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

[User] ELI5: Why do rich people donate to a certain college instead of providing free scholarships so students don't have as much debt?

[Assistant]
It's a lot of work to set up a scholarship fund, and it's expensive if you want to get a tax deduction. You need lawyers, etc. Schools generally want to give out more financial aid. It allows them to accept better students. Harvard, for example, eliminated tuition for all students with family income less than $100k recently. When they donate to the school, the school uses that money for the benefit of the students.

Some math to consider: If you give $100k to a school and you're in the top income tax bracket, it's equally as expensive to give out $60k to random students (because you miss the tax deduction). You can donate the money to a school, they can use $40k to remodel a lobby or hand out free condoms or whatever else they want to do and *still* give out the same amount of scholarships as you would have if you went off on your own.


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

[User] [Men in Black] Why is the MiB headquarters in New York kept on Centaurian time with a 37 hour day?

[Assistant] Hey, Sport, you think Earth is the center of the universe?  Listen up, Cubbie, there's a whole Universe of planets out there and there's plenty who don't give a damn about your silly little medium-sized yellow sun, Buck-o.  So forget that whole "We're number one" attitude, Sparky.  Pack up your foam finger and join up with the rest of the gang here in the big, wide, intergalactic community.  You get me, Bud?


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

[User] ELI5:How does the post office redirect your mail when you change addresses if the info is handwritten on envelopes?

[Assistant]
The post office scans the address and uses optical character recognition (OCR) to digitize the address.  The computer then helps sort the mail to the correct destination and can apply any address changes.

If the writing is too poor/damaged then a person has a look and tries to make it out and sort the package manually.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it so much more difficult for humans to fall asleep, compared to other species?

I already have the understanding that stress is a factor, but why did humans evolve into beings that typically need a "winding down" period in order to fall asleep? Evolutionarily speaking, I can understand the need for us to be on alert as hunter-gatherers. But why do the majority of us need at least anywhere from 5-30 minutes to actually lie in bed with our eyes closed in order to fall asleep?

[Assistant]
A lot of this is psychologically stress related. Many of us are on our computers or otherwise staring at a screen right before bed. the blue light from our screens messes with our circadian rhythm, sometimes being more stimulating than sunlight.

We're also distracted right before bed. As our head hits the pillow all we can do is think and for some of us, that's when the worrying starts and we begin working it over in our heads for solutions to our problems. All this combined with lack of adequate exercise, caffeine, and dozens of other issues make it much harder to fall asleep.

Animals might not need this "winding down" period that we do, but they're not asleep the moment they close their eyes either. Animals go through the same sleep cycles as humans with differing lengths of each stage depending on their sleep requirements (ex. a cat that sleeps 10 hours at a time vs. a giraffe that sleeps 4 minutes at a time).  If you have a pet at home and some free time, you can watch them lay down to sleep and then try to wake them, chances are if you do within 10min. they'll pop their heads right up but if let them go for 30-45min. it may take some shaking to rouse them.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Who were the customers of the Kaminoans, other than their big military contract with the Republic?

The secret contract with Palpatine's Republic was no doubt profitable for the Kaminoan cloning industry, but they can't have relied solely on once-per-century opportunities like that to keep their whole industry afloat (at least, Id think not).

What other kinds of business did the Kaminoan cloners do?

Create brainless "dummy bodies" for the wealthy as sources of organ transplants (or recipients of whole brain transplants perhaps)?

Clone galaxy-famous holoporn stars to serve as high-priced sex slaves in Hutt-run brothels in the outer rim?

Clone people who want to continue their family line/have an heir but don't want to go through the natural reproduction procedure of their species?

Clone animals or plants of particular agricultural, medicinal, or other interest (e.g. an unusually high-yielding fruit tree, a champion racing mount)? Or perhaps create of new strains? (Develop a crop that has genes from a Tatooine plant that makes it particularly good at conserving water, but also has genes from a Nar Shaddaa plant thats good at thriving in polluted conditions?)

How did the Kaminoans support all of their fancy cloning facilities before they landed the Army of the Republic jackpot?

[Assistant]
According to the Wookiepedia Legends page, the Kaminoans developed highly sophisticated cloning techniques as a way of self preservation due to the flooding of their planet. It was only later that they offered their services to offworlders in exchange for money, and only to very select customers. It mentions mining companies hiring them to create cloned miners and pirates and warlords hiring them to create elite soldiers.

he implication is that Kamino possessed far greater capability in terms of altering genetic material, such as the accelerated growth and inhibitor chips of the Jango clones. This is supported by Lama Su finding it curious that Jango wanted an unaltered clone--the whole point to using the Kaminoans was their abilities in genetic manipulation.


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

[User] ELI5: What are the differences between Body builders, Power lifters, Calisthenics athletes, and Strongmen and why do we distinguish between them?

[Assistant]
Body builders dont actually train for strength, they train purely for looks, so they do tons of targeted exercise and tons of cutting (eating restricted diets) and even doing things like waist training.  Plus they will dehydrate themselves before competing to make their skin tighter and muscles pop even more.

Powerlifting is training actual strength but in very specific exercises: deadlifting, bench press, and squatting. So while you are actually training for strength, its in very specific, regimented exercises.

Strongmen are like, old school Viking strength stuff. Their competitions involve just lifting, dragging, and throwing heavy things that arent a normal barbell. So things like logs, giant stones, big chains. Strongmen are the giant barrel chested guys who are just lifting the absolute heaviest stuff.

Calisthenics is also strength training that is all body weight stuff. So youre doing push ups, pulls ups, hand stands, presses, or hell the thing where people hold onto a pole and then hold their body out parallel to the ground. But the defining feature is really that its all body weight stuff, you dont use like, big weights.


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

[User]
[Pacific Rim] What makes two pilots drift compatible?

If I were to become a pilot for a Jaeger, what traits should the other pilot have in order for us to be drift compatible? Do we also need to be the same weight when it comes to physical compatibility or is it all mental?

[Assistant] From what little we know it comes down to similar attitudes and temperaments. Sharing a similar outlook on life while also having similar brain wave patterns. You're quite literally sharing your thoughts and feelings and memories while drifting so being able to meld your opinions together instantly is key. Having to stop and debate or consider different emotional responses to stimulus will cause you to fall out of the drift if too strongly felt.


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

[User]
CMV: It's immoral for a stranger to assert traumatization upon another (Dismissing "I was spanked as a child and turned out ok" as internalized trauma), as it robs their individual experience.

* I was spanked as a child, I was not traumatized from it.
* I do not condone spanking as it's wrong, however not all wrong-doings are always traumatizing.
* Not every individual is affected by bad things them same way or to the same degree.
* It is not moral, for a stranger to claim they know better about your personal intimate experience, than you yourself.

I liken it to situations where someone of an oppressed group says they're not oppressed. People shut down their claims as internalized oppression (in the case of spanking: "internalized trauma"). That takes away their individual autonomy and dehumanizes them.

Psychiatric evaluation would be an exception, as they are not a stranger (they know your history) and are evaluating you at your request.

[Assistant]
The science is pretty clear that, on average, beatings are bad for kids.

The science can't tell us whether or not you are an outlier.  But, if you use your anecdote to suggest that means of behavioral correction that are proven to be harmful is ok, you are going to get push back.


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

[User]
[Donkey Kong Jr] Was Jr murdered or paid hush money to cover up Mario's past?

I dont think Jr ever appeared after he rescued his father. Now that Mario is a superstar, do you think Jr was paid off to hide that chapter in Mario's dark past, or is he sleeping with the fishies?

[Assistant]
Jr is the current tie-wearing DK's father. Cranky Kong was the gorilla who had beef with Mario back in the old days, but has since retired. We don't know exactly why Jr kept out of the limelight, but I'd guess it was to ensure that DK could grow up away from meddling plumbers.

Or if you want to go by the other interpretation, where all of the Nintendo characters are good friends and the games are just performances/friendly competitions, maybe Jr's just not that good of a performer. He had his shot at the main character of his own game, didn't do so well, and decided to live a quiet life. His son DK, on the other hand, is a natural at it and has been part of the Nintendo ensemble for decades.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it so important to print the name of the country that a product is produced in?

I see "made in _____" everywhere and I don't see the impact of it.

[Assistant] Country of origin standards are important for determining how much tax should be charged on the item when it passes through customs. Requiring the tags is also politically popular with organizations encouraging people to support a local economy.


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

[User]
[DC] Would batman allow himself to be killed if it meant not having to kill anyone?

If we put batman in a kill or be killed situation with another human, would he let himself be killed? Let's assume batman would be able to kill his opponent without much trouble, but cannot otherwise subdue or restrain them for whatever reason.

[Assistant]
I think most versions of Batman in this scenario *would* kill in self defense, and it would absolutely break him.

Fortunately for Batman, no one powerful enough to contrive a situation where he can escape by killing someone but not by disabling or otherwise subduing them has ever put him in that situation.


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

[User] Wouldn't it make sense for airplane manufacturers to make the wheels spin either with a motor or the wind before a landing to preserve tires?

[Assistant]
Not worth the extra weight and complexity. Tires are relatively cheap and have to be replaced regularly anyways.

There were some tests done with an Airbus airliner a few years back where they put electric motors in some of the wheels so the jet could taxi using just using its APU providing electric power. The idea behind it was to save fuel when taxiing by not having to have the engines running (and burning fuel), especially at busy airports where you might have to wait in line for takeoff.


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

[User] Would Superman's Kryptonian metabolism allow him to get drunk off of Earth's alcohol?

[Assistant]
This falls under a recent discussion-

Superman draws so much power from the sun he doesn't necessarily have to eat, but probably does to keep up appearances. In contrast, his metabolism is probably so efficient that it would require a massive amount of alcohol to get him drunk- So much so that it wouldn't be worth it.

So... no.


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

[User]
ELI5: When a company goes public, how do they decide how many shares are available for people to buy, and what price?

So you're the latest Silicon Valley app, and you're going public. How does whoever is handling the IPO decide the company has X amount of shares and they're initially worth X amount?

Is it basically an estimate, they assume that 1,000,000 shares will be sold at $1 rather than 100,000 at $10? But then if that's the case why not offer more than 1,000,000 l, why not make it 2,000,000 shares at $1.

[Assistant]
Before companies go public they almost always do at least *one* round of private investing.

Say you found a company, you own 100% of it. You do a round of investing where you sell off 10% for $500,000 to a private investor. You own 90% still, the investor owns 10%. When you go public, you're putting up some of  your 90%. It's priced so as not to devalue the original guy's investment. Meaning you shouldn't price it so that 10% is now only worth $10 instead of $500,000, because that would screw over the guy who gave that money originally.

You also don't want to price it too high because people might not buy it.

There are a lot of ways to value a company. One way is to look at all the factors - how many assets do you own (buildings, printers, inventory, etc.), how much debt do you owe, how profitable are you, etc.


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

[User]
ELI5: Tesla driving range.

Note: I don't know science, I don't know cars, this was just a random thought I had.

Not sure if this is the right place for this but a Tesla just drove by on the highway and I had a thought. In a normal car with a combustion engine, running the engine charges the battery right? And in a Tesla each tire has it's own separate electric motor powered off of the main battery, I believe. Why not have each tire also act as a sort of generator using the spin of the wheel. The amount generated by each wheel alone I doubt would be much but all four combined could possibly be enough to increase the driving range by a decent amount.

[Assistant]
>Why not have each tire also act as a sort of generator using the spin of the wheel.

The physically possible version of this is called regenerative braking and it's already used extensively in fully-electric, hybrid, and even some non-electric vehicles to recapture energy.  It takes the energy of the car and applies a braking force through the wheels to suck it back out and store it in the battery.


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

[User]
Does our brain use more calories if we are actively doing something mentally stimulating?

If our brains use around 20% of our calories, is this a general flat rate the brain just uses, or if we're doing something like learning or problem solving does it require more calories?

[Assistant] The brain is metabolically active just like all other tissues. When it is doing more, it requires more - glucose, blood flow, oxygen, etc. We can actually watch specific areas of the brain light up on functional MRI scans when a person is performing specific tasks. The fMRI works precisely because active areas of the brain will begin consuming more nutrients when they are being stimulated.


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

[User]
How do I actually do philosophy when I'm reading philosophy? How do I critically examine the arguments in philosophical texts and essays?

How do I actually begin doing philosophy myself? How do I learn how to critically examine the arguments and ideas in various philosophical text and essays? For instance, I often find a big problem for beginners of philosophy is that many of their objections to arguments or theories they encounter when reading simply stem from their misunderstanding of the author.

I how do I learn to actually develop meaningful and thoughtful objections and criticisms of philosophical ideas I encounter while reading? While I eventually plan to study philosophy in college, how do I begin developing this skill as an amateur reader still in high-school?

[Assistant] Begin by restating the argument or idea in your own words. You may not get it exactly right. That's fine. You will get better with practice and as you get exposed to more philosophical ideas. Then pick out the strong and weak points of the argument. Are they enough to make you agree/disagree with the idea? Can you state your reasons for agreement/disagreement?


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

[User] What is it that I'm seeing in total darkness?

[Assistant] Your brain has baseline electrical activity. Usually the visual input you are receiving from your eyes washes it out (think about a ticking clock that you cant hear over your stereo). When you stop getting visual input, that neural noise becomes perceptible (you can hear the clock ticking, so to speak).


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

[User]
How do Physicists actually come up with scientific formulas?

For eg, how did Newton actually come up with the gravitational force equation- Gm1m2/r^2. How did he come up with the inverse square law? How did he calculate the value of G? What precise measurements he took?

[Assistant]
Newton never calculated the value of G - it was too difficult and wasn't measured until Cavendish did it 70 years later. The precise value of G is not that important usually anyway- what's important was the dependence on the masses and the distance.

So how did Newton come up with the equation? First, from Galileo's experiments Newton knew that the acceleration from gravity didn't depend on the mass of an object, so the force must be proportional to that mass (from F=ma). Since gravity is produced by mass, the force must be proportional to the gravitating body's mass as well -therefore, the force is proportional to the product of the  masses of the 2 bodies.
Finally, the 1/r^2 dependence and the fact that the force points toward the other body are required for the equation to be consistent with Kepler's laws.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did the United States get to be so wealthy?

Basically, I understand that we produce food or whatever, but is that what we are selling that has made us wealthy throughout history? I don't understand how we became so successful monetarily as compared to much of the rest of the world.

[Assistant] We were a manufacturing powerhouse well into the 19th century. We became one of the largest when England and the rest of Europe started licking it's war wounds, though England was arguably the largest before WW2.


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

[User]
If the world's population decreases, as as a result demand decreases for basically everything... what would happen to our economies?

I'm no economist, but Demand-based deflation of product prices is probably om the ropes...
what would change? Will things get cheaper? Or will people get richer?

How will it affect our economies?

[Assistant]
A reduction in the population (labor supply) would reduce aggregate output. We would be all poorer absolutely but per capita output and the distribution of the output is unclear.

This is all ceteris paribus. We may create more productive capital to increase output given the fall in labor.


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

[User] [Disney Aladdin] If Aladdin wished to be the most powerful sorcerer as his first wish then after Jafar stolen the lamp also wished to be the most powerful sorcerer, which of them is the most powerful sorcerer?

[Assistant]
Jafar.

Think of it like any other attribute. If Steve is the world tallest man, but then Pete was, which of them is the tallest? So long as both of them are alive at the same time (like in your question), we know Pete must be taller (or Jafar more powerful).


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

[User] ELI5: When swiping a card, you would think if you swipe slowly the machine could get a better read and accept your card. Why is this not the case? Why do you have to swipe it fast?

[Assistant]
A magnetic stripe readers operates by listening to a magnetic field for changes created by the passing card.   A card moving faster creates what could be described as a "louder" "message".

Ideally, a consistent, swift swipe produces the most clear "message" for the reader to pick up on, and it is also generally easier to maintain a more consistent card speed when the card is moving over the read head faster.


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

[User] [The Lord of the Rings] Could any member of the Fellowship have un-corruptedly traveled to Mt. Doom with the One Ring taped onto their personage.

[Assistant] No. Being near it is all it takes. Boromir was corrupted by it and he rarely got within a few metres of the thing. Sam did well to not be corrupted by it but had he been nearer it would have taken its toll.


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

[User] When we take footage of the ocean floor that isn't reached by sunlight, are the lights used for filming harmful to the ocean life?

[Assistant]
Generally not.

You might be drawing an analogy to 'if i sit in the dark for a while, a bright light is really bright - imagine if i lived in the dark!', but it isn't really like that.

Most of the visible spectrum doesn't penetrate too far, with only the blue end of the visible spectrum penetrating to the depths. As a result many animals that far down are insensitive to light, and those that are tend to be sensitive to only blue light - It's why so many deep sea creatures appear to be red or pink when we film them with white light (since red light doesn't penetrate that far down, a red coloured object is functionally black).

The only minor impact i can think of is in regards to a handful of species that have developed the ability to broadcast and sense red light. They are predators, and essentially have red 'headlights' under their eyes that cause the red/pink animals to light up like a christmas tree. Broadcasting white light down there would illuminate the subject to these predators...but it's a pretty niche thing, and not something to be concerned about.


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

[User]
Sunburn vs. skin cancer

With summer here and everyone getting sun burn I have a few questions I hope you folks can shed some light on.

Is skin cancer on the rise around the world?  I remember as I child (roughly 20 years ago) I would run around all day in the sun, never use any sort of sun screen, and didn't have a worry.  Now it seems, everyone thinks you will get skin cancer if you don't use sun screen.  (Personally I am fairly dark skinned and rarely burn, I never use sun screen)

If it is on the rise, is it because of global warming / depletion of the ozone layer?

Should I be using sunscreen whenever out in the sun for an extended period of time even though I do not burn?

Are pale skin people more likely to get skin cancer then people with high melanin levels?

[Assistant] Global warming has absolutely nothing to do with getting sunburnt (you burn from the radiation, not the heat). A slightly depleting ozone layer will have an effect, but it depends greatly on where in the world you are as the ozone layer does not deteriorate uniformly.


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

[User] [Charmin Bears-verse] Why are bears in this universe so obsessed with toilet paper?

[Assistant] In winter, bears enter a torpid state, similar to hibernation. They don't eat, living off their fat stores. Neither do they defecate, forming a fcal plug that is hard and fibrous. Come spring, they arise and hunt and forage. And poop. The fcal plug can contain bones, shells of nuts, tins found in human campsite trash, leathery husks of pelts from eaten animals, bits of gravel and asphalt devoured for the road salt that had been sprinkled upon it, and copies of Mad magazine. Pooping out this fcal plug can be un*bear*ably painful and leaves our ursine friends with a raw and sore fundament. As they are so sensitive, soft toilet tissue is a paramount concern for all bears, from Smokey The Bear to Iorek Byrnison, from Paddington to, er, Pooh.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do the clocks on all my devices fall out of sync?

Had a power cut three months ago. Set my oven, my microwave and alarm clock to match the time on my phone. After setting them they would have all been within 1 minute of each other roughly.

Three months on, at the time of writing this, my phone reads 10:10, oven 9:56, microwave 10:02 and digital clock 10:11.

[Assistant]
The clock in each machine is designed around a resonator - a small device which vibrates and its vibration is measured and counted to keep time. This is much like the pendulum in a clock.

Now these things are precise. Higher quality ones can get very precise. They are not, however, perfect, and every one will be cut slightly different. A different cut means a different frequency, and a different frequency means that one will count faster than another.


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

[User] Could you acquire a vaccination through a blood transfusion? ..and would it be cheaper to administer vaccinations by transfusing the blood of healthy, vaccinated people who are O-?

[Assistant]
When blood is transfused, you receive some of the antibodies from the donor, and this gives you "passive" immunity for awhile, until those antibodies get cleared out of your system, generally after a few months.  Passive immunity does not stimulate your immune system to produce antibodies.

Active immunity requires exposure to either the disease, or a vaccine containing the disease's antigen.

NB: This is considerably simplified to make it more understandable, and contains several generalizations.


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

[User] eli5: why arent animals massive? Elephants are huge, and they seem to be doing great, so why are other animals so small?

[Assistant]
Elephants are one of the very few survivors of land megafauna.  There's been a number of megafauna extinctions over the last 50,000 or so years.  Some are thought to have been caused by the to and fro of the ice age while others are thought to have been caused directly or indirectly by prehistoric humans.

Megafauna need more food and so they're more likely to go extinct during periods of time when food is reduced.  Then you have humans moving around the world with spears and megafauna made very tempting targets to hunt.

And finally, elephants are endangered due to humans.


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

[User] ELI5: How do developed countries deal with government corruption very well? How do these governments' differ with third-world countries who struggle with it?

[Assistant]
The developed countries used to suffer from huge corruption, and many of the changes in their political evolution over the last few hundred years have been made with the aim of preventing and controlling it. Before it came to be seen as a good thing in itself, democracy was a way to prevent high officials corruptly misusing their positions. Many of the day-to-day features of the developed countries and their governments are there wholly or partly to prevent corruption. This isn't just law enforcement, it's things like the rules by which civil servants are appointed (on the basis of ability not connections); external audits of government spending; appeal courts; transparency about government decisions etc.

There are also some features that tend to make countries more or less corrupt: inequality breeds corruption - its' no coincidence that the Nordic countries have the lowest levels of both corruption and inequality. Welfare systems and social safety nets also help prevent corruption, because government officals aren't expected to look after their extended family. And secrecy and complexity both encourage corruption: it's easier to get away with it if people can't see or understand what you're doing.  One of the big drivers of corruption is where the government gets its revenue. If the government takes it from the population in taxes, then people hold them to account about how it's spent. But if the government takes it from oil or mining companies in as a fee for extracting natural resources, then there's no accountability for what they do with the cash.

 Lots of developing countries have never developed the government systems that prevent corruption. They're poor, with high levels of inequality and no social safety nets, no transparency and no auditors, so governments can get away with huge corruption. In many countries it's become a deeply embedded part of the culture, and it's reflected in how poorly the public sector is paid: you might be expected to "buy"  a job by paying off your boss, and then make the money back by extracting bribes from everyone who uses the service that you're supposed to provide for free.


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

[User]
[LotR/Silmarillion] Eru is all powerful and completely willing to intervene in the world directly when things get too bad. Why do people like Morgoth/Sauron keep fighting what appears to be a hopeless conflict?

Anytime their plans work out and theyre steamrolling everybody in Arda, Eru just reaches down and slaps them back into the dirt.

What keeps these guys going? Whats their endgame? How exactly are they expecting to ever overcome Eru and his plans for the world?

[Assistant] Two things. One, you don't know someone is all powerful until you've been utterly defeated. Maybe they think they might finally be able to defeat Eru.  Two, they aren't human. They don't have human psychology. They may be unable to act against their basic nature even if it is pointless to keep trying. If their nature is to rebel or to corrupt or to destroy, they'll keep doing those things as best they can, regardless of the consequences.


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

[User]
[DC] How would Batman handle an upstanding citizen discovering his identity and wanting to unmask him?

Maybe an investigative journalist  has some lucky breaks or some random passerby to Batman brawling with criminals happens to see his mask get pulled back just enough to make out none other than Bruce Wayne. Either way, someone has figured out that Bruce Wayne is Batman, Batman knows this, and this person intends to make this knowledge public, perhaps of the opinion that Batman is just a vigilante, and has enough evidence to make this credible. I can understand that if this were a criminal, Batman might use blackmail, coercion, or pursue any number of other routes that he doesn't have any problem dishing out to the scum of Gotham (sans killing of course) to stop them from leaking this. However, Batman goes digging and finds that this person is not scum at all, and is in fact the very kind of person that he works so hard to protect.

What does he do?

Has this scenario ever come up in the comics?

[Assistant] The easiest thing to do is for Bruce to meet with the person or appear in a public place with a lot of witnesses, and then at the same time, "Batman" (aka Alfred or robin or someone trusted, dressed in the batsuit) will swing in and do something fancy and then be off on his merry way.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are there so many Saudi Princes? And how many are there?

It seems every time you open the news, there is another story about a Saudi Prince. How can there be so many? The British have something 6 or so. It seems there are hundreds in Saudi Arabia. Am I mistaken?

[Assistant]
There are 15,000 members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia, all princes/princesses or better. Part of this is just due to the fact that Saudi Arabia has practiced, and still practices, polygamy. The founder of modern Saudi Arabia had at roughly 100 children, 45 of them sons. His youngest was born **52 years** after his firstborn.

Picking three random sons (the first three kings after Ibn Saud): Saud, Faisal, and Khalid. Saud had 115 children, Faisal 19, Khalid has 9. The "norm" for Ibn Saud's sons and grandsons is closer to Faisal and Khalid than Saud, especially now that the law states a man can have no more than 4 wives, but that's still wayyyyy more than the British royal family.


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

[User] ELI5: How do scientists know the exact number of protons, electrons and neutrons present in an atom?

[Assistant]
Before any concept of subatomic particles, people knew about atoms and elements via a wide array of experiments (which could be detailed, but isn't really relevant to this story).  When you have a purified sample of an element, you can determine how much an atom of it weighs, and so we start with knowing a bunch of elements and their atomic weights.

Enter Dmitri Mendeleev.  He notices that if you arrange the elements by increasing weight, you end up with repeating groups of elements that are chemically similar.  This was nice, except people knew something wasn't quite right with it, because you had to do a couple tricks to make similarly-acting elements end up in the right groups (such as swapping the by-weight ordering of tellurium and iodine or cobalt and nickel).  Once this was done, the elements gradually got numbered using their place in the table: 1 is Hydrogen, 2 is Helium, etc.  The numbers didn't mean anything to anyone, they were just useful identifiers, and they were called atomic numbers.

Later, Joseph J. Thomson is working on figuring out what is going on in electric discharge tubes.  He discovers that tiny particles are being discharged from the cathode in those tubes, and he managed to measure the ratio between their charge and mass.  He calls those particles electrons.

Next we go to Ernest Rutherford.  He had an experiment where he fired a bunch of positively-charged particles at a thin sheet of gold leaf, and he noticed that the vast majority of them made it through without interacting with anything, but a few of them got deflected.  This led him to hypothesize that atoms had a dense central core of positive charge (the nucleus) and then a diffuse cloud of electrons around it.  Since atoms overall usually have neutral electric charge, the number of electrons and the charge of the nucleus had to be equal.

Following on from this was Henry Moseley.  He measured the wavelengths of X-rays sent off by various elements in a particular kind of experimental setup, and he determined that the wavelength was proportional to the square of the atomic number.  That indicated that the atomic number actually indicated a physical quantity, which was then hypothesized as the amount of charge in the nucleus.  One of the neat things this did was conclusively show where there were gaps in the periodic table: elements that should exist, but hadn't been discovered yet.  In the course of time, all those gaps were filled in, once people knew what to look for.

Back to Rutherford again, a few years later.  He succeeds in experimentally stripping out everything but the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, which has a charge of 1 and a weight of 1.  He calls what he ends up with a proton.

Finally, we need to discover the neutron.  We already know that the nucleus has a positive charge of the atomic number, and thus there are that many electrons as well, but the problem is that most atoms have a much higher weight than their atomic number, so something more than protons had to be in the atomic nucleus.  A leading theory was that there were a bunch of extra proton-electron pairs just hanging around in the nucleus, but that was shown to be impossible.  Enter James Chadwick, who shot a weird kind of radiation others had discovered at paraffin and other substances and measured what happened, and concluded that the radiation was in fact made up of neutrally-charged particles that had about the same mass as a proton.  He's discovered the neutron.

So, now that we know everything, we can gather up our data on elements.  The number of protons in an atom is the atomic number of that element.  That's also the number of electrons, since atoms are neutrally-charged.  Finally, the difference between the atom's weight and the atomic number is the number of neutrons.


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

[User]
Do humans have the ability to "sense" when someone is behind them or staring at them or is it usually just a lucky guess?

I've always wondered... You'll be sitting somewhere like the library, then suddenly you look up and turn around and catch someone looking at you, or simply standing behind you. Can we naturally sense when someone's behind us or next to us or does it just depend on the situation?

EDIT: I suck... "I've always wondered," not "I've always wondering."

[Assistant]
Obviously you can't tell what someone else's eyes are doing (the difference between them looking at you and not looking at you).  This is a great opportunity to consider bias!  When you look around and no one is looking at you, that doesn't stand out in your brain.  But when you "feel watched", look around, and someone IS watching you - think how amazing that is!  You have superpowers!  Your perception is paranormally good!  This gets remembered.

So due to bias, you have a tendency to have noticed all the times you "felt watched" and WERE, and a tendency not to notice/remember the times you weren't, thus you end up with a vague sense that you can somehow tell.


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

[User] [MCU] If the engineers and scientists in Stark Industries have the full sized arc reactor with them, with all the technical specifications, plans, etc., aside from not being Tony Stark, what were the other reasons why they weren't able to replicate what Tony did in a cave with a bunch of scraps?

[Assistant]
In 1800AD a man named Alessandro Volta invented the first battery. It was made by stacking pairs of copper and zinc disks separated by brine soaked cloth. It was revolutionary for the fact that it produced a stable, continuous current, and retained it's charged rather well when not being used. However, it didn't even produce a strong enough charge to create sparks. On top of that, Volta had a flawed understanding of how his own battery worked, assuming that the current was a result of two different materials coming into contact with one another. The true nature of the current was in the chemical reaction that was being produced.

The full sized arc reactor is Volta's battery, flawed scientific theories included.

Tony Stark's miniature reactor is a Lithium-Ion battery whose thickness is measured in millimeters, weighs less than a slice of bread, can fully power a handheld computer for half a day, can recover that charge in an hour, and can be recharged well over 300 times before losing it's efficiency.

Stark's miniature arc reactor is so far ahead of the original, both in design and in supporting scientific theory, that the two simply can't be compared. Trying to recreate Stark's achievement by studying the full sized reactor would be like trying to build an Oculus Rift by studying a CRT TV. They are generations apart from each other.


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

[User] ELI5: How does bleach work?

[Assistant] Bleach is NaOCl. The O is oxygen, which is very reactive, meaning it goes around and sticks to stuff and destroys it in the process--it works especially well on organic dyes and stains. When the oxygen in your bleach is all used up, you're left with NaCl, sodium chloride, which is simple table salt.


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

[User] [Classic Japanese kaiju films] How does Tokyo/Japan rebuild and recover between all the monster attacks?

[Assistant]
Have you ever noticed in those classic kaiju films that Japan has an amazing space exploration program, or that they have the military resources to make giant mecha-kaiju? Why is that? It's because their GDP is insane. Japan is THE world economic superpower. Recreating Tokyo every few months is not that big of a deal for them.

In addition, having the ability to call on Mothra (and sometimes Godzilla or Gamera) to help them deal with external threats makes them the most vital and powerful nation on Earth. They are literally too big to fail.


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

[User] Why do some metals glow red hot at their melting point (i.e. Iron, nickel, etc) while others (i.e. Aluminum) are silver when molten?

[Assistant]
Different melting points.
At roughly around 700C (=1292F) the human eye notices a faint dark red glow.
Aluminum is already molten at this temperature wheras iron needs a lot more heat and is already glowing bright yellow (around 1550C  (=2822F))


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

[User] ELI5: Why does pain often give a "throbbing" sensation?

[Assistant]
Depending on whats causing the pain, there are a few reasons that it might be felt as throbbing, aka coming periodically, or in waves:

First, the throbbing youre feeling is most likely your own pulse.

Second, there are also other systems in your body that move to a rhythm - think of involuntary muscle movements, like giving birth, or vomiting, or orgasm.

Third, your nervous system functions like a circuit board - there are capacitors, which need to fill up before they pass a signal on, and gates, which need to receive the right combination of inputs before outputting. Or think of how waves combine on the water - every once in a while two smaller waves will overlap and to make one big wave.

Finally, while all of those hint at mechanical reasons for why pain signals might be read in waves, consider the practical reason: its harder to ignore a flashing light than it is to ignore a light thats on full bright all the time. Your body is built to alert you to potentially dangerous conditions, pain is one mechanism for that.


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

[User]
ELI5: The 1851 treaty that keeps being mentioned in the North Dakota pipeline protest.

Explain  like I'm a non-american five year old too.

[Assistant]
Basically, The government fought the Standing Rock Sioux tribe among others for control of the territory that is now North and South Dakota. The government then signed a treaty saying "this bunch of the land is the tribes" while the rest of it was controlled by the US.

The tribe argues that the pipeline (which falls on government land) endangers drinking water sources on land that belongs to the tribe.


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

[User]
The Necessity of Linear Algebra in Computer Science?

[edit] I've found someone! Thanks for all your suggestions <3

Hi everyone!

I am currently going into my second year in computer science, as well as currently taking a course in linear algebra. We have been assigned a project which requires us to interview people in the workforce who specifically uses concepts of linear algebra in their work. I have reached out to some people in a handful of other fields but had found that the use of linear algebra only applies to some very specific projects/jobs.

I am still very new to this field, so I want to explore the concept of linear algebra in relation to computer science. I was wondering if anyone would be available to help me answer some questions (small interview) about their background & jobs in relation to linear algebra?

Thank you!

[Assistant] Linear algebra most commonly applies to computation performed on GPUs: 3d graphics (video games), machine learning, scientific computing, etc. More often than not, the actual math is abstracted away, so you'd want to be talking to people who actually work on the libraries/frameworks themselves that do the calculations.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do they blindfold people before they execute them?

[Assistant]
This was more common in electric chair executions.

To not go into scientific details; the person who is being executed, their eyes basically "pop out" and bleed and what not.

In other types of execution like shooting and hanging, it eliminates the human element from the equation. It is easier to execute someone if they are not making eye contact with you, or making eye contact with cameras.


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

[User]
Could you tell that camels have humps just by looking at their skeletons?

Like, say you had some archaeology students who were raised in a bunker and were taught everything about how to discern external anatomy from skeletal structure, but never taught that camels existed.

If they were given a camel skeleton, could they geuss that it had a hump?

[Assistant]
The short answer is "Probably not."

The long answer is more complicated, and involves a necessary investigative device called inference. We can look to animals with fatty humps and look at their bones to determine if there's a correlated hard, bony feature with the soft, fatty feature. For the most part, the bony parts of camel skeletons look little different than deer or cattle skeletons do in these areas, and their humps are above the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae, whereas the humps of other names, such as zebu cattle, are above their shoulders, where there are tall bony spines (which attach ligaments supporting the head, the nuchal system).

So, using this information, we infer merely based on similar skeletons, that fatty humps aren't likely to leave skeletal traces. But we can go a step further. We can *know* what relatives look like, and have bumped or unhumped versions, and infer the probability of the new skeleton having such a thing. If the probability is reasonable, we then can say there is a likelihood there was a hump.

However, the essential long answer is, "It depends."


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

[User] ELI5: Why 480p now seems me unwatchable, but 10 years ago it was like super good ?

[Assistant]
About 20 years ago, you watched everything on a CRT TV, which is main factor for why 480p seemed okay back then.

Those displays were very tolerant of actual resolution of source, meaning that both details and imperfections were often blurred out and you got a nice and smooth TV signal with good following pictures and it was actually sharp because CRT didn't pixelate the analog signal.

Nowadays, modern TV use pixel grid, where 480p video has to be stretched to cover whole screen, and this scaling isn't exact number. Meaning some pixels are twice as big while some are there time as big. This leads to major loss of quality.

It doesn't help that we have 4k video sources available that makes the loss of quality on a 480p that much more significant.


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

[User] How can electrons be so small but still be able to counteract the charge of the much larger protons?

[Assistant]
Because they have the same charge. Charge is a fundamental property of a particle - it's not like subatomic particles are made of "charge stuff" where the larger the particle is the more charge it has. It doesn't even really make sense to talk about the "size" of particles. Electrons are point-like and protons are fuzzy blobs of quarks and gluons which in turn are also point-like.

If you really want an kinda-not-totally-wrong intuitive analogy, think density. A one-kilogram ball of gold is much smaller than a one-kilogram ball of wood.


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

[User] ELI5: We say that only some planets can sustain life due to the Goldilocks zone (distance from the sun). How are we sure thats the only thing that can sustain life? Isnt there the possibility of life in a form we dont yet understand?

[Assistant]
Totally.  But we have no idea what "other life" would look like.  We could be staring it right in the face and we might have no idea that we could call it "life."  So until we have compelling evidence that some other form of life can exist, it's best to limit our search to "Earth-like" life, because at least then we actually know what we're looking for.

Hell, for all we know, there are living rock monsters on Venus that breathe the horrible sulfur gases in that atmosphere that would kill us.  But if we were to see that in some future observation, we'd probably say "Huh, there's some interesting effect that these rocks are having on the surrounding air, it makes them move around.  We should study that a bit."  It wouldn't occur to any of us to call that "life" at first glance because we've never seen anything like it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is the paint I put on the thing I'm painting still wet, but the paint I got on my shirt already dry?

[Assistant] Your shirt is made of fabric, which absorbs moisture pretty well - better than your average wall or whatever.  So when the paint hits your shirt, your shirt fairly quickly absorbs the liquid content, which is small enough that it's almost unnoticeable.  The pigments and solids of the paint stay on the outside of the fabric, feeling dry much more quickly than if you were painting on a hard surface.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is snow white when it settles but water when it's frozen is opaque.

My wife brought this up as were expecting snow tomorrow. Asking on her behalf.

[Assistant]
Ice is not transparent; it's actually translucent. This means that the light photons don't pass right through the material in a direct path -- the material's particles change the light's direction. This happens because the distances between some atoms in the ice's molecular structure are close to the height of light wavelengths, which means the light photons will interact with the structures. The result is that the light photon's path is altered and it exits the ice in a different direction than it entered the ice.

Snow is a whole bunch of individual ice crystals arranged together. When a light photon enters a layer of snow, it goes through an ice crystal on the top, which changes its direction slightly and sends it on to a new ice crystal, which does the same thing. Basically, all the crystals bounce the light all around so that it comes right back out of the snow pile. It does the same thing to all the different light frequencies, so all colors of light are bounced back out. The "color" of all the frequencies in the visible spectrum combined in equal measure is white, so this is the color we see in snow, while it's not the color we see in the individual ice crystals that form snow.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k] Has any faction actually ever made a pact or at least negotiated with other factions?

It seems like in the 40k universe everybody unconditionally hates all other factions, which is kind of dumb since the only factions with a chance of coming out on top seem to be Nids, Necrons, Orks and Chaos.

[Assistant]
Every once in a while short-term deals happen, typically between the Imperium and one of the more rational or easily manipulated xenos. For example, in Dawn of War 2, an inquisitor convinces an ork freebooter and his crew to hunt down a rogue chapter master in exchange for a chance at fighting a big mob of guardsmen. Space marines have been known to call ceasefires when a greater evil arrives, typically Necrons, Nids, or chaos.

Long term alliances are pretty much impossible however. Any two factions you can name have too much beef to join forces even if it's ultimately the smart thing to do. The possible exception is the Tau, who have made their own alliances with the Kroot, Vespids, and some other non-Tau species. They are pretty much the perfect example: a chaos-resistant, level headed, technologically advanced empire actively extending offers of friendship and yet still every major faction wants them dead.


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

[User]
[ASOIAF] Why haven't they developed clockwork?

They have developed siege weapons such as the scorpion, and mechanical weapons like the crossbow, which have some of the basic technology of clockwork (springs, gears, levers). Surely after thousands of years of civilization, and centuries without a Long Night, the maesters of the Citadel could have come up with the mechanisms for clockwork. If not for timekeeping, then at least for automation of simple tasks. What would prevent clockwork from being a thing in Westeros?

[Assistant]
While there is evidence of clockwork dating back to the first century BCE in Europe, mechanical clocks didn't come into common use until the 10th century CE, and spring-powered mechanical clocks weren't until the 15th century.

Meanwhile the Scorpian dates back to the era of the Roman Republic, over a thousand years beforehand. Crossbows date back to Ancient Greece (and even longer in China). Both long before the invention of reliable clockwork, and after thousands of years of civilization.

Now for all we know the Maesters do use clockwork mechanisms to aid in astronomical observations (common for early clockwork mechanisms in our world as well) and other purposes - just nothing common or important enough to be worth mentioning in the show. It took a *very* long time for clockwork mechanisms to become reliable enough for widespread use.

As far as automation goes, that's what mills are for, which Westeros does have plenty of (presumably in both wind- and water-powered varieties).


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do newscasters always speak with the same specific inflections?

Ive noticed no matter where the newscast is from, all news reporters speak in the same cadence that you would never use in real life. Why do they do this?

[Assistant]
Theyre trained to. Not all journalism schools have a formal voice class as a requirement for graduation, but many do, and even if they don't a certain amount of coaching about speech and delivery is a part of the curriculum.

This is done this because having a clear, consistent delivery makes the news easier to listen to and digest for a viewer. Most news anchors speak slightly slower than a normal cadence, fully annunciate every word, change tone throughout the sentence and have a fairly neutral, flat accent. That leads to a consistent "broadcaster voice." Contrast that to, say, an anchor who speaks in a fast monotone, runs words into each other, and has a thick Boston accent. Who would you rather listen to reading the news?


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

[User] ELI5: Why do musicians recording their voice wear headphones? What is the purpose?

[Assistant] The instrumental theyre singing to is playing through the headphones. It cant play through speakers because the recording will pick up the instrumental along with the vocals. Instrumentals and vocals need to be recorded separate so they can be mixed through different channels.


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

[User]
ELI5: What stops the first kernel of popped corn from burning until the last kernel pops?

The last kernel being the one you feel safe stopping the microwave at, without burning the entire bag.

[Assistant]
Microwave ovens heat food by exciting water molecules: the radiation gets absorbed by water most readily, and tends to pass through most other food bits pretty easily.

Unpopped popcorn kernels contain little bits of water inside that are heated, boil off into steam, and burst out of the kernel, forming the popcorn itself and allowing the water the escape.

While the first popped kernel sits around waiting, microwave radiation is passing over and through it and getting absorbed by other water molecules in other kernels, causing almost no damage to the first kernel at all.

It's not until all the popcorn has been popped that very little concentrated amounts of water remain in the whole set of popcorn, so the microwave radiation starts getting absorbed more readily by the fleshy bits of the popped popcorn kernels. That's when they start to burn, and it's before that point that you want to stop the microwave.


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

[User] ELI5: What happens if someone has stock in a company that is eventually bought by a larger company?

[Assistant]
It depends on the structure of the deal.

Sometimes the larger company pays cash for the stock. They usually offer a higher price than the current market price and the shareholders will vote. If a majority vote in favor, the larger company buys *all* of the stock (whether or not any individual voted in favor of the deal) at the offered price. So the shareholder gets cash.

Other times, the larger company offers their own stock instead, swapping a certain number of shares for a certain number of their own. For example, the larger company might offer to buy the smaller company by giving out one of their own share for three of the smaller company's shares. In this case, (if the majority of the shareholders vote in favor) all the share holders will have their shares converted into the larger company's shares. In the above 3:1 example, a shareholder who had 3,000 shares of the small company's stock would receive 1,000 shares of the larger company's stock.


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

[User]
ELI5: Credit card transaction signing

So sometimes when I purchase stuff using my credit card with card-present, I'll be asked to sign the receipt.

I understand that signing the receipt is for the merchant to proof that you made the transaction so you cannot issue a chargeback. It's to protect the merchant.

However, if someone were to stole my credit card and make purchase with it, they can literally draw a monkey on the receipt and they'll still be walking out of the store with the product.

Okay, even if the merchant were to compare the signature with the specimen signature at the back of the card. I would imagine it to be pretty easy to forge a signature after you steal someone's card.

Then as a cardholder, I can simply say that I didn't sign that. Doesn't this make the whole signing the receipt process useless?

[Assistant]
A signature verifies agreement, not identity.

The credit card companies need to know two things, that you are the person you say you are, and that you agree to the charges.

A signature does nothing to establish who you are, but it does verify that you agree to the price/terms etc. of the purchase, preventing you from coming back later and claiming someone overcharged you.

Verifying identity is done with other mechanisms.  Examples might be having the physical card, confirming the card is genuine with CSV codes, matching a photo ID, etc.  What steps are taken depend on the amount of risk the merchant and payment processor are willing to accept.


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

[User] [Marvel comics] Are mutants the only race of super people that suffer prejudice? If yes, couldnt they pretend they have their powers for some other reason?

[Assistant] There are technological scanners that detect if someone has the X gene.  There are biological weapons that only affect mutants.  There is a sentient psychic fungus infecting the majority of Homo Sapiens that makes them predisposed to hating Homo Superior.  Pretending to have gotten powers from another source would not work well.


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

[User]
[Fox X-Men] What would Quicksilver do if someone were on the toilet or other private or embarrassing situation when the mansion blew up?

He doesnt seem very mature or cares much, wasting precious time doing silly actions and often saving people in the nick of time. So what does he do if they were sitting on the toilet? Would he wipe their butt or act immature or like what?

[Assistant] Take them outside to ensure they are safe first. Then, go back to the mansion and grab the toilet once it has been blown off the floor. Run back outside and seat them back on the toilet surrounded by their classmates. Give them exactly three squares of toilet paper for maximum comic effect.


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

[User] [mcu] In civil war Bucky says the other winter soldiers are powerful enough to take down an entire country in a couple of days. What does that mean and could they accomplish it.

[Assistant]
To quote the film

> Cap: Said he wanted to see an empire fall.

> Bucky: With these guys, he could do it. They speak 30 languages, can hide in plain sight... infiltrate, assassinate, destabilise. They can take a whole country down in one night, you'd never see them coming.

What Bucky is suggesting is that they are effectively covert operatives, who can get close to a target and then assassinate, or sabotage. Whilst not at cap's level, it's implied they are better soldiers than Bucky, and so could probably get past most security measures fairly easily. There are enough of them that if they planned to take down the leadership/significant figures in a single night they probably could do so, effectively throwing a country into chaos.

SPOILERS CIVIL WAR

Don't know how effective they would be in the real world, but in the MCU, Zemo was able to hit the UN whilst the accord hearing was in process. Not unreasonable that combined he and they could do much worse in other countries.


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

[User]
[A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones] Does anybody really like the Greyjoys? Like, do they have ANY friends at all?

This whole "raving and raping" shit, come on, man. It's 299 AC, get with the times! Ugh, and if I have to hear "iron price" one more time, I may shove my iron foot up their ass.

I know the Lannisters have their supporters, the Targaryens probably have a few loons still loyal to them. I think everyone just sorta tolerates the Freys...

Does anybody actually like the Greyjoys? Hell, even the Starks (great guys, I love them) keep what's-his-face at arm's length after Balon's little hissy fit a while back...

[Assistant]
There are other ouses on the Iron Islands that are loyal to them.  Few people liked Balon, he didn't care much for the old ways.  More people like Euron, he promises them a return to glory.  A few follow Asha.

They're not well liked outside of the Iron Island, they don't tend to play nice and they've had an open rebellion in the recent years.  In the North, the Riverlands, the West, the Reach; they're known as raiders and pillagers, not surprising that they're disliked or feared.


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

[User] [The Truman Show]In a way, the entire giant Dome is Truman's house. Can a vampire enter the Dome without being invited? And if so, can anyone besides Truman invite him?

[Assistant]
No, a vampire can enter the dome without permission from Truman. It would need permission to enter his home however. This is due to the fact that the entire dome is actually a public use area, just because the people living there are actors doesn't give ownership to the one idiot who isn't an actor.

Vampires can enter hotels and such under similar allowance, these places aren't able to be sanctified like a private home would be.

For example Angel and Spike  from Buffy TV series can enter hotel rooms freely even if not invited. Furthermore Peter Vincent in the remake of Fright Night, purchased the penthouse he lived in specifically so that vamps couldn't enter it, as they could if he had just rented it.

The folklore justification for this is probably the fact that many homes would have a private family shrine or small religious display, where as public place other then a church wouldn't have any holy symbols.


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

[User]
How is it possible to have negative decibels?

I've heard of rooms which are soundproofed so well that their decibels are negative and induce hallucinations in the people who sit in them, what does 0dB sound like as opposed to -14dB?

[Assistant]
Decibels aren't an absolute measure of sound energy, they're a comparison with a reference level. It's similar to the Celsius temperature scale where 0 is set at the freezing point of water; when measuring the sound in a room 0dB is set at the threshold of human hearing (the quietest sound a human can hear).

It's also worth noting that the meaning of 0dB can depend on context. For example, on professional recording equipment, 0dB is the loudest level before distortion occurs. The scale is selected depending on what's useful in a particular situation.


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

[User]
[Stargate SG-1]Why did the SGC never utilize a Potassium/Naquadah enhanced weapon?

I would figure that a Potassium/Naquadah tipped railgun round would have greater damage output than the standard railgun round against non-shielded enemies like the Wraith.

[Assistant]
Earth doesn't have access to much in the way of Naquadah stockpiles.  They have a few small mines run by their allies -- Chaka's Unas, for example -- but it's not an element native to the Tau'ri solar system.

What Naquadah the Tau'ri do get their hands on goes almost directly to refinement for use in Gatebuster-family Naquadah-enhanced nuclear weaponry and Naquadah generators.


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

[User]
ELI5: How can an Aardvark consume so many ants at once and endure the pain of the ants biting its tongue?

Sort of a left field question, but I was thinking that there would be considerable pain inflicted when consuming a mound of fire ants.

[Assistant]
Not an aardvark, but anteaters have certain defenses:

"To avoid the jaws, sting, and other defences of the invertebrates, anteaters have adopted the feeding strategy of licking up large numbers of ants and termites as quickly as possible  an anteater normally spends about a minute at a nest before moving on to another  and a giant anteater has to visit up to 200 nests to consume the thousands of insects it needs to satisfy its caloric requirements." (from Wikipedia).

Also, aardvarks are native to Africa, but fire ants are native to South America.


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

[User] Is it morally good to give money to the homeless, why or why not?

[Assistant]
There's a moral and an empirical question here. The empirical question has to do with whether giving money to the homeless really does make their life go better, or makes their life go better than if you had donated that same money to various homeless-helping causes - in short, questions about whether and how giving money to the homeless is really helping them.

The moral question is whether we're obliged to help those worse off than us. Most philosophers think we are, on the grounds that only caring about ourselves seems like the opposite of moral action. There's a second moral question about *how far* we're obliged to go here: ought we give all our money to those worse off than us, for instance? Famously, Peter Singer has argued that we ought to give almost all (like, all except that which we need to keep living and earning money), although he thinks there are many groups who we ought to donate to before homeless people in Western countries. But plenty of people disagree with Singer for various reasons.


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

[User] [ELI5] Why do people lease cars instead of buying them?

[Assistant]
You have a monthly allowance of $10. Your friend just bought a new Gameboy and wants to sell his old one for $50. He says, he'll loan you the $50 but wants you to pay him $10 a month up to $60 after 6 months to make up for it. OR He will let you use the Gameboy for 6 months if you pay him $5 a month. At the end of 6 months, he'll let you give it back or buy it for $40.

If you take the loan, you're paying more per month, but at the end of the 6 months you have a Gameboy of your own. (Total of $60) This is called equity.

If you lease it, and pay the $5 a month you get a Gameboy for only $5 a month! But at the end, if you want to keep it, you end up paying more for it than if you took the loan. (If you keep: $70, if you give it back, you paid only $30 but you don't have the Gameboy anymore.)

Now, imagine this same situation but you know that Gameboy SuperAwesome 2 is coming out in 6 months and you really want it. If you took the loan, now you're stuck with an outdated piece of gear. It works, but it's not Gameboy SuperAwesome 2. If you leased, you can now lease the Gameboy SuperAwesome 2 at the same deal.

Basically: Short term with the intent of NOT BUYING, you're better off leasing.

If you plan to buy, don't lease unless you have a good reason for it. It's more expensive in the long run to lease, then buy.


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

[User]
Why do so many chemical compounds manifest as clear, colorless liquids or white powders?

Even though there are millions of chemical compounds, it seems like only a few of them have an easily identifiable color (like copper chloride or the vapor of iodine) while the vast majority seem to be clear liquids (hydrochloric acid in water) or some sort of white powder (caffeine, ZnO, titanium dioxide). Why is colorless liquid or white powder the 'default' for most chemical compounds?

[Assistant] Color is based off the absorption of radiation in the ultraviolet-visible region (200-800ish nm wavelength). Since this is a sliver in the wavelength spectra, not many compounds have the necessary "chromophores". The most common are conjugated double bond systems, though metals of certain oxidation states absorb in this region.


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

[User]
CMV: Semantics really matter and should not be dismissed.

Im going to try and keep this fairly short because I dont think its complicated.

Saying what you mean in a discussion is very important. Language is the way we express what we mean. Only if both parties can understand the meaning behind words used can you advance the discussion.

I therefore feel that semantics in any discussion are very important and lay the ground work for reaching a meaningful conclusion/understanding.

I completely see how semantics can be used to derail a discussion but thats not semantics at fault, its the bad actor within the discussion who has many other tools at their disposal, and would do so regardless.

It seems obvious to me, but Ive seen/heard youre just arguing semantics enough for me to feel that enough people disagree with me to explore it further.

Please change my view.

[Assistant]
>	It seems obvious to me, but Ive seen/heard youre just arguing semantics enough for me to feel that enough people disagree with me to explore it further.

People say youre just arguing semantics to call people out on using semantics to intentionally evade arguing substance. No ones denying that words can be important. But, as you acknowledge, semantics can be used to derail a discussion. Youre just arguing semantics isnt saying semantics are never important, its saying semantics arent important in this instance, at least not how youre using it.

Its a way of calling out the bad actor by highlighting the tools theyre using, not a condemnation of those tools in all contexts.


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

[User]
ELI5: How many businesses/medical are still 9-5ish when the majority of their clients work 9-5.

How is it that still to this day businesses can get away with being open 9-5 type of hours? I leave the house at 7:45am to get to work and come home about 5:30-6PM.

If I need a doc appointment, the latest is typically around 4. Dry cleaners closes about 6. Banks? Inside offices close at 5pm, drive-thru at 7. Same with post office.

Why are more businesses not open until at least 9?

[Assistant]
How can they get away with it? Simple. They know you need them more than they need you. These kind of opening hours are roughly industry wide, so they don't have to worry about their clients going to a competitor. Extending their business hours costs money, and you can bet your bottom, a business isn't going to spend more if it doesn't get them more either.

With doctors there is also the fact that in some places there is a lack of doctors, so sometimes even if they do want to extend their hours, it is not that easy. You can't make a doctor work even more hours (they already generally work pretty long days) and you can't easily hire even more doctors if there is nobody around that has those skills.


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

[User]
[Borderlands] What is the overall state of human civilization?

Pretty much all we see in the series is Pandora and Elpis over the course of a few years. Corporations seem to have superseded government almost entirely (Atlas in 1, Hyperion in 2, Dahl in TPS), but it is it like that everywhere? The way "The Borderlands" are referred to makes them sound a lot like the Outer Rim from Star Wars. There are brief references to other planets, but do we know where those are in relation to Pandora? We do know, for example, that Gaige grew up on Eden-5 before going to Pandora-- so are those two planets close together, or is FTL travel possible? "Eden" definitely sounds like a utopian galactic core civilization to me, far removed from The Borderlands.

It's probably worth mentioning the Borderlands 2 easter egg where we see Roland's Facebook page, which states that he graduated high school in 2854. If we assume that's according to a Gregorian calendar, it's easier to consider the world of Borderlands in relation to the real world. I'm fine with answers being mostly speculation, I just think there's some interesting stuff here to think about.

[Assistant]
FTL travel is not explicitly shown or mentioned by anyone, but there are multiple references to humanity covering several galaxies. And Pandora actually isn't the only planet that humans have discovered Eridian artifacts on, it just happens to have an unusually high amount. Plus, at the warrior's defeat and the revelation of other vaults on many different worlds, Lilith, Mordecai and Brick didn't bat an eye at the massive interstellar distances. FTL travel has to be a very common thing to them. Perhaps not an every day occurrence, but maybe it could be analogous to intercontinental boat or plane flights.

Also remember that Pandora is a special case when it comes to planets. It's a backwater of a backwater, only important because of the alien stuff on it.  And most of its troubles come from the fact that Dahl tried to monopolize it many years ago, but abandoned the planet wholesale when the early technology rush fizzled out. The planet already had a sizable criminal/slave labor force that was left behind, so they tore apart Dahl's attempts at civilizing it while fighting the rapidly awakening local wildlife.

Based on Handsome Jack's idealized city, Opportunity, and the technological juggernauts of the big corporations, it's safe to conclude that actual human civilization is far removed from the insanity of Pandora. Yes, it's ruled by companies rather than governments for the most part, but it seems most humans live pretty well out there. So well, that they don't need to mention Earth at all. (I believe it's still out there, probably a "gated community" for the ludicrously wealthy who can afford to have a second or third (or fourth or fifth) home on humanity's proverbial cradle.) Human civilization isn't a post-scarcity scifi utopia, but it's probably rather close. Perhaps that's why so many people are drawn to the Borderlands. Total boredom and social numbness makes them crave adventure and excitement. And even if they don't want to physically travel there, they can still watch ECHO-casts and popular series detailing the extreme violence and brutality of Pandora and other barely-civilized worlds.


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

[User] ELI5: What is really happening when I get a brain freeze?

[Assistant] When something cold touches the roof of your mouth, it causes a quick temperature change to the surrounding tissues. To compensate for this, blood vessels to the roof of your mouth dilate to allow more blood to go to the area to warm it back up. A side effect of this dilation releases 'pain signalers' that tell your brain there is something painful going on, which is essentially the quick temperature change.. This is usually perceived in your face or forehead because nerves in this area are all connected.


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

[User] ELI5: What is actually happening when we daydream, why does it happen?

[Assistant] It is an altered state of consciousness. Normally, our consciousness is concerned with stimuli entering our sensory store; we're attentive to our surroundings. However, when we daydream, we dissociate and enter a different level of consciousness. We enter a so-called "autopilot," as our attention and consciousness draws inward. This state of dissociation is characterized by more vivid imagination, introspection (or rumination), and a blurring of the external world. Daydreaming happens usually when we're bored with our surroundings (under-stimulated or under-attentive), or when we are trying to escape the external world (more akin to maladaptive dissociation associated with anxiety).


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

[User]
[Star Wars]Why didn't Palatine have surgery to fix his scrotum face?

Or use the force.

[Assistant] Too risky. Imagine how vulnerable he'd be while under complete anesthesia to undergo plastic surgery.  During that time, his apprentice could kill him.  His enemies could strike.  For a total control freak like The Emperor, that is an unacceptable risk.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are most circuit boards in a dark green shape?

I know that there are other PCB colors too, as Arduino blue or SparkFun red. But most boards in industry or in home appliances are in a very specific dark green color. Is there any particular reason for it or is it just a grown standard?

[Assistant]
Dark green is not a shape.

Assuming, however, that you meant "colour" - it's to do with the manufacturing processes involved.  While it's increasingly possible to use alternative materials, the best-established processes use materials that are that colour.  Simple as that.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the argument behind not imposing term limits on United States congress members?

[Assistant]
The argument is that we have regular elections where their seats come up. This means that they have to earn re-election each time and if their States want them to represent them then why should that be denied them.

There is also the argument that experience in lawmaking is very important so the longer someone can be in congress the better.


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

[User]
[Inception] How does Cobb's totem work?

In the Inception universe, infiltrators can break into your dreams at any minute. However, Mal Cobb came up with a fairly eloquent way to test if you are in someone else's dream: an ordinary object that is modified in a way that a dreamer wouldn't know to replicate.

This can be exemplified in the opening scene, when Saito realizes he must be in a dream because the carpet feels wrong. Even though the architect had perfectly recreated the apartment visually, he didn't know how to replicate the feel of the carpet.

Which brings me to the problem with Mal/Cobb's totem. It's supposed to be an object that a dreamer expects to behave in the "normal" way, but the owner knows to behave abnormally. Any dreamer would assume a top would fall over; why would the top keep spinning in someone else's dream?

[Assistant]
Firstly, you're slightly mistaken about the purpose of totems.  They aren't to determine if you are dreaming or not, they are to determine if you are in *someone else's dream*.  Arthur has his die which will always fall a certain way.  If he makes the dream, he will be able to predict it's behavior because he made it.  If someone else is attempting to extract from him, or has trapped him in an architectured dream for some reason, they won't be able to correctly make that die because they won't know how it works.  Likewise Arriadne's bishop falls in a peculiar way.  It will fall that way whether she is in reality or in a dream she architected.  However, if someone like Dom were to bring her into his dream, he wouldn't be able to replicate it (because she didn't let him touch it) and thus she'd know she was in his dream.
That said, Dom Cobb is batshit insane enough to need more than that.  He needs a way to know if he is dreaming or in reality.  Everyone else knows this implicitly.  Think about it, when was the last time you were awake but thought you were dreaming?  That doesn't happen.  The reverse does of course, but if you're thinking to check your totem you're already past that point.  So what Cobb has is a way to check if he's dreaming or not.  He does this by attempting to will the top to keep spinning.  He also has a wedding ring that he will into existence on his finger in dreams that he doesn't wear in reality as a backup measure.


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

[User] ELI5: How does spending huge amounts of money on the military by the government pay off? I.e., Unlike spending on technology or resource extraction which inherently produces materials or products that have value, what does the military produce that has inherent value?

[Assistant]
security, stability, and jobs.  When your looking to set up shop for your massive international company, you want to know that you wont get displaced by a warlord that wants to take what you have.

Theres certainly some research gains in the defense industry, things that come out of places like lockheed and boeing defense programs that advance technology.


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

[User]
ELI5: How come torrented/cracked games cannot authenticate with the online servers?

title.

[Assistant] Online servers normally have a system set up (think of the term "handshake") to determine if someone is supposed to be there. When you get a game, you now normally have to have a serial number or login to use it online. Downloading these from illegitimate sources will normally result in you not being able to use them online.


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

[User]
ELI5: How are we able to distinguish between loud sounds that are far away and quieter sounds that are nearby?

For example, how can I know that a sound is a firework in the distance and not just a balloon popping outside my house?

[Assistant] We cannot always tell. However, typically distant sounds have a slight echo (more precisely, they arrive at your ear through multiple paths after bouncing off different things), so the sound isn't quite as sharp and clear as if it were a nearby sound.


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

[User]
Why is ADD and ADHD so common now?

I have read it affects somewhere from 5-9% of the population. I myself have ADHD, and have been prescribed Ritalin. However, my diagnosis wasn't based on cognitive ability/other factors, but rather on questions such as "Do you feel so and so when you do so and so?". Is it just overdiagnosed, it is because of television and the internet, or what?

Also, is there any way to cure AD(H)D?

Edit: Wow, this question got more attention than I thought it would O__O. Don't bother answering the second question if you're going to contribute. Also, could anyone explain the causes behind ADD/ADHD?

[Assistant]
[Master's in Clinical Psychology, working towards Doctorate]

Go, go, EBSCOHost!

QUESTION 1

*"Based on the review of prevalence studies and research on the diagnostic process, there does not appear to be sufficient justification for the conclusion that ADHD is systematically overdiagnosed. Yet, this conclusion is generally not reflected in public perceptions or media coverage of ADHD."*

Sciutto, M. J., & Eisenberg, M. (2007). Evaluating the evidence for and against the overdiagnosis of ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 11(2), 106-113. doi:10.1177/1087054707300094

*"A critical review of epidemiologic research suggests that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is not universally overdiagnosed; however, for some U.S. communities there is evidence of substantial ADHD overdiagnosis, adverse educational outcomes among children treated for the disorder, and suboptimal management of childhood behavior problems. Evidence of ADHD overdiagnosis is obscured when findings are reported without respect to geographic location, race, gender, and age. More sophisticated epidemiologic tracking of ADHD treatment trends and examination of associated outcomes is needed to appreciate the scope of the problem on a national level."*

LeFever, G. B., Arcona, A. P., & Antonuccio, D. O. (2003). ADHD among American Schoolchildren: Evidence of Overdiagnosis and Overuse of Medication. The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice: Objective Investigations of Controversial and Unorthodox Claims in Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry, and Social Work, 2(1), 49-60. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

*"ADHD was overdiagnosed (all patients with ADHD had received the diagnosis, as did 38% of patients with MDD and 29% of patients with BD, respectively), while MDD was partially underdiagnosed and partially overdiagnosed (57% of MDD patients received the diagnosis, 43% did not; 33% of patients with BD were incorrectly diagnosed with MDD). BD was underdiagnosed, not overdiagnosed (38% received the diagnosis, 62% did not; BD was not diagnosed in the ADHD sample, and in only 5% of the patients with MDD)."*

Chilakamarri, J. K., Filkowski, M. M., & Ghaemi, S. (2011). Misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents: A comparison with ADHD and major depressive disorder. Annals of Clinical Psychiatry, 23(1), 25-29. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

**TLDR: ADHD is not universally overdiagnosed, but: (a) some practitioners are sloppy in differentiating it from depression, which looks similar to attention-deficit and/or hyperactivity in children (family physicians); (b) some practitioners see patients for all of 15-30 minutes before giving a patient a diagnosis (psychiatrists); and (c) parents and educators push for medication, since in many instances this is much more convenient than behavior modification or discipline.**

QUESTION 2

No, there is no cure. Symptoms can be most effectively managed with a combination of psychotherapy and psychiatric medication.


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

[User]
I believe that nothing is wrong with consensual polygamy. CMV!

What I am not talking about:

A man or woman sneaking around and having multiple families without their spouse knowing about it.

A man or woman cheating on their spouse.

A man or woman being allowed to have another family while their spouse is not allowed to.

What I am talking about:

An open relationship where if it is agreed upon, either spouse can have multiple spouses.

The only argument I can think of to this is that "marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman" (aka, the same argument used against gay marriage). Let's assume that this argument is out the window, because it is a religious argument and is completely *invalid* against anyone who does not share that religion, and therefore is not relevant (also I don't believe it's the *most* commonly held opinion in the world anymore).

I am unable to think of any other arguments against polygamy.

Edit: The general consensus here seems to be that people believe polygamy inevitably leads to supply and demand problems or abuse of the system.

 The supply and demand issue *assumes* that people are not for the most part naturally monogamous, which doesn't explain why the vast majority of people don't go around sleeping with everyone before they're married.

The abuse of the system issue does not address there being anything wrong with polygamy, it only addresses something wrong with abusing the system. This was never really up for debate, it is assuming human nature and saying that we should legislate personal freedoms to prevent people from breaking the law. To put this into perspective this is like saying we should make it illegal to enter banks to prevent bank robbery.

[Assistant]
Polygyny on a large scale has a very bad effect on society, because the richest men get more wives. This makes it impossible for the poorest young men to marry.

These unattached males not only suffer from the health problems single men usually do, but also represent a danger to society because they are far more violent than the average man.

Polygamous men are sometimes not very good parents because they have to spread resources (time, affection, money) on more children.

These families sometimes suffer from constant fighting and competition among wives creating a bad enviroment for children.


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

[User]
What happens to a baby's feces when it has not been born yet?

I was just wondering, at some point the baby inside of the mother's womb will have a fully functioning digestive system and a steady intake of nutrients. What happens to the baby's feces? Is there feces? At this point, I have nothing resembling an answer.

[Assistant] It's called *meconium,* and it normally just stays inside the baby's gut until the baby's born, at which time it's passed just like stool. Sometimes babies pass meconium while still in the womb, in which case it becomes diluted in the amniotic fluid. This usually complicates childbirth, because the baby's at risk of aspirating the meconium during the birthing process. But it rarely poses a serious problem. It just needs to be gently suctioned from the baby's nose and mouth.


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

[User] ELI5: How can a mathematician use 'infinity' in calculations and what types of 'problems' require them to do so?

[Assistant]
Infinity is a concept, not an actual number. It usually refers to something that isn't finite, has no end, or is unbounded. The actual meaning of infinity depends on the context, and whenever the term infinity is used, it needs to be accompanied by a proper, strict definition of what this infinity stands for.

For example: in calculus, infinity relates to limits - we say that a function's limit at a certain point is infinity if the value of the function keeps rising and rising the closer we get to that point. There is an actual, strict definition of what it means to say the limit of the function is infinity.

In set theory, however, infinity relates to sizes of sets. As such, there are different kinds of infinities, since two infinite sets can have different sizes.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Assuming I'm securely attached to the hull, can I ride the outside of a starship during warp flight? What would the effects on me be?

Suppose I'm firmly and comfortably mounted onto the hull of a starship using some sort of duranium couplings. I have an EV suit on. The ship jumps to warp 9. Do I have a reasonable expectation of surviving the trip? What  physiological effects would I experience?

[Assistant]
As long as you're inside the warp field during the entire voyage, and you have a very solid method of attaching yourself to the hull, you'll be fine.

Commander Tucker once experienced a warp field protected only by an EV suit, the combined warp bubbles of the Enterprise NX-01 and the Columbia NX-02, and a tow cable attaching both vessels. It was perilous, but he was fine. (The episode "Divergence", season 4)

And as we've seen in other disasters, crew members who are blown out of a ship when it suffers heavy damage at warp are physically intact until the moment they exit the warp field. (Star Trek Into Darkness)


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

[User]
[Star Wars]Did Darth Vader have problems with the Empire using slave labor?

The Clone Wars show that Anakin could barely keep his cool while masquerading as a slaver because of his deep seated hatred of them, fueled by his childhood spent as a slave. Did he carry that through to his time as Vader?

[Assistant]
I bet he did, but he has no power to stop it and is a master of justifying things in his head.

In a Legends story, Palpatine explained it to him that enslaving seditious alien species was the just thing to do for the greater good, but Vader definitely didn't buy it.


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

[User]
Most galaxies have a black hole at their centre, does this mean that galaxies form around black holes?

Given enough time, will enough matter and stars accrete around a black hole to form a galaxy?

[Assistant]
More likely the opposite: Given enough time, a galaxy will form a supermassive black hole in its center.

Galaxy formation can be simulated well from the dynamics of dark matter alone. Visible matter and black holes just follow the dark matter clumps.


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

[User]
Is it possible to power a modern family home with just the amount of solar panels that can fit on the roof?

There are quite a few things to take into account:

* Water heating & associated timer devices/clocks
* Electric ovens/stoves
* Electric heating during winter
* Entertainment, i.e. TVs, game consoles, computers
* Refrigeration for food storage
* Lighting
* Charging of mobile devices such as phones and tablets
* Intruder/fire alarm systems
* Telephone systems - these are usually powered via the socket, but cordless phones require a separate power source

Assuming that the home was entirely purpose-built for the task, would pure solar energy be sufficient or would you need extra power via a wind turbine?

I'm fascinated by solar energy, and it's inevitable that we'll have to utilize power sources such as this more often in the future.

[Assistant]
There is an absolute limit on how much solar power you can collect, namely the brightness of the sun.

On earth, on a sunny day at a location close to the equator with panels perpendicular to the sun, the sun delivers just under 1000 watts per square metre. Current solar panels are about 10% efficient, so 1m^2 of panels will deliver about 100 watts of electricity. If you are just collecting solar thermal energy, for example to heat water, it's more efficient.

An average North American person consumes about 100 megajoules per day, so assuming we collect solar energy at a maximum for 8 hours per day and store it with no losses, each person will need about 30 m^2 of solar paneling.


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

[User] Is 320 days without snow and 50F temperatures in Chicago in January the result of global warming (providing further evidence) or a fluke?

[Assistant] It's impossible to positively correlate a single climate event with a given cause. However, global climate change might be expected to produce that kind of effect, so statistically its chances of occurring have increased.