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

[User]
ELI5: how does private equity work?

I understand private equity is just a group of people buying a company, but oftentimes the debt to purchase the company is put on the company itself.  How does this work and why is this possible?

How can you take out a loan to buy something and make that same thing pay it back?

If private equity often signals the death of a company anyways, why sell yourself to private equity firms?

[Assistant]
Lots and lots and lots of misinformation in here. The basic idea is this: private equity simply refers to firms that invest in private companies (i.e., not public). The goal of private equity funds is to purchase a company, make it more valuable, and then sell it at a later date to another buyer (like another PE firm or strategic corporate buyer) for a profit. In purchasing a company, most often PE firms will use debt to fund some of the purchase price (leveraged buyout or LBO). Think of it like a mortgage, but instead of an individual buying a house a PE firm gets to buy a business. If they put too much debt on the business and the business starts to do poorly, they might not be able to make their interest payments and default on that debt. Thats a really bad thing for all parties involved, including the PE firm. The PE firm owns the equity of the business, which is subordinated to the debt. So if the debt holders cant be made whole, the equity holders lose all of their money. The way PE firms make money is to grow the business and sell at a higher price than they bought (while paying down debt and building equity like you would do in a house).

A bunch of people posting here only know what they read in the news about situations like Toys-R-Us and the like, but the truth is that in the vast majority of PE investments they want to make the business grow and be more valuable for the next owner. Bankruptcies and liquidations are not good for equity holders.


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

[User]
How do we take pictures of our galaxy if we are in our galaxy?

So we have pictures of the Milky way but we are in the Milky Way?

Edit:Rip my inbox

Thanks for the replies everyone!!!

[Assistant]
Assuming you mean plan view, we don't.

All images like that described as showing our galaxy are either digitally (or manually) produced images, or images of other galaxies similar to ours.

We can see the milky way in our sky, and being on the outer limb of one of the arms we see it as a broad band of stars dominating one hemisphere of sky. It's in profile. We have no photograph taken that shows the milky way in plan view.


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

[User] ELI5: How does soap actually disinfect germs?

[Assistant]
And for the germ-killing (*antibacterial*) soap...

Most germs (*bacteria*) are built like medieval cities, with the good stuff inside and walls (*cell membranes*) to protect them.  These walls have gates with gatekeepers (*ion channels/porins*) to let only specific things and people (*nutrients and wastes*) pass.  If this wall is compromised, things would be really bad.

Germ-killing soap almost always work by doing damage to the walls.  Some are general "wall-breakers", and others (e.g., gramicidin) insert arbitrary gates into the walls... so workers that were supposed to stay in goes out, and all becomes splattery goo.  Ack.


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

[User] [40k] If the emperor told everyone not to worship him when he was alive then how did the whole cult of the emperor get started?

[Assistant]
The early Horus Heresy books touch on this.

Basically, the universe is a pretty sucky place to start, and in the aftermath of the HH it got even suckier. Humans sort of needed a something to put their faith in, and it was hard to put that faith in progress and reason when things were just straight up getting worse all the time. So instead, they put their faith in the massive, gold plated, immortal, incredibly powerful godlike being who created the Imperium in which they lived, ruled it, and then died defending it.

In conclusion, DIE HERETIC!


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

[User]
How much healthier is fresh food vs frozen food vs canned food?

Also, what is the actual difference? Are there fewer vitamins? If so, where do they go, or how do they get destroyed?

[Assistant]
It's possible for frozen food to be healthier than fresh food. These days, it is often frozen within hours of harvesting, whereas "fresh" vegetables will spend anywhere from hours to days simply refrigerated in stores.

Canned food which has been heat treated contains less essential amino acids, and often has had salt or sugar added to it. Canned peas often come loaded with sugar for example.

(Source: food chemistry classes)


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

[User]
I always see representations of the solar system with the planets existing on the same plane. If that is the case, what is "above" and "below" our solar system?

Sorry if my terminology is rough, but I have always thought of space as infinite, yet I only really see flat diagrams representing the solar system and in some cases, the galaxy. But with the infinite nature of space, if there is so much stretched out before us, would there also be as much above and below us?

[Assistant]
In the solar system, all of the planets are on the same plane, but there are lots of smaller objects which have orbits which are at angles to the plane of the planets.

As for the galaxy, it is also roughly flat, and has a diameter about 100 times larger than it's thickness. Within the galaxy, the stars have planetary systems which are aligned randomly at all different angles to the plane of the galaxy.


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

[User]
[SCP] [Jojo's Bizarre Adventure] What would the SCP Foundation do about all the Stand users running around?

If of course they existed in the same universe.

[Assistant]
The Stand Arrow becomes SCP-#### and stand users become SCP-####-001, 002, 003, etc.

Having a stand user on staff would be a double-edged sword. On one hand, the tendency of stand users to run into and fight each other would be instrumental in the mission to hunt them down. On the other hand, it might be detrimental to attempts to keep other stand users contained.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does New England have cold an snowy winters even though they are on the same latitude as southern Europe?

[Assistant]
Latitude is only one part of the formula that determines local climate. One very important factor is the Gulf Stream: a flow of warm water that goes north from Florida before crossing the Atlantic around Newfoundland and then follows the European coastline. The warm water helps make the climate of Europe mild, but because the stream is a ways off from the coastline in northern North America, New England (and more so, the Canadian region of Labrador) are left comparatively cold.

Incidentally, New England also has a rather humid climate, which encourages snowfall when it is cold.


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

[User]
Can you explain how forces such as the strong nuclear force to gravity is mediated through particles?

E.g. gluons mediating the strong force between quarks. Gravitons (I know they have not been detected yet) etc.

EDIT: 'ARE mediated through particles' :(

[Assistant] Forces are not literally mediated through particles. Forces can be approximately described as being mediated by "virtual particles" in the approximation framework known as perturbation theory. For example, electrons interact via the electromagnetic field, and ripples in the electromagnetic field are called photons. So it makes sense that you could approximately describe the interaction between electrons in terms of exchanges of ripples in the electromagnetic field. Similarly for the strong force or gravity.


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

[User] ELI5 How do "Lock Ons" work in military jets.

[Assistant]
"Locking on" is a very general term; there are a bunch of different ways you can track a target (which is the goal of all of them).

Simplest is passive tracking: identifying and following the target by looking for it against the background, for example looking out for a cyclist on the road. They don't have any lights or reflectors and you don't have a torch, so you just have to look closely and rely on background light to see things. When you're "locked on" here, what you're really saying is that you're confident you can keep track of the cyclist. This is how daylight TV-guided missiles work: they have a sensor which detects contrast (or in more advanced systems, shape and colour and contrast and...) just like we do. Very similar is passive tracking of emissions: just the same as before, but the cyclist has lights now. You can see the light they emit much more easily, so you can a) find them further away and b) track them better, because they are more visible. This is what the Sidewinder does (with infrared light from jet engines, and in more advanced versions from the heat on the leading edges of wings and things), and the HARM (an anti-radar missile for killing surface-to-air missile sites) does with RADAR emissions. When all these things (say they) are "locked on", it just means their software is confident that they can track the thing they've been assigned and not get confused. It's a sliding scale, essentially.

More complicated (and more binary) is "locking on" with an active radar or missile. Back to the cyclist: it's dark now, so to find the bike, you first use a big torch set to wide beam to look around, scanning a wide area. Once you spot the cyclist, you switch to a narrow beam pointed straight at him, and move it so you follow his motion. You're now "locked on" because you've switched from not actively following a target, to actively tracking their movements. Several different kinds of missile then use this: "beamriding" missiles have a detector in the *back* of the missile, and stay within the torchlight (or rather, radar beam) until they hit the target; "semi-active radar homing" does a clever trick where the missile follows the reflection from the target independently. You keep the target in the beam, and the missile follows the now-quite-bright target - equivalent to your mate on another bicycle hunting the first guy, by looking where you shine the torch. Locking on isn't obligatory with either of these methods: you can (and early SAM operators had to) just sweep the beam manually, and manually track the target. Obviously this is pretty difficult against a target who doesn't want to die, and is a lot to ask of a modern fighter pilot, so we have computers for it now.

The most complicated variant is "active radar homing" missiles, which pack a radar transmitter and receiver of their own into the front of the missile. Rather than relying on you to keep the target lit up, your mate on the bicycle now has his own torch, so once you've found the target cyclist, he can follow it for himself, as he closes in. You're free to start looking for other targets. "Locked on" here means that the missile's radar has acquired the target from the plane's radar and can track it, rather than just that the plane's radar is tracking.

**EDIT** (for Americans and others who rejected our fair and rainy isle) : "torch" means "flashlight". In some parts of Yorkshire many people's torches actually have a small coal fire behind the lens to provide the light, and young boys are often employed in winter to stoke people's torches up when they leave the pub.


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

[User]
How did heavy metals arrive on Earth during planetary formation?

I understand that most heavy metals are created during supernovae and ejected during the explosion, but I'm not quite understanding as to how so much of anything metallic - especially elements higher in the periodic table - came to be part of the primordial dust cloud - a cloud composed of still so *very much* hydrogen that plenty of stars could form in our neighbourhood - that we have such a mix of elements here, and likely on any planet?

[Assistant] Our Sun is second (possibly third) generation, meaning that it was formed from the remains (stellar nebula) of previous supernovae. Earth and the other planets are little bits of the origin stellar disk the Sun formed from, and that's how we got a lot of our heavy elements. Presumably some came in the form of later bombardment as well.


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

[User] ELI5: Due to the extra chromosome, do people with Down Syndrome only accept blood from other people with Down Syndrome?

[Assistant]
No. Red blood cells don't have chromosomes anyway.

The real problems with blood transfusion has nothing to do with DNA, but usually involves blood types. To give an ELI5 view, blood types refer to ways of classifying blood characteristics. For example, the one most people focus on is the ABO system, which refers to antibodies in the plasma and antigens on the blood cells. If you mix give somebody the wrong blood type, it can be a problem. For example, a person with Blood Type A typically has antibodies specifically against the antigens Blood Type B, so person with Blood Type A identifies these new blood cells as foreign and starts attacking it. Something similar can happen with other blood typing groups, but this (and the Rhesus factor--another antigen that might be on a person's blood cell) is the big one.

Therer are other risks as well, usually when there's something else mixed in the blood. Cytokines are common, which can cause a fever and inflammation, but it's usually pretty mild. There's also occasionally infections or contaminants that can make somebody sick.

But Down Syndome itself doesn't affect blood, donated or received.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why did the Emperor offer no resistance when Vader threw him into the reactor?

When Vader picks him up, it's like the Emperor almost immediately gives up. Was there some force-work at play, here? Was he being electrified by his own lightning?

[Assistant]
Force lightning is a very powerful dark side technique.  It requires a great deal of emotion to power the attack.  This is also the moment when the Emperor had just seen his apprentice defeated, and his plans for Luke fail.
Basically, he was literally out of his mind with rage when Vader picked him up.  Being betrayed and then thrown down the pit only increased his rage, essentially locking him into undirected Force Lightning.
It's a pitfall of the Dark Side, a lack of control.


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

[User] Many people seem to believe that society is changing faster today than it did in the past. Is this a cognitive bias, is the world perhaps changing in different ways and we have forgotten the significance of past changes, or is there some truth in this statement?

[Assistant]
One thing nobody seems to have mentioned yet is population growth. There are *seven times* as many people alive today as there were 200 years ago. Overall, the standard of living for most people has improved over the last two centuries, so a proportionately-larger number of those people are literate and educated (to some extent, at least).

If Albert Einstein (to pick a random example) was a one-in-a-billion intellect, then there were only one or two people at his level when he was born. There are 6 or 7 of them out there right now.

As societies around the world grow in technological sophistication, the number of scientists and engineers grows faster than the population growth. This makes the exponential growth of technological innovation outpace even the exponential growth of the population, and is arguably why we aren't all starving right now, despite people's gloom-and-doom predictions of the Earth's "maximum carrying capacity" only a few decades ago.


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

[User] ELI5: How exactly does counting cards work and how does it level the playing field against a casino or improve one's chance of winning?

[Assistant]
Counting Cards is all about keeping track of probability.

Let's say you're playing blackjack. And the first five cards that are dealt are relatively low (let's say less than seven).

If you keep track of this, you know that the probability of drawing a high card is larger than normal because several low cards have already been played. This information will help you decided whether or not it's smart to hit or pass.


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

[User] What is the difference between scotch, whiskey, bourbon, and rye?

[Assistant]
They are all "whiskey" (despite differences in spelling) in  that they are spirits made from grain. Generally, the names refer to where they are made, scotch being made in Scotland and Bourbon being made in Kentucky. "Rye" means that rye (a type of grain) is used. Rye can be made anywhere, but tends to be more common in Canadian whiskey.

Despite the similarities, differences in the process (the use of peat fires in making scotch gives it it's distinctive smoky flavor) and the ingredients (corn giving Bourbon a bit more sweetness) make pretty significant differences in the end.


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

[User] [Daredevil] Why is Daredevil unable to see ninjas from the Hand when he can see what kind of tools are inside of a medkit from across the room which are all inanimate objects?

[Assistant]
Sound absorbent materials.

Daredevil "sees" via a form of echo location. Sound bounced off the medkit in a way that made it identifiable.

The Hand's clothing, however, absorbs more sound than it reflects. Not unlike how stealth aircraft work. At best it confuses his "sight". At worst they're invisible to him. When he can focus on their breathing though he can pick them out.


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

[User]
ELI5: What cause that "heart throb"/"tighten up lung" feeling when you are extremely sad/ heart broken?

First hand experience on Monday and still going through it from an out of the blue break up.

Edit: thanks guys for not only sharing answers but also stories and advices. Sadly the thread is locked so I cant reply to some of you.
"To day is gonna be a great day and you know why!!!? Cause EVERYDAY is a GREAT day!!"-MarkE Miller

EDIT2: just checked inbox and thanks again for the love through pm guys!

[Assistant] Effectively your body thinks that you are in fight or flight mode because it doesn't have a great mechanism to deal with heartbreak. Your autonomic nervous system takes over for your body (essentially autopilot) and tells the rest of your body "HOLY SHIT SOMETHING BAD IS HAPPENING WE NEED TO BE WORKING DOUBLE TIME TO RUN OR FIGHT OUR WAY OUT" and then your heart pumps faster and that starts hurting your chest. The shortness of breath is for a similar reason but it's because your body is trying to breathe a lot more than it needs to.


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

[User] When you wake up by yourself after a period of time (be that 7 hours or 12), is that the amount of sleep your body required?

[Assistant]
The simple answer to your question is: no, not necessarily. A lot of it depends on the timing.

In terms of the biological factors involved, sleep timing can be largely understood in terms of two processes:

1) Your circadian rhythm, which times your 24 h rhythm of sleepiness, hunger, hormone release, etc.

2) Your sleep pressure, which increases the longer you are awake and decreases the longer you are asleep.

In addition, environmental influences, such as light and noise, may alter your sleep patterns and your likelihood of awakening, but let's forget about those for the moment. Sleep timing can then be understood quite well in terms of the above two processes.

Your circadian rhythm promotes wakefulness during the biological day and sleep during the biological night. That means that even if you have a very high sleep need, you may not be able to sleep well during the day. This is something that often affects shift-workers.

For similar reasons, it may not be possible for some people to sleep in, even with a large sleep debt, due to the wake signal provided by the circadian rhythm around the normal waking time. This also means that if you manage to fall asleep earlier than you usually do, you can sometimes sleep all the way to your usual wake time.

Now, to get to your specific example, sleeping for 12 hours continuously suggests either or both of the following: (i) sleep was initiated much earlier than usual; (ii) there was a pre-existing sleep debt.

It is also worth noting that one night of increased sleep duration is insufficient to compensate for a sleep debt built over weeks.


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

[User] How do scientists know how much dark matter a galaxy has or doesn't have?

[Assistant] You take a galaxy and measure the rotation speeds of the stars. When you plot them on a graph of orbital speed Vs their radial distance, you'll see that it doesn't add up. There should be more mass present to account for all that speed. Then you figure out how much mass should be there for the stars to be going that fast and voila. (Simplified version)


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

[User]
[Dresden Files] Lots of wizards died in the war with the Red Court. Like lots. Why didn't we see wizards doing amazing things with their death curses?

It seems like good opportunity to do something great, but no one seems to do it.  One of the Denarian carriers, Cassius, pulled out that "Die alone" death curse so it doesn't need to be just pure destruction. Donald Morgan was a formiddable wizard. Why didn't he do something amazing in his last minutes?

[Assistant]
Death curses are not the effect of a wizard dying, contrary to popular belief. It is the final spell expended by a dying wizard, fueled by all his remaining life force and magic. So, for a death curse to have any effect, the wizard must have time to formulate his curse and choose his target. If death was instantaneous, or the wizard is somehow incapacitated from conscious thought before dying, then he could not cast his death curse.

In the war against the Red Court, the wizards were fighting an enemy with superior strength and speed. Most likely, after the first few death curses, the vampires adapted their tactics appropriately. Also keep in mind, more than a few nobles of the Red Court were spellcasters, in addition to whoever the Black Council sent to aid the Reds. They have more than enough experience to formulate such tactics.

As for Donald Morgan, who was he going to target with his curse? The only appropriate target was the traitor that he just killed mere seconds earlier.


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

[User] ELI5 Why do TV shows have different directors for each episode?

[Assistant]
The first reason is purely practicality. TV production is much more fast paced than film production, and there are almost always multiple episodes in different stages of their production being made. Therefore it is much more efficient and usually better for the end product to have different creative forces (writers, directors, etc.) behind each episode.

The second reason is simply to provide variety to the show. On any kind of art it can be very helpful to bring in fresh perspectives to the project. A lot of television show runners want to keep the audience excited with new, varying styles, and a lot of the time different directors are even better at certain types of episodes than others (think an episode with a lot of car chases and explosions vs. one based mostly around dialogue).

This all really varies with the show. An extreme example is the show LOST, where different writers an directors were even paired with their own characters. Each time an episode focused on a certain character, those writers and directors were much more likely to work on that episode.


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

[User]
Voyager 2 has reveled that the interstellar medium near the heliopause has a temperature of around 30,000-50,000K (29,000-49,000C). How and why doesn't Voyager just melt with such tempatures?

Is the vacuum of space the same temp or is it just the infrequent and tiny particles that are this temp? I thought space was rather cold when away from a star.

[Assistant]
Most of the gas in space really is quite hot. Most of the volume of the "interstellar medium" - the gas distributed within a galaxy - is an ionised plasma at around 10,000 K. In intergalactic space, the gas is a hot blob of plasma that has largely been ejected from galaxies through supernova explosions, so it's at ~1,000,000 K. It's only really in dense cool molecular clouds that you get to room temperature or below.

*But* this is an extremely thin gas, and it doesn't transfer heat to solid objects very efficiently, because the rate of collisions is so low. On a human scale, it doesn't feel like a gas/plasma at all, but more like an insulating vacuum. How much a probe heats up or cools down comes down to: how much heat does it produce, how much heat is lost through radiation, and how much heat is gained from radiation. You get heated up by nearby stars and your own internal power source, and cooled down by thermal radiation.

Once you are far away from the Sun, you really don't get don't get much heat at all from the background of Milky Way stars. So the general tendency is to cool down - you emit more radiation than you receive. This is quite a slow process: for a human in a space-suit it's slowed down by your body converting food & air into heat. A human in a space-suit without heating might die of hypothermia, but it'll be over days - they won't be snap frozen like in Mission to Mars. For a probe or satellite, you can even get the opposite problem - the power source might be producing too much heat, and you need to think about how to design it to make sure it cools down.

**tl;dr** interstellar space is full of hot gas that feels cold, but not *that* cold.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is special about ARM computer processing?

I keep hearing about the new Macs with ARM processors, as opposed to x86. I dont understand what either of those mean.

[Assistant]
Processor architecture means the way the processor carries out instructions. x86 is designed to be able to do a bunch of specific complex instructions and ARM is designed to do a limited group of very simple instructions.

But a long time ago people realized that there's no limit to what complex things we'll want to add to the list of automatic complex instructions, and that every complex instructions added to the architecture slows down its ability to do ANY instruction. But you can also do any complex instruction by breaking it down into very simple instructions.

These things put together mean that the more complex things you want to do with a computer, the faster it will be able to do those things if you just build them out of many simple instructions rather than fewer complex instructions.

The problem is, computers were already mostly using x86 when people realized that, so for a couple decades we've been using the less efficient system just because it's what everyone uses and the companies that make processors don't want to have to change.

It's like if you're drawing. It's easy to make straight lines, and triangles, and circles, and squares. And with those shapes, you can draw literally anything else. But if someone gave you a magic pencil that could automatically draw a face, drawing faces would be SO much easier. But if it can only draw the same face then you either have to settle for the fact that all the people you draw will always have the same face, or you'll only be able to automatically draw one face and still have to do the rest by hand any time you draw a group of people. And it'll be completely useless any time you draw a bridge. But if you have a pencil that automatically draws basic shapes, drawing ANYTHING becomes a lot easier.


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

[User]
CMV: There is no fair and practical way to pay reparations for past crimes like slavery or what happened to the Native Americans.

**Edit: I also meant to say that I don't mean this as a way to look down on people who might call for reparations. I think 98% of the time people call for it it's well intentioned, and their heart is in the right place. It just doesn't seem viable as an actual policy.**

The way I see it it would be more or less impossible (in a practical sense) to determine who is owed how much and who should pay for it.

In regards to who should be paid, it seems like one would have to do rather extensive DNA testing and historical lineage tracing on every individual American in order to determine who is eligible for payment, and how much. For example, would a Native American whose ancestors helped Europeans kill off other Native Americans be owed as much reparations as Native Americans who were solely victimized by the Europeans? Doesn't seem like that would be fair. Is a black person who moved here last week and who is descended from the slavers who took and sold slaves during the transatlantic slave trade owed as much in reparations as a black person who has been here for ten generations and whose lineage is on the salve, not slaver, part of that equation? Again, doesn't seem fair to pay them the same amount. And if race and ethnicity accounts for prejudice and a need for reparations, presumably a person who is 95% African and 5% white is owed more than someone who is 50/50, or 30/70, right? So then the government would need to maintain an ethnic DNA database for the entire country which, on top of not seeming all that practical, strikes me as rather dystopian.

And then theres the issue of determining how much they are owed. I don't see any fair or practical way to do this, either. For African Americans, for example, I've seen people say that we should pay them the total estimated number of hours slaves worked x the national minimum wage and just distribute it evenly... but not everyone's ancestors worked the same amount, and again you're running into the same problem as before - black people who never had slave ancestors and in fact had *slaver* ancestors would end up getting paid for the work slaves did. I've also seen people say we should just look at how blacks as a demographic are doing compared to whites or the national average and just pay them the difference, but this seems to run under the faulty assumption that sans any historical discrimination blacks and native Americans would be making exactly what the national average is. We know that this cannot be the case because two historically discriminated groups, Jews and Japanese people, actually do disproportionately well compared to the national average, indicating that culture impacts overall success as much if not more than past discrimination.

Who should pay is another problem that runs into a lot of the same issues as who should be paid. Are you just going to get the money from rich people? So then that would include rich blacks and native Americans, who would be bankrolling reparations to their own people and for injustices that their ancestors also suffered? Doesn't seem fair. Just take the money from white people? So then whites who have no slaver ancestors and who never harmed natives in any way (and indeed perhaps never benefited from American colonialism at all - perhaps they moved here last year from some other country) would be responsible for paying? Just make people pay who had slavers and genocidal killers in their ancestry? Well that group wouldn't just include whites but also Hispanics, blacks, and Native Americans. Do you think reparations would fly if we did all the calculations and found that the Comanche actually come in owing money (rather than getting paid) because of past injustices they committed against other tribes? Or how would it go over if we figured everything out and certain individual natives actually ended up having to pay white people because their ancestors massacred and raided white settlements and took whites as slaves? You don't think people might flip shit if certain black folks who might be poor today get dinged for being on the slaver side of the slave trade? And for that matter there's no assurance that the descendants of white slavers hundreds of years ago are doing well enough to be able to cough up what they "owe" anyways. They might be broke as shit, what do you do then? And all of this is operating under the assumption that it's fair to make someone pay for what someone they didn't know and are only vaguely related to did perhaps hundreds of years ago, which is not a given.

And what about other marginalized groups? If you trace things back far enough in US history, basically the only group that hasn't been at the short end of the marginalization stick is a small caste of direct British descended wealthy white landowning men. Everyone else is fair game for possible reparations. Women, LGBT, Asians, Jews, basically every other European nationality/ethnicity that came over later, etc. If we're gonna hand out reparations to blacks and native Americans there's no reason we shouldn't be handing them out to people descended from non-landowning men, or women (so... everyone), Irish who dealt with NINA, Jews who were discriminated out of Harvard, Chinese forced into bonded servitude, Japanese interred during the second world war, all the discrimination, both legal and social, that the LGBT community has suffered. It goes on and on and on.

So, how the hell does anyone look at all the complications and confusion and work that would be required to do something like reparations even somewhat fairly and think that it would be a good idea to try? CMV.

[Assistant]
You could just avoid the problem by not paying individuals. Communities exist. Build schools in underserved communities. Give grants to historically black colleges. Build communities centers in Harlem and other historically black communities. Improve living conditions on native American reservations.

There is no need to get bogged down in making sure that people who are 64 percent Cherokee get more money than people who are 62 percent Cherokee. If the community has been historically oppressed, give that community funding that it can use to build structures that will improve that community.


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

[User] [general modern era fantasy] how are magic users trained by the military and integrated with the rest of the armed forces?

[Assistant] Intelligence and medical fields mostly. Modern weapons are easier to use and don't require decades of training or any sort of innate ability. Battlefield scrying, precognition, infiltration, and defenses against those are much cheaper and easier with magic than tech, no need to launch multiple trillion dollar satellites when you just need a couple of guys and their support team. It's the same in the medical field, healers don't need much equipment to restore a broken limb and can do it right on the battlefield, major injuries are easily repaired, and gone are the days of soldiers going home with missing limbs, the only problem left is the psychological impact of said injury.


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

[User]
ELI5: How can some severe long-term alcoholics/smokers/drug addicts maintain full and healthy organ function?

How is it possible for people to be alcoholics/smokers/drug addicts for decades, but develop no liver / heart / lung / jaundice problems and live to a ripe old age? Why do some bodies cave in, and others seemingly remain indestructible?

Edit: To clarify, I don't mean no visible problems, I mean having a full medical and scans, and coming back clean after being on 4 bottles of wine a day for years, or no problems with lung function after decades of 60-a-day smoking, for instance.

[Assistant]
when you take toxins into your body, you increase the *chances* of developing a disease related to those toxins.  we say things like, "smoking causes lung cancer," and that's not exactly wrong, but it's not a 1-to-1 relation, either.  just as some people who never smoke or work in dangerous environments will develop lung cancer, some smokers never will.

part of this is just chance, and part of it is that everybody is different.  there may be other environmental or lifestyle factors, too, like exercise level, mental stress level, diet, etc. that help mitigate some of the damage.

but the numbers don't lie: most addicts will suffer predictable physical damage related to their substance of choice.


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

[User]
[Fantastic 4] What does the Human Torch smell like?

What does he smell like when he's flamed on? Is it possible for fire to burn without emitting a smell? Does he smell like a burning person? Is that distracting to any of the other members of the F4?

[Assistant] Well, technically he isn't on fire. What Johnny Storm does is pyrokinesis of self-generated plasma, which is more similar to lightning than actual flame. As a result, it would probably not smell of anything in particular, though the air around him may smell like ozone if the plasma destabilized the O2 in the air around Johnny into free Oxygen molecules.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is orange juice much cheaper than oranges?

The cost of a bottle of orange juice is much lower than the cost of the oranges needed for me to squeeze out a similar bottle of juice. This is true even for those 100% never-from-concentrate juice. Do the juice manufacturers use the pulp and rind for something else?

[Assistant]
Aside from the fact that juice manufacturers can buy in maybe bulk, thereby getting discounts, and aside from the fact that through futures (contracts that guarantee specified supply of oranges at a set price, irrespective of supply and demand spikes), oranges that you buy at the site are not the same as oranges for juicing.

Store oranges are bred with size, color and hardiness in mind, whereas juicing oranges are bred for moisture content alone. Those moisture content oranges are cheaper to produce, and are produced at much greater quantities, altogether, this keeps the price low.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Where are all the gays?

All the worlds problems and interpersonal shit have been solved for centuries, so why are there no gay characters on Star Trek? They should make up like one tenth of every Star Fleet crew statistically, right? I mean there was that one episode where Riker fell in love with that androgynous alien but I dont think that counts.

[Assistant]
Fully integrated into society and considered thoroughly unremarkable.

Lieutenant Hawk, the helmsman of the Enterprise-E during its first year of service, was married to another man, to name one instance.


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

[User]
[MCU] Would a full blast from the power stone destroy Caps shield?

Thanos has only the power stone, but it's his goal to destroy the shield. Can it be done?

He can use it any way he wants, and has unlimited time and chances to do it.

If not, how many more stones would it take for him to do it? (Probably excluding the reality stone, assuming he just use it to change it's molecular structure or change reality to make it split in half).

[Assistant]
Yes.  No question.

Vibranium is one of the strongest metals known, yes.  But just because nothing on EARTH has managed to damage it doesnt mean that nothing ELSEWHERE can.  Its reasonable to assume that even vibraniums ability to absorb kinetic energy has to stop somewhere, based on yet undetermined factors (mass of the sample, energy input, potential redistribution, etc.).

The Power Stone, however, is the physical embodiment of energy itself.  Just as the Space Stone gives you access to all the space in the universe, the Power Stone gives you access to all the energy in the universe.  And whether or not Thanos himself survives the attempt, theres no way in hell the shield does.


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

[User] ELI5 how private prisons generate revenue.

[Assistant]
The state has a budget for the prisons that is X. The state wants to save money so it takes bids on taking over the operation of said prisons. Whomever has the lowest bid usually gets the contract. The state saves whatever X - winning bid equals.

The company then looks at the books and shaves off whatever they can. Exercise facilities, libraries, food, ect tend to get cut. Then they charge a huge markup on commissary items which is sort of like an in prison store that inmates can purchase items from, like clothes, food, ect. Add to that the profits made from prison labor where the inmates are paid pennies a day to make various things and it starts to become a VERY profitable business. You have a stable cheap workforce whom can only spend their money at your overpriced store.

TLDR: Slavery.


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

[User]
[Narnia] What are the Deep Magic the Queen was citing and who wrote them?

Aslan famously roars at the Ice Queen "Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written."

So who wrote them? Was there a negotiation process? Since some Deep Magic favours the Witch and can even bind Aslan. Is there a full list? Why are there in place to begin with?

[Assistant] The Emperor-beyond-the-Sea wrote the deep magic. There was no negotiation, as He rules everything, not just Narnia, but every world. The magic doesn't favor anyone, it simply is. His motives for putting it into place are inscrutable, unknowable for people like us. Which is kind of the point. The shattering of the stone table represents a breakdown of everything that Narnia was, all that old magic and laws and everything being literally set in stone. Aslan's resurrection, shattering the stone, was immediately followed by a joyous romp. This heralds the new Narnia: Freedom, happiness, and life. You could say that the deep magic was written purely to lead to that moment.


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

[User]
[Pokemon] Why do Unown Pokemon based on the English alphabet if the Pokemon universe seems to use a different alphabet

Like in sword and shield all the text is a made up alphabet. Shouldn't the unown be those letters?

Edit: Why ARE**

[Assistant]
Unnervingly enough, the actual pokedex entries specify they're based on an *ancient, long extinct alphabet.*

In the pokeverse,  the English (well, Latin, but whatever) alphabet is long dead and almost completely forgotten except for a few tablets and the Unown. The implications of this for what exactly the pokemon world is are...worrying. But without going into post-apocalyptic speculations, there's your answer.

They *are* based on the English alphabet in-universe, but the pokeverse doesn't use the English alphabet anymore. Precisely why there are pokemon based on this one writing system and no others is lost to time.


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

[User]
If you had a national UBI policy how do you prevent landlords, energy companies, insurance etc from raising costs to capture some of that Income?

I keep hearing about Universal Basic Income, and how universally give folks a set amount would help.deal with inequality etc. But wouldnt landlords, energy companies and others that have non discretionary costs simply up their prices /rates to capture some of that money, negating the inequality purpose of UBI?

[Assistant]
While landlords especially could raise their rates to capture some of the UBI income, the landlords whom don't raise their rates would have an advantage against those who did, and could more easily find tenents. Those who do raise their rates will need to compete with landlords who have better properties, but chose not to raise their rates. And since rent in the area has been raised, there is more incentive to build housing, which will also drive down prices.

If a $1000/mo UBI is passed, landlords will not all raise their rates by $1000/mo. Rent will increase, but by some amount less than $1000/mo.

Insurance will be handled similarly, but since they can more easily take on new customers, they will be even less able to raise their insurance rates.

This is, of course, excepting the possibility of all the landlords in an area getting together and deciding to raise all their rates at once, while also ensuring that no other housing will be built.


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

[User]
ELI5: Does mixing ingredients separately actually affect how the end product turns out? If so, how?

I was baking Christmas cookies and I realized that it always has you mix ingredients separately, and then blend them all together. Why is this? If you're just mixing them all together in the end anyway then what difference does it make?

[Assistant]
It's because the order and method you mix things can have a huge effect on the outcome. For example, let's take the most common mixing method, the creaming method:

First you cream together the butter and sugar, because the sugar punches microscopic holes in the butter that aid in leavening. Any additional ingredients at this stage would inhibit that. Then you slowly add the eggs, just a few at a time, because eggs have a lot of structure and take time to get fully incorporated. You sift all of your dry ingredients together because powders like to clump up, and once those clumps get wet they're much harder to break up. You add your dry batch last to minimize gluten development, because any mixing after the flour is added will create gluten and could make your product tough. If you have additional wet ingredients, you alternate adding portions of your wet batch with portions of your dry batch to allow the flour time to soak up the added moisture.

If you were to take all the ingredients of a butter cake and just toss them in a mixer, you would end up with a lumpy brick. If you follow that method, you'll get a tender, airy cake with a consistent crumb.


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

[User] Before nuclear fission/fusion was discovered, what did people think powered the sun?

[Assistant]
One of the leading theories was gravitational collapse. Which, as it turns out, is how stars get hot before they begin fusion reactions. Calculations showed that gravitational contraction could heat the Sun for millions of years. And until it was discovered that the Earth was billions of years old, this wasn't a problem.

Nevertheless, the theory of what powered the Sun was only a supposition, not a widely believed fact, until the fusion theory came around.


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

[User] ELI5: If hydraulics are used because liquids aren't compressible why do they use pneumatic brakes in large vehicles like buses and lorries?

[Assistant]
There are two primary reasons. One applies more to trucks, the other to passenger buses.

1) - Trucks - most trucks have multiple, interchangeable components (cabs and trailers). Each component has it's own braking system. These systems all have to be interconnected so they can be controlled from one location (the brake pedal in the cab). This means frequently connecting/disconnecting brake lines. Disconnecting lines in a hydraulic system is a pain. Fluid leaks and has to be replaced, then pressure has to be restored to the system. In a pneumatic system, however, it's easy. Only air leaks out, so no mess. And the system is pressurized off a compressor attached to the engine, so that's primed as soon as you start her up.

Basically, think about a pool vacuum vs. a house vacuum. You can easily add/remove attachments from a home vacuum, all the tubes are filled with air. Try changing out a pool filter hose without getting water everywhere. Plus, if too much leaks out, you might have to re-prime the filter pump.

2) - Buses - Hydraulic brake systems are forced closed by pressure. What this means is when you push the brake pedal, you add pressure, which engages the brake. Pneumatic brakes are forced *open* by pressure. While the vehicle is running the system is pressurized, holding the brakes open. When the pedal is pressed, a valve is opened, the pressure is released, and the brakes swing closed.

Basically what this means is when a hydraulic system fails and loses pressure, the brakes are stuck open, and the vehicle can't stop. When a pneumatic system fails, the brakes are stuck closed, and a vehicle can't go. Either system is fine, because you always have an e-brake... but when it comes to a bus carrying 30 children to and from school everyday, a lot of people like the idea of a bus that won't even move if the break system is faulty.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do so many drugs/medicines have the potential to cause liver damage? Is the liver just a weak organ that can't handle much?

[Assistant]
Liver filters your blood. So everything you take passes through it.

Most drugs are toxic in high concentrations. They become poison. So when they hit the filter, they hurt it because it sucks up the poison.

It's not weak. It's one of the few parts of us capable of regeneration.


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

[User] [WH40K] Is the belief in the Emperor doing more harm or good for the Imperium?

[Assistant] Definitely good, at least in the state the Imperium is in. It provides tangible protection against Chaos, and through fervent faith and mass hallucinations, has turned the tide in more than one battle.


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

[User]
How is the right amino acid brought to ribosomes?

So what I know is that the mRNA is brought to the ribosome with a code for an amino acid. I also know that the tRNA with a matching codon and correct amino acid are brought to the ribosome for assembly. But how is the right amino known? Does the ribosome read the mRNA and call for a tRNA or do the tRNA keep trying to fit the codon in the ribosome till it fits then goes and brings the amino acid. Thanks i have a test on this is a couple of hours.

[Assistant]
> But how is the right amino known?

Put simply, it doesn't 'know'. All the amino acids are attached to tRNAs and they all diffuse around until they meet a ribosome that requires that particular one, as determined by the codon of the mRNA. It can't "call for it" it just waits for it.


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

[User]
Answers to the omnipotence paradox

What are some good arguments refuting the omnipotence paradox?

EDIT: The paradox suggests a problem on the divine attribute of omnipotence. Can god create a task even he can't perform? The most famous example is the stone paradox. What if god created a stone so heavy that even he can't lift?

[Assistant]
You either understand "omnipotence" to just being able to do everything that's logically possible, or you say God can do things that are logically impossible. You will very rarely find someone who will entertain that God can do the logically impossible, and typically that will involve just us being wrong about what really is impossible in the first place (e.g. Descartes).

>>I answer that, All confess that God is omnipotent; but it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists: for there may be doubt as to the precise meaning of the word 'all' when we say that God can do all things. If, however, we consider the matter aright, since power is said in reference to possible things, this phrase, "God can do all things," is rightly understood to mean that God can do all things that are possible; and for this reason He is said to be omnipotent. (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I:25:3)

For your specific example, a stone that God couldn't lift wouldn't be logically possible, because God could lift any stone. Now if God can do logically impossible things, He could create a stone He could not lift, but then He would also have no problem lifting that stone too, since being logically contradictory is no barrier.


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

[User]
[Sonic Adventure 1 and 2] Why are city streets and otherwise public areas and architecture built with strange elements that are impractical for normal people?

Like why are there loopty loops on a highway or lack of safety measures in an indoor amusement park that normal people can't traverse? Why is the government approving these measures? I swear Twinkle Park must have dozens of safety violations.

[Assistant]
In Sonic Adventure 2 we see an actual finished highway (Tails' chasing after the president), and while it's got a few similarities to racing tracks it doesn't have any loops in it.

What's clear is that Speed Highway and Radical Highway are in the process of being built and/or repaired.

This can only mean that, in this world, Highways are prefabbed pieces of concrete. Rolled up into a circle for transport and unfurled once they reach their destination.

Sonic and friends just happen to be running through the area mid-construction.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we always look at our hands when we feel something is psychologically/cognitively wrong?

[Assistant] Probably because they are the easiest, most movable, spatially aware part of our body that we can look at to see if something is abnormal.  Short of doing some physical activity to gauge control and perception, hands are very telling of coordination loss.


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

[User] Why don't we get heat stroke when we take a long hot shower or bath?

[Assistant]
You can get heat stroke. There's a reason that most hot tubs and saunas recommend not being in them for more than 15 or so minutes at a time.

That said, you'll expel some heat via your breath just as other mammals do via panting. In a shower your body will continue to sweat. Some of that water will still evaporate, as will the hot water hitting you from the shower itself. Generally in a shower only one side of your body is being hit with water, so you'll radiate heat from the other side.

But, if you stay in a hot, humid shower or a hot tub long enough you'll eventually begin to experience symptoms of heat stroke. Shortness of breath, lightheadedness, tunnel vision, etc. Exertion will make it worse.


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

[User]
CMV: If legalization of prostitution increases human trafficking, we should not legalize it.

I am not against prostitution in general.  If regulated with the likes of marijuana, I feel it can be a great contributor to the economy as well as provide protections for workers and give them opportunities to unionize, have legal methods for pay disputes, etc.

What would make me be against legalization would be if this increased human trafficking.  I cant find it inside me to justify the economic gains if people are being bought and sold into modern slavery.

What will change my view is if you can show legalization of prostitution does not increase human trafficking or otherwise increase the number of workers in the field against their consent. I would prefer actual data.

[Assistant]
Why do you think it *would?*

With legalization comes recourse for sex workers. When prostitution is illegal, sex workers can be abused by their "employers" and unable to report it to the police because they'll be arrested as well. Is prostitution is legal, a person who has been trafficked or otherwise taken advantage of can go to the police without fear that they will be put in prison or have their possessions/money taken from them.


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

[User] ELI5: How do producers of movies like Jackass and Borat acquire consent of the people they film?

[Assistant]
They use a consent form. Basically they sign the right to use their name/image/voice in the film.

They generally do this by telling them what they are signing. But sometimes they say anything (such as this is a school project) to get a signature and go on their merry way. That's when lawsuits generally happen.


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

[User]
Do photons (and other C travelers) experience an acceleration to C or is the velocity instantaneous?

Or does it not even make sense to define an acceleration to such things? If so, why? For examples sake, say I have an interaction that results in an emitted photon, at what point is it traveling at C? And where does this energy to travel such speeds come from, simply from the system as it goes to ground state which in turn is the energy to fuel the emissions? How can that be enough?

[Assistant]
There is no acceleration, because photons always travel at c.  This is just an intrinsic property of massless particles in general.

> And where does this energy to travel such speeds come from, simply from the system as it goes to ground state which in turn is the energy to fuel the emissions? How can that be enough?

Photons do not have kinetic energy, so it takes no energy to send them flying off at c.  Instead, energy imparted to a photon changes the wavelength of the photon, and the energy of the photon is simply however much energy the system has lost in producing the photon.


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

[User] ELI5: How do beekeeper's hives stay populated while we harvest a good portion of their larvae's food? Do they really produce that much excess honey?

[Assistant] basically, yes. normally hives literally expand to breaking point. then large part of the population splits off, which is called a swarm, and go find a new home. we're artificially delaying that process by taking the honey, and we artificially add sugarwater, which they turn into honey, at times of shortage.


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

[User] ELI5: We all know plastics aren't biodegradable and that's bad, so why can't we just use chemical science to break them down ourselves?

[Assistant] We can, but the problem is you end up with a soup of toxic chemicals that cant be economically reused. It all comes down to money - it is cheaper to burn or bury the plastics than to resuse them - it may also be greener to bury them as at least the CO2 is locked up for a longer time.


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

[User]
ELI5: why does any number times 0 equal 0? Who came up with this and how do you logically explain it? How does nothingness erase something ness?

Hi everyone. I hate mathematics, but have always been curious why multiplying something by zero, negates the number entirely? I think of math starting out of basic necessity for trading of goods back in the day, and then clearly evolving from there. Someone at some point, had to define that 2 x 6 equals 12. So why wouldnt 0 x 6 equal 6?

[Assistant] You put a box of 6 eggs in your shopping cart. 1 box x 6 eggs = 6 eggs. You put another box of 6 eggs in the cart. 2 boxes x 6 eggs is 12 eggs. You remember that you have eggs at home and put both boxes back in the refrigerator case. There are 0 boxes of 6 eggs in your cart. 0 boxes x 6 eggs is 0 eggs. Youd probably be pretty annoyed if the store charged you for 6 eggs at checkout, which is what your example suggests.


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

[User]
[Game of Thrones] How does Cersei's claim to the throne work, succession wise?

I get that she basically just took it by force after Tommen's suicide, but what's the legal justification? Officially it should go to the Baratheon heir, right? And since the Iron Throne is patrilineal, if we assume Lannister ownership shouldn't the heir then be Tyrion? But he's a kinslayer by this point, so then it's Jamie? How does Cersei swing this other than threatening to re-enact the Mad King's rampage?

[Assistant]
She really has no legal claim, holding it entirely by force.

The simple fact that shes the person sitting on the throne gives her a veneer of legitimacy, but thats all.

Oddly, the people of Kings Landing - who have in the past risen up in violent riots, and threw shit at her in the streets - seem to be okay with this, despite the fact that she got there by murdering the beloved High Sparrow and Margaery Tyrell, along with hundreds of others.


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

[User]
ELI5: When countries like Russia, China, and America 'buy gold' to bolster their economies, where do they buy it from?

It's like there is some vast gold store that only major countries can shop at or something. Russia just bought like 800 tonnes. Did they order it from a gold warehouse? Did they contact their local Gold seller and have it delivered?

[Assistant] They buy from each other. In NYC the federal Reserve has a massive vault with many compartments. Each labeled with a different countries name so they buy from each other and shift the gold.bars from vault to vault. Source: took a tour of the reserve and saw the vault even held some of England's gold.


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

[User]
I believe a global government or New World Order would be a great thing. CMV.

Ignoring the conspiracy connotations and totalitarian aspects associated with a "NWO."
A global government, working for the benefit of everyone, not just their own nation. Not necessarily dissolving local and state governments, as they can handle trivial (comparatively) issues, but all major decisions being brought to the global government (something similar to the UN), which has elected officials from every country.

CMV.

[Assistant] What about varying resources, geography, demographics etc? How can any  singular government be sure about what is best for everyone on the planet when we're so varied? What if every nation decided it would be ok to take away the oil in Kuwait without permission based on a vote? Little Kuwait wouldn't stand a chance in that type of system. What if a country refused to abide by this government and did whatever it saw fit? How would the NWO be able to control these outsiders? Man, it's starting to sound more and more like the UN in here.


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

[User]
Is Malthus's hypothesis of the global carrying capacity legitimate?

In my opinion, I believe that the human race reacts to limiting factors much like viruses breed in protection against vaccines; the human race's pursuit of constant adaptation will eventually lead to extremely effective solutions to these limiting factors. However, I also believe that this process will indefinitely repeat itself. What do you thnk?

[Assistant]
Malthusian hypothesis was legitimate in his lifetime. Pre-industrial populations behave just like Malthus predicted.  He was essentially correct in his observation.    However, technological developments already happening in his lifetime changed things dramatically.

Current predictions for population growth don't expect population growth to continue and life standards return to subsistence-level. Population growth turns to decline when people reach certain living standards.


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

[User] Wage increase is suppose to increase cost of living. Is the opposite true; does an increase in cost of living also increase wages?

[Assistant]
You can't reason from a price change.

It depends on what caused the increase in the cost living.

If it's caused by an increase in aggregate demand, then yes wages will rise.

But if its caused by a decrease in aggregate supply then wages will decrease.

The same goes for the premise of your statement btw. It depends on what caused the wage increase.


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

[User]
[Daredevil TV Show] Why did Matt Murdock get heightened senses from the car accident while most blind people apparently do not? Also, why did they take so long to manifest?

I doubt every blind man in the MCU has the ability to hear heartbeats and stuff like that. Was it the chemicals that did it or is he just unique?

And his senses didn't really go into overdrive until he was in the orphanage. Why is that?

[Assistant]
It was the Chemicals.

He was used to all the sounds and sights of home, they couldn't overwhelm him because he felt safe there. The Orphanage was not home, it was a constant stressful reminder that his father died.


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

[User]
ELI5: Internet piracy is illegal while brick-and-mortar stores selling used music/movies are legal. Why is this?

I did a search for "piracy" and "piracy used stores" and found similar discussions but nothing addressing this specifically, so I apologize if I still managed to miss something.

Every logical argument I've heard against piracy is that it hurts content creators by depriving them of sales. Doesn't a used music/movies store do the same thing? There's an awesome store in my city that sells some new, mostly used music and movies from every genre imaginable on every medium imaginable from cassette tape to blu-ray. The bulk of their used inventory comes from people trading in their own music and movies for store credit or cash. Stores like Gamestop do the same thing for video games. Going off the "denying the content creators of sales" argument, I would think this would be even *worse* than piracy because when you buy Game of Thrones used on blu-ray, not only is HBO not profiting off that sale but some other third party *is* turning a profit. How is this allowed?

To be clear, I'm talking specifically about "merchants" in the traditional legal sense - namely, someone regularly dealing in the kind of goods being sold. This separates established used stores from eBay sellers or thrift stores that may sell used DVDs but don't ordinarily deal in them and aren't set up for that express purpose. My bias is that I have no bias - I don't care one way or the other about piracy. I don't pirate media personally, but really just because I'm too busy to enjoy anything I would download. Lord knows I put Limewire through it's paces back in the day.

[Assistant]
> Doesn't a used music/movies store do the same thing?

No.  The content creator already profited from the original sale.  The fact that they don't profit from each subsequent sale is irrelevant.

Contrast with piracy where there is no original sale and the content creator gets zero profit.


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

[User] ELI5: how do we know dating something is accurate? If the materiales from which something is made are millions of years old, what difference does it make once its made into something?

[Assistant]
The radioactive isotopes that are checked for with radiometric dating exist naturally in the world. The acts of molten rock churning in the Earth, or the waters mixing in the oceans, or animals eating plants, and even breathing, all increase the amounts of the isotopes found within the body.

Once the thing is no longer moving, eating, or breathing, it is no longer adding the radioactive isotope into itself, and it begins to decay.

The most common form of radiometric dating is carbon dating, which is most useful for recent (within a few tens of thousands of years) artifacts made of living material, like cloth or pottery. That carbon isotope is generated by sunlight, which replenishes the amount found on the planet.


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

[User]
Why does basal cell carcinoma so rarely metastasize?

Biochemically/genetically speaking.

[Assistant]
I believe you are implocitly comparing BCC to melanoma - they are derived from different cells and the epithelial cells are much more terminally differentiated and more committed than melanocytes which easily restore their mobility which enables metastasis.

Short answer is that melanocytes migrate during embryogenesis and provide pigmentation (defects in this process are observed in many animals where they are unpigmented at terminal sites far from the neural tube origin like peripheral limbs - white socks and ventral surfaces in cats and dogs). Because melanocytes migrate in to the highly differentiated epithelial tissue, these melanocytes are then the most easily transformed cells when it comes to oncogenic mutations. Because they migrated through other tissues they are also less dependent on the local environments.

A cancer cell needs to acquire mutations that revert its differentiation so it can move, adhere to other sites, ignore local signals, and replicate independently. The more stem-like a cell to begin with the more easily it is able to acquire this phenotype through mutation. In their terminally differentiated state melanocytes are much more stem-like than basal epithelial cells.


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

[User] Why does hitting the top of a bottle of beer with another bottle of beer create that much froth?

[Assistant] it momentarily cause the bottom of the bottle to move away from the beer faster than the beer can move. this creates lots of tiny vacuum bubbles. the beer then rushes into this gap. each of those becomes a nucleation site for the dissolved carbon dioxide to form dozens of small bubbles. this basically turns all the beer contacting the bottle into foam. fun fact if the original hit is just right the vacuum pressure can cause the beer to slam back into to bottom of the bottle so hard it blows out the bottom.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do mattresses always have a weird stiching pattern on them?

[Assistant]
The practical reason is that it keeps the stuffing more evenly distributed around the mattress after several hundreds of nights. This is similar to the box patterns that are usually sewn into comforters.

The less practical reason is that it's visually appealing for the showroom floor. This is similar to putting pretty patterns on the inside of shoes.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the difference between a checking and savings account? And why do we have both?

[Assistant]
Different purposes, different properties.

Savings accounts typically have a relatively high interest rate, but charge some money per transaction. This means it is in your best interest to stuff cash into the account; saving.

Checking accounts typically have a lower interest rate, but charge less (or free) for transactions. It is used for more frequent transactions.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do your dreams seem longer the less you sleep?

[Assistant]
Generally you forget almost all of your dreams. You go through multiple REM cycles (Rapid Eye Movement) in which you dream.

Over the course of the night, you dream, forget and dream. If you sleep less, that means less dreams for you to remember and the more you'll remember about these dreams.

This is why when you smash your alarm for another five minutes and scream into your pillow until you collapse asleep, you can dream what seems like an entire lifetime.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why did Luke waste so much time at Jabba's palace, when he could have walked in there with his lightsaber and free Leia and Han

It's not like Boba and a couple of guards could have stopped him.

[Assistant]
I always attributed to the fact that Luke didn't want to go all violent on everyone and would have preferred a diplomatic solution.  Except Luke has absolutely no diplomatic or negotiation skills so he tried to alpha Jabba out of the palace's prized collections.

Except that Jabba has had to deal with arrogant crooks and scum for years and doesn't intimidate easily.  How much street cred would Jabba lose if some shmuck with a robe and a fancy weapon from a dead Jedi was able to intimidate him?  The Jedi were extinct and this dude just happened to find a lightsaber from an old battlefield?

Luke just has shit people skills.  Not unexpected from a moisture farmer who grew up on a dirtball planet.


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

[User] [Stargate] Because of their services to the Galaxy, would key members of SG-1 be offered a chance to ascend over death when they reached old age?

[Assistant] Probably not. The only one (that we know of) helping humans ascend in the Milky Way was Oma Desala. Unfortunately, she's occupied with keeping Anubis busy until the end of time. The Others aren't keen on interference of any sort.


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

[User] ELI5: How do we know gravity actually affects time?

[Assistant] Einstein first described it in his theory of relativity, and since then it's been directly observed using atomic clocks in orbit. In fact, in order for GPS to stay accurate, the clocks on the satellites used for GPS have to be occasionally corrected.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are foreign movie posters often depicted with art that has nothing to do with the movie?

I just saw the Soviet Union posters for Star Wars, but I've also seen other foreign posters for movies that have characters or art that has nothing to do with the movie. Why is that?

[Assistant]
I can tell you about why Eastern European countries did this with a degree of certainty  because under communist governments/for a while after them, censoring imported cinema was the norm. When foreign movies were played in these countries, they were often modified to the point where the end product was significantly different from the original film, and this drove foreign cinema into becoming a niche unto itself.

Promoters don't want to waste too much money advertising a movie they don't expect theatre-goers to care about. Either because of the stigma attached to foreign imports, or because the quality of films was reduced by cuts to their contents, the quality of *promotion* also fell along the way. Artists hired to design these posters weren't so much seizing the opportunity to illustrate the film (it was quite common for artists to have only had the plot *described* to them, or in some cases only have the name of it to go by when designing its poster). They were seizing the opportunity to make art that would be widely seen by the public, in a time where art was heavily monitored too.

Of course, the sheer absurdity of the end result without that context can be hysterical.


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

[User] ELI5 how is it we build a tolerance to spice?

[Assistant] Assuming you mean the heat from peppers. The chemical in peppers mimics the sensation of burning, but does no actual burning damage. Eventually your brain understands that you won't actually be hurt, just tricked into believing it was hurt. The mild irritation can then become pleasurable.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does it feel so good to rub your eyes when you're tired\sleepy?

[Assistant]
Your eyes tend to dry out when you get sleepy because of reduced tone in the sympathetic nervous system. Normally, your eyelids are subconsciously kept open by the superior tarsal muscle, which is an involuntary smooth muscle activated by your sympathetic nervous system. However, when you get tired and sleepy, reduced sympathetic tone causes this muscle to relax, making it more difficult to keep your eyes open. You are still able to open your eyes but this requires a concerted effort and voluntary muscle contraction, as anyone who's ever been very drowsy can attest to. In any case, when it becomes difficult to keep your eyes open and the muscles keeping your eyes open begin to fatigue, your blinking frequency decreases correspondingly. The decrease in blinking reduces the distribution of tears over the eye surface, which is the reason your eyes also become dry when you are sleepy. This mild irritation is alleviated by rubbing your eyes because rubbing reflexively stimulates the release of tears from your lacrimal gland. The rubbing also stimulates a small amount of local sympathetic tone, making it temporarily easier to keep your eyes open, which means you blink more frequently and keep your eyes moist more easily.

coluv101 has a really good point though...


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

[User]
ELI5: If liquid water turns to gas at 212F, how does water evaporate at room temperature?

Edit: Thanks for all the help, science and scientists!

[Assistant]
Have you ever jumped on a trampoline with two other people? Sometimes, semi-randomly, two people will land at once, and the third will go flying. Evaporation is sort of the same thing.

Every molecule of water has heat energy, and is in motion. As a liquid, the molecules move somewhat freely in and around each other. They constantly collide with one another, and like those Newtonian bouncing balls they always show in movies, the molecules transfer energy to one another. Sometimes they collide in such a way that lots of energy is transferred to one molecule, it is near the surface, and its direction is such that it doesn't collide much with any other molecules. If, in this case, it has enough energy to become a gas, it will escape the liquid water. This is evaporation.

When you heat water, you increase the *average* energy of all its molecules. This just increases the rate of evaporation until you add so much energy that molecules even deep in the water turn to a gas en masse, and you wind up with boiling.


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

[User] ELI5: why is it considered disrespectful to wear a hat during the national anthem in America?

[Assistant]
Fundamentally goes back to Christianity as practiced years ago.

When praying or prophesying, men were to have their heads uncovered.  Women were to have their heads covered in the same circumstances.

Thus, the removing of hats when someone died in westerns, etc - you were praying, and thus removed your headgear.  Likewise, the hats you see in depictions of African-American women (most famously) in church - same basic thing.

So, by extension, removing your hat became a sign of respect for men.  Hasn't translated into secular terms quite the same for women for whatever reason.


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

[User] Why is it that natural remedies occur so often in plants, but rarely if ever in animals?

[Assistant]
Consider the chief difference between plants and animals. Animals can move, plants can't. If an animal needs to defend itself, it needs to move faster, or have more muscles, or have teeth and claws and so on. How does a plant defend itself? It can't run away from a predator. It can't bite or claw at an enemy.

So how does a plant protect itself? Aside from maybe some thorns, they use chemicals. There is much more pressure for a plant to synthesize new chemicals that can be used to defend itself, making for a vast array of chemical compounds that may potentially have use in human medicine. There is not the same pressure in the animal kingdom to synthesize unique chemical compounds.

Consider the smell of cut grass. Why does it smell that way? It's the smell of trauma. The grass is basically sending out a distress signal, a category of compounds called "green leaf volatiles". One effect these compounds can have is to lure bugs that eat caterpillars, which like to eat grass.


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

[User]
[Marvel Comics] Will the Punisher go to Valhalla when he dies?

He is undeniably brave, a skilled and disciplined warrior, he is addicted to fighting, and yet has strong convictions when it comes to noncombatants. Also, Thor overall seems to respect him.

[Assistant]
No. The Cosmic Ghost Rider, which was an alternate Castle was taken to Valhalla as an exception. Technically some people can go to Valhalla if they qualify (by dying with a weapon in hand) and if a valkyrie is nearby to take them, but for the most part Valhalla is an exclusive club.

People don't like to talk much about it, but Frank already died once or twice, and forces of Heaven have already laid their claim on him, so likely once he dies, he'll go back to a celestial Doomguy, shooting demons with angelic guns forever.


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

[User] ELI5: How exactly does the brain store information?

[Assistant]
Information and stimuli comes into your brain trough your senses: smell, sounds, vision, etc. Most of this if filtered before you even realise it. The relevant stimuli then comes into the working memory, which contains information you are using right now (like when you are calculating, the numbers are in your working memory) and is fairly limited. You can only hold 4-7 'chuncks' of information in there. When the information is repeated or you pay more attention to it, it will go to the short term memory. For example, you repeated a phone number a few times, so you can put it in your phone. Most of this information is discarted, but some will go to the long term memory. This is mostly information you pay attention to and repeat often, which is important to you or which you relate to stuff you already know. That is why, for example, you remember a name of a person better if you relate it to a fact you are familiar with.

How we store it, we don't know. Some say pictures, some say words, some say something abstract, certain nerve patterns, to name a few.


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

[User] ELI5 How come certain creatures' stomach acids can dissolve bones and flesh but don't dissolve the stomach lining itself?

[Assistant] Your stomach acids could dissolve your own flesh, as well as your stomach itself, so the stomach defends itself by constantly supplying a layer of mucus on its inside. The stomach can also produce some basic chemicals that can neutralize the acids.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is 'burning man'?

I've read about it and seen tons of pictures, but I don't get what exactly it is. Can you elaborate?

[Assistant] An annual mating ritual where hippies congregate to spread STDs and take drugs. The hippies with the brightest colors are able to lure their mates back to their tents where they proceed to ingest ceremonial mushrooms and talk about the universe. Once they have reached extreme levels of intoxication they are made immune to the music of the womp, the songs of their tribe. They dance, barter more drugs and slap eachother with dreadlocks until the sun goes down and they are ready to mate. Only the strongest men with the most stamina are able to maintain an erection while on opium and Molly thus their species is able to survive and carry on the gene pool. The ceremony lasts a week or until the drugs are gone and afterwards they pack up their tents and Berkenstocks back into their vans to return to their positions as servers in the restaurant industry. They have also had their annual exfoliation and are now clean enough to pass as normal people.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is Reuters considered to be a very valid news source? What makes it any different than MSNBC or Fox News?

[Assistant]
Reuters is a news agency that sells articles to other people, so that they can publish it and make money. Since Reuters wants to sell their articles to both MSNBC and Fox News, and both of their online sites, and both conservative and liberal newspapers, they make their articles as much of "just the facts." that you can get.

MSNBC and Fox News are both offering political spin on news. It is in their favor to deliberately push an agenda, because that's what their viewers want.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why is the 4.0 GPA scale used?

It seems like the 4.0 GPA scale isn't exactly reflective of a students academic ability.
For example, let's say 90-100 = A+ = 4.0 and 85-89 = A = 3.9.
Student A gets 100 in 4 courses and 89 in 1 course, resulting in a GPA of 3.98.
Student B gets 90 in 5 courses, and ends up with a GPA of 4.0.
I don't know about you, but to me Student A has a better academic achievement than Student B, but their GPAs say otherwise. So why is this scale used?

[Assistant]
>For example, let's say 90-100 = A+ = 4.0 and 85-89 = A = 3.9.

I've never seen that scale before.  I've always seen something more like:

97-100 = A+ = 4.33
94-96 = A = 4.0
90-93 = A- =  3.67
87-89 = B+ = 3.33
etc.

Thus Student A has a GPA of 4.08, and Student B has a GPA of 3.67.


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

[User] If the universe is 13.7 billion years old, how come the observable universes edge is 46-47 billion light years away? Should it not be 13.7 billion light years away?

[Assistant]
Because the universe is expanding "faster than the speed of light can cover spacetime". Imagine the earth was the universe and it is expanding at a high rate (getting bigger in scale). If you were living in New York and China was some light years away, the earth is now expanding faster and faster (growing in size) at a rate that increases distance between NY and China so fast that even if you were travelling at light speed, you will never be able to reach China. So effectively, it's expanding "faster" than the speed of light can keep up, even though technically the countries are not travelling at any speed at all.

EDIT: So to put everything together, light now has to travel 47 billion years to reach us even though it's only 13.7 billion years old. because now we are so far apart.


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

[User] Is there any significance to the color of the wizards in the Tolkien universe (Grey, Blue, Brown, and White)?

[Assistant]
No.  If White has any significance it is because Saruman was "the White".  White came to designate the head of the order because Saruman was chosen to lead. Saruman did not lead because he was "the White".

Saruman eventually came to dislike the White in favor of Saruman of "Many Colors".  This only became known after his open betrayal to Gandalf, though his true betrayal started hundreds of years beforhand.

Gandalf returns as Gandalf the White (now enhanced by God in power and wisdom) because he is Saruman "as he should have been".


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

[User] ELI5: How does my clothes dryers lint catcher get so full, yet my clothes dont fall apart? Where does all this lint come from?

[Assistant]
As you wash items, they lose particles (lint) which is collected in your lint trap. If you weigh the lint youll see that it is a small percentage of the (dry) washed items.

As an interesting aside - laundry and linen companies (e.g., Aramark) often have a weight cut off for when they inject new linen. For example, if Aramark provides uniforms and the dry uniform loses 25% of its weight or more, it is retired from circulation.

Edit: Injection is a term used in laundry & linen to mean a new item is put in (injected) to circulation. When an item is retired - which can be due to weight, but could be caused by any other number of issues like rips, tares, stains - they are no longer in circulation, which means they wont be cleaned and supplies back to the client. Syringes and other injection devices are not involved in laundry injection.


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

[User]
If fusion power was as widespread as fission today, what would the worst case "meltdown" scenario be and how bad would it be compared to fission meltdowns?

If fusion power was as widespread as fission today, what would the worst case "meltdown" scenario be and how bad would it be compared to fission meltdowns? Why?

[Assistant]
Since fusion reactions take place only under very specific conditions (very high temperature and pressure), any disruption in the operation of the reactor would cause the necessary conditions for fusion to disappear, which would halt the reaction.

Unlike nuclear fission, which in many cases can be self-sustaining and needs active intervention to be slowed down (in the form of control rods, for example), a fusion plasma takes a lot of work to be kept in the right state. Except of course when it is so large that its own gravity does the trick, like in stars. But that won't be the case for earthbound fusion.

So if there is a catastrophic incident in a hypothetical fusion reactor, the reactor and surrounding building could be destroyed and the high energy particles could irradiate some of the debris. But that's about the extent of the damage. Unlike the unmitigated meltdown of a fission reactor, the damage would be very localized.


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

[User]
ELI5: how come in movies when the cameraman is filming the actor looking in the mirror, you can't see the camera even if the camera should logically be reflected in the mirror?

This question has been plaguing me for more years than it should have.

[Assistant]
It's a little known fact, but there are a group of vampires in hollywood who are recruited a bit like stunt doubles but for cameramen when they need to film scenes about mirrors.

There are also several alternate techniques that people who don't believe in vampires usually employ.

First and by far the most common, the director takes advantage of the angle of reflection. Light reflects off a mirror in the same way a tennis ball bounces off a wall - that is, it only comes straight back at you if it hits perpendicular to the wall. For something to be seen in a mirror, light first needs to bounce off the object (in this case the cameraman), then bounce off the mirror straight back into the camera. When the camera is off to the side though, the light bounces in the opposite angle, so the camera doesn't see the camera in the mirror. This is why most mirror scenes are filmed at an angle, rather than directly behind the actor in question.

Secondly, you can not have a reflection at all, and construct the entire reflected scene in CGI.

Thirdly, a technique done in Terminator when they wanted to do a panning shot around a mirror. They used a wall of glass instead of a mirror, put the actors in a duplicate of the set on the other side of the mirror then used dummies on the "real" side.


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

[User]
Why are Pigeons so well adapted to living in cities?

Why is it that there are so many of them compared to other birds (except maybe Seagulls at the cost) and have they always been well adapted to city life or is it something that has evolved alongside cities?

[Assistant] The urban pigeons are rock pigeons, they originally nested in cavities on cliffs, big rocks, etc... The urban environment is quite similar to these, with vertical structure, holes everywhere, and other features. Add the abundance of food due to human garbage and the pigeon's adaptive diet and you get the perfect urban bird.


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

[User] How does brain differentiate between factual vs fictitious memories ?

[Assistant] It doesn't, and generally the only thing distinguishing it is your own contextual awareness. Memories are altered very easily, both by people embellishing as time goes on without realising and because the emotional state both at the time and years later has a significant effect on how you interpret that memory in the first place.


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

[User] [Power Rangers] With an entire planet to conquer, why does Rita Repulsa always attack Angel Grove, California?

[Assistant]
Because she knows the Power Rangers live there. Rita's plan is to destroy the Power Rangers because they are pretty much the only obstacle towards her conquering Earth.

And most of her attacks are psychological, meant to throw the Power Rangers off their game by messing with their personal lives. It's not necessarily the best or most effective tactic, but you try telling a millennia old witch that she's being impractical, and see what kind of response you get.


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

[User] Is it possible weve permanently eliminated some strains of colds and flu with the year long quarantine?

[Assistant] Yes, maybe. There are a couple of strains that there have been zero reported cases of and scientists think they may have gone extinct.  Which is good news for flu shot makers because they just hope they are right about which strains they develop vaccines for months in advance of flu season.  Fewer types of flu strains means they will have higher likelihood of picking the correct strains to vaccinate against.


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

[User] [Star Wars] If Luke had killed Vader and become the Emperor's new right-hand man, would it have affected anything? Wouldn't Lando and Wedge have still blown all of them up 20 minutes later?

[Assistant] If, in the original story, Luke had enough time to drag Vaders cyborg-armored ass to the ship, have a heartfelt goodbye, and escape, Im assuming that they would have just gotten the hell out of there before the Death Star blew.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do both coffee (stimulant) and alcohol (depressentt) both make the human body sweat more than usual?

[Assistant] Coffee increases heart rate and blood pressure by stimulating the central nervous system, which in turn stimulates sweat glands. Alcohol dilates (widens) blood vessels which makes the extremities/crevices of your body much warmer, which stimulates sweating to cool you off.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why did the Separatists join with the Trade Federation?

One of the reasons for the Separatists, from what little info about their motives I could find in canon, is that the Republic was corrupt and unwilling to protect outlying star systems from megacorps, and that the invasion of Naboo in Episode 1 was an example of that. In a Clone Wars episode, they even highlight how, unlike the Republic, they don't work with the megacorps.

But it was the Trade Federation that was responsible for the corruption in the Senate and invading Naboo, and that same Trade Federation built the battle droids they used. Did the Separatists at no point worry that they were joining with their oppressors?

To use an analogy, it would be like if Hawaii got mad at the US for not stopping Pearl Harbor and then joined Japan.

[Assistant]
They didn't. The Trade Federation was (supposedly) neutral. While they did provide resources to the Separatists, they also had a seat in the Galactic Senate of the Republic, and publicly denounced Nute Gunray's invasion of Naboo.

As for why the Separatists were ok with this arrangement, it's actually pretty simple; They needed the money. Both the CIS and the Republic drove themselves deeper and deeper in debt to the Trade Federation to win the war. If the CIS wasn't willing to set aside their ideological battles they would have lost the actual ones.


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

[User]
Why are there so few elements that are liquid at room temperature?

118 elements and only two are liquid at room temp... what makes the liquid state so rare?

[Assistant]
Because in order to have a 'room' you need to have solid elements?

More seriously, this should be seen the other way around: life has developped on earth because Earth has a good balance of solid/liquid/gaseous elements.

Additionally, the liquid phase can be seen as an intermediate between solid and gaseous phases. The temperature limits for liquids are bounded by the melting and boiling points, while gaseous states are not bounded in high temperatures and solid states only bounded by the absolute zero.