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

[User] [The Culture]What is REALLY going on to cause every member of billions-strong civilizations to choose to sublime all on the same day, seemingly at random?

[Assistant]
Have you read *the Hydrogen Sonata*? It's the last book in the series and explains a lot about sublimation. It's rarely at random, they usually spend decades discussing whether they are ready for it as a civilization, and if they decide they are, then they set a date a few years off and start making preparations. They all have to go within the same hour or so because a single biological mind is not strong enough to keep itself together in the Sublime, and will quickly dissolve into the background. When huge numbers go at once, they can band together to survive the early stages while retaining their individuality, then once they are accustomed to the Sublime they can presumably go their separate ways, whatever that entails. It doesn't have to be the entire civilization though, just a large number - 7% of the Chelgrians up and did it one day and it worked. AIs can sublime alone whenever they want.

Edit: As for *why* they want to do it in the first place? Well, because so far as any civilization that has ever researched into the matter has been able to tell, it's incredibly amazing and better than existence in the Real in every way. Here's a description of what it's like.
>It was wonderful; that was the general tone of the vague, dreamy reports that did come back. And almost beyond comparison, literally indescribable. The absolutely most splendid wonders, experiences and achievements of the Real and all those within it were as nothing to the meanest off-hand meanderings of the Sublime. The most soaring, magnificent, ethereal cathedrals to reason, faith or anything else were as mere unkempt and dilapidated hovels compared to the constructions - if they could even be described as such - within the Sublime. That was about all anybody had to go on, but at least the reports never varied in one respect; no one ever came back saying, shit, it's horrible, don't go.


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

[User]
[General] What incarnation of Earth is most powerful?

Excluding Earths where main power comes from aliens and other non-Earth beings (Superman for example)

How strong can Earth become in science-ficton?

[Assistant]
The Doctor Who Earth can get pretty damn powerful depending on the time period.

Humanity discovered time travel in the early 22nd century and it had become common by the 51st century. They even had a Time Agency which was created to fill the power vacuum left by the Time Lords' disappearance.

In the year 4126, the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire stretched across three galaxies. In the year 200,000, the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire was still at the height of its power. Earth was the hub of a galactic domain stretching across a million planets and a millions species. Earth itself was covered with mega-cities and it had five moons and a population of ninety-six billion.

A quarter of a million years into the future, Emperor Ludens Nimrod Kendrick Cord Longstaff XLI ruled a human empire which spanned a thousand galaxies. A thousand years earlier, the Cyber-Wars had been fought between Humanity and the Cyberiad. The conflict only ended when Humanity blew up the Tiberian Spiral Galaxy in an attempt to wipe out the Cybermen. This galaxy contained a million star systems, a hundred million worlds and a billion trillion people.


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

[User]
CMV: Food stamps should be limited to healthy foods only

Food stamps are a very effective program. It only cost the government 4 billion dollars, whereas Medicaid cost the government 500 billion dollars. Food stamps are probably one of the best welfare programs looking at it from an investment standpoint it yields a lot of economic return for very little money. That four billion dollars probably saves us a lot of money in healthcare. Because people will have less health issues if they are eating.

By that reasoning I think it would also make a lot of sense to limit the types of food you can buy with food stamps. I'm not saying we shouldn't let people have red meat or whole milk, but we could probably cut out Doritos, doughnuts, cookies, and most junk food.

If taxpayers are giving people money to buy food for the purpose of helping them and improving the economy, that money would better be invested in healthy food. That way the people who are buying it end up in the hospital less often and will avoid putting them in further economic despair and while also saving taxpayers Medicaid dollara in the future.

[Assistant] I agree with this 100% but the issue is who will dictate what is healthy? You can't count on the government to do it because look at school lunches. Look at the food pyrmid.  They will go with whatever Nestle and the other big companies say.


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

[User]
[Pokemon]What happens if a pokeball breaks?

What happen's if one of my pokeballs break? With the new model of ball I understand this may be a lot less likely, however some of the older models seem like they could have been less reliable. What happens to a pokemon if it is inside a pokeball when it breaks?

[Assistant]
It depends on how the ball breaks. If you only break the receiver on the front, you will need to see a Pokecomputer specialist about retrieving the pokemon's waveform data with specific equipment, but the pokemon will be fine (just trapped within the ball). Ask your local Pokecenter for contact information for the nearest specialist, each one should have a liscensed number on hand for these kinds of things. DO NOT TRY TO DO SO YOURSELF!

If the hinge is broken, carefully connect the two halves (such as with tape) and place in a safe container until you can make it to the Pokecomputer specialist. Be VERY CAREFUL not to touch or damage the metallic inner surface- this is where the data is held in the pokeball about your pokemon.

Your pokemon "exists" within the pokeball in a holographic layer within the pokeball, engraved with tiny lasers. If any of this part is broken, such as the round part of the balls broken, then unfortunately your pokemon will be lost. Luckily the protective spheres are extremely strong and this is HIGHLY unlikely. However, if these parts are damaged, your pokemon's data is corrupted. Your pokeballs will not send out a corrupted pokemon if you somehow can still make the ball function otherwise. Even if it could (or if the programming somehow malfunctions), you wouldn't want to. Believe me.

It is recommended you purchase insurance for your valuable pokemon in the unlikely event that they are inexorably lost for any reason, and most companies cover equipment failures. Most pokeinsurance companies have deals on numbers of pokemon so it should be affordable to most trainers.

Pokeball technology is extensively researched and improved by scientists continually. Pokeball breakage is a huge concern and each generation of pokeballs strives to lessen any dangers pokemon have when encased in them. We have made huge strides in material, computational, and structural science to better protect our beloved pokemon. But, unfortunately, accidents do happen.


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

[User]
When and why is variance sometimes used instead of standard deviation?

Standard deviation (sigma) is the average distance from the mean, so if you are describing the spread of a distribution, doesn't reporting it as sigma squared (i.e., variance) exaggerate that spread? I understand that variance is computed the way it is because E[(X-mu)] = 0, so we need to square the difference (and people like avoiding the absolute value function). But when does it actually make sense to report or use sigma^2 over sigma?

[Assistant]
Both variance and standard deviation are measures of spread.

The reason that standard deviation is useful is that its units are the same as the units of the original data set, so it's meaningful to interpret it in the context of the original data (that is why we talk about "X standard deviations from the mean").

The reason that variance is useful is that it's more convenient to work with when you're dealing with the underlying math, rather than dealing with actual data.

If you are doing data analysis, it (almost) never makes sense to report variance. If you are doing theoretical work, it almost never makes sense to use standard deviation.


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

[User]
I want to write an algorithm to alter the speed of the played music, while keeping the pitch.

I want to write a music editor, and the main component would make it possible to alter the speed of the played music.

Could you help me figure out where to start? - I don't know a lot of math and science in general, so I could start with basic things, if necessary.

Edit:

I just wanted to thank everybody, I really appreciate all the helpful information.

[Assistant]
>while keeping the pitch

You should realise that this is a *very* hard problem. There is no *general* method that can alter the speed of a piece of digitised sound / music (while keeping the pitch) without introducing unwanted side effects. Each technique has their own trade-offs. A piece of music will be suitable for one algorithm and another piece of music with a different style and instrumentation will be suitable for another algorithm. There are entire companies that sell algorithms for this and nothing else!

Two "easiest" methods you can start with:

1) Use granular sampling. You basically create a granular playback engine, chop incoming audio to very small (5-30ms) bits, apply a windowing function over them (so each grain fades in and out gracefully instead of starting and ending abruptly, creating nasty artifacts) and trigger them at different speeds / overlaps. So think of it like resizing an image - you cut multiple copies of image to identical sized square bits and combine them with different levels of overlap to make it bigger (slow down) or discard some (speed up). While doing this, pitch will generally be preserved - there are a lot of variables for this, like window size, overlap ratio, windowing function, even variables for something like how regularly you will trigger grains to decrease the artefacts caused by the windowing function being audible etc.

2) You can use FFT to decompose time domain signal to frequency domain - then play the data with your own sine bank oscillators at your own pace.

Both of those methods will smear the fast attacks, so rhythmic instruments, the attack portions will be smeared when you slow things down. To compensate for that, you need more intelligent algorithms - machine listening / computer audition people deal with that. You detect attacks, or other patterns in sound and tweak your algorithms to respond to those instances robustly etc.

All this requires quite a bit of work, if you aren't an experienced programmer and have no experience in audio programming, DSP, and related math it will take you a loong time to put those together. It certainly is possible, but if you are looking at this as a quick project, you might be disappointed.

There also are open source implementations for this purpose so you can take a look at what they are doing! Beware that best implementations of this are proprietary (those used by popular DAWS like Ableton Live etc.) and cost a pretty penny.


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

[User]
Was the Spanish flu pandemic a large enough selection pressure to cause a change in the human genome detectable in some populations today?

I've recently finished Adam Rutherford's 'a brief history of everyone who's ever lived'. He talked about how the black death and the bubonic plague caused greater variation in the human genome amongst particular populations.

I was wondering whether the spanish flu would have caused a large enough selection pressure to cause detectable changes in the human genome still noticeable today.

[Assistant]
Its a matter of degree.

Let's say an isolated event happens in an area that favors Genotype 1 over Genotype 2.  Over time that will impact natural selection.  But if the event stops, and the populations interbreed that limited impact gets diffused.

So killing a few percent of the world's population may have had some impact, but it was a short-lived event.  It wasn't as widespread or long-lasting as the Black Death.


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

[User]
ELI5: Does a restaurant really lose a star (or a "grade" in general) when the chef that founded it dies?

I was watching Ratatouille and in the beginning it said something like "And the death of Gusteau (the name of the chef), following tradition, made the restaurant lose another star".

Couldn't find anything on the internet about it.

[Assistant]
Yes,

Michelin star are based on a trio:

- owner
- chef
- location

Any change in the three will lead the restaurant to loose its stars.

this is quite logical, the stars are allocated not only on the food (the chef) but also the ambiance/design/view (location) and the staff (management/owner), if any of them change therefore the criteria used to allow the stars need to be re evaluated, that also stop any chains to buy their way into the a star rated restaurant quickly, you buy a three stars restaurant because you are mac Donald ? sure now its a zero stars and will stay that way for 1 year, if you change the staff you will have a hard time to get back your stars, so basically its a protection agaisnt buying a reputation without deserving it.


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

[User] ELI5: How does pausing and resuming downloads work?

[Assistant]
The file being downloaded is a simple (GET) request. You open the connection, and  read the incoming data (bytes) until the connection closes. You also know the size of the response from the beginning, that's how you have a percentage.

For resuming the download request, you just do a "range" request:

    GET /download.zip HTTP/1.1 Host: example.com Range: bytes=0-1023
which skips the portion of the response you have already received.
Though only the size of the file, and the validity of the incoming bytes is verified. If the server doesn't resume correctly or the response is not the exact same, you get a corrupted file. That's why hashing is being used for serious downloads (Firmware Updates etc.).


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

[User] [LOTR] Of the characters we meet, who knows of Gandalf's true nature as an Ainur?

[Assistant]
* Elrond
* Galadriel
* Cirdan
* Saruman
* Radaghast
* Sauron

There were a few that might have guessed like Celeborn and Aragorn, but they likely didn't know for certain. It's unclear who Sauron told of Gandalf's true nature, so maybe the Witch King knew, but it's never said.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do I get significantly less gas mileage using cruise control compared to not using it?

[Assistant]
Cruise control can be inefficient if you have an extremely hilly drive.  To maintain a constant speed, it will accelerate on the uphills and brake on the downhills.  This can kill your mileage compared to coasting and allowing your speed to vary.

If your drive is rather flat, though, then that shouldn't be happening.


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

[User]
I plan on testing whether or not astrology works or not. I'll send volunteers their profile with 4 other profiles, so they'll have to guess which one of the 5 is theirs. If I do this 10 times, and, say, only 10% guesses correctly...

I plan on testing whether or not astrology works or not. I'll send volunteers their profile with 4 other profiles, so they'll have to guess which one of the 5 is theirs. If I do this 10 times, and, say, only 10% guesses correctly, does this mean that astrology is slightly good, because if it were bad or random, then exactly 20% of the volunteers would be able to guess their profile?

[Assistant]
I'd expect people who already know about about their 'sign' to be able to guess (better than randomly) which one was written for them, regardless of whether astrology works or not. Libras (for example) will likely always have profiles that mention the same personality characteristics.

This would work if all of your volunteers knew nothing about astrology or their sign.


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

[User]
[Hunger Games] Does the Capitol enforce a breeding quota on the Districts?

Even Districts like 12 seem to have a very high number of kids. I would think that over the course of 74 years, the rate of people having children would rapidly decline out of fear of them being reaped for the Hunger Games.

[Assistant]
People continue to reproduce even in harsh, totalitarian conditions in the real world. The reality is that impoverished people tend to have more kids since that's the only reliable safety net.

If you're some poor coal miner in District 12 and you choose not to have kids to avoid seeing them get reaped, you're just going to destroy your body by age 30 without ever earning enough for meaningful savings. If you're unable to work then you're doomed to go home alone and starve to death. If you have 3 or 4 kids you'll guarantee someone is gonna stick around to take care of you in your old age, even if one of them gets reaped, or another dies of malnutrition or gets beaten by the Peacekeepers too hard.

Avoiding kids is much more of a modern conception when you can get an education, career, and pay for your own retirement without devoting 18 years of your life to raising a kid. Probably people in the cushy core districts like 1, 2, and 4 have the luxury of choice in that regard.


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

[User]
CMV: There is no such thing as a 'nazi sympathizer' as the term is used today. A person is either a nazi or they aren't.

I have always heard the term 'nazi sympathizer' to refer to people who support the ideology but don't necessarily practice it, or to refer to apologists for the ideology. But the way I see it, nazism is such an extreme and vile viewpoint that it's not possible to be a sympathizer without holding those same views personally.

I recognize that this was a meaningful term in the years after world war two. There were people who passively endorsed or supported the party without engaging in the party's activities or actually being members of said party, and a term was needed to refer to them. My argument is that it's a pointless distinction when it's used today to refer to people who socialize with or endorse nazis and their views, as there isn't an active, organized party anymore. Those people aren't 'sympathizers', they're just also nazis, and we should call them nazis.

[Assistant]
> Nazi: a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

Unless they belong to no-longer-existing German political party, they aren't an actual Nazi.

Today, calling someone a Nazi is short for "Nazi sympathizer".  Nobody is going to get confused if you call them just a "Nazi", but technically they aren't actual Nazis.  That is like calling a conservative person in England a "republican" based on their conservative political views.  "Republican" is specifically a US political party and just having the views doesn't make you a republican.  Nazi is a political party.

'Nazi sympathizer' refers to someone that believes the ideology but isn't apart of that political party because it no longer exists, but agree with the ideology it perpetuated when it did exist.


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

[User] [Star Trek] What percentage of Holodeck time is not used for sexual gratification?

[Assistant]
Any time someone is in there alone or on a date, it's being used for sex.

If it's used for team sports, training, or Shakespeare, everyone pretends like it's not almost entirely used for getting off.


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

[User]
[The Last Airbender] What would have happened if the Air Benders had been completely eradicated before Avatar Roku had died?

EDIT: Air Nomads. The whole nation.

[Assistant] The Avatar would have been born to an Air Acolyte couple, had a shitty time trying to master Air Bending, and probably die trying to fight the fire nation.  Then we'd get a Water Tribe Avatar, who would have an even shittier time trying to master Air Bending, and also die fighting the fire nation.  Repeat until Harmonic Convergence, which Unalaq pulls off without a hitch, which spits out a lot more Air Benders than it did in canon.


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

[User] [Terminator Universe] Could Skynet exist solely in space? If it decided to somehow blow up the entire planet Earth, could it sustain itself as a spacefaring "race" of machines?

[Assistant] An AI? Yes absolutely. Skynet? No, it is very defined by it's conflict with humanity and without that it wouldn't be Skynet. There is a lot of evedence that Skynet is either insane or stupid, but stupid really fast. It gets strange, counterproductive and sometimes self destructive ideas stuck in its head causing behavior that seems unusual for a superintelligence.


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

[User]
[Flash vs Superman] Who's faster?

All day today my sons, 4 and 6, have been asking me who's faster. What should I tell them?

[Assistant]
Flash, no contest.

Superman's speed ultimately comes from his physicality. Flashes speed comes from his connection to a higher dimension (The Speed Force), and because of that, is not restricted by the laws of physics.


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

[User] How do Psychiatrists diagnose a patient? By checking off a list? How do they make sure its an accurate diagnosis?

[Assistant] That's actually pretty close. Each official diagnosis has a list of signs/symptoms/test results/criteria associated with it, and notes how many are required for positive diagnosis. There is a book, in the US at least, called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, currently on volume five and abbreviated DSM-5, which lists these psychiatric diagnoses. The book is organised to help primarily, this being the US, with accurate billing for insurance.


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

[User] Would tides have been more ferocious a billion years ago, when the moon was closer to Earth?

[Assistant]
Yes, evidence from stromatolites & corals shows the early earth had far shorter days & shorter lunar months.

If we make the logical assumption that the moons mass has not changed in that time the obvious conclusion is that with a faster spinning earth & a faster orbiting moon the moon would be closer so not only the tidal range would be far greater but it's flow & velocity would he greater too.


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

[User]
How much contention was there in Sauron's army between the orcs and the humans?

It seems the orcs are already a contentious bunch and then coupled with what seems a hearty dislike to humans, how did they interact in battle or camp? Or did the orcs think they were alright because tehy were all with Sauron?

[Assistant]
They were probably kept separate.

Sauron understood very well that orcs are excellent cannon fodder and that humans are the tactical assault troops, smart and more capable of complex warfare than Orcs, at least generally (there are smart and tenacious orcs but they are the minority)


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

[User] [DC]If there was no Superman would Lex Luthor be a founding member of the Justice League?

[Assistant] One of the times Superman died, when he came back to life a few years later he called out Lex on the fact that he didn't accomplish jack shit for the world while Superman was gone, so for all his blustering about being the pinacle of humanity and how Superman is what stands in his way, he's full of shit.  He is a petty jelous asshole, and if there was no Superman, he'd get hung up on another hero.


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

[User]
[Star wars] why didn't Vader just kill himself?

After mustafar but before he learns he has a son, he's angry and depressed.  Her fights like a man with a death wish.  Why not just commit suicide?

[Assistant]
Anakin/Vader is far to vain to have a deathwish.  Wanting to die implies the problem is either with himself or that he isn't strong enough to bend it to his will.  Vader does not think either thing.
No, he's plenty angry, but it is everyone else who should die, not himself.  That is the fighting of a man who is angry and thinks himself invulnerable, not the fighting of a man with a deathwish.


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

[User]
[Doctor Who-Series 6] Why did The Silence stick around Earth for 2,000 years just to get humanity to build a space suit when they have time ships that can travel in space? and are from the 51st century anyway?

Seems a bit redundant to me.

[Assistant] The space suit is not for space travel. They were attempting to kill the doctor and so created a fixed point in time where the doctor must die to an impossible astronaut on the shore of lake silencio in Utah. To the silence, the event had already happened and so they went back in time to cause the event that would cause them to go back in the first place. It is one of the weird events where an event happens in the present which causes something in the future to go back in time to guarantee it happens. Like how the doctor warns himself about his own death in the first episode by inviting himself to his own death, causing him to create the invitations.


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

[User] What features of an aircraft and the aircraft's engine allow an aircraft to supercruise at supersonic speeds?

[Assistant]
This mostly comes down to engine selection and inlet design. Each stage of the turbojet/low-bypass turbofan engine (low pressure compressor, high pressure compressor, burner, turbine, afterburner, nozzle) have to be designed to be efficient enough to sustain supercruise on the fuel the aircraft has. They also need to be optimized for supersonic flight. This can come down to nozzle control to make sure the exhaust is not being over or under expanded. Also, the inlet design has a massive impact on the overall efficiency of the engine. As the aircraft gets above mach 1, there have to be shock waves that slow the flow into the engine so the air entering is subsonic. If the inlet was flat like a 737 inlet, it would have a single normal shock to slow the flow down. That is inefficient and it would be better if there were multiple oblique shocks before the normal shock. This is why aircraft like the F-15, F/A-18 super hornet, etc. have angled inlets. The number of shocks and how closely those shocks align with the inlet at the supercruise speed determines the efficiency of the inlet. The inlet can be a moving piece that adjusts its angles and can therefore adjust for its speed or they can be fixed and have a set supercruise speed.

There are other ways of doing this too. The SR-71 has conical inlets that effectively do the same as a ramped inlet but in a circle. It also has engines that can almost completely switch from a turbojet to a ramjet. Ramjets use the high compression from the supersonic air to compress the air instead of the compressor blades of a turbojet. They suffer from the fact they dont work at low supersonic speeds and below so they need a way to get there either by converting from a turbojet or by being carried to the necessary speeds by something else.


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

[User]
[Buffy the Vampire Slayer] Why keep the vampires and other bad things secret?

Doesn't that only benefit them? If everyone knew what to watch out for, including trained police and soldiers, wouldn't everyone be safer? Also, Buffy wouldn't have waste time going to school and dealing with normal person stuff.

[Assistant]
The main reason is to avoid an arms race.

Demons find it useful to have an unsuspecting human population to draw on for food and labour, and by keeping their presence hidden, they don't have to spend resources on actively subjugating humans or protecting their own interests. Very few demons have any actual interest in actively controlling humanity and their needs from us are fairly limited overall, so it works out for them to try and keep themselves (mostly) hidden.

The Slayers and Watchers focus on taking down the big "want to destroy/enslave humanity" threats, and otherwise just cull the heard and make sure the demon population doesn't get too out of control - especially when a Hellmouth starts getting active. Holding up the Masquerade benefits them by keeping the scope of the conflict small. So long as it stays in the demons interests to stay on the down-low, the overall threat to humanity is minimal.

Now what happens when you try to break the masquerade, and make demons and the like public knowledge? Well then all your miscellaneous vampires and small-time baddies start joining up with Cult Leaders and Big Bads like The Master or Angelus - strength in numbers, no one wants to find themselves alone in front of a lynch mob. Now instead of a small group of true believers and subservient minions, they have an army. And an army of vampires or other demons is really bad news. Police or military weapons and tactics are not at all equipped to handle opponents that can only be killed by a wooden stake through the heart (high explosives to remove the head nonwithstanding).

Another thing to consider is that while modern armed forces may have a chance to rally against a demon army, this is a very recent event in human history. Two hundred years ago the human population had only just passed one billion people, we were fighting with muskets and flintlock pistols, and didn't have anything like the communication tools or strategic command ability we do today. Open warfare in the 19th century would likely have been a curb stomp in the demons favour, and coming from that mindset, the organizations today don't want to take the risk.

Also, when the government and military *did* get involved, they started meddling in forces they didn't understand and generally screwed the pooch on things. Though that group may not have been representative of government/military efforts as a whole at preparing for the supernatural.


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

[User] Whats the reason head lice prefer the head and pubic lice prefer the pubic area? Hair is just hair isnt it?

[Assistant]
If you look at a diagram of pubic lice vs head lice you will notice the claws of pubic lice are bigger and more suited to thicker hair. The species is more likely to stick on the host in their respective regions because of this difference but that does not mean theres zero chance of finding pubic lice in the eyebrows or a beard.

Hair can also have different thickness or coarseness depending on region. Pubic hair tends to be thicker and coarser than the head.


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

[User]
Eli5- how is radioactive waste properly disposed of

Does anybody know the process?

[Assistant]
You put it in the ground very far away from anywhere any human is likely to return to (and where water or whatever can't move it close to any such place), and leave it to naturally calm down over centuries or millennia.

There's nothing else you can do to it, really. Since the problem is with the atoms themselves and not their chemistry, you can't put them into some chemical compound where they'll be safer. You literally just have to wait. In theory you could put it in a particle accelerator and try and blast the atoms apart into safer things, but that's *absurdly* energy-intensive and extremely slow, and there's no guarantee you'd end up with something that's actually safer in the end.

As a side note, the stuff that's really seriously problematic is the stuff that's *middlingly* radioactive. Really intensely radioactive stuff decays fast enough that it takes days or weeks for it to mostly have converted to other things. Stuff with half-lives on the order of years to centuries is the really awful stuff, because it's still more than radioactive enough to be dangerous but hangs around for long enough that you have to find some sort of permanent disposal solution for it - you can't just leave it in a shielded box in your lab for a few weeks.


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

[User] ELI5: Not sure how ELI5 this can get, but how is that two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen combine into something (water) that's heavier than air even though they're lighter than air separately?

[Assistant]
> water is heavier than air

Oh but that's the typical riddle: which one is **heavier**, 1 Kg of water or 1 Kg of air? Answer: naturally, they weight exactly the same, 1Kg.

What to want to look at is not the *weight* but the weight *per unity of volume*. While it's true that one molecule of water (H2O) is lighter than one molecule of oxigen (O2), 1 meter cube of liquid waters packs way more water molecules than there are air molecules (oxigen and others) in 1 meter cube of air. That's because in air there's much more empty space between molecules, as it's typically the case with any gas. This makes the cubic meter of air much much lighter than the cubic meter of water.


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

[User] ELI5: Why you get the munchies when you're high.

[Assistant]
The human nervous system have specialized receptors for the chemicals in marijuana (The two most people study are THC and CBD).  These chemicals also effect the neurotransmitters Serotonin (5ht) and Dopamine (DA).  Marijuana causes a burst release in both 5ht and DA.

The part of your nervous system that controls appetite is the hypothalamus.  It controls "appetitive behaviors", or what we call the "four F's" - Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Reproduction.

All three chemicals effect the feeding part of the hypothalamus (CB1 from Marijuana, 5ht and DA) resulting in increased levels of percieved hunger.  It's often used in treatment for people with depressed appetites (chemo patients and the like).

Just so you know, the THC component is what gets you high, the CBD components usually have the medicinal effects.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are males stronger than females, even when a female might have more muscle mass?

[Assistant]
Hormone differences.

Testosterone vs. estrogen

Both men and women have each hormone in their body; The amounts are drasticly different for each though.

Long story short. Men have lots more testostrone which goes to make muscles stronger.


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

[User]
[Always Sunny] Why hasn't Ben the soldier had his life ruined?

A running theme of the show is that the gang and the bar are almost like some mystical force that ruins the life of everyone that stays near them, the gang are individually all deeply toxic broken people purely because of their interactions with one another and several episodes have demonstrated what happens when one goes their own way. Rickety Cricket went from man of the cloth to deformed atheistic drug addicted degenerate death-lusting homeless man, the jew lawyer had his eyes pecked out because he couldn't just stop taking cases that involved the gang pro-bono just to fuck with them, even that waiter from Gorgino's was straddled with the tuition of pilot school after just doing his job around the gang too often. Pretty much the only person who has interacted with the gang with no fallout was Ben the soldier, and he's been featured in several episodes and is revealed to be one of Dee's booty calls.

[Assistant]
The gang is temptation manifest. They are all of the sins wrapped into one group. They are a living hell.

Ben is an innocent, hes 100% pure. You cant corrupt him, its simply not in his vocabulary.

Think about all the people they drag down with them. None of them were "clean", cricket was a lustful priest. Bill Ponderosa was always bordering on addict and spent his life fighting those urges, until the gang got involved. Maureen was mentally ill and vain. The lawyer was ruthless etc etc.

Not Ben.


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

[User]
ELI5: why do lithium ion batteries degrade over time?

Why do lithium ion batteries capacity diminishes after each cycle? I'd like to know what happens chemically or structurally.

[Assistant]
I am a battery test engineer. There are many ways lithium batteries can degrade, but since this is ELI5, I'll stick to one main method.

Batteries have a few main parts: the anode (negative), the cathode (positive), a separator between them, and some stuff in between (usually a liquid) that conducts ions. When you charge a battery, you are cramming a whole bunch of lithium ions into the anode, kind of like absorbing water into a sponge. When you use the battery, these ions flow to the cathode, generating electric current. Over time, by cramming the ions in and out of the anode and cathode, you begin to damage the 'sponge', so it can't hold as many ions any more. So your efficiency goes down.


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

[User]
ELI5: File Compression

Like zip files. It seems odd to me that you can reduce a file to a smaller one and then get it all back.

[Assistant]
Imagine you have a list of names you're trying to remember:

    Mary Mary Mary Dave Mary Mary Mary Mary Dave Mary Mary Mary Mary Dave Mary Fred

You could memorize each word (or even each letter and space) in order, but there are lots of ways to organize the data to make it easier for yourself. The first thing you notice is that there is a lot of repetition. You might try to think of the list like this:

    Mary(3) Dave Mary(4) Dave Mary(4) Dave Mary Fred

You've reduced it from a list of 16 items (each name) to one of 11 (each name plus the repetition notes). We can even reduce it further. You notice that this pattern appears three times:

    Mary Mary Mary Dave Mary

So let's define this:

    A = Mary(3) Dave Mary

Our list now becomes:

    A(3) Fred

Depending on how you want to count, that's about 8 or 9 things to keep track of. We've cut what we have to remember in half, and yet we haven't lost any of the original data! As long as we know what method we used to make our shorthand list, it's easy to take it and expand it back into the original list.

File compression on computers works in a similar way. A computer uses a little program (called a utility) to compress the data. The utility has an algorithm (a method of processing the data) that looks for patterns and shortcuts in the binary code. (We were concerned with discrete words above, but the utility analyzes the string of 1s and 0s that actually make up a file.) The more sophisticated the algorithm, the smaller the compressed file can be. (It also helps if there are lots of patterns or repetition for the algorithm to latch onto. Certain files compress better than others because of this.) To decompress the data, a companion utility reverses the process.


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

[User] [Batman] What was the Jokers reaction when he met Tim Drakes Robin for the first time?

[Assistant]
I killed you!

Literally though. Joker genuinely was confused at how the hell Robin came back to life after he beat the shit out of and blew him up. He eventually figured it out off-screen, judging by how he taunted Nightwing in the Last Laugh by claiming he hit *Jason* harder.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do scabs get itchy?

Is it not counter intuitive that the scab, which is part of the healing process, is really itch while your skin grows back?

[Assistant]
There are several theories that explain why scabs itch. There are histamines in scabs that irritate the skin around the wound. Some doctors think this is the bodys way of getting rid of the scab which is no longer needed. When it itches, you scratch it and it is comes off. There is a flaw in this theory, because sometimes the scab itches before the wound is healed.

A second theory has to do with nerves in your skin that are cut when the skin is cut. When a wound is healing, the new skin is very thin, so the nerves are even more sensitive. As they are healing, their signals may be affected and the brain gets the wrong type of signal. The brain may interpret it as an itch and want to respond by scratching it.

Another theory is that as the wound heals, the scab pulls on the new skin, and that causes the area around the scab to itch.

Lastly, dryness could be a reason for itching. When the wound occurred, the skin, nerves, and oil glands were affected, and without oil, the skin would become dry.


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

[User] ELI5: It is said that time gets slower and slower near a blackhole. Does this mean that inside the blackhole there is a point where there time does not exist at all? If something got sucked into that point, would it stop existing completely?

[Assistant]
In GR you have to distinguish between the

1. The time a person at point X observes passing at a point Y remote from them and

2. The actual proper time experienced by a person at point Y.

From the perspective an observer outside the event horizon of a black hole time seems to stop at the event horizon. Nothing is ever seen to actually enter the black hole. [This is because the way a person at X observes things changing and happening at point Y is by receiving messages from point Y. The gravitational pull near the event horizon makes it take longer and longer for light to crawl out of the strong gravitational pull. At the event horizon the pull is so strong that light is making no forward progress. From the perspective of someone riding the photon out of the black hole it is like swimming against a strong current, the universe is falling back into the black hole as fast as they can swim out. Hence from X's perspective nothing enters the event horizon... because he can't see it happen.]

In reality, and from the perspective of a person falling into the black hole they do in fact pass through the event horizon and reach the singularity in finite time.


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

[User]
Eli5 How does a car that turns off in a stop beneficial?

Today I was outside of a store. Infront of me a slow traffic and a BMW stops and you can hear the engine turn off and on.

What is the benefit of a car doing that? Wouldnt that use more mechanic and energy when it constantly turning on and off?

[Assistant] It is a required feature on European models, the reasoning isn't that you will save a bunch of gas but that it helps with air quality in urban areas. Emissions from idling vehicles are the worst kind of pollution, the kind that isn't the result of any useful work being done.


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

[User]
[James Bond] Why is Britain's best spy so rarely sent to the areas (such as Afghanistan for example) that the UK intelligence is most interested in?

And depending on the time frame we can add Iraq, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, North Korea, the Philippines, Argentina, Taiwan, Somalia, Hong Kong, East Germany, Libya, Syria, and many more onto that list.

[Assistant]
He's not the right tool for those jobs. It sounds trite but it's kind of simple as that.

MI6 has other assets that are better suited to gathering the sort of more mundane intelligence you'd be needing out of places where fairly straightforward insurgencies are the main concern.

The 00's and Bond in particular, is for a different sort of mission.  Though in fairness he does, over the course of his missions, often find himself in many of the places you mention.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is handwriting so distinct to an individual person?

[Assistant] I would say primarily because its a muscle memory action. You don't actively think about how to write each letter as you are writing them. You achieve muscle memory by repetition of the same action, so each person will tend to reinforce whatever particular traits they happen to have when writing. The traits themselves are going to come from all sorts of factors: grip, how you were taught, styles you might try to emulate, etc.


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

[User]
[General Sci-fi] What faction is the most hated in its own fluff?

I was reading the Clan Raukaan supplement for Warhammer 400000, and I was surprised to see just negatively it treated the chapter. I knew games workshop wasn't overly fond of the Iron Hands, but their own supplement - ostensibly supposed to celebrate their impressive character and get you invested in collecting them - all but called their entire philosophy stupid and foolish, and had them act like petulant children. Needless to say, I was rather shocked.

But it got me thinking that sometimes you see this in other fiction too. The Kazon on Star Trek Voyager were said to be so worthless assimilating them would have weakened the Borg, the Vogons are so terrible in Hitchhicker's guide their poetry can kill. So here's a fun question for this board: What is the most hated - or failing that the most inexplicably hated - faction in sci-fi?

[Assistant]
Cobra: a globe spanning organization with not only the man power (tons and tons of recruits including both military specialists and regular soldiers) to match that of a U.N. backed, U.S. military fighting force but also enough economic, intellectual, and production power to develop and mass produce all of their own weapons and vehicles.

It is shown to have absolutely no public support and it's leadership is utterly inept to the point that in many episodes, Cobra is seen being defeated by its leaders' own stupidity or the casual intervention of children and civilians.

The only explanation is that the cartoon, GI Joe, is an in-universe work of propaganda to try and drive the masses of potential Cobra recruits away from joining what must be a powerful organization with ideals that draw considerable public support (with the "actual" in-universe events being utterly hidden from viewers in our reality).


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

[User]
ELI5:Why are humans so prone to creating and following routines?

What benefit do we get from sitting on the same seat on the train every day? Or walking the same path to work? What purpose does it serve?

[Assistant] In general, if you find a way to solve a problem, repeating the steps to solve that problem again will often end up in similar results.  If you are satisfied with the results, then there is no good reason to pick an alternative method for solving that problem.  This is valuable for highly important tasks, and it doesn't hurt us much when we apply the same logic to trivial tasks, so it's evolutionarily advantageous for us to follow routines.


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

[User]
does programmers from developing countries/third world countries have a chance on this field?

I'm 16 years old girl and i really want to be a developer or a software engineer , but my dad keep telling me that i better be a doctor since i live in sudan and will never had a good job here nor have the chance to compete outside cuz the universities here are not as good at computer-science-and-related-majors.

Are here some people from countries with similar issues in education? And should this stop me from choosing programming as my major?

[Assistant]
If you have internet you can learn to code and contribute to code from anywhere in the world. It might be hard to find a traditional-pay job from Sudan but there are lots of ways to make money on things like bug bounties or project work.

The real power comes from learning how to program and have knowledge in another area. So study medicine and then be a doctor or make software for doctors.

Short answer is "yes you have a chance". You might have to hustle some. That's life.


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

[User] What is difference between advection and convection?

[Assistant]
In the broadest sense, they are really the same thing, but they are typically discussed in different ways.

Advection is the change of any quantity due to inflow or outflow rather than local production. For instance, the process that causes a river to become polluted downstream from a polluting factory is advection. Advection usually is the term used when we talk about large-scale flows.

Convection is generally used to specifically refer to flows that transfer heat, which can be small-scale. When a region is convectively unstable, flows that transfer heat arise spontaneously - there is generally no way to get spontaneous advection. An example of such a region is the outer 30% of the Sun, which is constantly producing magnetized bubbles transferring heat from one place to another.


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

[User]
Are there any experiments involving lab mice that have had hugely different results when testing on other animals and/or humans?

Lab mice are used in all sorts of studies of medicine, psychology, biology and others. I am just curious if there have been any results when studying mice that have had a completely different result when that study or test was performed on another animal.

[Assistant] Yes. Methadone is a good example where animal studies did not predict how it would act in humans. In rats, methadone has a half life of around 30 minutes, but in humans it is around 24 hours. This is why human clinical trials must take place first before any drug is approved.


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

[User] [Star Wars] What was the Jedi Order's opinion on other non-Sith Force-based organizations like The Guardians of the Whills?

[Assistant]
We see them interact with other traditions both light and dark in The Clone Wars (CGI series).

The Dagoyan Masters, for example, were another light side organization that greatly disliked the Jedi, yet the Jedi were nothing but respectful of them, and even got involved in helping them find their missing members.

The Nightsisters, on the other hand, mostly stayed under the radar until they got involved with the Frangawl cult, and started abducting people - then the Jedi stepped in and put a stop to it.

We don't have enough documented material about the Jedi and the Guardians of the Whills to decisively say anything - but given that the Jedi and Guardians among thousands of others treated Jedha as a holy world, and there were enormous statues of ancient Jedi half-buried in the landscape, presumably it wasn't an antagonistic relationship.

The Sith have such an impactful relationship with the Jedi because they sprung out of the Jedi themselves, outcast for using the dark side of the Force, and basically every major galactic war since they were exiled had been caused by them.


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

[User]
[MCU] If Asgardians are "basically immortal", then how was (SPOILER) killed by a single dagger stab?

The dark elf guy kills Thor's mother with a single stab. Yet it seems like Thor could survive an RPG blast to the head. Is there something unique about his physiology compared to his mother's?

[Assistant]
The person wielding the knife is extraordinarily strong. There's also no way of knowing exactly what said knife was made of.

Asgardians and denizens of the other realm seem perfectly capable of killing each other with all kinds of weaponry, and were doing so at the beginning of the story, so it doesn't seem extraordinary to me that Frigga could die in the same manner.


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

[User] [Fairly OddParents] A child loses their faeries when "they get too old to believe in faeries". If a child has proof of the existence of faeries, how do they ever reach an age of non-belief?

[Assistant]
It's not about belief, it's about maturity. When a child grows up and starts to accept responsibility and gaining more freedom, eventually the fairies will be removedat that point, it's up to the person to seek their own happiness.

There's an episode in which Timmy wishes he were an adult and loses access to his fairies because he can now do grownup stuff. But later he starts crying 'cause he's losing Cosmo and Wanda. Since that shows he's still immature, he gets them back.

An adult who remains an immature manchild could theoretically keep the fairies indefinitely.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Why didn't the Cantina attendants react that much to a jedi-looking old man who cut off another man's arm off with a lightsaber?

[Assistant]
It's a hive of scum and villainy.  Someone getting dismembered by an energy weapon is a fairly regular occurrence.  Similarly, someone getting shot by a smuggler in one of the booths is also nothing to raise eyebrows over.

Unless you're asking why they didn't react to the Jedi specifically, well it's possible none of them knew what a Jedi is, or what a Jedi would look like.


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

[User]
A really basic question for C++

So i just got into C++ a little and I don't know much yet, but there is already a thing that bugs me out and i would like there to be a reason for it.

So if a program runs and i started it off with

Int main

Then a 0 is returned to me, to signal that the program is working right? So basically 0 means correct.

But if i test something out for example a variable

A==5

Then 1 means correct (so a is 5) and 0 means incorrect, why is that? It's really weird to me. Thank you for answering.

[Assistant]
The idea is that if everything went right, no extra information is needed. Just return a zero. If there was an error, return a code representing what kind of error occurred.

With A==5, think of it as true/false rather than correct/incorrect. Yes, this difference between boolean values and error codes is a bit incongruous. It's just one of those quirks you'll have to remember.


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

[User]
ELI5: Where does the web material go when a spider climbs back up?

I was watching a small house spider today drop down from the ceiling on a strand of web. I touched it and it climbed back up the web. There wasn't a loop of web dangling below it. Do they just reel it back up inside like a yo-yo? Eat it? Where does the web go?

[Assistant]
This is from some museum entry about orb weavers:

Thats where the spiders genius for recycling comes in. When the orb-weaver takes apart an old web, it actually eats the silk. The protein from theold silk is never wasted, from the spiders digestive system, it goes to the silk glands to be made into a new web. Even if a spider misses a few meals, it can still go on spinning webs. This is thanks to the efficient recycling program that lets spiders conserve protein by eating old webs.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do transformers, power adapters and battery chargers usually emit a low buzzing sound?

[Assistant]
Not enough hot glue

Transformers are coils of wire around an iron core.  When you pass current through the coils they generate a magnetic field, since we pass alternating current through the coils they generate an alternating magnetic field

Every time this field ramps up it physically squishes the iron core and pushes the wires away from it, and then switches to pulling the wires towards the core as the field flips.  For big power pole transformers this is tens of pounds of metal moving about and it rattles and generates that characteristic 50/60 Hz hum you hear from them

For things like phone charges, they're using a much higher frequency(132 kHz is common) to let them use smaller transformers so you won't hear the sound created by each cycle, but you will hear the natural resonance of the core vibrating over time.  A big ol' dollop of hot glue is generally the solution to this problem and connects the core to the housing and damps out the vibrations quite well.


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

[User]
Junior Developer - Company expecting too much? Should I leave or stay?

Hi all,

This is my first post on here as I don't know where else to go for advice/help.

I graduated in 2018 and have done my placement year as IT support for a big worldwide manufacturer. I was outsourced from there by another company as I saved the company a lot of money during placement with my solutions.

I worked for that new company for the remainder of the summer until I got back to Uni for my final year. Once I graduated I instantly landed the job here with 24k salary and 2 days working from home(due to travel expenses). I've been told that there would be people to help out and that we can all learn together etc. This turned out to be a big lie as since I started I have been the only one developing software for customers, when I needed any extra help from other engineers they were no use to me since they didn't have a clue about any programming languages, only thing they knew a little bit was SQL, so I had to take all the duties for myself.

My duties include:

* Meeting up with customers who presented their problem and I would figure out a solution for them (This would include stock control, reporting and more) .
* Designing database architecture for the software
* Front-End and Back-end development
* Dataflow for reports etc.
* Creating PDF reports using PHP and SQL/MySQL
* If a customer doesn't have a wifi infrastructure, I'd have to accommodate this by providing them with one and setting it all up from scratch.
* Testing
* Debugging

So I basically handle the full stack development of an application, from start to finish, nobody but me.

I'd be fine with all this but right now I am working on new projects and some bugs etc. come up in my previous software and I have to drop everything and go and fix that. My deadlines are basically all delayed as they have been set very unrealistically. I'm trying to move onto another project but the previous ones keep coming back to me as my manager would say to just get them out the door and then see what comes up, just to keep the customer happy instead of telling him/her it'll take an extra week.

I don't have enough time for testing applications as I have to move onto the next ones and there always will be bugs as I can't dedicate a full day to testing an application, instead it's like an hour max, whatever I find in that hour I fix and then it goes to the customer. I also have to do the full installation so my development time gets shorter since I have to do so many other things.

I feel like I am learning nothing as at first I started programming in C# and Java and then when the manager seen the progress he thought it was too slow(it was normal but he seems to lack technical knowledge), so instead I was given a license for 'Kalipso Mobile Application Generator' he told me to train myself up within this software and to create software within that as it'll be much quicker.  Great it has made the work for me a lot faster but I don't get the flexibility that I get with using proper programming languages.

The only thing I feel I got better at is problem solving, PHP, SQL and MySQL but I'd like to get better at C# and Java too.

Now I am stuck because I have so much work here it's overwhelming, ridiculous, I do full stack dev yet my job title is Software Developer, I am using some software that makes me feel like I'm cheating myself, I am passionate about programming and I want to progress but now I feel like for almost a year, all these applications I've made are worthless because I didn't actually use anything else to create them than 'Kalipso' and some SQL. Currently I only enjoy making the reports as I actually get to be hands on with code like PHP.

I've been here for 9 months on Contract as a Software Developer and altogether not including the contract 1,5 years including the summer time before uni etc.

So since I haven't been learning much in work I decided to pick up Python, Java and C# in my free time at home, but I feel like this isn't good since I haven't made anything impressive and also this isn't professional experience which I could be getting right now in my job.

I rambled on a little there, and thanks for reading if you did....

Now I don't know what to do, whether I should demand more money (even if I got 30k I don't think I'd be happy here) or look somewhere else and tell the new future employer the truth that for a year I have made software in this application called 'Kalipso' and wherever I could I used my coding experience in order to develop things outside of that software.

Again thanks for reading and for any advice in advance.

[Assistant]
These are unrealistic expectations for even more seasoned developers. Projects have teams for a reason.

Youve already shown youre capable. If you continue like this you will burn out.

Start interviewing with other organizations. You will find a better fit and your current company can better assess the requirements that they really need fulfilled.


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

[User]
When an electron in an atom is excited, does its probability distribution instantly change from one shape to another, or is there a transitionary period?

If the latter, what does the distribution look like as it is shifting and how long does it take?

[Assistant] The electron's probability distribution is related to it's wavefunction. The time dependence of the wavefunction is governed by the Schrodinger equation, which is a first order differential equation in time. The solutions have smooth time dependence, so the probability distribution does not change instantly.  In real systems, there can be significant changes in time scales of nanoseconds, which is very fast in human terms, but the wavefunction still changes smoothly.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] If Voldemort was causing so many problems why didn't the Ministry or Dumbledore ask other countries for help?

If the Death Eaters were that big of a problem why not go to the United States, Canada, Australia or another country and request help in dealing with it. Surely the Wizards in these countries could offer assistance? Was asking for international help every considered?

Assuming they could get international help would things have played out differently? Would the war end sooner?

[Assistant] One word, Trust. A sovereign nation asking for help against a coup shows that they lack the power to govern, if they asked for help .1) they could be removed from power by the saviors. Also you cannot trust them, what if they are death eaters themselves.


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

[User]
[Marvel] what would the Ultimate characters think of their 616 Counterparts

what would the Ultimate characters think of their 616 counterparts and how their universe is much crazier?

[Assistant]
Ultimate Cap would think 616 Cap isn't right-wing enough or taking a proper stand to enact real change.

Ultimate Punisher and 616 Punisher would give each other a nod and walk past each other to continue their business.


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

[User] [Marvel] Does Punisher ever feel remorse for the countless criminals he's laid waste to or consider giving up his crusade?

[Assistant]
Realistically the answer to both of those is no. No remorse for killing the people he's killed, and no intent to ever stop until the job is done.

A bit of an exception; There is *one* incident where he is led to believe that an innocent child was caught in his crossfire and killed, which causes him to turn himself in, and (iirc) contemplate suicide. Once this is proven to be false, he goes right back to the crusade.

So, really, there are only two circumstances where he *would* give up the fight. The first is as described; if he caused the death of an innocent person. The second is when it's *over* (it never will be), at which point he fully intends to put a bullet in his own skull to get rid of the world's last monster.


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

[User] ELI5: The practices/beliefs of the Jewish religion.

[Assistant]
Judaism is a monotheistic religion - i.e., we believe in "One God", indivisible. The foundation of Judaism is found within the Torah (a.k.a. the old testament) wherein you will find every law (halachah) that a Jew must follow. These are referred to as "mitzvot". There are 613 Mitzvot.
These concern everything from dietary law, to dress, to marriage and death. A significant portion of mitzvot concern laws related to the Sabbath.

The hebrew calender is neither lunar nor solar. Technically, it is a combination of both. There are 13 months but sometimes there is a leap month.

Jews are huge on life cycle celebrations (birth, bar mitzvah, marriage, death) and have many, many holidays. There is only one Jewish month without a holiday.

The most important holidays are pesach (passover) and yom kippur (the high holy days refer to the 10 day period before yom kippur).

Passover commemorates the exodus from egypt (moses and the israelites) and Yom Kippur is the day of atonement - supposedly, when God writes in the book of life your fate for the following year (this is why you atone).


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

[User] ELI5: As an American, Why could I visit North Korea, but not visit Cuba?

[Assistant] Because your own government forbids you to visit Cuba, but not N. Korea, as part of the over 50 year old embargo.  Cuba is fine with your visiting, though.  It's just tourism money from their perspective.  N Korea is another matter.  They may or may not let you in at all.  They simply refuse a lot of people, apparently.


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

[User]
"Nuclear power is bad", CMV

**My view has been changed, I am also sorry for abandoning the threat, I completely forgot about it. The two users who contributed to changing my view the most were awarded deltas accordingly.**

I believe that we should not use nuclear power and instead focus on renewable resources.

With rising population and advancing technology, the power demand of humanity is increasing. And we must meet that demand and provide sufficient power to cover all our needs. There are various ways of doing so. Today, the most of our power is suppiled by fossil-fuel-burning power plants. However, they present serious threat to the enviroment, so we need to look for our power sources elsewhere. The other options are renewable resources, scuch as water, sunlight, and wind; or nuclear power. I do NOT believe that nuclear power is the right way of progress, and I believe so for these reasons:

1) The price. Nuclear power plants are incredibly expensive to build and maintain. The building costs a small fortune, since all the reactors, shielding, and other protective structures are exteptionally hard and costly to build. Then there is the nuclear fuel, the mos common being U235. It is quite hard to get. The mining alone is quite tedious , moreover, it damages the surroundings a lot, and it's expencive to restore to the previous state. What's more, some of the damages to nature, the common heritage of mankind, are irreparable whatsoever. The fuel is also hard to process and transport, both of which are not only expensive, but also present a serious threat to the enviroment, which is, as I have explained before, not exactly a thing we want. And the same goes to the costs and risks of nuclear waste transport, reprocessing or disposal.
In conclusion, nuclear power is costly in both economical and enviromental aspects.

2) safety. I have to concede, that modern nuclear powerplants are quite safe and a major safety failure is just a rare occurence. However, the damage these potential failures can bring upon mankind and the enviroment is immense. In case of major breach of the reactor shielding huge anmounts of radiation and/or fallout escape the power plant. These horribly affect global enviroment and severely damage human health. although it is true that the failure is quite improbable, if it occurs, the aftermath will be disastrous.
Another safety hazard is the risk of the power plant being damaged in the instance of war or terrorist attack. Power plants are important military targets, so in the case of war are likely to be attacked. The possibility of a disaster following the destruction of a nuclaer power plant also makes it an extcellent target for terrosrists, who just want to cause maximal damage.
To sum this up, there is possibility of a safety failure, and despite its low pobability it is still not worth the possible outcome.

3) Alternative sources. As I mentioned at the very beginning, there are other means of getting power. The alterantive resources, such as water, air and sloar power are cheaper to harness and present barely any threat to our planet. I believe that instead of focusing on nuclear power, inovations should be ecnouraged in this area

I believe that nuclear power is simply too dangerous to utilize. We should therefore focus on alternative resources, as they are more enviroment friendly, safer, cheaper and do not present a major threat to mankind.

Wow, a bit longer than I expected. Mostly, the thing is that in my country, they are planning on expanding one of our power plants, and the Austirans think it's wrong, and I basicaly second this attitude. so, please, CMV

**EDIT: Thanks for the great comments! I'll try to respond to some of them, but I've had a long day and am totally exhausted, so I'll reply more tomorrow.**

[Assistant]
1. Currently, the most expensive aspect of constructing a new nuclear plant is litigation from opposition groups. The reactors themselves, along with their containment, are fairly straightforward and no more expensive than similar industrial projects.

2. You are greatly overstating the danger of nuclear power. To date, the most catastrophic power plant failure, in terms of casualties and damage, was from a hydroelectric dam. Also, there are many potential terrorist targets that would cause far more damage if attacked than a nuclear power facility.

3. The alternative sources you list have problems of their own. Hydro is limited and environmentally destructive. Solar and wind require the mining of rare earths, which is just as destructive as mining Uranium. And except for hydro, the alternatives are incapable of providing base load power, making them unsuitable for large scale power generation.


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

[User]
[Comics] can super heroes work out and increase their strength proportionately to regular humans?

I dont know how many planets Superman would need to bench to even break a sweat, but assuming he COULD work out, could he get 3-4 times stronger than he already is, the way human weightlifters are roughly 3-4 times stronger than a slob who just sits on the couch?

Like if Peter Parker is a scrawny teen, gets bitten by a spider and can lift 12 tons, can he work out and eventually lift 48 tons? Or does his strength sort of go with his powers, and it just amplified what he had? Like if flash Thompson had been bitten hed be 2-3 times stronger than Peter-Spiderman but thats it?

[Assistant] Most of the ones who have some sort of supernatural (as in, they have some sort of powers that give them super-strength, as opposed to someone like Batman or even Captain America whose strength is defined as "peak human" despite usually being shown to be superhuman to some degree) strength don't usually get the benefits of working out to increase said strength, no. Their utilization of their maximum strength gets better through experience, not through any strength training.


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

[User]
films/tvshows/books about academics working

On those days when preparing lectures, reading articles or doing other "academia stuff" seems like the most boring thing ever, I like to read or watch something with university lecturers in it just doing their jobs (preferably in awesome-looking offices and libraries). I find it quite motivational. The problem is that most lablit reading lists or wikipedia collections mention things that actually have very little to do with what academia looks like. Professors lecturing to rapt audiences about forensics and then taking off to the Maldives in a government helicopter to fight crime, or impossibly goodlooking postdocs saving the world from deadly viruses... Indiana Jones, Da Vinci Code, Guilt etc. To say nothing of when rival academics kill each other for the royalties from co-written books. Eyeroll.

**Can you think of any books, films or TV shows that feature lecturers and academics doing normal everyday things?**

Some that occur to me are Still Alice, or the beginning of the new Discovery of Witches that is more about doing research at the Bod than dating vampires (that goes downhill quickly though). Some bits of Unabomber are quite good. As for books, I find Elly Griffith's series about Ruth Galloway has a lot of realistic moments about class prep and teaching.

[Assistant]
In Contact, a lot of time is spent waiting, a lot of time is spent unsuccessfully begging funding agencies for money, a lot of time is spent trying to navigate bureaucracies you don't understand.

It has some more fantastic elements, of course, but it's pretty obvious it was written by someone from the academic jungle.


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

[User]
[Walking Dead] Can anyone survive a bite?

Everybody has the virus, and it activates when you die. Getting bitten just makes you sick as it's a decayed human mouth full of germs. If you had some really good antibiotics, could you survive a zombie bite?

Edit: This ignores how hard antibiotics are to come by in the post apocalyptic setting.

[Assistant]
It didn't seem to help the early survivors who were able to receive good medical care in hospitals, including the CDC.  On the other hand, amputation works pretty well even though the survivor has an open stump in an unsanitary post-apocalyptic world.

So it appears that the bite has some agent that accelerates death once it circulates in the bloodstream.


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

[User]
[DC] How would Batman adjust to a Utopian society?

Batman seems to be a pretty maladjusted individual. If, let's say, all crime, poverty and hatred was eradicated from Earth in the blink of an eye what would he do? Would he keep the costume? Would he obsessively prowl around, always searching for a threat that would never rematerialize?

Could he become friends with the Joker, Riddler, etc. if they were permanently transformed into genuinely good people?

[Assistant]
>	Batman seems to be a pretty maladjusted individual. If, lets say, all crime, poverty and hatred was eradicated from Earth in the blink of an eye what would he do?

He would immediately start investigating why that happened, he has seen enough to know someone would be behind it and would hunt them down to figure out their motives for what theyve done.

After all if a being can remove that all in an instant what else could they do to humanity if they wanted?


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

[User]
Why does superluminal communication violate causality?

Reading Card's *Speaker for the Dead* right now, and as always the ansible (a device allowing instantaneous communication across an infinite distance) and the buggers' methods of communication are key plot devices.

Wikipedia claims that communication faster than light would violate causality as stated by special relativity, but doesn't go into much better detail. So why would faster-than-light communication violate causality? Would telling somebody 100 lightyears away a fact instantaneously be considered time travel?

[Assistant] If something travels faster than the speed of light in your frame of reference, there are other frames of reference (for observers who are not traveling faster than the speed of light relative to you) in which that object will be traveling backwards in time.  That is why there would be causality violation.


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

[User]
CMV: Person who make false rape allegations should face the same charges as the other would if convicted

As the title says, *any person who makes false rape allegations should face the same penalties as the person who they made them about would if they were convicted. When a person is convicted of rape, theyre on a sex offender registry for life, face years in prison, and will likely never be the same. A false accusation is enough to ruin a persons life even if theyre found innocent due to changing views of community and family, lost opportunities, and general distrust resulting from the false claims. A person making a false allegation is willingly choosing to ruin anothers life, and as a murderer is met with death, I think the person who makes that accusation needs to have the charges reversed.

[Assistant]
How would you propose that is managed? Does any accusation without enough evidence get classed as false and result in the accuser being jailed or is there a separate trial after the main one to prove it false. How could you prove if false?

If the only requirement is that the defendant not eb found guilty then this would discourage a lot of people coming forward with genuine rape claims given they face jail if there is not enough evidence (which is hard to come by in a situation that usually only includes 2 people in a room).

Also worth noting instances of false accusations are really low and not something that happens anywhere near as much as actual rapes.


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

[User]
ELI5 how do cameramen and women in films hide the cameras whilst filming so well when there is a scene with reflections?

Whenever Im watching a movie and there is a scene with mirrors or something that causes reflections Ive always wondered how they are able to hide the cameras so well?

[Assistant] Scenes are carefully choreographed in advance, including the camera angle.  That's the behind the  scenes you see of the cinematographer walking around holding a lens to their eye.  Sometimes, particularly with mirrors, they shoot with a non-plano camera that has a distortion opposite the the effect of shooting at an angle.  In the worst case, they just edit them out in post, like CGI only backwards.  That's how they remove wires and support structures.


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

[User]
ELI5: Clouds are made up of water that has evaporated, in Summer when it is hotter and more water is evaporating there is often far less clouds than in Winter when it is cold and there are lots of clouds. What causes this?

My head hurts trying to think about this...

[Assistant] Truly evaporated water is invisible, its basically air. Think about the totally clear area right at the top of a boiling kettle. Clouds are tiny droplets if water, white and visible, like steam. The summer heat evaporates lots of water,  but it only forms clouds in certain areas where its gets pushed up to colder parts of the sky. Thats part of why some places have summer thunderstorms, with hail sometimes.


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

[User] ELI5: Do dogs recognize that their name is their identity or do they simply know to respond when a certain sound is made?

[Assistant]
Dogs are capable of recognizing their names, and discerning it from other sounds.  Recent animal behavior studies have found that dog's brains behave in much the same way our brains do when someone says our name.  It appears that they are able to recognize that their name is not just another sound that someone is making, but is meant to specifically identify them.

Edit: Fun fact -- cats have been shown to do this as well.  The research suggests that cats can also tell when you're using their specific name.  The reason they often don't react?  They don't care.


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

[User] ELI5: What exactly is happening in my brain when I have a song "stuck in my head?"

[Assistant]
It's called an earworm. Much about them is still unknown, but nearly all of us experience earworms. Repetitive rhythms ("catchy tunes") make a song easier to reproduce in our heads, and unusual time signatures or unresolved or incomplete musical ideas excite an abnormal reaction in the brain; they bother us, perhaps because we strive to communicate completely and clearly. These unusual/abnormal qualities compel the attention of the brain, forcing it to repeat the song in a phonological loop. So, we fixate on these little snippets of songs, replaying them over and over in our heads, hoping to resolve them, which of course doesn't work. Repetition does not remove the song from the phonological loop, but increases the length of its presence. Earworms are quite literally a cognitive itch, an itch that gets worse by being scratched.

There's no completely effective way to get the song out of your head, but most methods center around distracting yourself (sing another song), or taking steps to resolve the musical idea and relieve the cognitive itch (listen to the song all the way through).


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

[User]
[Bioshock Infinite] Did the rest of world have access to the Lutece Particle?

Columbia went AWOL almost 10 years after its launch.  Surely Rosalind would have spoken to universities and her discovery would be well documented.  Would the rest of world be more even more advanced than Columbia?

[Assistant] If the appearance of New York City c.1980s is any indication, the world went right along on it's normal trajectory after Columbia went away. The Luteces seem to have kept their breakthroughs close to their chests.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't we dispose of nuclear waste by putting on a subduction tectonic plate to sink it into the earth's core?

I saw the John Oliver segment on nuclear waste, and thought of the following idea:

Bury the nuclear waste on the subducting side of a subduction boundary of tectonic plates, near the actual boundary. Eventually the tectonic plate, along with the nuclear waste buried in it, would sink under the continental crust where it will melt, become super hot magma, and I assume be diluted in the various super-hot elements down there and gone forever.

Would this work? Or am I missing something?

[Assistant]
It would work. But the subduction plates move at the same rate that your toenails grow, or thereabouts. So it would take years and years and years for the waste to disappear. Years that highly radioactive/toxic material is sitting on the ocean floor, polluting the water and killing nearby organisms.

Not to mention the difficulty in getting the waste there, which is not a tivial task. It would have to be placed carefully by professionals, as well as transported safely to the location by ship.

It's sort of like saying, "why can't we fire radioactive waste into the sun?" We can. There is no meaningful amount of crap we can shoot into the sun that would make it care. It's just getting it there is enormously expensive and if a rocket explodes in the atmosphere or on the launch pad (which they still do, from time to time), it'd be an enormous mess.


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

[User]
[the expanse] why use railguns for close combat?

in the show they use regular 50 cal machine guns (i think) at medium to long range space combat, and seem to switch to rail guns at close range.  wouldn't the increased velocity and kinetic energy of a rail gun round be more effective at long range combat, as well as more accurate since it takes less time to get to it's target? am i wrong here?

[Assistant]
As far as we've seen in the show, rail guns are generally used at medium range (missiles for long range), and the PDCs at close range. Very few ships actually have rail guns mounted though, so missiles and PDCs are the mainstays of combat we see.

Normally rail guns are mounted on battleships and the like, since they have the powerplants needed for them, and are big enough to mount them in turrets. The stealth ships from S1/S2 are the smallest ships ever known to have rail guns, and they have them in a fixed emplacement along the length of the ship, making them impractical to use at close range or outside of an ambush (since you have to point the whole ship to aim it).


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

[User] [STAR WARS] How much of Palpatine's plan relied on Anakin turning to the Darkside? Did he have a backup to turn? What if Anakin was killed during The Clone Wars? What if Anakin ultimately decided to not turn?

[Assistant]
Almost none of it. The Clone Wars were already being prepped before Palpatine even knew of Anakin - that's literally what the Naboo Crisis is, the openin salvo to prep the way for the Clone Wars.

Anakin was, at best, a side project and extra middle finger extended at the Jedi.


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

[User]
[FMA: B] On a technical level, what is Edward Elrics most impressive transmutation or use of alchemy.

Edward is recognized as a protege many times throughout the series, but if you had to pick his single most technically impressive feat what would it be?

[Assistant]
If there was any one field he genuinely excelled at, from an academic standpoint, it would be soul transmutation. He didn't invent philosopher's stones, but he *did* come to fully understand them to the level that he was able to use *himself* like one. He also managed to bind his brother's soul to armor, on instincts, *as a barely trained child.* That's something that teams of researchers had to work up towards, and he just whipped it off on a whim without knowing it was even possible.

Just as Mustang took on someone else's teachings and perfected their execution, Edward Elric did the same for soul transmutations.


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

[User]
How do applications request for RAM from the CPU?

I want to understand how applications on computers (not smartphones) request for RAM from the OS. I want to understand how on a practical day-to-day basis, everyday applications request memory from the OS, and **NOT** the theoretical CompArch/ OS answer.

I remember reading somewhere (I don't remember the original source) that they request for RAM as a percentage of free RAM. For example, if there's `6 GB` of free RAM available, Slack would ask for `30%` of it, netting `30% * 6 GB = 1.8 GB` of RAM for itself.

Also, is there a common theme among types of applications? Say something like Electron-based applications tend to ask for RAM a particular way by default (for e.g. `30%` of free RAM), and Qt-based applications ask for RAM differently, and another type of applications ask for RAM in yet another different way.

Thank you!

EDIT: Not the CPU, I mean the OS. Have edited the post accordingly.

[Assistant]
> and NOT the theoretical CompArch/ OS answer

Then you're not going to get an answer, since a way for applications to request the RAM they need is a facility provided by the operating system. It's really got nothing to do with the CPU. The CPU will ensure an application cannot use RAM to which the OS has not granted access, but that's not _requesting_ the RAM in the first place.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did the Polynesians have enough food and water to travel such great distances in canoes and why did they do it?

What made them think they'd ever find another island in the Pacific Ocean? It seems like many of them would have died trying.

[Assistant]
Carrying enough food isn't really a problem, especially 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, when there were lots more fish in the sea.

I sailed 12,800 km, from Panama to New Caledonia on a 11-meter sloop.

We left with 100 liters of fresh water for 4 adults.  We caught rain running off the mainsail and put it in the tank.  Never was short of water.

We towed two fishing lures the entire time.  We caught good sized tuna every other day, usually two at the same time.  We would catch one or two dorado every 5th day or so.

As we emptied the jars of vegetables and other foods, we would refill with fish and a court bouillon, then water-bath can the jars on the boat's stove.

We arrived in Noumea with all the jars full of fish, which were given away to the skipper's friends.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does getting nutrients from other organisms' feces work and how come humans can't do the same thing?

I mean I know it'd be pretty gross if humans ate poop on a regular basis but if it was for survival purposes then I would be somewhat okay with it.

[Assistant]
Digestive systems are never perfect, organic life is too complex. Often one animal's digestive system will be a bit crap (heh) at getting a particular range of nutrients out of their preferred food source. In these cases, another animal that lives in the same ecosystem may well smell their feces, realise it smells like food (many species are good at smelling nutrients that are important to them) and eat it. They may be better than the first animal at getting the leftover nutrients out of the pre-digested food.

Humans usually don't do this because our digestive systems are very good at getting a wide range of nutrients out of a wide range of food, and because there's a high risk of getting sick if we eat shit.

However, we're not very good at breaking down the seed coat of some plant species, which is why whole corn kernels may turn up in your poo unbroken if you don't chew your corn up properly when eating it. For this reason, some non-agricultural (hunter-gatherer) peoples in food-scarce situations may practice "second harvesting" - going through their own or others' poo to find unbroken, undigested grains and seeds to eat.

TL;DR: you can if you really want, but get ready to get gastro.


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

[User] When a gas gets compressed the temperature increases. According to Google the temperature of a black hole is near absolute zero. If a gas gets compresed enough that it becomes a black hole, in wich step does it loose that temperature?

[Assistant]
I highly suspect that the sources you are referring to are talking about the temperature of the equivalent blackbody of Hawking radiation emitted from the black hole rather than the internal temperature of the black hole.

So, you might know that black holes emit a black body spectrum at their event horizon. This has a characteristic temperature that is inversely proportional to mass (basically it is 10^23 / Mass(in kg) K) such that a solar mass black hole would have a temp of ~ 10^-7  K. This inverse mass relationship is the reason why only tiny black holes ever exhaust themselves from Hawking radiation.

The internal temperature though is a different story. Maybe it makes no real physical sense to talk about it, certainly within the singularity itself the pressure and temperature are unrelated (same as in a white dwarf or neutron star), especially since it is obviously not observable...however, in the frame of reference of a cloud of gas falling in, it is clear that the gas will compress and heat up, eventually becoming degenerate matter, asymptotically approaching infinite temperature as it approaches infinite density.


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

[User] ELI5: When out of the water, why do whales and dolphins need to be kept wet? Aren't they mammals who breathe oxygen?

[Assistant]
Their skin does not have UV protections or protective oils so they dry out quickly.

Their body heat regulatory systems are designed to dump heat into water, so they overheat when only able to dump heat in the much less dense air.

And most die from their organs being crushed by their own weight since they are designed for water to support much of their weight.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it 'Beheading' instead of 'Deheading'?

[Assistant] The word "head" and the prefix "de-" are from different places. "De-" is a prefix usually attached to words that English borrowed from Latin or Romance languages (French, Italian, etc.), and "head" is a word that English borrowed from older German languages. "Be-" is a Germanic prefix.


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

[User] [Troy 2004] Hector has killed Ajax and probably dozens of other Greek warriors. Why did he feel so guilty over killing Patroclus, who was just another Greek invader?

[Assistant]
Because Patroclus was not a hero. he was just a boy playing a game, desperate to be seen as worthy by his cousin.

And Hector knew that by killing him, he had raised Achilles to a rage. Achilles who was the greatest warrior the world had ever known. As long as he didn't take the field, the armies of the greeks would never defeat Troy. With him.. Troy's defeat was all but certain.


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

[User]
What causes wind?

I checked out the Wikipedia article but require a little more extensive layman's/five year old explanation. I am curious!

[Assistant]
Basically heat rises. When air gets hot it expands. When things expand they get less dense. Less dense means it has less mass for a given volume. When you are less dense than the stuff around you will float or rise.

What does any of that have to do with wind? Well, the Sun heats the Earth and the hot Earth then warms the air right next to the Earth's surface. The warm air expands and then rises. As the warm air rises the near by air comes rushing in to feel the empty space. That rushing air is wind.

That is really over simplified, but it gives you a start. Do not read any more if you are happy with the explanation so far and do not want to go down the rabbit hole any more.

Also related is the fact that the equator gets more direct sun than the poles so the air near the equator is heated more than the air near the poles. that means the air near the equator will rise up more than the air near the poles.

This will cause a circulation of air rising up from the equator and flowing toward the poles, with the low cooler air from the poles will move toward the equator to fill the gap left by the rising air.

Now mix in the fact that the earth has a "right hand" rotation and the air will bend toward the west as it moves toward the poles, this will cause a counter clockwise rotation in the north and clock wise rotation in the south.

Now also figure that the air over water heats differently than air over land and all kinds of crazy weather patterns can emerge.

You can also explain why there seem to be desserts on land the same distance from the equator in both directions from the above circulations (at about 30 degrees).

tl;dr Heat rises, cool air rushes in.


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

[User]
[Avengers:AOU] Ultron's Self Realisation (Possible spoiler).

When obtaining the vibranium Ultron made the statement that he'd like to spend time explaining his evil plot, just prior to attacking our heroes/

I am considering that Ultron at that stage was aware enough to realise he is the villain by his own moral compass, his "evolved" plan for "peace" is in his own true opinion "evil" and he was carrying it out knowingly.

Given his and Vision's shared creation as a consequence of the mind stone, and their final exchange reflecting on us humans, it is plausible that he was aware of the folly, futility, and hubris while still machine enough to undertake the procedure he understood to have been created for?

[Assistant] I think he was being sarcastic. Ultron seemed to genuinely believe that wiping out humanity was the best course of action for the world. He also recognised that the Avengers were regarded as, and regarded themselves as, Heroes, so he was playing up the 'Villian' thing just to be a smart ass.