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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why was Shimi Skywalker chosen to be impregnated with Anakin instead of someone strong in the force? Once impregnated why were she and her offspring ignored by the Sith to live their lives as slaves?

Wouldn't it make more sense for this little force experiment to be more closely monitored?

Wouldn't it have been more effective if some Dathomirian witch was tested on instead of some random tatooinian woman?

Why, once they carried out the experiment on Shimi did they just leave her and her offspring to their own devices?

[Assistant] Because nobody knew. Darth Plagueis attempted to manipulate midi-chlorians in order to extend his own life, and in doing so tampered with the force to much. The Force created Anakin as a backlash unknown to Plagueis or Palpatine.


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

[User] [Star Wars VII] How did a fragile Tie Fighter survive almost intact a crash landing after free falling from space straight in to the sands of Jakku and without killing or even hurting either passenger?

[Assistant]
The TIE/sf space superiority fighter used by the First Order is far more advanced than the TIE fighters used by the Galatic Empire. The TIE/sf series of fighters have deflector shields (already a massive improvement over the previous model), hyperdrives, and numerous other benefits "that provided better protection and offensive capabilities".

All in all, the new TIE/sf represents a shift in Imperial navy doctrine, one towards treating pilots as important assets and not cannon fodder. The limited resources of the First Order (in comparison to the Empire) means that many aspects of the Imperial military machine are not sustainable, like the use of "disposable" pilots. Pilots in the First Order are not easily replaced, and therefore an emphasis on quality has taken on a whole new meaning.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Do the letters and numbers of droids like C-3PO and R2-D2 have any meaning?

[Assistant] It's a model number and designation. R2-D2 is an R2 series astromech with the designation D2. R2 units look different and do slightly different shit than R4s or R7s. All the companies have extensive backstories and descriptions of their products on the holonet(wookiepedia)


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

[User]
ELI5: How does someone die from an explosion?

Like is it the heat, or shrapnel, or could it be the initial impact?

[Assistant]
Explosions are of different types.

1. Ones where you see a big fire ball... These are only used in movies mostly and only have cool looks on their side... They are the most harmless variety. Their fire only appears for a few seconds and quickly extinguished. They have low temperature flames so they don't set fire to anything around them.

2. incendiary explosions. They have persistent high temperature flames that cover a wide area of the explosion.. they set objects on fire and can be very lethal in closed places. They kill be inflicting high degree burns on the body.

3. Anti personnel or shrapnel explosives.. they are what you generally find in military use. They are the deadliest when you compare the damage to explosive ratios.. they have inbuilt shrapnel inside them that gets launched by the explosion... They are nothing fancy to look at, you only get to see a flash and smoke raising.. but the sharpnel travels tens of thousands of feet per second and causes puncture wound across the body.. people very near to the point of origin will also be damaged by the shock wave..

4. Shock wave damage... This type usually requires a very large amount of explosives.. it has high damage that's very difficult to avoid but the explosion is highly inefficient at killing.. you need great amount of explosives to do significant damage.. they occur in gas line leakage, factory accidents or high explosives weapons and can launch a shock wave that can damage for miles.. the shockwave basically compresses and expands the internal organs in the body.. if the wave is strong enough, it ruptures the organs.. in this explosions you will often find that the body is intact or with severed limbs with seemingly no puncture injuries... However, we can find that most of the innards are turned into a mushy paste. They are particularly dangerous in enclosed spaces. They are some cases where people walk away from the explosion seemingly unharmed only to collapse and die a few minutes later. Common injuries among the survivors include hearing loss, ruptured intestine, cerebral hemorrhage and retinal detachment.


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

[User]
CMV: If Marvel makes Captain America 3 faithful to the Civil War comics, the movie will ruin the MCU

While I think the idea behind Civil War (should people with super abilities and/or powerful tools be regulated by the government)  is great and should be used in a movie, being faithful to the story of the comic won't make sense and will ruin a lot of the MCU. Here are the reasons while I believe that:

1.Secret identities just aren't a big deal in the MCU. Everyone knows who are the Avengers, and they were already with the government in a way (SHIELD). I don't see why it would be such a big deal that the government would have their personal information, specially because they already have that.

2.There aren't enough people to justify something like the Civil War. With Age of Ultron, we'll have what, two or three more super-beings? With Ant-Man it will be at least one more. And even if in the end we have a reverse House of M, with a bunch of people getting powers, it's not like they would all decide to run around fighting bad guys, so it wouldn't work having them taking one side or the other so strongly. How would an argument between a group of seven people turn into a war? It would make no sense.

3.Tony Stark is a dick in the comics. Even if you agree with his point of view, you can't deny that he was very unlikable by the end of the story, specially if you went after the tie-ins. Meanwhile, the character is the most popular thing in the MCU, and adapting the story faithfully would ruin this completely.

These aren't the only reasons, but they are my three strongest ones why I think a faithful Civil War movie would be terrible for the MCU. Yes, I know they aren't faithfully adapting anything so far, but Civil War was such a big event, and it can change so much, that I fear they'll try to follow the comic a lot more than before. And I've seen a lot of people arguing for this, so, change my view.

[Assistant]
1. People may know the Avengers, but they don't know Cap, Hawkeye or Black Widow. They kind of need their secret identities. SHIELD ceased being "the government" after the events of Captain America 2 and is now a rogue undercover organisation. The USA doesn't have superheroes' identities.

2. There are superheroes introduced by the Agents of SHIELD canon. Minor ones, kind of "monster of the week" but enough to justify there being supers all over the place. It's not just the movies. And it's Marvel Comics. If you tell the audience "there are lots of superheroes now", they'll buy it.

3. He's a dick in the movies. He's just entertaining. And having people like both Cap and Iron Man allows for a more interesting story when they fight, tbf.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do mathematical proofs work?

I don't understand how you could actually prove with absolute certainty that a concept or supposition will hold true in all possible circumstances.

I mean, for example, it seems obvious that all even numbers can be evenly divided by two. But how could you really PROVE that this is the case for some astronomically high even number that's so large that no one has ever even tried to divide it?

[Assistant]
Well that's not really the right way to think about it because the *definition* of an even number is that it's a number of the form 2*n* where *n* is an integer. For any integer *n* the number 2*n* will *obviously* be divisible by two, because 2*n*  2 = *n*. There's your "proof," in a sense, but really it's just the definition of "even." It's tautological, which means it's a statement that's true *because it's true.*

But we can go on to prove something that's not tautological. For instance, consider this assertion: The product of two even numbers is even. Is that a true statement? Well, 6 is an even number and 4 is an even number, and 6  4 = 24, which is an even number  but that's just one case. Is it *necessarily* true that *for all* even numbers *a* and *b*, the product *a*  *b* must be even?

The answer is yes, but we don't have to just accept it on faith. We can *prove* it. Consider:

Start with some numbers *a,* *b* and *c* such that

*a*  *b* = *c*

where *a* and *b* are even numbers. Since *a* and *b* are even, then by the definition of "even" we can write

*a* = 2*a*
*b* = 2*b*

and say that *a* and *b* are integers. This, again, is the *definition* of an even number. We can then put these expressions into our original equation and come out with this:

2*a*  2*b* = *c*

We can factor this expression thusly:

2(*a*  *b*) = *c*

Now we know that the product of any two integers is an integer (not proved here, but you can work that out if you want), so since *a* and *b* are integers, *a*  *b* must also be an integer. In other words, there exists an integer *c* = *a*  *b* such that

2*c* = *c*

And by the definition of "even," that means *c* must necessarily be an even number.

That's how math proofs work in a nutshell. You start with something known to be true, then do things which are known to be valid (or which can be separately proved to be valid), and then you end up demonstrating that the thing you were trying to prove is *necessarily, unavoidably true.*

Or else you start by assuming the thing you wanted to prove is *false* and then, by working through steps, you show that some contradiction exists. This is called proof by contradiction and it's a very powerful technique. If you start by assuming a certain statement is true then follow the logical consequences of that statement and end up "proving" that 1+1=3 or something, then you know that either you made a mistake or else your initial assumption was wrong. And since a statement can generally only be true or false, if you were *wrong* to say it was *true,* then it must have been *false.*

I say "generally" there because if we go much further we're going to have to get into matters of decidability, and that's just too much for a short answer. Suffice to say that not every mathematical statement can be proved true or false. *Most of them* can, though, so the issue of undecidability rears its head very infrequently unless you happen to choose to study the question of decidability itself.


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

[User]
[General Fantasy] I'm a Knight considering building my castle on a nearby floating island. How can I overcome the obvious logistical challenges?

Obviously this has tremendous advantages in both defense and style. However, I am more that a bit worried about the logistics of construction and agriculture. The floating rock I'm interested in is about 100 meters up.

In addition, I don't want to get magic involved more than I have to. We all know Wizards are bastards.

Bonus Round: There's an even better floating rock 1000 meters up. Any idea how I can make that one work?

[Assistant]
Use a hot air balloon to get up there.  Build a platform for a pulley lift system.  Supplies go in buckets at the bottom and are offloaded at the top in a continuous cycle all day and night, powered by oxen yoked to a gear crank.  (Or use your beast of burden of choice, including slaves, if you like.)

 Build a second pulley system for heavy loads.  You may be able to break chunks of the floating rock island off and tow them to different levels to create intermediate platforms. This would reduce the tension on the ropes and reduce the chances of catastrophic failures.


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

[User]
[Interstellar] Did post-Earth humanity attempt to recover the other crewmen from the Lazarus missions?

- Hibernation allows crew to extend their lives for decades. Dr. Mann was able to sleep almost 20-30 years (10 before Cooper begins his mission, another 23 or so when they investing the Water planet), and that's assuming he was awake for the better part of a decade for his expeditions.

- The end of Interstellar shows us that the wormhole is still open - Cooper steals a shuttle to find Brandt, which would be beyond impossible if the wormhole was closed given it transported them to another galaxy.

- Humanity is shown living in large O'Neil cylinders with manufacturing capabilities, so even if large ships for some reason could not traverse the wormhole, they could still likely build smaller ships that could. They have been on these stations for a while, Murph was approaching middle age when she made her discovery and was over 100 when she was put into hibernation for 2 years.

Tl;dr humanity has the means, motive, and opportunity

Given these capabilities and the likely hood that at least some of the mission crew are still alive, have recovery ships been sent to follow the remaining active signals and recover these astronauts?

[Assistant]
In short, no.  Until Coop's wildly unexpected recovery something like 90 years after launch, the entire Lazarus team was considered...not quite lost..perhaps..."expended" would be a better word - which was basically part of the original mission design.  Even with the belief/hope that one would find a habitable world, no member of that team expected to see humanity again.

After his recovery, it's clear we have a space infrastructure that could support the trip but it's doubtful they'd actually commit resources to it without a clear objective - an exact location, number of survivors, time dilation factors, etc etc.  Otherwise it's just another one-way ticket.

OOU for a second, but an easy sequel would be for Coop, now substantially aged, to come back through the wormhole to beg for humanities aid in defense of the colony that Brandt setup.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do earphones get so tangled when left unattended?

They go into my pocket untangled and come out 10 minutes later with the most intricate tangles and knots. How does it happen?

[Assistant] its due to something called "chaos Theory". Which states that there is billions of ways in which your earphones can be tangled, but only one way in which they are not. Probability states that they will most likly always be tangled when you get them out.


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

[User]
If you walked out of a room with no windows and had no orientation, and saw the sun near the horizon, is there a way to determine instantly whether you were witnessing a sunrise or a sunset?

Without waiting, what are the cues that distinguish any given moment during a sunrise from that during a sunset?

edit: If you were near a body of water the surface would be more calm in the morning right? Also if you were near a very large body of water you may be able to tell by the direction that the wind was blowing.

[Assistant]
* Touch the outer wall of the room. How warm is it? Is the other side sensibly colder?
 * Sunset tend to be more red that sunrise.
 * The smell of the plants (but you need to be trained in that position).
 * Bird song tends to be higher in the morning.


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

[User]
Why didn't John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx cross paths both being in the Victorian era?

It seems like it should have been likely, I know Marx knew about Mill, but I'm not sure the extent Mill knew Marx. So why didn't  two great economists in the same time and place not engage ?

[Assistant] To give some context: the Victorian era was full of philosophers, economists and new political ideas. Just like thinkers today engage with those they deem interesting or relevant, so too did thinkers in the past. You should also not forget that we dont remember most thinkers and that the relative importance of certain thinkers to us now isnt a view always shared with people in the victorian era.


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

[User]
ELI5 why it doesn't matter how much you spend on a HDMI cable, and then how some retailers end up charging so much?

I'm asking this more so I can explain to my sister who can't understand why a $1,000 would even exist if it's no better than a $20 one.

Seriously, why does this market for overpriced cables even exist? It's not like like buying an overpriced watch, no-one will ever even see the cable to see how much you spent on it?

[Assistant] HDMI cables are digital, so they can't *kinda* work. Either the binary data is getting through consistently or it is not; in the first case the cable works perfectly, and in the second case it doesn't work at all.


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

[User] ELI5: how they manage to provide reliable high speed wifi to 80k people at the Ethiad Stadium (home of Man City)?

[Assistant]
A very large number of access points with narrow  beamwidths (each access point covers only a small slice of the total area) with careful ordering of the available wifi frequencies to limit interference.

Think of it like waitresses - each is assigned a small part of the restaurant so you can just hire more waitresses as needed instead of having just one waitress for everyone.


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

[User] [Game of Thrones] Why Jaqen H'ghar killed 3 men in Harrenhall? Did he really believe that God of Death should have his 3 deaths back, or did he just want to lure Arya into his order?

[Assistant]
Both. It was part gratitude for saving his life and the life of his companions(so they could carry out thier mission whatever that was, in the books he's after a book from the citadel),  and part following the precepts of the many faced god who is particular about how and when some people should die.

It could have also been a test, to see what sort of person Arya was and if she could be helpful to the order.  When Arya names Jaquen in order to get more than three deaths she passed the test as it demonstrated she is clever and willing to kill.

Edit: On more research, a faceless man who matched the new face jaquen took when he left arya bribed a novice at the citadel  (who stole an archmaester's key which can open any lock) and killed the apprentice and took his place. we never seem more beyond that.   Maybe show Jaquen had a simular mission.


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

[User] Are there any elements that aren't common on earth, but are more common throughout the universe?

[Assistant]
Hydrogen and Helium are estimated to make up roughly 74% (H) and 24% (He), by mass, of all baryonic matter in the universe.

However, Hydrogen provides only about 0.026% of the Earth's mass, and Helium's terrestrial mass-fraction is negligible.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do the backs of credit cards say "Not Valid Unless Signed," yet I have never been turned away when using my unsigned credit cards?

[Assistant]
It's supposed to be an extra security measure against identity theft. The merchant can compare your signature on the back of the card to the signature you give when you purchase. You used to do it on a hard copy but now they have the digital signatures, which make pretty much everyone's hand writing look terrible.

Most retail places have some sort of policy where the employees are supposed to verify the signature. They just don't put effort into enforcing them and the cashier/sales person/ect. probably doesn't care enough to check.


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

[User] ELI5: how can laptops fit over 1tb of storage and 16gb of ram in a tiny chill while PCs need massive ram sticks and often large SSDs? Why isnt PC ram as small?

[Assistant] The main reasons why PCs are larger are ease of access and cooling. Cooling is very important to improve performance and durability. If you make everything small and cram it into a small space, you cant have good cooling so the system will have to slow down as it heats up. The bigger your RAM stick is, the faster it can dissipate heat. The more space you have between your parts, the more airflow and cooling you get.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are the "shade balls" that are being put in open water reservoirs in California to prevent them evaporating, black? Wouldn't something reflective or white make more sense?

[Assistant]
The balls aren't there to prevent evaporation. They are put in place to prevent UV Rays from interacting with the chlorine and bromine in the water.  Without the balls, those 'keep clean' the water chemicals would become 'hurt the people' chemicals.

I think this confusion comes from a misleading title on a few gif/article posts here.


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

[User] REAGANOMICS. Like I'm five, I wasn't even a fetus when that happened.

[Assistant]
Reaganomics is also known as supply-side economics (and got its nickname because of its association with Ronald Reagan).

The idea is that supposedly, if you give more money to the rich (and to big companies), that that money will "trickle down" to the lower parts of the economy.

The notion is that if you give a rich man a bunch of money... maybe he'll buy a car (for example). And then the car salesman (and the people who made the car) will have money... so maybe they'll remodel their houses. And so all the people who worked on *that* will have money... so maybe they'll go out to eat for dinner. So the cooks and waitresses will have money. So by giving money to a rich man, you've given money to everyone he spent that money on, and everyone *those* people spent money on, and everyone **those** people spent money on, and so on.

There are arguments *against* this, however.

Firstly, is the rich man going to spend his extra money? Well... not necessarily. A rich man is far more likely to put his money into his bank account to collect interest. It'll be a number in an account somewhere. It's not like he needs to spend it - he's rich, he's got everything he needs already. The poor man, on the other hand, would almost certainly spend it - if not on necessities, than on luxuries he wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to get.

Secondly, if the rich man spends that money, what will he spend it on? He's much more likely than a poor man to spend it on something imported from another country, be it a car, a wine, or a factory full of children willing to work for 12 cents an hour. In which case, that money isn't even staying here, it's getting shipped off somewhere else. Or, maybe the rich man will take a foreign vacation and cut out the middle-man.

Thirdly, while the argument goes that the money the rich man spends will pump through the veins of the system and the added supply of resources (and demand that its spending causes) will create jobs... but this causal effect is highly dubious. If a dozen people eat at a fancy restaurant for a night, spending hundreds of dollars they wouldn't otherwise spend, does that really mean the restaurant will hire a new employee to compensate for the increased traffic? Or... will they just be happy at having had a good day and just go on like normal? If 100 more Ford cars are sold in America than would have otherwise, will the factory hire more employees?

Finally, the poor man has a far more immediate need for the money than the rich man. He needs to worry about paying the bills, buying the groceries, and making ends meet. The rich man already has that stuff covered, so for him it's just a bonus, an excess.

TL;DR - Reaganomics says that if you pay a rich man, the money will move through the economy when he buys something, and the person who gets that money buys something, and so on. The argument against that reasoning is that if you give that money to a poor man, they're more likely to spend it immediately, more likely to spend it *locally*, and more likely to be in *need* of it in the first place.


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

[User]
Eli5, why do we make bullets out of lead instead of a harder metal like steel

Is it just that lead is cheap? Or is there a reason to use a softer metal like lead? Because I feel like a harder metal would do more damage no?

[Assistant]
A couple of different reasons, not the least of which being a denser but softer metal will do more damage when it hits a soft target.  Another reason is that lead has a much lower melting point than, say, iron or steel, so anyone could make their own musket balls back in the day.

But a big reason these days is because you want a softer material than steel as your bullets to keep from damaging the barrel, especially if the barrel is rifled.  Lead and copper won't cut into rifling grooves, while steel will wear them down over time.


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

[User]
[Witcher] Why do Witchers carry a different sword for humans?

I ain't no beast but a silver sword through me gullet would do me just as well as any other. If the freak chooses to kill a human then why not use his silver sword instead of carrying two?

[Assistant] Silver isn't the best material to make swords out of.  Compared to proper steel and iron, it's softer and weaker.  The only reasons Witchers carry silver swords are for monsters, most of which are weak to silver.  If they weren't weak to silver, Witchers would only have to carry iron or steel swords.


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

[User] [John Carpenter's The Thing] Why doesn't the Thing spray spores right away if it only takes one cell to infect someone? Why wait to eat someone?

[Assistant]
We don't know for sure that one cell is capable of assimilating an entire human body. We know each cell of The Thing is active and capable of assimilation, but A does not lead logically to B... necessarily.

Every time we see The Thing in the act of assimilation it seems to force the target to ingest large quantities of itself.

* When assimilating the dog it sprays the target with liquid and jabs it with spiked tentacles.
* When assimilating >!Windows!<, it hoists the target up and seems begin eating or merging with him.
* When assimilating >!Nauls!<, >!Blair!< simply merges his hand to the target's face.

All of these would require a lot of extended contact. Since Things are only ever logical and rational, if they could simply let a tiny cell bud off its buttcheek and infect the whole camp without their knowledge, they would do so. Therefore, they do not do this, because they CAN not do this.

Presumably the immune response in the human body is able to stave off micro-traces of Thing, so a small cell just won't do the trick.

Later tie-in comics hint at the possibility that the Thing could fully infect with a single cell, but A) those suck, and B) it's hard to find good corroboration for that claim.


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

[User]
ELI5: Expensive boutiques in airports. Are they really profitable? Who buys things there?

I recently had to fly trough Heathrow a number of times and I've found myself in the middle of dozen of crazy-expensive shops. A Rolex one, a Gucci one, jewelry shops etc...

Who buys things there, honestly? Is there really someone with time to waste that goes: "I'm gonna buy a 10,000 Rolex while I wait for a plane?". Who buys a Louis Vuitton luggage set while connecting? Who buys a designer brand 1,000$ suit before boarding the plane? I mean..., for sure somebody like that exists. But are there enough of these people to pay what I expect to be a huge rent there?

It doesn't really make any sense to me...

[Assistant] In a busy international airport, they may be trying to attract Duty-Free business. That $10,000 Rolex may cost $11,000 in the U.S. due to sales tax or $12,000 in Europe due to VAT. So they may buy it at the airport to save on the tax/duty.


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

[User] ELI5:do toilet seat covers really protect you from anything? Or are they really there to make the user comfortable?

[Assistant] Theyre not useful for protecting you from diseases, because youre unlikely to get a disease from a public toilet in the first place. They are useful in keeping you away from something you personally find gross, which is a totally legitimate purpose.


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

[User]
CMV: I think the voting age should be 21

Well in reality I really want the voting age to be around 23, but of course not many Americans will agree with that huge rise of age, so I kept it at 21.

Of course with the news media this week about the event that happen, there been talk of lowering the age limit of voting to 16. I disagree with that statement as I think kids at that age are not yet expose to the tragies of the real world. Granted I am fresh out of high school and experience the many things that a teen can do in a span of 4 years. But my experiencs with teens is that there think their rights most of the time. Which doesn't at all help give critical thinking to them, even when a teacher assign us an assignment on it, most teens do not think about the opposing view of their argument. I also hate the grading system, but I don't want to rant any further.

[Assistant] Then would you say the age for military enlistment should be raised to 21 as well? Or would you say the people who are risking their lives and giving up a lot of their own freedoms to protect yours should have no say in who represents them?


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

[User]
What causes spatial orbits in higher dimensions to be unstable? Is it linked to how gravity behaves or does it apply to any kind of orbit?

Also, does this affect the existence of String Theory's higher dimensions?

[Assistant]
There are two parts to the proof. First consider a general force of the form F = k d^a where k is a constant, d is a distance, and a is an exponent. You can show that closed stable orbits are only possible if a = 1 or -2. This law is Bertrand's theorem.

Now we must consider how gravity behaves in higher dimensions. Using Gauss's law form vector calculus you can show that the force of gravity has an exponent a=(1-D) where D is the number of spatial dimensions.

When you combine the two laws, you find that closed stable orbits only exist in 0-dimensions and 3 dimensions. However, 0-dimensions is a nonsensical result.


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

[User] When seismic waves encounter a mountain range, do the waves continue along at sea level or do they travel up and down the mountain sticking towards the surface?

[Assistant]
I actually know this one! The answer is there are different types of waves in solid media.

The simplest are **bulk waves**. These travel outward spherically from a point. So bulk waves would travel straight, although they could "bounce around" inside mountainous structures depending on geometry. There are two kinds of bulk waves, P-waves and S-waves, with P-waves being compressional waves and S-waves being transverse (shear). Keep in mind that the focus of an earthquake is usually under the surface, so "straight" doesn't mean at sea level in your example, but in straight lines originating from the source.

There is another kind of wave, called a **surface wave**. These waves travel along the surface and arise from the solution of the wave equation with a free edge. Surface waves would travel along the surfaces of mountains and other geometric changes, although the solution to the wave equation is much more complicated than on a flat surface. Assuming a flat surface, there are two kinds of surface waves at play: Rayleigh waves, which have up/down motion (EDIT: and also longitudinal motion), and Love waves, which have side to side motion (perpendicular to the direction of propagation). In a non-flat surface these two types might not be distinct.

All four of these wave types show up during an earthquake, so the answer is that *some* of the energy goes straight and *some* goes along the surface of the mountain.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do sites that don't display ads make money?

I'm talking about websites like streamable.com, torrent sites etc. (only examples I can think of).

[Assistant]
As website you can make money by selling ads, but also by selling user data.

Alternatively, the site is devoid of money making schemes as part of its growth strategy, and will monetize once it secures enough market share.

Why bother showing adds when you barely get 100 visitors a day, better keep it add free to develop a proper following ,and only then switch on the adds.


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

[User]
In Babylon 5, many of the floors are visibly curved - but should all floors be curved?

Many of the scenes show a huge curved inner floor - are all the inner floors aimed so that their bottom is facing outward for gravity - but at what point does that stop, and you start installing flat floors?

It seems the middle sections (where C&C is) would be difficult to set up - and transitioning from one section to another would be hard.

[Assistant]
Part of it is simply a matter of perception; the further you get from the outer hull, the smaller the radius of the station, so the curve is more visibly pronounced to the naked eye.

The other part is that the nicer areas of the station - the parts you are more likely to see on Interstellar News Network reports - are usually closer to the outer hull, where many of the rooms are installed with flat floors. The curve there is gradual enough, and the rooms so constructed small enough, that the volume of the station that is sacrificed is small.

Critical facilities such as the C&C are set up that way for practical reasons; pretty much every species in the galaxy is used to level floors, and they are easier to navigate in a crisis.

As for transitioning from one level to another, the lifts that go between levels have independent gyroscopic controls that line them up with their destination. Travelling by access ladders in an emergency can be a nauseating experience, though.


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

[User] Why do you hallucinate when you stay awake too long?

[Assistant]
During sleeping tons of processes happen with the result that  your brain gets rested.
In a rested brain the noise/signal ratio is pretty low. As the period till the last resting period grows, the noise/signal ratio grows. This results in the brain getting more and more false signals which can lead to false sensory readings.


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

[User] [Smallville] What is it about Krypton that makes pieces of it give people super powers when they are exposed to it during an accident?

[Assistant]
Parts of the planet, just like our own planet, were radioactive. And then the bits and pieces of the planet that make it to Earth pass through parts of space that contain weird energies and even more radioactivity.

And it turns out that humans are more receptive of radioactive stuff on this Earth, so it's more mutagenic instead of harmful.


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

[User] [Pokmon] My charmealeon's tail just went out! Can I relight it with my lighter? [URGENT]

[Assistant]
It's not that the flame is the Charmeleon's life, but rather the Charmeleon's biological processes cause it to generate fire on the tip of its tail. This is why even Charmanders can be dunked underwater and walk out fine, the tail just relights or even stays lit underwater.

If the tail went out, your Pokemon might be dead or near death. Get it in its Pokeball if you can and get to a Pokemon Center right now!


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

[User] eli5 Is it correct to think of events happening on the far side of the universe or in a different galaxy as occurring "at the same time"?

[Assistant]
If you involve relativity events "happening at the same time" depends on the observer.

So you can say some things are happening simultanously, but you have to say from wich perspective.

There is no universal neutral observer that could give you a "most correct" order of events.


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

[User]
eli5: Are there points in space where any past event is observable?

We can through telescopes, observe events from far distant locations. Is it also true that if you were able to travel to any location in space, that there would exist a location from which you could observe any past event, even up to the big bang?

[Assistant] Yes, here on Earth you can see past events,  just go outside at night and look at the sky. The Moon you see has moved several feet by the time you observe the light that reflected from it's surface. The planets, which are more distant, have moved even more by the time you see them. The stars you see? They are all millions of miles from where you see them, and some may not even exist right now. You are seeing them as they were years, or even billions of years ago.  Photons are time machines. They do not experience time. They travel unchanged by any event until they are destroyed or altered by contacting something, which in this case is your eyeball. In fact, you never see something as it is *now*, but only as it was when the photon from it hits your eye.


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

[User]
[Lord of the Rings] If Bilbo had not found and taken the Ring, what would have happened to Gollum (and the rest of Middle-earth)?

I've always wondered :)

[Assistant] The Ring was going to leave Gollum eventually: it wanted to be found by someone who wasn't just going to hide deep underneath a mountain for the next several hundred years. If not Bilbo, this would probably mean the Ring would find an orc of the Misty Mountains. The orc would undoubtedly use the Ring, but could not master it. It's only a matter of time before the spies of Saruman and Sauron heard of the Ring being wielded by an orc of the mountains. Of the two, Sauron has vastly more resources, spies, and knowledge of Ring-lore, so he's much more likely to be the one who figures things out first. The Nazgul pay a visit to the Misty Mountains, kill the orc (who would certainly refuse to give up the Ring), and return the One Ring to Sauron. Sauron wins.


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

[User]
Can a fever actually turn the tide in an immunologic battle that the human body would otherwise lose without the aid of medicine?

Read a lot about it but couldn't find an answer or a more proper subreddit to ask this, so hoping this doesn't get deleted.

For clarity: can a fever be THE causing factor behind the human body winning an immunologic battle against an infection that would otherwise cause death or other permanent type of harm without the help of medical treatment?

I know the question is very specific and it might be hard to find someone who knows the answer.

If you provide a positive answer please specify against which pathogens does a fever actually enable a turning of the tides if you can.

[Assistant]
There's a fairly clear mechanism that applies to a broad range of viruses. While we often handwave and say that viruses hijack our cells mechanisms to replicate, that's ignoring a very important detail: Most viruses bring their own methods of copying their DNA/RNA. Those enzymes (usually polymerase or reverse-transcriptase) are generally not super robust versions and they tend to be pretty sensitive to temperature.  Even a few degrees difference can make a big impact on how quickly/accurately they're able to copy genetic material.

So, to the question: Can that result in a fever being the factor that lets the body win? Not really... But that's mostly because you're thinking of it as some sort of crime scene where we need to select that one weapon that resulted in the primary cause of death. It's not. The immune system is a battle on many fronts and all sort of layers are involved. Their goal is not to find the one thing that really shuts down an infection. The goal is to overwhelm an infection from multiple sides so that there are no avenues of survival (for the infection).

To that end, a fever can be very helpful for some diseases. It doesn't outright destroy many bacteria or viruses, but it can drastically slow down their ability to spread/grow/replicate. That then opens the door for lots of other mechanisms to overwhelm the sluggish infection. That said, the effect is useful in some cases, and not so much in others. That's why we generally don't have a problem with suppressing fevers, particularly when we're fighting the disease in other ways. Our bodies are also sensitive to temperature, and its often more important to protect that than to leverage a fever for a leg up on a disease.

Now, one more thing to note: The fact that polymerase is temperature-sensitive ends up being important in one other way: Viral-vector vaccines or attenuated-virus vaccines often leverage this mechanism to create viruses that look dangerous but cannot really infect us. The vaccine will use a virus with a polymerase that --for example-- has an optimum temperature of 95F rather than 99F. That's enough difference that the virus in the vaccine can barely replicate and the body has no problem at all preventing the infection. However, the vector still works and the body recognizes it as a disease to build immunity to.


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

[User] [MCU] How does one get Soul Stone if the loved person is durable enough to withstand falling from the cliff?

[Assistant]
The fall wouldnt be what kills you, the stone takes you as a sacrifice.

Id imagine the cliff is there so the sacrifice can fully embrace the sacrifice, theres a difference between throwing who you love off a cliff/jumping and just saying nah take that person/me


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

[User] [Terminator genysis] if i throw a programmed chip into a pool of poly alloy, will it turn into a t1000?

[Assistant] If its programmed to be a terminator or similar, then yes. if you just throw a motherboard into that, it wont do much. that alloy is probably already preprogrammed to interface with special kinds of chips thrown in there, most likely just terminator chips.


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

[User]
ELI5: how can old TV shows that were filmed pre-HD can be syndicated in 16:9 HD when it was originally aired in 4:3 SD and look great for that matter?

I'm watching an Ep of Seinfeld right now from mid 90's that looks great and in Dolby digital 5.1. I have even seen SE01 of this look just as good.

[Assistant] They were shot on 35mm film, which is far higher in quality than even Blu-ray. They were broadcast as a lower-quality SD version. Now they're being broadcast as a lower-quality HD version. In the future, they will be broadcast as a lower-quality ultra-HD version.


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

[User] ELI5: How did climate change become about politics?

[Assistant] Historically, industries like oil and coal that drive human emissions of carbon dioxide -- or industries like lumber that reduce the ability to offset the impact of carbon emissions -- tend to be highly profitable. This leads to concentration of wealth in a few hands. People who make a lot of money from those industries found they could take a small percentage of what they earned to pay for political influence. This goes back hundreds of years. This was often used to enact policies that should lead to even greater concentration of industry ownership and wealth in fewer hands. Hyper-wealthy individuals gained much greater power in politics. All this happened well before climate science even began. After climate science pointed to the dangers of global warming, people in those industries decided it would be a more effective strategy to influence not only politicians, but public opinions as well. So they funded supposedly apolitical nonprofit foundations to cause people to disbelieve climate science. Many politicians went along with this because it increased their campaign funding and also their chances of winning or holding onto their offices.


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

[User]
[Supernatural (the TV show)] How can all the God's of various religions exist?

So in Season 5 episode 19, Sam and Dean find themselves held hostage in a hotel by a group of God's from various religions including Norse, Japanese, and various other "pagan" religions (show said it, not me). This is all happening during the judeo-christian apocalypse. The question is, how do all these Gods exist when some of their holy texts or other lore clearly contradict the existence of other Gods? Mainly, monotheistic religions.

[Assistant]
>The question is, how do all these Gods exist when some of their holy texts or other lore clearly contradict the existence of other Gods? Mainly, monotheistic religions.

Those texts are clearly incorrect then aren't they?

Also, if you look at some of the wording they don't specifically say there are no other gods. Even in the Ten Commandants, it is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."  It never says you can't worship other gods as well, and nothing close to saying there are no other gods at all.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are there no big insects?

I'm not talking about stag beetles or giant millipedes.  I'm talking horse size at least to qualify for "big".

> There are big mammals like whales and small mammals like voles.
> There are big birds like ostriches and small birds like kiwis.
> There are big reptiles like crocodiles and small reptiles like skinks.

Why are there no big insects?

[Assistant] Because insects don't "breathe" the way other animals do. They absorb oxygen through their "skin" and it sort of trickles through to the rest of their body's cells. Earth doesn't have high enough oxygen concentration to support insects beyond a certain size.


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

[User]
Why do we throw up much more frequently when we're children?

As babies we throw up all the time, then as children it becomes more sporadic, then as adults it only happens if you're ill. Are we adjusting to the planet, as it were?

[Assistant]
Medical student here:

Baby 'vomit' is actually called positing and is to do with undeveloped and hypotonic muscle control, the stomach sphincters aren't as well controlled and there is also gas trapping which when released suddenly will bring food up with it. This is the classic immediate milk vomit after food.

Childhood vomiting occurs for all manner of reasons. Underdeveloped immune systems, greater exposure to pathogens (poor hand hygeine, eating things off floor, lots of contact with other grubby children), lower pain thresholds (they haven't experienced pain before), more cytokine release (immune response to infections that then stimulates vomiting, so things like ear infections can make them puke), less cerebral inhibition (they aren't inclined to fight the feeling), underdeveloped language skills (can't express what/where the feeling is and thus doesn't get painkillers and soothing agents in time)


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

[User] [Alien] If Xenomorphs inherit physical traits from their hosts then how many time would the Xenomorph have to infect someone to become indistinguishable from normal humans?

[Assistant]
It would never happen. The Xenomorphs don't inherit genes randomly; one human-incubated Xenomorph is going to be essentially identical to another. Each one grabs the same sets of genes from their host.

That makes me suspect that the face-hugger and larva form of the Xenomorph have certain "blanks" in their DNA that they then patch in from their host. These blanks were probably inserted in their genetic code by the Engineers to allow them to adapt to a wide variety of environments, making them useful as a weapon on virtually any planet.

This means a human-bred Xenomorph can create an egg that is eventually implanted in a Predator and the result will just be a Predalien, not some human-predator super hybrid.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why wouldn't a small city switch to underground power?

[context: I'm in a small city of 6k people. This stupid town is known for constant power outages due to high wind and snow. Are they stubborn or is it really that hard to switch this small town to underground power so we stop having power outages anytime someone even sneezes?]

[Assistant]
Underground high voltage cabling is easily 10-100x the cost per meter of overhead cabling.

If a 900km powerline costs $2.4 billion, the same distance of underground cabling would be will over $200 billion.


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

[User] ELI5 radiation causes cancer, but radiation therapy is used to beat cancer?

[Assistant]
Radiation causes DNA damage.

DNA damage causes mutations.

Mutations *can* cause cancer... but usually trigger apoptosis; cell suicide.

Tumors are a concentrated mass of cancerous cells.

In radiation therapy, *many* relatively weak beams of radiation are aimed at the tumor from all angles. They are aimed so that they ***only*** converge on the tumor; this means that the target tissues are affected tens of times more powerfully than the non-target tissues.

Essentially, you irradiate the tumor with such an absurd dose of radiation that the DNA damage goes beyond the realm of mutations, and into the realm of, "What the fuck is that molecule anymore? Certainly not DNA."

This kills the cancer cells.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do we know the visible universe is 4% and not more or less?

I always hear how the visible universe as we know it is only 4% of everything else... but how do we know the visible universe is 4% and not more or less?  And how do we know the non-visible universe is 96% if we can't see it?

Where do we come up with 100% percent of the everything in the universe and what all does it include?

[Assistant]
The visible universe and the observable universe are two different things. The thing that is 4% is the collective mass of things in the observable universe comprised of ordinary (visible) matter. The other 96% is dark matter and dark energy, which are invisible but whose presence can be roughly detected via gravitational effects. From these gravitational effects, we have determined roughly how much dark matter and dark energy there are in the observable universe, and there's a lot.

Specifically, dark matter impacts rotational velocities of galaxies, and dark matter impacts the rate of expansion of space. Measuring those allowed us to learn how much there is.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is there one universal measurement of time, but multiple ways to measure distance and weight?

[Assistant]
There are just less common. Here are some less commonly used time increments.

**moment**	*varies	medieval unit of 90 seconds; modern moments usually shorter*

**ke**		*traditional Chinese unit of decimal time, usually 1/100 of a day. 14 minutes and 24*

**kilosecond**		*16 minutes and 40 seconds*

**megasecond**		*About 11.6 days*


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do most societies associate sex with shame if it feels so good? And why not other "feel good" stuff?

This post is assuming religion is human-made.

[Assistant] Prior to the development of reliable birth control, there were some pretty major consequences associated with sex (stds, kids, etc).  It was beneficial to discourage recreational sex, and shame is a good way achieve that.  Nowadays sex is mostly safe, but society is slow to change and so those shameful attitudes still exist.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do a girl's breasts first develop during puberty, and not during a woman's pregnancy? Would it be too much stress on the body to develop breasts while pregnant?

Curious, because there's not much of a point needing/having breasts before having a baby.

[Assistant] It's called a "genuine signal" like birdsong or bright plumage, breasts can't be faked. If a female has breasts she is likely able to reproduce. So if you're an early human, it's a very easy way to see if a female is worth pursuing as a mate.


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

[User]
[Hitchhikers Guide]Does the Babel Fish work on written language or only spoken/auditory language?

It auto translates everything you hear but would there still be a language barrier with written language?

[Assistant]
Exactly how the Babel Fish works depends on which slice of the Whole Sort of General Mishmash you reside in. Generally, at least in universes that operate according to sane physics, you will have one of the following two entries in your mk.1 Guide:

> The Babel Fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting, telepathically, a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain ... The speech you hear decodes the brainwave matrix.

Those of you living in, shall we say, more *verbose* slices of the WSOGMM, may find this entry instead:

>  The Babel fish ... is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

As you can see, although the details vary slightly, the central tenet remains the same: your brain requires speech, or at least information-rich sounds, to complete the translation process. We know that there are limits even to this ability, as described in the adventures of Ford Prefect and some ape descendant on a tatty little world that got demolished:

> ... He had grown so used to receiving an instantaneous and unconscious translation of everything he heard via the Babel Fish lodged in his ear that he had ceased to be aware of it, and he was only reminded of its presence now by the fact that it didn't seem to be working. Vague shadows of meaning had flickered at the back of his mind, but there was nothing he could get any firm grasp on. He guessed, correctly as it happens, that these people had as yet evolved no more than the barest rudiments of language, and that the Babel Fish was therefore powerless to help.

It is possible, of course, that your particular universe has a Babel Fish that operates in a very different manner, but in that event it is profoundly improbable you are reading this explanation, and will instead have just read one that accurately summarizes how the Babel fish operates in *your* universe.


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

[User]
Specifically, what about heavy water is it that makes it harmful to organisms?

So it has some extra neutrons. So what?

According to its Wikipedia article,

> Experiments in mice, rats, and dogs have shown that a degree of 25% deuteration causes (sometimes irreversible) sterility, because neither gametes nor zygotes can develop

> High concentrations of heavy water (90%) rapidly kill fish, tadpoles, flatworms, and Drosophila

> deuterium-poisoned mammals die of a failure of bone marrow (bleeding and infection) and intestinal-barrier functions (diarrhea and fluid loss)

But, at the chemical level, what specifically is it about the added neutrons that means that gametes and zygotes can't develop, or that the bone marrow fails, or any of the other effects it has?

My understanding of chemistry admittedly isn't great, but I didn't think the number of neutrons affected how elements react with each other in any way, so it can't be because of some adverse chemical reactions taking place (unless I'm wrong, of course).

So what exactly is it that makes it harmful to organisms?

[Assistant]
The difference is due to something called kinetic isotope effects. Bonds to deuterium are just a tiny bit stronger and shorter than bonds to hydrogen. This is a result of the deuterium being twice as heavy.

The toxicity stems from the fact that enzymes are very finely tuned systems and the small change in bond strength is enough to really mess with how fast some reactions proceed. Do this on a large enough scale by drinking a bunch of D2O and your whole biochemistry goes out of whack leading to death.


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

[User] Eli5: Why do birds waste their time migrating back north in the spring/summer? Wouldnt it be easier to just chill down south year round?

[Assistant]
Birds migrate north for the summer because theres untapped resources and less competition up there.

Down south you have competition from all the non-migratory species and threats from all the local predators.

Rather than deal with that while trying to raise that years chicks, they fly to a place where theres fewer local competitors and predators due to the harsh winters.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are there so many personal injury lawyers? Is it that profitable of a business?

Also, what happens when the clients lose the case?

[Assistant]
Because a lot of people sustain personal injuries.

They all need representation.

In addition, it is much easier to get clients that way, because clients are not required to pay anything out of pocket. Most personal injury cases are handled on contingency basis making legal representation affordable even for poorest people.


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

[User]
Animals, e.g. (wild) cats, have loads of anonymous sex and know nothing about protection or medicine. Why aren't they decimated by cat aids?

Why aren't wild animal populations riddled with disease when they know nothing of prevention or cure of STDs or other communicable illnesses?

Edit: thanks for the fascinating discussion and insights! TIL many things.

[Assistant]
FIV is much less deadly than HIV.

Cats have been dealing with FIV for a long time, somewhere in the 10's of millions of years. Overtime they have built up some resistance; you see the same thing happening in human populations that are under intense selection from HIV. CCR5 delta 32 is a famous mutation that provides some resistance in humans, and there are others that have started to manifest in Africa. Under intense selection pressure, these will increase in frequency until the whole population is more immune to the disease.


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

[User]
ELI5: What do people actually die from when they are burned alive?

Does the heat cause the heart to stop working? Or does it affect the mind first? Or is it smoke inhalation?

[Assistant]
Depends... but here's a few ways...

Carbon monoxide poisoning would be the nice way out. Happens in house fires fairly often.

Shock is another nice way out, where you effectively go unconscious from the pain and vital organs shut down.

Not so nicely, you can cook to the point your skin burns off, and the organs can no longer function. The human body can burn pretty well, once the skin is burned off...

It's possible to bleed out if the fire destroys enough blood vessels, and effectively pass out from blood loss. Then it's similar to shock as the body shuts down.


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

[User]
Is it common for beginners to forget the stuff they write?

So recently I have finished a project that took me a little more than 20 days, which was a small C library with 43 small functions that "copied" original ones like strlcat, strlcpy, memcmp and such. When I went to hand in the project yesterday, I realized in shock that I had no clue of how my code worked anymore. Surely enough I could remember what each function was about, but just by looking at it for a fee seconds wasn't enough to make my own logic clear to myself; I'm not talking about a lot either, just around 30 lines of code per function or something.

So my question is: Is this kinda stuff normal or am I failing at some point? Are there strategies I can take to improve this and actually remember what I wrote?

I'm asking this mostly because I'm still learning the roles and my school understands that if you can't explain your code to someone else, you're cheating, and I'm scared shitless of receiving that kind of feedback even tho I rarely look at other people's code to help me.

[Assistant]
There is absolutely no way you will remember even 1% of the code you write in your life. Maybe you remember the gist, but not every line.

Theres a famous quote:

>	"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan.

This is why you make code readable and *not clever*. All that matters is ability to read it later. If you do that then your coworkers will thank you. And you will thank you.


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

[User]
[Dr. Seuss] Are Whos anthropomorphic bacteria?

I ask because they live on a speck of dust/snowflake.

[Assistant]
The Who are the Who, it's plain to see.

Their characteristics are import to notice, that's the key.

A Who has arms and legs and a head full of dreams.

Bacteria has none of these, at least, so far as it seems.

The world of Seuss is silly and unknown. Full of Yooks and Zooks and Wockets a'plenty.

Dwelling on the what's, why's or Who's would be like trying to count wet spaghetti.


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

[User] [Lord of the Rings] If I took some lava from the Crack of Doom and let it harden into rock, could I use that rock to destroy the One Ring? Does it still count as the same fire in which it was forged?

[Assistant]
The Crack of Doom is a magical forge, that magic holds the power to make and unmake the ring. By proxy, do the components of that forge, the magma in this case, hold the power to unmake it also? Probably not.

Whatever spells are at work in the Sammath Naur, Sauron probably oriented them towards the *process* of making magical items, not imbuing every atom with Ring destroying powers. That magical process likely needs the whole shebang, an entire magical forge, to function.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do so many people believe that if your urine isn't clear you aren't drinking enough water and is there any truth to it?

[Assistant]
To understand this, you have to know why we have urine at all. Your blood has to have a very precise chemical balance for your body to be able to work. If it's off even a little bit, you will get sick and eventually die, unless it's corrected. Your kidneys have the job of doing the corrections. They work by filtering out any excesses, returning blood that is chemically "balanced", and they are very good at it. The stuff they filter out is basically urine. The most important things filtered out are extra water, extra salt, and urea, a chemical produced continually by the body. Another chemical filtered out by the kidneys is urobilin, which makes urine yellow. Removing certain amount of water is necessary to the process, whether your blood has excess water or not.

If you are dehydrated, meaning you have not been drinking as much water as your body needs, your kidneys will do their job by removing the bare minimum amount of water to get the other stuff out. That means the urine will be concentrated. Think of it as being like strong tea. Because everything including urobilin is concentrated, its color will be dark yellow. This is actually normal first thing in the morning because you don't drink water while you're sleeping. During the day, it's a reliable sign that your body could really use more water. But it doesn't have to be clear for you to be healthy; a well-hydrated person's urine will still be light yellow unless they are drinking much *more* water than they need.


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

[User]
[MCU] Is the Iron Spider armor heavy? Doesnt it weigh down Spider-Man and slightly limit his mobility?

i mean it is metal right?

[Assistant]
Well when you put it in a bucket and put it on a scale then sure it's pretty heavy, but like IRL full plate armor, when it's distributed across all body + being basically a liquid mesh + Spider-man having superhuman strength to begin with, it's basically nothing.

In mainstream comics even normal humans can use Iron Spider suits - Mary Jane used it once, and Aaron Davis, formerly Ultimate Universe Prowler and uncle to Miles Morales right now uses black Iron Spider suit in his underhanded activities. There also was a squad of "Scarlet Spiders", but these kids were clones with Captain America level physique, so they could actually pull off the Spider-man moves.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is Ireland divided into two (Northern Ireland and Ireland) and is there a chance that they'll ever be combined back into a single Ireland?

[Assistant]
The entire island of Ireland was once a separate country, but became part of the United Kingdom in 1801. It was an unhappy relationship, and Britain's treatment of Ireland during the infamous Great Famine of 1845-1851 caused a great deal of resentment. Movements sprang up campaigning for Ireland to regain its independence, mostly among the majority Catholic population. Independence was less popular among the minority Protestant population, descended from immigrants from Scotland and so concentrated mainly in the north of the country.

In 1916, things got violent: an armed insurrection by a relatively small group (the Easter Rising) was met with brutal violence from the British, which only made the Republican cause more popular among the Irish. The violence escalated into full-blown civil war.

In 1921, a treaty was signed giving Ireland almost complete independence, but with a clause allowing Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. Northern Ireland, which has roughly half-and-half Loyalist (Protestant) and Republican (Catholic) immediately invoked that clause, and so Ireland was split.

There followed several decades of terrorism in Northern Ireland, as Loyalists and Republicans battled it out on the streets, and the British Army was deployed to keep the peace -- not very successfully, and it was often accused of being anything but impartial (in one notorious event, the Bogside Massacre -- popularly known as "Bloody Sunday" and the subject of a U2 song -- 26 unarmed civilian protestors were shot by British soldiers, 14 of them fatally).

The violence, for the most part, was finally ended about ten years ago (the Army withdrew in 2007), and the province is now governed by a power-sharing agreement, with two leaders: one Republican and one Loyalist.

Most civilians would probably tell you that they don't mind whether the province remains British or is reunited with Ireland, just so long as there's no repeat of the endless violence of the 20th century.

Because of various agreements and treaties between Ireland and the UK, the border is not a very big problem at the moment. Both countries are part of a Common Travel Area, which guarantees freedome of movement (the CTA includes a few territories that are not part of the European Union, which is one reason Britain and Ireland opted out of the Schengen Agreement which abolished routine passport controls between most member states -- it would have conflicted with the CTA).

The problem now is Brexit. Northern Ireland actually voted Remain, and this has prompted some people to suggest that now is the time for Northern Ireland to leave the UK and rejoin Ireland. Brexit will mean that the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland forms part of the border with the EU, and it's not known how that will affect trade and the CTA.


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

[User] eli5: Does Manuka honey really have effective anti bacterial properties? Why does bacteria not build resistance from it if it's consumed daily?

[Assistant]
All honey is anti-bacterial, not just Manuka honey.

There's no evolved resistance because of the *way* it's anti-bacterial. Honey has so much sugar in it that it sucks all the water out of bacteria it touches, killing them. You can't "evolve resistance" to that the same way they can't evolve resistance to a blowtorch or humans can't evolve resistance to lava. The mechanism is "complete annihilation", no possible body change will up the chance of survival, so none evolves.


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

[User] Why do we get the green/yellow goo in the corner of our eyes when we sleep and why don't we get it in the day when we're awake?

[Assistant]
Basically, you're eyes have to be moist constantly.  This means that there is a constant stream of liquid flowing from the outside corner across the eye, which drains into the opposite corner through the duct near the nose.  When you blink, it's to spread the liquid across the eye, which prevents it from drying.

The eye produces the liquid in such abundance that if the duct were to inflame and become closed, your eye tears up quickly.  When you are hurt or emotionally distraught, the duct is closed by pressure building around it from your sinuses.  This is what makes your tears flow.  When your tears dry on your face, you can feel the itchy sort of calcium/salt from it's trail.

This same build up occurs when your sleep.  Your eyes are close, thus the liquid flows across the eyes quickly and in large quantities.  Unfortunately, the draining duct cannot take it all.  So slowly a small bit overflows the duct.  As it does, it dries when it contacts with the air.  Which each bit drying over the last layer, it creates the "green/yellow" hard "goo" in the corner of your eye.

You will notice this more frequently if your sleeping in a room with low humidity, as it will dry and crystallize much sooner, creating an almost sand like grain that you can rub away.


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

[User]
[DC] How often would the Flash need to take a dump?

I mean, we see scenes of him eating a lot to gain energy. His body quickly converts the food into energy, so naturally he'd need to relieve it, right? Do they ever even mention this in canon?

[Assistant]
Waste processes are only very, very rarely ever brought up for any characters in comics. The Flash is not really any different in that regard.

On the other hand, once the Speed Force concept was introduced, speedsters needing lots of food was basically handwaved away and ignored.

Also, most of the time your waste isn't actually mostly undigested food - it's mostly old cells, with only material that you can't actually digest being mixed in.


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

[User] [Star Wars] If Luke's identity was to be protected from Vader, why did he retain his Skywalker surname?

[Assistant]
Two main reasons:

1. Everyone was told that Padme died and her child died with her. Thus Vader and the Emperor *weren't even looking* for Luke and Leia.

2. Obi-Wan took him back to Tatooine - not only is this planet outside of the Empire's jurisdiction, it's a reminder of *Anakin Skywalker*'s past - a past that Vader does his best to avoid.


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

[User]
[General Fantasy] Why the fuck do aliens keep coming to Earth to steal water?

There's just so much goddamn water elsewhere in the solar system, much of it snaggable without needing to chug through a planet's gravity well. Why risk getting the tar beaten out of you by a ragtag group of scrappy human asswipes when there's a bunch of hydro up for grabs out there?

[Assistant]
Well maybe they aren't the brightest bulbs. Like we always think the alien invaders are the pinnacle of their race and this is a planet vs planet invasion.

What if they were like just a bunch of hillbillies on a space pickup and saw a planet with essentially free resources guarded by some cavemen. Risk vs Reward seems in their favor. Maybe all the other planets with water are already under the ownership of someone else.


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

[User]
What do you believe you do as a programmer that others don't do, that you find worthwhile doing?

The writing process can be pretty personal, and whenever I discover something interesting about how I can improve the way I write, I am always met with the thought that there's likely so, so much much that I'm not attuned to, that other programmers have found helps them.

What things have you incorporated into your workflow that actually is really worthwhile, that you don't see enough people do/mention?

Here are a few of mine:

* I try to re-read code that I wrote, so that I can get a sense of what others have to read when they read my code. Most people I know just move on once they wrote it.
* I try to enjoy algorithms (they are like little design patterns to me), while I see that the prevalent view of algorithms (at least those practicing for FAANG interviews) is that they need to be grinded.
* I actively try to write code only once. If I need a function in C that does network packet reading, I'll typically try to refactor/generalize/document it until I can re-use it in future projects, because I believe it'll be less work in the long-term. I'm actually not sure if others do this one.
* I use Vim, and I always try to evolve my Vim skills. It helps me think of my code in a nonlinear fashion, which actually adds to my ability to perceive what the program is doing as a whole. I also have no idea if others are doing this, but it is possible that a lot of do-it-all IDEs (VScode, CLion) may have different results, or give a different kind of benefit.

[Assistant]
Writing README.md files for modules. Basically what you see on the main GitHub page for a repo that includes basic examples of how to use it and why you would want to. So many organizations I've contracted at have had multiple modules doing the same thing with no explanation of how or why to use them.

Writing said documentation accomplishes a couple of things... It forces you to understand how your module works, because it forces you to do an ELI5 explanation, and it allows others (and your future self) to get a high level understanding of what's going on.

Bonus points if it goes into a wiki or something that has up to date and accurate documentation that everyone knows exists.


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

[User]
[Tolkien] Why does the Balrog in the movies have wings, but still falls with Gandalf?

Does the Balrog have wings in the books? Admittedly, I have only butchered my way through some of them.

[Assistant]
Whether or not Balrogs have wings is actually actively debated.

However when it comes to the depiction of which you speak, where it *does* have wings, it's likely that they simply weren't strong enough for actual flight, but rather gliding or swifter running.

It's also possible that there was not enough room for the wings, or the air might not have had room to flow correctly, or a number of other reasons.


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

[User]
[Star Wars]Why not just have a SSD bomb the same spot until the planet is destroyed instead of using a Death Star?

So according to cannon material, Star Destroyers and especially the supers have these massively powerful turbo-lasers where a single shot is as powerful or even more powerful than nuclear weapons.

...so what is even the point of the death star?

The obvious answer at first is that turbo-lasers can't actually literally destroy the planet. But is that actually true? If a single turbo laser blast's destructive power is measured in megatons, why not just use a very large ship like an SSD to blast the same specific spot on the planet over and over and over until you eventually make it to the actual core? At some point, the planet is bound to start cracking, right? This would destroy the planet, would it not? Why even use a Death Star at all?

Fear? Is a city sized supership that can destroy your planet really less scary than a death star?

[Assistant]
In Legends this was known as Base Delta Zero and something a single Star Destroyer was capable of, although three was most efficient as it could reduce the surface of a world to molten slag in a matter of hours

However, the Death Star was more than a weapon of destruction, it was a tool of fear, and a message to the Galaxy. Knowing it existed should have been enough to prevent dissention or rebellion, because having it turn up in your star system meant only one thing. Whereas a Star Destroyer could be there for any number of reasons.


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

[User] [ELI5] How did Jordan maintain relative stability during and after the Arab Spring, and how is Jordan still maintaining the relative stability with the state the Middle East is in right now?

[Assistant]
Despite being a monarchy, Jordan is actually one of the better countries in the region when it comes to democracy and human rights. The king is popular and doesn't rule as a dictator.

The religious demographics also help. Jordan is 92% Sunni Muslim and allows a decent amount of religious freedoms for the rest (mostly Christians). Iraq and Syria are partially in the mess they're in because their Shia governments were unpopular among their Sunni populations, which lead to support for ISIL.

Also, they have no oil to fight over. There's the conspiracy-theory view that that means nobody is interested in toppling their government.


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

[User] [Dilbert] Why hasn't he looked for another job at a less dysfunctional company?

[Assistant]
That's the thing. He's worked at a hundred different offices, but there's always the *same* absorbed manager, the *same* clueless receptionist, the *same* unhinged/scary coworker.

Dilbert moves around. The point of the comic is that mediocrity is inescapable.


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

[User]
How do our stomachs produce acid?

Where does the chlorine come from to create hydrochloric acid in the stomach?

[Assistant]
Chloride comes from salts in our diet - most notably, table salt (NaCl).

As for the actual production of acid, we have parietal cells in the stomach that pump hydrogen ions into our stomach lumen, while different proteins in the same cells pump chloride. In the lumen of the stomach they combine to form hydrochloric acid.


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

[User] Are neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and GABA stored in the body like some vitamins and minerals are? Is it then possible to deplete them from chronic stress and/or bad diet? Furthermore is it possible to replenish them and cure things like anxiety and panic disorders?

[Assistant]
Neurotransmitters are synthesized in the neuron and stored in the presynaptic terminal of nerve cells in small intracellular pockets called vesicles. When an action potential reaches the presynaptic terminal, voltage gated calcium channels open and the resulting influx of calcium ions into the neuron cause the vesicles to fuse into the neuronal membrane, releasing the contents of the vesicle into the synaptic cleft. Once in the cleft, the neurotransmitters can bind to specific receptors on the postsynaptic terminal, inducing a number of physiological effects in the next neuron. In this way, neurons are able to send biochemical signals throughout the brain creating thoughts and emotions as well as controlling the various functions of the body.

The the degree of the effects of various transmitters doesn't only rely on the concentration of the neurotransmitters but their ability to bind to  receptor proteins. Normally, once a neurotransmitter has been released into the synaptic cleft, it is either destroyed by various enzymes or taken back up by the presynaptic neuron. However, many drugs that modify the chemical balance of the brain don't just cause the body to produce more neurotransmitter, but also cause the neurons to remain in the synaptic cleft, either by reducing the activity of enzymes that destroy the neurotransmitter, or reducing the ability of the cell to re-uptake the neurotransmitter.

Interestingly, cocaine and methamphetamines acts on the brain by "forcing" dopamine into the synaptic cleft and inhibiting the cell's ability to reuptake the neurotransmitter. This creates the "high" that drug abusers feel. These high levels of dopamine cause the brain to adapt by reducing then number of dopamine receptors in the postsynaptic neuron, so that without the drug, the effects of dopamine are considerably reduced (this causes withdrawal symptoms).

Minerals on the other hand are stored in the body in many different ways. For example, iron is stored in the body as ferritin, an intracellular protein that stores iron for future use. Bones are used as calcium reservoirs, and various hormonal and physiological changes cause the bone to lose calcium to the blood or cause calcium in the blood to bind to the bone.

Vitamins can also be stored in various ways. For example, vitamin D is produce from inactive vitamin D precursors in the skin. When UV-B radiation excites certain pigment molecules in the skin, this causes a series of reaction that "activates" the precursor into active vitamin D. This process is highly modulated by various hormonal systems in the body (since vitamin D can act as a hormone). Vitamin D also comes for dietary sources.

Neurotransmitters are synthesized in the soma (cell body) or directly in the presynaptic terminal of the neuron by various enzymes. The Golgi apparatus, the organelle responsible for packaging and distributing chemicals that the cell synthesizes, packages the neurotransmitter into a vesicle where it is transported to the presynaptic terminal where it waits to be released.

Unlike neurotransmitters, there is no universal way for minerals and vitamins to be stored in the body. The various minerals your body needs have widely varying functions, and each mineral has multiple functions. For example, as mentioned before, calcium is used by neurons to transmit signals throughout the brain. However, calcium is also used as an important structural element in bone and cartilage, as a hormonal messenger, and is vital for muscle contraction, among other things.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why would Emperor Palpatine need any Royal Guards?

Because no one could possibly get near him to hurt him, or were they more of a "statement" thing?

[Assistant]
You have to remember that Palpatine maintained a very specific public image. He was a weak old man who had been scarred by the radical Jedi. He was not a mastermind or powerful to the general public.

The guards are an image, similar to the Swiss Guard. Theoretically, each of them could be very competent at their job, there is just a very small chance that they will need to do so.


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

[User]
Can someone explain how Q is calculated with different fusion systems and why some parts of the energy inputs can be ignored?

I am trying to understand more about fusion energy given the recent news. I dont really understand how they calculate the Q scores and why some of the energy input is ignored. For example with the laser system they used at LLNL I read they used 500MJ for the lasers to deliver 1.8MJ to the target. Why isnt that 500MJ part of the Q calculation?

[Assistant]
Because you want to know how much goes into the *fuel itself* (deuterium/tritium) vs how much comes out. You don't count light lost along the way that doesn't go into the fuel. So you don't count conversion efficiency at the laser, light lost through absorption and scattering along the way, light that misses the target, conversion to X-rays, X-rays that miss the target, etc.

It's like computing MPG on a car, we don't count crude that leaked from ships, crude lost refining the gas, gas that evaporated at the station, gas spilled on the ground at filling, and gas that leaked from the fuel lines.  We only count the gas that actually makes it to the engine vs the miles you get out.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How does Starkiller Base maintain its climate when absorbing a star?

A normal planet that went from pretty darn close to its sun to no sun at all in such a short time would have to deal with some fierce climate change.

Why doesn't this happen to Starkiller Base? How is it still an ice planet that's able to support life?

[Assistant] They seem to have a pretty good grasp on sun-harnessing doomsday weapons. Controlling the life support on their base would seem to be pretty trivial, especially considering they can obtain and store nearly limitless energy.


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

[User]
Why do train tracks rest on a bed of gravel/pebbles?

For someone completely uninformed, this seems inherently unstable, but it can't be since it's been the standard for so long. Does anyone know what makes this the best way to place tracks?

**EDIT**: Thanks for all of the thoughtful answers, everyone! This is taking the magic out of the science for me, and I love it.

[Assistant]
Trains cause immense vibrations when they roll on track. A rigid substance would crack and break under the stress.

The gravel acts as a way to dissipate that energy into each tiny stone which just nestles further into the other stones around it. This allows the gravel bed to bend and flex as the train travels, both preserving the foundation and the track.

Despite its looks, the gravel is well compacted and has very little chance of washing away without significant outside force.


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

[User]
[WH40k] What did the Emperor give up?

assuming what we've heard is true and what horus was told is an accurate retelling of the events: in the deal with chaos, the ruinous powers supposedly gave up some of their power or the secret to their power to put into the primarchs. but what was the emperor supposed to give up as his part of the bargain?

[Assistant] The blood of the divine. The Emperor IS a god, the same kind as Chaos, but he is in a mortal body. To imbue the would-be Primarchs with his own blood was to grant them a touch of divinity, something the Chaos Gods could never offer.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Could Darth Plagueis actually do any of that healing stuff, or did Palpatine make it all up?

Doesn't seem like a Sith Lord to take much interest in healing others. Seems like that would be a light side skill.

[Assistant]
Palpatine...*embellished*. Plagueis could certainly heal. Healing in general was a light side ability, but that was when taken from a philosophical perspective of 'righting the natural balance of the body'. Healing could also be done by a skilled dark side user, especially if handled from a purely scientific point of view by specifically manipulating the body itself to do what you want it to. If the differences sound ambiguous, that's because they are. It's a major problem with the Force, and one of the reasons it's easy to "fall" to the dark side. Basically it boils down to this. Light side healing is done by *helping* the body's healing process, whereas dark side healing is done by *controlling* the healing process.

Also, Plagueis was much more concerned with the technical aspect of healing and how it could be used to help him. He wasn't a local village healer or anything. He was working on discovering a way to achieve immortality in his own body rather than through something like essence transfer. The things about creating life (specifically creating, not resurrecting; that he *could* do, and used it to torture a rival) are where the embellishment came in; Plagueis was only able to do so once (with the help of Palpatine), and it was purely by accident. It wasn't something he could just pull out whenever.


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

[User]
[Halo Universe] Questions about lore

So, I've not played most of the Halo games, but I do follow the lore to some extent by either watching the cinematic play through/let's plays, or reading the synopsis'. However, I've found a bunch of stuff confusing...

1) The premise of the importance of John 117's existence in the first two Halo games is that he's the only Spartan left. Halo 4 and 5 make it abundantly clear this isn't the case, and there's in fact a bunch of other Spartans around doing other things, such as Blue Team. Is this just an inconsistency or was this ever retconed?

2) In Halo Reach, Cortana is claimed to be a Forerunner AI. In Halo 4, Cortana is claimed to be a human AI who's creation was evolutionarily guaranteed by the Librarian. In some other piece of Halo lore, Cortana is claimed to be simply a psychological graft of Dr.Halsey in AI form, (hence Cortana looking like just a young version of Halsey). What's the deal?

3) Where does the Arbiter get his different armour from in Halo 4/5?

4) Where did the Brutes go?

5) Where did that flying species from the Covenant go after Halo 2? I've never seen them again.

6) In Halo 3, the Elites leave the covenant and are replaced by the Brutes. Humies and Covies call truce. In Halo 4, when Master Chief is awoken from crysleep, he's attacked by an Elite, and when he asks "I thought we had a truce?", Cortana responds "things change"; what changed...? lol.

7) If the Covenant worship the Forerunners, why do they fight the Prometheans?

8) In the Covenant civil war in Halo 2, the hunters side with the Elites; in all subsequent Halo games, the hunters appear to side with Covenant. ??

9) Are Lock's team actual super soldier Spartans, or are they just good soldiers which earned the right to wear Spartan armour? If they aren't genetically and biologically engineered super soldiers, how could Lock ever spare with Master Chief, a Spartan II and not lose immediately?

[Assistant]
1. After the Fall of Reach information in the UNSC was hazy at best and it appeared that the only surviving Spartan-II was John-117 however as time went by it was quickly discovered that other's had survived and in fact one of them was onboard the Pillar of Autumn in a comatose state (Linda). Afterward the Halo event other Spartans were simply assigned to other missions than the Master Chief so it appeared he was alone to the majority of the UNSC.

2. Cortana is the first ever AI made from a human brain, she was not a forerunner AI in Reach she simply studied forerunner objects.

3. Made it himself probably? It's likely some based on older Sanghelli armor design.

4. Split off into warring tribes, 1 tribe even sought peace.

5. They were in Halo 3 actually, Post-War most returned home whilst others joined various Covenant factions.

6. Some Elites did not like allying with the humans which is what the Arbiter wanted. So they split off and continue war with the UNSC.

7. The godlike image of the forerunners was largely shattered with the revelation that they commited suicide against the Flood and not ascend to "godhood" . But the primary reason the Covenant fight the Prometheans is because the Promethean's turned on them, (hard to worship something when it's shooting at you)

8. The Hunter's that sided with the Elites may have split even more when the Elites themselves fractured into multiple factions, there's large possibility a good number of them joined M'dama and others.

9. Locke and his team are all Spartan IVs and thus have the required enhancements to wear the armor. Spartan IVs have roughly the same physicals as Spartan IIs if they are both in armor which allowed Locke to hold his ground.


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

[User] How did England transition from old English currency to new English currency? (Eg tuppence and sixpence to pounds and pence)

[Assistant]
1971.

Tuppence and sixpence are simply shortened versions of "Two pence" and "Six pence", which is why you will sometimes hear them spoken today.

Pre-decimalisation there was still pounds and pence, but the values were broken down differently. At the top was the pound, in a pound was 20 shillings, and in each shilling was 12 pence. That's 240 pence to the pound. Since a shilling was 12 pence, a half shilling was 6 pence, hence the common "sixpence".

In 1971 they decided that it would be simpler to use 100 pence to each pound.


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

[User]
CMV: You shouldn't have to pay tax when you sell something unless you have a real profit

By real profit, I mean "inflation adjusted profit."

For example, say you buy a necklace for $1,000. Inflation averages 2% a year, and 20 years later, you sell the necklace for $1,486.

You would be required to pay tax on the $486 of "profit" but in reality, when you adjust for inflation, $1,486 buys the same amount of goods and services that $1,000 did 20 years ago.

So really you would be paying a tax on a break-even sale, which turns it into a *loss.* I think this is unfair, and all capital gains tax should be automatically offset by inflation over the duration that you held the item.

Also this is not counting sales tax for this CMV, I'm solely talking about capital gains tax.

[Assistant] Consider if you hadn't bought the necklace and just hid the 1000 dollars under the floorboards. After 20 years of inflation that same money would be worth 667 of today's dollars, so you actually did make a profit by buying the necklace even after paying a capital gains tax.


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

[User]
[MCU] if thanos was made sane, would he still be a tyrant?

If someone with the knowhow used the mind stone on him to un-crazy his ass, in one of the times when he wasn't in possession of any other stones, would a now-sane Thanos with his black order and armies be peaceful or would he be a tyrant and carve out an empire of his own?

Or would the black order not fall in line with peace and there'd be civil war between thanos and the BO and armies?

Basically, what would happen if he was made sane?

[Assistant]
He'd probably still maintain his ideals, but realize that his plan is more-or-less worthless.

He'd still embark on his quest to acquire the stones, but his overall goal would be to enact a more permanent solution to the overpopulation problem.

Maybe he'd make it so any given species can't reproduce if their population is too large, or any population growth over a set limit gets automatically dusted.

The Black Order would still exist, and Thanos would still lead them, they'd just be striving for a more sustainable, probably even more fucked up, endgame.


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

[User] [Batman] Is millionaire Bruce Wayne main owner, main investor or main patron of Arkham Asylum?

[Assistant] He is an investor, but not the main one in most cases. Mainly, he puts money into it to try and get them to improve their security and possibly do a better job, but it's not his property alone, and the rest of the investors are fine with just an absolutely minimum job of keeping it secure.