication that Wakanda does not have very much Vibranium at all, which is undoubtedly why they are so protective of it.

To the visiting dignitary, Wakanda presents a strange contradiction. Your visit will be a completely controlled tour, similar to that of North Korea, you will be shown poor villages where people live in impoverished conditions. Nevertheless, everyone seems content, even happy, and even the poorest person you see looks to be fed and content. You feel as if the country must be performing a big show for you, similar to what North Korea is known to do, but satellites and spy planes show no sign of labor or internment camps, nor villages you aren't allowed to visit. Where would they be putting the hungry or discontented?

You leave the country with little of your questions answered, but nevertheless thinking that the country is more-or-less harmless. Wakanda poses no threat to your nation, no threat to its neighbors, and no threat to its people. Furthermore, Wakanda has little to offer you, they may not be the poorest country in Africa, but they have a small population and little material wealth to speak of. The little Vibranium they have must have already been used up, or stolen by Klaue, or else you or the satellites would have seen the mines.

At any rate, based on what you saw, Wakanda is clearly not worth thinking about.


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

[User] Have biologists identified "training" behavior in primates? Wouldn't chimps who develop a workout(bodybuilding) culture have great advantages?

[Assistant]
A human bodybuilder can burn thousands of extra calories per day, and maintaining extra muscle mass requires the expenditure of lots of time.

Neither of these things are feasible for chimps, who move constantly to forage for food.

And it should be noted that chimps are much stronger than humans, proportionally. So increased strength would mostly be useful in internal confrontations. BUT: confrontation within a group is more efficiently handled through negotiation, display, and appeasement, not physical conflict. And confrontation between groups, for the vast majority of chimp evolutionary history, was most efficiently handled by group display which ended in one group moving on.


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

[User]
[Jojo's Bizzare Adventure] [Stone Ocean] So can Whitesnake only remove Stand abilities specifically, or can it remove any "Ability"

In the Heavy Weather arc Pucci used Whitsnake to remove his eyesight. Does this mean he can remove more mundane and non-stand related abilities and implant them into other people?

[Assistant] It is implied that his ability is more general, and can remove abilities and somewhat abstract concepts. We see whitesnake remove sight from Pucci, and we see him insert abstract commands into people. It does seem like the ability is limited to living creatures though.


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

[User] ELI5:Why does the air at night smell nicer/different?

[Assistant] During the day, the sun heats the air and it causes air to get mixed all over the place due to convection.  This kicks up a lot of stuff and generally makes it smell worse.  In the colder night, the air is stiller and thus cleaner.  It also decreases the airs ability to hold water, so the moisture condenses in our noses and increases our sense of smell (same reason dogs have wet noses).


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

[User]
Why, on a molecular lever, are metals shiny while nonmetals are not?

My chem teacher is...not the top of her field, and she says, "They just are." But I don't understand why metals reflect light better than nonmetals. What properties of metals specifically cause this?

[Assistant] The defining property of metal is that it is a sea of free electrons. These electrons create a plasma. A property of a plasma is that it will reflect EM waves that are below it's "plasma frequency", which is a function of the electron density. Since metal has a lot of electrons, it's plasma frequency is in a ultra-violet, and thus it reflects visible and lower frequency light very well. This is also the same reason the ionosphere reflects radio waves. Since the density of electrons in the ionosphere is much lower than a metal, it only reflects radio waves and not visible light.


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

[User] [Terminator 2] How exactly does the T1000 see? Similar to the T800, all red and with numbers and calculations and such?

[Assistant]
The red numbers and visible calculations aren't even how the T-800 sees.  That's just a legacy diagnostic view meant for humans to use in debugging early units.  Skynet just never bothered to write it out of the code.
What both the T-800 and T-1000 are doing internally is just feeding raw visual data from the cameras into their pattern recognition and parsing algorithms.  If you want to call that seeing, then the cameras are capturing roughly the same spectrum as your eyes, so the Terminators see the same thing you would.


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

[User]
[General Fantasy] Why do Dwarves use Axes?

They are miners who live underground. Axes seem to be an odd choice for a weapon. Why not a mining tool? That way it can serve two purposes.

[Assistant]
Dwarves are master armor smiths, and their armor and shields tend to be thick and heavy.

Historically, warhammer and War axes have been very effective weapons against heavy armor and shields. Where as a sword would just bounce off, or arrow easily blocked by a large shield, hammer and axes break bones with sheer force behind it.


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

[User]
What caused the neutral rate of interest to fall since the '80s

Hello

The neutral rate of interest consistent with full employment seems to have fallen significantly over time since the 1980's. I was wondering what the main factors for this change were.

[Assistant]
There is a lot of debate on this topic, and there is no one answer. The two (not mutually exclusive) big answers are "the global savings glut" and "secular stagnation."

The global savings glut theory - most associated with Ben Bernanke - says that there is a lot of money saved in the global economy, which is making that money less valuable to investors. East Asian economies who wanted to build up reserves after the Asian currency crisis in the 90s are the most commonly cited source of those new savings.

The secular stagnation theory - most associated with Larry Summers - says that wealthy countries are saving too much and have too few wortwhile investments, which makes money for those investments less valuable Productivity growth is low by historical standards, meaning there isn't as much worth investing in. Populations in the west are also growing older, and old people have a lot of savings that they try to keep in the safest possible place (like bonds). Income inequality could also play a role since well-off people save more of their income than working class people.


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

[User]
What caused protons and neutrons to come together in the early universe?

In the early universe, when the temperature was hot enough, there was a sea of protons, neutrons, electrons, and radiation (photons). Eventually as the temperature dropped, it became possible for protons and neutrons to come together and form atomic nuclei, though it was still too hot for electrons to bind and form neutral atoms.

My question is - what caused the protons and neutrons to bind in the first place? If I understand correctly, the nuclear force keeps the nucleus together **once** it's already formed, but what caused the proton and neutron to bind? Why didn't all protons and neutrons continue as individual particles as the universe continued to cool?

[Assistant]
You're talking about primordial nucleosynthesis. The first reaction in the chain is the production of deuterium:

p + n <-> d +

There's a photon so this is an EM process (electromagnetism mediates it). The subsequent processes to create helium and heavier elements contain both EM, weak and strong mediated reactions.

However, this first reaction cannot happen until the weak interactions are *decoupled*, i.e they've become weak, which happens when cooling below 1 MeV.

When they're active, there is this channel

p + e <-> n + _e

And permutations. At equilibrium you will find a certain ratio of protons and neutrons, given by the Boltzmann distribution and using the last reaction. At T=1 MeV the weak interaction decouples and this ratio is "frozen" at the value it had at 1 MeV.

Then a little time has to pass before we can start making deuterium. This is because we have a sea of photons messing with our stuff and decomposing our deuterium. We therefore need to wait for lower temperatures. In this small time neutrons decay. Remember that free neutrons are unstable with a 10 min or so half-life and they decay according to

n -> p + e + bar _e

So that when we get to making deuterium the neutron fraction is even lower.

All of this alongside a lot of boring calculations explains why not all of the hydrogen was fused into helium, which only forms a fraction of the total mass of baryonic matter today.


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

[User]
If an obese person attempts to lose weight and starts eating healthy, would the plaque on their arteries decrease and/or disappear over time?

I'm not obese myself, I'm just wondering.

[Assistant]
Point of clarification, just being obese doesn't mean that there are plaques in arteries (arteriosclerosis). Being obese only raises the risk for developing plaques.

That said, a healthier diet and weight loss in a person that does have plaques can slowly decrease the natural progression of the plaques.


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

[User]
CMV: Using a chair as a footrest in a public place isnt disrespectful.

Obviously, this can definitely be disrespectful in certain situations. If the room is crowded and youre taking up an extra seat, if your foot is dirty, if the chair is an antique, if youre in a formal setting, etc. But if youre in, lets say, a computer lounge that is nearly empty except for a few people, why is it disrespectful to use a chair as a footrest?

Im typing this because I was just recently told to get my feet off of a chair in a library. This was at a university at around 2 am while I was studying for a test, and I was one of like five other people in the library at the time... Security guard still made the effort to get up and walk all the way over to me and tell me to get my foot off of the chair.

I dont think I was being obtuse enough to warrant that kind of late night demand. Change my view, Reddit.

Edit: The abrasion argument wins it for me. Even though its small, it definitely builds up and causes the chair to wear away.

[Assistant]
Shoes cause damage to chairs. Every time someone puts their shoes on a chair, they cause small abrasions, which over time contribute to *increased* wear and tear (in addition to normal wear and tear).

When you take the bus or train, you can often easily see the specific areas where people tend to put their feet, because that's where the seat covers wear thin, or the plastic gets discolored.


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

[User]
[DC]How can the Atom(Ray Palmer) breathe when he shrinks to subatomic sizes.

I mean at that point he is smaller then what he is supposed to be breathing in.

[Assistant] I believe he has previously demonstrated the ability to shrink other matter around him to relative proportions as well, so it's probably some kind of shrinking field that around him that he can manipulate, including shrinking the air around him until it is small enough to breathe.


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

[User] [Marvel] Why isn't She-Hulk ugly when she turns into a hulk like the He-Hulk?

[Assistant]
There is a subconscious aspect to the hulking out. Everyone who has the effect changes in different ways, and almost all in ways that reflect there subconscious and repressed aspects of there personalities.

Jen was a very mousy, sexually repressed, physically weak woman who had a deep seeded desire to be liked. This desire was warped by the gamma radiated blood into an over sexual and extremely confident woman, as well as a great deal of physical power.

Looking over everyone who has been effected by the gamma blood the only one who is even close to healthy is Doc Samson, who was a accomplished psychiatrist to begin with. He only gained some green hair and a stronger body.


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

[User]
The evolution of the smile - it seems incredibly unlikely?

I have a modest understanding of biology, so please be patient.

How did a facial expression like a smile come into being? I would imagine the ability to manipulate the face would rely upon several genetic mutations. And once they happened, their ability to advantage an organism would depend upon another human in close proximity - at the same time - randomly developing the cognitive capability to interpret such a gesture.

Doesn't this all seem tremendously unlikely?

[Assistant]
To answer the actual question: No, not really.

First, the question generally misunderstands evolution, in that evolutionary changes are not "random". The cognitive capacity to visually interpret the actions of others (such as a "smile") in the environment is not a randomly selected for mutation but, rather, a series of systematic changes in neural architecture (e.g., development of a complex visual system) combined with the most simple of associative learning (i.e., thing X leads to thing Y). Such changes would be critically important for surviving in any complex environment, and, so, can be observed in many organisms you'd think are relatively simple.

And, of course, the ability to manipulate the structure of the face is important for doing things like eating, breathing, and plenty of other behaviors other than smiling.

Regarding the smile specifically, plenty of animals make gestures like smiles that are very different (in human meaning) than smiles. For example, dogs and monkeys will curl their lips and bear their teeth, and neither are doing it because they are trying to express joy or friendship - both are warning to GTFO.

In any event, the evolution of facial gestures seems tremendously likely.

Interestingly, the perception and recognition of facial gestures is very different across different populations. For example, Asian cultures rely much more heavily on the eyes than Western cultures. There has been some interesting recent psychological work on this topic by Phillipe Schyns and his collaborators.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we grunt/scream when doing strenuous exercise?

[Assistant]
Everybody uses their tummy muscles. But sometimes, when you squeeze really hard while you poop, you squeeze some air out! Same thing if you are lifting heavy ass weights. You're squeezing air out. Even though you are A. Trying to keep it in or B. Go for an extra bit of power by forcing all the air out and really *really* using your abdominals.

Edit: its the same reason that people doing martial arts either yell or do that hissing noise. they are tensing their midsection to help squeeze every bit of power out of their body.


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

[User]
[Death Note] What could L have done to catch Kira?

As I understand it (and I guess I'm somebody on the Task Force looking back years later), L knew who Kira was all along and just had no way to prove it. Given the scenario Kira placed him in, the information he had at the time, and the situation they both faced, what could he have done differently for a winning scenario?

[Assistant]
He could've not announced himself during the Lind L Taylor stunt until much later, after having bugged Light's house. And making sure it was done on laundry day so his mother would've left his clean clothing in his room, thereby eliminating any suspicion about someone being in his room.

Then, announcing who he was to Light at the school. He's basically got him on tape freaking out about L outplaying him (and realising he's talking to someone who is clearly not there).


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

[User] ELI5: How intricate/detailed is sign language, especially where inflection and sarcasm are concerned? Do those exist?

[Assistant] Body language and facial expression play into it heavily. With sign language you can half-ass the sign to indicate dismissal, make it very emphatically or adjust the pacing, repeat for emphasis and so on but mostly you're watching the non-specific cues just like you are in a verbalized conversation.


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

[User] How does an inert gas like argon prevent the evaporation of tungsten in a filament bulb?

[Assistant]
A main challenge with tungsten bulbs is that they don't work in the presence of oxygen, as the extremely hot tungsten rapidly oxidizes, losing its electrical properties and crumbling away.

To avoid oxygen exposure, you can either make the bulb a vacuum or fill it with inert gas. Of these two, inert gas is the better solution since the hot tungsten tends to evaporate under a vacuum due to the low surrounding pressure.

So inert gas only prevents evaporation in comparison to evacuated bulbs, not because there is something inherently anti-evaporative about inert gas. But this is a very relevant comparison in the context of tungsten lightbulb technology.


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

[User]
[Marvel] How many times have the Avengers actually beaten Thanos in a straight fight?

No cosmic macguffins, no self-defeating mentality, no higher being interference, just a straight up battle.

[Assistant]
Right before Civil War II Thanos came to earth looking for the cosmic cube, the Avengers told him to leave, he did not.

Long story short, he put She-Hulk into a coma, and killed Rhodey. The Avengers went monkey-mode and beat his ass.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it that if I'm hungry right before going to bed, I'm not longer hungry when I wake up in the morning?

The other night, I was going to bed and felt pretty hungry, but I just went to bed. I woke up, expecting to be somewhat hungry but the feeling of hunger was gone. Does anyone have a nice quick explanation?

[Assistant]
Very concise answer: The loss of hunger when you wake up is due to excess glucose in your system caused by the breakdown of glycogen from your liver while you're asleep.

Explanation: Glucose is the main source of energy that your cells use to generate ATP, which powers many processes in the cell. When you eat, the glucose in your food, in the form of sugar and carbs, is absorbed into your system and spread to your tissues. Any excess glucose that you eat is stored in the cells in your liver in these giant chains called glycogen. These glycogen chains serve as a way to save the excess glucose for when your body needs it, much like how you store excess fats and lipids in your fat cells.

The prime example of when the body needs these stores is when you're asleep. Think about it. The average person sleeps for 7-8 hours. For that same amount of time during the day, you can easily fit in two full meals, so your body needs some way to keep all of your organs supplied with glucose when you have no ability to get it from food yourself. That's when these glycogen molecules come into play. As your body falls asleep, the liver starts breaking down these long chains of glucose and releasing the individual glucose molecules into your system. This makes sure that all of your organs (especially your brain) is supplied with glucose throughout the entire night. This breakdown occurs for the entire time you're asleep and stops when you wake up (and shifts back into storage mode). But right when you wake up, the glucose in your blood is still high from the overnight glycogen breakdown process, and there still may be some residual breaking down as your body shifts back into an awake state. The higher level of glucose in your system tells your brain that "you're full' even though you may have not eaten anything for 12 hours by that point.

You may have noticed that you got REALLY hungry within a couple hours after waking up. That's your body realizing that you haven't eaten anything in 12 hours AND you have the ability to do something about it.


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

[User] ELI5: Competitive eating. How can people eat so much in one sitting? What happens to their stomachs and bodies after eating so much? And why does it seem that so many competitive eaters are very skinny?

[Assistant]
They are able to eat so much because they prepare. They stretch their stomachs, they practice techniques for speed, etc.

After a competition, it's not unlike how you feel after Thanksgiving. Full, sluggish, tired, maybe even a little nauseous. Just to a greater degree. Most of these people don't vomit after competition. Other than that, you recover pretty easily within a day.

It isn't necessarily that most competitive eaters are skinny so much that the successful ones tend to be. This is for several reasons. First, your stomach is (supposedly) better able to expand when you don't have shit tons of fat around it. Second, people who are fit burn more calories, so if you do a lot of competitions it benefits you to stay in shape for your health. Third, competitions are exhausting. It may seem like just aggressive eating, but it's tiring and if you aren't in shape it is hard to keep up aggressive activity for 10-12 minutes non-stop.

Source: Former low level competitive eater.


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

[User]
Why cant babies eat honey?

I know the basic answers Honey can contain spores of Chlortridium botulinum which babies cant digest. But I want a deeper answer, why cant babies digest it but adults can? It also raises another question, some adults get botulinum toxin from improperly canned food because the spores activate in low oxygen environments, but why is it that why the spores are in the canned food adults cant digest it but they can when its in honey?

[Assistant]
Its *Clostridium botulinum*.  Infants have a higher stomach pH, so their stomachs are less acidic than that of children and adults. The spores can survive in their stomachs and then colonize the intestines and cause botulism. In children and adults the spores are destroyed so infection is not a worry (adults can get this type of infection, but it is very rare).

Adults get botulism when they eat a food that has had the bacteria growing in it and ingest the endotoxin botulinum.  The bacteria die, but the large dose of botulinum causes rapid poisoning, versus a baby with a *Clostridium botulinum* infection, where the bacteria grow slowly and produce the toxin as they multiply, causing gradually increasing muscle weakness.


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

[User]
ELI5:What makes a sore throat hurt?

I've heard its mucus but how does that hurt you/cause pain?

[Assistant] Your white blood cells are attacking everything in the location. This combined with the swelling due to increased number cells in the location, causes damage and irritation to the nervous system as it fights off foreign bodies. This is where the pain comes from and this whole process is known as inflammation.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] What happens when you break a magically binding contract?

Say Harry didn't compete in the Tri-wizards tournament after his name is called, what happens to him?

[Assistant]
Nothing. He never entered a contract. Had he been lying about not entering and failed to compete, something bad would happen.

What exactly happens depends on the contract. Marietta Edgecomb broke one and ended up with SNEAK written on her face. Unbreakable vows kill people that break it. They really should have said what would happen if they broke that one, but they didn't, so we don't know.


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

[User] Would Mercury's close proximity to the Sun make it rich in heavy and precious metals?

[Assistant]
I don't know why you use "would". It already is rich is heavy and precious metal.

Planets are formed when after the star (read: our sun) form, materials in the area start to condense and merge together. Close to the star, its hot, so only things that condense at high temperature can condense. Hence Mercury is mostly metal. As it goes further away, things with lower boiling point, like rocks, condense, giving us rocky planets like Earth. Beyond the frost line (between Mars and Jupiter), water and gas can start to condense, giving us all the gas giants and their icy cores.

Astronomy is awesome.


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

[User] [Marvel] Given that Captain America is still considered to be human, albeit the absolute peak of human potential, does that mean a normal human could train themselves to the same level of physical fitness as him?

[Assistant]
Sort of

There are "normal" humans who have his level of strength or some other physical faculty. But Cap is peak human in virtually all possible physical faculties, which no human being could ever achieve, because each of those faculties requires radically different training.

You need totally different training to be a swimmer compared to a powerlifter- just look at the body-types of both in most Olympic games. But Cap can be the best at both at the same time.


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

[User] [Lord of the Rings] What are the Silmarils and what can they do?

[Assistant]
They are the most beautiful jewels ever crafted. Most beautiful crafted things ever, actually, created bt the greatest crafter of all times.

They capture the primordial light of the two trees that lighted the world before sun and moon existed and their beauty can be seen through them.

As for what they can do - not much, really. They are not practical things.
They could have been potentially used to restore the two trees after they were killed, but it was never attempted, and the silmarils would have been destroyed in the process even if it worked.

Oh, and the only surviving silmaril is the morning star, so there's that.


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

[User] [The Fly; 1986] Even if the fly never got in, would Brundle have eventually mutated due to microorganism in the air or any food/water in his body?

[Assistant] It's possible but unlikely. More likely the pod would have simply degraded his biology no matter what even if the pods were sterile. Something as simple as a single protein chain misplaced could result in a whole number of mutations and abnormalities that would result in his death or disfigurement.


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

[User]
[LOTR] So did the Balrog accidentally cut the stone bridge with his fire whip or did Gandalf smote it?

I'm watching the movie and arguing this point with a friend. The book clearly says that Gandalf does it but the movie plays the scene totally differently. Gandalf looks surprised by the whole thing. Is the Balrog an idiot or what?

[Assistant]
He does it in the movie as well. It was just delayed; the bridge only collapses when the Balrog stepped on it, having been weakened by Gandalf.

Gandalf shows no surprise at this until the Balrog's whip snags him  'round the ankle.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do our necks hurt all day after we sleep in an odd position, but the rest of our bodies can be in any position as we sleep and they do not get long lasting cramps?

[Assistant]
Your neck is the most flexible part or your spinal column which is the boney part surrounding your spinal cord which is the nerves which report sensation and allow movement.

Wait till you get older and have shoulders which have been injured in the past and scream bloody murder if you fall asleep in the wrong position. It is part of the joy of getting old.

Until then it is possible to put your neck, containing the most vital part of your nervous system, in a bind while you sleep. Your neck muscles will complain the next day.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does head/facial hair grow indefinitely but body hair only grows to a centimetre or two?

[Assistant] Each hair root will grow for a certain length of time, and then stop, shed its hair, and start over.  If the length of time it grows for is just a few weeks, then the hairs have time to grow very long, like the hairs on most people's body.  If it's a couple of months, the hairs have time to get a bit longer, like your eyebrows.  If the hair root will grow for several years, then the hair can become extremely long, like the hair on your head.  But even though the hair on your head becomes very long, it doesn't grow "indefinitely" - if you stop cutting it completely, it will eventually reach its (quite long) natural length, just like the other hairs on your body.


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

[User]
What technologies actually use our understanding of general or special relativity?

I've got this friend who keep saying that all this new astrophysics research is totally useless, and that Einstein's theories don't actually help anyone. But I know that's not true. Can you guys help me out and give some examples of of technologies that wouldn't be possible without understanding relativity, and how?

Thank you so much!

[Assistant] Basically the only technology that does this is GPS, where the clocks on the satellites have to operate at sliiiightly different frequency than the ones on Earth to account for gravitational time dilation.


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

[User] ELI5: How do predators eat poisonous spiders and not die? I saw on the TV a big spider eating a poisonous black widow, isn't that suicide?

[Assistant]
To be specific, these spiders are *venomous* which means the toxin is intended to be injected into the tissues of the unlucky victim.

In some cases, venom does not achieve the same impact if ingested. They may be diluted in the stomach, less able to penetrate to the tissues where they can do harm, and the hostile environment may even break down the critical substances that give the venom its potency.


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

[User] ElI5 Why do impact drivers work better for installing and removing screws and bolts?what does the extra vibration do to help while rotating?

[Assistant]
It does a couple of things.  First, the vibration isn't just vibration. The impact driver exerts very high torque on each impact, but it is much easier to control because it is broken up.  If you were to apply the same static force, like from a drill, you would need much better leverage and risk shearing the screw.

The second thing that happens is actually due to vibration.  When a bolt is stuck, like a lug nut on a car, the vibration helps break corrosion or even cold welding on the nut/bolt.

Drill's were never really meant to install screws and bolts, they work best when drilling holes.  Impact drivers work great for removing/installing nuts, bolts, screws, etc...  Screw guns work better than impact drivers for screws in wood and drywall, but are pretty useless outside of that.

There are probably other principals at work, but those would be the main two.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does it seem like all other languages speak so much faster than English?

[Assistant]
When you don't speak a language, it always sounds as though it is being spoken very fast, with all those unfamiliar phonemes rushing by.  Most English speakers sound quite fast if you don't speak English, by all accounts.

As it happens, studies have shown that various languages all seem to convey information at about the same rate.


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

[User]
Do photoreceptors of the eye respond to light wavelength or frequency?

I can strangely enough not find any info on this. The question seems important to me because a refractive medium would change the speed and wavelength of light, but not its frequency. Does the perceived color of an object change based on the refraction of the medium (photoreceptors sense wavelength) or not (photoreceptors sense frequency)? Intuitively I would assume frequency, but there might also be a physiological reason I am not aware of why people use the wavelengths as a reference measure.

[Assistant]
Your question doesn't **exactly** make sense. The wavelength and frequency of a photon are two aspects of the same thing. So, this is like asking, "Is the speed of a car determined by how many times the wheels turn in a given time or the distance the car travels in a certain time?"

Since the speed of light is constant, the frequency and wavelength will be inversely proportional to one another. The higher the frequency the shorter the wavelength. The lower the frequency the longer the wavelength. You can't change one item without changing the other. Therefore, it's best to say that photoreceptors respond to a specific portion of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Whether you choose to use frequency or wavelength to describe that spectrum is up to you because they're basically different aspects of the same thing.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does a box of chocolate mints make everything else that's near it minty?

[Assistant]
Menthol, the (natural or synthetic) essential oil that gives mint its minty flavor is volatile (it evaporates easily).

So in a closed box where some of the contents has Menthol, the Menthol scent will end up bathing everything in the box, specially if closed for some time, and exposed to temperature variations.

It's sort of like if you stay close to a person with a strong perfume (which also has volatile essential oils). Even if you do not touch the person, you'll end up catching the scent and have some explaining to do.


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

[User]
[Superman] If Kal-El's pod had landed in rural Germany in 1936 to a couple of grumpy conservatives, instead of his friendly foster parents in 50's America, would we all have been f*cked?

...Or does he possess some sort of principle of justice or morality that transcends the contingent circumstances of the environment of his upbringing?

[Assistant]
I can see him being a Nazi superhero who is the poster boy of the regime. He stands for everything the Nazis do: German unity, order, and stability. Due to his upbringing in the *Hitlerjugend*, he sees Nazi policies through an extremely propagandized lens, to the point where he's able to justify to himself that the oppression of the Jews- the restrictions, revocation of citizenship, the yellow stars- is for the best.

During the war, despite being a young boy, he serves with honor and single-handedly repels the Normandy landings to save his older brother, a Wehrmacht artilleryman who is caught behind the Allied advance. This act gains him the attention of the Nazi government, who take a special, potentially sinister, interest in the boy.

Following the Soviet surrender after the withdrawal and hasty capitulation of the Americans and British, Superman grows up as **the** example of the Aryan: strong, smart, brave, and utterly loyal. Superman's *other* attributes are a carefully kept secret, known only to certain higher ups in the German government.

One day, Superman is at the post office picking up his parent's mail, as every good German child should, when he is erroneously handed a package that was fumbled by the German postal service. His curiosity overpowering his sense of respect for the security of the mail service, he uses his X-ray vision to look into it, seeing a 5 kilogram mass of gold. Using his extraordinary knowledge of chemistry, he analyzes it as 18 carat gold, aka dental gold. This discovery, of a mass created from at least 2500 gold teeth, leads him on a journey that shakes everything he's ever known to its core.


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

[User] [Star Wars] How drastically would Tatooines ecology change if Starkiller Base absorbed one of its twin suns?

[Assistant]
Ultimately it would disrupt and destroy the entire system. The loss of one of the suns would change orbital patterns. It wouldn't be a case of Tatooine now getting less solar radiation, but rather that it could now find itself drifting into the remaining sun, ejected into interstellar space, or on a collision course with other planets, moons, or debris in the system.

Take away the sun, and Tatooine is doomed.


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

[User] Was the 1970s Stagflation caused by Government overspending?

[Assistant]
Alan Greenspan in his autobiography suggested that the 1970s recessions were caused by the oil embargoes which, corresponded to the US in 1973 reaching domestic peak oil.

This jives with the widely held belief that global economic growth in the 20th century was driven in large part by extremely cheap and plentiful energy from fossil fuels.


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

[User]
ELI5 why do people with dementia sometimes have really inappropriate sexual behavior?

I understand that dementia impairs the brain but im just curious - is there a common factor among the people who exhibit these behaviors?

[Assistant]
The prefrontal cortex is the area of the brain that governs inhibition.

You're standing at a bridge and looking over the edge, and suddenly get the thought to jump. You don't = prefrontal cortex.

You see a beautiful woman with enormous... Tracts of land. You want to grab them. You don't = prefrontal cortex

You're in an argument with a child and feel extremely angry. You want to hit them. You don't = prefrontal cortex.

The limbic system is the "emotional" part of the brain (emotional, sexual urges, addiction, impulses).

In dementia, Alzheimer's and some neurodegenerative disorders, the inhibitory connections from the prefrontal cortex to the limbic system are lost.

So, more impulsive actions are taken which normally would be restrained.


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

[User]
[Shrek] How did Donkey manage to get Dragon pregnant?

Are Dragon anatomy and genetics really that compatible with the donkey counterparts? We know they didn't adopt or use a surrogate, because the offspring were Dronkeys. Does their success in breeding have anything to do with Donkey's use of the Happily Ever After potion?

I need to know!

[Assistant]
In the world of Shrek, procreation isn't based off of something as silly or far-fetched as genetics. Any two people of opposite gender can procreate as long as they share that most important and divine aphrodisiac; True love.

Conversely, people who aren't truly in love cannot reproduce, even if they had compatible parts. (Villains may be an exception to this rule.)


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

[User] [Dragonball] Why did that giant purple cat thing come to Earth to punch everyone and why is the magic wish snake scared of the cat thing?

[Assistant]
If you're referring to Beerus (one of the Gods of Destruction), he came to Earth because he had heard of how delicious the food was. Beerus would travel from universe to universe, from planet to planet, searching for the most delicious food he could find.

Shen Long showed reverence to Beerus because he recognized his ki, and who he was. Shen Long knew that Beerus was much more powerful than himself.


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

[User] Is it possible to remember being born?

[Assistant]
No.
Episodic memory starts around 2 years after your birth. Mostly due to the fact that you brain undergoes lots of change that, basically continously reformating, before settling.
Poor wording, feel free to correct me.


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

[User]
ELI5: what makes people so attached to college sports teams when the actual teams themselves are barely the same from year to year?

I mean, I get sports, I am a huge mlb and nfl fan. I live getting sucked up in my teams "story". But I don't get college sports. Anybody exciting is only with a team 1, maybe 2, years. It's like minor league baseball, which is not really that popular beyond the local level.

What gives?

[Assistant]
Most people are fans of the school they went too.  In that case the "connection" is that they attended college there... and then continued to follow the team after they graduated there.

Other teams carry massive regional appeal (the University of Alabama is a prime example) ... which is also often linked to a lack of a professional team attached to that area.


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

[User] Why does rice suck the moisture out of things?

[Assistant]
Rice (like a lot of other grains) is hygroscopic, which means it can trap water molecules inside of it thanks to long biopolymers like cellulose. Rice can gain and lose water in a sort of osmotic balance with the atmosphere. It balances out so that the vapor pressure of water inside the rice grain is equal to that of the atmosphere outside. If you put a wet phone in a closed bag with dry rice, the equilibrium eventually shifts from wet phone and dry rice to less wet phone and wetter rice.

Cooked rice is already supersaturated with water, so that's why you only use dry rice to desiccate your phone.


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

[User]
[LOTR] Where did all of Bilbo's gold go?

Bilbo was at the Shire, he left the Shire with nothing but his book and a good journey with elves and fantasy.

For a good amount of years, mind all.

Frodo became the heir I guess. But what happened to all that treasure?  Is it really in the Hobbit hole somewhere?

[Assistant] He didn't have much to begin with: two small chests, one full of gold and the other full of silver. Considering his tendency to give many gifts (especially to less well-off hobbits) and other large expenditures (like his farewell party), it's not surprising he managed to spend almost all of it in the 60 years before he left for Rivendell. He took what little remained with him to Rivendell and later gave almost all of it to Sam after the One Ring was destroyed.