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

[User]
Which fruits and vegetables most closely resemble their original wild form, before humans domesticated them?

I've recently learned that many fruits and vegetables looked nothing like what they do today, before we started growing them. But is there something we consume daily, that remained unchanged or almost unchanged?

[Assistant] A lot of the "berries" like blueberries, strawberries\*, raspberries\*, blackberries\*, and currants are quite similar to their wild cousins (\* not actually berries). Another group is nuts like walnuts\*, hazelnuts, and pecans\* (\*not actually nuts). They've often been bred for larger fruit and easier cultivation or harvesting but they're much closer to the wild form than corn or bananas or peaches.


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

[User] [Transformers] Why don't more Transformers choose to become aircraft?

[Assistant]
One possible explanation is that close-up reconnaisance of human society cannot easily be done from aircraft, while common cars and trucks can accomplish this almost unperturbed.

On a foreign planet, gathering information on the local species' society and potentially gaining allies can be much more valuable than taking a slightly advantageous form for combat, and the Autobots tend to take full advantage of this fact.

The Decepticons, on the other hand, tend to be more concerned with human military operations and surveying any sites which may be producing energon-rich materials, so they traditionally take forms giving them a better way of collecting information on these topics (e.g. military vehicles and aircraft).


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

[User] ELI5:Why can a manual car with a dead battery be started by pushing it but not an automatic?

[Assistant]
Most people have seen a movie where someone needs to start an old airplane so they walk up to the propeller and someone gives it a mighty spin.  This is enough to get the engine "going" and it starts.  It's basically the exact same thing that's happening when you start a lawn mower by pulling on the cord.

Most engines, once running have enough power to keep running.  But getting going requires more power than the engine has initially.  Basically an engine has it's lowest power when it's very low in the RPM range, such as when the engine is initially starting.  But an engine is like an avalanche or a cascade, once it's going it stays going but starting it going requires some kind of energy.

Lawn mowers use a pull cord to get the engine rotating and then once it starts firing it has enough power to keep going.  Old airplanes needed someone to come manually spin the prop, old cars used a crank in the front.

Modern car use an electrical motor called the starter.

Now, lets get to your question directly.  With a manual car, as long as it's in gear if you spin the tires it will cause the engine to spin.  This is the opposite of normal operations where spinning the engine causes the tires to spin.  But with a manual car it works in both directions.  So pushing the car (rotating the tires) will cause the engine to rotate and if you go fast enough it can be enough for the car to start and keep going on it's own power.

Automatic cars work very differently.  In a manual car there's a clutch that disconnects the engine and drive wheels so that you can shift gears.  But as long as you are not activating the clutch there's an actual mechanical link between the wheels and the engine.  This is why, in a manual car, when you come to a full stop you must engage the clutch or the engine will also stop.

An automatic car is much more complicated but lets simplify things and just say that there's no mechanical link between the wheels and the engine.  The torque converter is basically a fluid linkage. Think of it like 2 fans spinning in a thick liquid.  One fan spins, this causes the liquid to spin and this causes the second fan to start spinning. 2 fans encased in liquid. This allows automatic cars to shift gears without needing to activate a clutch, it's also what allows automatic cars to come to a complete stop without stalling the engine. But it also means that a bump start just won't ever work. Since there's no direct physical linkage spinning one fan very slowly won't get enough of the liquid moving to ever cause the other fan to spin.  So doing a push start just won't ever work on an automatic.


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

[User] ELI5: How come the same prescription for eyeglasses produces thick "coke bottle" lenses can be used for paper thin contacts?

[Assistant] The glasses are pretty far from your cornea (the lens on the front of the eye.  Contact lenses are, or course, in contact with the cornea.  A much thinner lens can bend the light the required number of degrees because the light hasn't spread out to an aviator's eyeglasses sized area before the lens has to capture it.


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

[User] [StarGate] Danial and Teal'c typically only spend a few hours a week exposed to natural light when on missions. maybe Teal'c's symbiot protects him, but shouldn't Danial have skin pigment issues after ten years of living like that?

[Assistant] Daniel doesn't live in on base. He goes home to an appartment and has days off. It should be no different from working in an office with some field work every week. He might get more sunlight than a lot of people working desk jobs.


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

[User] [King Kong] What is the relationship between Kong and the Natives of Skull Island?

[Assistant] They give him human sacrifices because he's one of the few beings on the island who can thus be placated. He accepts the sacrifices because, with his race almost extinct, it's the closest thing he has to a social relationship now.


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

[User]
10,000 word chapter in 10 days - doable?

As per title. PhD introduction for a Confirmation review. I am already familiar with the literature, and have the ideas down pat. I have been unwell and also a tiny bit of procrastinating (I am likely ADHD but still waiting diagnosis), but now its getting close to a deadline (13 Nov) and I think if I left a decent time to fine tune and get close academic friends to read it it will be ok (so finish by 3 Nov). What are your strategies for managing long words in short times? Has anyone had any tips for managing tight deadlines like this? (Please no shade - I know I have cooked it, but I am determined to push through and get it done; so productive answers would be great)

[Assistant]
If you know what you want to communicate, 1000 words per day are quite doable. (A paragraph is 100-150 words. Write a paragraph in an hour and you will get it done.)

If you don't have 10,000 words in your brain to let out, you are in more of a problem...


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

[User]
[Coronation Street] How does Coronation Street not have a bad reputation, given the number of deaths?

32 people have been murdered on Coronation Street,
38 have died from heart attacks, 18 have died due to accidents, 8 died due to bizarre accidents, and a further 85 died to illnesses and natural causes. This is on one street over the course of around 60 years.

How does Coronation Street not have a bad reputation as one of the deadliest places in the UK? Why do people keep moving there?

[Assistant]
Like you said, it's a broad range of deaths, from accidents to heart attacks to crime to illness.

There's no one big massacre that would capture public opinion, no recurring trends (the vast majority of the murderers were demonstrably working alone- it's not a mafia stronghold or anything) that would get the authorities suspicious. It's just a really unlucky street, a weird blip in the mortality stats you'll only see if you work in emergency services or look it up.

Superstitious people who research death stats wouldn't move there maybe. But there's plenty of people who don't or simply look, rationalize it. and go ahead. And then die.


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

[User]
[Dune] Are the sandworms composite beings by nature?

From what I know,  Leto II's transformation happened after he merged with many sandtrouts then underwent a slow change for thousands of years. I might have missed a thing or two here.

[Assistant]
No, Leto's transformation was very different from the normal lifecycle of a Sand Trout.  Well, more that it was a unique life cycle resulting from some odd circumstances.

Under normal conditions one of two things happen with Sand Trout.  Left alone, they can survive long enough to grow into a small sandworm that, over time (thousands of years), grows into a full size sandworm.  The second thing that can happen is they can find water, at which point they surround the water and attach to one another forming a living cistern that surrounds the water completely.  Those trout are eventually killed in a later ensuing spice blow when the trout, water and spice all interact.

Leto's circumstances were a unique combination of the two.  Basically the trout formed a cistern around his body's water as usual, but he was so pumped full of spice that instead of going through the spice blow process they merged with him turning him into a human/sandtrout hybrid.  Once that happened he underwent the normal lifecycle growing into a full sandworm (hybrid).


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

[User] [Star wars] Why didn't Vader overthrow the emperor earlier and take control of the empire?

[Assistant]
The Rule of Two states that there must be two Sith, a master and an apprentice. It is the Master's job to hold power, and the apprentice's job to crave it. Emperor Palpatine always knew that Vader would one day try to overthrow him, in fact, that is the very essence of the relationship between a Sith Master and his apprentice. Both parties knew what was up.

Vader didn't move before the events of episode VI because he didn't think he could take out the more powerful Darth Sidious (Emperor Palpatine). When his son showed up, Vader recognized his power and saw a way to take out Sidious with the help of Luke. Before that, Vader wasn't sure he would win, and the consequences of failure could have been drastic.


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

[User] Why do we pet animals (rub hand against their fur, feathers, scales, etc) ? Is it a learned behavior or something ingrained in us?

[Assistant] Many reasons. Animals don't speak; touching and body language are a form of communication as well. Mammals get oxytocin (happy feeling bonding hormone) with touching, so that is a mutual benefit between us and other mammals. In general, humans are very curious and touch/pet a lot of stuff - leaves, rocks, sand/soil, etc. bc it helps us explore and learn about our world, which helps survival.


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

[User] Eli5 What takes more energy, to maintain the house at a temperature while I'm gone for a few hours or to turn off the ac and turn it back on when I come back?

[Assistant]
It takes more energy to maintain the temperature.

From a thermodynamic perspective, your AC pumps heat from the inside of the building to the outside. How much the AC needs to run (and how much power it uses) is determined by how much heat 'leaks' from the outside to the inside. And that depends on the temperature difference between the two. The bigger the temperature difference, the more the AC needs to run.

If you turn off the AC for a while and allow the temperature inside the house to rise, that will reduce the heat transfer between the two sides.

In other words, the power required to cool the house back down is less than to maintain the temperature, because if you maintain the temperature, more heat gets into the house (that the AC has to remove).

This becomes very obvious when you look at longer time frames, like say a week.


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

[User]
[Dragon Ball Z] If there were thousands/millions of competitors on Cell games, would Cell fight them all in one x one?

Send enough people daily and humanity can survive indefinitely.

[Assistant]
No.

The guy's not stupid, and the rules are entirely at his prerogative. He's shown he's willing to ignore challenges he thinks are beneath him, and he's smart enough to quickly figure out what you're trying. Odds are he'd just Kamehameha  the crowd- anyone who survives is worthy of a one x one fight.

Besides, even if he *did* play along, he can kill a normal human instantly and move at superhuman speed- he can destroy a city in a day, and that's with people spaced out and trying to escape rather then walking into murder range. You send the thousands of people, he kills them all, and then it's back to the tournament with only slight delays.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do people who are lactose intolerant become gassy or sick instead of getting rid of lactose like the body does with fiber?

I know the body lacks a certain enzyme to digest lactose in these cases, but the body can't digest fiber either. I guess another way to word this question is "Why don't people get sick when they eat fiber but lactose intolerant people get sick when they consume lactose?"

[Assistant] with lactose, if *you* don't digest it, the bacteria in your colon will happily digest it. When they do that, they make gasses and ferment sugars. The gasses and sugars have a variety of effects ranging from the sensation of bloating, to causing water to enter the colon and give you diarrhea. Fiber does not have the same chemical composition, so you don't necessarily get the same by-products when it ferments inside you. Lactose also results in pretty significant production of those by products, which can overwhelm your system. Symptoms typically worsen with more consumption.


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

[User] ELI5: How does "popcorn" work? Could we "pop" other grains, like quinoa or rice?

[Assistant]
Grains are usually the actual alive part of the seed that is wet and alive inside a hard dry shell. If you cook it up without burning it one way or another the inside part cooks and expands while the shell around it is hard and dry and dead and stays the same size so the inside part swells up and pops out.

You have had "popped" rice. It's that puffed up rice they make like, rice crispys out of, or breakfast cereals out of or rice cakes.

Lots of other old people cereals are other puffed grains and a lot of other kid cereals are like, puffed grains that they mash into a paste then make into another shape. Same with things like corn puffs/cheese puffs. snacks like that.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are some sodas almost always caffeine free, e.g. lemon-lime, root beer, orange, and some almost exclusively sold caffeinated (coke, dr pepper, etc)?

[Assistant]
Mostly history, but also because caffeine is bitter and thus is more likely to be used to balance the very sweet flavors.

Sunkist Orange Soda and A&W Cream Soda are a couple of flavors that usually aren't caffeinated, but are caffeinated in those specific brands, much to the surprise of many people.  Also Mountain Dew is a citrus flavor that we might not expect to contain caffeine, but it has a strong reputation as having one of the highest caffeine amounts.


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

[User] Are there any plants that can hydrate themselves from humidity?

[Assistant] Trees on the west Coast of the United States "harvest" fog as it rolls over the hills and mountains. Without it they wouldn't be able to hold onto enough water to grow so large in their native environments. The soil doesn't hold onto water due to steep slopes, so large conifers such as Redwoods evolved to absorb water from the fog.


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

[User] [Mad Max] Is recovery of civilization possible?

[Assistant]
Almost certainly not. Even if the climate returns to something more habitable, the essential building blocks of modern civilization aren't there anymore. The coal, iron, copper, tin, etc., that were easily accessible without modern techniques are all but used up, and those won't return anytime soon. Eventually, the remnants of modern technology are going to break down, and the industrial base necessary to replace them is impossible to recreate without raw materials that don't exist anymore.

There is the possibility of new mineral deposits being uncovered on former seabeds. It's all but stated outright that the seas have dried up completely; the "salt" that takes a hundred and sixty days to cross is likely the dried-up Pacific. Given how uninhabitable the salt seems, it's unlikely those deposits will be exploitable anytime soon.


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

[User]
[MARVEL] Could Captain America be just as good or even better of an archer than Hawkeye?

With the precision we've seen Cap throw his shield who's to stay he doesnt have the same accuracy with a bow? Clint is one of the greatest marksman in Marvel and he's just a relatively normal man with extraordinary eye sight who worked at it his entire life. Im not saying Cap could do it right off the bat, but as an enhanced human would'nt he be able to progress significantly faster in skill and maybe even be more proficient?

[Assistant] Yes he could but why would he? You don't use a semi truck to commute even through it would work fine. Captain America has a huge number of strengths that synergize together to make him a great soldier and leader and while he could utilize some of those to be an amazing sniper the team already has one of those so rather than waste the rest of his talents he works as captain America.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] In the Empire Strikes Back, Luke brings his weapons with him to the cave that is strong with the Dark side, and "fails" the test. What would have happened if he had left his weapons behind?

Luke finishes his day's training with Yoda, and they're talking about the Dark side.  Luke put on his jacket, but he feels cold.  He goes to investigate, and Yoda points out that a particular place is strong with the Dark Side.  Luke goes to investigate grabbing his weapons on his way - as he does so, Yoda says "Your weapons, you will not need them", but Luke carries on.

In the cave, Luke comes face-to-face with Darth Vader (in a tunnel with surprisingly straight walls - is this an old Sith temple?), and when he strikes Vader down, the mask blows off to reveal Luke's own face - a harbinger of what is to come should Luke succumb to the Dark Side.  But what would have happened if Luke had left his light sabre behind?  Would he and this vision of Darth Vader just had a chat?  Would he have seen something else entirely?  What is Yoda hiding on Degobah?

[Assistant]
Luke went in itching for a fight, and the cave showed him what that attitude would get him.

It wasn't as much about physically taking his weapons into the cave as it was mentally doing so.

The cave, in Legends, had a long and storied history of conflict between Jedi and dark side users, leaving an imprint on it. It's not a hidden temple or anything like that, just a place with a lot of bad memories. The only thing Yoda was hiding on Dagobah was himself.


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

[User] Foods can be "too salty" or "too sweet," but can humans perceive "too umami"? If so, what does it taste like?

[Assistant]
MSG is used as the benchmark for umami taste, as sugar is for sweet, salt is for salty, and coffee beans are for bitter.

Not because monosodium glutamate has a lot of "umaminess", but because it chemically is glutamate, binding to the glutamate receptors on your tongue that sense the umami taste.

I've tasted pure MSG as part of a taste panel education, and even pure, it's not a very strong reaction. Imagine eating a gob of salt, that's pretty nasty, a chunk of sugar, well that's kind of pleasant, a raw coffee bean, that's just horribly bitter. Subjectively, umami is on the low end of that scale, tasting strongly of itself, but it's not an unpleasant experience to eat it.

Now, tangentially, when we come to cooking, the best dishes are a balance of flavours, and if one specific flavour is too strong, it won't be considered properly "tasty".


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

[User] What is the difference between an ethnic group and a nation?

[Assistant]
In modern social science, theres not really a consistent a distinction made between the two. Look at *Imagined Communities* by Benedict Anderson, for instance, or the even more abstract Beyond Identity by Brubaker and Cooper. Where you do see a difference is when it comes to *nationalism*which is a belief or political philosophy rather than a social category/identity/group (see Beyond Identity for pretty much the state of the field there on the later). Most definitions derive from Ernest Gellners, with slight tweaks, but its basically the idea that the cultural group (the nation) and the political unit (often the state, but not necessarily) should be more or less congruent, or at the least the cultural group should be dominant in a political unit.

Theres also some sense that ethnic groups have some common descentFrench text books famously used to start, Nos ancetres, les Gaulois, our ancestors, the Gauls. An immigrant from Algeria or Morocco who had a different set of ancestors, they seemingly can never be ethnically French, which leaves open the questioncan they ever be part of the French nation? Thats a question that much of Western Europe has been struggling with. In our modern, diverse, EU, what does it mean to be part of nation and *is* it still tied to ethnicity? Different groups will have different answers.

Here is where we see another difference: Hispanics in America are an imagined political community, in the words of  Anderson, but they dont engage in national*ism* in the terms Gellner and his students discussnamely, Hispanics as a group or an identity or a category are not really seeking to be dominant in any sort of governance area. Many minority ethnic groups in diverse states are like this.

This all gets much more difficult when we talk about nations that dont imagine they share common descent. See, the nation-states of Europe and much of Asia imagine that they all share some sort of common descent in the broadest sense, as discussed above. Peruvians and Canadians, on the other hand, being part of New World state-nations dont really think that. Belonging to the state sort of means belonging to the nation (again, this can open up a can of worms where there clearly was a sense in the US for a period that America ought to be dominated by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and not newly arrived Catholics and other hyphenated Americans).

It also becomes complicated in post-colonial states from South Africa to Myanmar where there are clearly many ethnic groups within one overall state. In these post-colonial states, the overarching state-based national identity (Nigerian; Kiwi; Malaysian; Singaporean) has varying degrees of salience compared to ethnic groups (Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa; Pakeha, Maori; Malay, Chinese, Indian, Bornean; the same minus Bornean). Both of these levels of identity could be called nations or national identity in social science but only the second set would be called ethnicities or ethnic groups.

So theyre two overlapping largely categories, but where they differ depends on exactly which distinctions you want to draw, and which theoretical schematics youre drawing from (the above only draws on three of the most standard and widely accepted).


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

[User] ELI5: How does a regulator work? (Scuba Diving) Going down 15ft without one feels like your head is going to explode, but with one you feel fine..?

[Assistant]
It isn't the regulator that helps. The feeling you describe of your head going to explode is the air in your sinuses and inner ear shrinking due to the increased pressure as you dive deeper and deeper. Unless you equalise that pressure your ears start to hurt as the pressure outside your eardrum is greater than the pressure inside them so it feel like they are being pressed hard and it hurts.

When you dive with a regulator you remember to equalise by holding your nose and blowing against the closed nostrils as a way to make the pressure inside and outside your head spaces the same. It is part of the training all scuba diving students have to go through. If you did the same thing on a breath hold dive you would also fix the problem.

Because a reg is providing you with a steady and comfortable stream of air to breath you are more relaxed and equalising becomes easier to the extent that some people do it without thinking. Conversely, on breath hold diving, people can be more tense and not want to waste the little air they have equalising. That would be a mistake.


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

[User]
How to study for 12 hrs a day for 2 months straight without losing motivation?

People who have done this before, Please help. I have this big exam in 2 months, already attempted this exam and failed 3 times. Next attempt will be my last attempt as I have to start a job and move out from my parents house.

My exams are similar to CPA but of a different country.

[Assistant]
You dont. You study intensely for 2-4 hours per day over a longer period of time to assimilate the information more thoroughly, and you work with a tutor or enroll in a prep course. You pay attention during the coursework and utilize the resources you have in school to do well in your classes, so that you dont need to study as much for these exams.

Whatever youve been doing to study has failed you 3 times. Its time to shift your strategy.


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

[User]
[Red Alert 2] What is actually happening when a Chrono Legionnaire erases an enemy?

I've heard that these guys can erase units from the time stream so they never existed, how is that even possible without causing huge world destroying paradoxes?

For instance if I target a war factory, the tanks that it built persist even though they were built in a factory that never existed. If they can rewrite history and just power through the paradoxes these guys are basically gods, which raises the question of how the Soviets ever stood a chance.

Or, is that just an oversimplification of how their chrono blaster actually works?

[Assistant]
The Chrono blaster only removes that object/person from this time stream *going forward*. The Chrono Legionnaires say "never existed" but that is indeed an oversimplification. What they're doing when they fire their weapon is creating a dimensional bubble around the targeted object, and then slipping that space into a timestream where it never existed. So in some other dimension, a War Factory randomly pops out of nothingness, and in this timestream, the exact location where that factory stood is replaced by empty space.

This can take a while depending on how large the object is, and if the process is interrupted before the switch happens, then the Legionnaire's attempt to merge the timestream fails and he has to start over. While some say that the Chrono Legionnaires are playing with forces they don't understand, thus far there haven't been any reports of time paradoxes causing lasting problems. And desperate times call for desperate measures. The Chrono tech works, that's all you need to know.


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

[User]
If telomeres shorten at each cell division, how come each successive generation doesn't have shorter telomeres?

I've heard that telomeres shorten with each cell division, and that this is one of the processes involved in ageing. But for example in humans, a child's cells all are the result of cell division starting from a single cell, which in turn comes from the two gametes of its parents. These gametes are themselves the result of a chain of cell divisions in the parents. So the further you advance in the "generations" axis, the longer these "chains of cell division". So, how come it's not the case that each generation has shorter telomeres than the one before it?

More generally: a child's cells ultimately come from its parents' cells, and ageing roughly consists of cell damage accumulated over time; so how come the state of ageing isn't transmitted from parent to child, but is instead "reset" every time reproduction happens?

I'm having a hard time writing my thoughts in words, but I hope you understand what I mean.

[Assistant] Telomerase. Its an enzyme that lengthens telomeres. Its produced in certain cells at certain times to maintain telomere length. Some cancers also have telomerase active, so can escape that mode of cellular death.


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

[User]
ELI5: Explain "ballistic re-entry" and why it causes 7G of force

If the recent space launch failure had to do a "ballistic re-entry" wouldn't the astronauts have been weightless as it fell?   Why were they subjected to 7G of force - and in which direction?

[Assistant]
Space nerd here.

During normal re-entries from Low Earth Orbit (LEO), most spacecraft enter the atmosphere mainly horizontally, so they slowly encounter the thicker portions of the atmosphere, which greatly reduces the g-forces, or deceleration (1g = 1x Earth gravity acting on you, so 7g = 7x Earth gravity).

With a ballistic re-entry, one of which occurred early today after the Soyuz MS-10 failure and subsequent abort, they re-enter the atmosphere more vertically, although still with some horizontal velocity. Since they hit the thicker parts of the atmosphere quicker and more head-on, the deceleration and g-forces are more extreme.

Imagine side-scraping a wall in a car, you'll get some big scratches and dents, but it would be a lot tamer than hitting it head-on.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Nightcrawler can teleport to anywhere he can see. So can he teleport to the Moon?

**EDIT**: A lot of people seem to think I wrote "Nightcrawler can *only* teleport to places he can see". Not sure why you think that.

[Assistant]
I haven't read X-Men comics since the 90's and it used to be that Nightcrawler could only teleport about 3 miles.  Additionally, it was more difficult for him to teleport straight up.
Could he teleport to the moon?  No.  It's too far.


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

[User] How would a blind person experience LSD?

[Assistant]
It would depend on the cause of the blindness. LSD is an agonist of 5HT2a receptors and works at the level of the visual cortex. So if someone had a non cortical blindness due to for example a cataract it should still be possible for them to experience the visual effects of LSD. If the cause of the blindess was cortical (e.g. stroke) they would likely not experience visual effects.

It should be noted that LSD acts on many other brain areas apart from the visual cortex and it has many other effects on cognition and perception apart from the more well publicised visual effects.


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

[User]
Why does my old CRT T.V. screen remain faintly visible in a dark room?

When I turn the lights out for the night and the room seem completely dark the screen of my CRT television still seems to glow faintly and remains visable for a few minutes until it fades into the darkness. This happens even when I haven't had the T.V. if the lights have been on for just a few minutes.

[Assistant] The phosphors that form the image decay exponentially after the electron source is removed. This means that the initial decay is quite rapid, but has a long tail where they are faintly visible for quite some time. When the lights are off, this is visible, otherwise the light masks the small amount of light given off by the CRT phosphors.


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

[User]
How does formaldehyde preserve tissue?

And does it work in all species? Would it work for a fish?

[Assistant]
Formaldehyde works mostly by cross-linking proteins. It causes a reaction that binds the loops and coils of an indiviual protein to each other, and also binds parts of each protein to other proteins nearby.

This has three main results. One, it kills any bacteria that could decompose the tissue. Two, it deactivates the cells' own enzymes which would otherwise cause dying cells to self-destruct. Three, the widely cross-linked protein structure acts as a kind of "skeleton" inside the tissue, making it more physically tough.

This does work in all species. The chemical reaction operates most effectively on the amino acid lysine, and that is present in all known organisms.


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

[User] What exactly is a vitamin? And how did we determine which ones are necessary?

[Assistant]
A vitamin is:

* A nutrient, that being a chemical substance that your body does not internally produce (or not enough of it) that you need to consume to stay alive and healthy.

* A micronutrient that your body only needs small quantities of. This excludes the macronutrients, nutrients you need in large quantities. These are the things can get energy from, such as sugars, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. As well as water and dietary fibre.

* An organic compound, rather than a chemical elements which we call minerals. This excludes iron, magnesium, sodium, potassium, etc. Organic compound meaning made of carbon chains, but again excluding the macronutrients like carbohydrates.

Anything that meets these requirements is a vitamin. Note it's not the same for all species, some can produce a chemical substance on their own without the need to consume it. Vitamin C for example is a required vitamin for humans, but not for all species. Some vitamins you can produce given the right conditions, but you can also consume if you are not producing enough. Vitamin D for example our bodies can make when exposed to sunlight, but given skin colour, climate, and life style you might not produce enough and needs to be consumed for ideal health.

As for how we determined which organic compounds were required in small quantities, it started with the diseases linked to deficiencies in a certain type of food or diseases cured by consuming a certain type of food. Vitamin deficiencies. Likely the most famous example, scurvy from vitamin C (ascorbic acid) deficiency. It was soon discovered that citrus fruits would help prevent scurvy, which was a common disease among sailors taking long voyages where they had minimal fruit and vegetable consumption.

Then as chemistry progressed in the 20th century, we began to investigate these foods and determine what the actual chemical composition was and what chemical, or vitamin, was in these foods that was necessary for humans to consume. First identified vitamin was vitamin A, which is a now a group of similar chemicals that provide the same benefit to humans. Next was vitamin B, then C. Eventually, we determined there was actually a vast amount of chemicals that humans needed to consume, so we started grouping them by function rather than continuing down the alphabet in the order discovered. The B vitamins for example are all vitamins that play a role in cell metabolism.  Which is the role the second vitamin identified, thiamine, or B1, has in humans.

Some vitamins were discovered and named, and then turned out to either not be a required chemical for human consumption, not a vitamin, or renamed as a number variant of an existing vitamin as it performs a similar role. For example, there is no vitamins F it J anymore. F for example was certain fatty acids, which again by the previous requirements is a fat which while an organic computer is not a vitamin.


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

[User] ELI5 Why did Super Nintendo or Nintendo 64 games have almost no loading times?

[Assistant]
An N64 cartridge has direct memory access, thus the processor sees the cartridge as memory that it can directly access, just like its predecessors (Super NES/Famicom and original NES/Famicom.)

Unlike say the Switch, like its predecessors (Nintendo DS/3DS) sees that cart like a computer sees a harddrive: it loads files in RAM as they're needed, and unloads them when they're not. That takes time, hence the loading screens.


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

[User]
Is is true that in the past 150 years earth magnetism has depleted 6%?

It was the grounds of a creationists argument for a young earth, that with that rate of depletion we would have almost no magnetism left.

Additional question

-what is the "speed" of magnetism, in other words if a magnet and a steel bar are 500 miles apart (assuming the M.F travels that far) how long would it take for the magnetic field to reach the steel?

-also, on a tangent, what is the speed of gravity?

Thanks.

[Assistant] Actually, it's nearer 10-15% and the rate of depletion is accelerating. What those tricksy creationists have neglected to tell you is that the Earth's magnetic field is variable. Geological records show that it has fluctuated in strength and changed direction any number of times since the rocks (in which the evidence resides) were created. It has been happening for aeons and will continue so to do. It is currently well within any historically measured limits of field strength, so no need to panic just yet.


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

[User]
ELI5:As a kid - when you jumped from a high spot and your feet stung the first time, but not subsequent times?

As a little kid competing to see how high we could launch ourselves from the swings, it was commonly known that your first landing would make your feet sting like hell, aka 'busting our capillaries', but after that it would feel like normal. What, if anything, was actually going on?

[Assistant] Your brain recognised the impact as non damaging, and so when the signal comes in the next time, the brain essentially sets your nerves to ignore it, so that you don't undergo unnecessary discomfort (it's a lot more complicated, but this is a simplification). This is largely caused by your own confidence in your safety, as it knows from experience that you have been safe previous times. But the setting to ignore it only lasts a couple of hours, as the brain takes it off to avoid mistaking actual injury for another non-injuring impact.


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

[User] [Vampire: the Masquerade] I have just been Embraced a few days ago, and people around me are talking about "Disciplines". How would I go about acquiring one? Do they wake up on their own? Or do I need to study them?

[Assistant]
Any discipline native to your clan you learn how to do on your own. It's like a muscle you didn't know you had, so with enough practice or time you will stumble across new ways to use it. There are exceptions to this, where certain disciplines are more magical than innate and will require a teacher, usually the person who sired you.

You can potentially learn disciplines that are not of your clan via a tutor who has it as long as they aren't a power specific to a certain bloodline. The exception to this is if you drain all the blood out of another vampire that has that ability, this will kill them in the process but you will get more powerful if they were older than you and you will learn an ability of theirs instantly.

The downside to this is unless it was authorized by the Prince, you will most likely be found out (there are low level powers that can reveal this easily) and you WILL most likely be sentenced to death if you killing them was not sanctioned by a blood hunt by the Prince. The other downside is by drinking another vampires blood you're drinking their soul and with the last drop of blood it has no where to go and WILL try to possess you. That's right if you are too weak willed you may lose your mind to the very person you killed as your personality changes into theirs as their will takes hold of your mind.


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

[User]
[Walking Dead] What happens to all of the zombified children?

The very first walker we see is a little girl.  I think Carols kid was next walker child... then nothing.

So we obviously know kids can turn, but what happens to them? why dont they show up in herds? I can understand a majority of adult-aged walkers, but not a single child?

Ive never read the comic, is there an explanation touched on in there?

[Assistant]
If an adult is attacked by the dead, they've got a decent chance of fighting them off and escaping. Of course, if they've got bitten, then they're going to die and turn and you've got another walker.

If a child is attacked by the dead, they're probably going to get overwhelmed and eaten simply because they're smaller and weaker.

Those who die of non-zombie related causes and then rise... well, parents are going to put their children first. When they're starving, they'll give the last of their food to the kids. And then the parents die and the children are left clinging to the corpse, begging their mom or dad to wake up, please, wake up... and then they do wake up, and the kids become the first meal of the rest of their unlife.


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

[User]
[AVATAR] why didnt jake sully get his legs fixed before going to pandora

lets assume it was a 6 months to a year before leaving for Pandora why wouldn't it be more efficient and cheaper to get Jake sully the surgery on earth before he leaves. why didnt he ask for it as part of his deal. RDA can obviously afford it.

a paraplegic would be a liability.  its talked about that on a mars mission. explorers would need their wisdom teeth and appendix out before  flight to avoid complications. wouldn't they want their crew to have full capability as much as possible. if they can give him his legs back why not do it before they leave.

they didn't make his chair on Pandora as hes seen leaving the shuttle on it so they did front the cost of moving it light years.  assuming its cheaper than now to place items into orbit it would still mean cruising it across the entire solar system and into the next. so would still be upwards of a million dollars a kilo. especially considering how long it takes to get there.

[Assistant] The RDA didn't care about him that much and he couldn't afford it himself. The local RDA mercenary leader used it as a bargaining chip after Jake was hired by the civilian science team that wasn't working for the RDA.


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

[User] Do other animals lie to each other, like humans do?

[Assistant]
All the time among social animals.

Vervet monkeys have a vocabulary of alarm calls specific to a predator.  It has been observed that members of a troop will give a "leopard" alarm call then steal food as the rest of the tropp scampers up a tree.  If caught, the troop will go so far as to kill the monkey for lying.

Social animals have theory of mind, employ deception, have senses of fairness and socially acceptable behavior, form political alliances, get jealous, and so forth.

The more we learn about social animals, the more we find we are social animals.


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

[User]
Religion has no place in the modern world - CMV

I, as you may have gathered, am atheist along with many, I'd assume, of the reddit community. I am a very accepting person and will not release the hounds if you tell me you're religious in some way. In saying that, I believe the modern world, science, physics and astronomy utterly decimates all arguments that those who are religious uphold for being religious. I like to use the Copernicus argument; many speculate he died after presenting proof that the Earth, contrary to what almost all at that time believed, was in fact round. Of course, in our modern world such a thing would be seldom replicated. But also in this modern world, essentially everyone on the face of the planet knows for a fact that the Earth is somewhat spherical. Change my view.

[Assistant]
I wouldn't say *no* place. It is still a very good coping mechanism if used well (it can be extremely harmfully if you approach it pessimistically). Also, for people that aren't very curious, it's a good way of satiating their hunger for answers without requiring them to think much. Religious beliefs can be very comforting to people.

That said, it definitely has less of a place in the modern world, and this is evident as atheism/agnosticism is at an all time high (excluding before we could come up with such ideas).


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

[User] ELI5 Why do cows have 4 stomachs and I dont?

[Assistant]
The food cows eat have to be broken down by bacteria before it is edible to cows. That takes time. So, four stomachs to do the time-consuming work. Specifically, cows need to break cellulose down to sugar.

The food we eat is broken down by our own enzymes and ready for adsorption within hours. So, one stomach. We dont even bother breaking cellulose down. We just call that fiber.


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

[User] ELI5: For those of us with horrible allergies: How does the body not run out of snot? Eventually, you'd have to dry out, right?

[Assistant] Snot, like most things made by your body, is mostly water. When sick or suffering from hay fever, your body starts consuming extra water to produce mucus and snot. It absolutely is possible to get dehydrated because of this. If you've ever heard someone tell somebody with a cold that they should make sure to drink plenty of fluids, this is partially why.


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

[User] [Half-Life] How was The Combine able to kill off every major government in just 7 Hours?

[Assistant]
The Combine want Earth for it's resources, the people are expendable.

They won with overwhelming force, technological superiority and a willingness to murder populations without mercy.

Their job was made easier, since humans like to congregate in large cities.  All it takes is a few well placed destructive bombs to kill such large groups of people.

Capitals of countries are the first targets, destroying government and military leaders before they have a chance to respond.  Large cities are next, and then they can begin on smaller ones.

People that live in rural areas are not much of a threat.  As the combine asserts control it starts to strip the resources neccessary for rural humans to survive (food and water).  Plus any foreign wild life the Combine may have introduced may prey on those who try to survive.

Once the majority of earth's population is decimated, the Combine round up the small % of survivors into small, authoritarian cities, managed by human collaborators.  Humans are used as workers and help the Combine strip the planet of resources.

Once a certain area of resources are depleted, that city and it's population is either re-allocated to a different area, or most likely, destroyed.

Eventually the Combine will completely strip all resources off Earth at which point they will have no need for humans at all anymore.


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

[User]
Why do we look for 'goldilocks' planets when searching for extraterrestrial life?

Isn't it possible that alien life can survive on hotter/colder planets? Why do we limit ourselves to planets that are earth-like: similar distance to their star, atmosphere, etc.

[Assistant]
It's not that we know life can only exist at temperature where liquid water is possible.

It's that at this point, we know very little about the range of conditions in which life is possible.  We do, however, know that life is possible where there is liquid water.

Therefore, the idea is that if you're going to look for life, you might want focus your efforts where you at least know that the conditions present allow for life, which is not that same as saying other conditions do not allow for life.


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

[User]
[sci-fi at large] how does one person's sanity effect a collective hive mind?

In most sci-fi series, the hive mind in question also modifies the person's body to eliminate emotions and such, but assuming that didn't happen, how would the mental state of one person in the larger hive mind effect the sanity or lack thereof?

To phrase it another way, let's say you had 2 separate hive minds. One is full to the brim with mentally unstable folks of every variety, the other is full of rational, mentally sound adults. If they start trading members one for one, at what point would the sanity of the new members outweigh the insanity of the original members, and vice versa?

The same idea could be applied to optimistic vs pessimistic hive minds, if you all find that version less fraught. When does the hive mind stop being half full, and start being half empty, so to speak?

(All of this is with the understanding that "sanity" is a relative measure and that mental health often stems from physical health, etc)

[Assistant] In a hive mind the individual doesn't exist and the entire body of the mind is made up of different bodies. In a gestalt hive mind individuals do exist but parts of their minds are overridden or consumed by the greater hive. So if there's something off about a mind joining the others it's either erased completely or the damaged/crazy/off parts are pushed out of the greater whole. Essentially it's all just information that can be added or removed as needed. Even a deeply psychotic mind would just be an errant thought in relation to a consciousness made of thousands or millions or more of minds.


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

[User] New to programming and have noticed that everyone more or less has their own solutions to the same problem in the same language. As long as you have the correct formatting, is it all a use your imagination and if it works it works mentality?

[Assistant]
The main issue is readability. There are many ways to do the same thing, but not all are 'right' ways. If the code uses too many roundabout commands to get something done that could be written a lot shorter, it can be difficult to read. The opposite is also true; sometimes it's better to spread your coding out with white space or the occasional redundancy to make it more readable.

As a basic example, instead of:

`print(input('Write your first and last name here').title())`

you might instead write:

`input_name = input('Write your first and last name here')`

`player_name = input_name.title()`

`print(player_name)`

if that makes it more readable.

Remember that typically, you aren't going to be writing code solo. Other people are going to be reading and adding on to the code you write, so readability is key; if they can't read what's going on, it's bad code, even if it does what you want it to do.


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

[User] [Jessica Jones] What happens if Kilgrave gives a command to a person who doesn't understand the language he is speaking?

[Assistant]
As we saw from the "put a bullet in your head" incident (circumvented by placing one in her mouth) the command is entirely dependent on the *exact* wording.

It certainly seems, therefore, that if the wording is not understood in the first place, then it would not have an effect.


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

[User]
Is the life-arc of a star determined 100% by its starting mass, or are there other factors involved?

I understand that there are varying types and sizes of stars (red giants, blue dwarfs, etc.) and that a star can take on multiple "forms" as it ages and the composition of its fuel changes.

I understand that the mass of a star defines many of its key attributes, but is a star's lifespan and other features **solely** based upon its starting mass?  Or are there other considerations that determine when and how it changes form?

[Assistant] Starting mass is the most important thing. After that, other things that are somewhat important are metallicity (contents of elements heavier than He), which can also influence evolution, as well as the presence or absence of a partner (many stars form in binary systems).


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

[User]
Are there any examples of food ingredients used today which were first recognized and regulated as drugs?

I had a colleague assert to me that it would be impossible to gain regulatory approval for a food ingredient, used at any concentration, which has a history of use as a drug.  This doesn't sound correct to me, but I could not think of any falsifying examples.  I have thought of examples in the other direction, like vitamin D supplements vs the prescription, concentrated vitamin D caps, or fish oil vs the concentrate sold as Omacor or Lovasa for lipid lowering.  But in both of those cases the low-concentration food ingredient came first.  Has it ever gone the other way?  Could it?

[Assistant] Coca Cola kind of. It was first marketed as an cure-all drink. It was sold at pharmacies and told to cure for example headache, hysteria and melancholia. It wasn't until the end of 19th century when Coca Cola dropped the marketing as medicine and switched to marketing as a refreshing drink.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does applying pressure to your forehead when you have a headache help ease the pain?

[Assistant]
You have pressure points there. Your brain focuses its attention to those new areas, allowing temporary relief from your headache.

Imagine being stabbed in your leg while you have a headache. You're now more focused on your leg than your headache, which in comparison doesn't feel so bad anymore. You're doing something similar to this except without the pain or repercussions.


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

[User]
ELI5: Non-American here, why are television broadcasting times shown in formats such as 8/7 Central?

Instead of "7 Central" (if CST is the time zone the commercial was shown) or "8 pm" (and opt out the central) or just simply customize any format like 8/5 Pacific or 8/6 Mountain.

Edit: Yes I know there are 4 time zones, Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. But why the odd Eastern/Central pair? Since I thought there are a significant amount of people on the Pacific Coast. Or are the public just too daft to convert time?

[Assistant]
It's because some stations adjust their broadcast for the earlier two timezones, where they almost never do for CST.

i.e. If Breaking Bad is on at 8p EST it will be on at 7p CST, but they will wait until 8p PST to broadcast in Cali. The only real consistent exception here is with sports obviously. You see the east/central instead of west/mountain format because you're in Europe most likely and get the east coast version of US tv.


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

[User] [General Fantasy] What is the difference between fallen angels and demons? Is there a difference? If so what?

[Assistant] A fallen angel has not completely given in to the pride that got them cast from Heaven, and walk the Earth seeking whatever redemption or if they've given up more, pleasure, they can find.  Demons on the other hand have completely given in to the pride and now seek to put as much hurt on God's favorite creation, Man, as possible and drag them down to their level - the loss of their salvation.


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

[User]
CMV: Racism towards white people exists

Racism by definition is prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

People throw around that racism is based off power+prejudice but that is incorrect according to the definition. They seem to think that because white people are 'dominant' in society that you can't be racist to them because of their position, but that is not true. People who say reverse racism does not exist are right, because it is normal racism. Racism is based purely off that: Race. Not power or position in society.

The power+prejudice argument was invented so that certain parties could espouse racist views without the negative stigma of the term.

[Assistant] The thing is there's a big difference between interacting with one racist and interacting with a racist society. One person that doesn't like you can call you names, but that's pretty much it. They can't beat you up, they can't fire you, they can't throw you in jail for no reason otherwise it comes back to bite them in the ass when you call the cops or get a lawyer. It becomes a serious problem when its not just an asshole beating you up, but then the bystanders "didn't see anything", the cops won't make an arrest based on your story etc.


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

[User]
Can you publish a paper excluding one of the authors?

I have completed an internship and the paper is due to be published. It was between myself, another intern and a supervisor.
However, the supervisor and the intern are still in touch and it appears that she took credit for the work I have done. The supervisor is also saying the research is her own.

I have not received any updates regarding the paper or the publications, yet they are still in touch.

Im afraid they will get rid off my name when submitting the paper for publication.

What can I do? Is there anything that would be good to prepare (save or obtain) in case they will actually remove my name? Are there any organisations that could support me?

I still have messages from them, where we were discussing the work and the draft of the paper saved. They deleted the website where we listed who did what (however I doubt this has ever been checked in advance since specific graphs I created, the supervisor later said it was the other girl who did them)

[Assistant] I would just send emails saying that you would like to be included in the writing and revision of the manuscript. Of you contributed to the paper your name shouldn't be removed, but if you aren't part of the process you can't expect your name to be very high on the list, even if it's their fault.


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

[User]
[MCU] Remote use of the Infinity Stones (Possible Endgame Spoilers)

We have seen that Tony Stark can remotely control his armour as if he were there using varying degrees of immersion. Now we have seen that Ultron was able to use the Mind Stone directly himself and The Vision has one embedded in his construction that he is able to use so this strongly suggests that the Stones can be activated by machinery, or at least machinery driven by an intelligence be it a sophisticated AI or a living being. With this in mind, could Stark have used the Stones safely and from a distance using his armour remotely, or alternatively could he have allowed one of his empty suits to be controlled directly by F.R.I.D.A.Y. as we have seen J.A.R.V.I.S. do previously to carry out his instructions?

[Assistant]
Trying to avoid the cost of using the stones... not gonna work. The user has to use the stones either in hand (bad idea unless you're sufficiently powerful) or by some tool/conduit (a hammer or a gauntlet of some kind). Vision and Ultron used a single Mind stone, so we aren't really sure if all stones can be used like that.

The stones will incur a cost to the user if they use all simultaneously. Can't circumvent it. Either the stones won't work or they will remotely fry you if you succeed. Single stones can be contained and manipulated. The collection will not yield so easily.


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

[User] [MCU] If I wanted to bring Thanos back, would I need all of the stones to do it? Just him, not his entire army.

[Assistant]
You would need:

* The reality stone to make the recreation
* The mind stone to know/understand enough about Thanos to make the creation as accurate as possible
* The time stone to make it permanent
* The soul stone to make it an actual living being rather than a puppet

You might need the power stone, depending on whether or not the above is within the capabilities of the individual stones.

You probably would not need the space stone.


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

[User]
How does the body get rid of pus?

In the case of pimples, how does the body deal with pus if they're unpopped or rupture downward into the skin (as they apparently do)?

[Assistant] Special cells called macrophages (responsible for cleaning up cellular debris) are used to absorb and break down any waste. Any remaining healthy white blood cells, which pus mainly consists of, have completed their job and are reabsorbed.


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

[User]
ELI5: what is the difference between the magnetic north pole and the 'geomagnetic' north pole? Remember...I'm 5 here.

I looked it up on Wikipedia; I've tried googling.

The explanations use big words and jargon I don't understand.

[Assistant] The earths magnetic field is shaped like a donut, and the magnetic poles are where an imaginary pencil stuck in the hole in the middle would point straight up.  The geomagnetic pole is where it would be if it were a perfectly shaped donut.  Its not a perfect donut though, its a little bent and lumpy, so the actual magnetic pole is where the pencil sticks straight up in the real, slightly bent donut.


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

[User]
CMV: Both drug addiction and mental illness are natural reactions to the mental contortions needed for dealing with the modern world

We live in a world of contradictions.

We know that other people provide our lives with meaning but our society worships individualism. As a consequence we are routinely encouraged to prioritise our momentary whims and discount other's long term suffering.

We're told that all humans are equal but it only takes a rudimentary glance at the world to see this is emphatically not the case and never has been.

Having to deal with these mental contortions without necessarily being able to articulate or 'deal' with them leads to escapism.

[Assistant]
Both have existed essentially forever. For example, Wikipedia says that "the earliest recorded uses [of cannabis as a drug] date from the 3rd millennium BC" and that "ancient civilizations described and treated a number of mental disorders. Mental illnesses were well known in ancient Mesopotamia, where diseases and mental disorders were believed to be caused by specific deities."

The only reason we have more drug use is because drugs are more easily available and the only reason we appear to have more mental illness is because we now diagnose them as such rather than as evil spirits or just strange behavior.


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

[User] ELI5: How are power grids synchronized when connecting them together?

[Assistant] The switching equipment will only connect when the circuits are in phase.  There is a small amount of phase adjustment at each power plant, and they adjust to match the current grid phase before reconnecting.


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

[User] ELI5: What is meant by "spider web an inch thick could stop a jet"? Would it be like hitting a wall or would it just slow it down to a gradual stop?

[Assistant] It would be gradual. Spider webs are pretty fascinating, they actually have coils of web spread out along the length of each thread (too small to see with the naked eye) and when a bug flies into them the coils unravel and the web becomes longer. When the impact force has been dissipated the "knots" recoil and the web looks just like it did before.


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

[User]
What does Camus mean when he says in The Myth Of Sisyphus: "Thus it is that no depth, no emotion, no passion and no sacrifice could render equal in the eyes of the absurd man (even if he wished it so) a conscious life of forty years and a lucidity spread over sixty years"?

My understanding of this general part of the essay is that Camus is reconciling the value of the "most living" with the absurd's negation of value judgements by stating that living is having lucidity of ones own revolt against the absurd so it isn't much of a contradictory value judgement in a meaningless universe.

But the above quote comes straight after this and I'm confused as to what it adds to the prior points. Is there a difference between consciousness and lucidity? If not, is it merely stating that a life with more lucidity is better? That would seem simple but I'm unsure.

[Assistant]
Camus is pointing out the importance of being conscious of the absurd. It is this, not the quantity of experiences that is important.

> Here we have to be over-simple. To two men living the same
number of years, the world always provides the same sum of
experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

Note especially that awareness is important, it is a way to maximize living for the absurd man.

> Being aware of
ones life, ones revolt, ones freedom, and to the maximum, is
living, and to the maximum.

So it is not trying to cultivate many diverse experiences, or feel a variety of feels that is of fundamental importance (although these might be important, especially feeling!); It is the awareness of the absurd which allows life to be lived to the maximum.   Feeling though is still very important, and also being 'present in the moment'. But these are important only as a result of reasoning about the absurd, they follow from thinking about the absurd, they are not the 'starting point' if that makes sense. The absurd man lives life as a succession of presents, and values feeling.

> [T]he
Greeks claimed that those who died young were beloved of the
gods. And that is true only if you are willing to believe that
entering the ridiculous world of the gods is forever losing the
purest of joys, which is feeling, and feeling on this earth. The
present and the succession of presents before a constantly
conscious soul is the ideal of the absurd man. But the word ideal
rings false in this connection. It is not even his vocation, but
merely the third consequence of his reasoning.


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

[User] Can space-time warp in such a way as to allow me to start a journey and then return as my mirror image?

[Assistant]
Nice question. You're asking whether spacetime can be non-orientable.

In general relativity itself, it can. No obstruction to it.

However the standard model is not parity-symmetric; in particular the weak force identifies a preferential choice of orientation on spacetime. In a non-orientable spacetime this choice cannot be made consistently and continuously: following the same path that turned you into your mirror image and taking track of how the preferential orientation identified by the weak force is along the path we would reach a contradiction as we'd find the orientation at our starting point is equal to its opposite.

However this can be salvaged if we assume the standard model is just an effective field theory (= an approximate description) of a more fundamental theory manifesting itself at very high energy which is actually non-chiral (left-right symmetric) - examples would be M-theory or type IIA superstring theory. The asymmetry would actually be created by a spontaneous symmetry breaking out of which the standard model arises.

In this case, what would happen is that the preferential orientation of the weak force would be allowed to reverse abruptly at a very energetic boundary in space called a domain wall, a 2-dimensional surface in space. Such an object would be composed by a thin layer of extremely energetic field configuration interpolating between the two different orientations of the standard model.

Following the path you did before the reversal of orientation due to the non-orientability of space would be cancelled by the fact you need to cross the domain wall, and you'd end up with the original orientation for the weak force when getting back home. You itself wouldn't really be able to become your mirror image because, being your body essentially a structure built in the context of a given "version" of the standard model, it has no hope of surviving crossing the domain wall towards another version.


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

[User]
How long would a lever have to be so that a human can push a object of the size of earth

I heard that in physcs it was theoratically possible if the lever was long enough but how long would it have to be?

[Assistant]
weight of earth * distance1 = force that a human can exert * distance2

distance1/distance2 = force that a human can exert / weight of the earth

If we assume that a human can exert a force of 400N, the ratio is about 6.827*10^-24 or 0.000000000000000000000006827.

If the earth-mass object is at 1cm from the axis, the human would have to push from a distance of about 1.4647*10^21 metres away, which is about 9.79 billion astronomical units (avg. distance between Earth and Sun) or about 154800 lightyears.

and then you'll also need some sort of a magical material that can actually withstand this

I guess 400N is a bit of a low estimate because the human could just sit on the lever, but increasing it a bit won't change anything about the feasibility of this.


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

[User] Are fish in tanks/aquariums aware of the fact that they live in an enclosed space?

[Assistant] Probably depends on the fish.  Some groups of fish (e.g. mormyrids, gymnotids, notopterids, gymnachids) have either passive or active electrosensory abilities which allow them to image conductivity of their surroundings in three dimensions; these fishes would be directly aware of how small their habitat actually was.


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

[User]
What did atheists believe before the theory of evolution?

Nowadays it is accepted among scientists that the most plausible explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on this planet is evolution. The idea of evolution existed before Darwin such as Lamarck's theory of evolution, but it was only after Darwin that our modern understanding took hold. What did prior atheists of which there were many think about this big problem concerning the breathtaking complexity of life? Even Richard Dawkins said, "I could not imagine being an atheist at any time before 1859 when Darwins *Origin of Species* was published".

**Note: I am aware that evolution not being true doesn't automatically mean that there is a god, but I am just curious as to what did the atheists think before evolution was presented.**

[Assistant]
The obvious route would seem to be that we didn't have sufficient knowledge to explain the complexity of life. For example, while not an atheist per se, Spinoza, in the 17th century, rejected divine teleology, so regarding the complexity of biology, he simply said that it surpasses contemporary human understanding:

>Nobody as yet knows the structure of the body so accurately as to explain all its functions, not to mention that in the animal world we find much that far surpasses human sagacity... they do not know what the body can do, or what can be deduced solely from a consideration of its nature, and experience abundantly shows that from the laws of its nature many things occur which they would never have believed possible except from the direction of mind.


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

[User]
Would a thermonuclear bomb be more powerful if it used an heavier element?

So i recently read about the H-Bomb out of curiosity, and from what i understand the way it works is by fusing the hydrogen nucleus, having a small percentage of its mass turn into a ridiculous amount of energy which becomes the explosion. Supposedly the reason why hydrogen is used is due to it being easier to fuse, but hypothetically, if we were able to easily fuse heavier elements, would the resulting explosion be more powerful?

[Assistant]
The Coulomb barriers (how hard it is to make them fuse) get much higher, but the Q-values (how much energy is released per reaction) dont really get larger, and in fact can even get smaller.

The larger Coulomb barrier is a big problem. Even if each reaction released more energy, if theyre happening at a much smaller rate due to the higher Coulomb barrier, then its a net loss.

Thats why almost all man-made applications of fusion are using hydrogen fuel (deuterium and tritium).

And specifically for weapons, one of the main draws to the DT fusion reaction is not the energy that it produces directly, but the 14 MeV neutron it produces, which can then induce fission. The relevant fission reactions release ~10 times more energy per reaction than the relevant fusion. So while the fusion releases some energy itself, it can *cause more fission*, and thats where you get real gains.


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

[User]
CMV: Everyone in America is privileged, Super Privileged.

I come from a minority even though I dont see myself that way because I grew up around so many people like me, that dont mean I didnt grow up around many blacks, Asians, whites and Latinos though. I dont think it matters to say my race because thats not what this is really about.

Also Im not here to rant, Im here to at least either rationalize my position, or learn to understand someone elses.

1: Everyone in this country is privileged. If you are sitting here bitching about how they think a president is racist when people in Syria are being bombed out of their homes, and gangs in my native country are brutally killing innocent people, and Muslims are being held in China and being fucking stripped of their beliefs. Now that shit is fucked up. Im sick and tired of being out here hearing this bullshit from all you privileged people.

2: These people dont know what real racism is like. Yes there have been racist cops but imagine living in a country where the cops are corrupt as fuck and will watch you be beat and murdered by someone because they paid off the police. Even in Mexico racism exists, in many places you are treated better the whiter you are. Maybe its not as bad in the big cities, but in the countryside its ridiculous, light skinned Mexicans dont have to lift a finger sometimes, because their town or family will bend over backwards for them. People in Africa have been getting targeted, and killed solely for being white.

3: Police brutality is a whole different subject Id be willing to go into, but Ill just say many shootings of black people have been justified, the murders of Eric Garner and George Floyd absolutely werent justified, I can say that for certain off the top of my head, Im sure there is more but I dont have a list, but many, MANY of the shootings of black people were not justified. Everyone commits crime, black, white, red or yellow.

4: The fact that so many people have been complaining about this shows your immense privilege, because you just simply dont know what its like in other places. I implore you, if you are a person who believes America is this horrible place, do some research on other countries, recognize their struggle, these people need YOUR help. My people need YOUR help, because you come from the very country they would kill to live in.

EDIT: Thanks for the replies everyone, sorry if were in the middle of a conversation but I wont be able to reply for a while, If I remember, Ill try to reply as many of you as possible later, thanks again!

[Assistant]
What about the homeless addicts in the US?

What about the sex trafficking victims?

What about those dying because they lack access to healthcare?

Just because some things are worse elsewhere doesn't mean everyone is super privileged.


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

[User]
Why are planetary orbits stable?

Why do planets stay in orbit?  From a systems perspective, where is the negative feedback to keep them "dialed in" when, say, a meteor hits, say, the earth, and adds force.  Or when a meteor hits and increases the mass of the earth.  Or when atmosphere is blown off and mass decreases.  Or if everybody in China jumps at the same time.  Or a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere.  In an unstable system - one without negative feedback - anything would be enough to knock a planet out of orbit, right?

I think I understand how planets formed in the first place, (matter collected and coalesced in an orbit around the sun) and how the moon formed (an asteroid collision that knocked some matter off), but I can't for the life of me, "see" how these orbits are maintained.

Would it be possible e.g. inside a vacuum chamber to get a magnet spinning around another (mounted) magnet to maintain a stable orbit?

[Assistant]
> Or if everybody in China jumps at the same time. Or a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere. In an unstable system - one without negative feedback - anything would be enough to knock a planet out of orbit, right?

Sure, if you add or subtract energy or momentum to the system you will change it to a different orbit. When the Mars rover was sent from Earth to Mars in a rocket, that shifted the planet into a different orbit.

However, the mass of the Earth is about 6 x 10^24 kg, and it is orbiting the sun at a speed of about 30,000 m/s. This means that the kinetic energy of the Earth's orbit is around 2.7 x 10^33 Joules.

To give this a frame of reference, if every singe human being on the planet (~ 6 billion) detonated a thermonuclear weapon, the energy released would be about 2.4 x 10^26 Joules. This is just 0.000009 % of the orbital energy of the Earth.

So a few thousand thermonuclear weapons aimed at the planet or a few asteroids the size of an automobile will not make a noticeable difference.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does the warm, humid air of a shower "open up" my sinuses, yet the cold, dry winter air also "opens up" my sinuses.

[Assistant] They both work in different ways. The humidity of the shower wets the mucus that coats your sinuses, allowing it to flow better and making it less viscous. The cold dry air stimulates the flow of mucus, a normal physiologic response to prevent nasal dryness. The cold air can also constrict blood vessels in your nasal cavity, which has the effect of expanding the interior nasal airway and bringing down tissue swelling.


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

[User] ELI5: What just happened(since Jan. ) with the stock market/ economy with a huge losses and now it's raising back? Is it all related to oil prices and why its it coming back up?

[Assistant]
Honestly, they give oil prices as an excuse, but the real reason is that stock prices were overpriced and ahead of the rest of the economy and needed a reality check. This came in the form of a 15% drop.

This happens once in a while because the stock market is not the rational, metered, analytical system they pretend it is but is actually a gambling ring based on emotion and heard mentality. Yes, the overall trend seems to go with the overall economy, but day to day and month to month trends are pure emotion.


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

[User]
[The Purge] What would be the best day of the week for the purge to start?

I mean you would need some days post purge for there to be some repairs and gathering of any dead bodies as well as having people go back to work on the weekdays.

[Assistant] Thursday. Gives everyone a 4 day weekend to recover over. Businesses can file insurance claims on Friday to be processed and get an inspector out by Monday or Tuesday. Allows for the stock market to run given the possibility of rapid changes from the day before but not enough time for a total crash to take effect. For office jockeys it's 4 days to recover and rebuild. For wage slaves it's another day. For the wealthy it's enough time to clean up the torture victims before sunday brunch.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does the Speaker Option in phones not cause echo to the other person? Do phones explicitly handle this?

If I turn on speaker option, how does the voice of my called coming out of my speaker not become input to my mic thus causing echo to my caller?

[Assistant]
There *could be* a very good algorithm applied, to recognize time delays and "subtract" the audio coming from the speakerphone so perfectly that the microphone only picks up what's in the room.

But it's not done this way.  The sound delay between the speaker and microphone is easy to compute, but the echos off the walls (of varying distances) is so much more complicated that the phone doesn't have the computing power to do it.

So, the solution that is used today is a simple one: as the volume coming out of the speaker gets louder, the microphone volume gets turned down.  After a short delay (about 0.1 seconds, to let echos settle down), the microphone is unmuted.  This is why speakerphones never work quite as nicely as handsets - if someone on the other end is talking, the microphone is essentially muted and they won't be able to hear you until they're done talking.

The quality of the device depends on how adaptive the speaker-to-microphone muting algorithm is.  Too much muting hurts the flow of conversation, not enough muting can cause bad feedback.  Some devices are programmed to detect faint hints of feedback and auto-calibrate before the feedback becomes audible.

(I am an electronics/firmware/software senior research engineer for medical sensors)


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

[User]
ELI5: Do you go unconscious and die instantly the second your heart stops? If so, what causes that to happen instead of taking a little while for your brain to actually "turn off" from the lack of oxygen?

Like if you get shot in the head, your death is obviously instantaneous (in most cases) because your brain is literally gone. Does that mean that after getting shot directly in your heart, you would still be conscious for a little while until your brain stops due to the inability to get fresh blood/oxygen to it?

[Assistant]
No you don't.

We often reset the heart in ED using medication or electric shocks if people have SVT - basically a super fast heart beat.

When taking the injection the heart stops for a couple of seconds - sometimes more - and when it restarts it often goes back to normal.

People do not go unconscious during the effects of the injection but they will always feel absolutely awful until the heart starts again.

So no. We do not go unconscious as soon as our heart stops.

We will go unconscious as soon as there isn't enough oxygen in the brain.


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

[User] ELI5: How were artists capable of depicting kings or persons who were deceased by the time they're about to do so? Did they used existing manuscripts about the person, or was there any complex research and studies made before depicting the subject?

[Assistant]
They used existing descriptions, interviewed people that knew them, and studied existing artwork.

A lot of medieval artwork was also done to make the subjects look better than they actually did.

But in some cases they just guessed. With Jesus for example there were no descriptions or artwork available so the image traditional associated with Christ (Long hair, beard, white skin) is completely fictitious. They made him look like a contemporary European Noble.


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

[User]
[Harry potter] Why broomsticks?

Out of all the choices o fly. What's the advantage? Disadvantage?

[Assistant]
They really only seem to use them for short distances, the way we'd use a bike.  Floo Powder or Apparating are used for anything longer than a few hours distance by broom.  Those both do have dangers though, as we see.  Floo Powder has the possibility of shooting you off in random directions if you're unclear.  It also may require a fireplace.  Apparating has greater risks if you're untrained.

For longer distances with large numbers of young people, they do tend to use more conventional things, like the train to Hogwarts.


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

[User] ELI5: What makes neon colors have that unique glow?

[Assistant] "Neon" colors use fluorescence dyes that glow under UV light.  So if the object is "neon orange", it both reflects the orange portion of the sunlight hitting it, **and** converts UV light hitting it into additional orange light.  That makes it seem brighter than it should given the current lighting conditions.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is a "vector" image?

I often get confused when people at my work place ask for "vector". Starting design myself, it gets confusing because people do not know the meaning of what vector really is or at least I get confused from .ai, .psd files and so on.

So how can I explain what vector really is? And is it only limited to adobe programs?

[Assistant]
There are two general kinds of computer graphics: *raster* graphics and *vector* graphics.

Imagine a big piece of graph paper.

A raster image says how each *square* on the paper should be colored  as in, "square 3,2 is blue ... 3,3 is purple ... 3,4 is purple too ... 3,5 is black ..." and so on. Everything in a raster image is in terms of pixels, which are the squares on the graph paper; each pixel is given a color.

A vector image is, instead, instructions for how to draw lines and shapes among the *intersections* on the paper  as in, "draw a triangle from 1,2 to 4,5 to 0,3 and fill it with purple." A vector image does not talk about individual pixels at all; only about shapes (lines, triangles, circles, and so on) and which coordinates they are placed.

One big difference is that vector images scale smoothly whereas raster images do not. If you want to make a vector image 2x bigger, you just multiply all the coordinates by two. If you want to make a raster image 2x bigger, you have to average all the colors of the pixels to make the in-between pixels. This makes it fuzzier, whereas a vector image stays sharp.


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

[User]
CMV: The Real conspiracy is: the governments are fueling flat earth, anti-vaxx & anti-intellectual conspiracies to distract from the current real conspiracies theyre trying to hide, because of Wikileaks and Snowden exposing the true conspiracies.

A lot of this is from outside governments, such as major Eastern countries spamming Western countries with propaganda, and vice versa.

But also from within countries sometimes, such as the US atm with the federal governments anti-intellectual approach.

Its a conspiracy fueled by hiding the real conspiracies that are going on, the idiots are to busy shouting about flat earth and Bill Gates world domination vaccine plans, to discredit real conspiracy theorists (like those in the past that were correct) and convince the average person conspiracy theories are bogus and insane, as a counter measure to wiki leaks and Snowden proving the reality of them.

ETA: this is growth based too. Once 1,000 people believe these things theyll convince friends, wholl then convince friends, etc. stupid breeds stupid and thats the plan. Make the other countries people more stupid than yours or your countries people stupid enough to vote for your party.

[Assistant]
Here's the thing about theories like this:

**How would we go on about proving that you're wrong?**

The problem with conspiracy theories is that there is no failstate - the more you disprove it, the deeper the conspiracy becomes. Is there anything you would accept as proof that what you are saying is false?


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

[User]
What makes a tumor inoperable?

I see people dying of inoperable tumors and it makes me wonder, why are they inoperable?

[Assistant]
Location, location, location. In *very* general, it's because the tumor cannot be cut out entirely. Remember that even a single cancer cell can bring about a whole new tumor, so surgeons must be very sure they can get it all or else they cannot cure surgically. Another reason is that if the tumor has already spread to other parts of the body, removing the primary tumor will not cure the disease. Additionally, there are also occasions where the tumor is in a place that anatomically prohibits removal - this is seen with brain tumors, where an attempt at removal could cause severe brain damage. It can also have to do with being wrapped around important blood supply and surgical removal could result in severe bleeding.

In short, no tumor is "inoperable" - it's just that a surgeon deems it inoperable when they look at what it is, where it is, and how far along it is and say "I cannot cure this disease by removing the tumor."


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

[User]
ELI5: Why did ships in the age of sail not employ more bow/stern "chaser" guns?

Considering that much time might be spent chasing (or fleeing) enemy ships, rather than being side by side and exchanging broadsides, why didn't ship designers put more effort into placing guns that could fire forwards or backwards rather than just sideways?

[Assistant]
Deck space.  Guns required a carriage as well as a port-- when they fired, they would kick back HARD.  They also required a crew of several human beings, who also needed space to move around.

It wasn't that big of a deal to turn broadside, that's where the armor was, and there was a lot more real estate to mount guns along the flanks.

Edit: also, in the bow there is really nowhere to carve out a gunport, so you're stuck with only the space available on top (unless the ship has a significant forecastle, which messes with speed).  The stern, being generally square, had more options, but it was also the weakest-armored portion of the ship, and when a ball did penetrate, it was likely to rake the length of the ship, causing maximum casualties.  Not a place you generally want people shooting at.


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

[User]
[Ed, Edd n Eddy]Why would Edds OCD parents name him Eddward?

People as nitpicky as them wouldnt spell Edward wrong.

[Assistant] "Eddward" is an archaic spelling, probably preserved in the family. Double-D's parents would be obsessive in making sure he had the *correct* spelling for his name, not the mutilated version which most people had assumed over the traditional spelling.


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

[User] Does every liquid have a solid state?

[Assistant]
I think every state of matter can probably be solidified, but it sometimes requires very high pressure. Even at absolute zero, helium-4 remains a liquid at "normal" pressures, and requires a lot of pressure to solidify. Phase diagrams of elements like this differ quite a bit from the "usual" one you see for solids/liquids/gases, and can have multiple triple points, and the emergence of new "non-classical" (aka quantum) phases at low-temperatures.

It may be worth mentioning that using the words "solid/liquid/gas" for quantum phases is a bit misleading, because some of their properties can differ a lot from their classical counterparts. We use the same language in analogy to the classical case, but there are important differences, especially because particle statistics plays a huge role (a gas of bosons and a gas of fermions behave nothing like each other).


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

[User]
[X-Men] If Wolverine works out does he instantly bulk up/get stronger?

So I've been wondering what would happen to wolverine if he was working out in a gym type environment . As you exercise a muscle (like in  a barbell chest press) you cause micro tears in the muscle fibres which then heal causing the muscle to get bigger and stronger. This is why most people feel sore for a few days after training hard. But with wolverine he heals instantly, so I was thinking would this mean if he just kept doing an exercise over and over for a day or so  he would just continue getting bigger and stronger the whole time. He could make the kind of progress in a few hours it takes athletes decades to achieve? Is this ever commented on in the comics?

[Assistant]
Doesn't work that way. Wolverine heals *perfectly*.  When he's injured, his muscles restore themselves to an exact duplicate of their pre-injury state.  No scars, no changes, no gains.  He's significantly stronger than the average human, because he can push his muscles past the normal human limit and heal from the damage, but that's as far as it goes.

Deadpool, the Hulk, and other regenerators have the same issue.  Exercise doesn't help them. Interestingly, She-Hulk was able to give herself a massive strength boost by working out in her *human* form - her gamma transformation multiplied her normal strength by some particular amount - but, IIRC, she decided it wasn't worth the effort.


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

[User]
What is the political structure of the Pokeverse?

It almost seems like some sort of anarchy. AFAIK there's never been any sign of government beyond the local. How do disagreements get resolved? And what exactly prevents Pokemon warfare, or warfare in general? Do they just know better? Or do they remember what happened the last time this was tried? Who enforces the peace?

[Assistant]
I always assumed it was some sort of highly enviornmentalist corpocracy, seems like an oxymoron from our perspective but when legendary pokemon cappible of controling time and space, breathing fire and causing magnitude 9 earthquakes, can get angry over habitat destruction it seems prudent. The corpocracy come from that despite the presence of a police force, it seems to simply a token one copletley inadiquate to handle a clear organized crime epidemeic, but when most people carry living weapons with them everyware it may seem trivial to have a full fledged police force as we know it.
yes i know this is rife with spelling errors.


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

[User] ELI5: The AT&T Spying Scandal and how it affects the public.

[Assistant]
The law enforcement is permitted to demand certain business data from any phone company, for free, by getting a court warrant.

AT&T decided to offer that data, for a modest fee, to law enforcement without the need for a warrant.  They justify their fee with the "quicker and easier" notion.  Some law enforcement agencies subscribed, others just used the existing warrant system.

No laws were broken, AT&T sells the same data about you to other data brokers, they simply made a data product available to government customers.

The public is unchanged, this happened in the past.  How the public will react, and how the politicians will react to the public reaction, is unforeseeable.


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

[User]
Best Book on Hegel for the Layman

I am getting very into the history of ideas. I just finished Age of Anger by Mishra, and I am excited to start diving into some other books. I am reading about Rousseau atm, and I am going to meander my way into the German thinkers soon. I have read overviews of Hegel's philosophy, the way he shaped Marx, and the influence of his work. I am not a big fan based on what I read, but I would would like to understand him better. I have not attempted any of his books yet. This is partly due to intimidation (I heard that one of his books has an intro that is 500 pages long), and partly because I have heard he is one of the most difficult philosophers to understand. Are there any books out there that explain Hegel's ideas in such a way that the average reader (that would be me) can understand and critique? Preferably I am looking for a book that discusses his ideas, but also his life. I see that Charles Taylor wrote a biography that looks interesting. Is that a good place to start? If not, are there any better books you all would recommend? I appreciate any and all input. Thank you!

[Assistant] I'd heavily recommend *Reason and Revolution* by Herbert Marcuse, particularly if you are interested in Hegel's influence on Marx and how Hegel fits into the broader Enlightenment tradition. It's not really a neutral academic intro - Marcuse certainly favored an interpretation in line with the Left-Hegelians, and wrote the book in part as a critique of fascist interpretations of Hegel - but Marcuse displays a strong understanding of the texts, and explains Hegel's philosophy and historical context with readable and engaging prose.