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

[User] ELI5: How can I kill a plant by overwatering it, yet propagations of the same plant will grow in water?

[Assistant] Overwatering is not about the amount of water, it's about the frequency of waterings, In fact you can literally inundate most common houseplants in tons of water and they'll be completely fine as long as you let them dry thoroughly afterwards. If you keep the soil damp all the time, not letting it dry up properly between waterings, it will grow bacteria and molds which will suffocate the roots and kill off those delicate root hairs, making the plant unable to suck up water, which will ultimately kill it. This is not a problem in water simply because the lack of soil prevents molds and bacteria from building up.


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

[User]
CMV: Phrases like "toxic masculinity" and "white fragility," while describing real and problematic social issues, are unnecessarily divisive and incendiary and should be replaced with less offensive sounding terms.

These kinds of phrases are generally used by the left. And I find this odd, because the left is otherwise *very* concerned with using and even policing language that merely *might* be perceived as offensive or off putting. These are people who use wordings like "people who menstruate" to avoid possibly offending the small minority of trans men who have periods, or "people of color" to help emphasize personhood before race, and in my short lifetime have coined half a dozen different terms for "mental illness" to make it as soft a label as possible. In short, the left generally seems *very* concerned about ensuring language is used in such a way that it rubs as few people the wrong way as possible.

Yet all this seems to go out the window when it comes to men and white people. Terms like "white fragility" or "toxic masculinity" follow the opposite pattern: they seem to be deliberately crafted to be inflammatory and cause shock and offense among the people they are applied to. Again, **i do believe they describe real phenomena,** but the way they're termed seems almost guaranteed to put whites and men off from wanting to have the conversation in the first place, particularly when its not whites or men using the terms while addressing whites or men.

For example, similar to toxic masculinity, its not exactly controversial to say there are some negative cultural aspects within the black community practiced and reinforced by black folks that work to the detriment of black folks and those they interact with. Even if you don't believe this is the case just grant it for the sake of argument; not even the most insane, tone deft progressive in the world would think its advisable to term this phenomenon "toxic blackness" and then send in white people to criticize black folks for their "toxic blackness." Such a thing would be *immediately* recognized by progressives as problematic, counterproductive, and a good way to turn black folks off from the conversation before it even begins.

Its my view that terms like "toxic masculinity" or "white fragility" should be seen the same way. While I'm sure that the mere shock value alone has caused some white folks or men to pay attention it seems to me it drives far more of them away and unnecessarily predisposes them to be against the concept before they even hear what it is. To take an extreme hyperbolic example you could observe a very real and pressing social issue among X demographic, but if you decide to call it "X people are little whiney-ass bitches" you're gonna create shock value, but you're also gonna turn off 90% of X demographic from wanting to discuss the issue simply by virtue of how you named it.

[Assistant] You don't actually explain why you find "toxic masculinity" or "white fragility" to be inflammatory, except by an analogy that you don't get around to justifying. Can you explain more directly why you think these terms are inflammatory? (Or, alternatively, explain why your analogy is applicable.)


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

[User] ELI5: If condoms have 99% success rate, what causes that remaining 1% to fail?

[Assistant]
That success rate is not per instance. It is an efficacy rate, indicating the percentage of couples who conceived during a period of one year while using condoms as their sole contraceptive method.

The couples that conceive are a combination of people who decided to stop using contraception and people who used condoms improperly and an unlucky few who have condoms break in proper use.

The data is commonly estimated to be poorly representative of the actual effectiveness of condoms due to the fact that many factors contribute to the failures over one year other than condom technology itself, and that with the irresponsible users weeded out in a one year test period the efficacy rate would improve drastically in longer tests.


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

[User]
What do the social sciences have to say about the viability (or the lack thereof) of anarchy?

I'd love to hear more about social science findings that shed light on whether anarchy is a stable way of organising societies (or not).

I think that political discussions are necessarily impoverished when the parties involved lack extensive knowledge of various fields, and this is why I am turning to all the learned scholars here. Thank you in advance for your insights!

[Assistant]
A few thoughts:

Robert Nozick is probably the most helpful. In anarchy state and utopia he argues for the minarchist state. According to Nozick a true anarchist state is impossible because people will band together for protection, leading others to sell protective services. Eventually one group will have exclusive rights to legitimate enforcement, causing that group to become the de facto government.

Nozick builds off of the literature on the state of nature.

You may want to look at political philosophy regarding the state of nature. Locke, Rousseau, and of course Hobbes all have different ideas about man in the state of nature, whether it is brutal nasty and short (Hobbes) or communal and moral (Rousseau).  Each explains why states began to form in their own way.

Finally, many IR scholars, like Kenneth Waltz, argue that the international world is in a perpetual state of anarchy (there is no international sovereign).  This is permanent because no state will relinquish sovereignty to another body. This is debated as states sign on to and enforce international laws and organizations.  Also Alexander Wendt argues that anarchy only exists between states because they choose to let anarchy exist and perpetuate anarchy as a norm (anarchy is what states make it).


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

[User]
CMV: Being a minority is not a character trait.

Now, I dont have much high ground to stand on, being white...and a man. That said, please hear me out, and please refrain from crucifying me. I dont have a single problem with a character in a work of fiction being non-white/non-straight/non-cis male (and for the record, Im actually bi, so yeah). In fact, I support representation on all fronts (except MAPs, fuck them.) But if a character only exists to be a minority or to act as representation in a fictional work that isnt explicitly about minorities* and their persecution by the majority, and they dont possess any real character traits or development, then in a way, whats being done to them is as bad as being discriminated against; theyre being exploited. Then they arent really characters at all, are they? Pardon me for saying so, but at that point, they become caricatures, no pun intended. Now, obviously, Im willing to be politely corrected, or else I wouldnt post here.

Edit: Okay, so, I really should have been more specific with this title. I should have renamed it, Being a minority is not an inherent character virtue or a character flaw or something like that. I dont know. That said, thank you for not being upset with me, and for giving honest yet polite rebuttals, especially regarding a topic like this.

Edit 2: Thank you again for your honesty. Unfortunately, I have to be going now. I apologize to anyone whose questions werent answered, and I apologize to anyone I may have unwittingly offended. Im not trying to leave to get out of having to debate with you. Again, thank you, and Im sorry.

*I can go back and edit this if people would prefer that I cut down on the word minority.

[Assistant]
Why does a minority have to only be present when it's required for narrative purposes? Why can't they just exist in the same way that bad characters that arent a member of any minority group exist?

Do you have any problems with a character being white and straight and male unless it's directly related to the narrative? Probably not something you think too much about, that's just the way things are right?

So why does one type of character need an excuse to exist while another needs no explanation?


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

[User]
[Star Trek] why does Data bother tapping on keys, using voice commands, etc.? Can't he interface with the ship's computer directly?

I'm rewatching TNG and during the episode with the deaf peace-ambassador guy, Data learned sign language by watching what was basically a slideshow on a computer monitor. Why can't he just interface with the computer directly and put the knowledge in his "brain," Matrix-style?

[Assistant]
Data wants to emulate humans. Humans don't do those things.

Let's be honest. Your average P.A.D.D. or Tricorder does more wirelessly and without physical contact than Data does and he's orders of magnitude more powerful.

Or...and this is the less likely alternative...Noonian Soong was a freaking hypergenius, but forgot to put a wireless transmitter/receiver in his ultimate invention.

*EDIT: ultimate not penultimate*


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

[User]
ELI5: How does regularly over-charging a battery shorten it's "life"?

I was lurking reddit with my new laptop plugged in when I was informed (by my laptop) that I was wearing out the battery by continuing to charge it after it had reached 100%. I was wondering how this could limit the life of a battery.

[Assistant]
You can't overcharge the battery.  The charge controller won't let you, and for good reason.  Overcharging li-ion batteries tends to result in things like flames and explosions.

What wrecks li-ion batteries is heat and time.  You want to keep the battery nice and cool.  This is why Tesla watercools the batteries in their cars.


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

[User]
Why does string theory treat time as a separate dimension?

I thought time and space were interwoven into spacetime, where both space and time were relative, and can be bent/stretched.

But every time I read about string theory, I keep reading that there are 3 observable spatial dimensions, 1 time dimension, then 7 very tiny spatial dimensions that we cannot see.

But why is time separate? I thought Einstein proved time and space were combined. Does time need to be separate for string theory to work?

[Assistant]
Even in relativity, time is different -- in ordinary relativity there are 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension.  This shows up in the way you calculate distances in spacetime.  Whereas in ordinary space, you calculate distances by

        d^(2) = (x_2 - x_1)^2 + (y_2 - y_1)^2 + (z_2 - z_1)^2

in relativity, we have an interval in spacetime defined by

        s^(2) = -(t_2-t_1)^2 + (x_2 - x_1)^2 + (y_2 - y_1)^2 + (z_2 - z_1)^2

Notice the minus sign in front of the time term, the opposite sign from what you find for the x, y, z terms.
This opposite sign is what makes time different.

So in relativity, we  have 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension.  In string theory, there are additional tiny spatial dimensions.

Relativity does tell us that space and time mix together into spacetime.  In special relativity, two different observers will measure the same value for the spacetime interval s^(2) defined above, but how much of that comes from the spatial part and how much from the time part will differ.


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

[User] ELI5: How do audio wires work? How does a unit send something through metal wires that comes out of a speaker as a song/voice/etc?

[Assistant]
Ever shaken a large sheet of paper back and forth and listened to the wobbling sound it makes? It's from the air being pushed back and forth. In other words a very primitive speaker.

Next, take 2 magnets, in one position, the attract each other, in a different position they repel each other. Now what if we can turn one of those magnets on and off? Such as sending current through an bit of coiled wire, and making an electromagnet. Now we can make the magnets repel or attract with out having to turn the magnet around. Now we've got a very primitive voice coil.

If we attach this primitive voice coil to a diaphragm, we can make the voice coil move back and forth, which moves the diaphragm back and forth several hundred - thousand times a second. That movement of the diaphragm moves the air, which transmits those vibrations to our ear, which we hear as sound.

Put your fingers on your throat, and making a hummm sound, you'll feel those same vibrations. The more complex the range of vibrations, the more complex the sounds.


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

[User]
[WH40k]What's life like under Chaos?

I know (and I probably shouldn't) that Chaos is this vast powerful evil thing that manifests all sorts of daemons and foul creatures to do its bidding, but they seem to have human soldiers. They must live somewhere, and if they live somewhere they must have some kind of society.

But how can you have an evil society? Surely the only true civilisation comes through the benevolence of the Emperor?

[Assistant]
Chaos is... alien. You can't compare it to anything else in the galaxy as for Chaos not even the laws of physics hold true, it is pure will manifest. Followers of the ruinous powers do no longer feel like any other sentient being does. They feel merely the aspect of their respective God, no longer any of the things that define the lifes of normal creatures. No self preservation or drive to  procreate, or achieve a specific goal. They live for the moment.
Chaos is not evil. If you were to take the sum of it all you would end up with the average mindset of an average being in the galaxy.

A Khornate berserker feels nothing but rage and bloodthirst and an insane need to fight, a follower of Slaanesh only wishes for pleasure without any reflection etc.

They do not have a Culture and don't need one. In the Eye of Terror you do not necessarily need to care for mundane worries. They live as aspects of their gods without need for worries, rules or morals and do what they were meant to do.

All in all they are one of the happier races in WH40k, probably coming after the Orks sharing a place with the nids.


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

[User] [MCU] How did Zola get the entire contents of his brain onto the supercomputer memory banks?

[Assistant] It wasn't the entire contents of his brain. It was an incredibly-complicated set of interconnected programs designed to *simulate* the entire contents of his brain, and which he programed to believe that it was the entire contents of his brain.


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

[User] What counts as an observer? (as in the double slit experiment). If this observer were to stop observing (closing their eyes, or putting a piece of paper in front of a camera), are they still an observer?

[Assistant]
An "observation" in quantum mechanics is something that forces the particle to assume a definite value.

In the double slit experiment, the observer would be the sensor at one of the slits.  It doesn't matter whether there's a conscious human being watching the instrument or not.  The instrument itself interacts with the system, and therefore performs an "observation", or a "measurement".

Words in physics often mean slightly different things than they do in regular English.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do touch screens work?

I've always wondered how Iphones can differentiate between your fingers amd other objects such as stylus' and pencil erasers, etc. Does it have something to do with the heat from your fingers?

[Assistant]
Remember that time when you went to Timmy's house and played on the trampoline? Bouncing around was fun!

A touch screen works using a special kind of trampoline, called an electric field. At Timmy's house, when you stood on the trampoline, what did it do? It went down a little bit under your weight.

When your fingers touch a touch screen, they send out a teeny tiny bit of a pulse of electricity. This tiny bit of electricity pushes against the special electric field trampoline in the touch screen. So, just like you make a "bounce" in the trampoline by standing on it, the electric field on mommy's touch screen phone has a "bounce" in it from your finger!

The computer inside mommy's phone is very smart. It can tell where you touched the screen, where you put in the little bounce in the electric field, and it can use that information to help you do things like take a picture or throw those little birds at the piggies.

When you have more than one finger on the screen, it creates more than one bounce in the trampoline, and the phone computer is so smart, it can tell how many bounces you make with your fingers. It can even tell where a bounce starts and where a bounce stops.  That's why you can use two fingers and pull them away from each other to make the pictures on the phone bigger.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do astronomers take pictures of things in different wavelengths?

[Assistant]
You can think of different wavelengths as different colors. The human eye can only see a small range of wavelengths of light - from around 390 nm to 700 nm - but there's light with wavelengths smaller than 390 nm (ultraviolet) and light with wavelengths larger than 700 nm (infrared).

Just as there are a lot of details in the world that you can only see if you look for specific colors, there are lots of details in the universe that you can only see when you look at different wavelengths.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we have so much trouble creating large storage ssd's when we already have 256gb micro sd cards?

[Assistant]
There's no trouble.  They are just expensive.  A 256GB Micro SD card is similar in price to a 256GB SSD.

SSDs are extremely fast and reliable compared to microSD, and can handle many more read/write cycles.


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

[User]
Could a human, animal, or any living being live with YY chromosomes?

Just in theory. I know that women are XX, men are XY, but nothing is YY. AFAIK there aren't even any disorders that give someone YY, but there are disorders for things like XXY.

X chromosomes contain things which are vital to survival as humans, but could an animal or something like that live with YY?

[Assistant] The X chromosome has too many vital genes, without the X the zygote would be aborted. Any organism using XY sex determination requires the X for survival, while the Y contains only a few gene (Testes determining factor and some spermatogenesis genes). This is how females can survive without a Y chromosome.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do Venus Flytraps Die in Good or Fertilised Soil?

I understand their normal conditions are in poor soil, which is why the flytrap, but why would good soil outright kill them instead of them ignoring it or maybe just doing slightly better?

[Assistant]
Being in a "good" soil wont kill the plant. However being in a soil that has too much of something can cause the plant to suffer from getting too much of that something.

For example, Vitamin A is good for you. But if you eat too much Vitamin A you will die. Having some ammonia is good for the plant, but if you place the plant in a literal can of ammonia, it will die. Its all about balance. If you place Venus Fly trap (or any other plant) into soil that has too much of something that VFT cant handle, it might die.


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

[User] ELI5:Why are some letters in alphabet like G and Q have such contrasting shaped uppercase and lowercase, while letters like C and W are so similar?

[Assistant]
New Roman Cursive!

Long before movable type was invented, scribes wrote everything by hand. Though Classical Latin was Unicode (only upper case) mideval scribes found Greek Cursive to be a way to write more quickly and avoid making costly mistakes on expensive parchment. So Western Europe acquired the capitals thousands of years before it went back to Greek to borrow its lower case cursive letters, which became our cursive letters. Most of the letters had just gotten smaller and curvier to reflect their use in cursive writing, and some had no Greek equivalent so a small version of the capital was adopted.

But some Aa, Bb, Dd, Ee, Gg, Hh, Qq, and Rr, had just changed a lot in Greek during that time. Dd are different ways of drawing what was once a triangle, Aa rotated 90 degrees, e is a writing of E very quickly, the tail of g reflects the tail that G used to have. R became something like a 2 around this time, developing into r much later than the others.

With the advent of movable type, it became important to standardize the letters and move away from scribe creativity or laziness. It also put the scribes out of work, so their efforts to speed up writing became less important. We developed standardized cursive with public schooling so that children could write faster, but otherwise, we've stuck with the c. 1500 letters.


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

[User] [DC] If joker draws the line at working with Nazis and the IRS and Harley Quinn draws the line at giving people cancer, what other boundaries would villains not cross?

[Assistant]
Captain Cold is well known for not harming civilians.

He does have contempt for police due to his abusive father being a cop who got away with stuff because his other precinct buddies vouched for him.

But he never kills civilians and will terminate any accomplice of his who does so.


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

[User]
What did Deleuze mean when he said "we no longer want to talk about schizoanalysis, because that would amount to protecting a particular type of escape, schizophrenic escape"

> Consistent with his commitment to ongoing transformation and to resistance to mechanisms of capture, the year after Anti-Oedipus was written Deleuze commented that we no longer want to talk about schizoanalysis, because that would amount to protecting a particular type of escape, schizophrenic escape. Deleuzes statement is not a questioning of schizoanalysis per se but an affirmation of the multiplicity present in life, multiplicity that the clinic needs to take account of.

> Standing in stark contrast with the reductionist tendencies inherent to a royal science of evidence-based practice, Deleuze insists on the impossibility of controlling change and of predicting the flow immanent to life. There is no one method that will do the trick, and there is no one ending to the story. The presence of health is, in fact, measured by its gradient of differentiation, which is to say, by its creative and novel way to provide unique responses to the problems inherent to living a life. It is in this sense that, for Deleuze, the experimentation that takes place in the clinic is more like a stutter than a well-polished script..

Was Deleuze trying to force the affirmation of a brand new multiplicity by no longer wanting to talk about schizoanalysis?

Have any modern-day Deleuzean philosophers found a new multiplicity to affirm?

And does he ever identify any particular types of escape that should be protected?

Thanks.  I've been watching The Good Place and I am trying to predict where the show is going because their writers are supposedly Deleuzean-inspired.  :)

[Assistant]
Deleuze and Guattari wrote A Thousand Plateaus, which took up several distinct starting points. The stuff about war machines and the state as an apparatus of capture (released as its own work in English under "Nomadology" or something) is basically a rewriting of this "line of escape" way of thinking. That's also where the "royal science" thing comes in - that's from a discussion in ATP.

There's no "new multiplicity to affirm" because that's contrary to Deleuze's point here - to say that "this is the multiplicity we should affirm" would be to make the very move that Deleuze refused to make here by prioritizing one means of deterritorialization over others, thus creating a sort of makeshift binary hierarchy. That's why he doesn't say that any one way of escape should be "protected." The ATP chapter "How to Make a Body Without Organs" is helpful here as well, because they go in detail about the nature of experimentation vs. suicidal deterritorialization.

The applications of Deleuze's work to feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, anti-colonial philosophy, trans and queer philosophy, etc. are all probably along the lines of what you're talking about, though, and there's tons and tons of that work out there. Just put your favorite keywords next to "deleuze" in google scholar and you'll find plenty.

PS - The writers of The Good Place weren't inspired by Deleuze. Schur read Todd May's book on death and was inspired by it. Todd May happened to have written about Deleuze earlier in his career when he wrote about post-structuralist anarchism, but that's not what his book on death was about and it's not related to the show whatsoever. The Good Place mostly just touches on broad areas of philosophy with some well-known, popular references. Referencing Deleuze wouldn't even be possible; if they tried, they would have to make it a different show. It would have to be like a Twin Peaks fever dream on DMT.


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

[User]
Why does the strong force work keeping protons and neutrons when the electrostatic force would push them apart?

Why does the strong force work keeping protons and neutrons when the electrostatic force would push them apart?

For example, a proton and neutron would go together fine with the strong force, but a proton and another proton won't fit in together because of the electrostatic force.

I'm not an expert, but I feel this is a simple scenario that a high school student could fit in together.

[Assistant]
The electromagnetic force between protons is repulsive, but the residual strong force is attractive at short distances (although it becomes repulsive at *very* short distances).

Within the range of distances where the residual strong force acts, it's usually much stronger than the electromagnetic force.


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

[User] What are the criteria for having a species declared extinct? How are scientists so sure that there is not one single animal of a species left?

[Assistant]
Basically you have to have a bunch of different teams gathering data over quite a few years on last known sightings and animals that have been tagged, etc.

After that you have a committee come together, review the data, have the data proven, and after a while they'll agree the animal is extinct. With some it's a lot easier than others (kinda hard to miss elephants or rhinos if they still live in areas)


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

[User]
ELI5: Why don't we make cigarettes without all the bad stuff in?

I understand that the tobacco itself has some bad qualities, but is there not a way to maintain the feel of smoking a cigarette without having all/as many of the nasty chemicals in them?

[Assistant] American Spirit cigarettes contain no additives. They just have pure tobacco and no artificial chemicals. If you want to go further than that, e-cigarettes are simply nicotine, water vapor and flavoring.


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

[User] ELI5: Do governing bodies have to pass laws banning really obvious stuff (theft, murder, assault) or is there some long-standing precedent that these things are just understood universally to be illegal?

[Assistant]
It's a complicated situation, but in general -

For countries with common law legal system, they do not need to specifically pass laws. In these countries a lot of legal principals can be traced back to the old common law traditions and is applied whether is is subsequent changed by codification. This includes stuff like battery, assault, murder, trespass, etc.

For those with civil law legal systems, the laws need to be traced back to something referable. In these systems codification of law is required, although this can be based on existing systems. We've had legal codes from the Romans times and before.


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

[User] ELI5: How tugboats can pull ships almost 100-1000 times their size.

[Assistant]
They're designed to. It's not as if they're your uncle's powerboat- a tugboat is essentially a large engine with a hull around it. The design of the hull isn't for high speed, it's for being able to apply a lot of power to a very heavy barge or ship at low speeds. It's the same way that one locomotive can pull 50 train cars.

A tugboat has thousands of horsepower. It's the same motor you'd find in a much larger ship, put into a much smaller boat. There's no cabins or cargo area or anything like that, just the engine and the stuff to run it. They can have up to 25 times more engine power per unit weight than a normal ship.


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

[User] [Avatar the last airbender] How has each nation's population kept up with the demand for constant soldiers for a century?

[Assistant]
They didn't.

The Air Nomads were gone of course.

The Water Tribes has been decimated.  The South was completely depleted of water benders *and* older men.  The North was secluded and not involved in the greater conflict.

The Earth Kingdom is huge and could continue the majority of conflict with the Fire Nation.  And they were on the verge of collapse by the time Aang came back.  Down to the last main city states. When Ba Sing Se fell there was nothing left except a few guerrilla groups.

The Fire Nation has a serious state commitment. They are efficient and driven.    They breed **for the Fire Nation**.  Their small country was dedicate to the cause and produced many *many* children to keep up the Fire Nation ranks.  The Fire Lord honours those who pledges for the army.  Schools teach the children to feel national pride and do what they can for the war effort.


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

[User]
Are there any writers who posit that nihilism (and its reaction, existentialism) stem from alienation in capitalist society?

I've only just begun reading Nietzsche and Camus, so I'm not entirely well-versed in 'existentialism.' But being a big reader of Marx, it seems to me that one could explain the historical rise in nihilism and existentialism with the advent of capitalist production and its correlating alienation.

For example, taking Marx's earlier works, such as *Comments on James Mill*, *The Paris Manuscripts*, and *On the Jewish Question*, he attempts to explain the dehumanization of man as a species-being. The result is an isolated 'atom' within a seemingly apathetic world, both material and social.

Yeah, you get the point. Are there any writers who tackle this possible connection?

[Assistant]
There are plenty of thinkers who say pretty much exactly that. A good starting point might be Rahel Jaeggi's recent book *Alienation*, which surveys the two lines of post-Hegelian thought that develop this idea. These are, roughly, Kierkegaard (up through Heidegger and onward) and Marx and the traditions he started.

Adorno is consonant with these ideas. Marshall Berman's *All That is Solid Melts into Air* is a great book to address these sorts of questions. Sartre's *Search for a Method* is probably worth your time, since it's about tying up his existentialism with his Marxism. It'd probably be worth looking at Fredric Jameson's *Marxism and Form*, too. Anyway, yes, there are lots and lots of thinkers who make this connection. More than you could probably read in a decade if not a lifetime.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect] How much would it cost the average human Earth citizen to take a vacation to the Citadel? What would travel look like?

I've always wondered how civilian transport/commercial starliners work in the Milky Way, and what the likelihood of an average Earth Human getting to see the citadel in their lifetimes. Are there space-equivalent airline companies offering routine flights from the earth to the citadel? Would an average citizen have to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a ticket or are they relatively affordable?

[Assistant]
There are dedicated starliner companies, yes. They work just like airliners for the most part. You book a ticket, get a spot on the transport, and off you go. Roman Basee, a Martian, had to rebook their trip once because increased security at relays caused days of delays to commercial traffic.

Given the technology available, trips from major hubs to other major hubs are relatively easy. From Earth you just have to go to Charon, which is ~235 light minutes from Earth. Even a civilian transport will manage that in a few minutes. From there it's a jump to Arcturus, then a straight shot from Arcturus to Widow and the Citadel. You'll honestly probably spend more time waiting in customs than actually flying. As a result the flights are pretty cheap and accessible to most, though it's probably not a trip the average person will want to take every year. But for things like milestone birthdays, honeymoons, retirements, or whatever, a trip to the Citadel is totally affordable for most people.

Smaller or more remote locations, like those outside systems with relays, would be the more expensive ones. Those trips could take a day or more, so you'd be paying for all that extra fuel and crew labour.


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

[User]
eli5: Why do snakes have such potent venom when the prey they eat are normally small in comparison?

Im from northern Australia and we have many snakes that can easily kill humans, cattle and other live stock. The power of these snakes venom seems overkill for what is required?

[Assistant]
Snakes with potent venom are often those adapted such that either their meals are few and far between, their meals are potentially dangerous to them, or both.

When potential meals are rare it is necessary that every attempt made at catching prey have a good chance to succeed, and potent venom makes that much more likely. A venom might be excessively lethal overall in order to obtain the desired rapidity of action; that prey needs to stop struggling very quickly because if it breaks free and dashes off just to die later the snake is still out of a meal.

A snake that eats rodents is exposed to the danger of its teeth, and rodent teeth are no joke. Snakes really can't stand being chewed on by their pray for a while so they really need it dead quickly. Reducing chances of injury and increasing success rate in hunting both aid the snake, while incidentally giving them a venom which is a powerful deterrent to predators of themselves.


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

[User] Why does the human body check the CO2 amount instead of O2 to determine if you got enough oxygen?

[Assistant] CO2 forms a buffer system in your blood , it actually exists as several different components depending on how much of it there is (CO2 +H20 => H2CO3 <-> HCO3^- <-> CO3^(2-)).  If CO2 builds up in your blood it causes a pH shift.   The nifty thing about this is that it's (normally) easy to regulate by controlling breathing patterns (if your blood is too acidic, you have too much CO2, you breath more, and it is expelled.  Too basic and you breathe less letting CO2 accumulate). Shifts in pH are pretty easy ways to trigger effects in the body. Oxygen on the other hand is (for the most part) bound to hemoglobin and not just floating around free. Also dissolved oxygen won't participate in the same type of buffering system as CO2 - so it is "more difficult" to develop a system around measuring it.


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

[User] [Cowboy Bebop] How did humanity go from decimated by the gate accident to terraforming basically all the moons/planets in the solar system in just 50 years?

[Assistant]
Didn't the terraforming already start before the gate accident? Not much sense in having a gate in the first place if there's nothing worthwhile on the other side of it.

It wasn't humanity that got ruined, it was Earth.


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

[User]
[Avengers: IW/Endgame] Where did Valkyrie get a Pegasus, and where were the Asgardians during Infinity War?

We never saw a Pegasus being loaded up during their evacuation from Asgard, and even if they did, their ship got blown up by Thanos.

Which leads me to the second part, There is no whole piece of the ship left after Thanos blew it up, so where were the other (assumedly) half of the Asgardians during the entire time Earth based superheroes were fighting to stop Thanos? Did Thanos give them a ship to go on their way or something? and they just noped out of fighting to stop half the universe getting Snapped?

[Assistant]
The survivors presumably squeezed onto escape pods and/or the Grandmaster's orgy ship (which was nowhere to be seen in the opening of Infinity War.)  They were travelling without the Bifrost on craft that might have just had the "limp home" equivalent of interstellar travel, and space is *big*, so they probably were still in transit for the rest of those events.

As for the Pegasus, we don't know (at least not yet), but there was a five year timeskip which gives plenty of opportunity for Valkyrie to find it.  Maybe she went on an expedition to touch base with the other Realms since she had more or less taken charge while Thor wallowed, or maybe that Valkyrie found her on Earth.


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

[User] [MCU] Tony Stark goes back in time to when Tony thought of creating Ultron. He tells him of everything that will happen if he does it. Does Past Tony listen to his future self?

[Assistant]
Yes, he would definitely listen to his past self. He's aware of how... extraordinary the MCU can be at this point, with Asgardians, aliens, and weird cosmic cubes. If there's one person Tony's going to hear with his full attention at this point in the timeline, it's himself. He'll probably try to ask his future self if he could add some alterations to Ultron, but he'd get shot down hard since Future Tony is guilt-ridden from Sokovia.

So yes, this effectively changes the timeline for the better; or rather, this splintered timeline turns out much better than the prime timeline, given how we know MCU time travel works. Heck, even if Past Tony refused to listen, Future Tony would stop at nothing to prevent Ultron's creation and dismantle any efforts, *by force*, toward this goal.


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

[User] [Harry Potter] why didnt quirell just kill fluffy instead of going to the effort of finding the music trick?

[Assistant]
It was supposed to be a stealth-based operation. Get in, get the stone, and then get out (hopefully without Dumbledore noticing for a few days, or even better, weeks).

Dumbledore was the one wizard Voldemort was ever afraid of. That's part of the reason that Voldy's resurrection was supposed to be a secret, both in Book 1 and in Book 4.


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

[User] [Action Movies] Why are the authorities so mad about property damage done when safely rescuing all of the hostages?

[Assistant]
Becasue it could have been done cleaner. Yeah, he saved The hostages, but he Also blew up a city block, 14 Police cars and a Subway line doing it.

If he just had done it by The book and waited for backup this wouldnt have happen.

The only reason he is still on The force is becasue he is god damn best cop we have!


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

[User]
CMV: Artists who do not wish their works to be published should have their wishes respected posthumously.

Recently, we have seen Michael Jackson "release" an album of songs that he never wanted to be released.  Likewise, Tolkien's translation of Beowulf has just been published despite his protestations that it is "hardly to my liking".  Jackie Kennedy's private letters to a priest are even being auctioned off.  I believe that this kind of behavior represents a deeply problematic invasion of the artists' privacy, and should not occur.  If they are unfortunately published, you and I ought to refrain from listening to or reading these works.

In short, I believe the dead have a right to privacy that ought not be violated for merely prurient interest.  Scholars and spies may have compelling interests in the material, but most of us do not.

[Assistant]
> Scholars and spies may have compelling interests in the material, but most of us do not.

Fans of Michael Jackson and Tolkien would disagree.

I believe the artist has a choice of who makes those decisions after their death. There is no other practical way of doing this. You're proposal would forbid those entrusted with the materials to do what they were entrusted to do. Perhaps a famous artist would have wanted their children to publish works for profit if they were hit with hard times?


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40K] Can a Space Marine "switch" into another Chapter?

Ugh. My Chapter Master is *SO* unfair. Last week, we were all at the "Enchanted Under the Warp Storm" dance. But when me and my Battle Brothers got there, They engaged in close-quarters combat and tactical deep strikes. But *I* said that we should Use Speeder bikes and Melta-bombs to destroy the support structures of the bridge!

So like, while I hate it when I cause *Drama*, my Chapter Master is pulling this shit all of the time. If nothing else, can't I at least *serve* in another Chapter?

[Assistant] There is one way, brother.  Become a xeno killing veteran, and apply to join the Deathwatch.  Then you can spend your days murdering Xenos in the most efficient ways possible.  There are few things more satisfying than educating T'au on the finer points of chainsword combat, or cracking open  a tyranid's carapace.


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

[User] If a child were never explicitly taught to walk, would he/she naturally develop the skill?

[Assistant] Genie learned how to walk and nobody ever taught her. She's more of a linguist disaster but she didn't know much of anything when child services took her. You should check out her story. It's heartbreaking at first but it gets better.


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

[User]
[Discworld] Who are the students of Unseen University?

We learn a lot about the staff, from the teachers to even the cooks, sweepers and candledrippers, but the students are always sort of in the background. We know they exist, but we rarely hear anything about them or what they do. For example: what age are they? Is UU a real "university", where you'd expect people in their late teens to mid-20s to be students? Or is it a Hogwarts situation, with kids being trained from an early age? What do the students do before being admitted? Given that DW is a feudal late-middle-ages fantasy setting, we can't presuppose everyone to have gotten basic schooling as they would before entering Hogwarts or a university. Do the students just live as farmers or apprentice blacksmiths or whatever, and then enter UU without basic literacy? Or does UU accept only students who learned the prerequisite skills elsewhere?

How does one get admitted to UU? Does one apply? What's the criterion for admission? Or do students get identified and invited? What's the criterion for invitation? I know (from *Sourcery*) that there is innate magical ability that is unevenly distributed among people, but is that all that counts? Would UU accept a dullwit with a high magic skill, or does it admitt more on the basis of abilities that actually let you learn spells and theory, even if your magic skill isn't exceptional? Do they have to pay tuition? Are there scholarships?

Finally, what happens to graduates? They don't all graduate to become staff members (I think only Stibbons does over the course of the novels), so what happens to the rest? Do they go and open a practice somewhere as hedgewitches and -wizards? Are there other institutions that employ them?

I know there's probably not a lot of detail about any of this in the books, but feel free to tell me anything you know!

[Assistant]
The important thing about the university is that it doesn't exist to educate or advance magic, it expressly exists to contain wizards to prevent magical wars. The fact that the facility are all lazy fat pompous old fools is by clever design not just corruption.

The point of being a student is to be taught all the ways that using magic is difficult and unpredictable and dangerous and how its frankly easier to use the ability as political power with the muggles to get a generous cheese board than to solve a problem magically. There are at least 2 other universities plus various other magic schools and from what we see all of them exist to achieve this in one way or another (its implied in places that the last sorcers did this on purpose).

Also the death rate of students is quite high, which is one of the reasons the university works. Nearly everyone who graduates is well aware of the danger they pose to themselves, which is one of the reasons only the lazy but intelligent survive long enough to teach. Whole groups of students have died merely going to the library. Its fostering this exact mindset on all the graduates that the university really exists for.

They attract in everyone who is likely to be a problem uncontained and let them get on with accidentally turning themselves in small showers of frogs in peace before they can stumble unguided into the really dangerous stuff. It helps that the university itself is a pretty unstable patch of reality to the point that no one really knows the full geography of the building or how many people are in it, so anyone who isn't super cautious gets blown away very easily.

Stubbins is a massive outlyer as hes ambitious, intelligent and doesn't care about traditional magic at all but uses a far safer 'scientific' approach compared to the traditional natural philosophy style of randomly poking at things you don't really understand.


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

[User]
[Emperors New Groove] Why did Kronk need to take Kuzco out of town to kill him?

Just snap his neck and throw him in the crocodile pit that youve got by the entrance of Yzmas lab!

[Assistant]
Because Kronk is a big softie!

Yeah, he will work with Yzma and even poison someone, but **actually killing** them with his **own hands**?

Nononono, thank you!

He rather just push them of a waterfall, it's less messy and he's not directly involved.

*He's no Brock Samson.*


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

[User] How is "progress" achieved in the field of philosophy?

[Assistant]
That there is such a thing as progress and, in particular, progress within philosophy is, in itself, a philosophical contention, to which many would disagree or would have nuanced views about. Wittgenstein would probably think that any philosophical progress that doesn't outright dissolve philosophy is progress in making language traps (excepting probably logic), or Benjamin would say that progress is a catastrophe.

In at least the most basic of senses, progress in philosophy is, at the minimum, achieved by making the philosophical canon (the set of works that are accepted as philosophy and placed within a hierarchy of importance) bigger. That, at least, is more or less indisputable (that there is more philosophy as time advances). If then you want to call this progress qualitative or merely quantitative, positive or negative, you're gonna find literature going to all sides of this.


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

[User]
[LOTR] Why is Arwen, an elf, able to perform a feat of magic arguably more powerful than even Gandalf?

When she summons that huge torrent of water horses to wash away the Nazgul, whats that about? Why is she able to perform this? Gandalf does some cool stuff, but even he doesn't really do anything this destructively powerful throughout the films.

[Assistant]
As other have explained it is actually Elrond that causes the flood in the book.

But, if we limit ourselves to just the film the same reasoning applies.  It  isn't so much Arwen's power itself to create the water, but within her power to command the River.   The River is imbued with the Magic of Elrond to protect Rivendell, and by extension (for the film) this extends to Arwen, his daughter.

Gandalf is the one who adds the Horses for flair.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do we not have 'intelligent' AI?

I mean obviously the AI we currently have are smart enough to make simple or even somewhat complex decisions, but they are still incredibly limited.  If human thought is just the programming of our genes and past experiences, shouldn't we have made more progress towards this?  What are the major problems holding us back?

[Assistant]
Here is the underlying misunderstanding that you have.  We all know how smart computers are, and how they are so much smarter than people, right?  Well...kind of, sort of, but not really.

Computers are good at one thing: executing simple commands very fast, and repeatedly.  That's about it.  On the most basic level, all a computer knows is 'on' and 'off'.  But that's not ELI5, so let's not go there.  Point is, a computer itself is not smart.  Through a lot of years of programming and hard work, a lot of smart people have made computers do really cool things...but contrary to what your grandmother tells you, computers don't just act randomly.  They do EXACTLY what you tell them to do and nothing else.

So you want to figure out 10 billion digits of Pi? It would take a human a lifetime to do that, but a computer may be able to do it in minutes. Because it is one small thing done over and over, very quickly.  So is the computer smarter than a person?  Or just better at moving numbers around quickly?

On the other hand, try to have a computer recognize when someone is sad.  Pretty hard to do because how do you define sadness?  Is it a look, a tear, a tremble in a voice, the way someone is moving?  Probably different in different situations.  But an infant could do that..hell, even a dog could.  In that sense, a computer doesn't have the intelligence of a 2 year old.

To sum things up, computers are completely awesome, but they do not have any intrinsic intelligence; they are just really good number crunchers.  We are still a very long time away from self aware robots.


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

[User] eli5 : What exactly is DNS over HTTPS? And If HTTPS is considered to be so secure then why it is advisable to use DNS over HTTPS while browsing?

[Assistant] DNS is the system that translates a websites name like google.com to its actual address like 134.67.80.2 (made up), using a DNS server. So when you type google.com into your browser, your browser asks the DNS server what the IP address for google.com is. Until recently, these requests to and answers from the DNS server were made via plain UDP packets. UDP is a very basic protocol for transmitting data over the internet. So it was theoretically possible that if someone got into the network between your computer and the DNS server, they could find out what websites you were visiting by looking at these packets. HTTPS is a secure protocol used by most websites today. HTTPS is encrypted. DNS over HTTPS means that the communication between your computer and the DNS server is made via the HTTPS protocol and thus encrypted, making it impossible for others to find out what websites your visiting from your DNS requests.


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

[User] Do protons and neutrons move around inside the atom or are they completely stationary?

[Assistant] Protons and neutrons can move around a bit within the nucleus, depending on the nucleus. They also vibrate, so they're never 'completely stationary'. Nor do they move on the scale of the _atom_, which is something that's about 10,000 times larger than the nucleus.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do essential oils dissolve paint?

I put a drop of lemongrass essential oil on my wood, painted bedroom vanity to freshen up the room and returned to it a few hours later only to find out that the paint was nearly completely dissolved! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS ??? D:

[Assistant] Paint is a liquid when you apply it and after a bit becomes a solid. What is happening is that the paint is dissolved in a solvent, which evaporates off as it is applied, allowing it to solidify. If you were to apply another solvent capable of dissolving the paint again, it will redissolve. The lemongrass essential oil was able to redissolve the paint.


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

[User] "You don't understand something unless you can say it clearly." Do you agree with this thought? If so, why?

[Assistant] I think that explaining something clearly is a sufficient condition for understanding it, but not a necessary one. In the context of teaching, it might be a helpful metric to determine whether someone has in fact understood what they're learning. But taken at face value, the proposition is false.


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

[User] What goes on in the body while a person is in a coma?

[Assistant]
Basically, your heart keeps beating, your lungs keep breathing, your blood vessels keep things moving. The things that are absent are patient sensations and thoughts. Your brain is inoperative/damaged and essentially shuts down everything you don't need to stay alive. It can happen from a variety of different things, but brain damage is one of the more common things to cause it. The body will die however, without treatment and nutrients. So a person going into a coma won't last long without being in a hospital.

TL;DR: Think of it as a running car with everything working, but the driver is asleep with the car in park. The car will keep running until gas runs out.


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

[User]
[Comics] What's the general hiring process like for a goon?

I'm a dimension hopping immortal goon. I love doing grunt work for super villains, maybe like the Joker or Doctor Doom?
How do I get started with them? Is there a job posting website they post jobs on?

[Assistant] Hey, you look like disadvantaged youth to me.  How would you like to help strike at the system and maybe get paid to do it? Cool! Now take this gun and go menace those people over there.  If batman shows up just circle around him and try to punch him one by one.... no don't use the guns, do you know how much bullets cost these days?


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

[User] [Marvel] So straight up, is Thor Odin's favorite child?

[Assistant]
Yes. But he is special in other ways

Angela, Tyr, Balder and Hermod(?) are the children of Odin and Freya, while Thor is the son of Odin and Gaia (or the phoenix force? A bit confusing) making him more powerful than the other children, Becasue he is half elder god/cosmic force (?)


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

[User]
I am no astrophysicist.  The consensus is that the moon was formed when the proto-Earth was struck by a body the size of Mars.  The ejecta and (mostly) the Mars-sized body became the moon.  Why should it have a remotely stable orbit?

I understand why the Earth still has a stable orbit (it and the impactor were moving near the same speed and were in the same orbit), but why should the mass left over from the collision have enough kinetic energy remain in orbit and not fall back?  I'm picturing the collision as something of a bounce, as inaccurate as that may be, with massive heat, magma, taking many hours to take place.  But why did the left-overs fall into a stable orbit when in it seems they should have just fallen back to Earth again?

[Assistant]
It is believed the earth and this hypothetic planet (Theia to some) shared an orbit, with Theia occupying the stable Lagrangian points 60^o ahead (L4) or behind (L5) of the earth.

However, these points are only stable if Theia's mass is low relative to earth's.  As it accumulated more matter, the orbit became unstable, and it eventually caught up with the earth, or the earth caught up with it.

Since the two planets would have similar orbital velocities, the collision would have been slower and less energetic that most.  Instead of being like two cars crashing head on, imagine a car going 50 kph being rear ended by one going 51 kph.

Still plenty of energy to mess up the planets themselves, but not enough to change their gravitational interaction with the sun.


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

[User] [40k] What would happen if Leman Russ returned from the warp as a daemon prince of chaos?

[Assistant]
Before or after the Space Wolves are deemed tainted and the extermination of Fenris sanctioned?

Actually... that's about it... They may go so far as to deem the Leman Russ Battle Tank 'tainted' but i highly doubt the High Lords would allow that, the beast being the mainstay of their armoured legions...


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we sometimes forget things or thoughts that we were thinking about just a few seconds ago and then can never seem to recollect them.

[Assistant]
Also known as the doorway/portal effect, this is an evolutionary hold over from when humans were still hunter-gatherers. The prevailing theory is that when we entered a new area, our brains would do a kind of quick wipe of all surface thoughts, making you take in more information from the new environment. This would allow us to become aware of potential food or danger more easily, as we are focused on the new place instead of our thoughts.

In the modern day, this means sometimes you walk into the kitchen for water, then forget why you got up, then remember youre thirsty when you get back to your chair. Basically your brain deletes some short-term memory, trying to make it easier to survive in the wild, but instead simply trolling itself.

TL:DR; brain tries to optimize for caveman lifestyle, ends up inconveniencing modern day houseman lifestyle.


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

[User]
ELI5: Deep Fried Ice Cream

How can ice cream be deep fried? Why doesnt it just melt when put into boiling cooking oil?

[Assistant] The ice cream itself is not fried. It is surrounded by batter (like a donut) which is fried -- quickly enough that most of the ice cream doesn't melt, especially as the batter acts as a heat insulator.


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

[User]
How does the international space station get fresh air?

Forgive me if this is a stupid question but I was wondering what process they use to get oxygen up there.

[Assistant]
The production of oxygen aboard ISS uses 2 main processes:

- Electrolysis. This process involves running a direct electric current through water to separate it into oxygen and hydrogen. This produces the oxygen needed to breathe, but has hydrogen as a byproduct.

- Sabatier process. This uses a combination of carbondioxide and hydrogen to produce waterr and methane.

So the source of the oxygen is the electrolysis process and the Sabatier process "recycles" the carbondioxide that we produce while breathing and uses the hydrogen from the electrolysis to produce water that can then be used in the electrolysis again. The methane produced in the Sabatier process as well as any excess hydrogen is vented.

Since this is not a perfect closed loop, new water has to be brought up from Earth in supply missions to keep the systems running. So that is ultimately where the fresh oxygen comes from: Water sent up to ISS from Earth.

As a backup, there are also cans of pressurized oxygen as well as chemical oxygen generators using solid fuel oxygen available.


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

[User] ELI5: The difference between an nuclear bomb and a hydrogen bomb.

[Assistant]
A hydrogen bomb is a kind of nuclear bomb. Specifically one that uses nuclear fusion to boost the yield (explosive power) of the bomb.

The first nuclear weapons used purely nuclear fission (splitting an atom) to produce energy. That gives you a huge bang, but it's pretty inefficient since most of your fuel just gets blasted apart instead of fissioning to make the big boom.

Second-generation bombs introduced a second stage with a different kind of fuel that allowed for fusion (smooshing two atoms into one bigger atom). The fusion stage takes the energy from the fission, and uses it to fuse lightweight atoms into heavier ones, which releases crazy amounts of energy. This makes your bomb much more efficient, which means you get a bigger boom from a smaller bomb.


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

[User]
Are imaginary numbers strictly necessary?

I'm an electrical engineer doing "MRI stuff" - I deal with imaginary numbers every day, from computing complex impedances in circuit analysis to modelling of time-varying signals. Recently, I was watching a popsci documentary (of which naturally any statements should be taken with a grain of salt) and the narrator made a comment along the lines of, "imaginary numbers are not absolutely necessary, but they make a lot of mathematics much simpler". This just didn't sound right to me, and I've been mulling it over ever since. Is there any validity to this statement? In my gut I feel sqrt(-1) is just such a fundamental concept that there's no way to work around it, so to speak.

[Assistant] It is true. You can define any physical system without imaginary numbers. There is even an entire formulation of quantum mechanics without using them. Anything that is done with imaginary numbers can be re-formulated with phase angles, it would just be a lot tougher.


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

[User]
ELI5: why do some medications require you to take them multiple times a day while others only require a shot every few months?

I was watching a commercial for yet another medication with a ridiculous name and when they got to the dosage instructions it said after two booster shots you only need 4 per year. Usually pills like an aspirin or something like that you take multiple per day.

What is it about some medications that make it able to stay in the body for days or months and why others are gone in hours? Does the actual medicine stay in the body that long or is it expelled sooner and somehow the effects just lasts for months?

[Assistant]
Medications have a half life and effective concentration. The half life is the period that it takes for your body to remove 50% of the drug from your body. 8 hours might be a reasonable half life. And you need a specific minijrmum amount of the drug in your body to work but also not too much because the side effects might to unsafe or unwanted.

Take for example a drug with a half life of 8 hours and you need 5mg of it in your body to work and anything more than 7mg will make you sick. You'd want to take 1.5mg every 3 hours because if you have 6.5mg in your body it takes 3 hours to get to 5mg, and that will be within the targets.


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

[User] ELI5: How did people get fountains to work in medieval times?

[Assistant]
Gravity, water and air pressure, and an understanding of fluid mechanics (especially siphoning).

If you have a body of water (a little pool, for example), and a very narrow tube leading from the bottom of the body of water to a position that is higher than it, the pressure from the pool will force the water up the tube (so long as there is no air in the tube; this is called siphoning).

So you begin the siphoning process manually (sucking the air out of the tube), then install the tube into the fountain. So long as the pool of water never goes empty, you never have to restart the siphoning. It'll just keep going forever.


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

[User] [Redwall] Is Redwall abbey mouse-sized, human-sized with normal-sized mice in it, or human-sized with human-sized mice in it?

[Assistant]
Earlier generations made it seem that the animals were all regular animal sized with human intelliegnce. All the badgers were massive compared to the other animals, the bobcat that Martin the Warrior fought was huge, and a horse drawing a wagon that held Cluny the Scourge and hundreds of his rat men army.

However, it seems as time has gone by, many creatures have evolved to be of more similar sizes, and relatively human sized at that, based on how they interact with the world around them. Badgers and otters are still generally larger than other creatures, but not nearly to the level they once were.

The exception to this is snakes, which are monstrously huge in comparison to every other creature, to the point that one snake devoured a small rat army that fell into its lair.


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

[User]
[mcu] Did the apearance of thor restarted norse religion?

He is the only god proven to be real i would assume that his appearance would have some significant impact on religions worldwide.

[Assistant] Though there would of course be a sect of neo-norse followers *(even Beyonce has fanatical zealots)*, in this day and age he would likely be interpreted by and large as he isa **veery** strong alien with some pant shittingly highend tech.


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

[User]
[Biology] Do birds of a flock obey some sort of hirearchy? Is there an "alpha" bird or birds?

Woke up today to the sound of some Kookaburras (not that they're necessarily a bird that flocks) outside my window (Australian here) and I was wondering how birds of a flock might interact with each other as far as some pecking order (no pun intended, seriously) is concerned?

[Assistant] Some birds do. Some birds don't. You may have heard of "pecking order" That comes from chickens, because there can be an alpha chicken. Sometimes things like geese may seem like they have an alpha male because he's flying in the front of the V, but that's not true. they take turns flying in the front because that bird fights the most air resistance. Most of the time social animals will have some sort of hirearchy. Other times they all look out for each other.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does some electronic equipment (smart tvs, consoles, computers etc) respond so slowly when they are first turned on?

[Assistant]
They have a lot of things to load into memory and process (startup processes, kernal modules, etc)

Think of it like eating breakfast. It takes a while to get to the eating part because you have stuff to do prior like cooking, getting the dishes, bringing them to the table, etc.


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

[User]
If I, as a person with long forearms, lift the same weight as a person with forearms half my length, am I twice as strong due to the increased moment at my elbow?

I was wondering whether strength scales linearly this way, because moment does scale linearly with the radius it is applied it.

EDIT: Guess I didn't clarify, I was thinking about bicep curls when I wrote this question.

[Assistant]
While this is true, also consider that your upper arms would be twice as long as theirs, and so the *volume* of your muscle would be well over twice what theirs would be.  So actually, you'd be weaker per unit volume of muscle.

The linear force that your muscle could produce would be higher than theirs, though.


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

[User]
How did the spread of the Black Plague die down?

So I know the plague was spread by rats but how did it get to such low rates and how long did it take to die down?

[Assistant]
Basically, it ran out of victims.
Eventually, the Yersinia pestis bacterium only met people who were resistant to it as everybody else was either dead or had left. This can happen if an infectious disease is too virulent.


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

[User]
[The Walking Dead] How can zombie-Randall walk after Shane broke his neck?

I think I remember other instances of half-decapitated zombies. Surely they wouldnt be able to manipulate their limbs? Would a zombie paraplegic be able to walk?

[Assistant] Although they don't realize it on the show, zombies pretty much have to be supernatural. They are animated human bodies, but human bodies need all sorts of things to function, and zombies don't. Why does stabbing a person in the heart kill them? Because the heart pumps blood which carries oxygen, and cells need a constant supply of oxygen to do *anything*, including keeping themselves from literally disintegrating. The fact that destroying a zombie's heart (or any other vital organ besides the brain) doesn't stop them means every aspect of their bodies work differently (and apparently magically). A "dead" body is literally a body that doesn't work anymore, by definition, so they must be "walking" by external means.


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

[User]
Can smoke detectors detect things other than smoke?

Are modern smoke detectors (2000s and onwards) able to detect other gases? Would it be able to detect tear gas?

[Assistant] Smoke detectors don't directly detect smoke or any of the gases in it. They contain a few micrograms of radioactive Americium, which releases radiation that is detected. It is the interference of this radiation by the smoke which raises the alarm. Anything that blocked the emission from the Americium would be detected in the sense that it would set off the alarm.


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

[User]
[Predator] What evolutionary advantage did florescent green blood give Yautja ancestors?

The florescent part is what I'm trying to understand better, not necessarily the green-ness.

[Assistant]
First thing is that evolution is fine with weirdness as long as there's no harm. Not every feature of a species has an advantage.

Second, Yautja see in a different spectrum, an so it's likely everything else in their evolutionary context does too. That it's florescent and bright to us doesn't mean it is for them.


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

[User] [DC/Marvel] Could a Blue Lantern calm down the Hulk?

[Assistant] If they can calm down a Red Lantern, then they can calm down the hulk. Reds are pure rage and most can't talk, similar to the Hulk. A Blue Lantern would be able to calm down the Hulk, and it wouldn't even be difficult for them.


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

[User] [1984] I was born a prole and dream of the luxuries that are only available to party members. Is it possible for me to join the party? If so, how?

[Assistant] You could apply, but be forewarned that there are rigorous exams, both academic, physical, and political, and unless you were educated in a school for party-members the chances that you will pass them are pretty much nil.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do cats hate water as much as they do?

[Assistant]
Cats dislike water for the same reason you do. It draws heat from your body more rapidly than air, forcing your body to work harder to stay warm. Cats have dense, double-layered, relatively non-oily fur, meaning that it takes them a long time to dry out. That hair exists to trap body heat close to the skin. When wet, that function is mostly disrupted.

Cats can be trained to like water as kittens. I've had some that will sleep in a wet sink. Without acclimation to water when young, though, they will naturally dislike it.


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

[User] ELI5: whats the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath?

[Assistant] They are used interchangably -- there's no distinction. Psychopath has been more common, but people have been encouraged to use sociopath in popular/lay works because people can confuse psychopath with psychotic, and those terms are completely unrelated.


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

[User] ELI5: How did it happen that Hitler influenced so many people and they actually believed him?

[Assistant]
It wasn't as if Hitler said "lets kill al the Jews and reconquer Europe" and everyone else who had never even entertained those ideas before was hypnotized to go along with it.

What Hitler and the Nazis were selling were ideas that had been present for quite some time in a significant fraction of the population. And not just in Germany. A lot of the ideas that today seem unthinkable were thought quite freely by a large number of people throughout the 'civilized' world.

What happened was that Germany was in a crisis and people were looking for ways out. Hitler and the Nazis were populist who were telling many people what they wanted to hear and offered up simple solutions to complicated problems.

Populists like that always have popular appeal and with the whole economic crisis and the political crisis and elections happening seemingly several times a year, they had even more appeal.

The conservatives tried to use Hitler as a tool to fight the socialist not realizing that they wouldn't be the ones in control of the partnership and the Social democrats and the communist failed to properly work together to oppose the right wing coalition.

Before they knew it Hitler had taken over and quickly dismantled the system so that the Nazi propaganda was the only thing that anyone heard.

Every source of information echoed the party-line and used the same language. All forms of people organizing themselves were co-opted or banned by the regime and soon everything was Nazi. It was inescapable and insidious to those caught up in it.

Between the ones who had been with Hitler all along and the ones who went along because they were apolitical and now followed the rules of the new regime and the ones who joined up because they sought an advantage, quickly a large part of the population was on board.

You have to be pretty sure of your beliefs when you hold out when everyone else seems to be okay with what is going one.

The worse things got the harder it would have been for anyone going along with it to change their minds.

BY the time the war was over an entire generation had grown up in the regimes propaganda. It would have been like growing up in a cult.


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

[User]
ELI5: Somalia and what's happening there

I know it's a failed state, but how did reach this point? Who is running it? Who is suppose to be running it? What's happening with UN peace keepers there? Is there hope for the future? Is it anarchy? Is there any 'safe zones'?

So many question, when I try to read about it I become more curious.

Thanks!

[Assistant]
Today 'Somalia' is basically a geographic expression, the country has had no central government since the 80s. The previous government did a lot of bad things in the north so when that government (Siad Barre) fell they were able to step away and run their own business. So the north is a pretty decent place. They have their own (unrecognized) government and their own (unrecognized) currency. You can even go there as a tourist and you'll be relatively safe.

The southern part of the country is a different story. When the Barre government collapsed there was no more governmental authority. Warlords and clan chiefs stepped into the void and spent about 15 years fighting one another in an anarchic free for all.

Eventually a group of Islamists called the Union of Islamic Courts was created to attempt to end the civil war and restore stability. While they were fighting to take over the south the U.S. gave millions of dollars worth of weapons to the warlords. The UIC won anyways, and for a little while they were doing some good. They were more moderate than the Taliban and while some of their punishments were barbaric they made progressing in restoring a semblance of order. They also got the airports and port running for the first time since things went
to shit.

Once the warlords were beaten there was a lot of concern about terrorists going to Somalia. So Ethiopia, whose military is largely a product of American money, went in (presumably with U.S. backing) and attempted to overthrow the UIC and install the U.N. backed provisional government. The provisional government has a lot of problems though, it's mostly made up of warlords and has no presence inside Somalia-- they have to hold their meetings in Kenya.

Ethiopia tried occupying Somalia for a little while but since they'd gotten rid of the UIC and didn't have the resources to stay that long they got out. The UIC of 2006 didn't really exist by this time, it had been splintered. The previous leadership tended to be older and more moderate, but after the Ethiopian intervention the Islamists who were left fighting were the youngest, fiercest, and most extreme. They call themselves al-Shabaab (meaning 'youth movement'.) While the UIC cared more about restoring law in Somalia than international terrorism, al-Shabaab is much more sympathetic to terrorists who want to carry out attacks abroad. They've provided a safe haven to some al-Qaeda guys and have carried out a few attacks of their own elsewhere in Africa. Kenya and Uganda have both been bombed by al-Shabaab, in retaliation for support they've given to the provisional government.

So Somalia is a complex place, with regions that look radically different from one another. The north will probably continue to do well and likely will be recognized as an independent state some day. There's no reason to be positive about the south though; that's only getting worse and worse. Especially since we've now got all kinds of drones flying around the place.


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

[User]
[Batman universe] Is the Joker a millionaire? If not, how can he fund all his evil plots and maintain such a big operation?

I'm not well-versed in the comic books, but judging by what we've seen in Batman: TDK, he lives by ripping off mob dealers, along with using all that money to keep his whole operation going.

[Assistant]
Money???!!?!

WooooHoooHOOhooo!!!!!

Money is EVERYWHERE!!! The banks are FULL of money! They hand it out all day! Every store on every block has a box full of it, right up front, for convenience!!!

And people?? Ooohhhooohhooo they ALL have some, and some have a TON!! There are neighborhoods where EVERYBODY has big shiny houses with big shiny cars, and they ALL have moneymoneymoneymoney that they LOVE  to share!!!

.....you just have to know how to ASK....


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

[User]
Is the surface of the ocean relatively flat (i.e. the biggest difference in height are waves and the occasional storm surge) - or are there notable peaks and valleys?

This may seem like a stupid question but given the vast network of oceans and waterways in the world I really was curious if you were to look at a cross section of all of the ocean's surfaces, would there be notably higher areas than others?

[Assistant] Due to waters cohesion, mountains on the ocean floor can cause a measurable bump on the surface. It would not be noticeable from a normal persons point of view, though. The moons gravitational pull and the earths rotation also cause the oceans to be deformed.


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

[User] ELI5: How is it that some animals seem to know when bad weather is coming?

[Assistant] Many times its a change in air pressure. The air pressure part is somewhat simple as it changes in both the time leading up, and the time of the storm itself, which some animals are able to detect when us humans are naturally unable to.


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

[User]
Eli5: how does remembering a dream work? How does that fit with long term and short term memories?

Sometimes i can remember a dream, sometimes i can't. Sometimes something will spark me remembering a dream and the longer i think about it the more, i can remember.

[Assistant]
There is a part of your brain that tests reality.  You are walking down the street and see a man with three arms, and that part says, "whoa, that can't be right, let's take a closer look and figure that out."  You do, it turns out to be two people standing at a funny angle, and all is well.

When you dream, that part of your brain operates at a reduced capacity, and doesn't question the implausible as much.  You are an adult but still in elementary school, you are in a rocket to space, you are pitching for the Yankees, your brain just accepts it without asking too many questions.

This leads to dreams that seem to make sense when you are in them, but fall apart when your logical mind awakes.  It might make perfect sense in your dream that you had to pitch for the Yankees because you lost your shoes on the bus, but when you wake up and try to put that into a logical framework within your memory, it all falls apart.

Also, when we dream, we often dream in impressions rather an actually sights and sounds.  If you have every dreamed you were driving a car, what kind of car was it?  Was it a stick or automatic?  Two doors or four doors?  What was playing on the radio?  Chances are these details were left undefined, and the only parts of the car you were aware of were the steering wheel and pedals.  The rest remained this abstract concept of a car, that left you impression the details were there, when they were not.  Since it is those very details that help up build memories, their absence makes remembering dreams more difficult.


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

[User]
[Phantom Menace] Why not sell Princess Amidala's ship and buy a used one instead of all this futzing around with podracing in order to get a hyperdrive?

Or heck, just charter a flight to Coruscant and go incognito.  We know that hiring a "no questions asked" passage is possible from Tatooine.

[Assistant]
Step One: Sell a ship without a hyperdrive. As this is a garbage planet, you're going to be taken to the cleaners regarding the value you'd get for it.

Step Two: Buy a new ship. Remember how you're on a garbage planet? A new, working ship isn't going to be affordable with the meagre credits you earned selling that *nonfunctional* ship to rip-off artists. Now you're stranded, with no ship and not enough credits to justify what you've done.

Chartering passage is an option, but you put your life in the hands of whoever is flying you. If you're Random Smuggler #7, that's not a real concern because your life is worth virtually nothing to anyone. But the queen of a planet, who pissed off some of the richest people around? The bounties she could fetch would be obscene. Would *you* trust some random criminal with that?

And keep in mind, they decided to get a new hyperdrive at first when it seemed like the far and away simplest option. By the time that it became clearly more complicated, Qui-Gon had become invested in Anakin's fate and any decisions from that point on weren't solely with getting a hyperdrive in mind.


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

[User]
ELI5: What good does my nose do by leaking non-stop in the cold, then blocking up when it's goes bac to a normal temperature?

I don't know if it's cause I'm a pale ginger and can't take cold so well, but when the temperature goes below the common house temperature, my nose has a constant flow. Then blocks up when I'm in a warmer environment. It's winter here at the moment so it's a frequent annoyance.

[Assistant] When you breathe cold dry air the nose will release mucus to protect the sensitive spots on your lungs and some of that mucus will run out your nose which is what causes runny noses. On the other-hand your nose dries up because there is no need for this in the temperature you are used to. Hope that answers your question.


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

[User] [DC] Why do Superman and Flash usually stay in Metropolis and Central City if they are fast enough to help pretty much every city in the planet?

[Assistant]
Because that's where they live and consider to be home.

Besides, does it really matter where they spend most of their time? If something happens somewhere else then they can be there in, well, a flash.


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

[User] Eli5 why do adults get back/body pain when they sleep wrong but not children?

[Assistant] Children bend and heal much better than fully matured humans will, basically. When you're younger, some activities you won't even get hurt because you're 'elastic enough' to handle the movement - or you don't notice it because the damage is minor and a young body heals so much more quickly on average. Children bounce back much more efficiently than adults do with injuries.


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

[User]
Are genes from Mom/Dad just a coin flip at every "zip" of the DNA sequence? How far away can we deviate from 50/50?

People often say we are "50% of Mom, 50% of Dad", wouldn't we actually be some amount above/below, like maybe I'm 45/55 and my sister would be 57/43, my brother maybe 49/51, etc? I assume there is some point like 30/70 which cannot be achieved, do we know of such a point existing (are we all a minimum of 40% one parent, or 35%, etc)?

[Assistant]
You contain 50/50 from your mom and dad. It's essentially a coin flip at each of their genes, which you got: your dad might an allele for brown eyes and an allele for blue eyes, and you are guaranteed to have received one or the other from him. Same as with your mom. But 50% of your genome came from each.

What you express is based on which gene is dominant or recessive. If you got your mom's red hair gene, but your dad's black hair gene, you'll express black hair. You still contain both genes.

What you can't guarantee is that you'll be 25% of each of your grandparents, because of the randomness of which genes from within your parents you received.


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

[User]
ELI5: During the 07/08 financial crisis, what would have happened if the US government had not committed to the bailout to save private financial institutions? Doesn't saving inefficient companies have a negative impact on the economy in the long run?

I've been reading up on the financial crisis and the government's decision doesn't seem to line up with the conventional economic logic that in a free market, inefficient companies will dissolve and efficient ones will remain (or new ones will emerge) creating a market equilibrium. So why not let these big private organizations fail when they were clearly no longer able to make profitable decisions on their own? Why feed them tax payer dollars to remain in operation?

[Assistant]
The difference is that other companies rely on large financial institutions for their investments and finances. There is also the issue of investor confidence - you aren't going to invest money or take out a loan if the money starts evaporating. So if a big bank goes down, it takes out lots more with it.

Back in 1929 when Wall Street crashed, the government followed the free market rules and liquidized the failing companies. It resulted in a knock-on effect and more and more companies collapsed. Welcome to the Great Depression.


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

[User] [Doctor Strange] Dormammu is stated to exist outside of time on several occasions. So why is the ritual to contact (and leech power from) Dormammu in the book that is referred to as "the study of time"?

[Assistant]
So that you'd know exactly what to get out of. Otherwise you'd get someplace wondering "Where the hell's Dormamu's place?" and never realizing you're still within the borders of time. On the other hand, it gives you an idea on what to do so you didn't get out of time and into Dormamu's neighborhood by accident. Kinda like when Nicaraguan army accidentally crossed the border with Costa Rica because they used google maps instead of some real navigation.

You have to do your homework first before engaging in some serious activities.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do technology companies work so hard to hide UI configuration and other IU components that users are used to or expect? For example, iOS and file management, MS Windows Control Panel oversimplification or Google Maps interface w/o much customization?

[Assistant] They don't want to get tech support calls from confused non-experts  who accidentally changed the behavior of their system; but they don't want to totally eliminate these customization features that experts like. So they bury them where experts can still find them.


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

[User]
[Marvel Universe] How is Thanos "powerful"?

I was just watching Guardians of the Galaxy, and it said that only "powerful" beings could control an infinity stone. Then they said that Thanos could handle it because he was the most powerful being in the universe. I guess he's physically large, but what exactly does "powerful" mean in this sense?

Edit: I guess the big question I'm trying to get at is what properties it takes to control an Infinity Stone.

[Assistant]
He's a Titan, an offshoot of humans created through the genetic tampering of the Celestials (the race that left thqt giant head that became Nowhere) and are basically Mutants on steroids without the control issues, given the Super Soldier Serum, and with tech that makes the Xandar and Kree look like stone-age savages.

He's 'Powerful' out of a combination of biological superiority, technological superiority, intellectual superiority, and a ruthlessness that would see him destroy the universe for a date.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Why didn't the Potters choose Dumbledore over Pettigrew to be their secret keeper?

I know they chose Peter over Sirius because they thought Sirius would be the obvious choice and would be the primary focus of Voldemort, plus they trusted Peter as much as they did Sirius and Remus. But it seems that Dumbledore would have been an even smarter choice.

[Assistant] Consider a scenario where someone really, *really* needs to find the Potters on legit Order business. Dumbledore is up to his neck in war-related responsibilities, and being the Potter's bouncer/call screener on top of that is a duty he really doesn't have time for. Pettigrew, by contrast, has a lot less on his plate, and at least in theory should have been a rock solid bet in terms of reliability.


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

[User] Why and how do stomachs rumble?

[Assistant]
Actually sounds can be equally heard with or without food, when the pylori (stomach) muscles contract. Doctors listen to these sounds around the navel to assess whether or not there is enough activity, or if no peristalsis (the forward movement of food by muscle contraction in a single direction).

When these contractions occur they trap liquid and air under higher pressure (against a valve for example, or 2consecutove contractions) essentially causing an internal wet fart. Thus, food can be there but it doesn't have to.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] The Empire's official story on Darth Vader

Save for the informed few no one would have had any idea who Vader was following order 66. Did the empire have an official story on who Vader was, and why he came out of no where to be the emperor's second in command?

Additionally how common was the knowledge that palpatine was also a sith? presumably Bail Organa knew and told the rebellion, but what was the public knowledge of the situation?

[Assistant]
Back then, nobody really cared.

Imagine it; you're just told that, on the eve of winning a long and costly war with a bunch of corporate goonfucks, your strongest allies and combatants had tried to kill the Chancellor.  They had been since the beginning.  The Emperor, may he ever be praised, was simply a kindly old man trying to keep a panicked populace calm as the enemy stormed gate after gate after gate.  They struck right at the heart of the Republic, and it was like all hope had gone out.  Sure, Skywalker and Kenobi swung in to save the day - or so we thought - but that feeling of utter hopelessness was raw.  Pile on that these same Jedi were in on a plot to overthrow the Republic and could very well have been working with Dooku all along?  Let me put it this way: the Adjudicator had *several* interesting methods of bolstering morale, but you can't apply them to trillions of people.

Then he came.  Like a black, vengeful wind, he came.  In one night, the Jedi were put in their place and order was restored across the galaxy.  Our boys did their part.  And Vader - whoever the hell Vader even *was* - did his.  When word got around that he not only led the assault on the Jedi Temple personally, but also single-handedly executed the entire Confederate command?  It was music to our ears, especially in light of all we had seen up to that point.

Rumors flew around, don't get me wrong.  The lightsaber was a dead giveaway that he was some kind of Forcie, though.  Good, bad, whatever, it didn't matter.  This was the guy.  This was the rock that the Empire was built on.  And we all would've gone through hell and back for him, no matter where he came from.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is venus only visible a few hours after sunset?

[Assistant]
Venus's orbit lies between Earth's orbit and the Sun.

During the day you can't see Venus for the same reason you can't see any stars - the Sun is too bright.

During the night you can't see Venus for the same reason you can't see the Sun - it's "behind" the Earth.

The only time when Venus is visible is either right after sundown or right before sunrise, since at that point the Sun isn't bright enough to block out Venus, but Venus isn't completely hidden behind the Earth.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why wouldn't a candidate file on time for a ballot?

I saw that Virginia only had Romney and Ron Paul on the ballot and was wondering why Gingrich and Santorum wouldn't have been able to get the 10,000 signatures to be on the ballot? How does something that important get missed?

[Assistant] In Virginia, not only are 10,000 signatures required to be on the ballot, but at least 400 or those signatures must be gathered in each of the state's eleven congressional districts. In addition, the people gathering the signatures all have to be residents of Virginia. So if a candidate does not have a good statewide organization it can be difficult to meet the requirements.


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

[User]
Why does a can of Coke sink, but a can of Diet Coke floats when placed in water?

I just saw on the television where they did an experiment with Coke & Diet Coke.

After placing both (full, unopened) cans in a tub of water the Coke sank, while the Diet Coke floated. Any idea why?

[Assistant] In a regular (not diet) 12 oz can of soda there is close to 10 tsp of sugar.  A can of coke (Sugar water, plus aluminum can, plus sealed in gases) has a higher density than the surrounding water, and sinks.