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

[User] ELI5:Why do many recipes call for the use of Kosher salt instead of sea salt or regular table salt? Is there an actual difference when using one over the other?

[Assistant]
Chef here. Yes there is a big difference in different types of salt. The first, and biggest difference, is the sodium to salinity ratio. Iodized salt (table salt) has the highest sodium to salinity ratio, meaning it takes more of the actual salt to give it a salty taste. Kosher salt has a medium ratio, and sea salt usually has the highest ratio. This means that you will get more flavor from less sea salt than you will with iodized salt. This is very important for people who have low-sodium dietary needs, as you can use less sodium and get the same taste. This is why you will not get the same flavor using iodized salt for a recipe that calls for kosher salt.

The second difference in salt is the size and shape of the grains. Notice how iodized salt is all the same size and very small, whereas kosher salt is usually very coarse grain. This affects not only the solvent time of the salt, but also your ability to consistently measure the same amount of salt with your hand. The grains of kosher salt make it the easiest to measure out by hand.

These properties of salt give different salts different uses. Iodized salt is more commonly use to finish salting fried foods, as it sticks to the surface of the food better. Kosher salt is used in most commercial kitchens because of the ease of measuring, and also because its shape and salinity allow for bleeding meat. Sea salt is most commonly used in desserts in order to balance the intense sweetness of some items.

Edit: For those wondering about the S/S metric of salts, it is caused by the different crystalline structure of salts. As salt forms, it doesn't always form in the same crystal structure. This means that in some salts more ~~sodium~~ NaCL molecules form in a more densely packed fashion. This causes a higher sodium content, and less taste because it breaks down slower in your saliva. The less densely packed molecules have less sodium per volume, and dissolve more rapidly in your saliva.


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

[User]
ELI5: how airplanes slow down so quickly when landing (while already on runway)

after the plane's wheels have all touched down, the plane immediately begins to decelerate at a fairly rapid rate. at this time, passengers hear that sudden "woosh" sound come from the engines/wings.

what's happening on/in the plane to make that rapid deceleration  happen? and what exactly is that woosh sound?

[Assistant]
Thrust reversers.  The structure of the plane's jet engines are reconfigured so that the jets are *reversing* the thrust.  In addition, the wings and flaps are in positions that generate a lot of drag.

This all slows the plane down really fast.


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

[User] How do polarised lenses block the glare from water?

[Assistant] Light wave energy can oscillate up and down, side to side,  or any angle in between.  The molecules in the lenses or lens coating allow only one angle of polarized light to pass through and block all others. If the angle is chosen to allow all vertical oscillations to pass, then any horizontal ones are blocked. Light glancing off water at a low angle are primarily horizontally polarized.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can we randomly feel our pulses in parts of our body for a few seconds?

[Assistant] Your arteries are pretty close to the surface in some places, for example behind your knees. If you put pressure on them or your heart rate goes up or a couple other common things happen, you can feel them pretty easily. For example some people's toes will start bouncing from the pulse in the back of their knee if they have one leg crossed over the other for a while, pressing into the back of the top leg. Remember that a pulse is just blood suddenly going faster in an artery because of a heartbeat, so it makes sense that wherever your arteries are close to the surface you can sometimes feel them.


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

[User] Can you adhere to a normative ethical system without believing in objective morality?

[Assistant] Sure! You can adhere to a normative sports system (like the rules of basketball) without thinking there are objective rules to sports, or without thinking there's objective morality, or anything like that.


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

[User] [General] If I was living in a Dyson Sphere or on a Ringworld and looked up during a darkness cycle what would the observable night sky look like?

[Assistant]
Depends on the mechanism used for the darkness cycle, the habitation density of the structure, and what exactly you're looking at.

With THE Ring World, directly above would likely be a black square that appears somewhat like a square lunar eclipse. To the sides of the panel, you're still likely to see stars off to the sides, and may be able to make out other light-cycle bands along the ring its self. If the ring is extremely densely inhabited, you may be able to make out extremely large population centers as small stars along the ring structure its self. They'd have to be EXCEPTIONALLY large, mind you, and no modern city is going to cast enough light to be viewable across the ring.

One of the day-night cycles i've seen proposed for a Dyson Sphere are 2 quarter-spheres that rotate around the central star. Because of the area you're dealing with, they would cast a shadow on where you're standing, making it 'night', but you should still be able to see the areas of the sphere that are in their day cycle if you look up. To an extent, anyway. Cloud cover, locally and on other sections of the interior sphere, are going to obscure your view, likely making day-cycle sections look like a sort of murky grey-green.


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

[User]
[WH40k] if rowboat girlyman happened to find a STC, would humanity have a serious chance at overcoming the threats around them ?.

Lets good old robot grindman found an intact stc on a planet, and knowing what it is, immediately started using it to better our technological capabilities and reform the mechanicum. How would things play out ?.

[Assistant]
Assuming that it's fully functional and **uncorrupted**, it would be the find of the century. It would likely be years or decades before anyone would feel the impact, though. The tech that would be 'ready to go' right out the box (like incremental upgrades to currently-extant weaponry and equipment) would need to be disseminated, and factories currently producing the old models would need to be systematically upgraded to the new ones, in a staggered fashion to reduce disruptions to the overall supply chain. The more advanced stuff (genuine lost technology) would likely take multiple iterations of building the needed tools/infrastructure so that you're capable of building a new tier of needed tools/infrastructure, which in turn would consume resources not being directed to more conventional weapons/technology.

And as others have noted, the raw scale of the universe (and of the threats bearing down on the Imperium) means that no individual thing is going to be an "I win" button. Alone, the STC won't save humanity, it would just mean that the humans would take more xenos down with them on the way out.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Boggarts. What if your biggest fear was was something without a shape?

Like being afraid of being alone, of heights, a failing economy or like what Ron said to Hermione; "Scoring only 9 out of 10"

Would it keep going down your list of fears until it finds the first thing that makes you uncomfortable, that IS tangible?

[Assistant]
It'd probably try and find a manifestation of that.  Lupin wasn't scared of the moon per se, but of the fact that he'd turn into a werewolf.  But it couldn't contextualize that fear, so it showed him the moon.

Keep in mind, though, that the Boggarts aren't terribly intelligent. They're creatures but not all knowing or all powerful, just magical.  They're limited in what they can do or show, they just do their best.  They can be defeated with a simple spell and some laughter by schoolchildren.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the "Old Math" that our parents and grandparents did, and what does it involve doing that's different than the "New Math"?

Specifically the addition and subtraction part of it.

[Assistant]
Old math: Add the 1s column, if it's greater than 9, carry the 1, add it to the tens column, add the 10s column, carry the 1 if needed.

New math: Add the 10s, add the 1s. If adding the 1s is greater than 9, repeat.

New math is the way most people add numbers in their head. Makes mental math and paper math consistent. Old math is easier for dealing with more than 2 digit numbers.


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

[User]
[ASOIAF/GOT] Why was Jeor Mormont in the Nights Watch?

Did he decide to join because he was ashamed of his son's crimes? Or did he join because he thought they needed men? Or did he break some laws himself?

And what about the other noblemen in the Nights Watch like Denys Mallister?

[Assistant]
Jeor Mormont joined the Night's Watch before Jorah committed his crimes. He abdicated several years before Robert's Rebellion.

Not all of Westeros' houses view joining the Night's Watch as a form of punishment. Some men from certain houses, mainly Northern houses or houses with strong First Men links, will willingly join the Night's Watch. Obviously Benjen Stark, Jon Snow, Waymar Royce and Jeor Mormont are good examples of that. Denys Mallister probably also joined by choice. There's a number of other men in the Night's Watch who are of noble birth who we're unaware as to the reason they joined (Mallador Locke, Ottyn Wythers, Wynton Stout as examples).

The ones we know that were forced to join are Alliser Thorne and Jaremy Rykker (wrong side of Robert's Rebellion). Samwell Tarly was also forced to join, not because of crimes, but because his father's a dick.


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

[User] If an overweight person and a thin person were both in a car accident which would sustain more bodily damage?

[Assistant]
The amount of energy required to stop each body is linearly proportional to their mass.  So the fat person will take greater energy to stop.

If this is applied through the use of a seatbelt, the force applied to stop them will be applied over a similar area, regardless of their girth.  That is, the seat belt will be exerting a lower pounds per square inch on the skinny dude.

The same argument can be made for heads against windshields (a point collision), legs under the dashboard (again a line).

The only one that is vaguely interesting is the fat guy makes a bigger imprint on the air bag.  But the greater area presented doesn't match his increase in mass, so again he hits the bag with greater force.

Then there is the matter of the health of the individual.  All else being equal, the skinny guy probably exercises more and has greater bone density which can help a lot.


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

[User]
Just started my first full time job as a Software Engineer today, is it normal to feel like you're wildly underqualified off the bat?

Like the title says, today was my first day as a professional Software Engineer. I was thrilled to get the position, the hiring manager seemed very excited to have me aboard and in fact even raised my base salary before I even started because he felt I deserved more. This especially made me very confident going into my first day, but now I feel like I'm in over my head.

I've done plenty of programming in my life but unfortunately my internships weren't as technical as I wanted them to be, so today was my first taste of a DevOps environment. Hearing about so many technologies that I've never touched before was overwhelming. Getting thrown stuff ranging from tmux and tmuxinator all the way to Redux and Google SDK, all kinds of stuff. The code I looked at made sense to me and I even closed a ticket but I still feel like I'm so far from being an asset to my team because I'm going to be drinking from the firehose from so long.

Is this normal and I'm just a worrywart? Or am I behind the curve and should catch up on all these DevOps technologies that I'm gonna be using.

[Assistant]
Imposter syndrome is rampant, probably because this industry is a lot of the blind leading the blind.

Your boss was in your shoes once, Im sure he understands. It sounds like he is a good guy.

The good thing about hiring a new person is that they are adaptable and motivated, as well as (usually) very willing to conform to the standards of the project/company. These are the traits your boss is _really_ looking for, IMO.


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

[User] ELi5: Can someone please explain qualified/unqualified audit opinions and modified/unmodified audit reports?

[Assistant]
And unmodified opinion is when a company's financial statements presents a true and fair view.

A modified opinion is the opinion and auditor gives when there are misstatements present in the books. The three main modified audit opinions are: Qualified opinion, adverse opinion and disclaimer of opinion.

Qualified opinion is when there are material misstatements present but don't affect the financial statements as a whole ( as in not pervasive).

Adverse opinion means that the misstatements are pervasive, and is serious enough to distort the company's financial figures.

Disclaimer of opinion is the opinion the auditor gives when they lack necessary information to properly audit the financial statements.


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

[User]
[MCU] How does the afterlife work in the MCU (spoilers for Moon Knight)

For everyone caught up on Moon Knight, we know we get to see a glimpse of the afterlife, which is VERY much aligned with Egyptian mythology.

How does this work exactly? Is this the afterlife for literally everyone on Earth? Is it belief specific? We know the Wakanda afterlife (or we think that's what we're seeing with the soul plane visions) is very different.

I'm just trying to imagine Tony Stark sailing through the Egyptian Underworld like "...you have to be shitting me."

[Assistant]
Tawaret made it pretty clear in the episode that other afterlifes exist, and explicitly mentioned the Ancestral Plane that Wakandans believe in.

It seems that people go to the afterlife that is appropriate to their beliefs.


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

[User]
ELI5: If our skin regenerates, why do scars last so long?

When I was five days old I had a major surgery on both my small and large intestines, which was followed by a colostomy. I am now seventeen and my scars are still clearly visible. I've always wondered scars stay visible for so long, even lifetimes, if our skin regenerates. (I've read that all the cells that make up your skin are new within a week.) So, why do scars remain. At that point aren't they unnecessary / redundant? Wouldn't it be more beneficial for the body to have smooth skin without scars, moles, or blemishes?
EDIT: Ok I kind of get it. I understand it takes a long time to heal, but there is not way the tissue isn't "healed" after seventeen years. I mean this scar is faded but its gonna be there for the rest of my life.  You explained that dermis takes larger to heal, but how long is that?
FOLLOW UP QUESTION: What determines how long a scar will last? Is it possible for doctors to minimize scaring or completely eliminate it when you go "under the knife"?

[Assistant]
Skin scars occur in the dermis, which is the 'lower' level of the skin as opposed to the epidermis. At the deepest level of the epidermis, as opposed to the superficial layer we know as the surface of our skin, skin cells are reproducing constantly, and moving up through several layers while gathering keratin until they are dead  keratinocytes that get sloughed off in daily life.

The abundance of tougher, single-direction collagen in a scar disrupts the growth pattern over that previous laceration. So imagine you've got water constantly bubbling up from a manhole, constantly flowing and then dispersing when it reaches the surface. These are your cells rising up through the layers then 'falling off'. Nail a stick across the opening of the man hole. Water continues to rise up and disperse, but can't go directly through the stick, and thus simply disperses around it. If anyone can imagine a better analogy or sees glaring flaws do feel free to tell me!


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

[User] [The Matrix] What is it about the "wet wall" that thwarts the system? Assuming the windows can be "deja-vu'd" with bricks, the wet wall seems to not be affected. Is it a memory/resource allocation issue?

[Assistant]
The Machines work in a system with rules - thats one of their only weaknesses.  Like how an Agent is killed by a bullet to the brain (or at least, the host body is), those rules must remain in effect to some extent even when inconvenient. Though small allowances can be made when necessary, but only the smallest, ideally.

A building must have plumbing, and so a change that would interfere with that plumbing (replacing it with bricks, say) would be a massive violation of those rules.  The nature of the Machines philosophy in the Matrix is to minimize those sorts of changes.

Covering up exits, on the other hand, is a smaller imposition, one that doesnt alter the fundamental structure of the building.  Old buildings often have windows boarded up or bricked over, after all.  So this change was a smaller violation of the logic of the Matrix, one that caused minimal errors in the code (like Neos deja vu) but was unlikely to affect the stability of the world or the people still plugged in at all.


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

[User] ELI5: Why roads look like wet puddles when it is extremely hot outside?

[Assistant] This is an example of a mirage. The sun heats up the bitumen, and it creates a very thin layer of very hot air. That hot air is less dense than the air above it, and this acts as a lens, curving light that approaches from a shallow angle upwards. This looks a bit like how light reflects off of a still puddle.


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

[User]
[Dc/Marvel] What's the legal precedent for aliens forced to immigrate to earth?

Superman arrived here as a kid with his home world having a bad case of dead.

Thor ended up here because Odin brainwashed him into thinking he's a human citizen.

The Space Cop Abin Sur latterly crash landed and DIED here beacuse he was attacked.

There Is quite a precedent for aliens immigrating to earth against their will.

so what is the legal precedent for this?
They are not here legally or by choice and many aliens ether don't really have homeworlds to go back to or have something trying to hunt them down. Is there a way for these people to quickly explain their situation and get citizenship?

[Assistant]
the supergirl TV show goes into this.

And superman's origin as an alien is supposedly the crux of lex's beef with supes.

Thor actually established diplomatic relations at one point.

as far as the GL corps .. well that's a matter of jurisdiction.

In general it's case by case.


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

[User]
If Nietzsche rejects the will, how does he claim that man can be explained by the will to power?

In Twilight Nietzsche says that man is not the product of an intention or will. How does this square with his comments about the will to power? Does Nietzsche think individuals can progress, or are they just born weak or strong? If I'm a "slave" (A) and I want to be a "master" (B), but Nietzsche is right that there is no will, how can I get from A to B? If I'm missing something feel free to let me know!

[Assistant]
It's easy to be misled by the term 'will'. However, the will-to-power isn't analogous to willpower or intentionality, and it doesn't do goal-setting so it won't help you get from A to B. As Nietzsche conceived of it TWTP entails a metaphysical and ontological theory about existence as such, what makes change possible and what unifies and maintains existence through change. ALL change. In a way TWTP is Nietzsche's response to a far older discussion between Parmenides, a pre-Socratic philosopher who argued on behalf of eternal, timeless being, and Heraklaetos, another pre-Socratic philosopher who argued on behalf of flux and unending change.

As such TWTP encompasses far more than individual agency, and it really doesn't have anything to do with 'will' considered independently of power (i.e. expression). Will-to-power (the hyphens are necessary in English) is expressed in whatever is actually happening at any given moment. In this it can be likened to evolution, which is expressed in whatever biological organisms happen to be alive at any particular moment. Also like evolution TWTP doesn't have any goal or purpose.

Since Nietzsche is a preeminent philosopher of change, he obviously believes that people can change. Since in fact they do. A weak man can become strong and vice versa. It can also be the case that the very quality that makes a person strong under one set of circumstances is the same quality that makes them weak under a different set of circumstances.


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

[User] [Borderlands 2] How does Salvador accumulate bullets while gunzerking?

[Assistant]
All the weapons get 'digi-structed' out of your space holster, just like the catch-a-ride vehicles. Finding a weapon is just finding a schematic for it. Your 'inventory' size is limited due to your holster's hard drive space. The limited active slots are the ones it's holding in hot RAM at the time.

These things are also restricted by intellectual property laws. There are a lot of shitty pirated designs floating around, on Pandora especially, but the way it's *supposed* to work is you buy a license for guns and ammunitions, and your digistructey thing complies with those regulations. This is more like a copy-protection Software license than a modern concealed-carry license - it's tightly regulated by the companies, and enforced like the wrath of god, not for public safety, but for profit. The arms dealer situation is fucking nuts.

So, having 200 'bullets' is actually just being licensed for 200 shots. If you kill someone and 'loot' their corpse, you're just finding the cryptographic hash for their licensed bullets and adding it to your digistruct account. They're extremely secure digitally, but almost nobody gets a chance to log off their account when they're being shot in the face. Most violent people pack some free apps to make this 'looting' process quick and easy. Any objects (guns, bullets) you might see lying around are super-imposed by your ECHO HUD based on the active code.

What Salvador is doing is getting really angry and mashing the button so hard and so fast that the software glitches and he gets a few extra shots out.


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

[User] [MCU] Why did Tony's ARC reactor allow him to resist Loki's staff?

[Assistant]
Simply because it wasn't flesh and blood. Loki needed to touch the point of his sceptre to his target's chest. Thin cloth wouldn't impede its power, but a thick lump of various metals is as good as wearing heavy armour would be.

If Loki had thought to move his sceptre a couple of inches in any direction and try again, he'd have had Tony - but he was so nonplussed by his initial failure that Tony was able to take control of the situation and taunt Loki into throwing him out the window instead.


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

[User]
ELI5:How do compensatory damages for a sex tape reach 115mil?

Granted, it was a horrible thing to do, but *before punitive damages*, the sum is already 14 times Hogan's net worth. How is it calculated?

[Assistant]
To answer your question literally, in tort law compensatory damages are calculated by determining what amount would "make the plaintiff whole" again.

There's a bunch of factors that can be taken into account. Lose of job prospects/income is one; however, they also take loss of reputation/public good will as one. The lawyer would have had to make an argument as to why what happened to Hulk damaged to that amount, and without reading the argument it is hard to tell why the jury decided that was the case. There's no set formula, although there are books called Jury Reporters that tell you what was awarded in certain cases. The lawyer may also have been able to point to that as a reference. Again, without being able to read the lawyers argument it is hard to tell.


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

[User]
How did Leibniz come to the conclusion that reality consists of single indivisible windowless monads?

I'd like to know how you can even reasonably conclude that with just reason.

[Assistant]
Leibniz's issue, along with many others at the time, was the problem of having matter at the foundation of all substance. If we take a chair, we can divide it in half, and again, and again... Leibniz doesn't like this answer. He argues that there must be a single complete soul-like concept as a foundation of substance. This foundation can't be material because then it would just be divisible.

So he posits these *monads*. Monads are necessarily immaterial. These monads are soul-like in that they are indivisible and thus suitable for the foundation of substance.


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

[User]
how much potential energy is accrued the further a body moves away from the earth?

obligatory excuse my ignorance.

if an object at rest on earth is lifted to a higher altitude then the kinetic energy required to do so is converted to potential energy?

so is there a limit to this?

If an object is lifted higher and higher until it is only negligibly affected by the earth's gravitational field, does the amount of potential energy it gain keep increasing too?

Would the voyager probe or some equivalent far off former piece of earth have enormous potential energy?

[Assistant]
Neatly this is how escape velocity is found. The kinetic energy of an object at escape velocity at sea level (or any other altitude you define escape velocity from) is equal to the amount of GPE it needs to gain to get out of the Earth's gravity well, basically to reach infinite distance at zero velocity.

Note that both KE and GPE have a mass term, which is why we talk about escape velocity which is independent of mass.


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

[User]
ELI5: What exactly makes the sky different colors at different times of the day?

I've always heard about "scattering" and that blue light is "scattered more," but what does that really mean? Why can the sky become red/orange as well then?

[Assistant]
On its own, the Sun is almost perfectly white. Its light covers a broad spectrum of colours ordered by wavelength, from infrared (long wavelength) through reds, yellows, greens (the brightest part), blues and violets and tapering off in ultraviolet (short wavelength).

When light passes through something transparent and colourless, it undergoes what is known as *Rayleigh scattering,* which means that each photon of light has a certain probability to veer off in a different direction rather than moving in a straight line. For interesting quantum reasons, short-wavelength light scatters much more than long-wavelength light. (Of course, the amount of scattering  also depends on how deep and dense the transparent material is.) To illustrate this, imagine a bunch of red photons and equally many blue photons in a beam. It moves through a material, and every now and then, a photon "hits" an atom and jolts off in a different direction, like a subatomic billiard ball. The wavelength of the red photons is about 2 times as long as that of the blue ones, so due to the aforementioned quantum stuff, it turns out that the blue photons are 8 times as likely to scatter. Therefore, when half the blue photons have scattered, 91% (the 8th root of ) of the red ones are still in the beam. Much later, when half the red photons have scattered, only 0.4% ( to the power of 8) of the blue ones remain.

When the Sun is high in the sky, it passes through 100 km or so of air, which is enough to scatter blue, violet and ultraviolet light many times over, so that it is spread out evenly throughout the air. On the other hand, shorter-wavelength light hardly has time to scatter at all. Therefore, the reds and greens and yellows come straight from the Sun (they mix to form a slightly yellowish white light, but the Sun is perceived to be much more yellow than it actually is for interesting psychological reasons), while the air is filled with blues and violets all over. Sunlight contains much more blue than violet, so even though violet (and ultraviolet) scatters even more, it is washed out by the blue.

When the Sun is rising or setting, its light hits the atmosphere edge-on, so it must pass through much more than 100 km of air. The short-wavelength light is scattered so much that very little of it reaches your eyes -- it is absorbed, or veers off into space, or hits the ground in some other part of the world. Only long-wavelength light -- reds and oranges -- remains, and is scattered by a moderate amount, enough to spread out in the sky but not enough to disappear. Under the right conditions, further scattering on clouds or dust in the air can make the colours even more vivid.


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

[User]
[LOTR] When Sauron was vanquished, did Mirkwood heal?

Did it turn back into Greenwood or was it permanently scarred?

[Assistant]
During the War of the Ring, an army came forth from Dol Guldur and attacked the Elves of Mirkwood. There was a fierce battle, but in the end the Elves were victorious - the Elves of Mirkwood were aided by the Elves of Lothlorien, who crossed the Anduin to trap the orcs between their two armies, and Thranduil and Celeborn met under the eaves of the forest.

After the orcs were destroyed, the Elves marched against Dol Guldur itself. At this point Galadriel brought forth her power, and the power of her Ring Nenya, and threw down the walls of Dol Guldur and laid bare its pits. Thus Dol Guldur was overthrown, and Mirkwood was cleansed.


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

[User]
ELI5: On the scale of human to microbe at which point along the scale does sleep stop being an important life component for organisms?

Im guessing there is a general line on that scale in which sleep happens to most everything to the right of the line and does not happen with most everything to the left of the line but I have no idea where that line is.

[Assistant]
Theres not really a hard line there, or a great definition of what sleep means to a jellyfish.

A lot of cruder organisms do change or shut off certain metabolic/behavioral pathways on a daily cycle, either to conserve energy during sub-optimal light/temperature conditions or simply to be inactive when predators are active.

Youll see changes in activity even down to the single celled level.  Its not exactly sleep, but these organisms do need this dormant period to handle certain metabolic activities that theyre not doing as much while active.


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

[User]
[Deathnote movie]Why didn't Kira just turn himself in? It's not like there is a tangible, provable link between the deaths and the notebook.

[I've only ever seen the movie, but I suppose the anime has a similar plot and my question could apply to it as well]

During the Kira crisis, every agency in the world was looking for him, and he stayed in hiding. Why not just come out, let himself be arrested, and then sent to trial?

How could any prosecution prove that he is the murderer of someone who died on the other side of the planet, in a locked cell,  by slicing their own throat with a shank? How could a prosecution prove beyond any reasonable doubt that writing a name in some old notebook could possibly take control of someone's mind instantly, over thousand of kilometers, and through billions of tons of solid and molten rock?

It obviously doesn't make any sense that this kid could be responsible. Arguing that he is flies in the face of everything we know about medicine, psychology, and physics. It simply is impossible to hijack someone's mind like that.

It seems evident to me that he would have been found innocent, if the lawsuit wasn't thrown out for being frivolous in the first place.

[Assistant]
Well, if Light turns himself in and shows them the notebook, they'd see that everyone listed in it has died in the way listed, so that's suspicious. They'd also be able to match up the times of death to times when Light was alone, showing he could have written it.

Obviously, a magic murder notebook isn't very believable, but if they tested it themselves they'd see that it's real. They could test it on a terminally ill volunteer or on a prisoner scheduled to be executed anyway.

What would Light have to gain by turning himself in anyway? If that somehow exonerated him, the investigation would continue and he'd be back where he started (except that L would be paying even more attention to him).


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

[User] [OPM] Would Cloning Saitama work like Cloning Superman? Having a double that has similar powers to him? Can Saitama pass on his potential like Goku?

[Assistant]
It doesn't seem like powers in OPM universe work like that - almost everyone had achieved their powers somehow, so cloning someone would end up with a normal human, unless you actually monkey around with it in the tube and give clone powers that way. Saitama didn't achieve his power through some quirk of genetics or ancestry, it was through will and determination. In-universe it's described like he's broken the limiter on his potential. There are other characters in the series who did similar things - like Garou, whose arc we would follow in second season, and he demonstrably becomes stronger all the time, as he pushes and breaks through his limits, and Monster King Orochi. Who is a Monster King.

So basically if you clone Saitama, he'll have hair and no powers.


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

[User] [Batman] Due to damage after a fight, Batman's mask breaks down and he's clearly seen as Bruce Wayne on a security camera. The owner of the tape is set on making it public. How does Wayne protect his identity?

[Assistant]
Ask yourself "What would Paris Hilton do?" that's what Bruce Wayne would do.

- Release a viral video saying he is Batman, wearing a Batman suit to parties with hot chicks
- Start a clothing line that says "Batsex" with the slogan "Like a bat out of hell"
- Claim we are ALL Batman
- Get destroyed in the media for it
- Have the Justice League publicly denounce him

Then when this video DOES come out, it will seem like a pithy attempt at viral marketing and nobody will bat an eye. Pun not intended.

Bruce Wayne is the Gotham equivalent of Paris Hilton. A ditzy rich party boy who might be good-intentioned but it all reeks of narcissism and the need for attention. NOBODY in their right mind would think he is the Batman. You might as well go around saying that Paris Hilton was in Seal Team 6 and had a hand in fighting Bin Laden.


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

[User] [WH40k] What deal did the Emperor make with the Chaos gods regarding the Primarchs?

[Assistant] In story, we don't really know yet. It's implied that maybe he learned how to create life,  the primarchs, but we are really not sure yet. It is also implied that Emperor tricked the choas gods. Until the we get a more information that's basically what we know.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is engine braking, how does it work, and why is it not allowed in some places?

I often will see signs while driving down the road here in TX, USA that say 'No Engine Braking'. I looked it up and I'm not quite sure I understand what it is or how it works.

[Assistant]
A compression release engine brake, frequently called a Jake brake or Jacobs brake, is an engine braking mechanism installed on some diesel engines. When activated, it opens exhaust valves in the cylinders after the compression cycle, releasing the compressed air trapped in the cylinders, and slowing the vehicle.

Engine braking is prohibited in some areas because of the loud noise it creates. Typically, when an interstate travels near a residential area is when you will see the signs prohibiting the action. Typically, research shows the decibel level to be the same as that of a large lawnmower, but in early morning or late at night, the sound a jake brake causes when engaged can be very disruptive to local communities.


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

[User]
Human beings aside, how do mammals behave regarding eating and drinking: drink before, while, after eating? And is there a better option among these three for human beings?

I'm curious about when to drink regarding meals, and if it has any impact on digestion and nutrient absorption. I feel like drinking during the meal would reduce the impact of acids in the digestion process, but I don't know much about it. And by asking about how animals do, I feel like it would be a good indication of the most instinctive, natural way.

[Assistant]
As you might imagine, for most mammals and other animals, the acts of eating and drinking are divorced out of necessity.  Grazers and other herbivores tend to continuously eat for long periods, while carnivores eat whenever they procure meat.  Meanwhile, drinking involves taking a separate trip to the stream/lake/watering hole.

In general, modeling your behavior after animals won't be the path to the "most instinctive, natural way" in any beneficial manner.  Animals don't eat and drink together because their food and water sources are typically in separate places, not because that provides some form of physiological or psychological benefit.


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

[User]
Is there an absolute maximum temperature?

As I understand it, absolute zero, 0 K, is the point at which all molecular movement ceases.  A point that can only be reached in theory.

If heat is a measure or cause of molecular movement, is there a temperature where molecular movement would reach the unbreakable speed of light?

[Assistant]
The speed of light is an upper limit for the speed of a massive object, but there is no upper bound on the kinetic energy of an object.

*The temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of particles in a sample*. Since kinetic energy does not have an upper limit, temperature does not have an absolute maximum.

Now, let's look at the limitations of our current understanding.

Current cosmological models postulate that the highest possible temperature is the **Planck temperature** , which has the value 1.416785  10^32 kelvin. The Planck temperature is assumed to be the highest temperature in conventional physics because conventional physics breaks down at that temperature.


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

[User]
[WH40K] Two Primarchs are in stasis, a few dead, but most just poofed. What are the chances of a loyalist Primarch returning?

The Lion and Ultramarine Primarchs are in stasis while a number are either dead or missing. What are the chances that one would return to the Empire after all this time? Furthermore, what would they likely do?

[Assistant]
There was an incedent during the 36th millennium (I think, can't check the date right now) when several figures appeared to lead the Imperial armies across the Imperium, vanquishing many foes, and were highly reminiscent of the lost Primarchs. Once the Imperium's borders were secured, they disappeared again.

So there's that...


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Is is truth that in current canon Anakin didn't lose force potential when he bacame Vader? If so, why didn't he overthrow the Emperor?

I read that somewhere, but don't know if it's truth, though.

I know that in Legends his potential was cut short because of his injuries, and because of that he wouldn't make it in a fight against Palps, it made sense. However, if in current canon his force potential stayed the same even after Mustafar, why the hell didn't he just kill Sideous?, I imagine that he should have surpassed him somewhere between ROTS and ANH.

[Assistant]
He's was a depressed and bitter husk of a man

His self-loathing and misery meant he didn't see the point of killing Palpatine- even if he succeeded, he'd still be a lonely, hate-filled, barely human creature in constant pain. He was destined to wallow in misery for the rest of his life, unable to muster the will to do anything else.

It was only once he found h had a son  and got someone to fight for that things changed. Before then, while his *potential* might have been the same, he simply didn't see himself as having any reason to use it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do our mouths salivate right before throwing up?

[Assistant] Since stomach contents are highly acidic, vomiting can be quite harmful for the throat, mouth and teeth and salivating helps to reduce this by diluting and rinsing. Saliva is also weakly alkaline, which helps to neutralize acid.


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

[User]
[Star Wars EU] Why isn't every force user "gray jedi"?

I always thought that using powers from the dark side of the force meant succumbing to temptation and become a "dark" force user, but the concept of gray jedis seems to throw that idea off. I also though that maybe they were much stronger or more diciplined than ordinary force users, but from the wiki (wookiepedia) it doesn't seems to necessarily be that way.

So if using the dark side of the force doesn't automatically corrupt you, why won't the jedi use it? And if you aren't restricted, why doesn't the sith use the light side of the force (I read that Siths commit themselves fully to the dark side)?

It just seems stupid to me to arbitrarily restrict yourself.

[Assistant]
"Gray" doesn't mean uses both sides.

"Jedi" implies they had some form of training from the Jedi Order, which is only one of thousands of Force traditions, albeit the largest that we know about.

"Gray" Jedi are Jedi who simply don't follow the Council's whims.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do pipes in the shower sing when certain temperatures of water goes through them?

[Assistant] It has to do with the vibrations caused by the water flowing through the valve. As you turn it to hot, the cold valve starts to close off more until it's barely passing water through and causes it to whistle, just like whistling with your lips. You have to restrict the airflow by closing off your lips to create the whistle sound and as you change the speed of the air and size of opening in your lips, the sound changes with it. This is what's happening with the water and the valves in your shower. The temperature doesn't matter to the sound, it's just that when you turn it up hotter you're closing off the cold valve more and more.


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

[User] ELI5: What is Linux?

[Assistant]
This is for actual 5 year olds:

Imagine you're hungry. You're trying to decide what to eat. Almost every day, you eat at your favorite restaurant, Microsoft Windows. The food there is good enough, nearly everyone eats there, some people REALLY like it but most people think it's just whatever. Some people who claim they have a "finer palate" prefer the restaurant Mac OS X, which has food that's supposed to be both gourmet and homemade. A lot of people like to eat there just because it's hip. However, you decide to go to your local farmer's market called GNU/Linux, and you buy all the ingredients for your meal and come home, then you cook your meal yourself. Now, your meal is exactly how you want it! It was a little extra work, and it might not look as fancy, but it was delicious and very cheap!

(GNU/Linux is actually free, so the farmers would give you the ingredients free of charge)

*for the people who want to go on about distros, maybe you can think of it like a bunch of different frozen meals in a grocery store freezer? It's not a whole restaurant experience by any means, but it's nearly ready to go. And you do have to do a LITTLE work yourself.*

Also, a bit of semantics: the actual term for Linux-based operating systems is GNU/Linux. This is because most of the code is part of the GNU project; the Linux Foundation only deals with the kernel. To use another analogy, imagine you have a car. Almost all of the car (tires, seats, framework, axles, windows, doors) are made by one organization (GNU Project) and the engine is made by another (Linux Foundation).


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

[User]
ELI5: How do desert lizards/snakes not suffocate when they bury themselves in sand?

Do they have some sort of special breathing they do? Or do they have membranes around their nose or mouth that prevent sand from getting in?

[Assistant] They do not completely encase themselves in sand. They make enough room for them to move a bit and allow an open area for air to get to. They do not require that much air, so the amount that seeps in from the space between the sand is enough to replenish oxygen supply.


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

[User]
[Final fantasy 7] [Final Fantasy 7 remake] [Final Fantasy 7:Advent Children] Are all SOLDIERS as strong as Cloud?

In cut scenes, (especially if the involve sephiroth) we see cloud habitually cutting whole sections of buildings (after being thrown at him by said sephiroth) in two, Jumping/running across falling buildings that have been thrown at him and just generally being more badass than any SOLDIER I've ever seen. Is that just him or can all SOLDIERs do that? And if its just him, HOW is he doing it? Materia?, Training? The favour of Gaia?

[Assistant]
All first class soldiers should in theory be able to go toe to toe with Cloud and sephiroth, not that they would win the engagement but they are enhanced super soldiers. There are also 2nd and 3rd class SOLDIERs who are a step or two below 1st class.

All SOLDIERs have been exposed to mako to grant them super human abilities, however this process dramatically reduces their lifespans.


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

[User]
[The Truman Show] How did they keep Truman past age 18?

I know they say the network got legal custody when he was a baby, but at 18 hed be an adult.

[Assistant] Lots of money and armies of lawyers. It's not the sexy answer, but it's the one given when the anti-show protestors are brought up. Plus, since Truman has a high standard of living compared to the average American, it's difficult to truly argue that he's being mistreated physically.


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

[User]
Why are there no "natural" artificial sweeteners?

So, part of why fruits are so delicious is because plants want animals to eat them in order to spread seeds around.  But what's the advantage to also being nutritious?  Wouldn't it make sense to start making some kind of sweetener that binds tightly to taste receptors to be the tastiest fruit to eat?  Maybe this actually does exist.  Thanks!

[Assistant] There is actually such a thing; it's a glycoprotein called miraculin.  It is found in a tropical fruit known popularly as the miracle berry.  You may have heard of it in the context of something called flavor tripping.  The protein binds semi reversibly to sweet receptors and is triggered by an acidic environment.  Acid is way cheaper for an organism to produce than sugar.  One likely reason we are so good at detecting artificial sweeteners is that if we get fooled by such a strategy, we get cheated out of calories needed for survival.


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

[User] ELI5: What causes you to get sick of the taste of your own breath when you've slept longer than usual?

[Assistant]
If you're asking about what causes morning breath, it really boils down to a couple of factors:

* Firstly, if you've been asleep for eight hours, that's eight hours in which you haven't brushed your teeth. That's eight hours for your standard minty-freshness to disappear, but also eight hours for bacterial colonies to multiply. It's these bacterial colonies breaking down food that makes bad breath in the first place. The more bacteria (and the more food they have), the worse the morning stink. (This is why it's not good to brush your teeth, then have a snack, then go to bed; you get rid of the bacteria, but you give them a fresh food source to gorge on when they build up their numbers.)

* Secondly, saliva production lessens during the night. (After all, your body doesn't really *need* it; it's not like you're going to be chewing anything.) One of the things saliva does is wash things from your mouth down into your stomach -- including bacteria. If you're the kind of person who sleeps with their mouth open, this situation is made much worse; evaporation causes your mouth to dry out, which makes it a lot easier for bacterial colonies to grow, as they're not constantly being swept away.


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

[User]
CMV: Airline seats should not recline

I am 6'1" and find flying incredibly uncomfortable due to inconsiderate people who just slam their seat back with no concern for the person behind them. People doing so causes a whole host of problems.

First, airplane seats are an incredibly limited space and the person in front of me shouldn't be able to encroach on my space. I am the type of person who likes to put my head on the tray tab and catch an hour or so nap while in the air. When someone reclines their seat, my head is in the way and causes them to jam into me. Typically the person tries again to recline their seat, but harder this time, causing me to be hit in the head again. If I am deep asleep it can be several seconds for me to comprehend what happened, resulting in 4-5 blows to the head before I can move. Even if I am not resting my head on the tray table, it makes it difficult for me to get up should I need to go to the bathroom or let the person next to me out. Space on an airplane is at a premium. The charge to sit in the exit row/first row in cabin is high. Therefore I should be entitled to my space that I purchased.

Secondly, if the person does it hard/violently enough, it can knock items off my tray table/out of my hand. Recently I was on a flight and had my soda in the cup holder indent on the tray table and a book out in front of me. The person in front of me slammed their seat back and knocked my soda over (not that I mind it ruining the book, it was a print off of a tax procedure textbook). I will accept some share of the blame as I had my soda in a cup slightly larger than the typical airline cup (maybe 2.5 inches tall) but not by much.  I have also had books I was holding up be knocked out of my hand if I didn't have a good grip, such as when I was turning the page.

Overall it is just inconsiderate for people to recline their seats on the plane. The benefit a person receives by being reclined that 15 degrees more is much smaller than the cost for the person behind them. The vast majority of travellers don't recline their seats for these reasons and probably more that I didn't cover. Those that do recline their seat don't care about the overall utility, just their personal utility. Flying would be more enjoyable overall if seats didn't recline.

To address a couple counterpoints I know of,
1) I am still in law school and so cannot afford to pay for an exit row, let alone first class.

2) If it is physically necessary for you to encroach upon someone's space then I do not have a problem. There is a debate about whether severely obese people should be required to buy two seats that I frankly don't want to be involved in. I think there is a line there where if you are wider than the seat by x amount then it is not fair to the person sitting next to you but that is a question for another day.

3) I am not advocating that we force airlines to have seats that don't recline. It would be incredibly cost prohibitive to retrofit all of the current planes in the air. I am also not a fan of government mandating how a company functions. This is just my ideal future and companies made the switch due to the market preferring it, not government demanding it.

4) I have heard people say just to recline my seat and then I'll have the same amount of space. This doesn't work however because not all seats recline, such as the seats in front of an exit row or the last row of seats on the plane. Are these people just SOL?

All airplanes have seats that recline and I am wondering if it is that way because that's just the way it has been and they don't see the need to change it or because I am in the minority in preferring they not recline. Thanks.

[Assistant]
How long was your flight? Maybe you should split the difference in your view and wish for a future where short haul flights don't recline and long haul flights do?

I know a 13 hour flight with no recline is not nearly as nice as a 13 hour flight with recline.


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

[User]
ELI5 - If we're supposed to be evacuating our (US) troops from Afghanistan, why are we still shipping new troops over?

Context - I have two friends who are relatively high-ranking officers in the Air Force that have just been shipped over and they're either unwilling or unable to tell me the answer to this question.

[Assistant]
It has to do with the fact that military personnel are only deployed for limited amounts of time (tours) that are shorter than the overall war/withdrawal schedule.

Lets pretend there's 9,000 troops over there right now and they're supposed to be completely gone in 3 years at even intervals.  So after 1 year we only have 6,000 there, in 2 years it's down to 3,000 and at the end it's down to 0.

However you don't want to have 3,000 soldiers stuck there for 3 straight years.  So what you might do is after year 1 you pull back 6,000 troops and send back in 3,000 meaning you're still at 6,000 total but 3,000 of them are new.  Then at the end of year 2 you pull out the 3,000 that have been there the longest.  That way you're not sticking one group with staying there for 4-5 years straight for the pullout.

TL;DR: Troops get sent in to replace troops coming home but they're sent in at a slower rate so the overall number actually decreases.

Note: If they're actually high-ranking officers, then the rules are completely different as the presence of higher ranking personnel is usually based on various command needs rather than a real timeline.


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

[User]
[Dragon Ball Super] Why is the present Android 17 so much stronger than the Android 17 in Future Trunk's timeline?

Recently, it was shown that Android 17 is about the level of Super Saiyan Blue. He was able to approach this power level despite only having worked as a poacher for several years.

Meanwhile, Android 17 in Future Trunks's timeline seems to be less powerful than Cell.

What explains the difference between these two characters when they have the exact same enhancements?

[Assistant]
The 17 of the original timeline was an untrained savant. He never had a reason to improve himself because he never met somebody he couldn't beat (until about 5 seconds before he got vaporized). The derivative 17 was eclipsed between cell and the hyperbolic time chamber trained saiyans, but lived through the process. This gave him ample motivation to apply himself in his training.

There's a lot of similarity here with Frieza, who had similarly never applied himself until after his (repeated) defeats at the hand of super saiyans, and spent all of 4 months surpassing super saiyans because of his innate talent. 17's baseline is a lot more powerful than Frieza's baseline to boot.


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

[User]
Is it possible to create a microscopic flame?

All flames, such as from a candle or lighter all tend to go out after reaching a minimum size. I suspect that simply making a tiny source isn't enough to do it. For example, birthday candles are much smaller than standard candles, but their flame is only marginally smaller.
Is there some limiting factor?

[Assistant]
The answer is sort of. You can not create an extremely small flame from a source such as a traditional candle. But there is a way to create micro flames.  This is called microcombustion and they are flames smaller than the width of a millimeter.  They are typically made in small hard ceramic combustors (such as alumina oxide) and they burn at temperatures of up to 2000 C. The combustors have small channels through which the fuel flows and the flame burns. They are typically fueled by hydrocarbons and oxygen. Methane, butane, propane, etc.

The two inlet flows of the fuels meet and combine at some point and then you have your combustible gas. The point at which the two flows meet exhibits turbulent flow and this is the limiting factor at ignition for the combustor due to wall conditions and fluid dynamics not worth explaining here. Turbulent flow tends towards extinction for a flame. Typically a large candle type flame will be seen at the end of the exhaust channel.

As the combustor ramps up to its max temp (steady state) the walls of the exhaust channel heat up and begin to provide the thermal energy necessary for the gases within the channel to ignite. You will hear loud pops as ignition events begin to occur within the channel. As the temperature of the wall increases due to the heat seen from the exhaust flame, the ignition events begin occurring closer to the mixing points of the 2 fuels.

Finally at steady state the walls of the combustor at the mixing point of the fuels is so hot that the gases ignite immediately upon mixing. Due to the turbulent nature of the flow, they go out almost immediately.  They are also almost immediately replaced by fresh uncombusted fuel which them ignites. This cycle repeats itself many times per second and you end up with a sustained micro flame. The ratio of gases determines how many times per second ignition occurs and you can actually say that the flame has a frequency (I.e. You can hear the flame buzz while it is lit).

So in short, yes micro flames are possible, just not from a candle.

Tl;dr
Teeny candles don't work. Burn hydrocarbons in a ceramic combustor for super hot, buzzing micro flames. Science is awesome.


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

[User] ELI5 The "edge" of the universe, and why there isn't one.

[Assistant] The best approximate explanation I've heard was from an astronomy 101 professor. He described it like so: imagine a stick figure, drawn on a chalk board. The stick man is limited in space by the edge of the board, so there is an edge to his universe. But if the stick figure is drawn on a balloon and the balloon is being inflated (infinitely, it's a very stretchy balloon), he'll never reach the edge, because there isn't one, and the universe is constantly growing so the distance around it is constantly increasing. He'll never come back around to the place he started, because his speed is limited and the balloon is inflating too fast. This also explains why we can't point out where the center of the universe is, any more than the two-dimensional man can point to the center of the balloon. Bear in mind, this is probably a gross over-simplification of the physics, but you're five, so don't worry about it. Go play outside now and let daddy enjoy his scotch.


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

[User]
ELI5:What is a cookie (internet, not delicious food item)?

Also, why's it called a cookie?

[Assistant]
It's a small piece of data that a website sends you and you store on your computer.  Generally used to track something from the server about you.

Good examples of this might be authentication cookies.  The server sends you some information that proves to the server that you're logged in and what account you're logged into.

Bad examples are tracking cookies, which are basically used to see where you go on the internet long term and can be used for everything from targeted ads to more malicious intents.


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

[User] [Doctor Who] What does the Doctor see when he looks at his physic paper?

[Assistant] He's received messages on it before... But for the most part he sees nothing. His awareness of what the paper actually is prevents him from being fooled by it, especially when he's the one holding it. For the most part the paper works by projecting the viewers own imagination on it... If the holder conveys a sense of authority and confidence before presenting then the viewer may see a police badge or an official ordinance of some kind and the Doctor just has to play the part after that.  Since the Doctor is not only the user but has a lot of experience using the item his imagination is in check when it comes to psychic paper. It's also been shown that individuals can be trained with an immunity to it.  The psychic paper isn't all that different than the Jedi mind trick, with the major difference being the user must work with the imagination of the mark as opposed to implanting a specific idea. This question is a little like asking if a Jedi can use the mind trick on himself/herself.


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

[User]
ELI5: Carcinogens; How Do They Work?

I understand that cancer is an uncontrolled growth/replication of benevolent cells, but how do carcinogens cause/increase the chances of getting cancer?

As an addendum, what makes some people more susceptible to getting cancer. My great aunt smoked from the age of 12 to the day she died of advanced alzheimers at 92, and never had any kind of cancer. On the other hand, my friend never smokes anything, and doesn't hang around smokers, yet he developed lung cancer at 25. Why?

[Assistant]
Carcinogen is a very broad term for agents which can damage your DNA, it encompasses all sorts of things from reactive substances to different types of radiation.

When a carcinogen reaches a cell and manages to hit your DNA, one of several things happens. If you're lucky, the DNA is repaired fully, which is the case most of the time. If you're somewhat lucky, it's repaired in the wrong way but the change doesn't matter and the cell lives on as per usual. If you're somewhat less lucky, the change is severe and the cell can no longer sustain itself and dies - not that it matters when you have billions upon billions of identical ones.

If you're _extremely_ unlucky the damage occurs in such a way that the cell "forgets" that it's supposed to stop replicating, resulting in the uncontrolled growth you mentioned.

As for why your grandmother didn't get cancer, the answer is most likely "dumb luck". It is possible that there are some genetics involved too but the mechanics behind those are likely beyond our current understanding.


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

[User] ELI5: What's the physics behind moving the arms in a looping motion when we're out of balance?

[Assistant] Conservation of angular momentum. If you're standing on the edge of a platform, your angular momentum is zero. If you start wheeling your arms in a clockwise fashion, your trunk will have to start turning in a counterclockwise fashion so that the total angular momentum of your body is still zero. This is what you want, to get your body to rotate AWAY from the edge. So you rotate your arms in the opposite direction.


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

[User]
[MCU] Why did Thanos task a bunch of smaller villains to gather the Infinity Stones when he could easily do it himself?

It seems like a risky idea letting others handle objects that grant God-powers when all held together.
With how easily Ronan turned on Thanos with just one stone, what would Thanos do if more of his lackeys wanted to keep their stones or if ONE of them managed to get the majority, or even ALL, stones?

[Assistant]
When Thanos moves, the galaxy watches.

Thanos is powerful.  Far too powerful for any single galactic Empire to defeat.  But, if he were to *use* that power, he would be vulnerable to one of his many enemies deciding to use that opportunity to launch a surprise attack.  He could use the combined Infinity Gauntlet to fight off all his enemies simultaneously, but he needs to be able to *get* them quickly.

Throughout the buildup movies, the Infinity Stones are hidden more than they are protected.  The main point of his minions is to find them.  Actually staying loyal and retrieving them would be nice, but it isn't necessary.  For example, Starlord finds the purple one on a dead planet, and Ronan takes it from him.  At the end of the movie it's being protected by Xandar.  Thanos can handle Xandar, waltz into their most secure vault and take the stone, but he can't waste time on what might be a wild goose chase searching a dead planet for the stone.


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

[User]
How exactly does a random function work ?

As far as I know it randomly picks any member present in a list but the how does the machine decide up which memeory address to pick ? I mean how does a programmer describe the random algorithm ?

[Assistant]
Generally, there are two types of randomness: true (cryptographic) randomness and pseudorandomness (sometimes these are used in conjunction to generate large amounts of mostly cryptographically secure randomness).

Most programs (where cryptographically secure randomness isn't needed) use pseudorandom algorithms, which generally take a seed and generate a seemingly random pattern using it. One of the more commonly used implementations is the mersenne twister algorithm.

In these algorithms, there is usually a hidden state, which is mutated after getting every value (the value is derived from the state, but usually isn't the state itself).

Cryptographically secure randomness is usually influenced by some non-easily-derivable / -influenceable source, such as electric noise.


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

[User] ELI5: Why a developing country like India have cheaper health care then developed country like America?

[Assistant]
America has by far the most expensive health care system in the world, with costs per operation approximately 10 times the average costs in other developed countries. This is because American health care lacks 'vertical integration'. Just like Walmart can undercut prices by controlling it's supply chain and providing massive bulk services from a central administration, government health care providers can too, negotiating better prices and saving on advertising, negotiation, insurance, etc.

Developing nations services are even cheaper than other integrated health services for the same reasons. Wages for doctors and nurses are lower, rent is lower, and they can negotiate bulk drug purchases at cost or near cost, since it's better for a drug company to sell to Cambodia for a tiny profit than for none. These factors (cheaper labor, cheaper drugs, and cheaper land) make publicly administrated health care in developing nations affordable, if slightly less high quality.


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

[User] Could a dinosaur regrow a severed tail like some lizards?

[Assistant] Neither birds nor crocodiles can regenerate lost body parts, and being the closest living relatives to dinosaurs (in birds case they are direct descendants) it's likely that dinosaurs couldn't regenerate body parts either.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] I'm looking at my hometown spaceport here, and it struck me that most freighters are really small. Why?

- And its not just the obvious smuggling ships, everything here is just a few tons of cargo capacity. It costs a lot of credits to transport stuff off world!

 Could I clean up if I got a hold of a war surplus star destroyer and crew it with droids? The cost per ton has to be a lot cheaper, and all my goods would not have wookie fur all over it after delivery. Am I missing something?

[Assistant]
You're only seeing the ones that can actually dock at a spaceport. The biggest ones don't actually need to land, they can just have cargo brought to them in space with smaller cargo shuttles.

You're not going to see many Star Destroyers at a land military base, but it would be wrong to assume that only light attack and transport craft are in the Imperial Military.


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

[User]
ELI5: What does the Vice President even do?

It's such an important decision every election season, yet to be perfectly honest I have no idea what function the Vice President actually fulfills.

[Assistant]
* He becomes President if the actual President is killed or otherwise incapacitated.

* If the Senate has a 50/50 tie on a vote, he casts the tie-breaking vote. This is less important these days since a lot of things now require more than 50% approval.

* If someone needs to represent the country abroad, and the President is unavailable, he can fill in.

* He has influence. As someone who works closely with the President, he can make his ideas heard at high levels of the government. This depends on the particular situation, but this can be power all its own.

* Sometimes one of the two parties will have a faction with very radical ideas. If the party nominates someone with ideas that match up to that faction, that candidate might not appeal to centrist voters. So, the centrist candidate will chose someone from the radical faction to appease them. Examples of this are when Eisenhower chose Nixon to be his Vice President or Mitt Romney choosing Paul Ryan in the last election.


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

[User]
ELI5: What Exactly Is Shoegaze Music?

What are specific, tangible things that make it stand apart? Is it the production? Lyrical themes? The type of effects used? What is Shoegaze?

[Assistant]
The responses here are really good but they kind of sugarcoat what makes shoegaze so distinct from everything else out there.

Shoegaze really came from Cocteau Twin's who pretty much pioneered 'dream pop', which is an alternative rock genre (your standard 3/5 member band which distinct roles creating rock music but what differentiates it from mainstream rock music is it's usually a bit more jarring, out there, non-commercial) that centered around lulling you to sleep with dreamy, hazy sound effects.

The Cocteau Twins do have a live act, but their sound manufactured incredibly in studio where they can isolate sounds and really 'sculpt' their tones. Shoegaze spun from the attempt to emulate that in a live context, so what audiences would see is bands essentially lugging a studio's worth of audio equipment and sculpt these massive soundscapes using sound equalizers, reverbs, delays, phasers, flangers, distortion etc.

Shoegaze is inherently experimental but what differentiates it from say, noise rock, or experimental rock is how bands approach soundscapes. Noise generally focuses on intensity of sound to achieve the soundscape and experimental tries to go away with songwriting conventions to create songs.

You asked what makes it 'stand apart', and it is partially the effects used but how does that draw the line between the instruments and what we hear? So, we'll make an example with guitar playing to understand.

Generally, with guitar, we go from guitar > distortion pedal (essentially 'clips' your guitar's sound to make it chunky and mean > reverb (emulates the sound of playing in a hall, if you're using a hall reverb) > delay (repeats your notes played as they fade out) > amplifier.

USUALLY, distorting into a reverb is considered *undesirable* by mainstream guitarists because distortion is used to create meanness, and reverb is to bring chill vibes. A shoegaze guitarist might do away with this and reverb their distortion. Now, the sound of this is HORRIBLE **BUT** if you change your pedals configurations, you can essentially dial in the intensity of the sound using your distortion's volume and your reverb's intensity knob and create something that is quite spacey, and nice.

Additionally, a guitarist might want to reverb > delay > distortion. What this means is the guitar's clean signal (no effects) is reverberated, then delayed, then the distortion turns each of those delayed signals into a mean distortion that is *wet*, meaning it sounds like it's echoing. This is when bands begin to sound more experimental, but note that it's not trying to do away with songwriting conventions (akin to experimental), nor is it just trying to make intense noises (like noiserock). The strange, ethereal sounds served their own purpose, usually most shoegaze is quite dreamy, meditative, intense, romantic. It's everything a standard rock song can be, but the sound is just BIGGER because the way in which the sounds are made are so much more broader than just compressing a guitar and using an overdrive.

So, when bands in the early late 80s and early 90s were trying to achieve the Cocteau Twin's unusual, dreamy sounds, they would essentially spend half the set playing guitar and then jump onto their pedal boards which were on the floor and begin dialing in bizarre, noisy, experimental soundscapes. Critics hated these kinds of performance because they weren't your typical "show" and mockingly called it "shoegaze" because that's what it seemed the musicians were doing, just staring at their feet.

The vocals just fit the vibe. If we're delaying and reverberating a distortion, then delaying the distorted reverbed, delay sound and then putting it through a tremolo, the sound is so bizarre and undistinguishable that clear cut, sharp vocals just stand out so bands would just hum, or gently sing into a mic. Eventually bands began droning, reverberating and delaying the shit out of vocals and now it is its own thing entirely.


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

[User] ELI5: How can you measure someones blood alcohol level just from their breath?

[Assistant] The alcohol is in your blood. The blood runs through the lungs in order to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, but alcohol is also small and light enough to transfer out of the blood and into the air in the lungs. Breath out, especially a long, full breath that will expel as much air as possible from the deep in the lungs, and alcohol vapor comes out with it.


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

[User] [Marvel] What exactly are Gambit/Remy's powers? I know he's a mutant and I know he can turn on the kinetic energy thing... is that it?

[Assistant]
He can weaken the molecular bonds in an object to the point where a significant part of it explodes. He is not converting matter into energy, he is releasing energy stored by matter.

He also has a pheremonal impact that makes people desire to trust him.

He has oddly colored eyes. They don't appear to have any unusual properties but those may just be as yet undiscovered.

He has a grace and dexterity that could be explained by training and practice but might also be the result of secondary mutations.


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

[User]
Why does Piketty say that it was essentially inflation that allowed the wealthy countries to get rid of the public debt they owed at the end of World War II? What brings him to this conclusion?

Hi all,

Im a layman studying economics, here, and Im currently reading Pikettys *Capital* (which is where I pulled the quote from; c. pg. 131). Considering I dont know too much about economics, Im wondering how it was that inflation paid off WWII era debts  or if hes exaggerating slightly, or what.

Any help breaking down his comment would be helpful!

Thanks!

[Assistant]
After WW2 there were some years were inflation was significantly higher than it is now. This has the effect of reducing the real value of debt.

For example: Imagine you owe  $ 1 million in year 1, borrowed at 10% and inflation is 20% (exaggerated example, but bear with me). After 1 year, you now owe $1.1 million, however, due to inflation that money is now 'worth' 20% less (you can buy 20% less stuff with it).

So the $1.1 million you owe in year 2 is only worth the same amount of stuff as $0.917 million was worth in year 1. You haven't paid anything back, but the real value of your debt (the amount of stuff you can get for it) has gone down.


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

[User]
ELI5 why does plastic take so long to decompose while natural polymers such as DNA, proteins, fibers and raw latex don't?

My previous attempt got removed for being too straightfoward, and I couldn't find anything on the rules forbidding me to try again, let me know if this is not allowed.

I understand that most human-made polymers will take a long time to decompose, while naturally occurring ones usually won't. Does it have to do with them being polymers at all? Is there a way to make disposable plastic that will decompose faster while still being useful? Is this a deliberate choice or is there some intrinsic limitation to our current technology?

edit: Probably worth mentioning, I don't know a lot about chemistry, but I was taught in school that plastic takes such a long time to decompose due to being a polymer, and only recently did I realize that DNA and proteins also fit into this definition.

[Assistant]
Think of how something like a piece of wooden log would break down. A bunch of the steps would be things like it growing moldy and maybe insects crawling on it and it getting all slimey with bacteria and growing mosses and worms eating it and etc.

There is nothing magic that makes it so that couldn't happen to plastic, it's just that plastic was invented like 70 years ago so no worms or insects or bacteria has much time to get good at living off plastic.

(this actually happened before, when trees themselves were new nothing on earth really ate cellulose, so there was a point several hundred million years ago where dead plants just started piling up and up and up never fullying rotting, which ironically is where a lot of coal and oil comes from that is made into plastic)


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

[User] Eli5: How golf cameras are able to follow the ball on its fly?

[Assistant]
It takes a lot of practice but the short answer is very good camera operators.

Camera operation is an art unto itself and it demands 100% attention and an incredible ability to multi-task because they have to spot, pan, and zoom as smoothly as possible within seconds of a que they have no control over.

On something like that there are usually multiple operators covering from different angles and the director is watching a bank of monitors calling out which feed goes live to the audience. So if 5 cameras are covering 1 or 2 lost the ball and the other 3 are of varying quality and the best one goes out to broadcast.

Shouts out to IATSE. Without hands the show don't go.


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

[User]
CMV: Polygamy is just an excuse for cheating, and indicates a lack of emotional connection.

Title just about sums it up, the whole concept doesn't make sense to me. Maybe some polyamorous people can change my mind.

In a romantic relationship, I honestly can't imagine declaring myself "polyamorous" as an excuse to sleep with other women but retain the emotional support of an SO. It just sounds like some next level manipulation, like having your cake and eating it too. It's an opportunity to prey on someone with low self esteem, who doesn't want the relationship to end so will agree to anything. My honest opinion if that if one even considers that option, then the relationship is already failing and its better in the long run for both parties to opt out or at least have a long heartfelt discussion. If my SO proposed something like that, I'd take it as a huge red flag and seriously reconsider the relationship.

It just doesn't make sense in my head for someone to "love" more than one person romantically at a time. It goes against my base understanding of love, and seems like an excuse to cheat with permission.

To me, it says that you don't love that person enough to commit 100%, so you end up half assing it.

Edit: To clarify, Im talking about polyamorous relationships, I didn't realize polygamy specifically referenced marriage.

Edit: one more edit, I'm not talking about a sexual needs fufullment type scenario, I'm specifically referenceing loving more than one person romantically at a time.

[Assistant]
From your post and replies to other people, it seems like the root of your argument is that you dont feel like *you* could love more than one person romantically at one time. And you require your partner to also only romantically love you. And thats your right, on both accounts!

But something can be okay even if its not right for you.

If youre heterosexual, you probably cant imagine being attracted to people of the same sex as you. It might go against your base understanding of love, as youve experienced it, in the sense that youve only personally known love to be towards someone of the opposite sex.

Meanwhile your gay friend cant imagine being attracted towards people who arent the same sex as him. The idea of having a relationship with a woman feels inherently wrong to him! He simply doesnt experience love and attraction in quite the same way that you do.

If we agree that we might all experience romantic love and sexual attraction differently, it doesnt make a certain kind of love any more valid than another. You might be only able to love women. Someone else might be only able to love men. You might be only able to love one person at a time. Someone else might be able to love multiple people.

Different people experience love in different sort of ways. Its something incredibly personal and its hard, if not impossible, to make someone fully understand a type of love that they dont feel. (Could you explain loving women in such a way that your gay friend would completely get it? Could he convince you to love men, if you dont?) Even if we cant completely love people in a certain way, we can respect people who do and trust them when they tell us thats how they experience love.

**Some people are genuinely capable of loving multiple people at once.** Some people arent. Were probably never going to completely understand each other but that necessarily doesnt mean anyones wrong.


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

[User]
ELI5: What makes Beethoven, Mozart and Bach better than other classical music composers?

To my untrained ear, pretty much all classical music sounds the same to me. But these 3 are pretty much known to everyone everywhere, whether they listen to classical or not. What makes them better than others of their day? What makes them better than a modern composer like John Williams? Is there a well defined "best" out of the three?

[Assistant]
I'll try and make this as simple as possible.

Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach are not all classical composers.

Before Bach a lot of music was very simple, a single vocal or chorus and maybe an instrument playing too. Bach was ~~an early~~ a later composer in the Baroque era, this era of music introduced much more complexity with multiple instrument parts, but it was still relatively simple music, usually featuring a single lead instrument with backing. Bach is seen as one of the best composers of this era, or at least the quintessential Baroque composer.

Mozart was ~~one of the first~~ a classical composers. The classical movement put a lot more emphasis on technical excellence in its music. Instead of the Baroque style of having a single lead instrument and backing pieces classical music would have different parts for every instrument in the orchestra, each instruments sound would weave the fabric of the music.

Beethoven wrote music in both Classical and the new Romantic style. The Romantic style took Classical and made it more dramatic. Rather than being about just technical excellence it was about the feel of the music, the ebb and flow. The composer was trying to evoke emotions in the listeners with their music. The music would alter its tempo and timbre, it would quiet down to a single instrument only to explode back into the full orchestra.

Each of these musicians is considered the best of their era, each era was considered a leap forward in the philosophy of music.

EDIT: A few improvements.

EDIT 2: Clarification to answer OP's question. Each of these composers is seen as the height, or quintessential, composer of their respective eras.


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

[User] ELI5: Can people really die instantly if someone snapped their neck like you see in the movies, or would it likely take a few minutes?

[Assistant]
Cervical fractures can occur via forces those  like depicted in the movies.

This can indeed lead to  death.

When someone dies from a cervical fracture, they tend to go into complete paralyis and instantaneous unconsciousness - actual death still takes a bit of time but the victim is not consciously suffering.

Not all cervical fractures result in death.


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

[User]
What does it mean if "morality exists" (i.e. if moral realism is true), from an atheist perspective?

Morality is essentially a value judgment: this action is good, another one is evil. Something "should" be done.

If you're religious, this makes some sense: These rules were created by God and, according to some beliefs, if you follow them you get rewarded.

But what does "morality being real" mean if you're an atheist? To put it differently: What is the difference, in practice, between moral realism and moral non realism? What does it mean to violate real moral norms if there is no higher entity nor afterlife? Yes, immoral behavior can have social repercussions, but these exist irrespective of the objective existence of morality.

[Assistant]
It means there's an objective fact that you erred if you do something wrong, the same way there's an objective fact you erred if you got a math problem wrong, but there are no necessary external consequences, just like getting a math problem wrong.

It should also be made clear though that you're also missing the point if you only focus on bad consequences of doing wrong in the case of theism being right, the actual point is the same as in the atheist case.


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

[User] [DC] If Superman gets his power from the Sun, is his power output limited by the amount of energy the Sun radiates over its lifetime?

[Assistant]
There is reason to suspect that Superman isn't solar powered; the amount of solar energy falling on a Superman-sized surface simply isn't enough to perform some of Superman's feats.

An alternative speculation is that Superman is solar-catalyzed (using sunlight to catalyze more energetic reactions, eg cold fusion, matter annihilation, or to tap some other dimension). There are also those who believe that Superman is a reality warper. For either of these hypotheses, Superman doesn't actually use the Sun's energy, thus his power isn't limited to that amount.


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

[User]
[Godzilla] How has world history been affected by the Godzilla attacks?

Can you give me a timeline of attacks and how they affected current events of the time?

[Assistant] Actually, since his attacks are restricted to Japan and a few Pacific islands, history has plodded on as normal. Save that Japan is a bit more technologically advanced that would be the norm, since they develop a lot of stuff to deal with the threat.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can organisms lift more than their body weight?

This is very simple and we see examples of it all the time with ants, human weightlifting, etc. but it would be great to hear some different ways of explaining it.

[Assistant] Because we don't use weight to lift. We use a force. Chemical energy in our muscles is converted into a force that pushes up on the object being lifted. If the force we can exert is bigger than the force of gravity, the object will move.


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

[User]
[LotR] What's the difference between the Moria orcs, the Saruman orcs, Sauron's orcs, and the goblins of the Misty Mountains?

Saruman's orcs, (White Hand) were Uruk-hai, able to travel in daylight.  They worked with but didn't get along too well with Sauron's orcs (Red Eye).  What was their relationship with the other orc/goblin tribes mentioned?

Were the Moria orcs allied with Saruman or Sauron?  Were they "working" for anybody, or did they just live in Moria?  Did they have any hatred or friendship with the goblins of the Misty Mountains?

[Assistant]
All Orcs can travel by daylight, they just don't like it.  It's not like they'll turn to stone like Trolls.  There isn't any difference in "breed" of Orc, just merely who they're in service to.

The Moria Orcs seem to be largely just your generic unaffiliated Orcs.  That said, if Sauron gave them an order, they'd probably follow it.

The is no difference between orcs and goblins aside from the name.

There *is* a difference between your generic Orc and an "Uruk-hai".  "Uruk-hai" means "Orc-folk" but in use is reserved for the bigger fighting specialists.  Professional Soldiers if you will (though obviously they aren't paid or anything like that).  The Uruk-hai call other orcs *Snaga*, which means slave.


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

[User]
[Sci-Fi] Hypothetically, if FTL travel was achieved by taking shortcuts through hyperspace, would there still be time dilation?

What I mean to say is: if the method by which you travel "faster than light" actually involves taking a short cut through higher dimensions but not actually accelerating faster than light, that would eliminate time dilation effect?

I really never grokked time dilation, so while this makes sense to me it's based on absolutely nothing. I'm really curious to know what the best guesses would be for this kind of scenario.

[Assistant] Depends on your flavor of hyperspace physics. In Star Wars, for instance, ships still need specific modules to avoid significant time dilation while traveling in Hyperspace; vessels in Babylon 5, on the other hand, show no indication of needing any such equipment.


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

[User] ELI5: How did the suit become the worldwide pinnacle of men's fashion?

[Assistant]
It became the central uniform of aristocracy/upper classes in the late 19th century, at the height of European (British) Imperialism. As a result it became basically the default for fashion the world over and subsequently it's been used by people in lower echelons of society to appear more wealthy/professional. Every man in the city US except for the very poor were wearing them around the turn of the 20th Century, unless they were given a special uniform by their employer.

It has been the tradition ever since, while the men's fashion world has been less focused on the style of the upper class.

edit: tl;dr The suit is essentially the grass covered front yard of fashion.


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

[User] Why don't planets twinkle as stars do? My understanding is that reflected light is polarised, but how it that so, and why does that make the light not twinkle passing through the atmosphere?

[Assistant] Stars are much, much farther away, and also very bright. The distance would make the light dim if it were not for how bright the stars are. The light from exostars arrives to earth as a pin point, meaning the actual area of sky taken up by the star is incredibly small. By contrast, planets are physically a lot smaller than most stars, but also far, far closer and dimmer. The result is that the light from our own planets does not come to us as pinpoints, but instead as an area. The twinkling of stars is caused by atmospheric perturbations. Changes in the upper atmosphere of the earth change how the light bends when passing through. For pinpoints, all of the light is affected by these perturbations the same way, which allows us to observe it. With planets, the light interacts over a larger area and is not all affected the same way. The interactions destructively interfere, meaning that what we observe is the average of the different perturbations. This average may vary slightly, but nearly imperceptibly.


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

[User]
How do astronomers measure the distances of stars?

I know that stellar distances are generally measured in light-years, but my question is this:

How do astronomers calculate the distance of stellar bodies using only optical & radio telescopes? Does it have something to do with parralax?

[Assistant]
Look up cosmic distance ladder on youtube for a complete description, but yes, relatively close stars are measured with paralax. Measure the position of a star, then measure it again six months later when the Earth has moved 300 million km, and use the change in angle to calculate distance.

Things that are farther away are measured with what are called standard candles, where we compare how bright something looks with how bright that type of thing actually is.


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

[User]
It's a common fact that fascists misappropriated Nietzsche's work to fit their worldview. Are leftists who were inspired by him also guilty of misrepresenting or misinterpreting his work?

Fyi, I'm definitely not equating fascists and leftists, but I've recently discovered that a lot of french post-modernist thought, which was IMO were mostly dominated by left-leaning people who were inspired by Nietzsche. Also, I found out that numerous leftists whom I admire were also inspired by him.

[Assistant]
There's quite a difference between finding inspiration and agreement in some aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy to the minimization or exclusion of other aspects and then just getting Nietzsche's philosophy, or even just aspects of it, wrong in basic ways.

Everyone, whether to the political left, right, or center, engages in the former because Nietzsche's philosophy doesn't neatly fit into any existing broad political camp and his philosophy in general is pretty inconsistent as well as incomplete at the time he stopped writing.

Everyone, whether to the political left, right, or center, is *capable* of the latter - that is, just getting Nietzsche wrong in basic ways. For whether anyone does misrepresent Nietzsche, we'll have to look more specifically at individuals rather than broad categories like 'leftist.'