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

[User]
ELI5: How did we make plastic that isn't biodegradable and is so bad for the planet, out of materials only found on Earth?

I just wondered how we made these sorts of things when everything on Earth works together and naturally decomposes.

[Assistant] Plastics are made from organic materials, oil, which is hydrocarbons that were once plants, so one might expect plastics could decompose as quick as any plants, except they don't. The reason is that there's very little life on earth that knows what to do with the molecules that makes up plastic, humans mix other chemicals with the hydrocarbons to make new molecules that never existed in nature before, they're so new to biology that almost nothing exists that can munch on it and use it to grow. The chemical bonds in plastics are tougher and weirder than anything natural, which is what makes them so useful to us but so awful for nature. There are some bacteria that can break down plastic with enzymes, because 'life finds a way' and hopefully research in developing that into a commercially viable process will make plastic recycling something we can actually do at scale.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does a symphonic orchestra work?

Is there a standard set of instruments or does it vary?

How is the amount of each instrument determined?

What is the reasoning behind how every group of instruments is positioned?

Can each musician hear the sound of their own instrument?

Isn't it crazy loud when you're there in the middle?

If someone makes a mistake, will the others spot it immediately?

How do so many people manage to find time to rehearse together? (I'm guessing not all orchestra are full time pros?)

How much do you need to know about other instruments than yours?

And a gazillion other questions!

**Edit**: thank you so much everyone for taking the time to reply and for the insight. This is amazing. I am reading every comment!

[Assistant]
1. it varies.  there is a "classic" configuration for symphonic orchestras, baroque orchestras and so on.  The symphony orchestra is most typically from about 75-90, but...actual results vary a lot because everyone is trying to be interesting (in that classical music "radical is having 100 members of your orchestra! kinda way).  The quantity of each of the instruments varies within some general guidelines and in general the world of _classical_ symphonic is well aware when you're pushing the boundaries that are as much about tradition and norms as they are about composer-driven-rules.  You'll almost never see anything but the 1st violins to the left of the conductor, but...you'll see lots of variation in the placement of the bass for example and percussion are virtually always in the back, etc.

2. the number of players in each instrument/section varies.  You'll not have lots of timpani players, and you won't have more violas than violins, and you'd never have as many trumpet players as cellists and so on - this is about balancing the sound.  There aren't rules, but volume levels drives much of this!  You've got to have enough to have a "section" rather than a single voice (some parts call for a single-voice/solo of course) so you'll not see fewer than 3 of a a non-percussion instrument very often).

3. positioning is based on tradition and some practical matters.  the first violin (principle of the orchestra) has a role that needs them at the front near the conductor, but beyond that the basic configuration is premised on getting section leads near the conductor and then distributing sound to get the right blend.

4. You can _usually_ hear your own instrument, yes.  And...when you're playing "hearing" is a complex set of inputs that range from ear to touch and the physical aspects of engaging with the instrument - you have more cues to allow you to hear (a bit like how you can hear someone's words better when you can also see their lips).  You certainly can't hear yourself as well as you can when no one is around!).

5. It's loud.  Not crazy loud, but some instrumentalists do wear earplugs.

6. You can spot some mistakes and not others.  If the oboe player fucks up during their solo, you hear it.  If the fifth row back second violin player makes a boo-boo it may go unnoticed by someone in the bass section.

7. In professional orchestras it is a _job_.  Their employment agreement (and union agreement in the U.S. anyway) dictates the amount of rehearsal time and often the time of day it occurs.  If you're top-notch symphony (e.g. boston, SF, philly, NY) you make pretty good money such that you may not need to teach.  Second tier orchestras don't pay as much and don't practice as much!

8. Being generally knowledgeable about instruments is a good sign of musicality.  The reality however is that the musicianship demands of any single instrument in the orchestra are so intense at the levels of major symphony orchestras that specialization and mastery are far more important than general knowledge.  (I find this to be a bummer, and one of the things that had me move from classical to jazz violin!).


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

[User] [Star Wars] What is the Empire's ultimate goal as a governing body?

[Assistant]
Total dominance over the galactic core and all old republic worlds, with regular patrols in the fringe areas by the Imperial Navy and Army;

Dominance of all major resource extraction by corporations allied with the Imperial bureaucracy;

Complete monopoly over all institutions of learning, and first choice of graduates to employ within the bureaucracy, or Allied Corporations;

Long-term goal - prevent rebellion and Institute long-term peace and growth into the fringe areas, while preventing successful invasion by extra-galactic powers, through buffer zones, and early warning systems (IE colonized worlds in the fringe that may not be allied with the Imperial bureaucracy and possess their own military, and will act to slow invasion while raising the alarm)


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

[User]
[Sofia The First] Is Enchancia prepared for war?

Enchancia's relationship with its fellow kingdoms currently seems to be perfectly fine. It's all sunshine, rainbows, roses and lollypops, politically.

However, things can't stay like this forever. If tensions between the nations suddenly appear and eventually give rise to a war, how capable is Enchancia of taking part in it?

Can such a peaceful kingdom adjust to wartime? Even if they don't take part in the actual fighting, would they be willing to provide aid or supplies?

[Assistant]
King  Roland had one more wish at the wishing well... That  could create an army pretty quickly...

And since Sophia is the most powerful princess in the entire Disney universe... She would end up saving the kingdom herself if needed.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do Scottish Fold cats have those weird, sausage-shaped tails?

[Assistant]
The same reason pugs have smashed faces.

A breeder sees one of their kittens has an oddly shaped tail, decides they like that trait and breeds it with another cat that has an oddly shaped tail,and its offspring has a more distinct oddly shaped tail.


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

[User]
[Superman] How is superman perceived in countries other than the US?

How is he perceived in other western countries? How do North Koreans see him for example? How does North Korean propaganda portray him? How do people in poor countries see him? What about countries with a lot of natural disasters? What do various world leaders think of him?

[Assistant]
For the most part, he's seen in a positive light by most of the world.

Pre and Post-COIE, he was awarded honorary citizenship by all UN member states in recognition of his value to the world at large, and to acknowledge that they authorize him to freely move through their borders to assist in routine crisis that may occur.

Tensions do exist between him and governments that lean towards the authoritarian and corrupt though, since they would feel most threatened by his existence and influence, and he would feel quite dismayed by their continued existence and and frustrated by his moral/legal inability to directly take action against them without significant approval and authorizations from other nations.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] During the Battle over Coruscant, Dooku dies, but Grievous executes Anakin and Obi-Wan after capturing them. What does Palpatine do now?

The only person in the C.I.S. who knows he's Sideous is dead, his future apprentice is dead, he's about to get transported to who knows where in the galaxy, and the Senate is going to have to start operating without his influence, and potentially wreck his already fractured plans while he's gone.

What do?

[Assistant] He kills Grievous, get's back to Coruscant, contacts a backup apprentice to fill Anakin's shoes (Most likely the Temple Guard who becomes the Grand Inquisitor in the main timeline), and get's the plan back on track.


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

[User] What does it mean that a vaccine is 95% effective? What happens to the other 5% of people?

[Assistant] So the Pfizer study had 45k ppl enrolled with half on vaccine and half on placebo. They stopped the study after 170 ppl in the trial contracted Covid. Of the 170 ppl, 162 ppl were in the placebo group and 8 were in the vaccine group. Therefore, if you were on drug then your odds of getting the virus were only 4.9% (8 divided by 162) that if someone who wasnt on drug. Ie: the vaccine was 95.1% effective (1-4.9%). People in both the placebo and vaccine groups still had to be treated for Covid if they caught it. Importantly only 10 people in the trial contracted severe cases and of that only one was in vaccine group.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can't a battery be charged instantly?

[Assistant]
Several reasons.

1.  The pipe that fills it would have to be huge.

2.  The chemistry of the battery takes time to go from a discharged to charged state (you're literally re-arranging molecules).

Along #1, imagine a car battery typically ~50Ah @ 12V.  To charge it instantly you need to feed 50Ah worth of current into it in an instant [say a second].  So that's 3600*50A => 180000A of current.    Cable thick enough to handle that would likely cost >$1000 per foot.


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

[User] ELI5: How do surgeons get ligaments to "stick" to a titanium implant?

[Assistant] They sew it with dissolvable stitches. The titanium implant will have small holes drilled in it for the surgeon to sew the ligaments to. Eventually, the ligament will attach itself to the implant and the stitches will dissolve.


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

[User] Why can't we remember our memories when we were a baby?

[Assistant]
Infantile amnesia is not well understood, partly because we still have a lot to understand about memory, and also because for obvious reasons there is only so far we can go studying infants and young children without some sort of ethics problems.

There is some evidence that memory is linked to language. Studies have shown that children exposed to more 'memory' related talk seem to have earlier first memories that not. Also the development of retrievable long term memories seems to correlate somewhat with language acquisition.

However there is still a big unknown in the area - a couple of little factoids to help blow your mind:

- typically children 0-5 will show day-to-day memories (i.e. remember what happened yesterday) yet will not be able to recall their childhood once they're older

- The range of infantile amnesia appears to change throughout the life-span, more most of our adult years more of our childhood is inaccessible and often more younger memory returns as people reach elderly ages

Sauces: 4th year developmental psyc.


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

[User] ELI5: When a new word develops (slang, tech words, etc.) in a language like French or Spanish, who "decides" if it is a masculine or feminine word?

[Assistant]
It can come from different sources.

* **Original language** : If the word comes from a language where it is already attributed a gender, it sometimes keeps it.
*e.g.* a "Gelato" (Italian ice cream) is now commonly used in French. Gelato is masculine in Italian, and so it is masculine in French.
* **Users** : The first few person to use a word may attribute it a gender based on their own will. This sometimes leads to inconsistencies.
*e.g.* a "Job" (work) is now a common word in French. However, it is masculine in France, but feminine in Canada.
* **Ending** : Most endings are attributed to a gender.
*e.g.* most words ending with *-a* are feminine in Italian & Spanish. So if the new word ends in *-a*, it will most likely be attributed the feminine gender in those languages.
* **Etymology** : If some related word already exists in the "receiving" language, the new word might take the same gender.
* **Context** : If that new word is a new variant of something that already exists and is bounded to replace an older concept/thing, it might just take the same gender as the older concept/thing, as people already refers to certain things in that field with a certain gender.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is killing fish not recognized as animal cruelty?

People go crazy over animal cruelty but it's perfectly okay to slice up a fish or boil a lobster alive. Just seems cruel to me.

[Assistant]
Some people see any killing of an animal as animal cruelty, or even liken it to murder. Some people don't have a problem with killing any animal. Neither position is ubiquitous, and most people are in the middle. Influencing factors can vary, such as the rarity of the animal, and the cuteness of the animal. More people are upset if you kill a familiar animal like a horse or dog, or a 'cute' animal like a lion or a tiger, than if you kill an 'ugly' animal like a spider or a frog, or an animal associated with common diets, like a cow or a chicken.

Fish and lobsters tend to be associated with food, aren't generally considered cute, and these factors don't help their 'cause' as it were.


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

[User] ELI5: What muscles are the least used and why do humans still have them?

[Assistant] The palmaris longus.  It is a muscle in our forearm.  It doesn't do anything.  14 percent of people don't even have it.  Those that do have one have it because it is a vestige of days when claws and climbing were important for survival (and not a hindrance to handling tools).  It is still there in most people because having the muscle doesn't hurt anything in terms of survival, so there is not pressure on the trait.  In other mammals, it serves to retract skin to expose the claws.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Do boggart replicate the power of those they turn into?

When Boggart turn into Dementor it look like it has a weaker version of actual dementor's draining. Does that mean they actually replicate that power? what if my fear was something that have instant effect like medusa, will I turn into stone? or if I fear Azathoth, will they also replicate weaker version of azathoth's power?

[Assistant]
They have the ability to weakly replicate the powers and abilities of whatever they take form of, how weak is hard to say.

The dementor boggart was weak enough for Harry to train on, but still strong enough to make him pass out.


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

[User]
[Vampire the Masquerade]Blood does not need to be in a person to give a vampire nourishment, blood bag of vats work. Would strictly artificial blood give sustenance or is there some mystical element to "authentic" blood?

Suppose that blood was recreated down to the last electron using highly advanced technology.  Would it give a vampire nourishment , or is there some mystical element such that the blood only works if it is "authentic" and comes from a living creature?

[Assistant]
If it could work at all, it probably wouldn't be very nourishing. Vampires relationship with blood is spiritual more than biological; there's no reason why an animal's blood should be biologically less nourishing than human blood, but it's a known fact that vampires gain less from the consumption of animal blood than they do from human blood. That doesn't mean that they gain *nothing* but they gain less. Blood that isn't fresh (such as from blood bags) also gives them less nourishment than straight from the source.

There might be *some* biological component but it's hard to verify. Young blood is better than old blood for a vampire, and the blood of a healthy person is better than the blood of an ill person. Diseased blood won't hurt a vampire but it's less nourishing, and the blood isn't magically transformed (think Catholic transubstantiation, but backwards), as a vampire can spread human diseases between humans.


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

[User] ELI5:Those "We buy houses" signs on street lamps do they actually buy your home or is it all a scam?

[Assistant]
Suppose your uncle just died, and you inherited his house. Great, right? (I mean, sad about your uncle, but great about the house.) But when you go over to look at your new house, it's in terrible condition. The roof leaked, and then water got in and the ceiling in one of the bedrooms collapsed, the kitchen countertops are missing, there's trash everywhere, and the raccoon who lives in the upstairs closet chased you outside and is still standing in the doorway hissing at you.

You're not a builder- you don't know how to fix the house yourself. And you can't get a loan to hire someone else to fix the house- banks won't usually write a mortgage unless there's a basically-inhabitable house to borrow against. And when you had a realtor out to talk about listing it for sale, he yelled at you for wasting his time, then peeled out leaving a cloud of rubber smoke.

Right when you're thinking maybe we should just let the raccoon keep the house, you drive past a We BUY Houses: CASH sign. You call the number, and someone from their office says, "308 10th St.... uh, hang on, let me look that up on the GIS... yeah, we'll give you $40,000 for that- we just need to run a title search to make sure you're the real owner and can legally sell it. What's that? Bad condition? Yeah, we can deal with that, it's all factored into the price."

That offer is kind of predatory- sure, the house needs sixty thousand dollars in repairs, but afterwards, it'll probably sell for $150k. But what else can you do? You can't afford you fix it yourself, and you don't have anyone else who wants to buy it. If you do nothing, the house will keep on decaying, and either you'll keep paying taxes on it or the city will seize it. You might as well get a payout now, even if it's not quite what the house is worth.


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

[User]
Does a double pendulum show quantum effects on a macroscopic scale?

Or is it just that it is very difficult to measure the initial conditions and so is hard to predict or is that Newtonian physics actually breaks down and we see quantum effects?

[Assistant] I believe you are referring to the chaotic nature of the double pendulum. This really has nothing to do with quantum effects, the behavior arises in an ideal, classical double pendulum with no friction. It is more a consequence of the mathematics. Although the system is deterministic, the behavior of the system cannon be predicted because any perturbations in the system or errors in measurement will cause the paths of the real and predicted systems to diverge exponentially. Even in a classical universe you really can't expect measurements to be perfect or for a system to be completely isolated, so you really don't need the heisenberg uncertainty principle or anything fancy like that to see these types of effects.


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

[User] ELI5: the differences between Chairman, Secretary General, President and CEO.

[Assistant]
The Chairman (of the board) is the head of the board of directors. The Board of directors generally doesn't run operations at a company but makes really big, long term decisions, such as choosing the executives that do run the company. The Chairman generally doesn't have any more power per se than any other voting member of the board, except the power to run board meetings.

The Chief Executive Officer is the senior ranking person in an organization, answering only to board. He makes all the decissions of running the company in real time.

The CEO may also be the president and the terms may be interchangeable depending on the business. However, if both terms are used in a company it is likely because the organization has multiple subsidiaries doing different things. In this case the CEO is in charge of the entire umbrella organization and a president runs each individual subsidiary answering to the CEO.

Secretary General (also General Secretary) is a term basically meaning the same thing as a CEO but is favored by multinational, non-profit, and political organizations.


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

[User]
[Pokemon] Can a 'pokeball' be used to capture a human?

What is it about a Pokemon that allows it to be captured into a Pokeball? Or is it the technology behind a Pokeball itself? If the latter, why is it not used for human trafficking or even mundane usage such as taking your pet on holidays with you?

[Assistant]
> What is it about a Pokemon that allows it to be captured into a Pokeball? Or is it the technology behind a Pokeball itself?

It's a feature of the Pokeball, not the Pokemon. They were explicitly designed for this purpose. The short answer is that the Pokemon Universe has astonishing capabilities for matter and energy conversion/manipulation.

> If the latter, why is it not used for human trafficking

Because it's relatively simple to look into a pokeball and see what's in there.

> or even mundane usage such as taking your pet on holidays with you?

People carry their Pokemon with them pretty much everywhere, especially on holiday. There were at least a dozen trainers on the S.S. Anne, most of whom had at least one Pokemon with them.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do child actors never or rarely receive any top billing on movies depsite being the titled or main character?

[Assistant]
Top billing is something negotiated by an actor's agent when making the contract with the production company.  Tom Cruise's agent can ask for top billing, and they will give it to him.  Because at that point, you either have Tom Cruise or you don't have Tom Cruise.  You can't just slug in John Travolta is Tom Cruise refuses to do the movie without top billing.

However, with some unknown child actor where it might be their first or second movie, nobody is going to see the movie because of that specific actor.  Even if they really like the actor, the production co. can simply say "we will just choose one of the other 90 actors who performed well in the auditions and didn't demand top billing", and then agent will be like "well wait wait wait, we don't HAVE to have top billing" because an agent who blows something like that will not be an agent for long.  That's how negotiating works!.


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

[User]
[MCU] Of all the ways Ego couldve killed Star-Lords mom, why did he choose brain cancer?

Why make her suffer as much as possible? He couldve snapped his fingers and disintegrated her, or conjured up a gun and shot her in the head, or dropped a 100 ton boulder on her house. Any number of methods would have made it quick and painless, so why go for the long-winded route?

[Assistant] Because Ego is a wimp, not having the guts to just kill her off instantly. Giving her the cancer lets him kill her, while also being able to distance himself from the act of killing her. Kind of like pulling a bandaid off, he too afraid to pull it off quick so he takes the long route of slow and painful.


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

[User]
[Fallout 3] What are these locks made out of that I can't pick them?

I don't mean to brag, but I like to think I'm an expert lockpick. According to my Pipboy, I've picked over 100 locks, even the door down in the Wheaton Armory, which was no joke. Yet I've run across a handful that I just can't force my way into. I later found keys that worked, so it's not like they were fancy electronic locks. Anyone have an explanation?

[Assistant]
They may not be made out of anything special, but there are locks built specifically to defeat lockpickers and sneaky wanderers like you. Most locks you find in the wasteland are standard pin tumbler locks, which have been around for a few centuries now. People have been making them for a long time because they work great for keeping most people and animals out of their homes and belongings. But they can never turn away someone truly desperate to get inside. And it's why they're so easy to pick. Once you figure out the little nuances of every standard lock, anyone can call themselves an "expert lockpick".

But not every lock is a standard lock out there. Before the war, some people got really paranoid about keeping safe, so they bought rare and expensive locking mechanisms for their stuff. The keys either push the tumblers in ways your little lockpick never could, or they do things inside the mechanism you can't replicate. A few might even have some kind of electric signal running through them that only the key can somehow deactivate, but don't quote me on that.

And also, don't forget that most of these locks haven't been used for centuries, so they may not be special, just corroded and nearly ruined. So your lockpick may not be able to push the mechanism in just the right way anymore, but the key specially made to unlock the ancient door may still work. Too bad the pip-boy doesn't tell you how to just kick some doors open. Some of those locks would probably just fall apart if you hit them hard enough, but NOOOOO, that's not part of "game mechanics".


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

[User]
ELI5 - Why if you stay up for 24+ hours your body sometimes doesnt let you fall asleep when you want too

You would think that the longer you stay up the easier it is to go to sleep after but thats not always the case, and i would love to know why! thank you!

[Assistant]
Your body and most living thing have something we call a circadian clock. It's an biochemical oscillator that synchronise with the sunlight and other external variable. This make your body create a circadian rhythm or 24 hours and regulate your sleeping schedule.

So if you force yourself to no sleep, you body gonna keep sending signal for your to sleep up to a certain point when your body gonna stop, since by that point you are suppose to wake up and stay up according to your internal clock. Your clock doesn't really know that you didn't sleep, it just know that at this point you should be awake. So usually, you don't really feel sleepy for the rest of the day, until it's time to go to sleep again.


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

[User]
[Star Wars Legends] How were Darth Sidious/Palpatine and Darth Vader remembered?

Both on short term (years to decades) and long term (centuries)

I know all this is probably Legends, but i wondering how the memory of Darth Sidious lived on in the EU.

How was Emperor Palpatine remembered in the New Republic? Was he, after hundred of years, remembered as an evil dictator like people nowadays remember Hitler? Or was the opinion of the further generations more nuanced? Did the fact that he was a Sith Lord ever became general knowledge through the Galaxy?

And how was Darth Sidious remembered by the New Sith Order or all other Dark Side Users years or centuries after his death? Was he respected for almost destroying the Jedi? Or was his Galactic Empire seen as an failure?

Bonus question: Same questions as above, but now about Darth Vader? Did the public ever hear the truth about his redemption? Did children at schools learn about him as an hero or a bad guy?

[Assistant]
For Sidious, the answer is "it's complicated".

The average citizen of the New Republic obviously saw him as little more than a warmongering, power-seeking tyrant; especially in later years, as Luke and the New Jedi Order revealed his full attachment to the Sith cause (and the implications for the reality behind the Clone Wars). Frankly, they'd have had little trouble propogating this particular viewpoint: Palpatine's policies as Emperor tended towards the most extreme and oppressive and his own writings revealed the depth of his manipulations as a Sith Lord.

A significant fraction of the Imperial Remnant initially viewed him as a fallen hero, slain by vicious terrorists (and later, the traitorous Darth Vader). As time passed, however, the Imperial Remnant began to shift it's views. I'd say this was largely because the surviving Imperial leaders tended to be the more rational and peaceful of the Empire's former hierarchy, the aggressive and spiteful ones having been wiped out either by infighting or fruitless one-by-one individual fights with the New Republic. Not only was this new crop of more sensible Imperial leaders more prone to recognizing the oppressiveness of Palpatine's policies, they also tended to have met him in person - and many of those who did recognized a lust for power and near-madness in the man that made them uncomfortable.

The Sith were badly destroyed during this period as well, but those who did remain in the decades after the New Republic's rise tended to have mixed-to-dim opinions of Palpatine - often taking the view that while he was a genius of Sith manipulation and power control, he was also critically flawed in that he allowed himself to be consumed by his own maddened lust for power. Other minor Sith splinter groups were often suppressed or hunted by Sidious, giving them negative opinions of him.

Darth Vader is a much easier answer: Nobody liked the guy. The New Republic opted to heavily differentiate between Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader, portraying Anakin as a victim of Dark Side control by Sidious to absolve him of actions taken while under the Vader persona while highlighting Anakin's final redemption and role in balancing the Force. In the Imperial Remnant, opinion was perhaps even poorer: Vader was already known among the Imperial staff as a temperamental, anger-prone, and dangerous individual who it was risky to be around. While he was briefly portrayed a victim killed by Rebellion terrorists, as it became clear that Vader had in fact turned on the Emperor his name was lowered to the point it was used to mean traitor.


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

[User]
CMV: It's perfectly fine if I like and consume lab-grown human meat

Biologist Richard Dawkins recently tweeted "What if human meat is grown? Could we overcome our taboo against cannibalism? An interesting test case for consequentialist morality versus yuck reaction absolutism." And people were up in arms, calling him Satanist and such.

However I fail to understand why is synthetic cannibalism unethical. The only potential problem may be a few deranged individuals who procure human meat from the natural source i.e. by killing another human being or from dead bodies. But this scenario where a person can't afford human meat and thus due to  *addiction* has to resort to get the meat from natural sources would be quite rare and these people should be declared clinically insane anyways. Another solution might be restricting human meat to labs till it becomes viable for every economic class to purchase it.

Apart from the above mentioned problem, I find it completely right and normal to eat lab-grown human meat or be curious about its taste and texture. So please try and change my view.

[Assistant]
One potential issue: If lab grown human meat were to become popular and create a demand, it is possible that would enable a black market in real human flesh. Not because it would be cheaper, but because almost anything people consume, some part of the population tends to fetishise more rare or "authentic" versions of it, even to the extent of breaking the law. See the popularity of Cuban cigars, the trade in poached protected animals and the insane amount of money people pay for "premium" versions of things. Kobe beef, rare scotch, etc.

Researchers have found that legalizing prostitution for instance, does NOT decrease human trafficking. It actually provides a smokescreen making it harder to detect. The same could be said for a widespread trade in human meat.


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

[User]
Why do pineapples contain Bromelain?

I've seen a lot of articles talking about this meat digesting enzyme, bromelain, that the pineapple is unique for, but none of those articles explain why would a fruit need to digest meat.

[Assistant] They are cysteine proteases, not specific to digesting animal protein. They have a multitude of uses in plants similar to those in animals e.g.. senescence regulation but also appear to be involved in seed development.


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

[User]
Does sound travel in absolute 0 temperatures?

We learned in physics that the lower the temperature of the air , the slower sound will travel through it , so if there is 0 kelvin , will sound travel at all?

[Assistant] Well, air doesn't exist close to absolute zero because it liquifies and then freezes. Sound can still travel through solids, so the solid nitrogen could have sound conduction. There are also unique forms of sound called "second sound" and "third sound" that occur in very cold liquid helium.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do teeth not repair themselves after cavities?

[Assistant] Cavities form when bacteria (or plaques, which are biofilms or special colonies of bacteria) secrete acids and other waste products that demineralize your teeth, leaving a hole essentially. For as long as the plaque is still there, the bacteria will continue to secrete acids and if your body can't *re*mineralize as fast as the bacteria *de*mineralize, the cavity will grow. Essentially the answer to your question is because there's usually still active tooth decay going on.


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

[User] Why does the sun look orange closer the horizon, but white in the sky?

[Assistant]
During sunset, the light from the sun has to travel through a thicker slice of the atmosphere to reach your eye than it has to during midday.

As the white light from the setting sun travels through the atmosphere, red orange and yellow light is allowed to pass through with little interference.  But blue indigo and violet light is scattered more (which is why the sky is blue).

Why are they scattering? Our atmosphere has Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules and these guys will scatter blue, indigo and violet.

During sunset, the light is travelling through more of the atmosphere, so the scattering is more pronounced and you see red-orange sunsets.

If you were in space, it would still be white.


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

[User] Can Chinese Alligator hybridize with American Alligator?

[Assistant] Both species (*Alligator mississippiensis* and *Alligator sinensis*) have 32 chromosomes. They are from the same genus. Theoretically it should be possible. There is a massive size difference between the species though. American alligators can grow to 1000 pounds while chinese alligators rarely exceed 100 pounds. So to answer your question probably yes, but probably not naturally.


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

[User]
[40K] "He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods"  what gods?

I've unearthed the following on a dataslate beneath a collapsed stack on one of our archive worlds. The resulting dataquake killed thousands of scribes and left me only with haunting questions:

>For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. **He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods** and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium, for whom a thousand souls die every day, for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten. Human blood and human flesh  the stuff of which the Imperium is made. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. This is the tale of those times.

As a senior member of the Inquisition, I am aware of the filthy mockery that cultists refer to as "the dark gods", but I am as yet unaware of any other gods, much less ones that our glorious God Emperor rules at the behest of.

What is this referring to?

[Assistant]
Well, one thing you've got to remember is that not every mention of "gods" are referring to the Ruinous Powers. Mankind has had thousands of different religions and gods (however misguided) throughout our long history.

Another thing is that the Imperial Faith, much like the Imperium itself, is not a single homogeneous entity. Yes, all good citizens believe in the Divinity and superiority of the God Emperor, but the details of that faith can vary from world to world. Some (admittedly backwards) worlds believe the God Emperor is the greatest among multiple lesser gods, it could be the excerp you're reading is using "gods" in that context, as in the lesser gods all bow before the might of the God Emperor himself.

It could also just be a colloquial saying, and doesn't refer to any specific gods. It's a simple way of stating that the God Emperor is the highest authority in the galaxy.

And, yes, it could simply be heretical lies.  It wouldn't be the first time the followers of Chaos have tried to spread lies about the God Emperor being subservient to Chaos, no matter how adsurd the thought is.

But all in all your best bet is to simply inform the Ordo Scriptus and let them handle it.


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

[User]
[Beyblade Series] How is it that people are not freak out that spinning tops can cause massive amount of damage to everything around them?

Clawing valleys, smashing stadiums and much more happened in the shows.

EDIT: Also, why do people continue to go the battles knowing that they could possible get hurt or worse.

[Assistant] Because Beyblades are part of the cosmology of the series and have been dated as part of historical and religious events, such as Moses parting the Red Seas with his own and the rise and fall of Empires. Its seen as just part of society.


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

[User]
[ELI5] Who made the first Blacksmithing tools?

I've recently watched a video of Tom Scott on his second channel where he made (with the help of a blacksmith) make a bottle opener.

The guy first made Tom to blacksmith a punch or whatever then he mentioned that "Blacksmiths had to make their own tools"  or something among the lines anyways.

So it struck me. How did people make their first tools? Are there any records? Or were people just banging rocks to the metal, made a primitive sledgehammer then used that further on?

How did they even came up with the idea that if you put metal in fire you can *remodel* it?

[Assistant]
>How did they even came up with the idea that if you put metal in fire you can remodel it?

Metal would naturally find its way into man made fires either by putting a rock or heating some sort of ceramics that contained metal in them. Depending on the metal, we'd visually see it turning into liquid (as a result of the heat) and then solidifying when it cooled.


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

[User]
ELi5 Netflix said they will charge more if someone outside of your household uses it. How can they tell?

If it's based on IP address, wouldn't me veiwing on mobile be affected? If I travel and log in through a hotel wifi, do I have to pay extra every month?

[Assistant] It will probably be done similar to how Hulu does it. You must log in to the (home) ip address using that device once every month or so to verify that you're a legitimate family member. They can determine your location using IP address, and Roku or cell phone or Amazon fire devices will report your location as well.


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

[User]
[The Matrix] What happens after the events of the 3rd Matrix movie?

Does the alliance between humanity and the machines stay stable?  Does humanity at large become aware of the Matrix?  Do people leave it en masse?  What happens?

[Assistant]
[Out of Character] There's an MMORPG set after the films called The Matrix Online.

In short, everyone in the Matrix is given the Red/Blue choice - some choose to stay in the Matrix, some choose to leave. There's also a war over finding pieces of Neo's RSI data and Morpheus is murdered, sparking political tensions between the Machines, Zion and the French Fuck's factions.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Was it impossible for Anakin/Vader to die before fulfilling the prophecy of the Chosen One?

 All those times Anakin could've been in danger as a slave on Tatooine, was in danger from Separatist forces and other threats during the events of the Prequels & associated media like the Clone Wars, along with all the times Vader was under threat in the OT&associated media...was it actually impossible for him to be killed because he was destined to fulfill the prophecy in Return of the Jedi?

[Assistant]
He could have died, but if he had, then the prophecy would not have been made about him in the past because the thing it is prophesising wouldn't have been true, and it was one of those actually-accurate-far-into-the-future prophecies.

Prophecies are almost always descriptive, not prescriptive. They don't make people immortal because they predicted they would be at a place - they accurate describe the people who happen to survive to make it to said place.

There are a *few* types of super powerful magical prophecies in fiction that seem to actively force their prediction to occur, and in that case the subjects *would* be effectively unkillable until the fated event, but they are pretty rare, and this wasn't one of them.


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

[User]
Why do humans kiss?  Are there any other animals that do this to display love, or is there an animal equivalent in some species?

.

[Assistant]
It's an open question.  There are hypotheses that it is a learned, cultural behavior, and hypotheses that it is instinctual.  There are certain human tribes that don't kiss, or appear to be aware of the idea; on the other hand, bonobos kiss often in a similar way to humans (and other animals have their own displays of affection, like nose-rubbing or nuzzling).

One "learned behavior" hypothesis postulates that mothers in primitive tribes would chew food for their young infants, bird-style, and then after they develop teeth, continue to "fake" the motions in order to comfort them.  One "instinctual" hypothesis is the idea that kissing enhances the exchange of pheromones between individuals, and so helps individuals decide if another individual is an appropriate mate.  This latter idea is somewhat weakened by the fact that though humans produce pheromones, they don't seem to have much of an effect on us anymore.


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

[User] [Godzilla 2014] why did Godzilla feel the need to get up at the bridge instead of keep swimming? Why didnt Godzilla obliterate the military for shooting him? Why didnt the jets shoot him?

[Assistant] The dude wanted to stand up and stretch, and the water was getting too shallow for him.  Godzilla doesnt hate or have any desire to hurt humans in this universe, in fact he may have interpreted their test nuke as a gift or sacrifice to him.  The jets probably didnt have a guaranteed shot that wouldnt cause collateral damage on innocents behind him if they missed.


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

[User]
[Fallout] I just bought a 2076 Corvega. How durable is it?

Sure, that asshole salesman said it could survive "anything and everything until Armageddon comes," but is that true? I've heard stories about the fusion reactors in it going off in an accident. Am I driving a nuclear Pinto?

[Assistant]
They're great! Well built, with an extremely heavy body. Even if you get into a head-on collision, the odds of the fusion reactor going critical are extremely low, it's almost unheard of. They're very well shielded and designed to survive impacts from the outside of the vehicle quite well.

Now, they *aren't* designed to survive small arms fire. Stay away from anything that could puncture the reactor casing and you're fine.


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

[User] Why does an accelerating electron(or any other charged particle) radiate electromagnetic radiation?

[Assistant]
Imagine you are very far away from a charged particle, and you can detect its electric field.

Then the particle starts accelerating. The electric field far away from the charged object is no longer the same. However, the information that the source of the field has changed can only propagate at light speed. So the electric field has this disturbance propagating outward at the speed of light, which is what we call electromagnetic radiation.


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

[User]
If higher spatial dimensions could be visualized, then would all of their axes be perpendicular to each other?

If I were an N dimensional hyper-being with a protractor, and I measured the angle between ever pair of the axes of the N dimensions, would all of the angles be 90 degrees, or is there a more abstract notion of what it means to be perpendicular in higher dimensions?

[Assistant]
Two vectors are orthogonal if their dot product is zero. This matches the familiar notion of perpendicularity in two and three dimensions.

So, yes, the coordinate axes are all orthogonal to each other in any number of dimensions.


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

[User] [X-men] Is the mutant Cyclops able to see while firing optic blasts?

[Assistant] Yes. In fact, Cyclops is ALWAYS firing optic blasts. The ruby crystal of his visor and glasses normally reflects the blasts back into to eyes through the portal to the extradimension from which the blasts emanate.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Didn't anyone notice Order 66?

I'm sure the Jedi had non-Clone, non-force sensitive friends who they'd chat with. Didn't *anyone* notice?

Oh hey, where is so-and-so?

Oh we had to shoot him.

Oh ok.

[Assistant]
Order 66 was part of a standard set of contingency orders that were available to everyone in the Army. The Jedi didn't mind them because they were to be used in case of emergency and most of the other orders held the same significance but in favor of the Jedi. Order 65, for example, was targeted towards removing the Supreme Chancellor from power.

In the Clone Wars cartoon, it is further revealed that the clones were further enhanced to follow Order 66, bypassing their free will. This was to battle the camaraderie and trust they earned with their respective Jedi commanders/generals.


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

[User] [Dune][Warhammer 40K] How does the god emperor of mankind compare in terms of power level to Leto Atreides II? Are they on par with each other? Or does ones power greatly outweigh the other?

[Assistant]
The God-Emperor of Mankind is the most powerful psychic humanity has ever produced. He can shoot fucking supernova-power beams put of his fingers, heal people with a touch, drive you mad with a look, rip the soul from your body, and oh yeah, he doesn't need spice to see the future.

Leto II ... Is a clairvoyant worm.

I hope that answers your question.


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

[User]
[Avengers: Endgame] What did the agents think went on with Captain America?

When the Hydra agents heard Captain America swear allegiance to Hydra, what did they think happened?

After all, he defeated the Red Skull and foiled his plans, and hes been in the present only for a short time.

How did they think he got recruited to their side?

[Assistant]
None of Captain America's public actions were counter to HYDRA's goals. Even the one time he espoused that he would not work with SHIELD because they had HYDRA tech, he didn't actually hurt HYDRA in any way. Defending New York didn't hurt HYDRA either. Even a mid-level HYDRA agent might easily conclude that the real Captain America was never found, that HYDRA created a clone, or a body double and 'planted' him in the ice to be found and recruited into SHIELD. It is a simpler explanation to a HYDRA agent than 'accidental cryostasis'.

So... yeah. He's a plant they all decided, relieved to know they'd never have to fight him in an elevator.

Actually, if Cap did not create a new timeline, then they would get into the elevator knowing that he knew, which explains why the did such a bad job of hiding that they were there to detain him. So it's not a continuity error in Winter Soldier.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is a boltzmann brain?

Can someone elaborate?

[Assistant]
It is an example of the general idea that if you wait long enough anything that is even the slightest bit possible will eventually happen.

The general concept is not very different from the idea of the perhaps better know thought experiment of having infinite monkeys randomly bang on typewriters and having one of them by pure chance end up with the script to Shakespeare's Hamlet.

If you have some random arrangement of stuff like a deck of cards that you continuously shuffle, the longer you keep at it the more likely it becomes that the cards per pure random chance will end up in the correct order.

Usually we don't worry about stuff like that too much.

The bit about shuffling a deck of cards will only result make it likely in timespans that compare with the expected lifetime of the universe.

A human brain complete with memories and everything has a lot more variables than a deck of cards, but if you get right down to it, if you arranged every atom exactly as the atoms in your brain are arranged now it would be an exact copy of you.

In the vacuum of space there is some constant low level random fluctuation going on of particles being created and destroyed. In the general view of things this equals out to more or less nothing.

However there is a non-zero chance that randomly enough stuff might come into existence to actually matter on a big scale.

It is sort of like the idea that a glass of water might randomly heat up by spitting out an ice-cube. In theory possible but you would never actually expect it to happen.

When you wait long enough stuff that is merely extremely unlikely becomes inevitable given enough time.

When taking the really long view. Eventually stuff that seems impossible will happen.

The Boltzmann brain is an example of an absurd  thing that could happen given enough time.

Matter randomly assembling by pure chance into something that works like a human brain complete with memories and everything.

A consciousness coming into existence full formed out of nothing at all.

In a universe that goes on forever it seems like an inevitable result that such impossible things might happen eventually, which seems pretty stupid.

Even worse is the idea that if Boltzmann brains are not only valid things that might occur at some point in time but actually inevitable things given enough time, how can you tell that you personally are a human being with a past that came into existence through evolution acting on arrangements of clumped together stardust and not just some random arrangement of matter which spontaneously came into existence a moment ago complete with memories of having been a human being for years.

You can't really know if you are a person or just a brain floating in space with false memories of being a person. Both are possible.

What might give you an existential crisis is the question of which is more likely.

When talking about forever some really frighting stuff may result.


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

[User]
[The Lord of The Rings] How did Sauron manage to deceive the Elves to forge the Rings of Power and how did he became capable enough to create the One Ring ?

Sauron managed to corrupt 9 human kings, 7 dwarf kings and 3 immortal, wise and powerful Elves.

HOW ?

Sauron was  servant of Morgoth, that alone shouldn't be suspicious enough (at least for the Elves) ? He deceived the Elves of Eregion, who under his guidance had created the Rings of Power.

Again, HOW ?

And even if he learn a lot of things from Morgoth, was that alone enough to create such a powerful Ring ? The One Ring ? Did the Elves show him something they shouldn't?

[Assistant]
Sauron was able to disguise himself as an emissary of the Valar. Naturally, as soon as the elves realized what was up they stopped wearing the Rings of Power, forcing Sauron to seize most of the Rings by force and redistribute them to dwarves and humans. None of the elves were ever corrupted. The dwarves weren't really, either; they proved too resistant to corruption to be fully controlled via the Seven Rings and so Sauron had to try to steal them yet again. The Ringwraiths and Gollum were the only ones to completely fall victim to a Ring of Power.

And Sauron was the one teaching the elves how to make Rings of Power, not the other way around: he was originally a powerful Maia in the service of Aule, patron Vala of smiths. Smithcraft was one of Sauron's greatest talents, along with deception.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] are Jedi-level midichlorians found in all species in the galaxy?

My bf mentioned that there were no Hutt Jedis.  I don't think I've seen an ewok or jawa or Wookiee Jedi either. So, do the midichlorians only present in certain species or does every species have the same probability of being able to train as a Jedi?

[Assistant]
Midichlorians are found in all living creatures, but it is true that some species are more prone to Force-sensitivity than others.

For an example, there is a species called the Miraluka which look exactly like humans except they have no eyes. They "see" through the Force, which requires a great deal of sensitivity.


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

[User] How can Hubble see nebula's light years away, but we had to wait till New Horizons to see Pluto?

[Assistant]
The angular size of an object in the sky is roughly (size of object / distance from us).

For the deep space objects we can see with Hubble,

(Size of object / distance of object) >>>>>>>>>> (size of Pluto/distance of Pluto)

Pluto is unimaginably small compared to its distance.


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

[User]
[Dragons] How hot does Dragonfire have to be to essentially become physical force?

I'm rewatching GoT and I'm at "Spoils of War" and I noticed somthing, Drogons fire doesn't so much burn as it does smash, especially when you see him burning the caravan line, it isn't just torching the caravans it's making them explode, despite the caravans containing mostly food and gold.

So, is it a temperature thing? can fire get so hot it basically becomes a much more physical force than just plain heat and burning?

[Assistant] It's a combination of factors. The most mundane and common one will be flash boiling liquids. Extreme heat of a few hundred degrees causing moisture to turn into steam instantly will cause a large blast as the steam escapes. There's also going to be a rapid expulsion of hot air around the dragon fire. It may not be hot enough to do more damage than the flame itself but it'll push things away and fan out like any other blast would. It's just a rapid heat exchange where superheated gasses are throwing objects around before and after coming into contact with the dragonfire.


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

[User] ELI5: How do farmers control whether a chicken lays an eating egg or a reproductive egg and how can they tell which kind is laid?

[Assistant]
Chickens lay eggs whether they are fertilized or not, so the easiest way to make commercial eggs is to not allow the males to mix with the females.

But if you need to check an egg you just hold it up to a bright light. You can see enough through the shell to tell if a chick is in there. Commercial operations do this with automated machinery.


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

[User]
[DCEU/Shazam] Why does Billy act more grown up in child form but more childish in Shazam form?

Billy in his child form has always been street-smart, self-sufficient, and not the best with trust, but due to him having lived on the streets, he was left with no choice but to fend for himself. However, when he gets his powers as Shazam, he acts like a child, becoming an egotistical showoff, and frankly like a dumb frat boy.

What's up with that?

[Assistant]
Shazam is acting like the child Billy *would* have been if he'd had been allowed a childhood.

As one of the most powerful beings on earth, he no longer needs to worry about all the threats he faces as a homeless child, so he can relax and finally act like he wants, rather then how he needs to.


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

[User] ELI5: When your body does not agree with your food how does it decide whether to make you throw up or cause a bad stomach ache?

[Assistant]
Bad foods can start poisoning you when they reach the stomach. Being poisoned triggers the feeling of nausea which then the body reacts by throwing up. This may help get rid of whatever is poisonous in the stomach whether it's from bad food, an assassin, or too much alcohol.

Bad food can also have a delayed reaction  by affecting the body after it leaves the stomach and goes into the intestines. After this point, there's no way to reverse the food train (with some exceptions from extreme vomiting) so it's gotta come out as fast as possible from the other end. Upset stomach and diarrhea occurs when the body is trying to shove the bad food out the other way as fast as it can. There's no time to reabsorb the liquid so it comes out all wet.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it that when you pull an all nighter and you decide to finally go to sleep that all of a sudden you have this burst of energy, as if you're well rested?

ELI5 cause i just pulled an all nighter and i don't know how much longer i can stay coherent. Where is my body finding the energy to keep going? Is my body tricking me? Am i now safe to drive to work today? (Haha still not going in) I'm also talking about an all nighter without the help of coffee or red bull.
Edit: now after getting much needed sleep i wake up to great/simple to understand explanations to this! My 5 year old brain is satisfied-- That's how my brain feels after last night's deprivation.

[Assistant]
Your body has a "biological clock".

If you wake up everyday at 7AM and one day you pull an all nighter and get home at 7AM you should get a lot of energy because your body thinks you need your everyday energy.


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

[User] [Game of thrones] Would Robb Stark have been able to kill The Mountain if Edmure Tully hadnt ruined his plans?

[Assistant] It's possible but really depends on how aware the mountain is of battlefield tactics. He was sent to commit as many terror attacks as possible and may have completely avoided the military targets Robb was baiting him with. He fled the first real battle he encountered without much of a fight so it's possible he would have avoided trying to push further into enemy territory if he sensed he was being baited. He had done what he was ordered to do and drawn a significant portion of the northern army away from the Lannister Frontline and bogged them down defending a worthless mill.


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

[User]
[The Mummy] What was the point of the Hom-dai in the first place?

Sure, Imhotep committed high treason, he was unhinged, and an unrivalled sorcerer.

But was the Hom-dai really necessary? Wouldn't a simple execution have worked? Did the Medjai not understand the stakes of cursing Imhotep with the Hom-dai? Eventually some bumfuck would break into the catacombs somehow and read from the Book of the Dead to bring him back. Then it's the end of the world.

[Assistant] It was meant to be eternal damnation. Imhotep's soul was condemned to eternal torture under the Hom Dai. They knew the risks. They knew what could happen. But Imhotep's crimes were so severe they were willing to risk it to punish him.


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

[User]
[Avatar] How does healing work?

Water benders can heal someone but how does that even work?

[Assistant] Waterbending can indirectly affect the body's *ki* energy. This is nothing special, since a *lot* of things can affect your *ki* (like jabbing pressure points with needles or your fingers) but waterbending is good at doing it with finesse. Healing techniques stimulate the body's *ki* pathways to maximize its ability to heal itself.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can't we just put nuclear power plants in 'the middle of nowhere' and use all the power they generate? Why place something potential dangerous anywhere near civilization?

[Assistant] If you place a nuclear plant in the middle of nowhere you need expensive power transmission lines to connect it to the users. You also need to build trains and roads to the area for the construction. You may also need to make a factory for the concrete and steelworks close by. All the construction workers need a place to live and later you need places for the workers at the power plant to live. The logistics is a lot harder as you can not just pop out to the hardware store if you need something. In Soviet they did this for administrative purposes. The Chernobyl power plant had 50,000 people living in the nearest city and they only provided the power plant with workers and hardware.


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

[User]
Can I repeatedly donate my liver since it can completely regenerate?

IIRC that the liver is the only organ capable of regenerating completely.

And should I?

[Assistant] The real issue is the blood supply and bile ducts. You have two main branches which allows you to donate half of your liver to someone else while maintaining one of the two branches for yourself. At this point you have nothing left to donate while still leaving yourself with functional liver as you would only have one set of vessels and duct.


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

[User] [The Matrix] What was the purpose of the mirror that Neo touched just as he was pulled out of the matrix?

[Assistant]
Just before the mirror turned liquid from Neo's perspective, it repaired itself. This was the first sign that his connection to the Matrix was becoming unstable and the simulation automatically searched for code flaws and other things that might cause the anomaly, and thus the mirror magically repaired before his eyes.

But since he was being forcibly removed, the simulation of the mirror (and most likely every other object in the room) began to completely destabilize and lose any sense of form and functionality, again, just from Neo's perspective and his personal simulation. Things like the chair and his clothes likely remained solid because of his deep-held belief of the realness of those objects, so they were able to keep their substance. But he saw the mirror fix itself, so the kernel of doubt was in his mind. The mirror was no longer conforming to his long held rules of reality, so when he reached out to it, the unstable and rapidly deteriorating code of the mirror distorted and began to act liquid. This was possibly the simulation's last ditch effort to retain SOME form of functionality and correlated "smooth and reflective" with "water", but of course, that "water" acted erratically and in a manner impossible to predict.

(Or if you're looking for the symbolic meaning, Neo is anointed by the healed/fixed mirror turning liquid. Saul is anointed with oil in 1 Samuel 10:1 and is swallowed up by God's Spirit as he becomes consumed by God)


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

[User]
[Lord of the Rings] Could Gandalf also make a ring and "pour" his powers into it if he wished to?

Would there be anything wrong if Gandalf, like Sauron, poured his powers into a ring of power and gave that ring to someone? Would that still be considered Gandalf "interfering" in the matters of middle earth?

[Assistant]
It's worth noting that creating such a ring is very very hard to do. It isn't just a matter of making a gold ring and shooting a bunch of your mana into it. There was a lot of esoteric craftsmanship that went into the magical rings. (however, it's worth noting that the act of pooing your power into something you create isn't unique to the rings of power, as Faenor  who made the silmarils and palantirs also was said to have been "diminished" after he made them, and that it would be impossible for him to recreate them since he had poored so much of himself into them)

Even Saruman, who was a maiar of aule (the valar of smiting and craftmanship, who sauron also was an apprentice of at the start), and who spent years upon years researching ringlore and how to recreate the one ring, couldn't even create a proper ring. He did create a magical ring, iirc he even created several, but none of them worked as well as the one ring, if they even worked at all. So, it's not only a power issue, it's that the secrets of actually making such rings is a secret only sauron and celebrimbor knew, since sauron was basically the one who invented it.

Now, add into this that gandalf is a maiar of manwe not aule, he has never studied ringlore and has never created anything more complex than some firework, then it's fair to say that the answer is no, gandalf can't create his own ring of power.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does the concrete not seem to be cracking, crumbling, or disintegrating when a skyscraper or a bridge swinging or wobbling in the event of an earthquake?

[Assistant] Concrete is famously quite weak in tension, i.e., it doesn't bend. But what can bend are the spaces between concrete panels and pillars. When you see video of a bridge bending and flexing, it's able to do that because it has been designed to be able to do that, with flexible joints between the concrete members. On the other hand, a building swinging or wobbling might well be vibrating beyond what its design can handle. In that case, you might not see visible cracks forming, but micro-fractures are likely forming throughout the material that could lead to collapse. This is one of the reasons we add steel rebar to concrete - steel is a lot better in tension and will hold the mass of concrete together even if some micro-fractures and cracks form in it.


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

[User] ELI5:If you play a game on emulator and you accelerate your emulation speed, time required to save the game decreases.How does that happen?

[Assistant] In many older cases, the screen or progress bar that you see was coded as a specific amount of time rather than a progression of the process. So when you speed up the clock on a game, that speeds up. Often, the time it took to actually save was well below the time it took the animation, they were just being cautious. Especially on consoles.


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

[User]
Why have gas prices been falling so quickly?

To my understanding, gas prices were high because of an increase in demand combined with frictions with the refining process (Ive heard partially due to lingering effects of Covid).

Whats been causing gas prices to decrease this quickly? Did the refining issues actually resolve this quickly, or is there something else going on? Citations would be appreciated if possible.

[Assistant] I work in the oil patch Natural Gas & Crude production is up 73 % in our Domestic GOM Gulf of Mexico . Plus 2 new LNG terminals on the US gulf coast to export LNG to Europe one In Lake Charles La. & one in Freeport Tx.


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

[User]
ELI5: If I file a restraining order against someone, what prevents me from "abusing" the order aka "trolling" the person by following them where they go?

So, if I found out the "restrained" was going on vacation, what stops me from boarding the same plane and forcing him to disembark?

If he's leaving for work, couldn't I stand in the middle of the street and block his driveway?

What stops me from follow him around and abusing my restraining order?

[Assistant]
Cop here:

The restraining order will usually specifically say not to, or you risk invalidating it.

Alternatively, the restraining order may essentially work both ways, so you'd be in violation.

Generally if the situation occurs where you show up to a public place they already are, they are not obligated to leave as long as they don't harass you.


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

[User]
ELI5: If a public company is owned by the shareholders, and a single shareholder owns more than 50 percent of the total stock, does that mean that a single person can control the company?

For example, if there are currently 100 shares of stock in a company, and I decide to buy 101, meaning there would be a total of 201 shares of the company with myself owning over 50%, does that mean I could make sole decisions of the company since I own more than half?

[Assistant]
That's not quite how buying shares work. There aren't infinite numbers of shares in each company - there are a set number. If a company has 100 shares, you can only buy 100 shares, not any more.

But if you bought 51 of the 100 shares, you would almost completely control the company. You could make decisions, appoint the board and would basically be in charge. However, there are some things which need a 75% vote to pass. You would need 75 shares in order ot pass these without challenge by other shareholders.


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

[User] ELI5: The suffixes after names in Japanese (e.g. -chan, -kun, -san)

[Assistant]
-chan is for when you call someone cute, or younger people.

-kun is for friends, your buddies.

-san is for adults and general people you want to adress politely

It's only used when addressing someone directly, not for yourself. It's basically just a way of indicating your relation to the person.


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

[User] What causes the randomness of internet speeds, even on Ethernet?

[Assistant] One factor is that when you are on the Internet you typically are using TCP. What TCP does is continually try to send more data. When the maximum is reached and the network is full a loss event will occur. When it does TCP will cut the amount of data it is trying to send, typically it will cut down to nothing and increase exponentially, or it will cut in half and increase linearly. This will continually happen and so the speed will always fluctuate.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] how does Earth's post scarcity economy affect the way inherently scarce things like antiques are aquired?

for example Sisko has "the best collection of ancient African antiques you'll ever see" but how did he get them?

[Assistant] There's no information on the civilian economy in Star Trek, but generally in post scarcity environments you have trade favors or other things that have scarcity. Maybe his dad's gumbo is the best gumbo on Earth. Maybe his blog about being a mediocre officer in starfleet is so amazing that he can charge people to look at it.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] How much firepower can a Borgs individual shields handle?

How long would I have to phaser an adapted Borg until it's shields failed? How could a Borg have such powerful shields in such a small mobile unit?

[Assistant]
First, understand that Borg shield design revolves around the principle of specific defense, as opposed to the conventional broad-spectrum defense.  When a Borg gets hit, it notifies the surrounding Drones that the enemy weapon is firing on a frequency of 123 hertz.  All Borg nearby shunt all their shield power into blocking that frequency.

Since all power is diverted to that frequency, it's dozens, if not hundreds of times more powerful than a conventional shield, which is trying to cover all possible frequencies.

Thus an attacker can fire until their power cell runs dry and never penetrate the Borg shield.

This does however, leave the Borg vulnerable to other frequencies.  A second attacker with a frequency of 321 hertz wouldn't encounter any resistance while firing.
Since the Borg defense is concentrated against the first frequency, that means the second attack would bypass their shields entirely - as if they weren't even there.

But they'd only get one or two shots before the Borg identify the frequency and adapt to that too.

Even blocking two specific frequencies still makes their shields impenetrable.  You'd need hundreds of weapons firing at different frequencies to burn through the personal shield.

It's much easier just to remodulate your phaser frequency every few shots in order to keep bypassing the shield.


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

[User]
ELI5: What does untendered contracts mean? Why is it such a huge scandal when uncovered?

TIA.

[Assistant] It means the contract was just handed to someone without comparing their offer with other potential offers. It means that you almost certainly haven't got the best value for money. It usually means that the deal was corrupt to a greater or lesser extent - eg the contract went to a relative or friend or someone who paid a bribe.


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

[User] Where do photons come from? When I, for example, set a log on fire, were the photons that come flying out of it always there and are being released now or are they being newly created?

[Assistant] Newly created.  The photons come from electrons which get jostled.   Chemical reactions let molecules release energy and this amounts to electrons in the outer shells of atoms creating photons.   Generally, a charge in motion creates an electromagnetic wave / field.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do video games today have very realistic looking cities and objects but relatively unrealistic looking characters?

[Assistant]
Mostly because humans are really good at detecting imperfections in humans. Likely the humans in video games have much more detail and work put to them, but the bar for a "realistic looking human" is much higher.

This is something you can also test yourself! You can likely draw a mostly realistic-looking house with perspective and a ruler, but drawing a realistic human is really damn hard. Even drawing realistic hands is a challenge most never conquer.


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

[User]
[Assassins Creed]What would be the consequences if the villains won in each game?

I am only talking about the historical villains.

[Assistant]
In most games, the main consequence would be the faster development of society and an increasingly orderly world that comes at the expense of personal freedom.

Al Mualim at the end of Assassins Creed 1 actually shows us the result of a completely unchecked Templar victory (complete loss of free will due to the Apple of Eden, Templars become Masters of a world full of zombies) though it is notable for the fact that he went too far *even for the Templars*.


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

[User] Is it possible to create a language that is faster than the language it is written in?

[Assistant] Depending on your definition of "create a language", yes. If you make a compiler in a very slow, interpreted language (say python), the result will probably be a lot faster than the language it was made in.


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

[User]
[DC] What could Superman discover about the planet that we don't currently know?

There isn't much of the Earth left unexplored but the places humans can't go pose no problem to Superman.  He could find out what is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and what the core of the planet is really like.  What else could he find out that remains a mystery to us?

[Assistant]
As you've said, most things on Earth are already explored, so Superman contribution would be about the same that unmanned probes can do - like discovering some extremophile life forms in extreme environments, carving up eternal ice in Arctic and Antarctic to see what's beneath, etc.

Of course, in DC, Earth has a hole on the pole, where there is a passage/portal into the  Skartaris, supposedly the place at the Earth's core, so there's that to discover too. Well, for the public to discover - adventurers of all kind have visited the place for ages.


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

[User]
[DC] What if Lex Luthor and Clark Kent were friends?

In the *Injustice* universe, Lex Luthor is a good guy, and Superman is evil.

What if this has been the case in the main universe, as well (Lex being good, I mean)?

If Lex and Clark were childhood friends instead of archenemies, would there be any significant changes to the DC universe?

[Assistant]
This is more or less the premise of Smallville. Clark and Lex grew up together, and were friends for a long, long time. It was only as Lex started making more and more immoral choices that they became enemies. If that didn't happen, he would have been a good and brilliant person at the head of one of the largest megacorporations in the world.

Generally speaking, Lex is capable of scientific advancements that will change the world. Look at the US in *Red Son*, for example. He's one of the few science-y comics characters that are able to resist the trope of Reed Richards Is Useless. Usually that trope means that scientific developments just go into more supers-related stuff and don't make a huge difference in the wider world, but we've seen Lex not fall into that trap regularly. If he's a good person, he can effect significant positive change in the world.


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

[User] [Star Wars] If only Sith deal in absolutes, then why does Yoda tell Luke: "Do or do not, there is no try"?

[Assistant]
What Yoda meant was a glorified way of saying go big or go home. Jedi go with the flow, they have no final plan, they just exist and do what they can to help others, with no way of knowing what the outcome is.

Sith, however, plot and scheme with a definitive end to their quest. They deal in absolutes, they don't just exist.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are secret recordings of Jared Fogle admissible in court if he didn't know he was being recorded and did not consent to it?

By no means trying to defend this guy's actions, but I thought secret recordings were not allowed in court cases unless both parties consented to the recording?

[Assistant]
It depends on the state. Many states are single party consent states, meaning so long as one person in the conversation knows they're being recorded, it's legal.

In other words, you can't plant a bug to spy on someone, but you can wear a wire.


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

[User]
How is it possible that something as large as a possible Planet 9 has completely evaded visual observation?

I've heard that if there actually is a Planet 9, it's more than 10x the size of Earth. I understand that Planet 9 is extremely far away, but it seems that something that large could not avoid being seen for so long. How can it be that all of Earth's astronomers have missed it for so long?

[Assistant]
It's a combination of a few things. First, it really is very far away. The amount of sunlight that it receives, if Mike Brown's estimates about distance being hundreds of AU are right (and he's pretty good at this), is *extremely* low. Then the light it receives is scattered back in every direction, not just towards Earth, so the amount of light we could see from it is again that much smaller again. It's likely so faint that you need a very powerful telescope to see it, and those haven't been around for a long time in the scheme of things.

Another reason is that the sky is big. There's lots of it to search, and there's a trade off between searching a wide area and searching deeply. It's possible that no one has looked at where it is hard enough to see it.

The last main reason is that you don't just have to detect it, you have to notice that it's unusual. It's so far away, that means taking a few images separated by a few hours or days and checking to see if there are very small movements of any objects between frames. If there are, it suggests that the object is in the solar system, but again it's probably so far away that these shifts are very small, requiring someone searching the right way specifically for these kinds of shifts. Otherwise, it would just look like a star. If you looked again years later and didn't see it, you might just assume it was something else that's much more common, maybe a dwarf nova or other transient object that happened to be in outburst during the last observation and isn't anymore. Actually realizing that it's a planet that far out requires a very particular type of search that simply hasn't been done, because it's hard and takes lots of time and there wasn't a good reason to do it before now.


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

[User]
[Naruto] Is the superhuman strength of ninjas fuelled by their chakra? Or is it just pure physical ability?

Rock Lee, for example, can only use Taijutsu, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have chakra, it just means he can't express it through ninjutsu, genjutsu, etc. He can still do shit like run on trees, and other passive ninja abilities, according to the wiki.

What about his blatantly superhuman strength? Is that fuelled by chakra reserves? Or is his body really just that developed? If a ninja were to lose *ALL* of their chakra, would they still possess their superhuman physical strength and speed? Would Naruto, Sasuke and the like still be beyond human in fighting capability, even if they were to lose all their chakra?

[Assistant] In that world everyone has chakra. It's kind of like the life blood of the soul. So that means really it's a mix. Even a strong man lifting a bundle of sticks an average man couldn't is using his chakra to some degree. Ninjas just train to have a far better control of it allowing them to lift more, and do more incredible feats.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do leaves from a branch that dies stay on trees but leaves that naturally die in autumn fall off easily?

[Assistant]
In the fall trees use their leaves to deposite materials that would be detrimental to them over the winter. As such they are designed to be released, and the leaves falling off the branch is something that the plants evolved to do. The death of the connective tissue that keeps the leaves attached is supposed to happen before the leaves die, as it reduces the possibility of damage or infection on the rest of tree.

When a branch dies, both the leaves and the connective tissues die, so it might be easy to break, but it is all still connected.


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

[User]
What do we mean when we say that an eagle has better eyesight than a human?

For instance, is its picture just zoomed in? Is it sharper, so sharp that it can so details from really far away? Are the colors brighter? Can it zoom in and out on command like a camera? Can it sharpen and blur like a camera? What does better eyesight mean?

[Assistant]
There are many metrics to compare. For example, Human eyes take up only 5% of our head, eagle eyes occupy 50%. The back of their eyes is bigger and flatter, physically allowing for a bigger picture on their retinas, which are  more densely covered in light detector cells (cones). Eagles see clearly for up to 5x further than a human with perfect vision.

As to colors, we humans can see three basic colors with three different types of cones. Eagles see four. Every color is more vivid, separation between shades is sharper and ultraviolet light can be seen. Humans with a tetrachromatic mutation reportedly see 100 million colors - a hundred times more than normal. It's likely similar with eagles.

Even their field of vision is about double to that of humans. We only win with our ability to see in the dark, as eagle eyes have such a large number of cones, that they only have a low number of rods, which work in low-light.

Edit: Eagles have four types or cones, not five. Thanks for the correction!


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

[User]
[back to the future] How did the doc keep the research and construction of the time machine a secret from Marty?

He didn't have much space to hide his reasearch, considering that his garage was his home/lab...And seeing that the flux capacitor was his life's work since the 50's,  why not confide in Marty, his only friend and lab assistant?

[Assistant]
Sometimes it's nice to keep a project secret until it's finished. Andew Wiles, for instance, kept his work on Fermat's Last Theorem secret from his colleagues for decades until it was finished. That was *his* life's work, but he kept a steady stream of other publications coming out while he was working on that in secret.

Also, remember that Doc Brown had to do some *incredibly* illegal and dangerous stuff to get his hands on the plutonium he needed to power the time machine. That's gonna get you into serious trouble with both the Libyans and the US Government. Doc couldn't in good conscience get Marty involved in that, so he kept the whole time machine project secret from him for the whole time.


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

[User]
CMV: Everyone should stop tipping

The main argument for tipping in the US comes down to the fact that employers pay their service staff far below minimum wage because they expect the difference to be made up from tips.

However, it is also true that if an employee does not make minimum wage after tips, it is the responsibility of the employer to cover the difference. Theoretically, if all tips stopped at once, then employers would be forced to pay minimum wage to all employees, which would eventually have to lead to a change in wage structure in the service industry. Moreover, in my opinion tipping, due to its cash-y nature, allows for shady accounting and tax evasion and in the end benefits employers more than employees.

I'm sure there'll be a counter argument saying that minimum wage is not a living wage and that tips allow service industry people to survive. I do not disagree with this, but I think this is more a problem with minimum wage than with tipping and is therefore a different argument altogether.

[Assistant]
People aren't stupid. If the system changes, they'll adapt their behavior.

Waiters probably aren't working their ass off for a tip they know isn't coming, so they'll provide the bare minimum service that won't get them fired.

The restaurant isn't just going to eat the cost of suddenly paying their waiters minimum wage. They're going to jack up their prices to offset the increase in wage expenses.

You'll wind up paying a roughly similar amount of money for the same food with worse service.


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

[User] What makes us wake up after we sleep?

[Assistant]
Circadian rhythm. It prefers to go to bed and wake up at a routine time because your body is more efficient that way. It's also effected by the amount of light around you, which is why some people can stay up really late starring at a computer screen or their cell phone, because they are simulating light.
Also there was a study shown that if someone anticipating waking up early the next day they would start making stress hormones an hour or two before they woke up which allowed them to wake up less groggy. Those who didn't expect to wake up didn't produce those hormones and woke up very tired.


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

[User]
[Tropic Thunder/MCU] Actor Kirk Lazarus is set to play one of the original six Avengers in adaptation of The Battle Of New York. What does he do to prepare for each possible role?

Kirk Lazarus in the universe of Tropic Thunder is a world renowned method actor who will go to *any* length to perfectly capture the character he's playing. In the upcoming Battle Of New York movie set to come out in 2021, he has been cast to play one of the six leads who helped save the world(Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye). How would he prepare to play each of these characters?

Bonus: What MCU characters could you see Tugg Speedman, Jeff Portnoy, and Alpa Chino playing, and how would each of them do?

Edit: Just realized that half the world is snapped in 2021. Just pretend that Infinity War/Endgame doesn't play into this What If? scenario.

[Assistant]
**Thor:** Lazarus goes to live in Iceland, listens to a lot of black metal, studies Old Norse, and joins an Asatru cult. Lazarus being Lazarus, this particular group of neo-pagans are also neo-Nazis (apologies to actual neo-pagans, most of whom are obviously not neo-Nazis). He arrives on set sporting a full sleeve of what he maintains are "runic tattoos", but which are instantly recognisable to any scholar of mid 20th century history. The resulting scandal tanks his career, until Jodie Foster casts him in her film The Beaver.

**Iron Man:** Lazarus drinks heavily, sleeps with a series of models, and is then arrested trying to sell a shipload of antitank missiles to what turns out to be an undercover ATF agent. He maintains that this was preparation for a role, but since the rest of his behaviour was indistinguishable from the regular Hollywood star stereotype the judge doesn't buy it.

**Captain America:** A course of HGH, steroids, and 12 hours a day of working out and training in boxing and judo still can't do anything to fix Lazarus's greatest weakness: His height. His insistence on doing all his own stunts (okay, most of his own stunts) clashes with his insistence on doing every scene standing on an apple box. He also insists on adopting stereotypical 1940s attitudes (with little awareness of Steve Rogers' actual background in the socialism-heavy melting pot of 1930s New York), referring to all women on set as "broads" or "dames", and getting himself publicly called out for racism by Samuel L Jackson.

**Hawkeye:** This role requires no preparation whatsoever.

**Bruce Banner/Hulk:** Over the course of eight months, Lazarus spends his evenings studying theoretical physics, completing almost 90 per cent of a PhD and accidentally discovering several new and interesting things about how gamma radiation interacts with \*insert science stuff here\*. His days are spent working as a teaching assistant in a kindergarten for "problematic" children. As a result, his performance as the Hulk is raved about by critics and audiences alike, he wins yet another Oscar, and the MCU is expanded to include a spin-off Hulk trilogy, rights issues be damned.

**Black Widow:** Lazarus begins living as a woman, in Russia, while training extensively in firearms, infiltration, and sambo. She perfects her Russian accent, takes a course of hormone treatments, and legally changes her name to Kimberly. Nobody is quite sure what to make of all this; the mainstream media makes token gestures towards being sensitive and polite while also getting them clickbait headlines going. The film is utterly overshadowed by Kimberly Lazarus's journey, which her PR team insists is just preparation for a role. Finally, she gives a press conference in which she explains that her endless re-invention was part of a desperate search for her true self, and she's finally found what she was looking for.

The film tanks at the box office, Kimberly Lazarus's career is never the same, but all indications are that she's happier than she's ever been.


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

[User]
Absorption-power Entities and The Emperor.

What would happen if a being with the power to absorb the power of others were to use their powers on The Emperor? For example, Cell from Dragonball Z or Kirby from Kirby? Let's assume the two universes were connected, and the absorber would be free to stay in the Emperor's universe or return to their own.

[Assistant]
They would become psychic hubs able to channel the psychic potential of humanity. And they would need to quickly sit down to prevent the warp tearing open consuming Terra, causing the fall of Imperium and the end of humanity, which is also the end of the psychic power and usefulness of the gained ability.

Cell could absorb C17, C18, but only the Ki of anyone else (and the body, where ever that all went). Being dead and a tormented composite being, the Emperor is not a worthwhile Ki meal. As Ki is life energy along with will and an internal harmony/being oneself, not a scale on which the corpse emperor ranks highly.


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

[User]
Are/were there any "anti-reason" and "anti-logic" philosophers?

Today, if someone claims people shouldn't think for themselves nor trust logic nor reason, we immediately get shocked and start getting suspicious of the person who said it. (The only modern example I'm aware of are some Jehovah's Witnesses)

Historically (and especially outside of the West) were there philosophers or thinkers that advocated that reason and logic are nearly worthless?

[Assistant]
I don't think its quite what you're looking for but:

Adorno and Horkheimer in *Dialectic of Enlightenment* don't say that logic and reason are *wrong*, but believe that reason/logic as a worldview brought to hegemonic status by the Enlightenment is responsible for the reduction of life to formal and operational processes and enables domination both of nature by humans, as well as the domination of humans by other humans.

Thomas Docherty also uses Gottlob Frege's discussion of 1+1=2 to suggest that mathematics, in order to allow 1+1 =2, has to strip the '1' of its content and reduce it to a pure formal logic; and that pure formal logic, applied to political structures like democracy where it is believed that simply adding votes or viewpoints together creates something greater, is a mistake.

Edit: If anyone is interested in the Docherty piece it's in his book "Confessions: The Philosophy of Transparency", Chapter 6 onwards from the subheading "Of persuasion and the confessional ground of judgement".