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

[User]
What is wrong with undergrad ECON classes?

A little bit of background: I am an undergraduate economics student from Spain with quite a bit of passion in the subject. I am a Junior now.

So this year I came to a US University as an exchange student under a bilateral agreement between my Uni and Purdue University. So far so good, love the American experience in many ways, but in others, I have been pretty disappointed with the classes I am taking here.

My first two years of Econ in Spain were intense, but interesting and pretty integral. We started on the very basics on the first year, covering intro to Econ, univariate and multivariate calculus, intro to stats (Random Variables, probability, etc.), Micro and some other miscellaneous stuff such as legal frameworks for Economics.

On the second year we moved onto more advanced coverings of these topics. I took Game Theory, Advanced Microeconomic Theory, Advanced Macroeconomics, Dynamic Macro, Industrial organization and more.

Overall, most if not all courses we had to take in sophomore year involved at least some form of applied calculus, which we obviously learned in our first year. No course relied on simple algebra or visual solving methods; many included some form of constrained optimization. We even went on to learn intertemporal optimization. We use all these tools widely. In econometrics, although and introductory course, we also learn how to prove and derive stuff and work it all out.

Although my University is somewhat known around Spain for being pretty tough and reputable on Econ, it still makes sense that calculus is an essential tool of most microeconomic courses, and that overall, math is a recurring tool in many classes.

But now, I come into the US and it seems like all the ECON courses I am taking are a joke. None of them mention the slight use of calculus on their syllabus, and after two weeks of classes, it even seems like Professors are reluctant to that idea. They try to calm down their students saying things like "don't worry, we won't be going into hard math like calculus in this course". One class even had an introductory "math review" session in which **we were explained the properties of exponents and how to fucking plot linear equations.** It just baffles me and it feels frustrating that this year will be spent learning about applied economics without using math at all, not even simple supply and demand charts sometimes. Ever since I started college I have been told by many Professors and counselors that as an Econ student, the more math I take, the better. And I abide by it: not only do I love math but I love applying it. So taking Calc I and II in my first year isn't obviously enough, and that's why I feel great about having had to use math in so many other classes. But now, here, everything is explained in such a simple and straightforward way, with little to no reasoning, that I just feel like I am wasting my time.

I'm taking Environmental Economics, Time Series Analysis, Behavioral Economics, International Trade and Linear Algebra + Diff Equations. The only two classes that seem math-wise are Time Series and Lin. Algebra+Diff Eqns, but still, why would the rest be taught at such a low level?

The way college works in Spain is that on the first two years most classes are mandatory for all students enrolled in a specific major. Then, on the third and fourth year each student can branch out onto their preferable electives, which must be selected from a pool of econ or econ related electives.

In my case, the ones that I was interested in most were developing Econometrics (micro and macroeconometrics, applied econometrics, proof based stats courses, time series...) and Micro (advanced behavioral econ, Information Economics, Advanced Industrial Econ, Environmental econ...), besides from others. So in order for my exchange agreement to work, I had to look for some of these courses in Purdue (or equivalent courses). This was already hard enough since it seems Purdue Undergrad Econometrics classes won't go further than Econometrics 101, unlike in Spain. But still, after finding some seemingly decent equivalencies, this is what I come across when actually attending the classes.

I am aware that the Spanish university system is,  by itself, quite different from other countries', even European ones. I know the US college system is way more flexible and open in terms of what you want to focus on during your years in college,  that's great, but it seems this comes with the cost of -sometimes- lacking a strong base in essential knowledge in certain subjects. In all three classes I mentioned earlier, we had to be introduced to how supply and demand works, to what a model is, to how Econ is studied. How am I being taught this three years after I learned it, again? For anyone to be enrolled in upper level applied econ classes, I believe there should be a required and expected minimum level of knowledge and math skills. I am very frustrated and lost as to what to do and I am not sure anymore if coming to study to the US is worth it.

**TL;DR: It seems that Econ classes in the US are a dumb joke compared to the classes I used to take in Spain. Almost no math at all and basic concepts from ECON 101 is what we've been taught so far (junior year taking upper level classes). I'm interested in quantitative economics and applied micro, am worried I'm not gonna learn much this year.**

**EDIT:** Wow, thanks so much to everyone for their replies. Definitely didn't think this thread would get so many. All of your advice is greatly appreciated and I see things clearer now. I got a lot of new insights that will for sure help me out. Thanks so much, everyone!!

[Assistant] Might be a Purdue problem. It wasn't like that at Texas A&M. There were plenty of classes tailored towards the BA students, but there were always enough sections to take a few math-literate econ courses each semester.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Why did the Empire sterilize Geonosis?

[Assistant] Geonosians built and designed the Death Star. Better to wipe the whole species out than to risk them leaking the plans to sympathizers. The Death Star was built by enslaved geonosians after all.  (Also wookiees but that's not related to the question.)


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

[User]
What exactly are the differences between Active ingredients and Inactive ingredients in medicine?

Obviously (or so I think), the active ingredient is the one that is the most important for chemical reaction to help out the taker's problem. But what exactly is the purpose of the inactive ingredients? Is the name "inactive" a misnomer because the name seems to imply it does nothing?

For example I have some flavored Tums (an antacid) in front of me:

Active Ingredient: Calcium carbonate USB

Inactive ingredients: Sucrose (for flavor?), Calcium carbonate, corn starch, talc, mineral oil, natural and artificial flavor, adipic acid, sodium polyphosphate, red 40 lake, yellow 6 lake, yellow 5 (tartrazine) lake, blue 1 lake.

I'm guessing the lakes are food coloring.

[Assistant]
* Binders/Fillers(They aren't mutually exclusive): Sucrose, corn starch, and mineral oil
* Ph Buffers: Calcium carbonate
* Anti caking(during manufacturing): talc, and sodium polyphosphate(not sure)
* Flavoring: natural and artificial flavor, and adipic acid
* Coloring: red 40 lake, yellow 6 lake, yellow 5 (tartrazine) lake,and blue 1 lake.


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

[User] ELI5: How does swimming burn so many calories (close to higher intensity workouts) even if my heart stays in the warm up zone the whole time?

[Assistant] Swimming is a decent full-body workout, but it also means youre immersed in water thats significantly below your body temperature. Water is far more thermally conductive than air, and it has a very high specific heat, so it rapidly cools you down. Your body then has to raise its metabolic rate to keep you warm, and that burns calories.


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

[User]
[40K] Why are Space Marines portrayed as battlefield demigods when they seem more akin to simple tough walking tanks?

I get that they're post human and can survive what would kill most, and are smarter and more mobile than tanks, but they are portrayed as being able to take a planet like 21st century earth with a single chapter relatively easily. This seems ludicrous when one realizes they're just big bipedal armored durable people.

[Assistant]
I think you're oversimplifying things...

Since the Horus Heresy, Space Marines are rarely used in pitched battle. They lack the numbers. Instead, the operate as rapid insertion specialists, dropping where the enemy is weakest and doing damage before withdrawing.

Within 24 hours, a full strength Chapter could kill every political leader on earth, along with the majority of General rank military staff, disrupt supply lines and infrastructure and generally incite havoc amongst the population.

Even if committed to field engagements, Astartes Power Armour is more durable than any contemporary tank. They can withstand direct hits from Krak Missiles (though not frequently) which are superior than the vast majority of modern AP explosives.

Physically, and Astartes is superior in every way to a human, able to survive with absolutely unfathomable wounds (there is an old story of a Marine continuing to fight after his rib cage had been blown open, his organs in full view). They are fast enough to intercept low-velocity rounds, strong enough to throw a car, and capable of moving and fighting at speeds in excess of 60kph. All of these capabilities are then heightened by their armour.

In short, it is the combination of their armour (which surpasses a 'simple tank') operational mentality and physical superiority which makes them demigods. Yes, there are weapons which can take them out even today. Problem is, you have to have those weapons on hand, everywhere, at all times. Because the Strike Teams are just going to avoid the positions that have them otherwise.

***edit
Another major advantage... Astartes do not follow the rules of war. They will target civilians to draw out military positions, they will kill the weak and sick, and they will deliberately massacre children if it means military gain. They also make wide use of chemical weapons and incendiary armaments which are highly ilegal.


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

[User]
What would happen if a voltage was applied to a superconductor in a ring shape and then have the voltage source removed? Would the electrons continue to flow forever in a loop?

Based on the limited knowledge and understanding I have, it would seem that an electrical current would be able to flow indefinitely due to the lack of resistance, is this the case? If not, how could this theoretically be done?

[Assistant]
>I have, it would seem that an electrical current would be able to flow indefinitely due to the lack of resistance, is this the case?

Yes, the current will continue to flow for a very long time. This is how superconducting electromagnets work. You just cause a current to start flowing through a coil of superconductor, and then just let it keep flowing. It produces a nice static magnetic field. Since superconductors have negligible resistance to DC, you can have hundreds of Amps flowing through the coils at a time. You just have to be sure not to exceed the maximum current for the superconducting phase, or you can cause the coil to quench.


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

[User]
[The Incredibles] What happened to the super villians?

Bomb Voyage and the like must have still been around during the trials and public rejection of supers. Without the good guys, why didn't the bad ones take that opportunity to step up their game? Where did they go?

[Assistant] Without heroes to oppose them what's the fun? Normal crime works just fine and doesn't draw as much attention. For example: Bomb Voyage probably learned he could make more money building bombs for terrorists and revolutionaries than robbing banks.


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

[User]
[Daredevil] How sure is Matt Murdoch that he's only getting innocent clients?

So Matt likes to only take on clients he believes are innocent, and accomplishes through using his super senses to measure philological responses like heartbeats and such.

Buuuuuttt, lie detectors based on reading these responses are inadmissible in court because they are not 100% reliable; someone might be really good at controlling their reactions when lying while another person might have a nervous disposition and cause a false positive.

Matt is a lawyer, he knows this. So how can he be sure that his method is working?

[Assistant]
His "lie detector" is a big part of it, but that isn't the only reason Matt knows if a person is guilty or innocent. He is, after all, a very good vigilante, in addition to being a very good lawyer.

He can smell that you had curry for dinner on Monday, took a shot of whiskey before coming into the office, and stopped by the dry cleaners on the way over. He can smell the gunpowder from when you fired a pistol, and the gun oil from when you cleaned it. He can sense the scrapes on your knuckles from when you punched something, and the traces of plaster tell him that it was a wall, not a person.

Matt Murdock is not omniscient, but it is extraordinarily difficult to hide things from him, first because his senses are so finely honed, and second, because you would need to hide things you aren't even aware of. A police dog can smell the cocaine in your pocket. Matt Murdock can smell the cocaine you _took out_ of your pocket before you came to see him.

And if all that fails, he can just mask up and poke around until he has all the necessary facts. He doesn't need search warrants and confessions; he can just break in and break bones until he has the truth.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How many lightsaber-wielding opponents does Dooku actually face in serious battles with intent to kill?

Dooku never really comes off badly as a combatant. We also hear he was known among the Jedi as an expert in the lightsaber.

So are the films and Clone Wars his first/only true duels against a lightsaber-wielding adversary? It doesn't seem like there would have been much opportunity to actually duel in life-or-death circumstances before the re-emergence of the Sith.

Did Dooku go from play-fighting in the Jedi Temple, with safe and friendly sparring partners, directly to facing down Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Anakin for real? If so, all the more impressive!

And if he did have an actual lightsaber-to-lightsaber combat record previous to the Attack of the Clones, who else had he been seriously fighting?

[Assistant] We haven't seen much of Dooku's past at all. He presumably employed his saber while on missions with his padawan during his many years of service to the Jedi. But for most of his eighty four years the galaxy was at peace and lightsaber wielding opponents were few and far between, so what we see during the Clone Wars and the films is probably it.


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

[User]
Is the universe quantized or continuous?

Perhaps with the exception of energy levels. Is there a shortest lenght, time etc implied by plank units or are they just useful scaling factors?

[Assistant]
Every test we have done is consistent with the universe being continuous.  Any "Pixelization" of spacetime would imply lorenz violations.  None have ever been found.

This has been searched for extensivly in the radiation emitteded by distant supernova, where a quantized spacetime would show up in time delays between different frequencies of light.  None have ever been found.

Given this energy is continuous in unbound systems as well, as given a photon, you can have any arbitrary velocity, given that photon any arbitrary energy level.


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

[User] Why are AA and AAA batteries in remotes and other electronic devices typically placed alternately/in opposite directions of each other? Why isn't the standard for them to always be facing nipple up (as In the case of the apple magic mouse)?

[Assistant]
In most appliances, batteries have to be wired in series. This allows the appliance to use a voltage of all the voltages of the individual batteries added up (e.g. three 1.5 V batteries in series provide a voltage of 4.5 V).

To wire batteries in series, the + pole of one battery should be connected to the - pole of the next.

The easiest way to achieve that in a battery compartment is by having the + side of one battery directly adjacent to the - side of the other. This reduces the amount of wiring needed to connect battery terminals.

Devices that take all batteries facing the same way either wire the batteries in parallel, which means they operate on the same voltage as a single battery, or they have extra wiring to connect + and - terminals of adjacent batteries.


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

[User] Where (on Earth) is it believed that Theia collided with us according to the giant impact hypothesis?

[Assistant] There isnt a place that people believe. The impact was so massive that it 'reset' any existing surfaces structures (if any such things existed) and our current tectonic plate system comes almost entirely from after that event. So its not possible to pinpoint anywhere.


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

[User] [Batman] How does the Gotham PD handle the chain of evidence for criminals Batman has captured? Have juries decided being captured by Batman to be proof enough of wrongdoing?

[Assistant] Batman has been officially licensed as a Special Deputy by Gotham PD since the 1940s. So despite his unorthodox methods, he is authorized. For evidence, he either takes a small sample but leaves enough for the crime lab, or takes the evidence, perform tests on it, and turns it over to the crime lab when done with it. As long as it remains in his possession, the chain of evidence is unbroken.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does Pennsylvania have state-run liquor stores and what is the argument against privatising them?

[Assistant] It has them for historical reasons. The original reasoning was probably something about public morals, but it was also decades ago. At this point plenty of people have tried to privatize it and they just debated doing so last summer. The issue is that the government employees who work there have a union and are actually paid pretty well. Getting rid of an entrenched government system is hard enough on its own, but it's damn near impossible to get rid of a few thousand union jobs in Pennsylvania and still get elected again next year.


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

[User] ELI5: The difference between Miles and Nautical Miles and why we need two different measurements?

[Assistant]
The mile traces its origins to the Roman Empire and was originally 1000 paces (2000 steps), hence its similarity to the Latin "Mille" for thousand.  When people went to the sea the need for a distance measurement of that scale still existed, but ships don't do much pacing so a different standard had to be used.  While it's hard for a ship to measure how far it's gone it is much easier to figure out how far north/south it presently is by looking at the sun or stars.  Thus, a definition for a roughly mile-length unit came to be--it is 1/60 of a degree along a meridian (north/south line).

More modern definitions have evolved from these original definitions, so a modern-day mile is 5,280 feet , while a modern-day nautical mile is 1.150779 miles exactly.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do coffee makers suggest you start with cold water?

If the machine makes it hot in the end, whats the purpose of using cold water?  Specifically is there any scientific reason that using cold water could the way the coffee turns out in the end?

[Assistant]
Hot water is more likely to pick up minerals from your pipes. It will have a higher metal concentration than cold water, so cold water is "cleaner".

Not sure how it impacts the taste of coffee but it is fully reasonable that it could, they are just recommending cleaner water.


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

[User]
ELI5: Are we fishing at too high of a rate? Are we going to run out of fish?

I remembered reading something along these lines earlier this month, but can't find the source. Do we not farm fish?

[Assistant]
We are not going to fish every fish out of the sea. But if we overfish, stocks will fall and either all fishing becomes uneconomic or fish becomes very expensive.
Yes we do farm some fish, but only a very small percentage of what we eat, and only certain types of fish are suitable for farming. Additionally much of the food fed to captive fish is made from fish-meal. So if the fish in the sea become expensive so will the fish-meal.


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

[User]
MATH IN ECONOMICS?

Good day, I'm a freshman taking AB Economics (i really thought this would take less math).

My first year is proceeding not as I've expected it thanks to our math subjects. Algebra for this year, two calculus for next. Econometrics, Math for Economics, and Statistics are following. The term is ending and I'm planning to self-study mathematics before things take a wrong turn. But studying from scratch would just lead me nowhere. I even saw, from an earlier post I made, that trig is barely used but our subject is Alg + Trig.

I won't say I'm terrible in math but I also won't say I'm good in it. I'm just pretty average who didn't take calculus during high school (regretting I didn't, thankfully I did during middle).

So can anyone provide me a grasp of what topics I should focus on?

Here are what I know:

Algebra

Calculus

Statistics

But these are too broad, tbh. I do know, however that I need to focus in Algebra is Linear Algebra, yet not disregard the others. Also I should learn a lot about matrices. In calculus I'm not really sure but I did see some online videos saying that it'll mostly be about optimization, differentials, and integrals. For statistics, on Linear Regressions.

Statistics may be difficult, yet that's the only subs we're allowed to use tools so I really wouldn't focus on that much (still i'm planning to study it). Can anyone provide me the topics I should focus on and focus on the most. Espeically with econometrics and all the scary ones.

Thank you for the help! I'm falling in love with the program!

[Assistant]
Economics is really wide field. And thus can have plenty of different math applications.

Learning Matrices, statistics and logarithms can help with Econometrics.

Learn to solve problems with Lagrangian methods in Microeconomics. So basically you need to know how to partial derivate different functions.

I'd recommend you to learn how to code with Stata / R. They will later help you out.


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

[User] In the 19th century, the concept of ether was disproven, but the Higgs field sounds a lot like ether to me. How are they different?

[Assistant]
The main feature of the ether is that it created a universal reference frame as the medium in which light traveled. In order for it to work it had to be possible to tell how fast you were moving with respect to the ether, for example by comparing the speed of light rays traveling in different directions with respect to yourself.

The fact that it was a field that permeates the universe was not the fact that was disproven, and indeed all of modern particle physics is based on the idea that fields permeate the universe. None of these fields, however, have the property that they create a preferred reference frame. It is never possible to do an experiment that tells you how fast you are moving with respect to the Higgs field, for example.


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

[User]
Could you freeze ice in a way that makes it a magnet?

Water is a polar molecule, right? Could we freeze the water into a lattice that mimics the domains of proper magnetic minerals like magnetite?

[Assistant]
You have mixed up electric dipoles and magnetic dipoles. It's a pretty common confusion because they both get called dipoles.

Water has a large electric dipole, but little to no magnetic dipole moment.

Most magnetic materials typically have an unpaired electron in an orbital somewhere. The unpaired electron gives that molecule a magnetic dipole moment.

It's possible to form a similar material with electric diples that has a permanent electric field. However they are fairly rare.


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

[User]
[Ghosts/Supernatural Misc.] So, the people I care about are being terrorised by this untouchable spectral force. How do I die in such a way as to become a ghost and kick its ass?

I don't mind staying dead, if anything acting as the watchful protector of my loved ones against the incorporeal and otherworldly forces of evil sounds like a good deal.

[Assistant]
Your plan is similar to ones Ancient Egyptians had in the afterlife. Once you died you became "One with the sun god" RA and watched over everyone - and when the sun sets you would travel to the underworld and fight Aphophis & his demons - it was the cycle of Day & Night

Becoming a ghost or a spirit means you have unfinished business on earth and your soul can not pass onto its next destination (whatever that maybe). Usually a death in a tragic/violent way creates enough energy to leave your spiritual imprint, as well as dying in an area with strong spiritual forces already around, like a haunted swamp, asylum, or a concentration camp.

I wouldn't recommend becoming a ghost, but there are people who can tether your soul to the physical realm if you desire. This way when you die you will become a ghost. You may want to move on after awhile to where you're supposed to go however. All ghosts eventually want to pass on or they want to enjoy life again.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does Facebook Messenger and other similar apps on the app store have random 150mb updates a few times a week?

I don't see any difference in the app at all once i update it, why is it around 150mb every time?

[Assistant]
Because it's easier for them, and no one really complains about it.

They *could* structure the app so that smaller parts of the app could be updated individually without having to redownload the entire app. Or they could wait longer between updates and roll all the changes up into one 150mb change every 3 months.

But everyone happily downloads those 150mb every time, so they don't really have an incentive to do anything about it. And for them, it's simpler to just ship a new copy of everything any time they make even the smallest change.


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

[User]
(LOTR) What is the difference between orcs and goblins?

I get that the two races a different, but they seem to have a lot of similarities.  I get that goblins mostly live in mountains, and orcs don't, but after that I'm lost.  Do goblins serve Sauron as the orcs seem to?

[Assistant] They're not actually different, it's a linguistic choice of Tolkien's. He changed "orc" to "goblin" to carry the term into English from Westron. He goes back on that decision inconsistently in translating *Lord of the Rings*, using the terms more or less interchangeably.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Half-Blood Prince: Why didn't Professor Dumbledore have Snape make the liquid luck potion for himself?

Wasn't Snape proficient enough to make it?
Dumbledore himself then could have asked Professor Slughorn about the memory he tampered with (Horcruxes).

Or given it to Harry without relying on Harry winning the potion (to get the intel).

[Assistant]
Dumbledore is motherfucking Dumbledore. There were hundreds of ways he could've obtained the memory.

In reality, Dumbledore is a teacher. He wanted Harry to learn how to obtain information from unwilling sources.


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

[User] ELI5: How did the acceptance and promotion of drug and alcohol use (e.g., Marijuana, Percocet, codeine, Xanax, Hennessy, Molly) become so common in pop culture, notably the music industry?

[Assistant]
It always has been, pretty much. Different eras had different addictions, of course, and alcohol is the most common in older times.

Removing the alcohol, since that's legal, you still get references to drug use as early as the 1930s, with artists like Herb Morland and Cab Calloway. In the 70s, there was a growth of hard drug references in songs, like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (LSD).


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

[User] ELI5: Why do countries that generate a lot of energy through nuclear power plants, such as Switzerland, want to remove nuclear power if they have seen no negative consequences from it?

[Assistant]
Humans are intrinsically, extraordinarily bad at judging risk.

Things we do every day that are incredibly dangerous (ex: driving) do not provoke a fear response in us, due to habituation.  Meanwhile, extraordinarily rare but spectacular and scary events (ex: terrorist attack, plane crash, etc.) preoccupy our brain with fear because of how random, novel, and powerless we feel about them.

This causes our brain circuitry to mess up, and get legitimately scared about say, being in a crash while on a plane, even though we felt safe and comfortable on the car ride there, which was *literally* a million times more likely to kill us.

Nuclear suffers from this.  A lot.  When you look at nuclear's track record in terms of environmental damage, damage to human health, deaths, etc. it is orders of magnitude safer than coal, gas, or oil.  Thousands of times.  (Fun fact:  there is an environmentally significant oil pipeline rupture approximately every 14 days in the US.  But like driving, we're habituated to it and do not factor in that risk anymore.)

But nuclear, because it is rare, explosive, involves radiation, and tends to be pretty disruptive when something *does* go wrong (ex: Chernobyl, Fukushima), our brains place these incidents far higher in our minds in terms of perceived danger and risk.  We obsess on them more and want to take dramatic action to reduce the chances, even at extraordinary cost.  And even when it doesn't make any actual logical sense.  (Ex: you get significantly more daily radiation exposure living near a coal plant than a nuclear one.)


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do hot things tend to emit light?

Do all materials emit light if heated up enough?

[Assistant]
All things emit light all the time. It's just one of the ways materials give off energy to their environment. Thermal imaging works by seeing the light things give off that humans can't detect with their eyes.

Anything, if heated up enough, will begin to emit light in the visible part of the spectrum.


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

[User]
When citing a review in APA, do you cite the review, or the paper the review is citing?

Usually if I'm reading a research paper and they cite something I want to cite, I read the original paper and cite it directly to make sure its correct and relevant, but I do not want to read 18 papers to write 2 sentences, so can I just cite the review?

[Assistant] If the assertion or point clearly originates from the authors synthesis of the literature, consider citing the review. If the authors assertion or point clearly stems directly from a particular cited work, consider looking at that specific citation and using it as your reference.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do you lose your voice?

I never understood how you could blow out your vocal box, how does that work?

[Assistant]
Basically, the vocal cords work when air is forced through them because of diaphragmatic pressure, causing the cords to vibrate against one another in a similar way to when you pinch the end of a balloon to make it squeak.

When your vocal cords swell up due to illness or injury, this vibration cant happen as freely because swelling also causes them to firm up. With reduced flexibility, the vibration cant happen as freely, and as a result air simply escapes without producing much in the way of sound.


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

[User] ELI5: Ants: from where do these tiny little ones come out when you drop food? Why are they not visible otherwise? Why are they always in packs and unending line?

[Assistant] Most ants are underground in their nest (or some nest in trees). There are scouts who are looking for food.  When they find food/water they lay down a scent and then walk back to the nest.  All of the ants in the nest can then follow that scent all the way to the food.  They're all following that scent on the ground in the same line the scout took to get home from the food.


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

[User]
[30 Rock] So what exactly is the deal with Kenneth?

Obviously the show is a comedy and not to be taken seriously, but looking at it in a sort of battle board sense he has crazy feats: hes immortal, possessed by some eldritch being (per episode 7.2 which I just watched and inspired this post) has been hit by a car and been fine, multiple characters/people in the universe are him in a wig or something, has existed for perhaps centuries, is from a Sovereign Confederate Countywhat gives?  From a non-humorous perspective if possible (but if its purely explained through humor thats fine)

[Assistant]
Kenneth *is* a page.

He *will be* a big wig at NBC decades in the future.

He *used* to be in a cult.

He *used* to live a very spartan lifestyle.

He *does* communr with supernatural entities.

He *has* lived an incredible amount of time before we meet him.

Above all else he **is** inexplicable, unfathomable and enigmatic, no matter how you view him.

But he *could* be delusional or a compulsive liar. So many of his flights of fancy could be just that, a product of an eccentric mind.


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

[User]
Id like to report all the illegal price gouging listings on eBay but there are too many and I cant do them all manually, is there a program or code I can use to do them in batches?

Please be kind to my question because I know nothing about this stuff. eBay has prohibited the selling of essential items like wipes, sanitizer, and masks so people wont illegally prove gouge  and profit off suffering during this time.

[Assistant]
Selenium is test automation framework. It is used for controlling browsers to test applications. No reason it can't be pointed at public sites.

I find it easiest to work with in Ruby, but there is Java, Python, Node.js bindings that work well, and some in nearly a dozen languages.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do bees have stingers if using it will kill them?

[Assistant]
Bees have a social order very different than ours. Don't think of a bee colony as a bunch of individuals working togehter, like a city. Instead, think of a colony as a single organism made up of many small parts.

A bee will sting to defend its colony and queen, and it does not care if it dies, since it will never personally reproduce. Its existence is based on ensuring the survival of the hive, not of itself.

Because they never reproduce, there was no reason for a stinger that didn't kill them to be developed. In fact because it benefits the colony (which, again, more like one thing than several things) by protecting the queen, the ability for the non-reproducing ones to deal as much damage as possible would be beneficial to the colony's survival.


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

[User]
Do Dogs Have Episodic Memory?

I hear conflicting opinions on this. Some say dogs have *associative memory*, but not *episodic memory*. If this is the case, how do dogs dream? If a dog is dreaming, for example, about chasing a squirrel, wouldn't it have to remember seeing the squirrel first? (I am assuming that remembering images relies on this *episodic memory*, but please correct me if I'm wrong).

[Assistant]
Go watch 'Bunny' the dog on YouTube. Has learned around 300 words, through the use of paw-activated buttons. Bunny absolutely has episodic memory, as well as long memory of the past, additionally, Bunny plans for the future and makes requests for things and events yet to come.

Bunny can relate the content of dreams and concerns, and remembers events in order.

Bunny is not the only dog that can use paw-buttons to communicate; there is now an entire industry for this, and some cats have learned as well. The buttons and holders are sold commercially now, and more and more amateur scientists are exploring how much a dog can learn, and how deeply they think about their lives.

The benefit - beyond establishing that dogs have minds like ours - is that the dog becomes vastly less frustrated and neurotic when it can say clearly what it wants, what it fears, or what is bothering it.

The downside is that the dog now can, and does, make requests and even demands, and expects respect as a member of the family. Language access means it can complain if things go badly, or insult if it is angry.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why cant we hear high frequency sounds as we age?

Why specifically do we lose HIGH frequency hearing as we age, and not low frequency?

[Assistant] Sound is fundamentally detected by "hair cells" in your inner ear, which have hairs suspended in fluid that move when the fluid is affected by an incoming sound. However, these cells die off as you age, so as you get fewer of them the sensitivity of your hearing goes down, with high frequencies being the first you notice.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does the US keep arming rebels when years later history shows those same rebels kill us with those weapons?

[Assistant]
>history shows those same rebels kill us with those weapons?

History also shows sometimes they don't.

It's always a tricky process of arming rebel groups.  Sometimes its right, sometimes its wrong. It's also hard to predict the outcomes if they are or are not armed.  The future isn't known, we can try to influence it to our advantage, and certainly the US does try to--just as every country does.


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

[User]
Eli5. Our sun will expand to an orange giant in the future. Why is that?

I have read that it has something to do with the depletion of fuel. Seems like the star would collapse rather than shrink.

[Assistant]
There are two main things happening in a star such as our sun, and they oppose each other. It's actually a really delicate balancing act.

1. The core of the star is fusing hydrogen into helium at an enormous rate. These fusion reactions produce vast amounts of heat and pressure, and that pressure means the core is constantly trying to expand -- just like when you heat water in a kettle, the steam tries to expand and get out of the kettle.

2. However a star is also really, really large. And even though gas is very light, there's enough of it in the outer layers of the sun that gravity is trying to squeeze all of those outer layers inward.

So there's your balancing act: the core is trying to expand outwards, and the outer layers are trying to squeeze inwards.

For much of its life a star like our sun will generally balance those two forces so that it appears as a more-or-less constantly shining object. But what happens if the nature of the atoms making up the star changes?

As mentioned above the star shines because the core is fusing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. There is enough hydrogen in the core for this to continue for a long, long time (billions of years). But eventually all the hydrogen will be used up, and so the sun's "fuel" will have gone.

Your initial thought about this "well it's run out of fuel, so it will collapse" is actually correct. Initially the sun *will* start to contract when its hydrogen is used up. But as it contracts the pressure on the core gets greater (as all the "stuff" in the star is now compressed into a tighter area) and as the pressure goes up, so does the temperature. Quite quickly it reaches a temperature where it's hot enough to begin a different type of fusion reaction, this time fusing helium atoms into carbon and oxygen atoms. And of course there are a *lot* of helium atoms in the core by now, as the sun will have spent 12-13 billion years patiently converting all that hydrogen to helium.

So, with a renewed even more powerful fusion reactor burning at its core once again, the outwards core pressure is more than enough to counteract the pressure of the collapsing star, and because the helium reaction releases more energy the outer layers of the star are pushed outwards. The star (our sun) will become much larger than it is at the moment due to this increased core pressure.

But as it increases in size, the temperature of the outer layers cools. The star's colour changes from yellow-white to orange-red. The sun has become a red giant (and, incidentally, raised the temperature on earth way beyond anything that life could survive).


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

[User]
ELI5- What happens when photons hit a molecule?

I know photons are incredibly small and moving very fast, but what happens when it hits a molecule or atom? I know it happens everywhere thats why we have visible light. But what happens to the molecule? Does anything dramatic change or happen to it?

[Assistant]
Depending on the energy of the photon there are a couple of options -

"Nothing". Of course nothing would violate laws of physics, so the photon would be reflected (or absorbed) and the molecule would be pushed. ( A tiny amount. Enough that you could propulse a starship with huge sunsails in space, but to less to be noticeable in common situations)

A electron of an atom could be pushed into a higher orbit, or completely out of the atom.
That could lead to effects like photovoltaic cells or plants are using, or others...

A bond between atoms could be broken up, that would lead to molecule degrade. This needs more energy in photons, ultraviolet light has enough.

The effects of this can lead to skin cancer (if the body isn't able to repair all damages to all molecules, especially if DNA molecules are hit) or e.g. printed colour bleaching in the sun.

Lastly, parts of atoms could be be kicked out the atoms. Energy for this would need x-ray or radioactive radiation at least.


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

[User]
Why does the pitch of a sound lower when a video is slowed down?

When slowing down a video, why do noises sound lower than they do at normal speed, and vice versa? Shouldnt the noise stay at the same pitch but just be slowed?

[Assistant]
If you consider a single tone, say a 100 Hz tone. This sound can be seen as a wave that oscillates up and down 100 times in the time span of 1 second.

If we now slow down the recording that this sound is a part of, say by a factor 2, we stretch a 1 second time span to become a 2 second time span. But we don't add any new oscillations to the sound sample, because that would be inserting data that isn't there. Instead, the 100 oscillations are now spread out over 2 seconds, leaving 50 oscillations per second, or 50 Hz. The frequency of the tone got cut in half, resulting in a lower pitch.

This is the most straightforward way to slow down audio. But, as you remarked, it lowers the pitch, which is often undesirable. An alternative approach is to insert new oscillations to keep the pitch the same. This is easy when the sound is just a single tone, like in this example. But when the sound becomes a complex mixture of all kinds of tones, the process becomes more complicated.

Nevertheless, there is software that uses this approach when slowing down audio (or video with an audio track).


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

[User] ELI5: How is it possible to release games with terrible performance issues on day one? Wouldn't this be caught during pre-release testing?

[Assistant]
You're under the impression that they didn't know about them.  Yes, this would be caught in testing, but it doesn't mean they delay the release because of it.   Publishers and developers are two different sides of a game.  The publisher decides when it releases.  If the developers can't fix the problem in time for the release deadline, the publisher can either delay release, or give zero fucks and release anyway.

The last few years have seen a lot of unifinished games being released, but no one stops buying games from those publishers to punish them, so there's no incentive to stop the practice.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do some conservative religious groups consider it immodest for women and girls to wear pants?

[Assistant]
From what I've seen, most complaints about women wearing pants are related less to modesty than they are to restrictions against cross-dressing.  Prior to the 20th century, women almost exclusively wore skirts, so some view pants as strictly men's clothing.  This means that as far as they are concerned, women wearing pants counts as wearing men's clothing, which has sexual connotations and is explicitly impermissible according to the bible (Deuteronomy 22:5).

Some arguments have been made that directly relate to modesty and they relate to the idea that pants are often tight and show off the shape of the legs, which apparently meets these people's definition of too sexual.


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

[User] I can't seem to understand what a virtual image is in optics. Secondly, is a rainbow an example of a virtual image?

[Assistant]
When you look at something, your eyes see and your brain interprets rays of light diverging from individual points of the object.  This is called image formation.

When you look through a magnifying glass at something, you still see rays of light that *appear to be* emanating from a common point, but those rays of light didn't actually start there.  They actually started from the object and bent at the lens, then went to your eye.  Because the rays you see don't actually touch each other, the image is called a **virtual image**.


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

[User]
How true is it that cell phones can cause infertility if left near a man's testicles for an extended period of time?

Along with that, if true, how long would it generally take for you to become infertile? What about more than one phone?

[Assistant]
the level of radiation put out by a cell phone is incredibly low.

nobody realizes it, but cordless phones put out much more radiation than a cell. now granted, you don't carry this in your pocket.

and cell phones put or less and less power all the time. as technology advances, the ability to decipher signals from noise increases, this lowering the required output.

a modern cell puts out somewhere around 1/4 of a watt at full power. in urban areas, they are generally more in the 1/8 watt range. that's nothing.

but, to be on the safe side, carry your phone screen side facing you. nearly all of the radiated power goes away from you.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are Chilli peppers so hot/spicy when the purpose of 'fruit' is to encourage animals to ingest the seeds they contain?

[Assistant]
Birds, believe it or not, cannot taste the spices in chilli peppers, and so they eat the chilis happily while most animals leave them. Birds travel much further distances than most animals, so when they poop out the seeds the plant can spread over much greater distances.

So, basically, peppers evolved to taste good to birds and bad to animals to help their seeds spread further.


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

[User]
ELI5 to a European why so many Americans value the founding father's opinions and views over anything else? It seems in America, the "founding fathers" opinions are viewed as the sole acceptable opinion by many when there must be many others intelligent enough born after the "founding fathers"

I'm european and I don't understand American fascination with the "founding fathers" views. Surely men born 300 years ago couldn't have written rules about everything in the modern age? Furthemore, the world has changed its views on many things that were seen as correct before. Why the insistence on listening to the "founding fathers" and ignoring every other person's views?

[Assistant]
The founding fathers were some of the best educated thinkers of their generation. They actually wrote the constitution with checks in mind to prevent future authoritarian leadership (such as a monarchy). They also knew the future was going to be different but wanted to assure principle freedoms to all persons. They allowed the constitution to change through amendments and such to adapt.

And yes, that has happened and there were smarter people - and we've added their ideas to our government as time went by. Social security, welfare, woman's suffrage, emancipation, etc.

Listening to the founding fathers therefore ends up being 'timeless'. Their ideas are humanistic by nature.


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

[User] ELI5: How is the panel of judges determined for Olympic events and how do they ensure that the judges aren't biased towards a certain country?

[Assistant] Well in London 2012, in the women's epee fencing semi-final, the timekeeper delayed starting the clock so that time wouldn't run out and the German fencer would have time to score a touch on the South Korean fencer. So whatever system is in place, it's clearly not perfect.


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

[User]
CMV: Wonder Woman 1984 is one of the worst superhero genre movies filmed.

Absolute crap-shoot of a film. Pedro Pascal and Gal Gadot's acting were the only two enjoyable things this piece of trash had to offer. As a huge DC AND Marvel fan, this was on the same level as Birds of Prey and Justice League... just horrid. Failed style with no substance.

Cheesy effects didn't reflect the title's budget and came off as a direct to DVD film, the writing was insanely underwhelming and made me feel personally insulted, (The scene where Wonder Woman lasso's onto a missile to fly through the air and rescue two children playing soccer on an abandoned road in the middle of a car chase was hilariously awful in the same vein of an SNL script,) and the scenes where Wonder Woman lasso's around like Spider-Man didn't help. Not to mention this movie completely ruins continuity in the already established universe, (Oh, she can fly 30 years before Batman Vs. Superman/Justice League where she can't?) Awesome, phenomenal work, Patty Jenkins.

[Assistant]
Are you asking us to change your view that wonder woman 1984 is bad? Or prove to you that others are worse?

Because it is in no way worse than Batman and Robin, Elektra, Johna Hex, Catwoman, Ghost Rider, or even The Punisher. There are for sure worse ones even if this one wasn't great.


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

[User] If I wave my phone/laptop around, or while travelling quickly, is it more difficult for it to receive a signal? Are signal reception or speed (even a little bit) affected?

[Assistant]
Yes, it is more difficult. This is mainly due to something called channel filtering. When the radio signal travel to your device it will be affected by the environment. The signal will look like it has been passed through filter of some kind. To be able to decode the data the filter needs to be estimated. In 4G this this is done by sending pilot symbols. Pilot symbols are certain signals that are known beforehand (calculated by standardised algorithms) these are used to figure out how the signal is affected by the channel filter (the filter is estimated and the estimate is used to cancel the channel filter). When the device moves the channel filter will change and the filter needs to be estimated again. IIRC in LTE (4G) downlink the pilot symbols are sent about 4000 times per second. Moving quickly means that the estimated channel filter will go bad more quickly, since it changes faster. A bad channel filter estimate will cause more errors when decoding the received data.

Similar techniques are used in WiFi (and most modern radio communication), the channel filter is estimated and then canceled. Moving faster means this needs to be done faster.


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

[User] [Batman] why exactly are criminals continually sent back to Arkham Asylum if it's found to neither be able to adequately keep them from escaping nor actually rehabilitate them?

[Assistant]
It's only been fifteen years in universe, and Gotham is a city where reform happens glacially even when it's for the immediate benefit of non-supervillian citizens. People who are smart enough or physically powerful enough to break out of jail with ease are, in the context of the DCU, a pretty new problem, and sociology hasn't caught up with them completely. Like every other social service in Gotham, they're muddling through.

This, of course, disregards continuities where Arkham's leadership is itself actively evil and pulling strings so that they can use the joint as a supervillian farm, of which there are many.


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

[User]
If an atom is 99.99% empty space, what percent empty space is the same atom in a black hole?

Basically I want to know how much closer the nucleus and electrons are when in a black hole.

[Assistant]
Black holes lack any kind of atomic structure, or any kind of internal structure at all.

They're effectively a region of space which acts like a fundamental particle, retaining only mass, spin, and charge.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] How exactly does magic deal with "modern" illnesses like HIV and cancer?

Wizards seem to be able to fix problems you can see, like broken bones or cuts, and I assume if they had proper understanding of medicine, they could think of a cure; but how do they deal with say, HIV or cancer, something you can't really see. They have microscopes- do they magic those to see on at molecular level? How far into "science" do they go? Do they even understand the concept of cells and viruses?

Or do they simply magic away the symptoms while keeping the person alive? Dumbledore is over 150 years old if I recall correctly, is he just riddled with cancer but is being held up with the equivalent of magical duct tape?

[Assistant]
Magic in H.P is not well defined. It doesn't have many rules and even the rules that it does have a bit illogical.

For example: There is a rule that states that food can't be conjured. However, we saw one of the teachers turn a table into a pig and vice versa. If you can make organic things from inorganic things why can't you go one step further and transfigure that pig into a nice pork chop?

It's not based in the manipulation of the real world at all, because they don't teach that at hogwarts. Magic just wills away illness.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do people code desktop apps in Java when very few end users like it?

I admit it is probably a loaded question,  but a coworker and I were discussing this yesterday. I work in the IT industry and just yesterday it took me 25 minutes to find the specific version of Java that a management tool wanted,  and get it installed and running. If making Java apps run on PCs and Macs is such a PITA why do developers continue to code in it?

[Assistant] If you write in Java, your program will run on any system that is capable of running Java, which is basically every computer. Java certainly has its many  flaws, but the ability to write a program that is guaranteed to be able to be run on anything is reason enough to overlook the flaws in many cases.


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

[User] What is the difference between blood types and why do our bodies only accept the correct type?

[Assistant]
Biologically, ABO blood types are just seen as different combinations of sugars attached to some of the proteins within red blood cell membranes. The reason mismatching is problematic is because your body will initiate an immune response against the donor blood because the blood type is still an antigen. You don't attack your own cells because there is a process during lymphocyte (white blood cells that handle specific immunity) maturation, that will cause any cell that reacts too early (i.e. activates while still in the thymus or bone marrow) to die.

ABO however are not the limit of blood types. Technically there are *hundreds* of different blood groups.


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

[User]
ELI5: Exercising warms your body and makes you feel hot. Fevers warm your body and make you feel cold. Why?

Does it have to do why core and exterior temperatures in the body, or what?

[Assistant]
It is all about the temperature your body wants to be. When you are healthy, your body wants to be 37 degrees Celsius. If you work out, your temperature increases, while your body wants it to be colder, so you feel hot to signal you should cool down a bit.

When you are sick and have a fever your body wants to be way warmer than the regular 37 degrees to fight the infection. When your fever is rising, you will feel cold as your body wants you to be even hotter than you already were. You will notice that once you start getting better, you will feel hot; your body doesn't feel the need to be as hot any more so it signals you to cool down and you start feeling hot.


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

[User] Weve now discovered that spending a year in space can change your DNA - What does this change about what we thought we knew about DNA?

[Assistant]
Nothing really.

We already knew different genes can express differently depending on the type of stress the individual is in.

Frequent or long term starvation/malnutrition for example can result in pronounced changes to how the body handles growth and development. It's one of the reasons why when a society transitions to one in which food is consistently readily available, average height of the population increases each generation for a while.

So the "change in DNA" touted is a predictable result of the unique long term stress of weightlessness. A cool headline, but something we expected before we ever sent him up.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does a middle octane gas exist? I understand using low octane for price and high octane for quality, but why use middle?

Is it just there for show?  What proportion of a gas station's gas is low, middle or high?

[Assistant]
The thing about different grades of gas, is you should only use the one your car requires.  Believe it or not, 87 will perform better than 93 in a car that's tuned for 87.

With that being said, some cars require mid-grade.  The ignition timing was increased, but not to the point where the owner would have to get the most expensive gas.  You'll find this in some domestic luxury vehicles.


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

[User]
People built a "Z machine" on Earth that creates a temperature of 2 Billion Kelvin. How can this temperature be generated and why does this temperature not melt the entire facility that creates it?

For scale, this is approximately 100x hotter than the center of the sun.

Given that the sun only has an outside temperature of 5,500K and easily heats up Earth to 300K+ over a distance of 150 million kilometers, shouldn't a temperature of 2,000,000,000K on Earth itself cause severe damage of some kind?

[Assistant]
It's a VERY tiny amount of matter heated to that extreme. It's a point temperature, they aren't making the whole earth 2B Kelvin.

Think of it like a welding torch. The spot of the weld is hit enough to melt the metal, but the rest of the object being welded stays solid.


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

[User] ELI5: How have scientists figured out how many colours an animal can see?

[Assistant]
There are two ways of knowing :
One is at the microscopical scale by studying cells on the retina, if there are cones we know the animal has some form of color perception, we can study how many cones there are, their location on the retina, all of this gives a good idea of the color perception of the animal
The other is by training animals, for example training a bird so that it learns there is food behind a red piece of paper and there is no food behind a blue one. You then put them in front of both a blue and a red piece of paper, and if the animal goes for the red it means it can differentiate the two colors. Of course the actual experimental protocols are more elaborate and changes depending on the animal but you get the main idea !


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

[User]
Why old people are more vulnerable to scams when they have more life experience then young people?

As per the title, shouldn't people get wiser with their age?

[Assistant] It might depend on the person & the scam. Many elderly people have cognitive decline such as dementia which may make them susceptible. Scams change over the years so scams happening online or via messaging & email such as inviting them to click a link and enter bank details may seem innocuous because they arent as up to date on how to spot a scam via technology. In terms of scams over the phone, this could be because they feel someone is taking the time to talk to them and they begin to trust the person. Political or thought scams like qanon can thrive because the elderly person is lonely and they get some sense of group support by talking and engaging with these communities.


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

[User]
[Doom] I am a Marine About to Embark on a Tour of Duty on the Moons of Mars. I Hear That There's Some Weird Stuff Going On Up There. What Gear Should I Bring With Me?

Mars has a bad rep -- I'm a bit nervous about going there because I've heard of all kinds of weird stuff, like human experimentation and even cult activity. I want to be prepared for anything.

Thanks to elite training and an abundance of pockets and straps on my Armor, I can carry up to 9 weapons at a time, plus a brace of grenades. What should I pack with me?

[Assistant] You got it wrong man. Mars is like, safe man. UAC has things under controlled. Just your sidearm will do man. You're security detail, not fucking anti-hell army personnel. Just chill man and enjoy the sands. Nothing bad is gonna... *static*


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What would have happened if Darth Vader had joined the fledgling Rebellion as soon as he was physically able?

Suppose that as soon as Darth Vader recovered from his cybernetic implant surgery, he decided that he wanted to leave Palpatine and join the fledgling Rebellion. Assuming that he escapes Palpatine, and also assuming that he does *not* immediately renounce his Dark Side ways, merely being Palpatine's apprentice, what effect would his presence in opposition to the Empire have?

[Assistant] I can't imagine Palpatine would let that fly. There are probably plenty of fail-safes/tracking-devices built in to that suit. The Senate would personally track down the little brat and either torture him until he is properly broken, or torture him until he dies.


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

[User]
[40k] The emperors greatest threat

Who in the 40k universe is the emperors greatest threat?, not a threat to the Imperium but just to the emperor himself, clearly hes well guarded on Terra and physically he cant really do anything, but is there something he must watch for?

[Assistant]
There isn't really anyone in the 40k universe capable of assaulting Terra. There are lots of what-ifs about unified Orks or Necrons, Chaos plots, dissent in the Lords of Terra, but none of them are realistic.

The emperor's greatest threat is probably the same as his greatest strength. When the golden throne fails and he attempts to manifest as a Warp Entity, download into a pariah or attempt another literal deus-ex-machina, failure means getting munched on by Chaos Gods. Sure he'll probably become a god-like beacon of humanity's salvation, but if he doesn't he's screwed.


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

[User]
If the primary business of stars is turning Hydrogen into Helium, and our planet is made of old stars, why do we have so little Helium on Earth?

Did the Sun or our Gas Giants hog it? If so, how would that even work?   Did it escape into space some time in the past?

To expand on this a little, why are the elements not evenly distributed among the planets and the Sun?  How does the Sun end up with a huge amount of Hydrogen while we get an Iron core?

[Assistant] Helium is the second lightest element, the lightest being Hydrogen. As such, any helium ends up going to the upper atmosphere where it escapes into space. Hydrogen would do the same, but it's not chemically inert like helium is, so it gets captured in chemical substances like water from where we can separate it.


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

[User] ELI5: How come one headphone sounds loud, but together they do not?

[Assistant]
Brain automatically puts more focus on one ear if a distinct sound (music, speech, whatever) is being fed specifically into that ear. That could give the illusion of it being louder, even though it isn't.

It's somewhat relatable (very vaguely :P) to when people close one eye while aiming a gun, i.e. narrowing down their visibility to focus better.


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

[User] Eli5 why foam is always white, regardless of the color of soap or detergent?

[Assistant]
Whenever light goes from one transparent material to another, some of the light is reflected off the surface.  You can see your own reflection in a glass window.  Foam has *lots* of surfaces like this, all the walls of the individual bubbles at different angles to each other, so the light goes in, bounces off the surfaces like crazy, and comes out in random directions.  So what we see is white, because the scattering effect from the bubble walls is so much stronger than the absorption from the liquid's natural color.  The light bounces back out of the foam before it can go through enough liquid to affect the color.

You see the same thing in other situations.  Crushed glass turns from clear to white.  A crushed hard candy turns from a clear bright color to a pale pastel powder.

And if you do something to *reduce* the amount of scattering off the surfaces, the material will become clear again.  Pour water onto glass powder and it becomes clear, because there's less reflection between the water and glass than between air and glass.  Pour oil onto paper and it becomes translucent.


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

[User]
What will happen when the center of the Milky Way galaxy ceases to exist?

The earth rotates around the sun, and the sun rotates around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The center of the Milky Way galaxy is a giant black hole that serves as the acceleration force for our solar system.

What will it feel like for humans on earth when that black hole dies?

[Assistant]
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are indeed very massive, but they only make up a tiny fraction of the mass of a galaxy. Typically, a supermassive black hole is about 1/1000th of the mass of the central bulge of a galaxy.

(Aside: This correlation is currently thought to be because both the black hole and the bulge form from the same gas. If some gas flows into the centre of a galaxy, ~99.9% of it collapses and forms into stars along the way, while the other ~0.1% ends up going all the way to the black hole. So both get "fed" together, but the black hole ends up with ~0.1% of the mass, because ~0.1% of the gas makes it that far to the centre.)

The central bulge of a galaxy is often only a fraction of the galaxy's mass. And that's not even counting dark matter, which is another factor of 5-10 or so. Really, the SMBH is such a tiny fraction of the galaxy's mass, that you could remove it and it wouldn't affect our orbit in any measurable way. We are really orbiting within the combined gravitational field of all the stars and gas and dark matter that makes up the galaxy.

SMBHs are important though, because of their *local* effect. Although it doesn't directly affect the orbits of most stars in the galaxy, it has a very dramatic effect on *nearby* gas and stars, especially within like 10s of light-years. They have a very sharp and deep potential energy well. So you can orbit around a black hole *very* quickly, and that means there's a lot of kinetic energy to play with. As fast-moved gas flows inwards, it collides with other gas flows, and converts kinetic energy into heat. This settles down into a very hot "accretion disc" of plasma orbiting around the black hole. This accretion disc is the important part, because it's so hot and bright that its radiation does affect the galaxy, heating up nearby gas and potentially dispersing it and preventing star formation. The light is intense enough that its pressure can drive outflows of gas out of the galaxy. The rapidly rotating highly ionised plasma also generates a strong magnetic field, that can launch a jet into intergalactic space at close to the speed of light.

This is what makes SMBHs important - they do not control the orbits of a galaxy, but they are powerful engines that convert huge amounts of energy into light and heat and outflows and jets, which can affect the formation of stars and stir up gas even beyond the galaxy itself.


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

[User]
What is happening as my body adapts to higher and higher temperatures in the shower?

Upon entering the shower, even mild heat takes a fair amount of getting used to before my body adapts to it.  And once it does, I find myself slowly turning up the temperature to a point that would have felt scalding hot to me just 10 minutes prior.

What process allows my skin to adapt like this?  Is my body deciding it isn't being damaged, so the natural pain warnings are no longer being triggered?

[Assistant] Nerve cells will stop firing in response to a stimulus after a certain amount of stimulation - they will become desensitized.  For example, you were likely completely unaware of the feeling of your clothes on your body until you were just reading this sentence, yet when you put them on this morning you could feel them on your skin.  Essentially, your neurons "re-adjust" to the new condition as normal, so for you to feel the same sensation (of heat in this instance) you must increase the stimulus.


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

[User]
[Boku No Hero Academia] If Midnight got in trouble for her costume being too revealing, then why does Invisible Girl get away with wearing gloves, shoes, and nothing else?

Granted, you can't actually see anything, but rules are rules, right? And someone might bump into her. Also, why can't she at least wear a visibility cloak? That would be easier to take off than gloves, but would still cover her until she does so. And it would be warmer.

[Assistant]
>Granted, you can't actually see anything, but rules are rules, right?

Yeah. And the rules are that your costume can't be too revealing. Tooru's outfit literally reveals *nothing*. 0% of her body is on display. Her outfit is somehow *less* revealing than that of the Space Hero, Thirteen, because you can't even tell where most of Tooru *is*.


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

[User]
A Christmas list probability question: if I have people buying gifts for me off a 50 item list, what is the probability that I receive no duplicate items?

More specifically, let's consider this: there are 3 people selecting 10 items each from a 50 item list without consulting each other. Ie, imagine sending your list to 3 people that have no contact with each other and they each buy 10 items from it. What is the probability that none of them buy the same item from the list?

[Assistant]
If you're assuming that none of the people are buying duplicates with their 10 purchases (seems like a reasonable assumption, why would the same person get you multiple copies of the same thing?), this would be

> (50C10)\*(40C10)\*(30C10) / (50C10)^(3) ≈ 0.0241%


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

[User] [Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters] What category would Godzilla Earth be in Pacifc Rim?

[Assistant]
This is the largest Godzilla iteration we've ever seen at like 400+ meters tall. Not only that but it defiled and altered all of Earth's ecosystem at a scale Kaiju Blue could only dream of doing.

As usual, the King of the Monsters is at a level all its own, several times more dangerous than any kaiju before him or maybe even after.


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

[User] If I donate part of my liver to someone, the liver regrows. What if in the future I need a new liver? Can I receive a portion of my exliver from said person who received it? Will I need immunosuppressive drugs?

[Assistant]
Living liver donor here.  There is a bit of an anatomical issue.  Your liver is split into two lobes, one on the right, one on the left.  The hepatic artery, vein and bile duct all branch with one leg going to each lobe.  When you donate, they take one lobe, along with it's branches of each connection to connect to the recipient's anatomy.  Your remaining lobe then quickly swells to fill the space, giving you the same volume of liver, but you never get the other lobe back.

So, anatomically, you couldn't just slice off a bit of the lobe you gave, as it wouldn't have a single point where you could hook up the artery, vein and duct.  As the liver is a mass of capillaries and hepatic cells, you have to get the right sort of blood going to the right places for it to work, and right now the only thing which can setup that complex arterial and venous network is the body itself.  The vessels which branch off after the main branching are just too small to support a full bodies blood flow. This is also why you can't donate your liver more than once, even though it regenerates.


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

[User] Is ice as conductive as water? If not, why?

[Assistant]
Water itself is not a good conductor, the dissolved ions in the water are responsible for most of the conduction.

Water tries to exclude as many ions as possible when freezing (to avoid disrupting the crystal lattice), making ice a poor conductor.


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

[User]
Docker

What problem does docker (and containers) solve? And in which projects should it (or not) be used?

Maybe an Eli5 because I made a long research and didn't get an answer yet.

[Assistant]
The same type of problem that a virtual machine would solve, but you don't have to carry the whole operating system. in each docker image.

Hence a docker image can be very small, holding just what you need. It lead to faster boot/restart time.

It also allow docker images to be composed out of each other. Let say a docker images for a basic node.js, that you extends to build a image that run your application in production ( basic node + all your adhoc crap ), then you can extends that extension to have a docker image running your integration tests ( basic node + all your adhoc crap + testing framework and test code )

It's also a good way to ensure reproducibility and portability of a environnement. ( your dev env == prod, witch is pretty awesome )

Many use. think of it of a fancy VM on steroid. ( that you can share and re-use, like a library ).

And that the "dev" point of view, if you start thinking about Operations ( OPS ) and things like docker swarm and kubernete, it's a whole lot more of use and application.

It's also a neat tool all around.


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

[User]
[Alien] how big can a xeno get?

 Let's say a face hugger impregnated a t-rex. Maybe the FH flew up into it's mouth from an egg. Maybe the poor t-rex ate a bunch of eggs. Will the xeno be as big as the t- rex?

[Assistant] Their size is essentially unlimited, given that the egg leaches from the hosts body like a cancer while also assimilating the hosts DNA and abilities. Like it's been said, it is entirely dependent on hosts, a Xeno could be birthed from a blue whale, the largest creature to ever live on earth, it would just be a huge aquatic whale-xeno.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does blowing air on a small flame put it out, but doing the same on a big fire only fuels it?

[Assistant]
Fire requires three 'ingredients' to take place: fuel, oxygen, and heat (let's make a basic assumption that we're talking about a wood fire so we don't get into critters like magnesium, other oxidizers, etc.).  If you direct a stream of air towards a fire one of two things will happen:

* the fire will consume the air and enlarge in size
* the air stream will interrupt the reaction; i.e. cooling the temperature to below what's required to continue, etc.

It's really a question of scale.  For a particular sized 'fire', the ingredients must be in the proper proportion.  Outside those proportions fire can't happen.


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

[User] ELI5: why does the source code for CSGO and TF2 being leaked mean that servers may be unsafe to play on? Like, what does the source code allow people to do that they couldn't do before?

[Assistant]
The source code being available means that everyone can see how the server operates. Which means people can see directly what vulnerabilities there may be rather than just guessing. It makes a hackers job easier, basically.

The flip side of this is that having your code open sourced means that lots of good programmers and security experts can audit the code and recommend changes to the publisher.

Its a double-edged sword basically.


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

[User] [DC/The Boys] If the Batman existed in The Boys universe what would his non-lethal takedown plans be for each of the Seven?

[Assistant]
Translucent - electroshock collar with a movement trigger. This would probably work for A-Train too come to think of it.

Maeve - she's invulnerable but her strength still has an upper limit so you can pretty much just lock her in a room and gas her.

The fish guy is... just a guy - knock him out however you like and cuff him to something.


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

[User] [Marvel] whats the different between the movie infinity gauntlet and the comic version?

[Assistant]
In the comics, the Gauntlet is literally just a place to hold the Stones. Youd be about as effective taping them to your arm, or holding them if you had large enough hands.

In the movies, the Stones have too much raw power for most people to harness. The Power, Reality, and Space Stones will straight up kill you if you touch them. The Gauntlet is a Dwarven device that allows a sufficiently powerful wielder (someone who could hold one or two of the stones unprotected) to harness the power of ALL the stones at once.


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

[User]
Why is infrastructure spending such a contentious subject in the US?

From my understanding, infrastructure spending would improve the supply chains in the US, create jobs, reduce green house gases, along with providing many other benefits.

President Eisenhower's interstate highway system seemed to be a success so why is there such pushback now? Wouldn't infrastructure spending be a net positive for the country?

Thank you.

[Assistant] First, the economics is about tradeoffs. Resources have alternative uses, so opportunity costs matter as well as benefits. Second, everyone might value benefits and oppotunity costs differently depending on their age, economic status, ideology, personal preferences etc. Many people simply dislike paying higher taxes to finance more public spending, Also, for instance, an elderly person with no kids might not care as much as a young person about how much the potential output would increase in the long run.


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

[User] ELI5: Do secret services actually do cool movie things or it's just office work and/or normal police operations?

[Assistant] They typically don't do "cool movie things" because real life isn't a cool action movie. About the most they've done recently (at least, publicly) is get in trouble with prostitutes, get drunk, and sneak into the white house when they shouldn't. Behind the scenes, they're responsible for keeping the President safe. As to what crazy things they've done, the public won't know about, since it's - you know - secret.


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

[User]
In Plato's dialogues, do you think we should read Socrates as a stand-in for Plato, or should we read the frames of the story (along with their "mimetic irony" according to Mitchell Miller [1986]) as Plato's point-of-view?

I generally have trouble with critics who attribute Plato's world view to Socrates. Also, I'm merely thinking aloud and wanted to have a conversation (i.e., I'm not writing a paper for a class, as I'm a faculty member [but not in philosophy]).

[Assistant]
The single greatest piece of evidence for the view that Plato's thoughts are being expressed through the main character of any given dialogue (Socrates, Timaeus, the Eleatic Stranger, etc.) is that everyone who knew Plato personally specifically said that they were his views. Aristotle, for example, spent decades with Plato, and Aristotle doesn't just attribute the ideas in the dialogues to Plato, he often tells us in no uncertain terms how Plato arrived at the views in question (for example, he spent time with Pythagoras as a youth). You can read more about this in Aristotle's *Metaphysics*, book 1, book 13, and book 14.

Of course, Aristotle isn't our only source on the matter. Speusippus and Xenocrates were two contemporaries of Plato, and they each became heads of Plato's Academy. They also treated the views in the dialogues as Plato's own, and they knew him personally.

One quick edit: it's a testament to Plato's literary achievement that we can read the dialogues in a number of ways, one of which is to forget about Plato-the-author when we read them. Doing so is exactly like reading a book without taking into account the author. That's possible (and rewarding). But consider the following question: did Plato believe what he wrote? It seems that the evidence is hard to deny: he did.


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

[User] [DC] Did Batman's hypervigilance and obsession with contingencies ever cause him to mistakenly pull the trigger on someone who wasn't an immediate threat?

[Assistant]
Well... DCEU notwithstanding...

He did make Brother Eye to monitor Earth's heroes (admittedly after they seriously broke his trust) at a time when they weren't really a threat, and Eye wound up being an even bigger threat.


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

[User] ELI5 how Supreme Court justices decide who writes for the majority and minority, and which opinion(s) ultimately comprise the precedent for later cases.

[Assistant]
If the Chief Justice is in the majority, he decides who writes the majority opinion; otherwise, the justice who's been there the longest decides who writes it. Dissents aren't really restricted; anyone can write a dissent if they want, because there's no requirement that all the justices who disagree sign off on the same dissent.

It's only the majority opinion that sets the precedent.


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

[User]
[Spider-Man] I have a huge fear of heights and spiders. If I were to be bitten by a radioactive spider and gained Spidey powers, would those fears disappear?

Also, would I have to constantly work out and eat proper meals to stay in shape and keep my strength?

[Assistant]
Not as a result of any mutation, directly. Rather, you would quickly find those fears dissipate as you explored your new powers.

Once you find that virtually any fall can be survived with relative ease, your fear of doing things at those heights will likely decrease.


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

[User]
[American Gods] I am a world famous celebrity with millions of fans going to my concerts, buying my merchandise, and listening to my music everyday. Why am I not a god yet? Or, why isn't there a god version of me?

If Odin, Vulcan, or Czernobog can maintain their godhood with a couple thousand actual worshippers, then why not me? My millions of fans actually devote their time and resources into "worshipping" me - they buy shirts with my face on it, hang posters of me on their bedroom walls, listen to my music on their phones during their daily commute, organise fan clubs, and each spend hundreds of dollars just to watch me perform live. I bet there are like 50,000 Czernobog worshippers in the whole world.

[Assistant]
Because your fans' worship fall under the domain of the New Gods, specifically "Media" & "Technical Boy". Your fans don't worship you, they worship the idea of "you", produced from the depths of "Media" & "Technical Boy". You don't have rituals empowering you. Every download from the internet is a rite of worship to "Technical Boy". Every mixtape a prayer from "Media". Every facebook page a Communion for "Technical Boy". Every poster bought a donation to the Church of "Media".

You are merely a lesser cog, idols to for the masses to direct their attention.


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

[User]
eli5: How does radiation both cause and cure cancer? I know it can be targeted, but I still don't understand how it's not causing cancer at it's target? How does chemo work? And how does chemo and radiation work together?

Sorry if the flair is wrong.  Biology or chemistry?

[Assistant]
Radiation damages the DNA in cells. At smaller doses this causes mutations, which can lead to cancer. At high doses it flat out kills cells, especially cells that are in the middle of reproductions. This is why radiation poisoning causes hair loss and nausea, it killed the fast-growing cells in your hair follicles and stomach.

When used for cancer treatment, you're using targeted high doses to kill cells that are already cancerous and dividing rapidly. It's a way of killing off cancer cells that can't be removed via surgery. Nearby cells can theoretically mutate and spawn their own cancers but that's a relatively low risk compared to the risk of having an active tumour right now.

Chemo also targets cells that are in the midst of dividing/replicating...this tends to be cancer, so it preferentially targets cancer and other fast-growing cells. Hence why chemo has similar side effects to radiation.

Together, they're two different mechanisms to kill fast-multiplying cells that can be more effective than either method alone.


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

[User]
ELI5: With recent news of Vine shutting down.. what costs go into keeping a platform like Vine or Blab going? The app is already there, if its not profitable quit wasting more money developing/growing it, but just leave as is and let the users still be able to make content, why COMPLETELY shutdown?

are costs to simply maintain it that high?

[Assistant]
The app is not the problem.

The costs come from keeping the infrastructure in place.

If you have internet you are probably paying your ISP each month for the ability to donwload and upload data from the net.

As you can probably imagine, someone hosting lots of videos online also has to pay their ISP each month for the data they up and downloaded to their servers. Since they are using a lot more data than a normal person, they need to pay whole lot more money each month than a normal person.

And that is just for the internet connection to their servers.

They also need to pay for the servers themselves.

Just like you desktop/laptop/tablet/phone whatever cost you money to be, server hardware also cost them money to buy, in fact it costs them a whole lot money to buy because there is a whole lot of it.

And this is not a one time cost. It is a constant cost because if you have enough hardware something is always breaking in some way.

There is also the cost of renting a space to put the servers, the cost of electricity to run them and the cost of colling to keep them from overheating.

All that costs money.

And then there is the fact that even if you stop developing the platform you can't just leave it as is. Every week some new security holes are found in software you use and if you don't want it to be all taken over by hackers you have to constantly patch and upgrade the software you use.

And the worst part is that the IT people who do all that stuff and help keep the whole thing running are not going to do it for free. They will want to get paid.

Now you don't really need to do everything yourself. You can have others deal with various levels of that whole bag of problems. That is the beauty of the whole 'cloud' thing that everyone kept going on about the last few years. Let someone else deal with the problem of the hardware and how to keep it running. Unfortunately the people who take most of the problem of your hands will want money for it.

There is no way to get out of it without paying someone money and with a service like vine just keeping it running alone can cost a whole lot.


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

[User]
Is it viable to bring a large number manufacturing jobs back to the US?

If not, what conditions would be needed to make it so?

[Assistant]
Always want to point out that there is a lot of manufacturing in the US. And that manufacturing is broad. Think of it this way, when we perceive "manufacturing" we perceive small widgets in an assembly line. Manufacturing however can be broad, advanced, high tech, and touch on ton of different things from minerals to food production.

With that being said again there is a lot of that already here. It's just advanced or higher end. We have commercial space and aerospace, lithium ion battery, and plenty of high end garment manufacturing throughout California. It's the lower end manufacturing that we do not have as much of, that went to abroad, and because people want to work in the higher end, which we have.

We had that lower end and we moved beyond it. The countries we now import products from from that lower end are trying to achieve the higher end we have and the diversity of manufacturing sectors that encompass it.


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

[User]
ELI5: Do babies get sore throat from crying?

I was thinking of how I had a sore throat from talking too much on a train ride when I was 6 years old. It was so terrible that I couldn't speak for a few hours. It made me wonder if babies ever got sore throats from wailing loudly, which they do all the time.

[Assistant]
A neglected baby can certainly get a sore throat.  The throat could have infection and worsen with crying. The baby may even experience headaches.  However,  a baby [well taken] care of that still cries due to chronic illness [the hell of it, etc] have the benefit of milk which is excellent in hydrating and lubricating the throat. Breast milk has been known to heal and hydrate cracked skin and the inside of a throat is no exception.

A neglected baby [or any baby under the sun, mom and stars] can suffer anything we can. Headache, loss off appetite,  sore throat,  even anxiety.


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

[User] If average human body temperature is 98.6 degrees farenheit, then why are we comfortable at an environmental temperature of ~75 degrees farenheit and uncomfortable at our own body temperature?

[Assistant]
Basically what Maxwell said.

You are generating a lot of heat. your body must be able to dump it. if the temprature outside your body is the same as it is on the inside you cant cant get rid of all that extra heat which causes discomfort.


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

[User] What makes paper fresh from the copier hot? Why don't inkjet printers produce the same amount of heat as copiers do?

[Assistant]
Laser printers and photocopiers don't work under the same principle as an inkjet printer. When you make a photocopy, the first step is to give an electrostatic charge to a special cylinder. That cylinder is coated with a material that becomes conductive when exposed to light. When the document is being scanned, a strong source of light shines on the paper and reflects on the rotating cylinder. The parts being hit by light (i.e. what is aligned with white on the original document) become conductive and allows the electrostatic charge to be grounded and discharge. What you are left with at the end of this process is a cylinder with an electrostatic charge only on areas that correspond to the dark areas on the document. The charge then picks up toner and rolls on a blank piece of paper with a heating element, which essentially melts the toner and makes it adhere to the paper. The paper then comes out of the photocopier with an approximate copy of the original document.

Of course, modern photocopiers and laser printers will digitize the original document and then use that digitized copy as the master to apply the charge on the cylinder and make a better copy with a single scan instead of having to pass on the original for each copy, but the core principle remains the same.

Long story short, the paper coming out is warm because a heating element is required to make the toner stick to the paper.


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

[User] Why can someone as young as 20 have liver failure, yet often you can see people older than 40 that drink to excess daily with a working liver?

[Assistant]
One of the liver's main functions is to be the detoxifying organ for the body. For this reason it is the organ most likely to suffer injury due to an ingested toxin (such as alcohol). The liver has evolved to have a remarkable ability to recover from an injury. A person who drinks alcohol to excess is damaging the liver a little bit everyday, but the liver is able to regenerate the damaged tissue.

However sometimes someone will take such a massive dose of toxin that almost all of the liver cells in the liver are killed at the same time. An example would be a large paracetamol ("tylenol") overdose. In this situation there may be complete loss of functioning liver and the person goes into acute liver failure. If they are supported the liver may heal, however some people will die before the liver is able to regenerate because the liver performs many essential functions in the body.


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

[User] [Elder Scrolls] Would Ulfric and the Stormcloaks have been able to defeat the Empire without the help of the Dragonborn?

[Assistant]
No, he would have probably died at Helgen.

The entire intro sequence is related to the Dragonborn. Without their involvement, Tullius executes Ulfric, and the Stormcloaks lose their unifying element.

Even if you continue on from after Helgen, the prospects aren't great. Tullius has captured Ulfric once, and his presence in Skyrim only escalates from there. Without a quick victory, Ulfric risks drawing the actual attention of the Imperial Legion, which he admits he can't beat. And it's the LDB that gives him that quick victory.