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

[User] [LotR] Ultimately, what was Saruman's motivation? Lust for power? For the Ring? Loyalty to Sauron?

[Assistant]
Despair.

He and the other Wizards were sent to Middle Earth by the gods to defeat Sauron: counter his evil works, set the Free races up into better positions of power, heal his corrupting touch, and basically work against him. For millennia they did so (all five).

However, by the Third Age one of the Two great nations of Numenorian Men had fallen: Arnor, the northern kingdom had shattered into three smaller kingdoms, each much lesser than than the former. Those two, slowly fell under the tide of Darkness. Gondor was diminished due to the loss of Isilidur and no clear heir (yet). The Southrons, Black Numenorians, and Corsairs daily encroached upon Gondor from the South and indeed had taken much of the land that was Gondor's in centuries old. From the East cam Mordor's orcs, time and time again. All of Gondor's fortresses in Mordor had fallen: Durthang, Minas Ithil, the Black Gate.

Rohan was still strong, but Gondor and they had not grown close. Indeed as years passed, their alliance became a memory and seldom did either help the other: though admittedly not from distrust, but rather from lack of ability. Both nations were sorely pressed. Rohan was constantly attacked from goblins from the Misty Mountains along with Trolls and Worgs. Dunlanders, evil men, would also harrow and attack their lands.

The Elves were leaving, every year in greater numbers. Lothlorien was still a Power and a great light in the Darkness, but it was a light on the waning. Dol Gildur was a dark spot that stood strong, and every time Lothlorien threw it down, it would rise again and again. Lothlorien paid a cost each time as well. The Elves of Mirkwood show their weakness in their own name. Once called the Greenwood, it had been corrupted and tainted. Men felled the borders with axes, spawn of Ungoliant had moved into the lands, and orcs roamed free along the south. The land changed, and the Forest Elves retreated to their fastnesses and ignored the world. Those few who left their secure regions only did so to go West, into Valinor.

The Dwarvish Kingdoms were in decline. Once mighty houses and strongholds, one by one they fell to Goblin or Dragon. Trolls made their home in many a dwarfhold. Many tribes were reduced to wanderers and tinkers (as Thorin's people were, before the Quest). They in response dug deeper and shut themselves away from the world of Man and Elf and left the alliances seeking to be left alone.

The East was growing in power, and often sent Men and armies to fight the weakening West. Two Wizards went hence, but were never seen again. Sources differ on if they succeeded in stopping the Darkness from spreading to the Eastern Kingdoms, but the fact that Easterlings continued to serve Sauron gave proof to that answer (although some writings at the tie of the War of ring show uprisings in the East that prevented the great strength of the East from marching on the Western Kingdoms and peoples, so there's hope the Blue Wizards did indeed succeed in their mission).

In the North, the Orcs and monsters of Angmar and Gundabad were closing ever closer to the peoples of the sparsely settled Eridaor (what was left of the fallen three kingdoms and noted mostly for the Shire). There were also wars with the Elves of the Grey Havens and the Dwarves of the Blue Hills against Sauron's forces, nearly unceasingly.

Radagast was too focused on his plants and animals and had basically given up on defeating Sauron. He spent his time healing the land and guiding Elves to the Grey Havens. Gandalf was the weakest of them and spent so much time with the weakest races: hobbits, dwarves, and the lesser men. The Blue Wizards had long since left and no word was sent.

The Ents were asleep and unmotivated to move or react. Many had slept so long as to be nothing more than particularly long lived trees (some ill spirited to be sure).

Tom Bombadil was Tom Bombadil and would remain so even as the Dark surrounded his Garden and killed all his friends. He would not act, care, nor notice, not until the Shadow ruled all. And even then there was question if he would even care.

And Mordor's power grew. Terrible engines of war like Grond and others. Great factories belching fire, smoke, and iron. Powerful men of evil blood with dread and fell magics. The Nazgul and their flying beasts. Sauron's own deceptions of the lesser mannish races of the West. The Shadow that lay upon everything. Sauron was growing in power, daily it seemed. His orc armies were larger than ever and he had been breeding new types of orcs and trolls: bigger, meaner, smarter, and able to resist the Sun and the light.

And all of this was seen by Saruman via the Palantir he held. He watched what it showed him and felt despair. Sauron talked to him, whispered lies and entreaties and showed him the might of Mordor and Sauron. There was a lot he didn't show him, the smaller victories the West was having (The mission to Lonely Mountain and the Death of Smaug, Aragorn burning the Corsair Fleet, whatever the Blue Wizards were doing). Sauron showed what he wanted and slowly twisted Saruman's will. Eventually Saruman made a realization that Man was doomed and Sauron would win.

His hopelessness drove him to ally with Sauron. Perhaps at first to betray him and save the day in the end, perhaps to supplant him and at least guide the victory of evil towards a better course. But Sauron is corruption personified, as seen i the effects of the Ring. Whatever other reasons Sauron had initially for betraying the gods and the light of Iru Illuvatar, in the end he made a choice to Rule in his own name because he felt despair at the future. He would take the Ring, master it, and then cast down Sauron. Saruman would rule the world and shape it towards a destiny that would strength all. And maybe, in the end, challenge even the one most high.

Saruman saw what the power of Mordor was and lost Hope. He despaired and gave up because there was no chance to win. Any attempt was a fool's mission and only by allying with Sauron could anyone have even a hope of survival.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does light have energy? How can light exert force?

Here is what I know:

Photons have no mass.

Force is change in momentum over change in time.

Momentum is mass times velocity.

E=mc

SO HOW DOES LIGHT HAVE ENERGY AAAA

I also read that massless particles can have momentum and I do not understand that at all.

Please explain how all of this is connected and how light has energy and exerts force. Thank you!

[Assistant]
The full formula is E^2 = m^2 c^4 + p^2 c^2

E=mc^2 is a simplification for particles with mass at rest.

Photons carry momentum (p) and thus have energy.

Note that force is change in momentum over time, but it doesn't really apply to individual photons.

A single photon transfers it's momentum instantaneously. Though if you have a steady stream of photons you can calculate a force based on the average rate of momentum transfer.

Yes it's weird.


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

[User]
[Marvel MCU] What would Jessica, Daredevil, Fisk, and Punisher think of the Accords?

Would they be for or against it or just not care?

[Assistant]
Jessica: She's not really concerned with current events in the news that are happening on the other side of the world. She has bills to pay. She might hear about it and consider that some day it might lead to a broader attempt to register people at her level. But that's probably years away. Probably.

Daredevil: He has already broken numerous laws and relied on the help of sympathetic cops to remain free. Breaking some future metahuman-registration law would be of little concern. If he was ever arrested and prosecuted, he would probably defend himself on some technicality how he's not really a metahuman by whatever definitions are used in the accord.

Fisk: The accords might be bad for business. He made most of his wealth by capitalizing on the destruction caused by the Chitauri invasion. But Fisk is adaptable and he can make money other ways.

Punisher: The accords are a good thing. If the number of heroes running around can be reduced, then he is less likely to be stopped. Just like gun control, such legislation is great for controlling people who obey the law, but it does little to stem the flow of illegal weapons. Bad guys will be bad guys.


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

[User]
eli5: How does "restart" work? when a device, e.g. windows PC is turned off, how does in know to turn itself back on?

Edit: Typo in title

How does it* know to turn itself back on?

[Assistant] Restart doesnt fully turn the computer off, it just triggers a routine that resets everything as if it was turned off. So parts of the computer are still technically on during the entirety of a Restart.


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

[User] Whats actually happening when power goes out and comes back on after a few seconds during a storm?

[Assistant] The most common occurrence would be a branch falling on a power line and creating a temporary fault. This fault will cause a high level current to run through the circuit which if left unattended could damage transformers and the conductors themselves. For this reason protective relays are placed in the circuit. Relays sense this high level current and send a trip signal to the breaker which isolates the fault from the rest of the system. If you are downstream from this breaker you will lose power in your home. Now, most faults in a storm are temporary so once a breaker is tripped this also starts a timer. Once the timer is complete the breaker will attempt to re-close. If the fault is gone and the relay does not sense the high level current anymore the circuit is automatically returned to energized state and you have power again in your home!


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

[User]
Water has been started to be traded as a commodity in the futures market, does this mean anything?

Is it just another Wall Street shenanigan or is something we all should start thinking about?

[Assistant]
Water futures have been traded in water markets around the world for a long time. In Australia, Chile, California. Even here in western Canada theres not much stopping a futures market developing for certain watersheds in Alberta.

I think people get really caught up with combining the words water and market. First of all - almost all jurisdictions Im aware of have minimum stream / base flow rates they try to maintain, have to legally be able to hold enough for emergency use and domestic household use.

So that really only leaves a certain amount to be allocated for trade in certain seasons - pragmatically its almost exclusively traded within irrigation districts or between major water license holders to prep for development.

Its actually far more effective and versatile to trade water rights on the market than to keep them attached to land ownership.


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

[User]
Are there any known computational systems stronger than a Turing Machine, without the use of oracles (i.e. possible to build in the real world)? If not, do we know definitively whether such a thing is possible or impossible?

For example, a machine that can solve NP-hard problems in P time.

[Assistant]
Usually when we talk about hyper computation we ignore runtime complexity. If we just look at what problems are decidable, we believe that no stronger model exists.

But if we look at runtime, quantum computation has (at least) a provable quadratic speedup over classical turing machines (grovers algorithm).

In the real world we are also not restricted to serial computation. Pi calculus captures parallel semantics and can also compute some problems faster than serial turing machines.


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

[User] [Marvel Comics] What are the Kree and the Skrull fighting over?

[Assistant]
This happened long ago, but the Skrulls have a very old, very powerful empire, with particular traditions. One of these was that, when they came across one world with two intelligent species on it, they would set some sort of contest to determine which species would represent their world on their Throneworld.

Back before the Skrulls became a military power, they had a power based on merchant-trade and exploration. They came across the planet Hala, home to the Kree and also the peaceful Cotati.

They gave 17 Coatati and 17 Kree isolated patches of prepared land in remote star-systems, a year's supplies, and their contest would be to build the superior work in that place, in a year. The winner would have the official 'seat' as an ambassador on Throneworld, permanently.

The Kree had a patch of Earth's moon, the "Blue Area" (where there was a constructed atmosphere). They built a city. The Cotati built a beautiful botanical park, in an identically-barren part of another system.

The park was, by most standards, the superior achievement (just getting it to *grow* that fast, alone!), and the Kree knew it. Before the judging could happen, the Kree attacked and destroyed the Cotati 'entry'.

When the Skrull judges arrived and balked at what happened, they attacked and killed them, too.

They kept the Skrull delegations' ships and technology, adapted them and (by the time the Throneworld found out what happened, over such large distances) had become a vicious interstellar power.

(In a way not-dissimilar from the origins of the "Evil Federation" on your *Enterprise* television program)

The Skrulls, accustomed to simply taking on the forms and natures of the people they encountered, to blend in, took on the form and nature of a vicious, agressive warlike people, just to survive.

The war had gone on for several thousand years before either side even heard of Earth.

This might be hard for you to understand, but there is no *causus belli* to resolve at this point. There is no issue of land or resources, economics or politics, government or religion involved- the war exists because, to both sides, the war has *always* existed.

 Kree society had reorganized itself to expand into what it saw as a hostile universe, and the Skrulls had redesigned *themselves* as warriors in response. The war continues out of inertia and vendettas, and neither society is able to let go of any of it, for fear of the other wiping them out.

More has happened, of course, but that's the cause.


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

[User]
What is the scientific merit of sending humans to Mars?

I understand the emotional significance, and the (very) long term historical significance that a manned Mars mission would hold, but what scientific benefits would come from send humans to Mars? Further, would there be any benefit to terraforming Mars?

That being said, if given the option, I would not pass up the opportunity to travel to Mars just for the sheer awesomeness of standing on another planet.

[Assistant]
NASA scientists are going to spend many frustrating hours trying to get Curiosity to do things, like flip over a rock, that a person could do trivially. They are also going to spend sleepless nights regretting the lack of features which a human could rig together on the spot. Curiosity has a speed of 100 meters per hour, given a reasonably flat surface. Human geologists are easily 50 times faster and can climb like...well, like great apes. And the list goes on.

Humans are fragile, expensive, and have an annoying tendency to want to come home. But they remain incomparably the best scientific tool there is.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are every country so far turning down Edward Snowdens plea for political asylum?

[Assistant] Because there's no reason to believe that he requires political asylum. Most countries have the same kind of law that the US wants to use to arrest Snowden, so they can't honestly claim they think he'd be a political prisoner.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the difference between sharing music over the internet and letting a friend borrow a cd?

Sharing music over the Internet via torrents, YouTube downloaders, etc. is illegal. Why is me sharing a few albums (that I bought) with friends of mine, assuming they'll just load it into their itunes, legal?

[Assistant]
I state this neutrally but it is true.

Loading your CD into their iTunes is against the law.  The possessor of a CD is granted rights to use it, not copy it.  Money was paid to the label and the band for one copy of the music, that's it.  Your friend can listen to the CD, you can listen to the CD together, you can give the CD to people or even sell it to someone else, but you cannot make a copy of it.


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

[User]
[FMA] What would the world look like in 2015?

What would the world of Full Metal Alchemist look like by 2015? How would alchemy change technology? Would we have the same level of technology today or would we be more advanced?

[Assistant]
Theoretical Alchemy has exploded in the last 80 years since the telling of the story.  The Elric brothers changed the paradigm of alchemy; what was once regarded as a dead end field of research with little gain has turned into a treasure trove of new discoveries to be cataloged.

The two brothers accomplished this feat with their theories on Entropy (S), which overturned the long lasting Theory of Equivalent Exchange.  While the Theory of Equivalent Exchange is good enough for most small feats of alchemy, it doesn't explain the failures of larger scale alchemy.

Armed with this theory, alchemists were now able to create longer and/or larger alchemical reactions.  With a precise ratio of materials, energy and alchemical circle an alchemist can create a whole furnished building from scratch.  Alchemists can now create Alchemical Plants, factories that run continuous alchemical processes using provided energy and materials.
_____________________________________
As was true 80 years ago, most folks still don't understand how alchemy works, or how to do it at all.  Most folks have some kind of alchemical creation in their home, from cleaning supplies...to their home itself.

Computers haven't made nearly as many strides.  Vacuum tube systems have been maximized to their near full potential, and mainframe-client systems are still popular.  Folks still use the normal telephones that they did decades ago.

Systems tend to pollute very little, and are very fuel efficient.  Its not hard to pollute less when you can transmute the pollutions to something less dangerous.

tl;dr Cars are more efficient and faster, homes are cheaper.  You aren't going to be finding cell phones any time soon.


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

[User] ELI5 To process images, a computer assigns red, green and blue values to every pixel. How does a computer manage sound? What are the values assigned?

[Assistant] All sound waves, even complex ones like talking or instruments are just single intensities at single moments in time. You assign each value in time an intensity and when you play it back you get the whole sound. Depending on how finely you chop up the timeline changes how good the sound will be reproduced.


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

[User]
How do you increase the amount of information a picture can hold?

I was watching a gif zooming in on a high resolution picture and I am curious how some pictures can hold more information (detail) than others. Also: how does resolution measure this?

[Assistant]
You can increase the amount of information by increasing the resolution, or in the case of lossy formats, decreasing the compression.

Most of the images you see are raster images, which are made up of little squares known as pixels, short for picture elements. In a completely uncompressed bitmap, it stores the color of each pixel. In the compressed ones, it's more an algorithm to calculate the colors of each pixel, but the end result is the same. A picture with more of these squares is more detailed.

Also, there's vector images, which store the image as all the equations for curves that make it up and that sort of thing. The resolution for them is just a guideline on how big to draw the image. You can zoom in as much as you want.


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

[User] Why do we (most people) add unnecessary filler words to our speech sometimes? (such as "um" or "like")

[Assistant]
"Um", "hmm", "so..." and other similar expressions are often used to indicate that the speaker intends to continue and is not done speaking. It ensures a smoother flow of conversation with fewer interruptions.

In other words, the speaker is asking for more time to continue his/her thought.


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

[User] ELI5: How do transformers work, what do they do, and why do we use them?

[Assistant]
Electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin.  An electric current running through a wire creates magnetism.  A wire moving through a magnetic field creates electricty.  There's not much of a difference between a generator and a motor.

If you switch from DC to AC, you get some more interesting & complex electromagnetic fields.  An AC current moving through a coil of wire creates an EM field.  Another coil of wire placed next to that will start generating an electrical current.  It's technically called "induction" but for our purposes, it's a little bit like radio.

A transformer is just two coils placed next to each other.  By picking the right size coils on either side, you can "step up" or "step down" the voltage.  A good example is the standard 'wall wart' that runs most electronics.  You get 110 volts out of the wall but you only need 12 to run your laptop - a simple transformer takes care of fixing this.

If you want a visual explanation...  Imagine you have 2 fans facing each other.  One of them runs, the other just sits there and spins.  If you have different sizes of fans, the 'passive' fan will spin faster or slower than the 'active' fan.


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

[User]
[Marvel, X-Men] Does having an active x-gene always mean you can access extra-dimensional energy?

What I mean, is that even the mutants without an obvious extra-dimensional connection (Cyclops' "punch" beams, Nightcrawler's teleportation, Magik's Limbo connection) still manage to break conservation of energy on a regular basis.

Wolverine heals wounds that require a significant amount of tissue to regrow, without his needing to constantly eat/drink.  I seem to recall Deadpool having cut off parts of himself to use as food...which means he's more than 100% efficient at getting sustenance from his own flesh.  Or that he's just avoiding the feeling of hunger by slicing himself up.

Everything from Jubilee's sparks and Gambit's energizing objects, to the Blob's gravity-altering abilities and Magneto's ability to create and modulate magnetic fields with pinpoint accuracy point towards some outside energy source.  Or are they all somehow solar powered?

[Assistant]
I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the first law of thermodynamics that govern some universes simply doesn't have any issues being broken in the 616 and associated universes.

Also the barriers between dimensions of all sorts and sundry appear to be pretty malleable in the 616. Whether it's a Pym particle shunting mass back and forth, or a Banner reaction summoning thousands of tons of biomass to this realm in an instant or the ability to rip the walls between this dimension and the Negative Zone with no apparent heat effects on either side, energy is thrown to and fro at the whim of any number of entities without any care for balancing the mass/energy scales or caring if there's anything on the other side of all these portals to even be concerned with.

For all we know, every time Iron Man jets off with out enough reaction mass to thrust away to support himself in any way, shape or form, a massive amount of 'X'-dimensional kittens are obliterated somewhere to balance the thermodynamic scales, as it were. Nobody in the 616 seems to care, or notice.


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

[User]
[Dune] Could the Fremen have lube?

This is a dumb question, but it's one that me and a friend just got into a heated debate over. The Fremen have a culture of extreme moisture conservation, so a product like water-based lubricant would likely be seen as an extremely wasteful and stupid luxury. But could they use oil or silicone-based lubricants, or would they find some way to extract the moisture from these products from the tribe's sake? Are there any native plants or substances on Arrakis that could substitute personal lubricant?

I'm just worried about my gay Fremen homies.

Edit: You guys are the best.

[Assistant] One thing to bear in mind is that moisture conservation is slightly relaxed within a sietch because the entire structure is designed for moisture retention/capture. So as long as you do it indoors, and don't do it excessively, you're probably OK with something water-based.


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

[User] [Christmas stories]When mankind spreads out and has colonies on the moon, mars or even other solar systems will Santa Clause show up and deliver presents? Time dilation is a thing, when will he do it?

[Assistant] Santa is a quantum constant. He exists across all time and space at a perpetual moment of December 24th. He will always be at all homes at that moment to deliver presents and always has been. To suggest otherwise is to ask why the universe exists instead of not existing. He is, he has, he was, and he always will be.


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

[User]
[HARRY POTTER] What if the boggart turned into Voldemort in Harry Potter 3?

Does the Boggart work based on what the person knows? At this point Harry never saw Voldemort so would it just turn into his interpretation of Voldemort? Or would it turn into actual Voldemort?

[Assistant] It would probably turn into someone's interpretation of Voldemort. It may have used Harry's baby-memories to form an idea of what Voldemort looked like, similar to how Dementors could draw on those memories as well, but there isn't a whole lot of evidence to go on.


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

[User] [General Sci-fi] what are the fundamental differences in how Hyperdrives and Jump Drives work?

[Assistant]
Hyperdrives have you traveling through some sort of spatial-like medium (usually hyperspace or subspace) at velocities greater than that of light.
Jump drives cause you to instantaneously change position from one place to another, usually by folding space or using a wormhole.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] There are so many instances of when crew members get sent back in time or to different realities - why doesn't anyone ever believe them?

Everyone always thinks they're crazy but since it's so common, why hasn't Starfleet set up an organization for helping people return to their own timeline instead of calling them crazy or imprisoning them?

[Assistant]
The temporal prime directive tends to discourage them from going back to "correct" a problem. After all, if one person is sent back in time, who says that's not what was supposed to happen anyway?

And like any prime directive, it exists to be broken.

At one point, agents from Starfleet visited Sisko on DS9 to inquire about an incident where several of his officers went back to the 23rd century.


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

[User]
CMV: Universal basic income is going to become more relevant and more popular an idea as automated systems get more advanced, and that is good for society.

*Disclaimer* I'm not a fan of the idea of UBI. Just discussed the concept the other day with colleagues, and we agreed our industry is relatively responsible for the inevitable rise in popularity of the idea.

Going by best case scenario studies, let's assume that the human race gets smarter by 5% every generation. Given the current state of automated systems, and the rate they are advancing at, this will not be enough for the human race to outpace automated systems. They will start to take on more jobs that were previously considered immune to automation, such as creative roles. As this occurs and more people are born, the number of people rendered unemployable due to automated systems will begin to swell to the point where those unemployed will demand a universal basic income in order to cover the basic costs of living. This idea, already spreading around now, will grow in popularity, and with each major layoff and loss of human employable positions across various industries, will spurr on the public's demand for enough money to survive, as they may not be able to acquire that amount themselves due to automated competition.

I'm hoping that someone has irrefutable evidence this is not our future.

[Assistant]
Its extremely optimistic to look at the future this way.  We've destroyed nearly 100% of jobs a couple times over.

It used to be that nearly everyone was a farmer.  something like 95% of jobs were farming.  Now its closer to 3%.  Nearly 100% of jobs were destroyed as we got better and better at farming.  Then everyone went to  work in factories.  and a huge number of those jobs were destroyed.  All the farming jobs and all the factory jobs were replaced with other jobs.  Unemployment is very low right now.

We want almost an unlimited amount of stuff.  What percentage of people currently pay to have their homes cleaned once a week?  What percentage of people would want to have their homes cleaned once a week?  There's a ton of jobs there.  What about a pool, do you want someone to build a pool in your backyard?  What about a sweet outdoor living space?  would you like to learn to dance? Golf? MMA?

Every time we destroy a job it frees those people to work on something else.  There is not shortage of jobs anymore then there is a shortage of stuff you want.  If your whole city got put out of work (slowly over many years) then you'd all have a bunch of free time, that you'd start trading.  and we'd use money to keep track of all the trades.

The real fear is that a small percentage of people will own the things which produce most of the value in the world.  If that happens we'll have redistribution taxes which might include a UBI, but probably public works is better then UBI.  Hire home teachers, the utra rich pay the teachers, and the teachers teach everyone.  That's a redistributive tax.


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

[User]
[Green Lantern/DC] What does the no lethal force law actually stop?

Prior to the Sinestro Corps War, there was a law in the Book of Oa that kept any GL from killing another being with their ring.

What would this actually cover? If you took your ring off and beat someone to death would that be stopped? What if you kept your ring on and just didnt use it.

Would it stop you from torturing someone into insanity or putting someone into a coma?

What if you were wearing two rings and used the non-green one to kill, or if you had the Ion Entity and used its power, but were still wearing your GL ring?

[Assistant]
As a Green Lantern, your ring/lantern sends periodic reports back to the Guardians about your conduct. If you break any of the big rules in the Book of Oa, it sends a priority report so that you can be recalled and dealt with, or possibly just teleports you directly to a holding cell on Oa. It doesn't matter if you use your ring to do something or not - if the ring notices you doing things that are against the Corps regulations, it'll snitch on you. And murder is very much against the regs.

As a Green Lantern, you're supposed to protect life and liberty within your sector; obey the Guardians; act in accordance with local law where possible; refrain from using force unless absolutely necessary and uphold the honour (read: reputation) of the Corps. There's exceptions for killing specific authorized enemies, but those are still logged and if the Guardians don't like how you did it, they will make their displeasure known.


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

[User] ELI5: How does your lip differ from your face or your skin, and why?

[Assistant] They still have all the layers of skin, but the outermost layer is thinner. Lips also have no sebaceous glands, so saliva is the only natural way to moisten lips. And lastly, lips have no melanin, so the color you see is from blood vessels.


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

[User]
ELI5: Does the Earth produce its own water naturally, or are we simply recycling the worlds water again and again?

Assuming that we class all forms of water as the same (solid - ice, gas, liquid) - does the Earth produce water naturally?

[Assistant]
There's the water cycle, which you already know, but there are other processes too. Biologically, water is created and destroyed all the time. Photosynthesis breaks water up into it's hydrogen and oxygen atoms and combines them with the atoms from carbon dioxide to make sugar. In cellular respiration, that sugar molecule is broken down and turned back into carbon dioxide and water molecules. So when you pee, a good chunk of that could be brand new water molecules.

Even without biology, water molecules are constantly swapping hydrogen atoms with each other. In any drop of water, you'll find a few hydroxide and hydronium ions as the hydrogen atoms are traded around.

The amount of water on earth is pretty constant because any process that breaks up a water molecule also has its opposite. Hard to say how old any specific molecule is, though.


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

[User]
Do we observe the handful of stars orbiting the Milky Way's central black hole moving slower during their perigees due to the intense gravity?

Since a distant observer sees an object moving more and more slowly as it approaches an extremely massive object, do we see this manifested in the stars that orbit close to the central supermassive black hole?  Or, do they just not get close enough to have the effect be measurable.

Basically...Do we observe on some level what happened in "Interstellar"?

[Assistant]
They don't quite get close enough for that. You basically need to be right on top of the event horizon of a black hole to get a significant effect, and a star would be torn apart before it reaches that point.

For the details - it depends on the radius of the event horizon, which we called the Schwarzchild Radius. How much time dilation you get depends on how many Schwarzchild radii you are away from the centre of the black hole. At 10 Schwarzchild radii, you get time slowed down by about 5%. At 5 Schwarzchild radii, that becomes about 10%. At two Schwarzchild radii, it goes up to 30%. At 1.1 Schwarchild radii, it's 70%. At 1.0001 Schwarzchild radii, time is slowed down by a factor of a hundred. So it increases really rapidly as you start to reach the event horizon, but the effect is only strong if you're really really close.

The closest stars get maybe 0.004 parsecs away from the black hole, which is about one hundred billion kilometres - i.e. a hundred thousand million kilometres. The event horizon of the black hole has a radius of about ten million kilometres. So they're very close, as far as stars go, but not nearly close enough for time dilation to have a strong effect.

This is one of the somewhat unrealistic things about the movie. For a planet to get such a huge amount of time dilation, it'd need to basically be right on top of the event horizon, and the black hole would take up basically the entire sky. It's not a very likely place to find a habitable planet. It also doesn't fit with the visualisation they showed of the black hole, which shows it with an accretion disc. This planet should actually be *inside* the accretion disc.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Were there ever any major conflicts where the Empire were the "good guys" fighting enemies other than the Rebels?

I thought of this in response to complaints I've heard (namely from Angry Joe) over the new Battlefront II's storyline, where they advertised it as being from the perspective of the Empire only for the protagonist to switch over to the Rebels fairly quickly.

Does there exist precedent in the franchise for this *not* to have been the case, namely with Imperial forces acting as peacekeepers against legitimate threats?

[Assistant] The Empire cracked down on crime, but they colluded with Hutts often as well. You're never going to find a situation wherein the Empire's help is for the greater good, because the system exists only for the good of it's leaders.


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

[User]
Is it true that if you can't network and don't have social skills than it is unlikely you will get a postdoc or a job even if you are a genius in your field?

So I have heard from people in Academia that networking is vital to getting a job or postdoc in Academia or even a PhD. If you do not know well-renowned scientists then you are out of luck. Therefore, advanced social skills and some oiling/charisma is important. If you don't have those then even if you are the next Einstein you would probably not even get a PhD or postdoc let alone a job.

Can someone confirm whether this is true and to what extent?

[Assistant]
I think there's a huge gap between "having some social skills" and "advanced social skills/oiling" being needed.

Academia is about the work, but it's also a field that is inherently people based, especially in many of the sciences. You need to be able to work with peers on committees and across the university, you need to be able to develop collaborations, you need to be able to manage a group of workers, and you need to be able to interface with students.

You're also hired into a position where you're going to be in close proximity with the same other people (co-workers) a lot, so being able to at the very least not be a drain during those interactions is hugely important.

Do you need to be the most charismatic person around? No.

But you do need to have some social skills, and have more positive than negative interactions with those around you.


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

[User] [MCU] How intelligent is Star-Lord? I assume he didnt get a proper education after he was abducted so he only has the education of a 10 year old? And how does he compare to the rest of the Guardians?

[Assistant]
Intelligent =/= Educated.

We can assume that Ego's contribution to Quill includes a great memory and genius level math skills.  He's a gifted tactician and leader.

While with the reavers he probably picked up a number of alien languages and practical engineering knowledge.

He's probably the second best at everything when compared to the rest of the team.  Not as good an engineer as Rocket, not as good a thief/assassin as Gamora, not as strong as Drax, and he totally lacks Groot and Mantis's abilities.


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

[User]
[Doctor Who] How was the Time War fought?

Recently started watching the new Doctor Who series and saw mentions of a Time War being the reason the Time Lords no longer exist.

Can someone explain the Time War? How does an entire race of time travelers get exterminated (heh) in the distant past? Shouldn't there be refugees scattered all over the timeline hiding from the conquerors?

[Assistant]
It's an effect of two different phenomena.

First there is the tendency for all time wars to travel further into the past. Even for time traveling societies, effects tend to be later than their causes, due to the default method of time travel, one second per second, forward only. You have to go out of your way to make an exception. This means that the conflicts tend to have their triggers sometime relatively late in the relations between the belligerents. Since the people initiating the time war are from this later era, their incentive is to defeat the enemy as recently as possible to maintain their existence as close to as it was when the war began, with the exception of the victory over their adversaries of course.

However if one side is victorious, say the Daleks are at some time in the twenty-second century, this can be undone by defeating them earlier on in their history, such as the twentieth century. Likewise the Daleks can undermine the Time Lord victory by defeating them in the nineteenth century. And so on back through the ages.

This brings us to the second part where things get all wibbly wobbly. As a general rule for avoiding potentially devastating paradoxes, a time traveler avoids crossing his own timeline, that is to say to avoid disturbing his own causal chain. However as move and counter move are made in a time war, these causal chains get more and more entangled, so that fewer and few possible safe moves are available, as altering another time traveler's past, or future, would be altering your own. This is the non-linier counterpart to the drift towards ever earlier battlefields.

By this time people are not as concerned about such things as paradoxes, but time itself still is. With a concerted effort paradoxes can be maintained, but as cross-time conflict becomes more complicated, the ability to change anything becomes more and more difficult.

A lesser version of this is responsible for so called "fixed points" in history. These are events that are so important to the interwoven histories of time traveling societies, that they are essentially locked in place by the interconnected causal chains.

It is to these fixed points, these common causes that the war is drawn, as no other field of battle would be effective, and increasingly, would not be possible. In the case of the Last Time War, this focused on the golden age of the Time Lords on Gallifrey.

As the convoluted causal chains more and more tightly intertwined around this period, it became impossible to change anything, as any action one might take, was already part of the causal past that had resulted in the inescapable, self-contained, and self-consistent constellation of nows centered on the golden age of Gallifrey.

The common term for this phenomenon is "time lock".


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

[User] Why does enriching uranium from 0.7% to 3.5% take so much longer than enriching it from 3.5% to 90%?

[Assistant]
You are removing U-238 (non-fissile) from natural uranium to increase the percentage of the fissile U-235.

Imagine a country needed 1 kg of 90% U-235 and their centrifuges were perfectly efficient (only filtered out U-238).  They would need to start with about 129 kg of natural Uranium (0.7% U-235; as 129kg * 0.7% ~ 1 kg * 90%) and would need to filter out about 128 kg of U-238 to get to 1 kg of 90% U-235.

Meanwhile, if you needed 1 kg of 90% U-235 but started with 3.5% Uranium, you would only need to start out with 25.7 kg of 3.5% U-235 and only filter out 24.7 kg of U-238.

This isn't a complete proof as the rate of U-238 removal on the centrifuges will obviously depend on concentration, but this just gives the intuition to make it seem more reasonable.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Where did NZ/Australian wizards/witches go?

Where did New Zealand/Australian-born wizards and witches go to learn magic? Given Hogwarts is for United Kingdom wizards/witches.

[Assistant]
Presumably it's the same answer to "where did muggle kids go to school?" Eventually the Wizards built a school for their children.

Hogwarts only has about a thousand students according to Rowling. If we extend that to the real U.K. population. People at the age they'd attend Hogwarts makes up ~12.1% of the Wizard population, making the total number of wizards in the U.K. around 8,300. That's an incredibly small percentage of the total population, and then consider that the U.K. population is nearly 3 times the size of Australia.

The Australian Wizarding School wouldn't need to be very large, in fact it would be the size of a private school, assuming the rates of Magical ability is the same in Australia as it is in the U.K. There would be a total of around 3,100 Australian Wizards. Australia is almost identical in terms of people in the age range needing Magical education, (12.1%). So an Australian Magical School would only have about 372 students at a given time.

There's more than enough Australian wilderness capable of sustaining a school for that number of students.


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

[User]
[General Scifi] Why is the space military likened to the Navy?

Bunch of pilots flying around, having dogfights in fighter craft. Seems a lot like the Air Force to me.

[Assistant]
But most military action in space is more akin to naval battles - large ships, requiring a lot of crew to maintain the vessels, man gunner positions, and replace the dead. And in-between, a whole lot of nothing to do but run drills and maintain equipment.

They're more like carriers or battleships than air bases.


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

[User]
[DC] Were the staff at Arkham Asylum ever successful in rehabilitating a supervillain?

##

[Assistant]
In every incarnation, Harvey Dent has come the closest but always inevitably recidivates.

In any case, Jeremiah Arkham has some problems of his own.  Jeremiah Arkham when first seen in Shadow of the Bat seemed to be obsessed with keeping his patients in as long as possible, not focused on rehabilitating them, but intensely studying their psyches.


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

[User] [Archer] You are a mad scientist who has captured Sterling Archer and have hooked him up to an experimental machine. Based upon his fears, construct the most terrifying nightmare for him possible.

[Assistant]
He is forced to give up all his vices as he works an alligator and crocodile farm. He comes home every night, only to be beaten and berated by Mallory and Woodhouse.

After decades of this, he succumbs to a non-fatal brain aneurysm on the job. He falls into a stroke, but is still cognizant of his surroundings. He lives at home with Mallory and Woodhouse, who live a life of debauchery, full of drugs, sex, alcohol, thinking that Sterling is unaware in his state.

One day, Mallory and Woodhouse decide to get married, and have the ceremony in Miami. Unexpectedly, a hurricane strikes, flooding the city, and Sterling is surrounded by alligators. As they are snapping at his immobile limbs, he suffers from a brain embolism, but it unfortunately does not kill him faster than the alligators.


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

[User]
ELI5: Started watching Chowder on Netflix, how do animators do the static patterns that stay with the characters and such when they move in scene? (Like Chowders hat

I'm just really curious since its a cool technique I've noticed in other animated shows that I can't quite place in my memory at the moment.

[Assistant]
It's actually quite simple. When doing graphic art you do a lot of what is called layer masking, where you basically put a shape over a layer (which can be a full screen for example) and tell the computer to hide all of the layer unless it falls under the shape in question.

Just think of it like a transparent window, and the texture actually covers the whole screen, but you can only see it as the 'window' passes over it.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do we forget most of our dreams?

[Assistant]
If you wake up unnaturally (I.e with an alarm clock),  you have a chance of remembering your dream you were just in. You don't remember dreams when you wake up naturally because your brain has shut off the "dream machine" in preparation for waking up,  and discards the dreams from your short term memory because they are not needed and not meant to be stored with conscious thought/experiences.

When you're sleeping, your subconscious brain is entertaining itself and working through data/experiences... its basically playing, and the toys are the elements in your dreams (people, places, things, conversations, feelings..) and the playroom is your memory. When you wake up naturally, your brain puts away all it's toys and closes the chest, so there aren't a bunch of dream elements laying all over the floor of your memory.  When you wake up suddenly, the toys are all over the place, scattered across the playroom/your memory.


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

[User]
What questions to ask dean during campus visit?

I have a TT campus visit in a week, and I'm wondering if anyone has any advice in what sorts of discussions I should have with the dean. I have an hour between the dean and associate dean. Thank you!

[Assistant]
I always like to ask what their vision for the college in five years looks like. It strokes their ego a little (since it makes it about THEIR vision) and gives you insight into their thought process for the future. If they dont have one, theyre likely to bail sooner rather than later.

I also ask where they see the department Im interviewing for fits in to this vision. Youd like to know if they view the department adversarially or in a collaborative manner. This question has given me great insight in the past.


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

[User]
Realistically, how dangerous is using a mobile phone on a plane?

I was just on a flight, and the stewardesses were insistent that every phone, laptop and even mp3 player were turned off and put away before we began taxiing out for takeoff. I fly quite often, but this time the rules seemed to have been tightened up a lot compared to other occasions.

With time to kill and nothing to occupy my brain, I got wondering about what damage phone use could do on a plane... So, I thought I'd ask science!

[Assistant]
There's probably no danger at all from a properly manufactured and licensed piece of hardware in good working order (like a consumer cell phone or laptop, manufactured to US FCC standards)

BUT

There could easily be some piece of hardware that DOES cause interference with the avionics. You don't want to find that out when you are taking off or landing! If something goes wrong at 30,000ft when they tell you it's ok to turn things on, there's a lot of time before the plane falls out of the sky. They can just come over the intercom and say "Somebody turned something on that broke the plane. TURN IT BACK OFF". If you're 100ft above the ground when that happens, you die.

It's a blanket policy, and it makes sense. It's easy and reasonable for a flight attendant to make sure everything is turned off. Yes, your Kindle probably won't make the plane crash, but if your kindle is ok, somebody else will think his tablet is ok, and then somebody else has a laptop, and next thing you know somebody has a radio jamming device and nobody tells him to turn it off.


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

[User]
[MCU- Luke Cage] Where's SHIELD? Luke seems like something they would be all over.

So a big part of SHIELD's job is dealing with inhumans and people with powers, and Luke seems to be doing a shitty job of hiding.

[Assistant]
SHIELD has had a dramatic few years between Hydra, inhumans, Ultron (for about 5 minutes) and, the biggest enemy of all, budget cuts.

Because they've been so busy they can't follow up on every case.

And yeah, Luke isn't exactly subtle but his power isn't super showy. It's easy for SHIELD to pass on looking further into him. With everything happening in there world, it's easy for someone to spot some dude carry 6 shopping bags of groceries at once and think they're powered.


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

[User]
ELI5: These Olympic marathon runners look like they have no body fat. Where are they getting the energy to run 27 miles?

I mean, they probably gave at least a little fat, but is that the only place our bodies can store energy for something like this?

[Assistant]
Generally speaking -

Energy for the body is stored in the body as fat or as glycogen, which is a complex sugar, and as glucose in the blood. The fat is stored under the skin and around the organs, and the glycogen is stored in the muscle cells and in the liver.

During exercise the body uses the glucose, and when the level starts to drop both fat and glycogen are used - the amount of each is determined by loads of factors like how hard they're working, the temperature, their own metabolism etc.

For Olympic endurance athletes they are mostly using glycogen in the muscles and glycogen in the liver is being turned into glucose to keep blood sugar up too - giving them energy to work. Additionally energy from food or drink consumed during or before a race is digested and goes straight into the blood ready for use. These things might include energy drink, or foods, though there is some debate about the efficacy of such supplements.


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

[User]
[general] What's your favorite space ship design, and why?

Can be small or big or simply everything of a specific faction. Links to pictures of those ships are appreciated of course.

[Assistant]
I kinda like UNSC battle ships, or the Colonial Marine ships from alien, those relatively near future human designs.

But on fluff and capabilities standard Imperial Navy vessels in Warhammer are pretty neat, at least the ones that dont over embellish the gargoyles and stuff. Some art doesnt.


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

[User] ELI5: Alternating Current. Do electrons keep going forwards and backwards in a wire when AC is flowing?

[Assistant]
Picture a tube of tennis balls, with both ends cut off.

Direct current is when you take a ball and push it in one end, causing one at the other end to pop out.

Alternating current is when you push a ball in one end and it pops one out the other, then push one in the other end and pop one out the former.

Over time, for constant frequency AC, the total change in distance for any ball inside the tube is 0.

Does that answer your question?


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

[User]
[Spider-Man] How did Sandman know that Green Goblin was impaled with his own glider but Harry Osborn didn't?

"They both died fighting Spider-Man. It was all over the news, Green Goblin impaled by the glider he flew around on and then a couple years later, you, Doc Ock drowned in the river with your machine ."

But it took another few years after Normans death for Harry to find out how he died when the bulter told him. So how come everyone else knew except Harry? Was the rest of the world in on Norman's whole "Don't tell Harry"?

[Assistant] Sandman seems to have come back from 2024 as Raimi Peter did. Its more like that the truth of the Osborns and Goblins was revealed in the aftermath of Harrys death, after he died fighting against Sandman and Venom unmasked with hundreds watching and Bernard and Peter no longer having any reason to hide it. There isnt any other reason why anyone would have known how the Goblin died beforehand when Peter would have been very invested in keeping it all a secret, and we can imagine the military would have been sniffing around Oscorp during 2&3 to know what was happening if so.


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

[User]
How come Wolverine can get drunk but not Captain America?

In his movie, Captain America attempts to get drunk but his body disallows him due to his "regeneration of cells and healing"

Wolverine has healing to an even further extent and is shown drinking I'm every Xmen movie.

[Assistant]
Because Captain America isn't a biologist. His inability to get drunk doesn't have to do with his healing, but rather the rate that his altered body filters toxins out. His kidneys and liver remove the alcohol as fast, if not faster, than he can drink it. He does however escape the liver damage through his accelerated healing.

Wolverine, on the other hand, just regenerates his liver. Nothing increases the efficiency of his body in removing toxins, so the Alcohol can still build up to sufficient levels to cause him to get drunk.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Do Wookiees have to wear hair nets when they work in the kitchen?

[Assistant]
Wookies are a proud race (and actually quite rare now), so likely won't be found working in kitchens where humans frequent.

If they had to though, chances are it's the sort of place that doesn't care so much about hair.


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

[User]
ELI5: In factory shows like How It's Made, who plans those assembly machines that know how to perfectly do everything?

How It's Made needs to do a How How It's Made is Made episode.

[Assistant]
It's usually a mechanical engineer who designs the actual machine, or an engineer in the field of what it will be making.  Very complex processes are researched by engineers with a master's degree or a PhD at a university or private research company.  Once they show that whatever it is they're making can be profitable, they usually sell the technology to a company who has its engineers make it faster and cheaper.

As far as the assembly line, plant layout, and human-machine interfaces, it's usually an industrial engineer.  If it's a chemical plant with reaction chambers, pressure tanks, and chemical flow, it's usually a chemical engineer.  Of course, being one type of engineer doesn't stop you from knowing all the things.


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

[User]
Is it possible that someone could have survived in the Titanicand died later at the bottom of the ocean?

Also - is it possible that there are still trapped air pockets in the wreckage?

[Assistant] No. The wreck of Titanic is about 3800m below the sea level, which means that the pressure is about 380 times the atmospheric pressure. (At that pressure, air shrinks to about 0.26% of the sea level volume.) Even if it there were big enough pockets of air to breathe, and a possibility to keep warm, people would die of nitrogen or oxygen poisoning.


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

[User]
[LOTR] If Aragorn and Arwen's son Eldarion chose to be an elf instead of a human, would he still be eligible to rule the Reunited Kingdom of men?

Because he would literally rule forever.

[Assistant]
He does not get that choice.

In choosing mortality, Arwen, like Elros before her, was granted the Gift of Men. Mortality is indeed a Gift from Eru himself, and is granted forever and cannot be taken away. In making the choice, Arwen was granting that gift to all her descendants as well.


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

[User]
[WH40K] What if every single human psyker in the galaxy killed themselves at the same time?

The God-Emperor of Mankind was supposedly created by the force of a few thousand psykers committing collective suicide in order to reincarnate as one being.

In 40K there are *millions* more psykers than when the God-Emperor was created, what if they all killed themselves trying to recreate that event and make a second, even stronger God-Emperor of Mankind?

What if they somehow had knowledge of the *exact* procedure the ancient Shamans went through to create the GE, and all gathered on a single planet to follow this procedure?

[Assistant]
They wouldn't be able to coordinate as well as you think, those deaths would fuel the Chaos Gods because Psykers don't have control over regeneration like the Shamans did.  So if they all killed themselves, we'd:

* Lose the Astronomicon.  RIP Imperium
* Give power to the Chaos Gods.  RIP Imperium
* Never hear a blind man yell "WITNESS YOUR DOOOOOOM" again.  RIP Everyone.


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

[User]
How does the energy of a nuclear fusion reactor scale according to its size?

Does it scale according to volume? For example, if you have a reactor that fits a volume X of hydrogen, and another that fits 10X, would the energy generated by the second be 10 times the energy produced by the first one? Or does it scale exponentially or by some other factor? (assuming the reactors have the same efficiency)

[Assistant]
Assuming all other factors, such as pressure and temperature, remain constant, the total reaction energy is indeed proportional to the volume of the fusion plasma.

However, the energy loss through the reactor walls is proportional to the surface area of the reactor vessel and since the surface area scales more slowly with the dimensions of the vessel than the volume, the net energy production of a fusion reactor will scale more strongly with size.

If you'd take a hypothetical fusion reactor and multiplied all its dimensions by a factor 2, while keeping all other aspects of its operation the same, the energy production would increase by a factor 8, while the energy loss would increase by a factor 4. This means that with two fusion reactors using the exact same design, a smaller version could run at a loss of energy, while the larger version runs with a positive net energy production.


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

[User] [Star Wars] How/Why is Pre Vizsla's lightsaber black?

[Assistant]
Lightsabers receive their colour from the crystals that are present within them. All coloured blades are a white core with a coloured hue.

However, the darksaber uses a black crystal, and you can't have a black hue, so it creates a black core with a white hue.

It's unknown if the crystal is manufactured or naturally occurring.


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

[User] ELI5:Why are snow storms with lightning so rare? What prevents them from occurring?

[Assistant]
Thunderstorms require a lot of warm, moist air moving up while a lot of cold, dry air is moving down. The warm air gets high enough that water droplets condense and make big clouds. The more air moving around, the bigger the cloud. The lightning comes from a build up of static electricity from the different air currents moving against each other.

If it's snowing, chances are there isn't enough warm air to form the right conditions. Snow requires cold, moist air. Dry air is much better at forming static electricity, and there generally aren't masses of air moving against each other when all the air is cold, like there would be if some was warm and some was cold.

Hail can often coincide with thunderstorms, however, because it's formed differently. When all that air is moving upwards, it can create some extremely powerful updrafts. Sometimes they're strong enough to push water high enough for it to freeze into hail before falling down again, even if it's much warmer down near the surface.


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

[User] ELI5:Can someone tell me why Russia is so interested in Crimea in Ukriane?

[Assistant] Crimea is home to the last warm water port (one that wont freeze) for the Russian Black Sea fleet. The Russians are securing their port in the aftermath of a pro-Western government being installed in Kiev. Loss of the port would be devastating for Russian power and influence.


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

[User] [Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs] Flint Lockwood basically found the solution to world hunger, why is his device only being used as a tourist attraction for some town?

[Assistant] People absolutely did not take Flint seriously. His entire life was a joke. So naturally, when he got something to work right, noone took it seriously at first. FLDSMDFR was operating for what, a couple of weeks before it went berserk? That was enough time for the media to just start to realize what he managed, before it all turned upside down. In that time, he didn't publish in any major peer-reviewed journal or make any effort to get it to the world at large. He seemed content to bask in the glory on his little island.


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

[User] [General]Can a ghost and a zombie come from the same person?

[Assistant] Absolutely. A ghost is the spirit of the individual, whereas the zombie is the animated corpse of the same person. The zombie might retain some memory, as that is a physiological process, but the soul has moved on and out of the body. The ghost is that same soul when they have remained in this realm for whatever reason.


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

[User] ELI5:Why are the EU still giving bail out packages to Greece ? What is the worst that could happen if we let Greece just die...

[Assistant] Well for one we would be dicks. The EU started out as a union of countries who promised to cooperate en help eachother in time of need. If we don't support them in their time of need, the union wouldn't really mean anything, would it?


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

[User] [Star Trek-TNG] We all know that no one cares if you are bald in the 24th century but the question remains has a cure been found for baldness or not?

[Assistant] I don't know how well it would work with regards to age-related baldness, but Voyager's EMH was able to stimulate the hair follicals in at least one rescued borg drone (Seven) which resulted in a full head of hair.


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

[User]
ELI5: Are swords and katanas made of meteorites or other space rocks are better weapons than their Earth-counterparts?

Just saw a photo of that katana made of space rock and I'm curious to know if it's a better weapon than those made of metal. Also, what is the ideal Earth element that is best suited for swords? Thank you.

[Assistant]
In the modern day, we can exactly replicate meteoric iron. So there's really no advantage.

In primitive civilizations, it's nearly impossible to find metallic iron except from meteoric iron. Because smelting iron ore is relatively difficult, this means that almost all ancient iron implements needed to be made from meteoric iron.


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

[User]
Can a bright light outside the visible spectrum hurt your eyes?

For that matter, what exactly's happening when a bright light "hurts"?

[Assistant] Yes.  Absolutely light outside the visible spectrum can be harmful.  Both visible and other than visible light can be harmful, but in both cases, it depends on the intensity.  The reason outside-visible light (such as UV/IR) can be much more harmful is because you can't see it so you don't blink to shield yourself and it can cause much more harm before you even know it.


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

[User]
Is there anything in the universe that has existed since the Big Bang continuously in the same form?

Essentially I'm asking if there's anything that has existed forever. The universe seems to recycle itself into new and different forms (we all used to be star dust as the trope goes). Is there anything that has existed forever and hasn't changed form?

[Assistant] Most of the visible matter in the universe (about 98% of it) is hydrogen and helium that has been around since the beginning. Most of it has never even been part of a star, it's just been floating around in the intergalactic medium, and a lot of it likely never will become stars.


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

[User]
Where are the codons defined?

DNA and RNA are typically "read" in groups of 3 that we call codons. Each of those combinations of bases codes for a specific (but not necessarily unique) protein or other "instruction", like start and stop. The entire collection of codons in a genome, in their particular order, "defines" an organism, so to speak.

But where are the codons themselves defined? What determines which groups of 3 bases results in which amino acids? Is it included in the genome itself, like a compiler written in its own programming language? Or is it entirely reliant on the cellular machinery already existing from the parent with the codons pre-determined? I know there are some examples of different codons between different species but also that it's mostly the same among all life; has it really just been passed down through the unbroken chain of reproduction without ever being encoded?

[Assistant]
Your description is a little confused. DNA is not read in triplets, rather pieces of DNA are transcribed into RNA (there are sites that promote the transcription). The RNA in eukaryotes is then spliced to form a messenger RNA. If a given mRNA encodes a protein, a ribosome will bind to it and find a start codon. It will recruit tRNAs that have an anti-codon matching the codon, and link amino acids (not proteins) carried by the tRNA to form an amino acid polymer (protein).

These are not instructions, but physical objects. Some proteins are predominantly structural, some are organic catalysts, some bind other things with various effects.

Much more than just the primary sequence of proteins (formed by translation of codons) defines an organism.

Which amino amino acid maps to which codon is defined by enzymes called tRNA synthetases and the tRNAs themselves, which are indeed encoded in the organisms genome. There are 31 known variations on the mapping of codons and their amino acids, though plants and animals use a common translation (the variations are in fungi, archaebacteria, and mitochondria).


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

[User] ELI5: What are food stamps?

[Assistant] Poor people get money from the government to buy food (this is also, in part, a subsidy to farmers).  To make sure they spend the money on food, they used to get special slips of paper that they would use at the store.  These days, it's all done electronically, just like a credit/debit card, using a system generically called "EBT".


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

[User] Are rainstorms, or storms in general, at all influenced by the sunlight? In other words, do storms behave differently at night vs during the day?

[Assistant] In Arizona during the monsoons there will be thunderheads that form during the afternoon. The heat of the day helps to form the anvil shape as thunderheads need strong convection currents and the heat creates the necessary lift. These convection currents, in turn, move water and ice (hail) through the cloud and  create static electricity which allows for the lightning. The moisture that falls pushes further northward and can fuel the creation of another thunderhead to the north. This repeats creating new storms until the energy dissipates.


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

[User]
[Dragon Ball (All)] How exactly does ki work?

From what I understand, using ki means drawing out of your own life force, or soul. So if someone is enhanced to super strength levels, such as any of the SSJs, what is ki doing? Enhancing their muscles? Making them bulkier? Muscles only have so much tensile strength so how could they lift up something incredibly heavier than a muscle should be able to lift?

[Assistant]
Projecting ki is essentially using your life force to cause physical change in the world. Maybe it's an explosion, maybe it's moving your body through the air, whatever.

In this case, ki is strengthening/supporting your muscles and bones. An easy way to think about it is that the muscles lift as much as they can, and the ki lifts the rest.


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

[User]
[The Simpsons] Why wasn't Ned Flanders at church on Sunday at the end of Homer the Heretic?

The entire episode is about Homer forsaking the church and no longer attending Sunday service. When the house catches fire, the first person to get to him is Ned Flanders when everyone is at church.

Apu is the first to notice because he's a Hindu so he doesn't go to church on Sunday. Krusty is Jewish so he also doesn't go to church on Sunday. Apu likely called him and they met at the fire truck and made their way to church to pick up Chief Wiggum, Milhouse's mom, Hans Moleman, Barney and Otto with all their kit on the truck so they can be picked up and prepped on the way to the fire.

Ned Flanders was at Homer's house long before anyone else. So early in fact that he was able to get in, get homer out, then get homer out *again* before anyone else made it to the house. How could he do that if he was at church like almost everyone else on the volunteer fire service? This could only mean he wasn't at church. So if he wasn't at church, why wasn't he there? He's more devout that even Reverend Lovejoy and **never** skips Sunday service. He spent the entire episode hounding Homer to come back to church. Except on this one occasion. Where was he and what was he doing that for one single moment in his life he felt it was more important than being at church on Sunday?

[Assistant] Ned was at home trying to figure out a way to convince homer to go to church. Ned is deeply devout but even he understands that Sunday service isn't essential for faith weekly. He chose to skip a week of services to look after his neighbor's spiritual well being.


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

[User]
Why is it when things get hot, they become red?

I mean the extra energy would change the objects state of matter, but how would that change how it reflects light?

[Assistant]
The red is not because it reflects light differently, the red light is coming from the object itself.

The object is the one giving off the light.

All objects not at absolute zero give off light. Under normal temperatures, the light is mostly infrared which we can't detect. At higher temperatures, the objects start giving off visible light.

This is known as blackbody radiation and applies to everything, although objects like metals will approximate closer to it.


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

[User]
How would you describe who Socrates was to children aged 8-10 years old?

I have a class on the history of poisons that is asking me to make a presentation for children on Socrates' death. The first part of the assignment is introducing him - how would anyone suggest I go about describing who Socrates was to children that are 8-10 years old?

[Assistant]
Hes this kind of sassy old guy who gave self-important people a hard time in public by asking them really tough questions about stuff they claimed they knew.  It turned out that those people knew a lot less than they claimed they know and were pretty embarrassed and annoyed by the whole deal.   We dont know a lot about what Socrates really said, but it seems like he made a big deal about trying hard to be good and being really honest with yourself about what kind of person you are and how much you know.  This inspired people to think really hard about stuff, and some of his students became famous writers and politicians.  But, the people he embarrassed dragged him to court and he ended up getting the death penalty because he was based and sassed his accusers and made them look stupid all over again.  He wasnt going to act like a coward in his final moments and warned them that it was super unjust to kill innocent people, even sassy ones.

Basically, hes like Khaby Lame, but instead of making fun of life hacks he made fun of powerful people.  Cancel culture was just way worse back then.


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

[User] In Halo, why can the MJOLNIR suit's power supply indefinitely power a half ton exoskeleton/energy shield, but can't power a flashlight for more than a few minutes without having to recharge?

[Assistant]
Perhaps the flashlight isn't meant to be a flashlight, but wearers discovered that by short-circuiting or overcharging a specific panel of the suit's wiring would create a usable incandescent glow via the induction. This is wildly inefficient and causes tons of energy to be wasted as heat, so the suit's internal systems can only withstand it for a brief period.

It would obviously be immensely more practical to wire a few LED bulbs to a straight DC current, but they just haven't gotten around to it due to space aliens and total galactic warfare.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do most countries have different outlet prong formats, and there isn't a universal one?

my girlfriend is going to australia tonight and shes running around trying to find the correct adaptor so it got me wondering...

[Assistant] Electricity infrastructure was set up before international travel was cheap and easy, and before portable electronics. Electrical devices started off big and hard to move, and people didn't travel much anyway, so nobody really wanted to carry electrical things with them from country to country, and there was no real need to all use the same format.


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

[User] Why is Phospohrous (and similar elements like sulfur) more stable when sharing 5 electrons, even though this violates the octet rule?

[Assistant]
More stable than what?  Phosphines, with their three bonds and a lone pair, are perfectly stable until oxygen comes along and spoils everyone's fun.  Same with organic sulfides; they can be oxidized to sulfoxides and sulfones.

The real question here is whether these two elements are actually breaking the octet rule when forming structures whose Lewis dot structures give more than 8 electrons to the S/P atom.  The general (and growing) consensus is that they don't!  The notion that sulfur and phosphorus have d-orbitals available to form extra bonds is a fiction, and not even a particularly useful one (like, say, VSEPR).

What distinguishes S from O or P from N are their large atomic size sand their low electronegativities.  They have a tendency to make more bonds because more atoms fit around them, and they can form bonds with larger ionic character with highly electronegative atoms.  Ever notice how you never see hypervalent compounds with a bunch of bonds to hydrogen, like PH6^- or SH6?  That's because hydrogen isn't electronegative enough to form those bonds with high ionic character.


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

[User]
I think Social Security should by definition be tied to the average age of death. CMV

Social Security in the United States is unsustainable. When it was created, life expectancy was much shorter and people did not generally live on it for very long. Now, people can be dependent on their Social Security paycheck for thirty years or more. With the average life expectancy going up so much, this model is mathematically guaranteed to fail in this generation at this rate.

Yeah, it will hurt, but it needs to gradually be pushed back to, say, the average lifespan minus five years (so roughly 72). Perhaps in the eight or so years between the current age and the new one there would be a dormant period where those still working would neither pay into the program nor receive from it.

[Assistant] This will have a disproportionately negative impact on the lower and middle classes, who tend to work much more physically demanding jobs that become much more difficult to perform with age.  They also tend to have shorter lifespans than those in the upper class, being that they have less access to preventative medical care.  I'd say these are the people we need to be helping *more*, but your proposal would have the opposite effect.


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

[User]
What would happen if Superman did heroin?

Or for that matter, what would happen to any superheroes who did heroin (I know this is a broad question, but I assume most answers would be the same). Would it affect their powers in any way? Would they become addicted?

[Assistant]
Well assuming you could find a way to inject Superman in a way that didn't expose him to a lethal dose of kryptonite. The heroin would probgably have no effect on his Krytonian physiology. Unless it was made from Super Kryptonian poppies.

The most intersting hero to give Heroin to would be the Flash. His extra fast metabolism would break it down quickly but from his Point of view he'd be stranded in a blissful experience for hours, days or weeks while the outside world only experienced a few seconds at most.


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

[User] If electric cars are the future, what will be the long term impact on the environment from the many batteries that will need to be disposed of?

[Assistant]
Disposed batteries is a bit of a misnomer. Telsa for example, plans on recycling the battery packs present in their cars for reuse. Obviously it requires energy to recycle them and make new batteries out of them, but there shouldn't be any massive need to dump batteries somewhere since they can all be reused. Any negative consequences are far outweighed by the pollution and damage to the environment that cars with internal combustion engines produce.

Electric vehicles have no tailpipe emissions and have a much simpler design - a lot less material is needed to produce an electric vehicle (excluding the battery pack) compared to an ICE, so that should also offset any damage caused by an EV-centric economy.


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

[User] ELI5: Whats happening from the point we feel a sneeze coming on and when the sneeze actually happens? Do our brains have a threshold that must be reached before it pulls the trigger on the sneeze?

[Assistant] First the nerves and sensors in your nose feel something irritating. Then your take a slow but deep breath (so the irritant doesn't go further inside your nose) to prepare a sneeze made to blow a lot of high pressure air to blow away the irritation. If you still feel the irritation and your lungs are full, you sneeze. If not, you just exhale.


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

[User] Why do we have 2 of some organs but only 1 of others?

[Assistant]
Because sometimes we only need the one (reproductive organs, mouths, anuses), and sometimes we need two for redundancy (kidneys, lungs, arms)

As organisms evolved, the most advantageous adaptations survived. So, if only having one kidney or having four stomachs was better, we would have likely eventually evolved to have them.


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

[User]
Would forcing large companies to pay tax really scare them away?

By which I mean is the threat of them basing themselves in other countries due to tax an actual problem?

[Assistant]
Just remember that the United States is an offshore location for a lot of non-American institutions as well.

The Economist had a very good article on this in their end of February issue. It was a special report on Offshore Finance. It's actually *several* articles. It points out offshoring globally as well as regionally, and correctly points out Delaware as an interstate "offshore".


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

[User] [Song of Ice and Fire] Has anybody in the world figured out steam power yet?

[Assistant] Someone may have figured it out at a Hero of Alexandria level (i.e., they did an experiment and found that steam could be used to do basic work), but if so it was either forgotten or the records are buried in the Maester's library. No one shows any real evidence of applying steam power on a practical level.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it when I open a executable/file in notepad it mostly looks like random glyphs?

[Assistant]
All computer files are made up of bytes. A byte is 8 binary digits, and this can hold a number between 0 and 255.

Some of these numbers represent regular everyday characters - for example, 65 is the character "A". Notepad assumes, when you load a file, that the file contains printable characters, and tries to display them to you.

(ELI12 note: it also checks to see if the file contains Unicode, where it groups two bytes together to make a single character. Not relevant to the question, but included for completeness.)

When you load an executable file into Notepad, some of the bytes in the file will, by chance, be regular printable characters. But many of them won't. Even though they aren't regular characters, they still get displayed on the screen. Each code between 0 and 255 has a meaning when it comes to displaying it - but for many of those codes, the meaning is simply a weird-looking shape, and that's what you see.


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

[User] [Star Wars] What would have happened if Vader found out that Leia was his daughter rather than finding out Luke was his son?

[Assistant]
For this to happen, a lot of things need to happen differently.

Firstly, Vader found out about Luke when he and the Emperor looked into the pilot who'd managed to make the shot that destroyed the Death Star.  From there, it wasn't hard to figure out that Luke was his child, and that Padme had apparently given birth before she'd died.

So if we're assuming that Vader found out about Leia rather than Luke, how did it happen?  Well, it seems rather unlikely that Leia would ever be in the cockpit of that X-Wing in the Battle of Yavin, so let's look at it from another direction.  Leia was taken to Alderaan to be raised by Bail and Breha Organa.  They managed to keep Leia secret from Vader all these years... but what if they'd failed? What if, somehow, Vader discovered Leia was his daughter while she was still a child?  If that's the case, then Vader would likely personally travel to Alderaan to retrieve her himself.  No doubt Bail and Breha would try to stop him.  No doubt Vader would not take that very well.  There will be blood spilled.  Alderaan's government and populace would object to Vader simply marching into a Prince's home and taking his adopted daughter, possibly killing the Prince and his wife in the process.  This would lead to widespread political and popular unrest against the Empire in Alderaan, which would in turn likely lead to a heavy-handed Imperial response.

So basically, if Vader discovers Leia's his child while she's still young, then it ends in an Alderaani bloodbath.

Afterwards, Vader and the Emperor would likely start training Leia in the Dark Side of the Force.  Their success might depend on how young Leia was at the time, the younger the better.  Eventually, Leia becomes a key Darkside assassin and operative for the Empire.  Deprived of such a key politician and negotiator, the Alliance to Restore the Republic never really gets off the ground.

Next, what if Leia is kept hidden from Vader until after she joins the rebellion.  One of the first key encounters between Vader and Leia took place when he captured her ship, the Tantive IV.  Suppose that Vader senses Leia's Force presence during this encounter, and realizes that she's his daughter.  Well then, Vader would likely take her back to Coruscant and try to turn her to the Dark Side.  Unlike training her as a child, however, the adult Leia proves much more resistant against Vader's teachings.  However, because she never had a Jedi mentor like Luke had Obi-Wan, Leia's resistance is eventually worn down, especially when Alderaan is destroyed by the Death Star.  Leia's spirit is broken, and she submits to the Empire.  In this scenario, Leia still serves the Emperor and Vader, but not as a high-ranking operative.  Instead, her role becomes largely symbolic and political, where she serves as a symbol for rebel-friendly systems abandoning their misguided cause and returning to the embrace of the Empire.  She also uses her Force powers to get a leg up on the other side during negotiations and discussions.  She never receives any combat training, because the Emperor does not trust her.

Oh, and the Alliance to Restore the Republic *still* doesn't get anywhere, because they've lost one of their most important leaders.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does shaking soda release the carbon dioxide?

[Assistant]
Soda is saturated with CO2 when it's in a can highly pressurized with pure CO2.

When you pop open the can, this reduces the air pressure (specifically, the partial pressure of CO2). Suddenly, the soda is highly supersaturated with CO2.

When the CO2 comes out of solution at the surface, you don't really notice, but when CO2 comes out of solution under water, a bubble of CO2 forms. The equilibrium state is a completely flat soda (leave an opened soda out for a few days - dead flat and no bubbles).

But equilibrium isn't reached instantly, it takes time. You can reduce that time by creating more nucleation sites.

A nucleation site is an irregularity that allows a bubble to begin forming. Simmer some water and you'll see steams of bubbles forming at specific locations on the bottom of the pan. Each corresponds to a tiny scratch on the pot where the bubbles form.

What's interesting is a bubble is itself a nucleation site. In boiling water, you can see the bubbles growing larger as they rise.

Shaking a can mixes air into the soda, creating more bubbles, creating more nucleation sites, and allowing the CO2 to fall out of solution faster.

A mentos tablet has an extremely rough surface that also dissolves into more rough surfaces, putting ridiculous numbers of nucleation sites in the soda, allowing the soda to reach equilibrium nearly instantly. The result is all the CO2 turns to gas.


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

[User]
[lotr] What if Smaug was killed during his attack on Erebor?

Durin's Folk affected a lot of the events during their wanderings. What if the Kingdom under the Mountain survived?

[Assistant] No takeover of Erebor means no Company is ever formed to retake it.  That means that Bilbo never finds the One Ring.  Eventually, the Ring would influence Gollum to leave and head towards Mordor.  Sauron gets the Ring and defeats his enemies.


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

[User]
[Batman/General DC universe] Why doesn't Batman help Mr. Freeze?

Mr. Freeze commits crimes only to fund his research to save his wife from her medical condition. While cold and methodical, he is a fairly honorable man, as Arkham inmates go. If his wife was cured, it's quite likely he would stop committing crimes.

Batman is friends with Aliens, Demigods, Magic Users, and people who use extremely high tech. Surely there is someone in his circle of friends who could cure Ms. Freeze, thaw her out, and end her husbands reign of terror with little cost to either Freeze or Batman?

[Assistant]
Mr Freeze wouldn't accept the help.

He doesn't trust others to look after his wife: certainly not batman, who he blames for his wife's condition in a lot of continuities and is his mortal enemy in all of them. And to be fair, the one time he did let someone else help, she came back as a pyrokenetic sociopath who had to be refrozen, so he's not without justification.

He might be one of the better of batman's rogues, but he's still insane. *He's* going to save his wife. He wouldn't trust anyone Batman brought out with the life of his beloved Nora.


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

[User] ELI5: How to the astronauts and everyone on the International Space station have oxygen?

[Assistant] Electrolysis of water (H2O) is the main method to generateoxygenaboard theISS. Water is split intooxygen(O2) and hydrogen (H2). Theoxygenis vented into the breathable cabin air system, known as theOxygenGeneration System, while the explosive hydrogen is vented externally.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why have humans not evolved to enjoy the foods that are best for their health?

I'm trying to eat healthy.  Not just calorie-counts or dieting, I'm trying to eat foods that are recognized as very healthy foods  The best foods for your body never seem to be the best tasting. Why?

[Assistant]
We have.

Humans and their ancestors spent millions of years on the dry plains of central Africa.  Food was scarce and we've evolved to like calorie dense foods that best prepared us to survive food shortages.

For most of human history slamming as much food as possible into your face *was beneficial*.

Only recently has it become an issue due to an overabundance of high calorie food.


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

[User]
eli5: Why isn't water the most effective Chapstick?

How come liquid water isn't the most efficient moisturizer? after all, it is 100% moisture, but when I take a sip of water my lips don't heal as quickly as they do when I apply Chapstick.

[Assistant] Because the point is the "moisture" will still evaporate if there isn't a fatty humectant layer to prevent it from doing so. The chapstick or Vaseline or whatever else you use provides that barrier which therefore locks moisture in speeding up healing.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why has aircraft technology (seemingly) stagnated in the past 30 years?

I'm sure that things like radar and black boxes and other smaller things are going to always be improving slightly, but aeroplanes in general seem to have stayed the same for many years. If you look at 80s movies, the 'heroes' will be driving noticeably old cars, using phones in booths, and everyone's clothes are different, yet planes are the same. In 1979 I'm sure that 20 year olds would have thought by now that we would all be flying in concordes, but that obviously isn't the case. Why haven't there been any large recent advancements in aeroplanes?

[Assistant]
On top of all the current comments:
It happens to be that the current lineup of aircraft design-wise is the pretty efficient (aerodynamically, and therefore economically) for its given purpose (travelling large distances).

There have been changes to aeroplanes since the 80's but most of them aren't immediately noticeable from the outside. For example the use of digital controls (fly-by-wire) replacing mechanical controls in the cockpit, changes in the aircraft body composition (stronger, lighter), engines being quieter and more fuel efficient (787 dreamliner being the best example).

Concordes fell through because it was more or less a premium novelty experience, until the fated crash occured which tarnished the reputation of supersonic commercial aviation in the public.

There's also a lot of bureaucracy that happens when you try to implement a new design, all kinds of regulations, safety thresholds and whatnot. The A380 being an example forced several major airports to widen runways to accommodate for the increased width/wingspan of the aircraft.

All in all, the airplanes in service generally 'work' at some level of satisfaction, there hasn't been a technological breakthrough in aircraft design which allows greater efficiency in transporting a large amount of passengers, and as such the status quo is established.


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

[User] ELI5: How does my body know when to take a 90 minute nap, vs taking an 8 hour nap?

[Assistant] Human circadian rhythms are on approximately 90 minute cycles. This means when you are asleep you go through progressively deeper stages of sleep, until you have a period of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and then the cycle repeats itself over again. Your body knows when the cycle is resetting and goes back to the very light sleep stage. If you ever wake up in the middle of the night feeling like you haven't been sleeping it's probably because you just started a new sleep cycle.


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

[User]
[The Boys] How accepted is heroes killing criminals in this universe?

Even when Homelander and other heroes are shown doing hero work they casually kill or seriously injure criminals without any sort of issue. So is killing criminals largely accepted by the society or do heroes just not give a shit.

[Assistant] It's probably an accepted side effect of superheroics, and Homelander and company have good enough PR, courtesy of Vought, that people think that lethal force was justified, either to protect themselves, others, or because the criminal deserved it in some manner.


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

[User] [Harry Potter] Would mother's protection magic kick in if Voldemort just stabbed baby Harry?

[Assistant]
We don't know for sure, but the protection did extend from not only magical but physical attack.

When Voldemort-possessed Quirrell tried to strangle Harry, he found his hands burning and blistering.

I would hesitate a guess that yes, it would save him, perhaps by causing the knife to heat up and shatter on impact.