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

[User]
Harvard RAship offer recinded at the last moment. What to do?

I'm a graduate student from an eminent Indian institution. I interned at a lab at Harvard Medical for my thesis and received an offer to continue as an RA after graduation. After the internship I had to return to India to apply for a new J-1 visa.

My visa application is underway and almost done. I had also looked for accommodation and signed the lease before I left Boston.
I have paid $1600 for the visa application and a month's rent already ($850). These are non-refundable.

Just received an email saying I will not be able to work at the lab. They cited grant issues. How should I proceed?

Appreciate any help!

EDIT: I have been given an official offer letter. My lab does sponsor all Visas, except for the one category I was eligible for this time. They don't sponsor J-1 Intern visas, the one I'm getting. The conditional aspect due to funding was put only for renewal post the one year appointment, not during or before the RAship.

[Assistant] Thats insane and Harvard should be held responsible for it. They have to be able to find you a different RA job. You must have received a DS2019 from them?! How can they rescind after all that. Get in touch with the international office and maybe the ombudsman. You could also try to reach out to their graduate student union. They may not be able to help you directly but are probably clued up on who you should contact.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How do you build a Death Star?

Building something 160 km in diameter, let alone 900 km is a daunting task, to say the least. Super Star Destroyers were on the order of kilometers in length, but the additional volume of the Death Star must present additional challenges in construction.

The facilities at the Kuat shipyards seem incapable of handling a project of that volume, and it is obvious from reports that the space stations are being built on-site, rather than in orbit of a known shipyard. How is the material being sent to such a remote location, and with such secrecy?

[Assistant] Space is big. Really, really big. Remote locations aren't really hard to get to, they're just hard to find unless you know what you're looking for. So you can pick a dead or useless star system and have Imperial craft take the workers, supplies and other needed things out there with no one knowing about it except the military leadership and the clones under them. Obviously, some points will allow for infiltration of spies, but the risk is minimal since trustworthy Bothans can be used at those points to conceal the Imperial footprint.


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

[User]
Why don't viruses spread throughout your entire body?

I have viral conjunctivitis and I was cautioned about washing my hands and not sharing towels etc.

But it got me thinking, what makes certain viruses only spread via a particular vector?

For example AIDS and blood/sex, Coronavirus is airborne/fomite tramissions, etc.

Logically, it seems once you get a virus, any bodily function should be able to spread it. Why do viruses behave the way they do?

Thanks in advance for your time.

[Assistant] Viruses need to enter cells to replicate, they do this by binding receptors on cells' surface. Not all cells will express the same quantities of these receptors, and so viruses will prefer some cells/tissues over others.


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

[User]
During a spacecraft launch and flight, for example a spaceship travelling to and docking at the ISS, how much of travel is calculated before hand and how much of the flight is reactionary?

E.g. do they know exactly where the ISS will be at the time of arrival or do they control the shuttle during the flight?
Just a question I recently started thinking about and have not found an answer of yet. Really curious to know!

[Assistant]
What you're talking about sounds like open loop control.  Flight software is almost always done with closed loop algorithms that use feedback to adapt to the environment.

For many vehicles, the entire flight is simulated in advance.  Computer simulations are developed that run the very same flight software as the onboard computers.  They also simulate noisy navigation data coming from sensors, as well as the reactions of the hardware control systems.

There will be environmental factors, hardware issues, errors in the simulation, etc that cause the trajectory to deviate from the planned one.   When developing simulations, monte carlo analysis is used to ensure that the flight software algorithms will succeed in closing the loop in the face of these uncertainties.

So while the capability must always exist to adapt to changes, engineers try to anticipate those changes as much as possible before flight.


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

[User]
[Tron: Legacy] What, if anything, could have been different about Sam's disc to convince Clu 2.0 to not try to kill him?

Clu obviously hates users, but when the two first meet, Clu is relatively friendly until he sees Sam's disc, at which point he says he "expected more."

I always assumed that what Clu wanted was for Sam's disc to have admin privileges like Kevin's, allowing Clu to escape, but was there anything else Clu was looking for? For example, if it turned out Sam hated Kevin as much as Clu did, do you think Clu might have tried working with Sam (a filthy user) instead?

[Assistant] Clu looked into Sam's past (disc) hoping to see something that was missing in his own development.  Clu probably knew about Sam from his previous conversations with Kevin, before he became overly driven to develop his 'perfect system'.  Kevin likely talked fondly of Sam and Clu looked for some reflection between his own development and Sam's.


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

[User]
Why don't planes use single blade propellers with a counterweight?

A two blade design creates more drag comparatively as one blade must travel through the wake of the other, so wouldn't the weight of the counterweight be overcompensated by the increased efficiency?

[Assistant] In order to generate the same amount of thrust as a double-bladed propeller, a single-blade propeller has to turn faster. You're correct that due to the wake, a double-bladed propeller produces slightly less than twice as much thrust as a single-bladed propeller (for a given rotation speed), however a more important factor is efficiency loss due to the tips of the propellers reaching the speed of sound and creating shock waves. Therefore it is desirable to have more blades that can turn more slowly, rather than a single blade that has to be turning very fast (of course there are other reasons, such as the strength of the blade and engine performance at high RPM).


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

[User]
Is it possible for a portable air conditioner to cool down a room when it has no hose to vent hot air outside the room?

I am a finance guy, my physics knowledge is limited to highschool physics classes. Here is the story, my house has a bonus room above our garage. This room is not linked to the central duct system in the rest of the house. It has baseboard heating for the winter and in the summer obviously gets quite warm without A/C. My girlfriend comes home from the store yesterday with a portable air conditioner to remedy the problem. I have seen these types of units before, but the ones I've seen have a hose you lead out the window that vents the hot air outside, this unit has no such hose. When on, it blows substantially cooler air than the ambient air out of the front of the unit. When I put my hand near the back of it I feel heat radiating from the unit.

My thoughts are although the unit blows cool air, without a way to vent warm air outdoors the net temperature of the room should not change. If anything it should slightly raise the temperature of the air with the heat given off my motors and pumps (most likely a negligible amount)?

Although the cool air blowing directly on you provides some relief, would conservation of energy state that this unit is essentially useless?

[Assistant]
Depends. Your girlfriend may have gotten you a swamp cooler rather than an air conditioner.

A normal AC would take the heat from a room and transfer it to the outside, keeping the conservation of energy. That is why those AC's are typically at windows.

A swamp cooler would instead take the heat of that room and use it to evaporate water so that the heat is transferred into the Heat of Vaporatization of the water. It does not need a vent, but it will increase the humidity of the air.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the material used to hold molten metal in a foundry and why doesn't it melt?

Every video of large foundries I've seen show these massive reservoirs of molten metal...but look like they're  (the reservoir itself) made of metal too. I get that different metals have different melting points, but what material holds the reservoirs' molten state? Some foundries are massive, so I'm having trouble picturing how they're made.

[Assistant]
It depends on the material being melted, and the quantity.

When looking at things like bronze or aluminum (950C and 660C respectively) using an iron or steel crucible (just over 1500C melting point) gives a pretty large margin where the crucible won't melt.

Of course, what happens when you need to melt and hold iron? A steel allow crucible is used, lined with a special ceramic that can take the heat and insulate the crucible from the molten metal (that *could* melt through, if not for the ceramic insulation).

On some higher end ones, there is an extra layer of insulation between the internal ceramic crucible, and the external "support" crucible. Sometimes, the outside crucible is even water cooled to help keep it from melting.

TL;DR the reservoir is made from a special ceramic, the metal is just the outside container to provide support.


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

[User] ELI5:how can Amazon lose millions year after year and stay in business?

[Assistant]
Investors believe that Amazon is temporarily losing money in order to expand and control a lucrative market in the future.

Amazon isn't in the red because nobody's buying from them, in fact their sales are higher than ever before.  They are in the red because they are spending a lot and growing rapidly.  Once their growth slows then they'll be in a much stronger and will easily make up for a few years of negative profit (so the thinking goes).


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

[User]
[Scooby-Doo] What is everyone getting arrested for?

It seems like most of the people Mystery Inc. aren't doing much more than dressing up in a costume and scaring people, how is it that they always end up arrested on the word of a group of meddling kids conveniently passing through town?

[Assistant]
Squatting on abandoned or privately owned property

Disorderly Conduct

Threatening people with bodily harm or death

And they usually have some dumb moneymaking scheme that involves running off the owners of wherever they are so they can take it for themselves. Which is also illegal.


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

[User] ELI5 what makes the Curiosity Rover more significant than other rovers that have been on mars in the past.

[Assistant]
People tend to get jaded pretty quick. Putting rovers on Mars is still a REALLY big deal. If this rover succeeds, it will only be the 4th rover to do so. The first landed in 1997, the two ones that you are probably most familiar with, Spirit and Opportunity, landed together in 2004, and Opportunity is still working to an extent.

The Russians failed twice at this, and the ESA failed after NASA's initial success. This is still *rocket science* we are talking about here, and honestly, the rocket is the easy part of this whole thing.

A big part of the significance is that in 1997, we only received data for a few months. This was a lot of progress, and paved the way to make some great discoveries with Spirit and Opportunity. They provided tons of data, and now we are sending a new, larger probe with 10x as many instruments (by mass anyway) to answer some of the questions raised by its predecessors.


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

[User]
ELI5 What the heck the Pirate Party is.

The heck? In my mind I see a bunch of peg-legged eye-patch wearing people with swords in government.

[Assistant]
Every political party in the world has some affiliation or ideology. This can be in the form of a wider political scope such as Liberalism (such as the Democrats) and Conservatism (such as the Republicans).

These wider political parties typically make up the majority of governments in the democratic world. Many countries, however, have little parties which focus on more specific issues, such as farmer's parties, religious parties, worker's parties, joke parties (yes, they do exist), and, in our case, pirate parties.

Pirate parties have a key focus in copyright and patent reform, along with focusing on issues revolving around the Internet and anonymity related to it, as well as wanting to make government to be more transparent in its actions.

You've been seeing news of the Pirate Party in Germany, but that's not the only one in the world. There are quite a few Pirate Parties in the world, many of which are under Pirate Parties International, which helps bring the Pirate Parties together to create a more solid organization.


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

[User] ELI5: given that all the bacteria has already gone through your digestive system, why would eating your own poo make you unwell?

[Assistant] Feces is the waste from your body for one. It has much less, and often no, nutritional value. That alone makes it something that can make you ill. Feces that isn't your own can be infected with diseases like hepatitis, which can cause you to get the disease. Feces that isn't ingested quickly can also grow new bacteria that can make you ill.


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

[User]
[Witcher] How did humanity thrive before witchers?

Were regular humans, in large numbers, able to kill monsters near towns and villages? Did humans actively remove monsters at a location where they wanted to build a settlement? Do monsters generally avoid large groups of traveling humans? Are monsters afraid of humans the same way animals larger than humans tend to be?

[Assistant]
Witchers are great at what they do and specialized, but knights, sorcerers, and monster hunters can typically do the same job when not preoccupied with war. The games do a disservice to the books in exchange for a more entertaining experience for the player - monsters in the witcherverse are few and far between typically, with the animalistic ones avoiding humans and the ones smart enough to be a large-scale threat realized that its better to join humans than beat them. The reality is that witchers *arent needed* anymore for the most part.

Humans were so successful before witchers because they are innovative and reproduce quickly in large numbers.


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

[User] ELI5: I just finished watching 2001: A Space Odyssey...WTF! Can anyone help me understand what I just witnessed???

[Assistant]
This is an awesome movie, and was an SF groundbreaker. This is mainly due to Kubrick's visual style. He did multiple things that no one had done before. For example, no sound in space. Most SF films previously had ignored the fact that sound doesn't propagate in a vacuum. Kubrick did things like playing the Blue Danube Waltz, and having you listen to the astronauts' breathing inside their helmets. His depiction of zero gravity was a first. Remember, this is pre-CGI, and making a guy walk through a doorway and turn upside down while he was doing it was non-trivial at the time. He added neat little touches like Pan Am (a major airline at the time) running the shuttle going up to the space station. The film is mostly a beauty to watch, except the star gate sequence near the end (more on that later).

Kubrick had a great collaborator in making the movie, SF writer Arthur C. Clarke (inventor of the communications satellite). The story came mostly from him, and was sourced from ideas in some of his previous works like "The Sentinel" and "Childhood's End". **The story goes in 3 major parts, with a subplot added in the middle part. The theme of the movie is intelligence and evolution, not space travel.**

1st part: Homo-whatever is a bunch of monkeys with potential. Aliens put a black monolith among them to enhance their intelligence, and suddenly they learn to use the first tool. Unfortunately, they choose to use the tools to attack their cousins and beat the shit out of them. But, so it goes.

2nd part: The aliens wanted to know when the monkey-men became a spacefaring race. So they left a sentinel buried on the moon (another black monolith, maybe the same one). When mankind exposed it to sunlight, an automatic signal was sent out towards Jupiter announcing that the kids were growing up and were ready to leave home. The mission was mounted and the crew sent off to see what was going on out there near Jupiter, hoping they might find aliens. (More about this part later.) But the crew wasn't told the whole story about why they were going.

3rd part: David Bowman finds another monolith orbiting a moon of Jupiter. When he flies near it, the top opens up and....it's full of stars. It is not full of stars actually, it is a stargate that takes him on a tour of the wonders of the universe. (Unfortunately, Kubrick got carried away with his attempts to make a visually cool movie here, and a lot of this is just crap. But hey, no CGI back then.) At the end, Bowman finds himself in a sterile white room with another of those monoliths. Like in Part 1, it fiddles with his brain (or DNA, or whatever) and helps him evolve to the next stage of mankind's evolution. He is represented as an embryo floating in space at this point. He has more power than humans can even imagine. (In the book, he decides to do something fairly drastic.)

Back to the 2nd part: There was a subplot with the computer HAL9000 and the crew, playing with the idea of what intelligence really is. (This is a major theme of the entire movie.) HAL was an Artificial Intelligence, and could do amazing things. But he was given conflicting programming requirements...the requirement to keep the mission details secret from the crew, and to make the mission succeed at all costs. When the crew started to question what the mission was all about, he decided that the only way to make the mission succeed without them knowing what was going on was to kill them and finish the mission without them. That achieves both goals! Was HAL driven insane? Was it a reasonable way to reconcile the goals he was given? Was HAL truly intelligent, or did he just simulate intelligence? Did he have feelings? Are emotions and empathy important for an intelligence to have? *Is it OK for an intelligent species to create another intelligent species?* This whole subplot was really meant to explore those kinds of ideas, since the whole movie was about the nature of intelligence and about messing around with it. And remember what the monkey-men did when the first monolith enhanced their intelligence and they first started using tools?

Anyway, that's a long-winded summary. The trick to enjoying and appreciating the movie 2001 is to read the book first, then watch the movie. If you do, it is one of the great SF movies of all time. And the last few pages of the book are awesome in a way that the movie can't be.

**TL;DR** - It's about intelligence and evolution. Watch it again after you read the summaries here, or read the book.


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

[User]
[Elf] What can we infer about the future of the world after the ending of the movie?

At the end of Elf (2003), a number of things become truth.

- Santa Claus is real.

- Christmas Magic is real (via the Claus-o-meter).

- The North Pole (Santaland) is real.

- Magic creatures like talking animals and sentient snowmen are real.

- The Naughty Or Nice List is real.

Realistically, how would this affect the world at large? I mean, sure, they didn't catch Santa's Sleigh on camera, but there were hundreds of people out on the streets singing Christmas carols as Santa flew overhead.

Would there be expeditions to the North Pole? Buddy the Elf laid down the basic route through the story books that were published.

Is Buddy forever a manchild? Or would he eventually become an 'adult'?

What about the NoN List?

[Assistant]
Well, no one can really *prove* most of it. Especially the parts that only Buddy witnessed. Santa's been doing this for years, he knows a thing or two about leaving as few traces as possible. And that's for the best: more Christmas Spirit is produced when belief in Santa is based on faith than on evidence. For the sake of Santa's privacy, Buddy and his friends made sure that his book deliberately fictionalized things a little bit.

Buddy kept in touch with his inner child, but the doctor was right, meeting Walter did regress him a little, and with time he grew out of it. Due to the differing cultural expectation of elves he had an advantage in some regards (like work ethic) but a handicap in others. The end result was less "man child" and more "seriously awesome dad/uncle."

What *about* the list?


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

[User]
[DC] Why hasnt Lex Luthor (Earth 1, not Earth 3) or any other genius used the existence of multidimensional technology to their full potential?

Since there are, at times, at least 52 earths to choose from, why not team up with more agreeable metas? why have Earth 1 Cheetah and Black Manta work for you when Earth 17 and 33 versions are more powerful? Or Grodd import troops from Earths for Gorilla City?

There are a myriad of ways to use them... (is it blocked by the Monitors??)

[Assistant]
At least on paper, The DC Multiverse isn't accessed casually. There are only a handful of Metahumans who can either do it inherently (Flash, Vibe, Signal, various magicians) or have it as one of their areas of study (Mr. Terrific, Rip Hunter, Maybe Booster Gold?) Outside of that extremely small cadre, the tech is experimental, unpredictable, and far less available even to Lex Luthor than you'd expect.

 In most continuities involving the crime syndicate, Crime syndicate Luthor only turns his genius to accessing the multiverse as a hail Mary when he's tried literally everything else and every other superhero in his reality is dead. Mainline Luthor rarely has that sort of external pressure bearing down on him- he's never going to be so utterly strapped for goons or cash that he wants to go poking around the multiverse. Especially because there's no guarantee he'll be able to *control* those more powerful alt-earth versions of supervillians if he recruits them.


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

[User] Why does smoking increase your risk of bladder cancer?

[Assistant]
When you smoke you inhale a ton of particulates, and chemicals that most people probably should not breath too often. By taking all of those things into your lungs they have access to your blood stream. The kidneys filter your blood, and flush these particulates out through your urine.

Your bladder is like a big bucket full of these things that were not good for you. Those things get to sit there in your bladder until enough urine is accrued to give you the desire to urinate.

TL/DR; you have a little bag inside of you that holds tons of bad stuff. The longer bad stuff sits in there the more damage is done to the little bag.

Everyone exposed to bad particulates is at risk, but smoking drastically increases your intake, and therefore the amount of this stuff that gets into your bladder.


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

[User]
ELI5: CRISPR and how it'll 'change everything'

Heard about it and I have a very basic understanding but I would like to learn more. Shoot.

[Assistant]
Geneticist here!  CRISPR (or CRISPR-Cas9, if you want the full name), is a big improvement in how we genetically modify organisms.

All organisms, from single-cell bacteria, to plants, to animals, to humans, have long molecules inside of them, called DNA.  The pattern of different molecules in this chain of DNA, called the *genetic code,* provides instructions for building those bacteria/plants/animals.  Tiny little machines inside those cells read the genetic code and use those instructions to make every part of the organism, so that it can grow and reproduce!

Now, one of the really cool things about DNA is that, because it's the "blueprint" for making an organism, we can make changes to the DNA and see the results in the resulting organisms!  For example, if we insert the instructions for producing a green fluorescent protein (called GFP for short) in a bacteria's DNA, that bacteria will make the protein, and will glow green under fluorescent light!

Unfortunately, inserting a new chunk of instructions into DNA isn't as easy as making a change to a set of blueprints.  We can manipulate DNA when it's isolated from an animal, on its own, but there's no way to build a new organism around that naked DNA.  If we want to change an organism, we need to get at the DNA inside the cells, without killing them.

In addition, cells don't like getting random chunks of DNA shoved at them.  They see this as a threat, and will destroy that DNA.  So in order to get a chunk of DNA to stay in a cell, we need to incorporate it into the cell's own DNA - merge it in, like glueing a new sheet into the blueprints.

In order to add a chunk of foreign DNA, we need to add our chunk inside the cell, break the cell's own DNA somewhere, and then get the cell to fix its DNA by sticking our inserted chunk into the gap.  Three tasks.

**Task 1:** getting the foreign chunk of DNA into a cell, can be accomplished by using electricity or soap to temporarily "pop" the cell's membrane.  Obviously, this doesn't work well on adult humans, but it works great on bacteria and single cells.

**Task 2:** Breaking the cell's DNA somewhere.  This is the really tricky part.  Using certain (very nasty and dangerous) chemicals can make the DNA break in random places, but this is dangerous; what if we break the DNA in the middle of a gene that we need?  Our cells will die!

This is where CRISPR comes in.  CRISPR is a combination of a scissor-like protein and a DNA guide that lets it only cut at very specific chosen locations.  Unlike old methods, we can be very precise with where we cut the cell's own DNA.  We can cut to turn off a gene, or cut at a place where there's nothing but junk so that we can insert our own foreign DNA pieces!

**Task 3:** Close the DNA back up, fixing those cuts - with our inserted chunk inside.  Fortunately, cells have the machinery to repair DNA cuts on their own!  That was easy!

******

**So, CRISPR is a molecular pair of scissors that cuts DNA in very precise locations.**  There are still big challenges with genetic engineering - it's tough to get these scissors into a cell, the foreign chunk of DNA doesn't always get inserted, and the CRISPR scissors can still miss and cut in the wrong places.  But this is a huge advancement in making more precise cuts, a very important part in creating an organism with new abilities.

Feel free to ask questions!


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

[User]
Why did Nietzsche think so highly of Tragedy?

My question is in the title, but I can elaborate if necessary.

[Assistant] I recommend reading the Birth of Tragedy, he talks about why the Greeks built their theology like they did, as a justification for all the suffering and that a contrast  was a necessity to enjoy life at all. The Greeks created a spectrum of comedic, tragic and romanic stories to envelope their world with meaning.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is a nightshade? Why do we consider them different to other fruit/vegetables?

I often hear about people avoiding nightshades in various diets, but I'm unsure why. I also can't seem to piece together what they have in common, or why that might be important.

[Assistant]
"Nightshade" is a huge family of plants that covers everything from tomatoes to potatoes. And belladonna too, commonly called "deadly nightshade".

The family as a whole is not considered to be different than other fruits or vegetable.

The general reasons why anyone would try to avoid anything are "medically diagnosed allergy", "self diagnosed allergy", or "fad diet that they got suckered in to".


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

[User] ELI5: What the heck is an Adams apple, what purpose does it serve, and why do men only have it?

[Assistant] Men have evolved to have a deeper voice, a voice that develops during puberty. To enable this, the larynx (or voicebox) expands so it can produce longer wavelength sounds. This expansion causes the cartilage around the voice box to protrude slightly from the throat. This protrusion is the Adam's apple.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does wetting paper permanently disfigure it?

Can we somehow "iron" it back to normal?

[Assistant]
Paper is made in a wet process that involves being pressed with giant steel rollers. Since paper is a natural fibre product, the fibres are of all different shapes and sizes. By the time paper is done and sheeted all the fibres have been compressed to a uniform thickness.

When you accidentally get paper wet, the fibres swell and cause the paper to wrinkle/get wavy. The reason it stays damaged after it is dried is due to the different size fibres swelling at different rates. If you were to wet the whole sheet and put it through a series of hydraulic roller presses it's possible that it would be uniform again, however any print on the paper would be destroyed. It would also be difficult to process such a small piece of paper and not have it break apart.


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

[User] What is a simple way to understand Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality?

[Assistant]
I always found the first two paragraphs of *Simulacra and Simulation* to be among the most straightforward, and sorta beautiful.

>If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts - the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride equal to the Empire and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, a bit as the double ends by being confused with the real through aging) - as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.\*1
>
>Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k] Where are all the Chaos Gods of positive emotions?

As I understand every strong emotion of sentient beings in the material world gets reflected in the Immaterium.

Overtime the reflections of the same/similar emotions coalesce into entities known as Chaos Gods. But all the Chaos Gods we see are formed out of negative and destructive emotions.

Khorne born from a thirst of power, Tzeentch from Men's futile desire to control the future and so on.

If all emotions are reflected in the Immaterium surely there must be some entity that coalesced out of humanities love, hope, peace, serenity, compassion etc.?

[Assistant]
The Ruinous Powers combine both the good and bad of their respective emotions, the galaxy is simply so horrific a place that all positives are easy to overlook:

Tzeentch is the God of hope, ambition and the dream of rising above your station in life through your own power and cunning.

Khorne is the God of revenge, honor and glory in battle.

Nurgle is in some ways the most clearly positive of the lot. Papa Nurgle will rot the flesh of your bones and destroy everything you love, but he harbors you no ill will while doing it. He and those who follow him are like a great jolly family and he loves all his horrific children. He is the God of the simple joys of life and compassion, but also the acceptance that everything will inevitably decay and die.

Slaanesh meanwhile is the most clearly evil of the four as the Eldar left few good things behind when they fell. Even still, Slaanesh is the God of beauty, love and the strife for physical perfection, though those emotions are especially fleeting and easily overshadowed.


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

[User]
ELI5: What makes the smoking of Weed different from Tobacco when it comes to respiratory issues / Cancer?

I've seen multiple studies and news articles calling out the harm that Tobacco does to smokers but little to nothing when it comes to Weed. The position seems to be mirrored by governments and regulators who are slowly legalizing weed while restricting Tobacco. Shouldn't the smoking of weed produce similar components like tar, carbon monoxide and nitrates that are blamed for the harm that Tobacco does?

[Assistant]
Tobacco appears to be uniquely terrible for you, which isn't to say that smoking *anything* is a good idea, but tobacco is a poor metric.

Reasons why:

First, because of the way tobacco is grown with high phosphate fertilizer, you end up with Polonium deposited on the leaves.

Second, the drying and curing process (of any kind) results in the formation of extremely carcinogenic molecules called Tobacco Specific Nitrosamines (TSN's).

Third, in most places the curing is done under large gas burners, which greatly increases the rate of formation of those TSN's.

Fourth and finally, cigarettes are generally consumed at a pretty fair clip compared to even a heavy smoker of marijuana.


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

[User]
Is a male more genetically similar to his mother because the x chromosome is bigger than the y chromosome?

.

[Assistant]
At a "number of genes" level, yes. You also get mitochondria from your mother exclusively and they contain small amounts of DNA.

Of course, that is based not on the expression of genes. And would not effect blood/tissue compatibility.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do some stereo sounds sound like they are coming from both sides rather than the middle?

Example: when listening to music on headphones, the vocal is usually in the center, inside your head, whereas instruments sound like they're outside your head on both sides, even though the volume is the same in both channels.

[Assistant]
So the way our brains interpret the direction a sound is coming from is to listen for differences in the sounds reaching each ear. So when stereo speakers (placed at an equal distance) are playing the EXACT same sound, our brain interprets that as coming from directly in front of us.

When an audio engineer is mixing music, it is sometime desirable to have some instruments sound like they are coming from the sides, but not necessarily one side or the other. To accomplish this, they have to make one side (either the left or the right channel) SLIGHTLY different from the other.

One way this is accomplished is by a Stereo Spread which will take a stereo audio file and spread certain sections of the frequency band to either the left or right. That way the left speaker will be playing some of the frequency bands, and the right speaker will be playing the other frequency bands of the same sound.

The other way this can be accomplished is by using the Haas effect. This is done by simply delaying one of the sides (either the left or right channel) by up to about 30 milliseconds; so one side is playing the exact same sound as the other side, but just slightly later than the other. By only delaying it as much as 30ms, our brain doesnt detect it as being out of time and can barely tell the difference. However our brain DOES definitely hear two separate and distinct sounds in each ear making it interpret the sounds as coming from each side instead of directly in front of us.


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

[User]
[Murder She Wrote] Why isn't anyone concerned that wherever this woman shows up people die?

Class reunions. Parties. Vacations. Doesn't matter. Wherever this lady shows up, you can reasonably expect someone to die. Isn't law enforcement at least mildly curious? Why do people keep inviting her?

[Assistant]
The same reason that MacGyver always seems to find himself trapped somewhere where his only means of escape involves jury-rigging household objects together, or how thieves passing through Hazzard County always travel in pairs and look a lot like Bo and Luke Duke, or how Klink always has some high-powered Nazi statesman coming to visit his camp and how only Hogan and the other POWs can make the visit a success through their slick hijinks.

I attribute it to a God that favors the safety of repetition.


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

[User]
Is it feasible to understand the entirety of Firefox's source code?

Hi, I'm a programming noob, and I was wondering about this: Programming is very specific nowadays, and a modern web browser such as Firefox (or Chromium, for that matter) has thousands of developers working on it. Moreover, the people who work on the UI are different from the people who work on the JS interpreter and debugger, which are different from the people who work on the rendering engine, and so on.

As a hypothetical question, would it be possible to understand every nook and cranny of a massive software such as a modern web browser? I mean understand well enough to be able to read the source code of any given part and maintain/fix bugs anywhere. Bonus: Is there any "Renaissance" programmer who actually does that?

[Assistant] It's possible to have the underlying knowledge and comprehension that would make it (relatively) easy to familiarize yourself with a given piece of code quickly, but honestly, even for projects with a single developer, they can rarely keep track of all the moving parts at once. It's extremely common for developers to return to a portion of their own code base and realize they have forgotten all of the details, and have to refamiliarize themselves with it.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do immortal jellyfish live forever and why is science not (to my knowledge) crazy about it?

Immortal jellyfish can transform from adult to baby, this is insane!
Im very surprised that in a world where science and medicine seem so focus on extending life expectancy, we dont see and hear much about this case.

[Assistant]
Science is definitely interested in how it genetically does this, but the mechanism of destroying most of your body and nervous system to revert back into a crude polyp isn't really useful to a more complicated animal.

The jellyfish that re-emerge from the polyp colony after a recycling are genetic clones of the original and they can do this indefinitely, although rarely do it more than once in practice.

Breaking you down into cellular mush and then producing a few infants that are genetic clones of you is a neat trick, but doesn't help you the adult live longer as an adult.


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

[User] ELI5: what happens when someone objects to a marrige when the priest asks if anyone objects to the marrige and should speak now or forever hold your peace?

[Assistant]
Despite popular conception, the purpose of this part of the ceremony is **not** for some lost forsaken boyfriend to yell out "I disapprove!" all romantic-like, and embarass himself and have to be escorted out by security.

The purpose of this is to find out if there was any previously-undisclosed reason why the marriage would be **illegal**. Like if it turns out the two people are actually cousins (depending on state), or if one of them is already married and not totally divorced, or if one of them is under-age or something. In the past there were a larger number of legal objections: Virginity, sterility, etc. Some religions also have additional barriers, e.g. by tradition Catholics are not allowed to remarry after divorce, nor can they marry someone who was previously divorced (even if the other person is not Catholic) (but annulment is not divorce (but only religious annulment, not civil annulment)).

But of course, no one actually follows the rules anymore, so it's just your drunk asshole uncle telling you that bitch doesn't deserve you, and he may even be right but that's not technically against the law.


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

[User] ELI5: What exactly is "microfiber" and why is it the only thing I can use to clean my glasses without smudging?

[Assistant] Extremely thin fibers of polyester, polypropylene, or polyamide.  These fibers are 1/100th the thickness of an average human hair.  In cleaning products they are split and a cross-section of a fiber looks a bit like an asterisk.  These tiny gaps trap dust, dirt, and liquids more effectively.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can't we revive a deceased person by making their heart beat again (e.g. by using an artificial heart)?

[Assistant] Sometimes we can. People have their hearts restarted or put on a bypass machine until they can heal or have surgery. Usually you have to be lucky enough to be in a hospital when that happens however. If your heart stops your brain is going to have about 3 mins before brain damage sets in. After 9 minutes the brain is essentially dead and revival isn't possible.


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

[User]
[ELI5] Conversion of 12V to 230V

I never quite got the concept of voltage converters. It seems mind boggling to me that you can have two 230v outlets in a car which just has a 12(or24)V battery.

Can someone explain to me how its done and what the downsides to a real outlet in your house are?

[Assistant]
There are two common ways to change voltages: using a transformer or using a switched mode converter.

Let's start with a transformer. If current passes through a loop of wire, it creates a magnetic field. The reverse is also true: a loop of wire in a changing magnetic field will induce a current. It's important that the magnetic field is changing: a wire won't see any current in a static magnetic field.

A transformer basically consists of two coils of wire. The wires are coiled so you get a lot of wire loops. One coil is powered by the input, let's say the 12 volts of a car. The other coil is unpowered. The 12V input has to be alternating current (the current constantly changes direction), so the magnetic field is also constantly changing. Since a car battery produces direct current, a circuit is needed to change it to alternating current. In essence the circuit switches the plus and minus of the car battery at a fixed rate (50 times per second). This changing magnetic field induces currents in the second output coil.

And here's where the real magic happens: by varying the turns of wire for each coil, you can vary the output voltage. So if the input coil and the output coil have the same number of turns of wire, the output voltage would also be 12 volts (assuming no losses). But if you give the output coil more turns than the input coil, the output voltage becomes higher by the same ratio. So to get 230 volts from 12 volts, you'd need 230/12 times as many turns on the output coil as the input coil, so approximately 19 times as many turns on the output coil.

Transformers are great at what they do, but they're quite expensive and bulky. The coils are connected by a structure of laminated iron to increase the efficiency. This, combined with the coils themselves make transformers really heavy and quite expensive, especially for high power applications. So transformers are being replaced more with switched mode transformers.

The operation of a switched mode converter is a bit more complicated, but to simplify: a switched mode converter uses a coil of wire that is constantly being connected and disconnected from the input power. Since coils create magnetic fields, as explained above, and the magnetic field can't collapse instantly, this makes the coil 'want' to keep the current flowing. Thus a large spike in voltage is generated. These large spikes in voltage are tuned and filtered in additional circuitry to match the wanted output voltage.

Switched mode converters are much lighter and cheaper. Nearly all modern adapters (think phone chargers and the like) use switched mode converters, and I'd assume most car converters do too.

As for downsides compared to a regular outlet: besides the obvious downside of having a battery that can run out, another downside is that the output isn't as well regulated as the power in your home. In converters that use transformers there is a circuit needed to change the direct current of the battery into alternating current, and if they skimped on the design of this circuit, it might not produce a true sine wave like a regular power outlet. This won't matter much for simple devices, but more sensitieve electronics may behave erratically or even be damaged by an input that isn't a true sine wave.

Similarly, a switched mode converter can deliver a true sine wave with the right design, but cheaper models will often have significant high frequency noise that can disrupt or even damage sensitive electronics.


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

[User]
What does Alzheimers actually do to the brain?

Why is it slow acting in some cases and fast acting in others?

[Assistant] The presence of neurofibrillary tangles and beta amyloid plaques (which recently have sparked controversy). Lead to the degradation of the cortex of the brain. Dementia is the term used to describe impaired cognitive status. The severity of the disease is typically generally attributed to the amount of neurofibrillary tangles. A decrease in the neurotransmitter acetylcholine is present as well. Drugs that increase this neurotransmitter help with symptomatic management but do not slow the profession of the disease.


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

[User]
CMV: The Purpose of a language is to communicate ideas and emotions, thus cursing is the most accurate way of conveying an annoyed or angry state of mind.

I have heard a number of times that only people who cant think of something better to say a curse or that only stupid people curse. however, it is my opinion that language has evolved to convey meaning quickly and that when I tell someone to "F*ck off" I in very few syllables have told this person that I no longer witch to be in their presence due to some prior problem.

what I have done here is use the English language to convey my emotions and important information in the smallest amount of time.

_____

[Assistant]
Yeah, and that's why words can communicate scale. Telling someone to "fuck off" is a magnitude greater than telling someone to "go away".

If your intent was to convey general annoyance, "fuck off" is a bit much. Do you agree that emotions and ideas can have layers of magnitude and intensity? If so, then should language not work to scale to accommodate that?

If "fuck off" is your go-to no matter whatever scale or context, then yes, it is a pretty stupid use of the term.


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

[User]
ELI5: If the NSA is recording every single email and/or phone call in the world, how can they analyze so much data?

Surely computers can't do 100% of the work, right? Do they have such a badass computer that it would understand spoken subtext in a phone call? How do the people that work for NSA know where to look in so much data?

[Assistant]
First, they aren't doing that.

What they do is record phone *records*. As in who called who and when. This is useful because if they have a bombing and then capture a suspect, they might look at the records and see that they called two numbers the evening of the bombing but got one incoming call. They then look at the incoming call's number and see that it has almost all outgoing calls, at regular intervals to a set of five numbers. This indicates that the caller was giving orders or instructions.

So they go to a judge with a security clearance and say "We think there is good reason to tap these lines because we think it is a terrorist cell, and future attacks will soon be ordered through this number." And usually that judge will issue that warrant, because usually they have good reasons to ask for it.


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

[User] How does your stomach know when to stop digesting food and move it into the small intestine?

[Assistant]
Let's start at the top - what does your stomach actually do?  It doesn't really "digest" food that much.  It's mostly a storage pouch.  It acidifies food to kill any pathogens, and has muscle contractions to break food up a little bit more.  It does have a few digestive enzymes - but they're not super important in the large scale.

So how does it know how long to store food for?

The way this is accomplished is actually super interesting.  Basically, your stomach is usually kind of "open" - a tiny bit of food can pass through it into the intestine.   When some of the food hits your small intestine, specialized cells that detect the presence of fatty acids and proteins recognize that food is coming down.  These cells release a chemical called CCK.

CCK has a bunch of effects, and is the primary thing your body does to say "hey, we've just eaten, lets get into dealing with food mode."  It causes your pancreas to release enzymes that break down food so it can be absorbed into your body.  It causes your gall bladder to release bile which aids fat absorption.  And it tells your stomach to hold up and slow how much food it's letting into the small intestine.

So basically, your stomach lets a bit of food out.  Your intestine recognizes this food, and releases CCK saying "hey, we're dealing with food - slow down." Then your stomach slows down.  Then, there's less food - so less CCK.  So your stomach lets some more food out.  Then CCK slows things down.  It basically rests in an equilibrium so your stomach is only letting out enough food that your intestine can deal with it, until you're done with your meal.

EDIT:

One other notable effect of CCK on the stomach: CCK tells the stomach to produce less acid - so when that as it empties its contents into the intestine those contents will be less acidic, because your intestine isn't really designed to deal with acid in the same way your stomach is.


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

[User] ELI5: How does UV light kill bacteria, and why is it used for cleaning things?

[Assistant]
Ultra-violet light can ionize the DNA in cells and break it down, disrupting cell function and eventually killing the bacteria. It also creates small amounts of ozone which can do serious damage to cells.

It's used for cleaning because it's a fairly non-invasive way of disinfecting surfaces that doesn't require any toxic or damaging chemicals.


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

[User]
[The Incredibles] Were there any Supers that ignored the Sansweet v. Incredible decision and continued being superheroes?

So we know that most supers retired after the Sansweet v. Incredible Decision that made Supers liable for any damage that happened. However, my question is if there were any heroes that ignored this ruling and continued to fight crime despite the litigation that may have come up.

[Assistant] Absolutely.  Dozens of heroes found a compromise with the police departments of sympathetic cities,  all they had to do was implement a new design code so that all citizens could tell the difference between heroes and officers of the law: Capes.


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

[User]
Does a Bragg curve apply to beta particles too?

I am currently working on my High School thesis about ionising radiation and while working on the penetration ability of the different types of radiation, I wondered:
Does a Bragg curve apply to beta particles too? Or more specific:
Is the relation between the stopping power and distance traveled of beta particles the same as alpha particles?

Thanks in regard!
(Apologies for any mistakes in term of grammar or vocabulary, english is not my native language)

[Assistant]
The Bragg curve represents the behavior of heavy charged particles, not electrons.

The transmission of electrons through matter is qualitatively very different than for nuclei. For instance the small mass of electrons makes them much more susceptible to large-angle scattering, and radiative losses (these become important at high energies).

There is a modified version of the Bethe-Bloch stopping power model which is used for electrons.

The characteristic behavior of the stopping power quickly jumping to zero at the end of the Bragg curve is due to the fact that the nucleus is grabbing onto nearby electrons and dropping its charge state to zero. This cant happen with electron radiation.

Overall the intensity of monoenergetic electrons impinging on some material will fall off approximately exponentially with distance. There is no sudden end to the range distribution like there would be for ions, and the intensity decreases continuously for electrons while it remains roughly constant for ions until the sudden drop at the Bragg peak. On average, electron radiation loses energy more rapidly than heavy ions, because electrons are scattering primarily off of particles with the same mass (other electrons), while ions are scattering off of particles with much lower masses (the ratio of a nucleon mass to an electron mass is around 1800, and ions have masses of approximately A nucleon masses).


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why does everyone hate the Separatists?

Why do they? I mean, they just want to secede from big, sickly, bloated mass of corruption and money known as the Republic, which is understandable enough. They just want to do things their own way.

But now when Jedi, the so-called 'peacekeepers' of the Galaxy, decide to attack and murder innocent Separatists all throughout the Galaxy with their clone soldiers, the Republic spins it as a 'necessary measure' to restore peace to the Galaxy.

Wake up nerfpeople!

[Assistant]
Because each world that 'decides' to secede  brings with it a whole lot of people who don't.

Notice that the Separatists aren't fielding armies of dissatisfied citizens who want a chance at a better life. The architects of this secession are the Trade Federation and the Banking Clans, who have literally built robot armies to serve them. A look at the run-up helps makes the reasons why clear.

This all started with Naboo, where the Trade Federation invaded a planet to enforce their economic agenda. [OOC: Imagine if Exxon literally invaded Nigeria to overthrow the government because they stopped letting them extract oil.] They declared war, incarcerated civilians, assaulted natives, lied to the Senate about it, and then claim, "Oh, no, we were avoiding the corruption of the Republic!" once they were caught? Bantha-fucking-poodoo.

Snap forward a few years. The bosses of the Trade Federation spent a few years on a resort prison planet (This is actually pretty obvious corruption, and Naboo held more than a few protests when Nute Gunray got out in 5-8 for model behavior). However, their profit margin has been seriously impeded because of the whole "invaded a planet" debacle, and they are hurting. So, they hook up with other dissatisfied oligarchs and economic powerhouses. We're talking Mid Rim dictators, tibanna cartels, more than a few 'legitimate immigration specialists' who are all feeling the hurt of a bloated bureaucracy that moves ponderously but will come down like the wrath of the Force on anybody who steps too far out of line. None of these guys want the Jedi showing up on their doorstep because one too many of their ships missed a customs checkpoint. They are considering some form of mega-cartel or economic confederacy, when a former Jedi named Dooku appears. He points them towards the industrious Geonosians, who are more than willing to finance an army for the right price. He also talks eloquently about how much better off they would all be if they were part of a new government, one without all of these pesky interplanetary regs. A Confederacy of Independent Systems, if you will.

So, they meet on Geonosis to discuss their plans and formalize their Charter of Secession, when a pair of jedi and the Senator from Naboo show up. Now, somehow everything got a little bit out of hand and through a series of mishaps, all three wind up slated for execution for violations of Geonosian law. However, under a new addition to Republic Law the Jedi are permitted to conduct operations vital to the security of the Republic or the Jedi, and so when Masters Yoda and Windu arrive with a few hundred thousand of Palpatine's new military forces to rescue the Jedi and senator, the Republic views it as a perfectly legal rescue operation. The Separatist political movement, however, is fairly certain that this enormous army is here to nip their rebellion before it can ever get off the ground. (Remember, Palpatine just got these powers because the Senate was worried by a huge number of powerful factions with dubious moral codes chatting in back rooms)

So, after shit goes down on Geonosis, the Seps have to mobilize quickly, lest their movement wind up DOA, and the Republic observes that there was an enormous army on Geonosis that seemed a little to well-equipped for the 'private security forces' they were registered as. (general rule of thumb is that most battle tanks fall outside of the PSF umbrella).

Both sides are reasonably certain that war just broke out, and so when Palpatine dispatches clone forces to protect key worlds, most of the citizens are happy to see them. Meanwhile, Dooku and Sidious are directing Separatist forces to take key world quickly to stabilize their fledgling insurrection. Coincidentally, this leads to several worlds being the site of bloody and protracted battles, which hardens the citizens of the Republic against the Seps. The average Togruta on the street knows that the Trade Federation is always up to no good, and this time they've gone way too far.

As for the Separatist citizens, there really aren't many. Not a whole lot of well-educated or empowered populations wanted out of the Republic, because they recognized that rationally even a bloated Republic was better than no Republic. There are some worlds with dictators who tell their people that they are being protected from the evil Republic by the brave droids, but even then they don't want their people marching off to fight, to see how the evil Republic actually treats its citizens.

In short, the Seps don't have a whole lot of people actually yearning to throw off the yoke of the Republic. Just a few really powerful ones. Why do you think killing the leaders literally ends the war overnight?


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

[User] [Austin Powers] Why does evil medical school exist? Doesn't it make more sense for aspiring supervillians who want to be called "doctor" to get a PhD in something relevant? (E.G., horribleness)

[Assistant] But what's more evil than knowing and being trained in how to save lives and choosing to not do so. Why get a PhD in engineering or physics when you could instead learn how to harm someone in the most excruciating way possible and keep them alive for the entire process. Plus the length of medical school almost ensures that any villain that graduates from it will forever be indebted and forced to commit crimes to pay off the evil debt collectors and evil student loans.


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

[User] ELI5 Why do modern lightbulbs seem to only last for eight or so years but the first lightbulb ever made still runs today?

[Assistant] It's not the first bulb ever made that still runs today.  Early light bulbs used to last only a few hours before burning out.  A specific light bulb, with low energy consumption and a thick carbon-based filament (that they're not quite sure what it's made of...) still runs after over a hundred years of continuous use, but we don't want dim light for a long time, we want BRIGHT light to illuminate our hovels, and that wears out components much more quickly.


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

[User]
ELI5: If dark energy increases and spread apart everything in the universe to the point where atoms are split, wouldn't this actually cause an inferno universe rather then heat death?

To expand a little on this based on the comments:

1. Wouldn't dark energy increase entropy?

2. Wouldn't pulling apart the forces of matter essentially "explode" the entire universe yet heat death requires temperatures to approach absolute zero.

[Assistant] Bear in mind that despite the name, heat death does not itself actually imply any particular temperature. It implies a universe where energy is distributed evenly, there aren't gradients of hot to cold. It does not mean the universe will be cold, or hot, or lukewarm, necessarily.


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

[User]
ELI5: Very few jobs pay any kind of retirement or benefits these days. Most Americans have no savings. What happens when generation X becomes too old to earn a living?

I'm 34, and seriously worried about my future. I have no savings, my parents didn't want to pay for my education and the jobs you can get without a degree don't pay for one. Even those with degrees are finding most companies don't offer any retirement or even any benefits. Lots of companies are hiring people as 'contractors' to avoid offering them health insurance.

How is my generation expected to survive without retirement benefits when we're too old to work?

[Assistant] There really is only one possible result: Change.  Either sooner or later, this kind of economy will reach a breaking point.  In the worst case scenario, the elderly will be forced out of their homes and into the streets to die or suddenly place a massive burden on social programs when they can no longer earn their living, and change will be forced upon society.  In the best case, employers will reign in their ever-growing desire for short-term profits instead of long-term growth, pay better wages and benefits, and the crisis will be averted.  In a more extreme case, the citizens will revolt, reunionize the entire skilled labor force regardless of the profession and use collective or forceful bargaining to demand better compensation.  In any case, change is inevitable, one way or another.


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

[User] ELI5: How are octopi, salamanders, etc. able to regrow limbs, and why can't all animals do it?

[Assistant]
The exact mechanism that allow animals to regrow parts of their bodies are something scientist study to figure out how to help humans. It seems very complicated and not immediately transferable, but it might give us clues as to how to help people.

The reason why humans and other similar animals can't regrow limbs when animals like Lizards can usually comes down to evolution and costs and benefits.

Keeping or evolving such a trait if it was easily done, would be more of a cost on the average individual than a benefit (especially if the individual is highly likely to die anyway after an injury like that).

Unrelated fun fact:

The plural of octopus is not octopi. Most of the words that end in -us and have an -i plural are from Latin. Octopus is Greek and Greek grammar is different. The correct Greek-derived plural is octopodes. The normal English-based plural of octopuses is the least wrong plural though.


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

[User] Watching Planet Earth and the opening scene is a group of penguins grouped together in temperatures of -70c, how do these animals live in these extreme frozen places without freezing solid like something does when you put it in the freezer?

[Assistant]
Insulation and food.  Living beings generate heat through metabolism.  What determines if you freeze to death isn't the temperature, it's whether or not heat leaves your body faster than it can generate more.

The bigger the temperature difference, the faster you cool, sure, but the better insulated you are, the slower you cool.

In short, the same reason you feel warm when you put on a coat.


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

[User]
ELI5: The Pussy Riot story

Today is the first I'm hearing about this, and it seems like this is something that's been going on for quite some time.

I've not been able to find a more concise version of the story, that isn't riddled with Russian politics that are, quite frankly, well above my head. What's the TL;DR version of the events that happened, and why is this news in the US right now?

[Assistant]
The TLDR version is....

1) Pussy Riot dislike Putin and his politics and the Russian government in general for all kinds of reasons.

2) Pussy Riot decide to go into one of the main Cathedrals in Moscow and sing a song protesting the government.

3) Pussy Riot get arrested for basically making a big scene and making Putin look bad.

4) Pussy Riot held in prison awaiting trial for longer than expected.

5) Madonna turns up to Moscow who was supposed to be supported by Pussy Riot.... obviously cannot be supported as they are in jail awaiting trial.

6) Madonna says on stage basicy 'omg like totally let them go and stuff, what they did isnt that bad, jeeez guys, chill' and then proceeds to sing some songs.

7) International media suddenly care because Madonna mentioned it.

8) Pussy Riot trial happened a few weeks later, they all got convicted for basically being naughty girls and saying bad things and being blasphemous and what not.

9) Media now in outcry because of Madonna link.

10) Probably now wont hear the end of it for months.

....And as for Putin, as ever, not a single fuck was given that day.


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

[User]
[Astronomy] How busy is a satellite like Hubble? Does it have downtime or is it scheduled 100%?

Curious how telescopes are utilized and at what capacity, is there downtime or is it constantly being used?

Sorry in advance if the formatting is wrong, im on Alien Blue and have no idea how to categorize.

[Assistant]
To give you an idea of how heavily scheduled Hubble is, imagine you wanted to borrow your friend's car, and he let you use it the way NASA lets scientists use Hubble.

A year in advance, your friend would make you write a 10-page essay where you clearly explain what you need the car for, exactly what stops you're going to make, and why you need to use his car rather than walking.  A thousand of his other friends also write essays.  He'd collect them all and ask other friends who don't need the car to compare them, so there's no favoritism.  The panel of friends would spend a week debating whether Joe needs to go to the grocery store more than Jane needs to visit her grandmother, and decide who gets to actually use the car.  About one in eight people are selected, the others have to wait until next year.


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

[User]
[Avatar TLA / Legend of Korra] What happens when two benders try and bend the same thing?

For instance if two water benders try and bend the same ball of water, or one is trying to freeze it and the other is trying to prevent it from freezing. Does it come town to a contest of will? Or who's bending is naturally more powerful? Or is there some technique involved?

[Assistant]
Bending is a martial art, and like other martial arts it really comes down to the specific strategies used. Imagine two non-benders trying to take a basket from each other. If they're both unskilled, they'll just wrestle over it and either the stronger one will pull it away or they'll just rip it apart between them. A skilled non-bender has a lot of techniques to pull an object out of the hands of a stronger person. Two skilled people will come down to who has the better strategy or possibly to just strength if each knows how to counter the other's techniques. Someone might even wrench an arm if they pull too hard.

For benders, it's mostly the same. Benders just use their chi as a spiritual connection between their muscles and the natural world. There's no inherent power level, and willpower doesn't enter into it any more than willpower matters to non-benders (that is, willpower determines your tenacity in a physically grueling fight, but it doesn't literally amplify your power). Your chi and your muscles are natural parts of you that can be strengthened by training.

Unlike muscles, chi is very effectively trained by mental exercises like meditation and certain emotional states--but that's not so different from the focus and mindset that lets a non-bender martial artist execute difficult techniques in the midst of battle. Chi, being an essence connected to all parts of the body, is also influenced by and influences your emotions, so your willingness to feel a certain way can enhance in reduce bending strength.

The third component to bending is your spiritual link to a specific element. Benders have this, non-benders don't. It's pretty much a binary thing. No ordinary person will win a fight over bending a rock because their spirit has a stronger connection to earth. The avatar, in the avatar state, can use the spiritual connection of all her/his predecessors, which multiplies the avatar's capabilities by the number of predecessors.


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

[User]
CMV:Christianity uses "showboating" (i.e. dramatic movies, big expressive gestures, etc.) because they can't draw people in with evidence.

When Christians get upset or "fight back" so to speak, they use dramatic movies (often misrepresenting atheists in the process), large dramatic speeches, big gestures, and what seem to be hidden fears. They get loud, puffed up, excited, and very animated.

When an atheist is upset or wants to "fight back" they are much more likely to take a keyboard and a few hours of research. They don't get as dramatic (although they can be angry or easily frustrated). They don't (seem to) make over-dramatized movies, and the movies they do make are more like an expos.

I think a large part of the reason for this is that in order to "draw people in" Christians have to be animated in order to make it seem interesting and they use movies to perpetuate myths about things like atheists converting on their death beds and portraying atheists as angry people, imagining fake lawsuits that would never actually happen, and showing the "power of prayer", or misleading someone about true events (remember "based on a true story" does mean it is only BASED on it and not a retelling of it).

They say artists use lies to tell the truth, but it seems to me as though the Christian filmmakers and over animated tv pastors are just using art to tell more lies, to make Christianity look pretty and "feel good" because they are losing ground and losing followers, where as atheists are using facts and keyboards.
CMV

Edit: I am from the U.S., and that is what I am addressing. I realize the culture can be different in other countries, but since I am not from other countries, my view isn't based on the cultures of other countries.

[Assistant]
Of course movies are dramatic.

The bread and butter of Christianity is the church community. If you attend a church regularly you'll likely have a small group that studies the bible and talks about how it applies to your groups life (teenagers, young adults, elderly women, etc.). Most good pastors present their message on Sunday mornings as a drill down into the text of the bible, focusing on different meanings. Pastors from one point of view will talk about Jesus as the gracious savior of humanity. Go into any given church, approach the pastor or any leader after the service and they'll sit down with you and listen to your ideas. Seminary teaches about the context the bible was written in and what the major philosophic challenges are.

A really good church won't draw people in with stories but will have community cook outs, volunteer at soup kitchens, walk in town parades, clean up parks, offer vacation bible school for kids.  Most people don't sit in church on Sunday because of some story about a deathbed they saw on tv, they sit there because there's a community who follow a benevolent and forgiving omnipotent figure and they model their lives after that figure.


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

[User]
CMV: In today's increasingly individualistic world, moralism should not influence state laws

In older societies, such as early agricultural- or hunting groups, where the individuals worked together for the benefit of the group, moralism played a more crucial role as the actions of one individual (even if not targeted at anyone else than themselves) could affect the whole group. Similar things can be said about larger, homogenous societies but even then the group moralism can be detrimental for individuals who do not adhere to general standards.

However, assuming you live in a developed nation (such as Canada, USA, most of Europe, and so on), individualistic efforts are generally more encouraged and most people are expected to look after themselves; therefore, laws and regulations should not be created from a moralistic standpoint but rather on rational arguments. For example, banning drug use, polygamy, LGBTQ-rights, or to a more extreme extent even necrophilia (assuming consent from all participants has been sorted out) for the sake of it being "wrong" are not the basis for a rational argument.

[Assistant]
>  laws and regulations should not be created from a moralistic standpoint but rather on rational arguments

Morals don't come from rational arguments?

How do you justify this?

If you split the two then you have things like murder, rape, etc becoming legal, because these things are moral in their very nature.

(As is pretty much every law, but those two are obvious)


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

[User]
ELI5 why do we feel the urge to chew/pick at/mess with sores in our mouth, even though we know doing so will make it worse?

Is there a scientific reason we do this? My brain logically tells me that I should bite at the sore in my mouth, etc... but my body feels the urge to mess with it even though it only worsens the problem. ELI5 why this happens?

[Assistant]
Great question! Two important mechanisms: innervation and gate control theory.

First, innervation. What's very different from the inside of the mouth and the tongue compared to skin elsewhere in the body (except the fingertips), is that its greatly sensorily innervated! This means it is much more sensitive to physical stimuli. So abnormal sensations, like aphthae, that occur in the buccal mucosa or on the tongue, are brought to awareness much more than stimuli elsewhere. When something is continuously within awareness, it stimulates a response. Which will be you to touch/press on the painful/uncomfortable area.

Have you heard of the *sensory cortical homunculus*? It's a cartoon that depicts the size of the brain areas involved in the sensory innervation of different body parts. You should see how big the lips and tongue are on the sensory homunculus, compared to the rest of the body. Google it (not the motor homunculus!).

Secondly, the gate control theory of pain. There are different sensory inputs that are each processed slightly differently on neurological level: pain, soft touch, rough touch, temperature and proprioception. What this theory basically asserts is that when there is pain in a specific area of the body, applying non-painful stimuli (e.g. soft or rough touch) to the same body part closes the "gates" to painful inputs. Thus, non-painful stimuli can alleviate pain slightly by suppressing its neural conduction! This is also the reason why people are quick to put there hands on painful areas (e.g. hand on forehead when having a headache).


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

[User]
In as simple a way as possible, how are we able to tell the elementary make up of a planet using only a telescope?

Just reading a story about how scientists used the Hubble telescope to view HAT-P-26b, s planet 440 light years away. They saw "distinct signatures of water in its atmosphere" and "found fewer heavy elements than they had expected". How can you do this using only a telescope?

[Assistant]
How does red dye work? It absorbs all colors but red which we see.

Well it turns out all molecules absorb at some wavelengths or another of light. They just aren't all visible. The wavelengths that molecules absorb at are specific to the individual bonds inside them. Similarly the wavelengths molecules emit when excited are specific to the bonds.

By measuring the wavelengths of light from distant planets we can get a feel for what molecules are in the atmosphere.


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

[User] ELI5: How/why does tilt-shift make photos or videos look miniature?

[Assistant]
Your brain is used to blurry backgrounds meaning you are focusing on something very close to you. Close one eye, hold a finger in front of your face and focus on it; the background behind your finger becomes very blurred. Now move your finger farther away; the background becomes less blurred.

Tilt-shifted photos/videos result in the brain being fooled to think you are looking at very small things, because that is what it expects when it sees a background so blurred with a sharp object in the foreground.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we "shake it off" when we're in pain? i.e. stubbed fingers, toes, etc.

[Assistant]
This isnt only done by humans, because there is more than one aspect to why it is believed/known that we do this.  A deer which has been hit by a car, but is still alive, will do a full body shake before running away.  This is believed to be done to shake the experience (literally) so that it doesnt linger in memories or a subconscious state.  The same thing can be seen in people when they "shudder" after saying something that they are afraid of or while retelling a horrific event.

The vigorous shaking motion that you are talking about seems to block the most intense stuff from really registering as painful. This is all because of how our nerve signals communicate sensory information to our brain. While understanding and treating pain is a massive part of modern health care and a sub-field with a lot of room to grow, what's needed to answer your question is fairly straight forward.

When you slammed your finger in the door, you(most likely) felt the immediate pain of the smash and then a rising, duller pain that comes on after a second or two. This is because pain nerves come in two general types; a thicker neuron with a sheath that transmits intense pain signal quickly from a small radius around the receptors in your skin, and a thinner neuron that more slowly transmits pain signals from a more general region of your body. When pressure is put on the skin, the faster pain signals can be physically blocked from reaching the brain while the slower ones pass through.

So how is this all related to shaking? By quickly shaking your fingers around, you are subjecting your fingers to g-forces as they are in a constant state of acceleration and deceleration, which could potentially provide enough pressure to dull some of that initial intense pain.


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

[User] [Harry Potter/Green Lantern] Would a wizard have an easier time against a magic green lantern (Alan Scott) or a science based (Hal Jordan) green lantern?

[Assistant]
Probably Alan Scott since he actually has a exploitable weakness.

Long story short, Green Lantern Corps power rings don't have a weakness, only limits. Alan Scott has a direct weakness to wood. Specifically he can't manipulate, move, or block anything made of wood or related to wood. The only way around this is manipulating something to interact with the wood. For an instance, he can't break down a wooden door so he'll destroy the metal hinges attached to the door.

Herbology is pretty big in Harry Potter along with the fact there are spells that affect plant life. A wizard could hurl some wood logs at him, or trick him into getting close to a whomping willow.

I should mention Hal Jordan is currently the champion of the Green Lantern Corps and amongst the most powerful members in their history.


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

[User]
Do the other three forces have a version of the black hole?

It just seems odd that I'm always told that gravity is very weak compared to the others while black holes are so immensely powerful. Do the others have these concentrations of power that can bend the universe?

[Assistant]
No.

The strong force is very strong, but only works over very short distances. So you never have quarks pulling on quarks that are too far away, or neutrons pulling on protons. So the limited range just means that there is never enough inward force to form a black hole.

The EM force repulses as much as it attracts. So over large scale, you just don't get the same effect.

The weak force works over even smaller ranges than the strong force, and repulses as much as it attracts.

So gravity is unique because it is always attractive and works over infinite distances. So it just keeps pulling stuff in, and the more stuff that is pulled in, the stronger the pull gets, which with enough initial mass allows the runaway attraction that leads to a black hole.


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

[User]
[DC, Marvel, General Superhero] How can I gain the trust of the citizens and police if Im a villains kid? And also am in a team all composed by villain kids?

So lets say one or both of my parents are villains. Certified A-list street level villains of A-list heroes. No world-conquering threats, but bank robbers with lots of imagination. The Rogues/Sinister Six level.

Me and my friends have been thinking of doing some hero stuff. Problem is, we have no idea on how people will react to kids with powers similar to a bunch of villains, specially if the best outfits are literally using a version of my parents villain suit. People had problems with the Suicide Squad/Thunderbolts (they still have), but how can we get better with this?

[Assistant]
Just get a better suit.
Also, ditch the mask.  Nobody will trust you if you wear a mask.  Instead, just wear glasses and comb your hair differently in your civilian clothes.  Trust me, nobody will ever notice.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Where are there Sith ghosts? Are they real?

I haven't read the books.

[Assistant] If you count Legends, then there are Sith Ghosts in the ancient ruins on Dromund Kaas (the Sith Capital).  They are quite real.  In the time of The Old Republic, an Inquisitor even bound several of the ghosts to themselves to steal their power.


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

[User] [Future] Would a laser weapon have recoil?

[Assistant] Technically, yes but for all practical purposes, no. Light does have momentum. However the recoil would be so low, far, far, far below that of the equivalent projectile weapon, that you would never feel it. You'd have to scale up the power to much, much higher levels and use a continuous beam for a long time before you'd even start to notice it, let alone before it became an issue.


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

[User]
[DC] Batman just destroyed my car

I'm a Gotham citizen, I work as an accountant. So I parked my Porsche outside of a restaurant which I went into to have some dinner at night. As I came out, a caped figure landed on my vehicle while chasing criminals, the figure who I know had to be Batman absolutely wrecked my ride, smashing it apart just by landing on.

Before I could say anything, the guy zipped away. While I appreciate the work he is doing for the city, he did wreck my $115,000 car which forced me to take a taxi home that night. I don't expect him to just appear at my door one day with a checkbook and pay for the damages.

Is anyone gonna pay for the damages inflicted to my vehicle? I doubt "destruction by caped crusader" is covered by my insurance.

[Assistant]
Anyone living in gotham, or metropolises, or any other city teeming with superheroes and villains needs to sign up for a separate insurance plan to protect property against meta humans. Health insurance will also be raised living in these areas.

Those who can not afford these payments will end up in debt when their car in inevitably thrown at their house by some super. This is why super villains are never short of new henchmen to hire.


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

[User] [Bleach] Why didn't Aizen just use his "Bankai" instead of turning into that giant butterfly thingy?

[Assistant]
A Bankai is only a five to ten time boost to your spiritual power at the outside.  The Hogyoku was in the midst of transforming Aizen into a completely new being with untold powers.  So while Aizen absolutely *has* a Bankai, or did at one point, he has so much more power than Shinigami did beforehand (although its debatable if he really had much more power than Yamamoto given the need for Wonderweiss,) Aizen wanted a different path.

Think about how Ichigo had to fight Aizen.  Ichigo was about the same strength as a Captain at the end of the first arc, and had his own Bankai that Aizen stopped with his finger.  Then later, Ichigo's grown much stronger, and his full power into an attack didn't even scratch Aizen.  Yet Aizen saw there was the potential for even more power than a hollowification through the Hogyoku.  Unfortunately he was wrong, as Ichigo's combination with his Zanpaktou for the Final Getsuga form proved, Aizen was pretty much the king.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why are there no reports of collateral damage from turbolasers?

Turbo lasers and lasers in general are flung around pretty liberally in most Star Wars battles. I am making the bold assumption here that a laser has almost infinite range. Why is it that there are no reports of foreign turbo-laser blasts which are flying through space at the speed of light hitting planets causing some localised destruction? Surely, somewhere in the galaxy this must of occurred by the sheer *n* of shots getting fired?

[Assistant] that is a bold assumption, the lasers need to be focused and while that focus range can be pretty lenient for a battle that takes place within visual range, anything beyond say a few hundred thousand klicks is going to be too diffuse to be an issue. That is making the assumption that space is empty which it isn't.


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

[User]
[Dragon Ball] If I wished back Nail and Kami, would that weaken Piccolo?

If not, could he fuse with them again? Coud I keep doing this ad infinitum?

[Assistant] Well they're not dead. They're a part of him. Also, any wish involving them would have to be with their consent (as Goku showed when they tried to wish him back after Cell). Assuming both is the case it would significantly depower him, as it did the first time Kami and Piccolo split.


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

[User] ELI5:What is "counting cards," why do casinos ban you for it, and how do they know you're doing it?

[Assistant]
Why do they ban you:  so they make more money by not giving some of it to you.

How do they know you're doing it?  By the way you bet.  Counting isn't the hard part, the hard part is making bets to take advantage of the fact you are counting, while appearing as though you're not doing that.

In order to maximize your winnings you want to bet the minimum when you have a low chance of winning, and bet the maximum when you have a high one so that you reduce your losses and maximize your gains.

But if you bet small, small, small, small, HUGE, HUGE, small, small, small, small, small, small, etc it makes it very obvious what you're doing.

That's why professional counters these days never work alone and always work in teams where the person betting and the person counting aren't the same person.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What medium are people using to communicate across the galaxy instantaneously?

Basically the title... How is it that faster-than-light travel via hyperspace can take several hours or even days, but people can still send & receive messages instantly, make holo calls, etc?

Is there some quantum entanglement stuff going on?

[Assistant] It's still facilitated by hyperspace, except the Holonet transmissions are boosted by a net of buoys littered throughout the lanes. Which is why it's so expensive to actually have instant Holonet communications at interstellar distances.


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

[User]
ELI5 : Why are we taller than our ancestors?

I've been told that it's because of genetics, of our better nutrition etc. What is the exact cause?

[Assistant]
Better nutrition is a good start. Compare the average height in South Korea (5'8 1/2") with the average height in North Korea (5'5").

And that's after just half a century of malnutrition.

Not sure about the rest, but the importance if better nutrition cannot be overstated here.

I can imagine there's been some evolutionary selection in mates favoring taller, stronger, healthier-looking people, as well, but that depends on how far back you go to define "ancestors."


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

[User] ELI5: Why do computers use Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) instead of the three primary colors, Red, Yellow, and Blue?

[Assistant]
The difference is between additive and subtractive colors.  When adding more of the color source makes the result brighter, usually from emitting light sources like light bulbs, LEDs (computer monitors), the sun, the primary colors are RBG.  When all additive primary colors are present you get white.

When adding more of the source makes things darker, like paints, and other light absorbing/reflecting scenarios, the primary colors are subtractive and you get RYB.  All subtractive primary colors make black.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are most coffee stirrers either divided into two tubes, or have a divider in them?

Basically the title.

[Assistant]
they use cheap soft plastic and having two smaller tubes with a divider makes them less bendy.

You just made me realize that i almost never see wooden coffee stirrers anymore. Thanks, OP, you made me feel old.


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

[User] Why do things get darker when wet?

[Assistant]
**Refractive index** of a material is the ratio between speed of light in vacuum and speed of light in that material. Light tends to bounce back when encountered with a sharp change in refractive index. Being wet means that there's a water film covering the material, mediating the change in refractive index,  resulting in reduced reflection.

**Edit**

Part 2 of the story

Apart from index mediation, the water film does something else. For rough/fibrous surfaces, the reflection will be **diffuse**, i.e. visible from all directions. When a water film is present, the surface becomes smooth, and the reflection will be **specular**, and only visible in one direction. So in most directions, the material will appear darker.

Conductors are a completely different beast. The reflection off of metals are not solely dictated by the refractive index.


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

[User]
CMV: Mike Bloomberg skipping the first 4 states in the Dem. primary shows he is too lazy to be president

The first four states in the primaries play a special role in the election process. Leaving the discussion whether these states are the right ones aside, the people in these states scrutinise candidates to a higher degree - more face to face - than those in other states can. It's hard work, but only candidates who can survive this process have shown what their candidacy is worth. Now, Bloomberg showed up late and expects his candidacy to be taken seriously without having had to do the first year of campaigning. A presidential candidate that cares about people should be willing to explain their policies in small meetings of <300 people, rather than coast on ads with a generic message against the current White House. Anyone who hasn't done that at all, should not be president.

[Assistant]
It was a strategic move, not one born out of laziness. Like you said, his campaign started late, and the other candidates' already had a strong ground presence in Iowa. Demographically, nobody was ever going to beat Berne in New Hampshire.

Committing resources there would have been a waste, and as we see with Joe Biden, poor showings in early states generate a narrative of your chances being low or zero, regardless of your polling support in the remaining primary states. By avoiding those states, Bloomberg's able to invest in states that others aren't yet and be a "sleeper" candidate instead of a struggling one.


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

[User]
[WH40K] The Emperor knows what will happen up to 41K from the start, how does he act differently?

Basically he knows one possible future, how does he change it?

[Assistant] Kept a closer eye on his primarch lab perhaps? Killed Magnus outright? In truth, all the Emperor would needed to have done was not teleport to Horus' ship and things would have proceeded so very differently.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Can Spider-Man shoot his webbing underwater?

If he can, is it changed in any way? Does it stick? Does it dissolve? I ask because I remembered a scene from the 1994 Spider-Man animated series where he encounters Mysterio for the first time, who manages to knock Spidey off of the Brooklyn Bridge into the water below. Preferably looking for a canon answer from the comics.

[Assistant] His web isn't water soluble and actually appears to be somewhat bouyant.  His web shooters just eject a pressurized fluid so they should still work, but the web wouldn't travel as fast through water.  Unfortunately the sheer volume of spider-man toys that have been made makes searching for an example a pretty big time investment.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it important to conserve water?

I understand that, in a drought, the supply can't keep up with the demand. I get why we need to conserve then. But in normal conditions, why is it important to not waste water? What's the ecological and economical impact of using too much?

[Assistant]
It takes a lot of energy/effort to clean water well enough before it can be introduced to the natural water cycle again.

In addition it also takes energy/effort to clean and prepare water until it's clean enough for us to use.