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

[User]
[General Fantasy] So is there any surveillance software or equipment which could be used to detect vampires?

So vampires dont show up in mirrors or film and stuff, which would probably make them harder to detect using normal security systems like CCTV.

But say I wanted to do something like make an anti-vampire shelter or a  prison camp for vampires. Is there any security or surveillance things which could be used to detect vampires and keep track of where they are?

[Assistant]
The reason vampires dont show up in mirrors or film is because older film had silver in it and mirrors were silver treated. This 'pure' metal did not reflect them as they are unholy and filthy creatures.

Theoretically speaking any modern technology not using silver treatments should still pick them up. Aluminum treated mirrors or modern cameras.


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

[User] [ MCU ] What made Steve Rogers worthier in that period of time from where he slightly moved the Mjolnir in AOU to where he held it in his hand in Endgame?

[Assistant] Intent. When he was just trying to pick it up he wasent doing anything to make himself "worthy". He wasent picking it up to smite evil, or defend himself/his friends/the weak etc. He was just trying to pick it up. In endgame he was holding it as a warrior, to destroy his foes, to defend the weak, all stuff the hammer just loves.


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

[User] ELI5: When we are about to cry or holding back from crying, why does it make your throat hurt?

[Assistant] When you cry, you produce a great deal of saliva. During this, your throat's attempt to swallow that saliva presses on your glottis, which expands when you're trying to stop yourself from crying or making otherwise involuntary sounds. The glottis is the opening between your vocal folds. This act of pressing by your throat compacts your food pipe, which makes it feel "stuck".


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

[User]
[DC] What are the strengths/weaknesses of the different Green Lanterns? Who would win in a fight?

Over time in the DC universe there have been a bunch of different people who have been the "Green Lantern" (Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, Kyle Raynor, John Stewart, Simon Baz, Jessica Cruz, etc.). Do any of the lanterns excel at specific aspects of being a Green Lantern (more complex constructs, or stronger, etc.). I'm curious in particular how they all stack up as Green Lanterns (not White Lantern Kyle or Red Lantern Guy, etc.)

[Assistant]
John is the most tactical. He was a marine, and that influences his fighting style. It also makes him predictable.

Guy has the most raw power, but he doesn't have any finesse.

Hal is powerful, lucky, erratic and unpredictable, but tends to act first and think later, which means he gets into situations too big for him.

Kyle is the most creative and "outside the box", but he has the least raw power.

Simon is strong and less averse to dirty tricks than the others, but he's also reckless and inexperienced.

Jessica is powerful, but she also has a lot less experience than the others, crippling self-doubts and has been known to suffer panic attacks.

In an all-out-no-holes-barred fight, i'd say Hal wins. He already took out the GLC once, he could probably do it again.


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

[User] ELI5: If Hydrogen and Oxygen are both gases, then how come when combined they form a liquid?

[Assistant]
Hydrogen and Oxygen arent both gasses, they are both elements.

Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen both exist. When Oxygen and Hydrogen combine their boiling point is raised to above room temp making it a liquid at room temp instead of a gas.


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

[User]
[Edge of Tomorrow] In the beach landing scene, I saw a lot of fighter jets and attack helicopters. Do you think they would be effective against the Mimics?

Also, have you seen any tanks around? So far, I have only seen the mechanized soldiers, supply trucks, armed hovercrafts and some (supposedly) battleships.

[Assistant]
Ultimately no, because of the nature of the Mimics they find ways to neutralize them. But the battle principle of air support is solid for what they are trying to do.  Artillery can lay down a creaping barrage to allow infantry to advance. Helicopters can quickly move to flank and pin down groups of Mimics. Jets are not dog fighting as we don't see any airborne Mimics, but the ones we see are probably doing guided bombing runs when infantry identifies large groups of Mimics. Dedicated ground attack aircraft like the A-10 Thunderbolt, or the Su-25 would be ideal for that role.

In the end you go to war with the army you have, and helicopters and jets are part of that army and if they wanted to storm that beach, they needed to be part of the equation.


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

[User]
If somatic cells can only divide up to the Hayflick limit, how do people live longer than a few decades?

I know not all cell types divide that frequently, but some like skin cells divide daily. It seems that it would not be that long before all skin cells have reached the Hayflick limit and eventually our skin will cease to function.

Even if we replace skin cells with stem cells, I imagine that our source of stem cells is really limited.

[Assistant] Some of our stem cells are not subject to the Hayflick limit, as they express telomerase. They don't necessarily need to divide all that much, just give a few "fresh" progenitor cells that can then divide a lot.


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

[User] [SUPERMAN] has anybody tried recovering any viruses or bacteria from the ship that brought him to earth? Would a kryptonian bio weapon kill the man of steel since his immune system has never had to fight anything?

[Assistant]
A fungus from Krypton once survived a trip to Earth on a meteorite.  It was called the Bloodmorel, and it incapacitated Superman with fevered delusions.  He was the only person affected by the fungus, and he failed to find a cure for himself when he still had his wits.

This suggests that, yes, a Kryptonian bio weapon could destroy Superman (and even leave terrestrial humans unscathed).


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

[User]
ELI5: The concept of time/spacetime (seriously, like I'm 5)

Here is my confusion: I have always thought of time as a measurement of events, cycles, moments, etc. For example, 24 hours a day because of the rotation of Earth. So years/months/days/hours/minutes/seconds/etc are all human made concepts based on observable, important events to humans. Then how does spacetime fit into all of this? Time is affected by gravity and time is intertwined with space, but if time is just a measurement of events/cycles relative to other events/cycles, how is it a THING out in space away from man? Does this make sense? You can see I'm confused...

[Assistant] You have to think about time as another dimension of space. you can move forward and backward, left and right, up and down, and through time. The reason that we know that time is linked to space is (other than Einstein's relativity) because we have observed it in subatomic particles. Just throwing that out there to show that it is a proven fact. Anyway, what we observed and have shown through mathematics is that the faster you move in any of the three typical directions that you would think of (front and back, side to side, and up and down), the slower you will move in time. This sounded absurd to me at first, but it seems to be pretty well proven. They have proven it by accelerating tiny particles to as close as they could to the speed of light, and shown that the lifetime of these particles (because they had a very short lifetime) increased dramatically, meaning that time for them was moving much slower relative to everything not traveling at that speed.


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

[User]
What is postmodernism philosophy?

I have done some research but I'm still very confused what it is. Can someone simply explain what post modernism is?
Thank you.

[Assistant]
The confusion is probably for multiple reasons.

First, the term itself is impossibly vague.  Post-modernism is a term used to refer to a bunch of artists, philosophers, and other groups doing all sorts of different things with all sorts of different agendas.  There is very little in common for instance between Kurt Vonnegut and Jacques Derrida, and yet they are both "post-modern" in their approach.

Second, many people are confused about what is included in the movement.  Some for instance mistake surrealism, Marxism, or avant-gardism as being part of post-modernism, despite the fact that two of those are entirely modernist movements and Marxism is an example of the kind of political theory that is most often target of post-modernist critique.

Third, the term has been co-opted by the right wing as a pejorative meaning 'art and philosophy we don't like'.  Thus authors who were in fact at the time anti-post-modernism, such as many French Marxists, psychoanalysts, and critical theorists, are now labelled post-modernists when they have nothing in common with someone like Lyotard.

The most canonical statement of what is supposed to draw together this amorphous blob of people is given by Lyotard in *The Postmodern Condition*.  He claims that we have entered a new era, the postmodern era, where it has become difficult for people to take seriously "meta narratives" - stories that are supposed to be all-encompassing descriptions for the way human history progresses, which tend to offer a complete account of moral or political good, and suggest where human progress is headed.  The exact account of what this era entails and what conclusions we ought to draw from entering this new era is where people end up disagreeing.

Marxism is one such metanarrative since according to Marxism, history is the playing out of class conflict, with set stages (at least at some points it seems in Marx's discography, e.g. *The German Ideology*), and while Marxism is neither utopian nor moralistic, a more vulgar version of communism does certainly have some features of that sort.  Liberalism, fascism, and modernism also had metanarratives associated with them (critics of 19th century liberalism give us the term "Whiggish History" which is meant to describe this sort of account of history).  A post-modernist who welcomes this break down of metanarratives would criticize Marxism, liberalism, fascism, modernism, etc because of their commitment to a metanarrative of this sort.

But that's only one statement of what post-modernism entails, certainly the most popular but not the only one.  Since post-modernism refers to a disparate movement, there is very little that we can say about it as a whole, unlike say, Hegelianism.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do metals at room temperature feel colder to the touch than other materials?

[Assistant]
Your body isn't feeling temperature it is feeling the amount of heat leaving your body.  There is a subtle distinction here.
You have 3 variables, the amount of heat the metal can pull away from your body (heat capacity). The amount of heat the metal can store (heat capacity * density, keep in mind metals are heavy). The speed at which the metal can pull away this heat.  (thermal conductivity).  A material which does not conduct heat well will feel warm, because your hand heats up the surface and the heat stays at the surface.  This is why plastics feel warmer then metal.

Metal has a lot of density, a lot of capacity to store heat, and a very good conductivity meaning it can pull the heat out of your body and into the metal very well and it can store a lot of heat.   This is also why different metals feel different temperatures at room temperature.

Not explaining the science:
Metal pulls heat out of your body faster then plastic.


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

[User]
[GTA] How do they keep the police force staffed?

With such a high frequency of officer deaths and the large number of seemingly immortal criminals running around laying waste to 100s of police daily. How is there enough applicants? Do they operate on a conscription system?

[Assistant] Significantly more pro-police sentiment than today thanks to the fact that there are many more extremely dangerous criminals, and also shitloads of propaganda. People love cops in the GTA universe. Even with the danger, who wouldnt wanna be one?


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

[User]
ELI5: (literally asked by my 5yo) What is coal?

I had trouble giving a concise answer, so I told her I'd ask my friends on the Internet.

[Assistant]
......

coal used to be leaves and sticks (and animal bones if she thinks that kind of thing is cool, if it would freak her out, you can leave it out)  from a long time ago.  they fell on the ground in a forest or in a puddle just like stuff falls down today and makes a layer.

but usually when stuff falls down, it can turn into soil (dirt) or can get burned, have you ever burned a stick in a fire?  so like that.  but this stuff from long ago got buried up or covered with water so fast, it couldn't burn or turn into dirt.

it just kept getting buried under more and more stuff, and squashed down more and more, until it stopped being fluffy and got harder and harder.  just like how you can squash down cotton candy.  and eventually it turned into a rock.  but you can still burn that rock, and sometimes people do dig it up and burn it.

but when they do all the stuff that happens from digging and burning can happen.


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

[User]
Why do sour things make people contort their facial muscles?

When people eat sour things, they always make weird faces, and most of the time its almost impossible not to. Why?

[Assistant]
Apart from informing others that this food is inedible, the facial expression closes some facial openings. Hard to explain for non-native, but I'll try: pulling your head backwards and lifting the back part of your tongue will close the throat; lifting your cheeks slimms the eyes, and wrinkling ones nose makes the nostrils smaller. The typical contraction of other cheek muscles that make the person appear to be smiling presses food remains from the cheeks to the center of the mouth for easier spitting. If you look at a baby with a mouth full of spinache doing this, you will notice that the food is pressed out of the mouth.
Also notice that the faces are similar to those of Disgust, which serve similar purposes.


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

[User] Since heat is vibration of atoms and sound is the same, then why can't we hear something when something is hot?

[Assistant] Heat is the random motion of atoms, while sound is (relatively) large-scale, organized volumes of slightly higher and lower pressure/density. Your ear can hear sound because it's the collective motion of large numbers atoms on spatial scales (the wavelength) similar to your ear. The spatial scale of the random motion due to heat energy is on the order of a single atom.


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

[User]
[The Martian] Could the entire crew have survived if they decided to wait out the storm?

Lets say the crew listens to Mark and wait out the storm on Mars. Communication is still dead and the rocket home is knocked over, could the entire crew survive until rescue? if the entire crew cant survive, how many could? which group would have the best chances of survival and which  astronauts would just be dead weight?

[Assistant]
Not a chance.  The MAV was tipping over without a doubt, so the whole team would have been stranded.

Watney survived as long as he did because he could take 6 peoples worth of food and have them all to himself, rationed down to make them last.  And he supplemented that with his homegrown potatoes - when he left Mars he had something like a dozen potatoes left between him and starvation.   On top of the fact that he had to use lots of the water that would ordinarily be split among crew members in order to grow the potatoes in the first place.

And of course, Watney had to travel halfway across Mars in a stitched-together trailer without the room to put another person.  He was saved by a combination of using resources meant for six people and redundant systems sent by NASA.  As the teams engineer and botanist, Im not sure any others on the team would have had the know-how to handle all of the issues that popped up for Watney over his year-and-change on Mars.


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

[User]
The Median Nerve branches to innervate three fingers. How is possible to move each finger independently and "select" for a specific neuronal branch?

My initial assumption is that when a neuron is branched (has more than one end point), that all branches would be stimulated simultaneously. However, if this were true in the example provided, this would mean all three fingers would move simultaneously. What mechanisms, then, are in place to selectively stimulate specific neuronal branches?

[Assistant]
A motor nerve is a bundle of (a lot of) axons plus supporting tissue. Think of it as a bundle of network cables routed through infrastructure in a large commercial building. It is a bunch of little wires that come from nearby places (neurons in the brain/spinal cord) and terminate at nearby places (muscle fibers). Each individual wire carries its own signal.

Axons don't "branch" as you describe; they each go to one place.


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

[User]
ELI5: What the heck is a mole exactly?

edit: I apologize for not specifying. I meant mole as pertaining to chemistry.

[Assistant] Moles occur when cells in the skin grow in a cluster instead of being spread throughout the skin. These cells are called melanocytes, and they make the pigment that gives skin its natural color. Moles may darken after exposure to the sun, during the teen years, and during pregnancy.


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

[User] [LOTR/GoT] let's talk about what really matters: the night king finds the one ring. What events unfold?

[Assistant]
The One Ring has two main powers -

1. It enhances the user's natural abilities.

2. It can be used to dominate the weak-willed.

So honestly, it's kind of useless to the Night King. His natural abilities are already immensely powerful. He has superhuman speed and strength, he's immune to fire, he can summon blizzards, and he can raise the dead. Sure, the One Ring might enhance those abilities, but...is there really much to be enhanced?

As for the second power, he doesn't need it. He doesn't need to dominate anyone. He has a completely loyal army of White Walkers and Wights. Why would he take the time to dominate someone when he can kill them and raise them as a Wight anyway?

And as we saw, it doesn't matter how powerful he was, it didn't protect him from a flying teenage assassin. The One Ring would make no difference in that regard.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] After a starfighter crashed into the bridge of the SSD Executor, what caused such a catastrophic failure?

An A-Wing hit the bridge and then the entire thing proceeded to crash into the Death Star. Did such a large and advanced ship not have fail safes, or even a secondary bridge that could have maintained at least enough control as to not hit their own battle station?

[Assistant]
It was a combination of bad luck and lack of foresight. The Executor has massive shields and firepower, and was heavily protected with point defense systems and turbolasers. It could have easily dispatched dozens of smaller capital ships on its own. And even if the shields did come down, it still had heavy armor and redundant systems, even a secondary command bridge in the unlikely chance the primary bridge is taken out.

But the Battle of Endor was...unconventional to say the least. Pinned between a massive battle fleet and the Death Star, the Rebels made the choice to attack the larger imperial fleet head on. The Imperial fleet had been ordered to cut off a Rebel retreat, but was not ready for fleet combat. And they were most certainly not ready for the Rebel fleet to engage the Imperial fleet at point blank range. Close quarters ship combat hadn't been seen since The Clone Wars, and the Rebel fleet possessed capital ships that rivaled Imperial Star Destroyers. And with the ships so close, Imperial friendly fire was rampant. Without clear orders and presented with confusing tactics, the Imperials weren't on their A game. It was the biggest fleet battle in decades, and the Imperials weren't ready.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Rebel ships focused all of their firepower on the Executor. Other capital ships were unable to assist in fear of hitting the flagship, and the Executor wasn't able to counter such close-up pummeling. The best solution was to maneuver the Executor away from the fleet, so that it could engage without limitations, and so it drew closer to the Death Star.  But the damage had been done. With the entire Rebel fleet firing upon it, the shields went offline. Still not a huge problem-major subsystems had their own dedicated shields, and soon the shields would recharge. But a quick attack by A-Wings also brought down the smaller bridge shields. Still, not the end of the world, the main shields would be up soon. The forward battery would protect the bridge. But a suicidal attack by a crippled A-Wing was the last straw. With shields down, a crew confused and lacking coordination, the forward battery missed the A-Wing, and it detonated at high speed. The design of the A-Wing saw it cut across the entire command deck like a knife, and crippled the destroyer.

It still could have survived. But with the explosion taking out the navigation systems and flight control, it couldn't maneuver. In deep space that's fine, it would be exposed until the secondary command deck came online, but it wasn't going to crash or something, it would be like an engineless boat in the water. But that close to the Death Star was more like a boat in dangerous rapids. The only thing keeping it safe was the flight systems. It was pulled in and destroyed before the backup systems could come online.


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

[User] [GOT/ASOIAF] What would happen if a Kingsguard killed their king by accident, say slipping while pushing their wheelchair and sending them down the stairs or any other ridiculos scenario?

[Assistant]
The job description isn't just "don't kill the king," it's "don't allow any harm to befall the king."

Even if it's something like, the King wanted to be left alone with some fancy woodcuts, and then tripped on a towel and died on your shift, a decent member of the Kingsguard would take the black out of shame at best.

Death from reasonably natural causes or when it's provable the Kingsguard did everything in their power to prevent it, that has some leeway.


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

[User]
Why are anti-particles shown as going backwards in time in Feynman diagrams?

Are they really going back in time, and if so would this explain the lack of antimatter, due to the anti particles essentially creating an identical universe, just going back in time, relative to us?

[Assistant]
Really, it's just a way of determining which quantities in your perturbation series are negative. It's mathematical notation only - it doesn't mean particles are actually traveling backwards through time.

That being said, it is a necessary mathematical convention to preserve causality. Particles traveling a certain direction in time are indistinguishable from their anti-particles traveling the opposite direction in time, and this causes the probability amplitude over spacelike intervals to exactly cancel, giving zero probability of a particle taking a "faster than light" path.


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

[User]
[Marvel] What is Thor weakness?

On the opinions of many, Superman is a bad character because he is powerful, therefore his stories lack a sense of danger.

Thor, being as powerful as Superman, doesn't get the same criticism, which can only mean that his stories do have a sense of danger

If he is so powerful yet his stories have that sense of danger, he must have a very exploitable weakness, in-universe. What is that weakness?

[Assistant]
Think of the opponents that Thor has to go up against. Other gods, demons, sorcerers, not to mention the usual supervillain and alien invasion shit he has to deal with when teaming up with other heroes. Those are very heavy hitters, which makes the reader think that Thor's going to have a 50\-50 fight ahead of him, regardless of anything.

Superman has had plenty of opponents that can go toe to toe with him. Doomsday, Mongul, etc. Thing is, Superman isn't a warrior. He's a farmer and a scientist and a saviour of people. His popularly known image of heroism isn't the same as Thor's. When you think of Thor, he's always about to throw down with some grave threat to Midgard.

Supes? His brand of heroism, at least what we all imagine when we think of him, is him stopping a plane from crashing into the ocean, or dealing with a natural disaster, etc. Situations where he gets to be a hero without having to actually fight anybody.

It doesn't matter that Superman has likely had just as many stories of him actually fighting a super villainous threat. Our perception of him colours this so called criticism, much as our perception of Thor influences his LACK of criticism.


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

[User] ELI5: Why was the SI shoot not considered nudity? [NSFW]

[Assistant]
Who is suggesting that this is not nudity?

Most of the stuff in the SI swimsuit issue is sexual in nature without the nipples or vulva visible.  That stuff could be considered non-nude.  The shots with nipples visible could be viewed as nude or at least more-NSFW.


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

[User] [The Good Place] Do the French really go to the Bad Place automatically? If so, why?

[Assistant]
Most Higher Powers are incredibly naive when it comes to humanity and believe nearly every story they hear. Unsurprisingly this means they think the French are arrogant, smelly, Gauloises smoking, cheese-eating surrender monkeys who have a maddening penchant for philosophical introspection, hyperbolic sarcasm and philandering on a grandiose scale.

Who wouldn't want them tortured for all eternity?


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

[User]
ELI5: How does Minecraft stay at/near the top of the app store downloads for seemingly...ever. Shouldn't everyone who has ever wanted it have it by now?

Like I get it, there are new smartphone owners constantly, but it just seems crazy that there are enough people that still haven't bought Minecraft but who want it, enough to be more than almost any other paid app...in perpetuity.

[Assistant]
I have one word for you:  Children.

Kids love Minecraft, and every year millions of kids become old enough to get their first smartphone, or be entrusted with an old hand-me-down from a parent or sibling.  And many, *many* more households have smartphones than have PCs or consoles, so the only way most of them can play Minecraft is via the mobile app.


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

[User]
Is there any ageism in academia?

Particularly for older PhD candidates, lets say mid to late 30's or 40's. If one wanted to pursue academia as a career, is age ever focused on during the hiring process?

[Assistant] A more common version of ageism that I've seen relates to the age of the terminal degree--namely where you need to have received it within the last 4-5 years to be viable (in some committees' eyes) as a candidate for an assistant prof. position.


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

[User]
Theoretically, can deserts be turned into arable lands?

The question might come off as one better suited for yahoo answers. Nonetheless, I'm assuming that the process of arable lands turning into deserts involves several chemical reactions; if those reactions were to be reversed, can we regain or expand our arable lands?

Furthermore, if certain types of bacteria and invertebrates die as a land turns into a desert, can they be reintroduced into the desert environment as it turns arable?

[Assistant] Climate has a lot to do with why a desert is a desert, as most (all?) deserts don't receive adequate moisture from prevailing wind patterns, and that's probably what initiates desertification of a previously non-desert area.  Once that has happened though, the biomass, primarily soil, of the area tends to dry up and blow or wash away.  Once that happens, the area is pretty much stuck as a desert regardless of changes in moisture availability until something major happens, like flooding with an inland sea that deposits more biomass, or perhaps the development of a large river that brings soil from some other area.


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

[User] [Men in Black 3] If the Archanans are pretty much omnicient, how did the Boglodites defeat them?

[Assistant] Just because you can see what may occur, does not mean you know what happens until the signs line up. Look at what is seen in the movie. He didnt know for sure the animal was coming to the studio until a few events happened in sequence. Nor could he see the animal coming on that motorcycle in the baseball field.


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

[User] [Batman] How does Bruce conceal the true purpose of hidden compartments, trick doors, secret pathways, and concealed armories when he must clearly have the support of contractors, engineers, and laborers skilled in fabricating these things?

[Assistant]
The Batcave was there before Batman was. In the Nolan Trilogy it was specifically called out as being used to hide runaway slaves as part of the Underground Railroad. It's therefore likely that the hidden passages in Wayne Manor that lead to it are also older than Bruce.

Hidden armories and such can be easily passed off as panic rooms or servants' corridors-- standard rich-guy security/lifestyle stuff.


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

[User]
ELI5: (2)1TB hard drives. 1st is completely full of data, the other is factory sealed & unused. Will one HD weigh just slightly more than the other?

Even just a flake of dust more?

[Assistant]
No there wouldn't, assuming they are completely identical apart from the data. The data is encoded as the direction of the magnetic field in a cell. So a magnetic field pointing one way would be 1, and a field pointing the opposite way would be 0. Both these states weigh the same.

Of course, in reality the hard drives wouldn't be completely identical anyway, so there would definitely be some tiny weight difference.


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

[User]
[DC & Marvel] What would Daredevil with Speedforce be like?

I am trying to make a story. In this story, one of the characters is blind, but her other senses are at superhuman levels. She also possesses super speed. To get a better idea of her capabilities, I came here to ask what a character with similar abilities would be like. What do you guys think?

[Assistant]
Daredevil primarily navigates the world through the use of his "radar sense". Though vaguely defined, this ability seems to be a kind of passive sonar. So moving at supersonic speeds would effectively blind him.

On the other hand, real world blind people don't have a radar sense. They navigate largely by touch and while a blind speedster would be significantly slower than a sighted one, they'd still be significantly faster than a non-speedster.


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

[User]
[Meta] Why Are Old Gods Better Than New Gods?

In many pieces of fiction, ancient, primordial cosmic beings are depicted as far more powerful and intelligent than their younger brethren. Why do you think writers do this?

[Assistant]
Old gods tend to be more fundamental than new gods.

New gods usually *come to be* somehow, be it via a cataclysm, the collective belief of a shit load of minds, or the endgame of a super-powerful sorcerer or lich or AI or whatever; regardless how *how* they're born, they still *are* born at some point in time. As a result, they've got researchable histories that make it possible - however improbable - to defeat them.

Old gods, on the other hand, have usually existed for at least as long as the Universe, and they're nearly always inextricably bound to it in some way. Take Lovecraft's big three as an example:

- All of existence is basically a fever dream of Azathoth's. If *waking it up* is enough to destroy the Universe, imagine what *killing it would do.*

- Yog-sothoth is spacetime. Without it *nothing could ever happen.*

- Shub-Niggurath is the font of all organic life. Killing her is killing life itself.

In summary, the old gods probably deserve a capital "G", while the new gods are nothing but pretenders.


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

[User]
Is there a limit to the amount of diseases we can be immune to? Can our collection of memory T-cells run out of memory?

Say one was given a viable vaccine regimen to all of the current diseases in the world, and no new strains/diseases arose. Would one be able to remain immune to all disease in the world?

From my understanding, the majority of the memory T-cells in our body are naive, not yet exposed to pathogen. However, would the amount of memory T-cells in our body be able to efficiently maintain a database of all known diseases and maintain immunity?

[Assistant]
This is a very complicated question, or at least the answer is very complicated; there's a great deal of ongoing research trying to understand the boundaries.

A short and simplified answer is that immune memory is not infinite. To some extent, generating memory to new antigens takes a bite out of the pre-existing memory pool.

The complications start to come in when you ask how large the memory pool can be, how much of a bite gets taken out of it, how small individual memories can be and still be effective, and so on -- that is, how much practical impact this has.

We know that elderly people can form new immune memories, and also that they maintain memory responses from their childhood.  (A paper a few years ago argued that people in the 2000s still retained immune memory to the 1918 influenza, 80-odd years after exposure.) So normal living, which entails ongoing exposure to lots of antigens, doesn't completely blow away all the old memory pools.

On the other hand, experiments in mice do show new memories pushing away some old memories. (I said this was complicated: Sometimes new memories enhance the old ones, too.)

So there are upper and lower boundaries established -- it can happen, it doesn't always happen.  In a few years we might have a clear idea of what normally happens, and how biologically relevant this is.


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

[User] [Raimi Spider-Man] Octavius built those arms specifically to regulate his miniature sun. What possible purpose would he need to include a retractable spike in each arm?

[Assistant]
Point manipulation of the magnetic field.

In normal operation they would smoothly glide centimeters or even millimeters in order to adjust the containment to prevent irregularities and any wobble. But with the inhibitor chip malfunction, all of the safety protocols were removed and they acted like quick-deploy death spikes.


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

[User] [40k] So if Slaanesh is more powerful when mortals have an extreme excess of something, why doesn't the Imperium's excessive amount of faith make it the most powerful Chaos God?

[Assistant] The Emperor is a being of Order, while Slaanesh is a being of Chaos. There's plenty of decay, bloodshed, scheming, and excess when it comes to the veneration of the God-Emperor and the existence of the Adeptus Ministorum, but it is all ultimately in the name of an idol who is known as the Anathema by the Ruinous Powers, so while these emotions and activities may be the intrinsic domain of the various Chaos Gods, they are ultimately negated due to the fact that they are done in veneration of a being who inherently opposes them.


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

[User] ELI5: What is going on with Isreal and why are we talking about them so much lately?

[Assistant]
On Tuesday there was a major election in Israel.  In the lead up to the election, the sitting leader of Israel, Benjamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu, did a number of things that strongly upset Obama personally and the Western world in general.  He stated he no longer supports the creation of a Palestinian state (which he has since walked back), tried to scare his voter base into going to the polls by telling them that Arab Israelis were voting in record numbers, and accused Western governments of financing his opponents.

In response, the US has said that it's considering taking away the blanket support and protection Israel receives from the US at the UN and in other international spheres.  This is something that hasn't been done since Ronald Reagan.

Relations between the US and Israel are at their lowest point in at least 30 years if not more and show no signs of improving in the immediate future.


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

[User]
ELI5: If the Earth can be used to ground charged objects, why is dirt not a good conductor?

And where do the electrons go, if dirt doesn't conduct electricity?

[Assistant]
A one-inch cube of dirt will not conduct electricity very well. In technical terms, it has a high resistance. By comparison, a one-inch cube of iron, copper or gold will have a very low resistance.

However, resistance doesn't just depend on the material - it depends on the size of the object. In particular, the higher the cross-section area of the object, the lower the resistance. A 2-inch-thick copper wire, for example, has much lower resistance than a quarter-inch-thick copper wire.

The Earth is not useful for grounding because dirt is a good conductor in general, but because the Earth is huge.


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

[User]
[Skyrim] why would a non-Nord support the Stormcloaks?

Non Nords are segregated from Windhelms upper-middle class Nordic population. Argonians aren't even allowed inside Windhelms walls. The Dovahkin is an Argonian Stormcloak, why?

[Assistant]
The Empire tried to cut off his head for no reason and he has to pick a side.

A dunmer believes in a morrowind for the dunmer, an argonian  believes in a black marsh for the argonians, etc. It follows that they would also believe in a skyrim for the nords. And a weakened Empire in skyrim is a weakened Empire in those places too.


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

[User] [My Hero Academia]I'm the principal of U.A. and one of my first-year students killed a villain by accident while they were defending civilians. They did not have a provisional license. What sort of legal repercussions would I (or they) be facing?

[Assistant] Well considering that even injuring a villain without a license is pretty illegal, Id imagine that the student would suffer severe repercussions, likely manslaughter + illegal quirk use. Might not be as harsh due to the nature of the killing but still looking at prison most likely. No idea about the school, maybe a large fine or something along those lines, unless they were under school supervision at the time.


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

[User] [Mario Bros] Are King Goomba, King Bob-Omb, King Boo, etc., in an alliance with Bowser, or are they officially Bowser's subordinates?

[Assistant] The Great Demon King Bowser is a staunch anti imperialist. However, realpolitik demands that the Koopa Kingdom have the resources and warm water access required to threaten the Mushroom Kingdom. Thus, many weaker kingdoms are compelled to join alliances with the Koopa that are a bit ... asymmetric.


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

[User]
CMV: Billie Eilish's brother is just as much of a contributor to her "vibe" or asthetic aura as she is

EDIT: so i realize this post is vague in its argument, so my argument is that Finneas creates most of Billies vibe, more so than she does herself.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Billies brother, Finneas, is her main music producer and song writer. the song that got her famous at 14 ( ocean eyes)  was a song that was supposed to have been used by finneas's band at the time and alot of the weirdness about billies songs comes from the instrumental. If you listen to the instrumentals, you can tell that Finneas has alot of talent in both musical production and mixing sounds that, once together, help create an unusual, creepy undertone in most of her songs. He is best at capturing the initial vibe that Billie tries to produce throughout her songs and when they work together they create their own weird type of harmony; its odd how well they can see the same potential in a song and work to create it in such a way that its observable to the public, its almost like they have one mind. i would argue ( on a seperate note) that Finneas would be making the instrumentals for movies if Billies career hadntve taken off.

 Nevertheless, without the creative and abstract mindset that Finneas has towards music,  most of billies instrumentals would be fairly generic and rather boring, which i think would take away from the aesthetic her music produces.

[Assistant] You're right, but what are you trying to imply with it? Should Finneas get more time in the spotlight? They're very happy with how they're doing it currently and Billie is an amazing frontwoman for their duo.


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

[User]
[Dragon Age] What will happen to the darkspawn when the last Archdemon is killed?

In between blights, the darkspawn are called to the Old Gods of the Tevintet Imperium, so they can corrupt them into old gods. Supposedly there were 7 old gods, and 5 of them have been killed so far.

So what happens when the last one is killed? What purpose will the darkspawn have?

[Assistant]
Consider this. The Dark Spawn are drawn towards the songs of the Old Gods. When one is corrupted, its song becomes an orchestra that can be heard for hundreds, thousands of miles, and Darkspawn from all around are drawn to it, as it drowns out the songs of the still-slumbering others. But when there is no Archdemon, the focus of the Dark Spawn is drawn downward, towards the sleeping Old Gods.

What happens where there's no song to draw them into the bowels of the world? No Old Gods means nothing to draw the Dark Spawn away.


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

[User]
CMV: "Dinner and a Movie" dates should go movie first, then dinner, not the other way around

EDIT: I'd like to clear up that I'm not saying you do this with someone you barely know. I'm thinking about this in terms of asking someone out on a date you've known for a while or had one or two dates with already. Also, I'm really only here to debate which should come first: dinner or a movie, not the viability of the concept in general.

Even though the phrase "Dinner and a Movie" puts dinner first, I maintain that this is simply because it sounds nice phonetically and that you should chronologically plan to go to the movie first, then dinner.

If you go to dinner first and you're not having fun, you're bound by social convention to go to the movie anyways. If you are having a good conversation, it gets cut short because you have to be silent in a movie theatre. If you decide to skip the movie, you've also wasted money on movie tickets.

However, if you go to the movie first, it starts you with a talking point and makes conversation much easier. If dinner is awkward, you can rush through it and leave without social expectation to stay afterward. If you decide to skip dinner, all you do is cancel a reservation, not bite the bullet on the cost of movie tickets.

[Assistant]
>If you go to dinner first and you don't hit it off, it means you're stuck with sitting next to each other for the next 2 hours awkwardly. If you do hit it off, your conversation gets cut short because you have to be silent in a movie theatre. If you hit it off and decide to skip the movie, you've wasted money on movie tickets.

1. Never do a movie on the first date for these reasons and more. Only second or later dates are movie dates. You don't have time to get comfortable with each other right before you are in a snuggling situation.

2. Always do the dinner first. You're going to be starving in the middle of a 2-3 hour movie experience. Since we aren't doing movies on the first date per number 1, you already hit it off, had prior conversation that won't get cut off.

3. By the time you all are done with work and met up for the movie on a Friday night or whatever, it's dinner time. By the time you're out of a 2-3 hour movie experience, the restaurant may be closed, you or your date may be too tired to go eat. Your options for food are more limited at later hours.

4. If you do dinner first and want to keep talking, you can always go to a movie another time. If you do the movie first, you'll have less time to talk if you want to keep going without being out excessively late.


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

[User] Wikipedia explains that String Field Theory is a part a of Quantum Field Theory while regular String Theory is not. What exactly is the difference between String Field Theory and String Theory?

[Assistant]
The difference between String Field Theory and String theory is, in the broadest of sense, the same as the difference between Quantum Field Theory and Quantum Mechanics.

QFT supercedes Quantum Mechanics in that it allows particle creation and annihilation dynamically. QM's basic building block is the Schrodinger equation, you're finding how a particle that you suppose already exists evolves when inside a potential that already exists, and never worry about how both of those things are generated. You can infer from that a whole lot more, but you will run into difficulties describing more complicated problems. In QFT, these things are not always fundamental, it allows us to derive a more microscopic view of e.g. the electromagnetic potential of a charged object, you can derive the famous 1/r^2 law.

String Theory is much the same, its basic building block is the action for one string as it moves through space. Again, from knowing that you can infer a whole load of stuff (particle states, anomalies, dimensions of space, existence of branes, etc.) but centrally String theory does not have a proper way of treating strings being created and annihilated dynamically out of the vacuum.  We assume they can, and we can figure out many properties of what happens when it does, but the formalism is somewhat lacking.

String Field theory exists to re-employ the techniques that made QFT an improvement over QM in this circumstance to solve what seems like a similar obstacle.


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

[User]
ELI5: When picking someone up (literally), why do people who are tensed up feel "heavier" than relaxed people?

I understand the the whole mass vs weight thing but what is the actual cause? Center of mass?

[Assistant] Grappler here. It's all about the other person's center of gravity. When you are under a person's center of gravity, even people who weigh quite a bit can feel light. When a person tenses, a lot of the time their muscles will expand or they will frame away from you. These actions push their center away from your's and they will feel relatively heavier.


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

[User] [Batman/The Matrix] Assuming he is unaware, could Batman figure out that he is in The Matrix?

[Assistant]
No, he couldn't.  Even the people who end up getting out don't really figure it out in any analytical way, they just intuitively feel that the world is wrong, without having any evidence to back it up.
If you don't have that intuition, there's no way to deduce it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do A List celebs not do reality shows like Strictly (UK) or Dancing with the Stars (US)?

[Assistant] Primarily because they're a massive time commitment, but also because they serve mostly to promote a forgotten/lesser-known star's image, which A-listers don't need. Plus, if an A-lister decided to go on one of those shows, they would be putting themselves on the same level as, say, Bristol Palin, which is not what Matt Damon's career needs.


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

[User]
[Alita: Battle Angel] What's the advantage of making your elite battle cyborgs look like little girls with freakishly large eyes?

Wouldn't making larger frames provide more strength and firepower?

[Assistant]
Their main offensive power comes not from physical force (although there still plenty of that) but from their mastery of PanzerKunzt - special anti-cyborg martial art.

Basically they're dex-based fighters as opposed to more traditional Str-based ones.


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

[User] If you slice off a piece of skin with a mole, will the skin regrow without the mole on it?

[Assistant] Maybe. You have to slice deep enough to remove all parts of it. Im a regular at the dermatologist and have had plenty of moles removed and some have completely regrown because they werent cut deep enough. On the other hand, you can temporarily remove moles/freckles by scratching them off but they will regrow.


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

[User] ELI5: Why copying 1x4000MB file is much faster than copying 4000x1MB file?

[Assistant]
Imagine you are sending out presents to a friend.
Two options:
1: Make a giant box and throw everything in. Wrap it in gift paper.
2: Individually wrap each present.

Option one is faster because you spend less time wrapping the gifts. The work required to wrap the gifts is called overhead.

Back to computers.
The transfer of files has the same overhead, consisting of, but not limited to:
- access times on the reading and writing target
- lookup of metadata to be transferred
- interruptions on the transfer bus

Hope this breaks it down for you


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

[User]
ELI5: I read once that deja vue is caused by a mistake in creating memories, but how does that work. How does your brain decide what to remember and what not remember?

Sorry if its a little long. Most of my deja vue moments seem to be moments that would be insignificant and I cant remember any deja vue moments when I try to, so why would my brain want to store it as such?

[Assistant]
Like computers, you have 2 kinds of memories:  RAM and SSD. Ram is instantly accessed and modified and that's what you use to live throughout your day without randomly dropping things because you forgot you were holding them or being able to remember a small series of numbers for a few minutes until they become obsolete. If the information regularly comes back or if it never becomes obsolete, you mind understands that it should be something important and thus transfers it in your long term memory (the SSD). For those reasons, Instant memory (RAM) is linked to present events while long term memory (SSD) is rather linked to past events.
Dj-vu is just your brain mistakenly placing a new information directly in your long term memory. The situation feels familiar because you have instantly created a memory of it, which usually takes time. Also, this kind of memory is usually linked to past events so you get the feeling of the situation being tied to the past  .


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

[User] ELI5: Why does the world not look 2D when I close one eye?

[Assistant] It does; you just don't notice(your brain *LOVES* to lie to you). Try having a friend toss you something. Also there are other ques you use to gauge distance, but for the most part your dept perception *is* destroyed without 2 eyes.


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

[User] Are memories stored passively, or the synapses must fire constantly? Can a single neuron store a memory? How can multiple neurons store a memory?

[Assistant]
In general, memory is stored passively (although things like "working memory" are believed to be activity based).  Memories (and almost all information stored in the brain) are stored at the connections between neurons (called "synapses").

The most fundamental mechanism is based on the number of neurotransmitter receptors in the neuron receiving the signal.  Neurotransmitters are chemicals (e.g. acetylcholine, dopamine, glutamate) released by one neuron that interact with the neuron receiving the signal (usually by opening channels in the neuron's cell membrane that let charged particles in or out, changing the voltage of the cell).  If the neuron receiving the signal has more receptors for a given chemical it will have a stronger response to the signal.

Let me know if you would like me to explain something in more detail.


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

[User]
[The Dark Knight] Why would the tarnished reputation of Harvey Dent constitute the release of all the criminals he convicted?

I get the idea that he's a symbol of hope that we can't afford to lose, but why do people keep saying that all the criminals he put away would be released if the public found out about the whole Two-Face charade? If they were legitimately convicted, surely that verdict should stand regardless of what people think of Dent.

[Assistant]
Most of the criminals arrested during the massive Rico crackdown are only being held pending plea arrangements that only Dent was willing to make. Dent would negotiate jail time - other prosecutors are either corrupt or too scared to do so, and would likely have negotiated fines (and low ones), in order to keep the mob happy.

If Dent dies a martyr, other prosecutors would be inspired to follow him - but if he dies a corrupt villain, people will realize no one is beyond the mob's reach and no one would challenge them, so the plea deals will all be meaningless fines or probation, and everyone goes free.


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

[User]
[DC Comics] Is Superman susceptible to high frequency sounds?

Superman has super hearing, does that make him susceptible to high frequency sounds? Can he be subdued by soundwave cannons for instance?

[Assistant]
In BvS, Batman stopped him for a few seconds with two powerful soundwave cannons. And then Superman gritted his teeth, ripped a manhole cover in half, and destroyed the cannons.

In the show Superman & Lois, similar story. A side villain incapacitated Superman with a soundwave gun, until Superman pushed through it and took him down.

So yeah, sound waves are pretty effective against Superman until he says "fuck it" and fights through the pain and discomfort.


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

[User] ELI5:Why is Stephen hawking so important?

[Assistant] Steven is important because he has challenged the status quo with plausible theories that have encouraged deeper debate and a greater understanding of our universe. He has turned a generation of young people on to science. He is also very important in what he has been able to accomplish while his mind has been trapped inside a non-functioning body. He has defied the odds, living decades longer than his diagnosis suggested and his contributions to science are staggering. He's also changed a lot of people's thinking about the value of handicapped people in society.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Can clones tell each other apart? If so, how?

I can get not confusing, e.g. Rex with Cody, due to their different hairstyles. But, what about the run-of-the-mill clones?

[Assistant]
When they are "fresh" from the tanks, not really, they are identical. But they very quickly started personalizing their hair, tattoos, and other small touches that most people wouldn't notice, but became big identifiers for other clones. Eventually little differences in language and slang could also be used to tell one another apart, as could posture and the way one walks.

Edit: the issue of them being identical yet separate people was not lost on the Clone. They more then anyone else felt the weight of looking exactly like their brothers, and having other people just pass them off as being the same. So most of them took whatever little steps and ways to make themselves a little different. They were proud of being clones, they were proud of being brothers, but they also wanted their own individuality and took it where they could.


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

[User]
In what part of the universe are we located?

Meaning, if I was looking at one of those maps of the entire universe, where would the "You are here" arrow be pointing?

[Assistant]
If you are talking about the observable universe, we are in the exact center.... because we can see about ~~13~~ 46 billion lightyears in any direction from our planet.

Now, in the actual universe... we have no idea because we can't see it. Most cosmologists believe it to be infinite.

Edit: Correction per James-Cizuz reply.


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

[User] ELI5: If the flu symptoms that make us "sick" are reactions from our body fighting it, what exactly does the flu do to harm us?

[Assistant] Viruses hijack cells to create more copies of the virus. Eventually the copies destroy the cell, releasing the copies to invade more cells. The immune reaction, while drastic and somewhat harmful in its own right, is necessary to stop this cell damage.


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

[User]
Confused about professor's reaction to asking if he'll be my PhD supervisor...?

I'm in my first year of a Top 10 PhD program that doesn't assign advisors (just for context). Since arriving, pretty much the entire PhD community assumed I would be working with a certain professor (since our research interests are about 100% aligned and there's not a lot of choice in that particular area). In fact, he asked me to be involved in 2 different projects almost immediately. We get along personally and professionally, no problems at all. I wanted to take my time, however, and investigate my options for supervisors. In the end, I decided it's true--he is the best match. When I asked him, however, he seemed surprised--hesitant, even. His response to "are you willing to supervise my PhD" was more or less "maybe, I think so." He first asked me to talk to a few other professors in the Dept (which I explained I already did) and implied it was a little early for him to know if our research interests aligned (except we've been spit-balling ideas for months now). In the end, he said "yes" I could put his name down with admin (I'm the LAST first-year to get a supervisor!). Is this a normal reaction? Should I be worried that he'll bail on me after the first year exams? Or, is this just a typical way for professors to make sure students have really given it enough thought? What was your PhD advisor's reaction when you asked? And, has anybody switched advisors in their second year?

[Assistant] It could be his funding situation. Many times in rotational based programs the PI ends up picking up the tab for the new recruit. If his R01 didn't get renewed this year, he might feel like he's not in a financial position to take on a new student.


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

[User] ELI5: How does saltwater and freshwater fish body system work?

[Assistant]
Living organisms need to have some amount of salt in them, but not too much. Now water will naturally want to flow from less-salty areas into more-salty areas to maintain its own balance. The body of a fish will not have the same saltiness as the water it lives in so fish have to do some special things to maintain the right amount of saltiness within their bodies.

Freshwater fish have more salt in their bodies than there is salt in the water. As a result, water tends to flow into their bodies. So they don't drink very much and they pee a lot.

Saltwater fish have less salt in their bodies than there is salt in the water. As a result, water tends to flow out of their bodies. So they drink a lot and don't pee very much.

There are various glands and organs and things that help the fish do what they need to, but that's the basics of it.


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

[User]
How was the first perfect circle or straight edge made?

With just raw materials of sticks and stones. How had modern man made the first perfect straight edge or circular item without having one to begin with?

[Assistant]
If you take a string and pull it tight, it'll make a straight line.  If you have a steady pivot point and a string or a stick and rotate around that center pivot point, you can trace out a circle.

Those are pretty straight forward, people of the past also need to make right angles for construction, that's a bit trickier.  You can get 3 straight rods (now that we can make a straight line) or 3 pieces of string of different lengths at a ratio of 3:4:5.  If you put these 3 sides together to form a triangle, it will make a right angle.

If you wanted to make a right angle to form the corner of a foundation for a wall or a pyramid.  You use 2 very long strings and simply mark them near one end at 3 and 4 units of whatever measurement and stretch them out as far as you need your wall to go.  Take a third string of 5 units of length and attach it to the 3 and 4 marks on the other 2 strings.  When that string is straight, you'll have 2 perfectly straight lines at a 90 degree angle to each other to start building a foundation.


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

[User] ELI5:How does catnip work, and does it have negative side-effects on cats?

[Assistant] Catnip is hard for us to understand because there is nothing quite comparable (except maybe the scent of food causing us to salivate - simply an automatic reaction to a certain smell). Catnip does this to a cat: The smell triggers the rubbing, purring, or rolling. Specifically, a chemical called nepetalactone causes this reaction and it only works in about half of all cats. Interestingly enough, it is even hereditary whether a cat will react to the chemical or not. Cats are also able to acclimate to the scent and can control their reactions; some better than others (again - hereditary.)


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

[User] ELI5:Is it possible to blind yourself permanently by just staring at the sun? If so how long would it take?

[Assistant]
Yes it is possible, but not in the sense most people think.  If you stare at the sun long enough you can damage the cells in the fovea, the center of the macula, which is the visual center of the retina, the lining of the eye.  The macula contains the vast majority of cone cells.  Solar retinopathy occurs from phototoxicity, and is not thermal in nature (ants versus magnifying glass).  It typically causes central vision loss.  If all you can see on the eye chart is the big "E" you are legally blind.  Solar retinopathy does not cause NLP (no light perception-"Helen Keller blindness).  It tends to get better over time (months) but can be permanent.  It can be seen in individuals with psychiatric disease, and has been seen in some religious practices.

Message received: Staring at the sun causes a bad chemical reaction in the lining of the eye.  It is not like cooking ants with a magnifying glass.  It can make it hard to see but won't leave you blind.  It usually gets better.  There.


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

[User]
[Futurama] How is dismemberment so safe?

It seems like in the year 3000, human beings in general are very resistant to dismemberment.

Fry has his arm cut off by Dr. Zoidberg, but he seems to be more irritated than in pain, and he hardly bleeds at all.

Fry also had his hands bitten off by a T-Rex, which apparently only tickled, the he hopped on down to Handscrafters, the existence of which implies that dismemberment is a fairly common and casual occurence.

Hermes had his entire *head* sliced off, and seemed to perfectly capable of surviving for at least a few minutes before needing to be placed in a head jar.

Keep in mind that none of these dismemberments would have been particularly clean cuts.

Many of the phenomenon we see can be explained by advanced medicine or alien physiology, but what explains this amazing resistance to bleeding, pain, and death at the moment of trauma for human beings?

[Assistant]
Nanobots, nanobots everywhere.

The real joke about Zoidberg isn't that he's incompetent, it's that no-one actually needs doctors anymore, except for incredibly rare occasions.

Nanobots were originally developed to help robots self repair, but they ended up accidentally infecting the entire human population of Earth. No one seems to mind too much.


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

[User] "Happiness is nothing but a fiction invented by man as a tool for self-deception. The same discomfort with reality that led to the invention of gods and superstitions, is what led to the invention of such a preposterous notion as happiness." Agree? Disagree? Thoughts?

[Assistant]
The great move of capitalism was to convince it's followers of it's own prowess. In Feudalism, the working poor were convinced that all of their suffering would be rewarded with an infinite paradise in heaven. Starting after the industrial revolution, and continuing up until today, workers have been told that the suffering they endure in their day-to-day labors will be rewarded with the early pleasured offered by capitalism.

In-the-pool-BBQ's, movies, TV, dining out, drinking, smoking, etc. are the tools by which one rewards themselves for a hard day's work, even if they don't realize that they are working during their leisure time. One has to, in many cases, spend money to be happy. They have to keep the blood of the economic body pumping by spending the money they earned during the work day. They are consuming narratives produced by and for the existing economic order. Their happiness is based on what is made available to them (even if it's the vodka they drink in the dark with good friends).

It sounds conspiratorial, but to think that all that one needs is sufficient relief after a shitty day at work ignores the central concern that work need not be so shitty for so many.


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

[User] If air is mostly nitrogen and dirt is mostly carbon, why do plants get all their nitrogen from the soil and all their carbon from the air?

[Assistant]
The nitrogen in the air is largely in the in the form of two nitrogen atoms triple bonded to each other. Breaking that bond is energetically expensive, so using the nitrogen in the air is difficult. Nitrogen in the soil tends to be in less strongly bound forms which can be more easily used. As a result plants have evolved to use nitrogen from the soil.

There are symbiotic bacteria that live in the roots of plants which do the work of splitting the nitrogen and fixing it so that plants can use it.


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

[User] Why aren't central banks increasing interest rates when there is significant inflation? Aren't they meant to be independent and that is kind of their main job?

[Assistant]
First of all, the fed has a *dual* mandate of low and stable inflation *and* low unemployment. This is important, because there is a trade-off between inflation and unemployment, called the Phillips curve. It's not quite that straightforward in practice, and the exact shape of that curve is a matter of debate, but that there *is* a trade-off is relevant.

And next, the economy is still in recovery, the fed believes the current inflation is not here to stay, and the fed doesn't want to jeopardize the recovery by slowing down the economy if they were to act too quickly.

Or in other words, they don't believe slowing down the economy is necessary, nor is it worthwhile to push down inflation and sacrificing the recovery to do so.


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

[User] ELI5: Is a race to a human like a breed is to a dog?

[Assistant]
Yes, basically.  All dogs are the same species.  The different breeds are just collected phenotypes that we lump together and name.

Same thing about human races.  What we call a "race" isn't a thing, it is a collection of similar phenotypes that we've lumped together and given a name.

The races/breeds *could* eventually lead to new species if left isolated long enough, but for both humans and dogs, that's a long way off.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are the belligerents in Ukraine labeled "seperatist" while the belligerents throughout the Middle East labeled "militants"?

I was listening to NPR and they were reporting about the pro-Russian seperatist and the Islamic militants in the span of 10 minutes and I really started to wonder how each label came about.

Edit: took out a question about whether what they're called could cause bias.

[Assistant]
The fighters in the eastern Ukrainian territories are trying to secede from Ukraine (presumably to merge with Russia, but that's it's own mess).

Many of the fighters in the mid-east are trying to take over the country they are a part of, or just fight against foreign invaders.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Is a transporter just essentially killing you and making a copy?

It turns you into molecules,gets the info,sends the info,and random molecules are taken and made into a new person based on that info.Right?

[Assistant]
Common consensus of the people having been transported is no, it doesn't kill you and remake you, you're the same person coming out that you were going in.
On a deeper philosophical level, it depends on your definition of self.  It is certainly building you a new body with new molecules, but your body does that itself anyway, it just takes longer and we don't think of that process as resulting in a new person.  Still, doing it all at once and quickly might be important to you.
If, on the other hand, your self is a particular pattern of energy and mass including a stream of consciousness and a collection of memories, then we have no problem.  The transporter preserves all that perfectly.
Of course, things like the Riker incident do complicate matters and prevent us from having any real clear answers.
Edit: A letter.


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

[User] [DC/Marvel] Batman is possessed by the Venom symbiote. What happens now?

[Assistant]
I feel like the sheer willpower and mental fortitude that Batman possesses could enable him to overpower the symbiote and control it to a greater degree than the other hosts. Maybe he'd even figure out how to deal with the hunger problem with a scientific solution.

Or at least that's what it would look like for a while until the symbiote has wormed itself into the black matter of the Bat's brain...


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

[User]
ELI5: why are stocks worth anything?

I can understand that people would want stocks from companies who give out big dividends. The better the company does, the bigger the dividend and thus bigger the worth of the stock.

What I don't understand is stock worth of companies who DON'T give out dividends, like Apple. If a company does good, why does it affect the stock's price? You aren't seeing any of that money as a stockholder. Isn't the price then completely arbitrary? It's based on demand but *why is there demand?*

[Assistant]
Stock in a company gives you ownership of that companys assets.

Gold doesn't pay dividends either, yet its popular for investing in.
The only real difference for an investor between gold and stock is that gold is likely to be more predictable in value.


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

[User] [Altered Carbon] Why arent Stacks bullet proof?

[Assistant]
Iirc in the books, stacks are actually pretty damn hard to destroy. In the show it seemed much easier, but then again i think the only ones showed destroying stacks with guns are envoys or super elite soldiers, so you can probably assume they have some sort of especially powerful bullets.

~~Or you can also think season 2 wasnt that realistic, but thats against the spirit of this sub lol ~~


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

[User]
did somebody say pseudo random number generator?

Recently stumbled upon the concept that computers are not truly random, and although I'm not from a computer science background this made sense to me but after a bit of digging around I couldn't find anything that was actually showing the numbers generated are entirely predictable.

If something does not become predictable over time then it should be considered truly random.

Is there some kind of decoder calculator or something like this that can take the sequence of numbers generated by a "random" computer and after enough data points predict accurately the next numbers in this sequence?

[Assistant]
In cs most RNG uses something called a seed value.
In most programming language we have the option of setting the value ourself.
If we hard code the seed value and generate say 10 random numbers.
The same 10 random numbers will be generated everytime.
If the numbers were truly random you'd not have any such control of what number is output by a random function with the likes of a seed value.


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

[User] eli5: How does does stenography work? I understand it is designed to allow fast recording of realtime statements in a courtroomBut how does the machine allow us do this?

[Assistant] Typing on a regular keyboard is slower than speaking so doesnt work in a court setting. Stenography machines work by typing syllables using multiple keys at once instead of each key being one letter.  So instead of typing 11 letters one at a time for Stenography, youd type four chords for sten, awg, ruff, and ee.  Then later that phonetic version gets transcribed back into normal spellings.


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

[User] ELI5: How can water be reflective and see through at the same time?

[Assistant]
Pretty much any object absorbs, reflects, and transmits some amount of light that strikes it. Nothing is perfectly absorptive, transmissive, or reflective. This is also why objects can display colors when you shine white light on them, they're selectively reflecting certain wavelengths and absorbing others. The color you see is the reflected light. So it's not unique to water.

Water, air (usually), glass, are objects that transmit lots of light (it passes through them without getting scattered), and very little reflects off of them. But still some does.


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

[User] [JudgeDread] How much would it cost to build an apartment building like in Mega City one? How old is the city?

[Assistant]
The exact age of the city is a bit fuzzy, since arguably it's a successor to a number of American cities that turned into a coast-wide urban sprawl (and some that were literally paved over, like New York City), and a lot of the buildings and infrastructure predate the proper founding of the city, but the actual, legal foundation of Mega City One as an entity was in the 2030s, and as of current comics has made it up to the 2130s, and is implied via time travel that it stays a functional entity at least into the 2150s.

As far as how much a Block costs to build, if they were working on a conventional human labor economy the cost would be monstrous. Each Block would essentially be a large town or a small city on it's own by modern standards, with more or less all the habitation space, amenities and logistics that would require. The only thing that keeps the cost from being impossible is heavy mechanization and automation (or, during really bleak times in MC1's history, press-ganged emergency human labor); most of the actual work is done by robots capable of maintaining a 24 hour work schedule without pay and with minimal safety protections. Actual cost is still likely equivalent to multiple billions in modern U.S. dollars, even with the savings provided by robot labor.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How good of a warrior was Luke after his training with Yoda?

So Luke obviously didn't do well in his duel with Vader but that's bit unfair taking one a man who singlehandedly purged an entire order of Jedis and personally put a bunch of them including trained duelist masters to the sword. However if we take Luke and put him into a battlefield situation either like what we saw the Jedi doing in the Clone Wars or maybe even the Battlefront games, how good is Luke at running around with a light saber on an open battlefield? We see him fight  the scout troopers in 6 but that was a really weird example too because technically he was trying to chase them down not trying to stand his ground or lead an assault on the power generator. Say Vader was coincidentally off doing some other stuff and Luke didn't feel the need to leave the commando team. Would he have been able to turn the tide significantly against the Imperial trap?

[Assistant] Probably not. Luke by the battle of endor was much more skilled than he was in hoth but still a novice. He could swing a lazer sword all fancy but things like commanding troops and fighting a battle were beyond his ken. At best he's an amazing pilot and talented soldier but not much else by then. It isn't until after endor that he becomes the Jedi master he was destined to be. Yoda taught him enough to win a fight against an opponent but turning a battle outside of his starfighter wouldn't come until later. Something like the ambush at endor was so far beyond his skills that really wouldn't have done much other than get pathfinders killed and a few imps.


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

[User]
ELI5: The Gold Standard

I heard about it so much, especially on Reddit, but I can't seem to figure out what is actually **is**. The Wikipedia article is waaay too complex and I can't seem to find any good Youtube videos explaining it (it's all just *why* the Gold Standard is bad or good and not *what it is*).

Maybe here I can find my answer.

[Assistant]
People used to use gold as money, but it's pretty inconvenient to carry around actual gold coins. So banks and governments started printing *paper* money. Originally, this paper money was just a promise that, if you went to the bank and gave the paper back, they would give you some gold. This was called the "gold standard"; currency was valuable because you could exchange it for a specific amount of gold.

Of course, you *can* still buy gold with modern currency. But there's no fixed amount of gold you get, meaning the value of money and the value of gold are unrelated. That's the difference.


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

[User]
Do electrons physically spin the way wheels and tops spin? Or does the word spin mean something different when it comes to electrons?

They say electrons can have a spin of +1/2 or -1/2.  Does this number represent how the electron rotates about an axis, or does it mean something else?  What do the numbers +1/2 and -1/2 mean; why couldn't they have used +1 and -1 instead?

[Assistant]
Different people will give different answers, because it has been taught differently over the years in introductory quantum mechanics classes. Current sophomore-level quantum mechanics dogma is that spin is an intrinsic quantity unrelated to anything you've ever encountered in the macroscopic world, and indeed that is a good way to learn it at that level -- because quantized angular momentum works a bit differently from the classical case that everyone is familiar with by their teen years, and breaking the intuitions built up from macroscopic experience is a major part of the quantum mechanics curriculum.

Upper-division and graduate-level quantum mechanics classes cover spherical harmonic interference in more detail (spherical harmonics are functions that are to spherical coordinates what the sinusoids are to cartesian coordinates), and it becomes more obvious that the electron wave functions rotate around the origin just as do wave functions of more complicated objects (such as wheels) -- it's just that they are restricted by the single-value rule from any amount of spin other than +1/2 or -1/2 quantum of angular momentum around any axis.

The relationship between the electron's angular momentum and magnetic moment is "anomalous" -- it does not correspond to the relationship you would find for a massy sphere filled with charge, nor for a massy sphere covered with charge on its surface.  It corresponds closely to the relationship you would find for a tiny cylinder covered on the curved surface with charge.

A very counterintuitive element of electron spin is that electrons always have to spin.  Angular momentum comes in quanta, so you can only gain or lose angular momentum in integer amounts of the universal quantum of angular momentum.  But the electron happens to intrinsically contain half of that quantum -- so it can never achieve zero angular momentum.

The +1/2 and -1/2 numbers refer to how many quanta of angular momentum the electron is carrying, along a particular axis (which is usually obvious from context -- e.g. along or against a magnetic field, or along or against the bulk angular momentum of an atom that contains the electron).  The whole point is that the electron can never be *not* spinning along *any* axis -- at best it can be in a superposed state where it's turning both clockwise and anticlockwise around that axis, with probability 0.5 for each case.  If you measure the spin (say) along the Z axis, you'll find that it is either CW or CCW about the Z axis -- and if you measure it again (say) along the Y axis, you'll find that it is either CW or CCW about that axis, too.  See, counterintuitive.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Some questions about the moving pictures.

First, some background. When Harry is on the train on the way to his first year at Hogwarts, Ron says that Dumbledore "can't be there all day," referring to the Chocolate Frog Card. In Harry's fifth year, Everard, Dilys, and Phineas all show the ability to move between portraits in entirely separate locations. Finally, in Harry's seventh year, Dumbledore's portrait seems to have retained the thoughts of the original. So here are my questions:

1) While a person is living, does his portrait retain his consciousness? Could a person talk with himself like this?

2) Is there a Dumbledore assigned to moving between Chocolate Frog Cards, and another that goes between portraits? Are Chocolate Frog Cards for like a photograph, which doesn't seem to have the same properties, or the portraits, where the person can move between images?

3) Are these people in the portraits considered ghosts or just shades of their former selves? Couldn't someone communicate with dead people just by having a picture painted of them?

Thanks for your help.

[Assistant] Frog cards are not portraits, portraits are much more powerful and require the person to be present for days to create. Portraits Have all the memories of the person at the time it was created and there is a rumor that a persons last one has all their memories at the time of their death.


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

[User]
How does wood glue work?

I understand how glue works but wood glue seems to become a permanent piece of the wood after its used sometimes lasting hundreds of years. Just curious whats going on there chemically.

[Assistant] It's an emulsified moisture cure urethane. Isocyanates react with moisture in the wood and in the air to form poly-urea that permanently bonds the wood together. The poly-urea is basically insoluble in anything short of chemicals that would also destroy the wood. The micelle tech that keeps the isocyanates stable while emulsified is really cool stuff.


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

[User] ELI5: How are autonomous vehicles supposed to function in large cities (assumed to be where they'll be used most) when any normal gps system can't even function correctly with all the interference from the skyscrapers?

[Assistant] They don't use JUST GPS.  They also use cameras, sensors, and built in maps (and math).  They are programmed to read signs, recognize pedestrians, keep an updated version of where they are on a map based on speed and direction, etc, etc...


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

[User]
Would a computer run better in a vacuum?

I was watching this documentary and they mentioned something about lightbulbs.

Apparently lightbulbs are vacuums and as a result the filament inside glows and can glow for days.  If exposed to air it quickly burns away.

By this logic... would computers run better if enclosed in vacuums?

[Assistant]
No, the lightbulb burns out in air right away because the filament oxidizes, but nothing inside a computer is going to oxidize that quickly.

In fact it would perform worse, because the components (especially the cpu) need airflow to keep cool. Computers on satellites do run in a vacuum, and it's a real problem to sink the heat away from their chips and keep temperatures under control.


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

[User]
ELI5: If losing weight can be summed up as CICO (calories in calories out), how do low carb/keto diets that have you eating steak, bacon, cheese, cream etc. work when they have such high base caloric counts?

I am subbed to a few weight loss subs, and I notice that there are a number of posters that tout low carb and keto diets, but it logically doesn't make sense to me. If you eat a 1,500 calorie steak, you are still ingesting 1,500 calories of steak whether or not you have it with a side of mashed potatoes or mashed cauliflower.

Enlighten me please :)

[Assistant]
The idea is supposed to be that you still are *in* a calorie deficit, but that you spend less time going through the following cycle:

1. Eat lots of pasta

2. Build up blood-sugar level

3. Build up glycogen level

4. Burn off blood sugar

5. Burn off glycogen

6. Finally, after running out of glycogen, start burning fat.

7. But now you have another meal, so you eat more pasta, back to square 1.

The idea is that taking all the sugar and glycogen away from the metabolic system is like separating a mom from her baby.  The baby will sob and sob and sob, and then forget about her and start playing with his blocks.  And he could play with blocks for hours... but if you bring his mom back, he'll sob as soon as they are separated.  To lose weight you have to burn fat, but your body *hates* to give up the final reserves of energy stored as sugars before getting down to that fat, and people who spend a lot of time in that state are irritable, stressed, and hungry.  Once the actually conversion of fat to energy gets going, it's not as bad.  So if you power yourself mostly through fat, it's easier to go through with it, because you spend less time in the carb-separation temper tantrum.

That is the theory.  In practice, it may just work because when you say "no carbs" you rule out a ton of foods and have to be very picky.


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

[User]
Why do so many critiques in ethics seem lacking in rigor compared with other branches of philosophy?

I'm just a layperson, but when I read books, papers, and summaries in other areas of philosophy, I almost never see commentary like the below, even from second-hand sources.

I would be interested to know whether this is a matter of different generations or schools of philosophy, or something else (?).  It crops up comparatively often in ethics, and it seems a little bit lacking in rigour.

For an example of what spurred the question, I have been researching metaethics, specifically on Mackie as I was digging around on error theory and some of the criticisms of it etc. I saw the following paragraph referred to in a teaching resource summarising Korsgaard's work on ethics as a "brilliant criticism" of the argument from queerness:

>According to Mackie, it is fantastic to think that the world contains objective values, or intrinsically normative entities. For in order to do what values do, they would have to meet certain impossible criteria. They would have to be entities of a very strange sort. utterly unlike anything else in the universe. The way that we know them would have to be different from the way that we know other sorts of facts. Knowledge of them, Mackie said, would have to provide the knower with both a direction and a motive. For when you met an objective value, according to Mackie, it would have to be  and I'm nearly quoting now  able both to tell you what to do and make you do it. And nothing is like that.
>
>But Mackie is wrong and realism is right. Of course there are entities that meet these criteria. It's true that they are queer sorts of entities, and that knowing them isn't like anything else. But that doesn't mean that they don't exist. John Mackie must have been alone in his room with the Scientific World View when he wrote those words. For it is the most familiar fact of human life that the world contains entities that can tell us what to do and make us do it. They are people, and the other animals.

Whether we agree or disagree with Mackie's arguments, which have been fairly argued by others to have some pretty considerable problems, I struggle to actually see an argument here, or what is brilliant about it except in terms of appeals to sentiment -- it rather reads like something a pundit would put in a newspaper column, rather than a paragraph of rigorous philosophy or even a responsible conclusion to an argument... Korsgaard makes some really interesting points elsewhere, but here I'm surprised by the absolute certainty behind "X is wrong, (thing I agree with Y) is right, OBVIOUSLY things that meet this criteria are there, for example: (category error)"

Have I been lucky enough to avoid this when I read on epistemology etc., or is this just something one getting stuck into their ethics has to deal with?

[Assistant] I'd say this is just a bad way to try to get to what Korsgaard is talking about. The quoted part comes at the very end of her *Sources of Normativity*. It's literally the last two paragraphs of the book. And they make more sense given what came before them. Korsgaard is drawing upon what she has argued previously and using a kind of turn of phrase to recast a sort of objection to Mackie's view. It's a bit of a flourish, as one might engage in when one is ending a book.


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

[User] Eli5: How come people don't commonly get acne on their legs, stomach, and arms? Why do only the face/back typically break out if we have the potential for clogged pores and bacteria everywhere?

[Assistant] Theres a genetic component to it as well as other factors like hormones. Acne is seen as a condition, like diabetes it can be inherited. So the face and back location for acne can also be inherited. Theres that and its mostly about oil glands. The back/shoulders and face have more oil glands than arms, legs or stomach. Which is also why the arms & legs can become more dry than your face or back without moisturizer. The more oil glands the more potential for acne.


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

[User] [MCU] Could MCU Pym create an arc reactor?

[Assistant]
if he had blueprints, proper resources, and time, probably.

but he wouldnt for two reasons:

1.) its a stark invention.

2.) apparently he can use pym particles to size-up normal batteries to output a fuckton of energy in an abuse of normal physics that only pym particles can.


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

[User]
ELI5 Why you can't prove a negative.

I am just having a hard time grasping the concept and need it explained to me.

I accept that it is true, and it *feels* right. But I can't explain to myself why you can't prove something isn't/doesn't.

[Assistant]
You can indeed prove a negative, and logically it is no different from proving a positive.  The problem that arises is that in many cases it is impractical or impossible (physically) to prove some specific negatives.  For example, you can prove that there are no cats in your box by opening the box and looking inside, but you can't prove that there are no cats in boxes anywhere.  This is not because there is something that logically prevents you, it's just that the universe is a very big place that contains lots of boxes, some or many of which could be in another galaxy in the possession of an alien species.  Unless you can look at them all, you can't "prove" the negative.  It's not a question of logic, its a question of logistics.

In the purely logical world, you can use techniques like induction to prove something about a large or infinite number of things without having to prove (or disprove) each individually by proving one case and then showing that it applies equally to all cases.

This question often comes up in reference to god, and the important thing to take away from it is that the concept of god is ill defined, and using very vague definitions often leads to situations where it is impossible to disprove god because there are an infinite number of ways he/she/it could manifest and no limits on what he/she/it could do, what form they could take, or what ways we could detect them.  Given a more restrictive definition of god might allow one to construct a proof of nonexistance.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is February the month with 28 days, and not April, November or any other one?

[Assistant]
There was a time when the year began in the month containing the beginning of Spring, namely March. This meant that February was the last month of the year, and it originally had 30 days.

July and August were renamed for Caesars of Rome and at the time those months were only 30 days. To honor the greatness of the Caesars, those months were extended to 31 days each and the days were taken from the end of the year, which at the time was February.


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

[User] ELI5: why are tomatoes easy to cut after youve knicked the first bit?

[Assistant] When you put the knife on the undamaged tomato skin there is no weak point it is all resisting being cut evenly. Once a cut has been made only two very small points are resisting being cut. The flesh is much weaker than the skin as well. That is why it seems effortless after breaking the skin each time. Also you are using a dull knife if a tomato needs to be squished at all to cut through, and serrated knives are a lazy answer.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did societies that mistreated slaves get into a mindset where their slaves were inferior/not humans?

I am just wondering how it could have spread and who started it.

[Assistant]
Suppose you're Jose Conquistador, and you've just arrived in what is now Mexico. You meet natives, who seem totally unaware of even the basics of civilized culture - their women go about with breasts uncovered, they cannot understand any known language, they even lack knowledge of the one true God! Truly, they must be a terribly primitive people.

It's easy to interpret "different culture" as "worse culture", basically. It probably didn't help that, because of superior military technology, Europeans had little trouble kicking pretty much everybody elses' asses during the colonial era - when a hundred of your guys can beat ten thousand of theirs, it's hard not to feel superior *as people* and not just in tech (even if the fight was far from fair to begin with).