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

[User]
cmv: Most cops in uniforms are not that different from LARPERS.

Obviously, not all of them, but after the recent episode in Uvalde and the release of cams, my cousin in middle school started referring to the men in uniform as larpers as they strutted around looking big and mean outside the school and doing nothing inside the hallways. It got me to thinking about the whole stolen valor situation as well. It's easy to be a cop on pleasant traffic stops, DUI, low-stress situation. It's not easy to be a cop in high-stress situation. And when you can't handle the high-stress situation, or rather, become totally immobilized in these situations, you are basically a wannabe tough guy living out some weird fantasy.

I used to want to be a cop from the age of 2 up until the age of 14. It was cool to want to be a cop and have a gun and be in situational power as a kid because that was "kid fantasy." But once I actually researched the roles of cops and the shit that they potentially might have to face, such as death, I realized I didn't have it in me to put my life at risk to protect others. It took me an hour of teenage thinking to make that decision.

So there you have it. I became an accountant, instead. Off-topic, I guess I am larping, too, because I'm not that good at math.

[Assistant]
A big thing about LARP is consent and happiness. You dont continue when someone withdraws consent / wants to stop. You are playing a **team** game where everyone involved is working together even the enemy to have overal fun and happiness for everyone.

I think its pretty clear the police you are talking about dont do that. They are just bullies. Lets not talk down LARPers wth those cops.


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

[User] [DOOM] Seraphim exist, so Heaven probably does too. What's it like compared to Hell?

[Assistant]
Head-canon:
Heaven is a light, golden, breathtakingly beautiful, totalitarian dimension where souls are forced to worship endlessly to fuel the seraphim war machine.

The DOOM Marine was created by the collective subconscious of mankind; millennia of stories and war preparing us.  Because deep inside, where we all stuff truths we don't want to look too closely at, we have known that in order to truly be free and control our own destiny, we must defeat not just Hell, but Heaven as well.


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

[User] ELI5: How do bike gears change the amount of work you do but stay the same speed?

[Assistant]
Changing gears doesn't change the amount of work you need to do. It changes the amount of force you need to apply to the pedals, but the trade-off is that you need to make more rotations to go the same speed. For instance, perhaps one gear has you making one revolution per second with a force of 100N, but lower gear might have you make 1.5 revolutions per second with a force of 67N, and a higher gear might have you make half a revolution per second, but will require a force of 200N.

Since work is the force multiplied by the distance, it's always the same, different gears just allow a different ratio of force to distance.


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

[User]
[The Incredibles] Why do all the superheroes have powers, but all the supervillains use some form of technology to do their dastardly deeds?

None of the villains in either movie have super powers: Bomb Voyage, Syndrome, The Underminer, Screenslaver. Whats up with that?

[Assistant]
It's implied that the government/military are more than enough to handle most villains in this universe, as compared to something like Marvel or DC. It's very possible that any villains with superpowers were quietly taken care of by a government black ops team for being too dangerous, or something similar.

EDIT: Alternatively, considering we know mind wipe technology exists, it's possible supervillains are reprogrammed to be heroes.


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

[User]
[Invincible] Why didn't Green Ghost just turn intangible?

When Omni-Man killed the Guardians, why didn't Green Ghost just turn intangible and get away?  Or better yet, turn herself and Omni-Man intangible so he couldn't hurt anyone?  Maybe this second suggestion is too problematic because her powers only work with people she can control or something; it's not very well delineated.  But she could at least have turned intangible herself and gotten away to tell someone.  You might blame her horror at what was going on or her inexperience, but this is the Guardians of the Globe, the world's premier super team.  I find it hard to believe that Green Ghost had never strategized facing a superior foe and planned a getaway or a way to neutralize the foes' strength with her phasing powers.

[Assistant] Omni-Man threw ~~Red Rush's~~ Darkwing's corpse at her, her instinct was to catch him, which required her to be solid, and then he followed it up with an immediate killing blow. It was 100% calculated on the part of Omni-Man.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] A tiny amount of red matter is used by Spock, why is there a massive amount on the ship?

Im going by what I remember from the first reboot movie- Spock apparently uses a tiny bit of red matter to...do whatever it was he needed to do- but on the ship he was on, there seemed to be a massive amount. Plus, want it what the Romulans used to destroy Vulcan too?

Why would such a large amount be held on any sort of ship, when a tiny amount can totally destroy a planet like Vulcan?

[Assistant]
We can only guess. Maybe larger collections are safer. Maybe Spock's future ship was designed to study the red matter, or use it as a scientific instrument, and a large clump was needed for his work. Maybe it was part of an experimental engine or weapon. Maybe owning red matter was a war crime in the future, and it all needed to be stored on a ship permanently to preserve a Federation-enforced legal fiction that it was perpetually in transit.

We'll almost certainly never know. For sure, old Spock wouldn't be flying around with *that* much of something *that* dangerous without good reason, though.


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

[User] [Star Wars] By herself, how competent as a leader was Queen Amidala's doppelganger in Phantom Menace?

[Assistant] At least according to those new books (queens shadow and queens peril) Padme's main double Sabe was one of the best to do the job, and at times could fill for Padme exactly. She's not however expected to be an actual leader. Or, more specifically nobody was supposed to see through the disguise, and their initial setup was to hold handmaindens in confidence, so Sabe could be relatively sure to make decisions that Padme would make herself.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is the steering inverted on motorcycles at high speeds?

E.g., when I turn my handlebars left and I'm going 40+ mph, the bike tilts and turns to the right.

[Assistant]
You are turning the front wheel to the left, the wheel goes left slightly, and the entire bike (and you) keeps going straight. The bike goes from looking like

this: l

to looking like this: /

See how the bottom of the bike moves to the left? you have turned the front wheel slightly left, moving the bottom of the bike to the left, and now you and the top of the bike are leaning right. In order to keep from falling over, you bring the handlebars to the right and make the turn to the right.

This happens the same at any speed, but feels more drastic at higher speeds. Most people don't think about this motion when you turn, but it happens in motorcycles and bicycles. This is just how they turn.


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

[User]
Does a nuclear weapon detonating in a vacuum create the characteristic double flash?

From what I've read, the shockwave of the nuclear detonation briefly obscures the light from the nuke, which creates the double flash used by satellites to verify an atmospheric nuclear test.

But would a nuclear detonation in space cause the same effect? I did not see any mention of it for nuclear weapons tested in space.

[Assistant]
Wikipedia says,

> This signature, with a double intensity maximum, is characteristic of atmospheric nuclear explosions and is the result of the Earth's atmosphere becoming opaque to visible light and transparent again as the explosion's shock wave travels through it. [...]  The effect is unambiguous for explosions below about 30 kilometres (19 mi) altitude, but above this height a more ambiguous single pulse is produced.

Without air you won't get this effect.


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

[User]
[harrypotter] can you perform the Killing curse without a wand?

I know that some magical cultures dont use wands so can they use Ava kerdava? With no wand?

[Assistant] Yes.  Wands (and rings, and staves, and whatnot) are just focusing devices.  Spells can be performed without them by a sufficiently skilled wizard.  That said, it's kind of hard to practice the killing curse, so getting enough practice to do it without a wand (you have to learn it separately from learning to do it with one) has most likely not been successfully done by anyone.


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

[User]
Supposing Trump wins, as it seems he might, what impact might this have on (graduate) research funding in the US?

Is a Trump presidency another reason to not do a PhD?

[Assistant]
I was just wondering this same thing. A quick search reveals much the same as his views on just about every other subject. He supports it but has no clear plan. He answers questions when asked, stresses it's important and he will do something about it. But he hasn't stressed it unless directly asked.

So, he's basically a black box.


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

[User]
What is academia's take on proofreading of theses?

Hello everyone,

I am an "English as a second language" author. I published few papers before. However, they have all been proofread by my supervisor/co-authors, and significantly improved. In all cases of my writing, there were no severe coherence and cohesion issues. Mostly a suboptimal academic tone, and some unclarities (super long sentences). Anyway, I'm expected to submit my thesis in September. And i wonder what is the general consensus in academia regarding proofreading of a thesis by a third-party. My university policy allows it, and in fact some colleagues were required to do so by examining/ supervisory committee.

I'm not very happy with my writing skills. I tried taking some short online courses but I only improved marginally. My thesis is already completed and i began the polishing stage. There are no editing and style issues I'm very well familiar with the ACS style. It's just the language that I'm not very happy with.

What are your thoughts on this? I'm quite reluctant and feeling a bit guilty and embarrassed to seek for help in this. My supervisor offered to help a bit in proofreading, but of course he's very busy, and I don't think he'll have time to properly proofread a 60000 words document.

[Assistant] Do you have any labmates or grad program peers to get feedback from? Id say its encouraged because scientific writing depends on getting feedback to improve - you can double check with your advisor if its okay.


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

[User]
[X-Men,Marvel] Why is there such a low number of X gene positive mutants in Wakanda ? the only one I can think of is Gentle and his X-gene was blamed on his foreign father. Do Wakandans not carry the gene even though it was proliferating in the human species before Wakanda existed?

Where are all of Wakanda's mutants???

[Assistant]
Wakanda famously existed in almost complete isolation until recently.

If there weren't any X-Genes in the population when they went into isolation- very possible considering how rare it is- that's it. No mutants.


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

[User]
Eli5 - how are western economies sustainable?

I live in the uk, but the more I think about it, the more I realise that it just seems to be series of office workers propping up each others salaries. Theres no (or small) base that actually produces goods, the farmers or the labourers as such. Why?

[Assistant]
Modern and wealthy economies tend towards being service based (it is one of their defining characteristics. Think about a typical "wealthy" society - just the basics but it can be extrapolated

1) Food - how many times have you encountered dysentery? Food containing things that will kill you in days/weeks? How about malnutrition? Where does the infrastructure for food safety and distribution come from?

2) Healthcare - We expect specialist care, modern and available treatment. Something like COVID-19 spreading even 150 years ago would have multiple times more death. Few people die from treatable diseases and many more diseases have become temporary inconveniences rather than a death sentence. If we fall and break an arm or leg, we don't expect that there is much chance of amputation or death through sepsis - yet that wasn't the case just a few hundred years ago.

3) Education. Where does the infrastructure to support specialist training, the basic education needed, all those things we take for granted. Basic education and literacy being universal, etc are all fairly modern. Just go to less developed countries - this kind of thing doesn't come automatically. Scientific research, technological progress can only take place within a society that has the resources to foster education from the bottom up.

4) Safety - How many people die in factories and workplaces? How many have their health and lifespan destroyed by their working environment? Contrast this to poorer nations. How are these regulations enforced? How are these improvements put in place? The legal framework and enforcement mechanisms, inspections, licensing, etc are there for a reason.

Entertainment, transportation, communication, finance etc etc. The modern economy is complex and delivers a standard of living for the average person that not even kings of 200 years ago could experience. If 80% of the people are working the land or engaged in primary production, there is zero chance that there would be enough leftover labor and resources to deliver these outcomes to the average person.


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

[User]
When your body creates new blood what happens to the blood that it's replacing it with?

The question says it all I hope.

[Assistant] The Kupffer cells in your liver go to work. The iron gets taken out of the hemoglobin to be used in the new cells (that's why humans do not need much iron in their diet). The rest of the hemoglobin gets converted to bilirubin (a building block for bile in the digestive tract). The cell itself doesn't have a nucleus so it usually just gets pooped out.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do newspaper companies print so many coloured newspapers, selling them dirt cheap, and yet if I printed a single newspapers-worth, I'd easily spend 20x the price of a newspaper on ink.

I hear all the time that we are often paying for the ink, rather than the printer, but how much of a scam is it and are there cheaper alternatives?

[Assistant]
Not all printing methods are created equal. Your personal inkjet printer is a marvel of technology (and the cost heavily weighted toward tiny capacity consumables) but it is not the least expensive method of printing. Most high capacity printing is going to be done by what is called "offset printers", a method where metal plates are etched with a pattern that conveys ink to a rubber blanket and from there to the paper.

Using an offset printer requires significant expense and lead time to make the metal plates and set up the run, but once going it is an extremely inexpensive method to make printed media in huge quantities. A high upfront cost spread across hundreds of thousands of pages becomes trivial. The limitations of this method are obvious though, it cannot deal with variable data (you want to print different things) and the machine itself will fill a large room rather than sit on your desk.


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

[User]
[Snowpiercer] SPOILERS

So does humanity go extinct at the end of the movie? Because 2 people are not enough to repopulate the human race,and its been said that everyone else on the planet is dead.

[Assistant]
Everything in the movie up to that point - humanity trying to stop global warming, Wilford building the train, Minsoo's decade-long hoarding of explosives, the rear passengers doing what they had to do to survive, the long string of failed rebellions - is an unbroken chain of failure and corruption. But it is also a tale of unlikely redemptions, of love and hope, of people refusing to accept their end, people fighting not just for themselves but for each other.

That polar bear at the end of the movie is a living restatement of the movie's premise. It is proof that life is possible, that there is hope - but the embodiment of hope is also the embodiment of terrible danger. (That bear had to be fucking pumped to have a trainful of tenderized humans and frozen steaks delivered to it.)

Are there only two survivors? Are they probably doomed? Is humanity itself doomed? Any answer but "yes" would betray Snowpiercer's integrity.

But will they fight, to the very end? Will they try to survive, and more than that to remain human? Will they hope, and love, and fight for each other? Again - Snowpiercer must say "yes."

I fucking LOVE that movie.


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

[User] ELI5: how come when you pour water out of some glasses it pours smooth but some times it goes down the side?

[Assistant]
Water tends to want to "stick" to glass, and other surfaces. This is called adhesion. This is one of the forces acting to turn the water as it pours. The faster you pour, the more force that is required to turn the liquid to keep it attached to the glass. At some point, the water is moving too fast for the adhesive force to turn it, and it detaches from the surface.

Here's a kind of similar analogy... Imagine you're running down a hall with a hardwood floor in socks, and there is a corner you want to turn around at the end. If you're running slowly, you can probably stay close to the wall. If you're sprinting, you're either going to slip or you have to take a wider turn and "detach" from the wall.


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

[User] Do any plant cells undergo apoptosis in a similar fashion to animal cells?

[Assistant] Yes. All the time for hollow cavities, shedding leaves, and things like that. From DNA damage is also possible, but far less common than in animals because any tumors would be far more localized so it's not as important to prevent.


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

[User] [X-Men: First Class] What happened to the nuclear energy Sebastian Shaw absorbed?

[Assistant] When Magneto sent the coin through Shaw's head, Shaw was full of energy. He was primed to detonate like a nuclear weapon. It seems that the energy remained in his body. If his death were any more physically jarring, perhaps he would have detonated.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are individuals given a much lighter sentence if they accept a plea deal and plea guilty versus if a jury finds them guilty?

[Assistant]
Because that was the agreement, if they plea guilty, they'll face a lighter sentence.

It's in the interest of the entire justice system for cases to not be bogged down unnecessarily, if someone is willing to not waste the courts time and money proving them guilty then they're rewarded with a slightly more mild sentence.

Also in some cases the prosecution (people who are against the guy being charged) might not have a 100% solid case so a plea is less "risk" from their perspective.


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

[User]
[DareDevil] Why does Matt Murdock pretend to be blind?

Okay, I get that technically he IS blind, but with his superpowers and echo-location he can basically 'see' everything around him, other than maybe colours or writing.

So why the need to act like he can't see at all? If it's to make it less obvious to his enemy that he's DareDevil, why cover his eyes when he fights?

Does he claim some kind of disability allowance for his condition?

[Assistant] His eyes don't work. They don't look like they work, they don't behave how other peoples do. He can't pretend that there's nothing wrong with them, so when he acts like he can see then questions start to get asked; how is he doing it, how good is it, his ability to sense stuff is eerily similar to that DareDevil fellow isnt it? It's best really just to not open that can of worms.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Was Palpatine a 'good sith'?

In regards to the Rule of Two, and the ideals set forth by Bane, was Palpatine a 'good sith', or could it be argued he defied the Rule of Two utterly, which is what lead to his death and the downfall of the Sith as a whole?

[Assistant]
It's true that Palpatine flouted the Rule of Two, but that's because he understood that the Rule of Two had a purpose, namely to strengthen the Sith Order so that they could eventually destroy the Jedi and rule the galaxy.  And he did that.

So think of it not as Palpatine showing contempt for the Rule of Two.  Instead, think of it as Palpatine being a *culmination* of the Rule of Two, the ultimate Sith Lord that generations of Sith have been building towards.


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

[User]
[Spider-man] How does Spider-man stick to walls with gloves and boots on?

I've always wondered this.  I know he sticks to walls in general with his cilia, or whatever it is that lets bugs cling to things, but he has gloves and boots on!  How does this work?

[Assistant]
He doesn't actually have little hooks in his fingertips. He has the power to "enhance the flux of inter-atomic attractive forces on surfaces he touches, increasing the coefficient of friction between that surface and himself." This works through fabric if it is thin enough.

He has some suits that are made of thicker material (e.g. invisibility suits, armored suits etc.) but he's a scientific genius and has presumably invented a way to make his other costumes equally sticky.


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

[User]
ELI5: How Do Hotel Star Ratings Work?

Who decides what star rating is awarded to a hotel? What are the most important sources for these ratings? Who decides which hotels get reviewed by "professionals" and which ones get rated on websites like yelp?

[Assistant] Most hotel star rating systems indicate the amenities/luxuries  available at a hotel, rather than their quality.  A one star hotel offers basic services (room and bath, table and chair, reception staff, etc).  A two star hotel adds things like a reading light, breakfast buffet, offer of toothpaste and other toiletries.  And on up to valet parking, concierge, 24 hour room service, one hour ironing, turndown service and other luxurious features.


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

[User]
Can our DNA be used to guess at our fingerprints?

Or vice versa?

Are the patterns on our hands and feet are result of specific alleles in our genes, or are they a result of our environment instead of our DNA?

[Assistant]
Not much is known about the specifics, but enough is known to answer your question.

We know that there is a genetic component to fingerprint formation.  For instance, a mutation to the regulatory gene SMARCAD1 can yield adermatoglyphia--a rare condition that results in no fingerprints forming.

We also know that environmental factors must be at play in the womb, as identical twins do not have identical fingerprints.


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

[User]
[Fallout] How people are still phisically intact? How come they don't have a leg sticking out of their asses or have four arms and stuff? Why are they ''normal?''

I mean, there are no mutated-weirdo people other than ghouls. And how in the hell ghouls live that long? Shouldn't they die sooner than normal people due to radiation poisoning?

[Assistant]
Mutations dont really work that way. The few animals seen with extra heads or something are extremely rare cases of animals surviving, adapting, and mutating in irradiated zones for generations.

The nuclear war left many areas only slightly irradiated. Many humans not in vaults were able to survive by not being near any blast zones, and they knew enough about radiation to avoid heavily irradiated zones, and also possessed the technology (like Rad Away) to stave off its effects.

Ghouls dont get radiation poisoning either. They are people that have mutated to not only survive, but thrive in irradiated places. They are immune to radiation, and anatomically, no longer human.


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

[User] Why can Hubble take amazingly high def shots of distant galaxies, but Pluto remains a blur?

[Assistant]
If a galaxy is a billion times as far away as Pluto, but a trillion times as big, it will appear 1000 times larger in the sky. The Andromeda galaxy, for example, is 5.3 billion times as far away from Earth as Pluto is, but is 560 trillion times as wide. That's why it's so much bigger in the sky.

There's also the issue that galaxies emit a lot more light than Pluto emits or reflects, so you have to devote a lot more telescope time to Pluto than to a galaxy to get the same quality image, other factors aside.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does food have to be labeled "not a significant source of ___"

I knew my diet green tea wouldn't be a significant source of calories from fat or iron. I figured that would be a given. Is there a reason they have to include that label on everything? Also why not do it with everything else rather than just the limited few?

[Assistant] The FDA requires all food items to have nutrition labels. Certain substances are required on these labels, like fat, protein, carbs, sodium, cholesterol, Vitamins A and C, iron, and calcium (I am unsure if this is a complete list). If a food item however has no significant amount of any number of these items though they are allowed instead of listing zero to list that, it can help to save space especially if it is true of many of the required categories.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are metal shavings flammable?

im just curious how Metal shavings of something like Steel can be flammable even though the metal itself ( and most others) do not combust like that.

[Assistant]
Metals can oxidize- this is what happens when they rust or otherwise react with oxygen. Usually this happens slowly, since only the surface is exposed to air and rust/oxides on the surface actually block the air from touching fresh metal underneath.

Rusting/oxidizing produces heat. A rusty nail is rusting very slowly so the heat is easily dissipated and not noticed.

If you shave the metal super-thin, thee is more surface area that can react with oxygen, and if it's thin enough it will react *very quickly*, and the small amount of heat will help feed the reaction even more.

Rusting is just burning *really slowly*.


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

[User] ELI5: What happens when you "unpop" your ears?

[Assistant] U open up  a tube known as the Eustachian tube which connects the middle ear to your pharynx. This balances the air pressure in ur ear which is what u hear as a pop. Some examples would be popping ur ear during a flight, esp during take off/landing.


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

[User]
[Jurassic Park (1993 movie)] Why were the dinosaurs getting sick?

They make a pretty big deal of it with the Triceratops (pustules, weakness, balance issues, dilated pupils and of course the cyclical, every-six-weeks nature of it, but never say.) Then, later, when a brachiosaurus wakes Dr. Grant and the kids in the tree, they notice that it too, is sick. And yet, as far as I know the question of what was wrong was never answered. Considering how much time was spent showing us this, I cant believe there isnt supposed to be an answer.

[Assistant]
Triceratops have gizzards. They weren't finding the berries in the feces because they weren't eating them, they were accidentally taking them in when they swallowed stones, and regurgitating them with said stones. While there's no paleontological evidence for triceratops specifically having a gizzard, it is known that its relative Pisttacosaurus had one, so it isn't too surprising, it just wasn't something Harding had figured out since the Trikes started getting sick.

Cloned dinosaurs are way, way too expensive for Hammond to let them kill and dissect one of each species just to figure out details of its anatomy.


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

[User] What is the difference between a brain when its sexually aroused and when it's not? Could we replicate this to synthesise aphrodisiacs?

[Assistant]
The difference in the brain between one task and another, or no task at all, is activation of a network of brain regions. Most individual brain regions will contribute to more than one task, but the constellation of activation may be different depending on what that task is. Artificially activating one network would involve stimulating every network area at once. This might be done with electrical or magnetic fields outside the head inducing activity in the cortex, but specific activation like this could need electrodes implanted all through the brain.

This doesn't even touch the fact that we don't really know much about how brain areas coordinate themselves or the nature of information travelling between them.

Sorry to be a downer, but you're better off with Barry White and a bottle of Merlot to get someone in the mood. Brain surgery probably isn't worth it!


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

[User] [Harry Potter] Are the owls that deliver the mail magic owls with heightened intelligence and such, or are they just regular owls that were trained by wizards?

[Assistant]
There are presumably magical variants of otherwise ordinary creatures found in the wizarding world. For example, in Prisoner of Azkaban, when Ron was shopping for some tonic for his pet rat at Magical Menagerie, Harry and co. ran across a rabbit who was able to transform itself into a top hat at will. And the shopkeeper also pointed out a set of black mice who were not only more intelligent than the average mouse (and able to skip rope with their tails) but also had a longer-than-normal lifespan compared to an ordinary garden mouse.

Granted, it is possible that these were normal, garden variety animals that were captured by wizards and enchanted to gain higher intelligence, longer lifespans, and magical abilities, but since the shopkeeper offered to replace Scabbers rather than offering to improve Scabbers with these spells, it's unlikely (unless the shopkeeper is a middleman that buys and sells the enchanted animals but is unable to enchant them himself).


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

[User] [Game of Thrones] Why are the Greyjoys considered a major house in Westeros? They're essentially pirates, wouldn't that really lend them to being considered scum by the Lannisters or Tyrells?

[Assistant] The iron islands are considered a nation. Nations have rulers and Greyjoy leads the iron islands. They're considered lesser than everybody else but still accepted to keep them in the greater 7 kingdoms.


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

[User] ELI5: What causes us to lose consciousness when we go to sleep?

[Assistant] We don't.  You're not unconscious when you're asleep.  Your level of consciousness has just being altered.  Unconscious means you're not able to react to any stimuli.  A sleeping person will react to stimuli that is strong enough, like an alarm clock.  An unconscious person won't wake up just because an alarm clock is going off otherwise that's how they'd wake up people from a coma.


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

[User]
ELI5:If deep freezing only puts bacteria to sleep rather than killing them, then why does deep freezing sushi/sashimi fish makes them safe to consume raw?

I've been told that deep freezing food doesn't kill all the bacteria and only puts them to sleep. However, when I look up about sushi/sashimi, they often say that freezing the fish is one of the things they do to kill bacteria.  What's the true story here?

[Assistant]
I think you're confusing bacteria with parasites. Freezing kills harmful parasites like tapeworms and roundworms.

The bacteria you're concerned about has nothing to do with the fish itself and everything to do with who handles it. If there is any harmful bacteria on your sushi, I'd blame your chef for not washing their hands.


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

[User] ELI5: How are high-profile, open marijuana users like Seth Rogen, Doug Benson etc. not pursued by police for breaking the law?

[Assistant]
The police know that prosecuting users doesn't work. Most of the efforts of the DEA and police go towards drug dealers and smugglers.

Also, using Marijuana is not against the law, posessing it is. Furthermore, saying "I used marijuana" is not sufficient cause for prosecution and arrest, especially for entertainers, who often make up stories to establish a character for the sake of their art.


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

[User] ELI5: why's it when you put some wet fabric, e.g. a towel, on a radiator, it dries all stiff and crusty?

[Assistant] The little fabric bits on the outside of a towel stick together when wet and tend to remain stuck (hence crunchy) when it is air-dried without air movement. A tumble dryer circulates warm air as the towel dries, which tends to separate the stuck fabric bits and the material feels more fluffy to touch.


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

[User]
Do my thoughts feel like they come from my head because I know that's where my brain is?

Or have inner monologues always felt like they're in our head? And of that's the case, isn't it obvious that your brain is the originator of thought? Why did it take Alcmaeon of Croton to come along and tell us all the brain is where thought comes from?

I asked this question yesterday on another sub, but I feel like this sub might be more appropriate.

[Assistant]
your eyes and ears are in your head, so everything you see or hear is naturally referenced to your head position (you also, of course, have a feeling of where your head is);

it follows, then, that your visual and auditory imagery (imagining images or sounds) will be referenced to your head position.

so whatever thoughts you have that are composed of sounds or images, it makes sense that they'd feel like they are in your head.

beyond that, it's more guesswork - why do abstract thoughts, e.g. mathematical or emotional thoughts - feel like they're in your head (I think they do)? probably, i think, because they often involve visual/auditory imagery, even if they don't *necessarily*.

there may be more to it than this, but i think that's the simple answer: because that's where your eyes and ears are, and vision and audition are crucial to human thought.

i don't think it's cultural or historical or whatever - there may be examples of philosophers etc believing that the mind/soul is in the heart or the belly or whatever, but i don't think there are clear accounts of some widespread belief in such cultures that thoughts felt like they were in those places. rather, those philosophers were trying to explain/understand things following some empirical rationale. e.g. we can see that if heart stops, person dies; but if head is cracked open, person lives a while but dies of illness. soul must have been in the heart.


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

[User]
I believe post-mortem organ donation should be obligatory whenever possible, CMV

A few things to justify that:

-You are not your body. Your body is a bunch of flesh and bones. What makes you important is that you have a mind and the ability to function. When you die, you are a rotting corpse and nothing more. "You" seizes to exist (and even for religious people, your soul leaves your body, or whatever). So the body of the "you" stops having rights because "you" isn't there.

-It is needed. There are many thousands of preventable deaths in the west from preventable conditions if we had enough organs. The fact that the corpse in the funeral might look a bit bad is not nearly a good enough reason to let a mother of two die because she couldn't get a new liver.

-It really isn't against religion. Most objections for most social changes can many times be traced to religions. However, all the Abrahamic faiths I know of don't consider your body anything more than a vessel for your soul nor am I aware of any modern non-western religion that places any particular importance into bodies.

edit:Apparently, some religions are against it, however most modern, big religions aren't. So eh, half-point there.

So yeah, bodies don't have rights, it is necessary for many people's survival and doesn't have almost any drawbacks that I can see.

[Assistant]
The general reason to oppose it is that when people fear that doctors will not respect their wishes/privacy/etc they are less likely to go to the doctor.  Some people are paranoid that if organ donation is mandatory doctors will not try as hard to save them.  Such a policy would severely compromise their medical care and the medical care of their dependents.  It doesn't matter whether they are wrong or right in their perception.  It matters that they change their behavior because of it.

A compromise position is to make donor-ship a mildly annoying opt-out process instead of an easy opt-in process.  This communicates some social pressure to opt in that increases donor-ship.

In any system, murder victims should never be used as organ donors both to preserve evidence and to remove any perverse incentives there.


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

[User]
Why does vacuum-energy exist? How can nothing have some energy?

Or maybe I'm just very confused.

[Assistant]
Well any theory that predicts a non-zero vacuum energy also predicts that the vacuum itself has a complex non-trivial structure.  Like the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics for example.  It can fluctuate, it can interact, it can become polarized.

It is also worth pointing out that from this perspective the vacuum isn't "nothing" but rather the situation where all quantum fields are in their lowest energy state.   These vacuum states of fields have both energy and fluctuations.


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

[User]
The two hot leads in a 250 volt electrical circuits are said to be "180 out of phase with each other", but 480v systems are 120 out of phase. How does the 120 phase get turned into 180?

I recently wired an outlet for a welder that was 250v. From some basic YouTube videos, I understand that industrial applications of electricity often use 480v. If 480v is made in three phases, 120 from each other, how is 250v with exactly opposite phases made for houses?

[Assistant] It goes back to the transformer feeding the house. They are weird single phase, centred tapped transformers. The primary voltage side of the transformer is fed with a single utility feeder. The secondary side coil is centre tapped, and that centre tap is the neutral. The two legs are connected to top and bottom of the winding, making one +120V and one -120V, or 120V 180 degrees out of phase.


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

[User]
[DC] What are some situations in which Flash's Speed Force would *not* be super useful?

It seems like super speed solves everything. But what are some situations where being super duper ultra fast isn't actually helpful?

[Assistant] Maybe not what you're looking for but the Speedforce can instinctively kick in for the Flash causing everything to seemingly slow down around them. This is usually handy in fights or sneak attacks because it gives Flash time to react before most people are aware anything has happened. Unfortunately for Wally West this ability would always kick in when he talked to his father-in-law, causing 5 minute conversations to feel like they stretched on for hours.


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

[User]
[Ed, Edd n' Eddy] Is Ed some kind of super hero?

After watching some old episodes of Ed, Edd n' Eddy, Ed in particular seems to be remarkably powerful for a child.

Some of his feats include:

Lifting a house with little effort,

Suspending his full weight from only his tongue,

Being able to force a large bone through his own head with little damage to himself,

Generating enough static electricity to destroy a house and remain unharmed,

Creating an imaginary friend that is able to interact with the physical world by beating up Eddy,

Forcing his entire body through a knot hole in a door without damaging the door.

So what, can all people in that universe do Ed's feats, or is he some kind of super hero without knowing it?

[Assistant] Ed doesn't understand things like "the house is heavy" or "your imaginary friend doesn't exist." Everyone in that universe seems subject more to their own understanding of the world than objective laws of physics. Remember, Sarah scares the shit out of Ed, Edd(who understands physical laws) tends to get injured a lot more, and Plank seems to have a personality of his own.


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

[User]
[Star Trek TNG] Why are so many high ranking Starfleet officers bad people?

It seems that so much of the time it is the Captain of the Enterprise that has to embody the principles of Starfleet, and the admiralty try to undercut it. How did they get to those positions and, given that they do, how does Starfleet still have these principles?

They hold drumhead trials, lie for ulterior motives and pull rank before attempting to communicate or discuss. They know through reports what the Enterprise has been through successfully, and yet they still make it jump through ridiculous hurdles.

[Assistant]
So the main thing is that the history books and documentaries rarely record the actions of the many, many high ranking Starfleet officers who don't break the rules or didn't make illegal schemes to exploit pre-First Contact worlds.

But yes, there are corrupt people in Starfleet. There's some discussion that while the Federation's ideals are amazing, those whose personalities harken back towards the barbaric 21st century are driven to enter Starfleet and gain power, but aren't prevented from doing so because the rest of Starfleet is too enlightened, some would say naive, to do anything to prevent people who want power for the sake of power from getting it.


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

[User]
[GENERAL CYBERPUNK] I'm a regular hacker in a regular hi-tech-low-life world. I'm about to be sent back to a parallel world's 1990s, naked. How can I make lots of money?

Learning the basics about the period goes without saying, but memorizing winning lottery numbers is useless: I have no idea what exactly would be different in that world. I think I should use my knowledge of both tech and social engineering. Some of the problems science struggled with are already solved, and solutions might be easy enough to reproduce by memory, since I will have no actual gadgets or code. The same goes for scams  some things only work once, and haven't been done yet in that age. On the other hand, the tech will be really archaic and unfamiliar, some of the stuff I know just can't be implemented yet. Last thing: I don't want to try and replace Gates, Wozniak, Torvalds or another *legal* billionaire  I prefer to stay hidden. So how do I make a shitload of bucks?

[Assistant]
So, you went FROM a time it is doable to become rich trough hacking, to a time when hacking is mostly a hobby that are Limited to a few machines, since there are no global network to take advantage of.

Why not just save a step in the process of whitewashing money, and become a legal millionare?
If management isn't for you, just start working for one of those. People will surely have work for a hotshot programmer with revolutionary methods.


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

[User]
How does the Ptolemaic geocentric model explain the concept of solar "years" when it assumes the sun rotates around the earth once per day?

I was reading an old Arabic book written in the 1200s AD and in one section it was comparing the Muslim calendar which is based on lunar years and the "Roman" calendar (as it so named it) which was based on solar years.

So the author said that "the Roman year consists of 365 days which is the time it takes for the sun to cross/rotate the Celestial circle once".

I know the model used during the time of the author is the Ptolemaic one since the same book in the first few chapters explains their concept of how the universe works (clearly based on the Ptolemaic model as he even quotes Ptolemy every now and then), and it states that the night and day cycle occurs because the sun rotates around the earth once every 24 hours.

my confusion is, what is exactly meant by "the sun crossing the celestial circle). in other words, how does the geocentric model explain a year based on the sun's rotation that takes 365 days while at the same time establishing that the sun rotates completely around the earth once every 24 hours?

[Assistant] The Sun moves against the background of fixed stars.  If the Sun goes around the Earth once per day, so do all the fixed stars.  Except the fixed stars always stay in formation, while the Sun moves about 1 deg eastward against that background during that day.  It takes one year to trace a circle all the way around.  That'll be the "Celestial circle" in your source.


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

[User] How did humans figure what the sun is made of?

[Assistant] When gasses become energized, they release light at a certain wavelength. Similar to how you can use a glass prism to split white light into a rainbow, you can use a glass prism to split light into its individual wavelengths. By comparing the wavelengths of the light from the sun to wavelengths that came off of energized gas that we made on earth, we could identify that the sun was made of hydrogen.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does the stockmarket exist?

[Assistant]
Stocks were invented as a way to share risk. European countries had trading expeditions going to Asia and Americas. These expeditions took months or years and were hugely expensive to fund but when successful they were absurdly profitable. The problem was that a ship could sink or get robbed by pirates, or a number of other problems.

The investors also had to stay solvent while waiting for the ship(s) to return.

At one point some very smart people in Netherlands figured that if they sold "shares" of these expeditions they could get many more people involved as investors, thereby the risk would be shared among a greater number of people/companies.

Once the expedition returned the company was dissolved and the profits, or losses, were divided up according to who owned what percentage of shares. Your reward was directly related to how much you invested.

Over time this mechanism evolved to companies in general, not just companies setup for trading expeditions.

Simply put it's a way to raise capital, across a large number of investors which all shares the risk and reward.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does sperm show up under a blacklight?

[Assistant]
Technically it's not the sperm that is glowing.  It's the semen.  All organic material, especially organic fluids glow under blacklight.  Phosphors are materials that emit visible light under UV radiation.

Organic (based on carbon) material almost always has phosphors present.  There are many phosphors including oxides, phosphorous, nitrides, sulfides, and countless others that respond to ultraviolet light.  That's what blacklights are.  UV-A emitters.
All of the above elements and compounds are present in organic material such as your body.  Semen is no exception.


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

[User] [ELI5] What part of an explosion causes an EMP? - Does it have to be nuclear or would a large enough explosion do it?

[Assistant]
A nuclear detonation produces a large amout of extremely high energy photons (light) called gamma radiation.

Those gamma photons are powerful enough to rip electrons from a large number of surrounding air molecules in a very small space.

That sudden massive electrical charge imbalance in the upper atmosphere generates a very brief but extremely powerful EMP.

Chemical explosives (i.e. Regular bombs) don't have a gamma component and do not generate any meaningful magnetic interference.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is cancer so common in some organs, and so rare in others?

You always hear about breast, skin, lung, and colon cancers for example, but things like brain, pancreatic, and stomach cancers seem to be so much more uncommon. Are some types of cells more susceptible to damage than others, or are some more resilient?

[Assistant]
Usually cells that reproduce quickly or are subject to DNA damage are going to be more likely to become cancerous.

Cancer is when our own cells begin to replicate without stopping, recruiting resources to feed themselves. It all begins with a single cell which accumulates the right combination of mutations to do all that. Mutations occur when there are errors in DNA replication as cells divide or repair themselves, copying themselves slightly incorrectly.

Most mutations don't really cause any problems or noticeable changes, if they don't outright kill the cell. And it isn't just one mutation to cause a cell to be cancerous, it takes quite a few. But if you have trillions of cells all rolling the dice over and over eventually you will end up getting the right (or wrong) combination.

Cells that replicate more frequently naturally are rolling that dice more often. Carcinogens and things like UV light cause more damage to DNA which needs repairing, again another roll of the dice. This is why someone who smokes is more likely to develop lung cancer but isn't guaranteed, they are making many more rolls but may just never get the combination. Similarly someone who cares for themselves perfectly may get unlucky and develop cancer anyway.


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

[User] I read that horses evolved on the great plains of America and then traveled over the land bridge  to Asia.  that they somehow died out in  the Americas and were later re-introduced with the travels of Europeans.  Why did they die out in the Americas and thrive in Asia?

[Assistant]
Horse ancestors originated in North America tens of millions ago, and likely migrated to Asia, then Europe around 10-20 million years ago. Around 12,000 years ago, as the climate changed in North America due to the ending of the ice ages, and humans migrated here, the horses died out and the remnants hunted to extinction. The climate in Asia and Europe remained favorable for horses to live, so they survived there.

Modern horses thrive in plains, but remember that pre-historic North America looked quite differently than it does today. Most of what we think of as the "great plains" was covered in vast forests and dense growth. The plains that the horses had lived on disappeared with the glaciers retreating.


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

[User]
[LOTR Movies] Is the prologue a dramatization, or did Sauron actually try to reach for Isildur instead of just killing him?

If the latter, why?

My headcanon has been that it is the former, told in the way of an epic myth or legend where details aren't as important as the larger story (Galadriel narrating that way helps too). It would also explain things like how Bilbo finding the ring only looks passably similar to the 'real' version.

[Assistant]
Sauron had just killed his two greatest enemies in Middle-Earth - Elendil lay broken on the ground, and Gil-Galad was literally burned to death from the heat of Sauron's hand.  Gil-Galad's death was mentioned in the books and was planned for the films, but was eventually left out.

Odds are that in his moment of triumph, Sauron was riding a high and wanted to make a show of killing the greatest Man still standing on the battlefield - probably intending to lift Isildur up and burn him to death as well for all to see, demoralizing the Free Peoples and emboldening his army of orcs.  He would have thought him self nearly all-powerful in that moment, which is a great weakness shared by the evil powers in Middle-Earth - one that often leads to their downfall.  His greatest servant, the Witch-King, would later fall victim to that same prideful thinking, believing that he could not be slain.


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

[User]
How do you answer the question "Why should we give you this scholarship?" without sounding pompous?

I'm currently applying for PhD funding, and one of the sections asks for 500 words on why you deserve it, and I can't help but hate myself for every line I write for it.

Do you have any tips for making yourself sound enthusiastic and accomplished without coming across as arrogant?

[Assistant]
You sound afflicted with a twinge of imposter syndrome colored by a dash of the humbles. But you have to somewhat shamelessly sell your work in the academic world because if you don't, who will?

Conference abstracts, grant proposals, and fellowship applications should have a smattering of the (realistically) grandiose.

So tell them what you are actually planning *to do* with that money. Be specific not only in terms of the what you expect to come out of the work they can fund (presentations, publications, and the like), but also why that work will be an important (this is the grandiose part) contribution to the field in general and the institution in particular.


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

[User]
CMV: People and businesses worried about losing their jobs in the oil industry can and should start working in clean or renewable energy.

Maybe I am a little ignorant here, but I see plenty of arguments that shutting down pipelines (Biden executive order, for example) will destroy the jobs and livelihood of people in Canada and the USA. What I don't understand is why these people, who have to know that their employment is teetering as the globe continues its transition to clean energy, don't just simply transition over to working in clean energy.

Worked on the oil field? Sweet, you can help in the construction of turbines and solar panels. Delivery? Well, the infrastructure isn't going to magically appear. The way I see it, every job that is lost will inevitably be replaced by a clean energy job, and it is wholly possible it can be transitional for the people that would otherwise be without a career.

[Assistant]
Those jobs will not be in the same locations, require the same skills, pay the same, and likely will not be proportionate in number.

And the globe isn't transitioning to clean energy at all, fossil fuel production is not declining nor predicted to decline in any meaningful way.


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

[User]
When they talk about mutations escaping vaccine protection, is it a sliding scale or all-or-nothing?

I kept hearing that this Omicron variant has the potential to escape vaccine protection, and the word escape to me implies completely avoid it. Is that what escape means in this context, or does escape mean that it reduces but doesnt nullify the protection of vaccines?/r/

[Assistant]
Definitely sliding scale. Those mutations make it more difficult for the bodys defense to recognize it as a threat, but the body will still react.

A vaccine make it easier for the defense to recognize the threat and attack the virus early before it gets a foothold.


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

[User]
ELI5: Austrian Economics in the context of fiscal policy

So, I've read some former explanations, and they all seem to deal with the monetary policy aspects of inflation and interest rates. I was just wondering if someone could tell me if/how Austrian Economics handles the fiscal policy problems of taxing and spending. And if you want to explain to me just how the Austrian School works, that'd be great also, the other explanations I found seemed to explain it like I'm six or seven...

[Assistant]
First, the Austrian view of taxing is to do it as little as possible. People are best off when their peaceful trades are interrupted by government as little as possible. Taxes interrupt people who are trading things for money and makes it harder for everyone to get what they want.

With regard to spending, that should also be done as little as possible. Government is not very good at spending wisely because it never really has to worry about running out of money. This is because none of the money the government spends ever actually belonged to the government. It takes other people's money and then spends that. How many candy bars would you buy if you had a dollar in your pocket you got for doing chores? How many candy bars would you buy if you took Dad's wallet and didn't have to give it back?


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

[User] [DC]Has any comic discussed what will happen when Billy Batson grows up? Will Shazam never age even when Billy grows? Or is Batson's growth just stunted in general?

[Assistant] It appears that while Billy Batson will continue to age and get older, his transformed form will stay the same age. There's one future where Billy Batson ages into being a dead ringer for Captain Marvel, and manages to convince people that he is transformed when he isn't.


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

[User]
How the hell does Netflix manage to absolutely block all screenshots (both using printscreen and snipping tool)

I thought it wasn't possible for a browser to retrieve this kind of information from the host (that is, that the host is using an application like Snipping Tool). Isn't that a pretty big security violation if it is possible?

[Assistant]
If you have hardware acceleration on in the browser, it is likely that your video is being decoded with your processor or video card's built-in DRM (Intel Insider, for example), via some technology like HDCP. This let's the CPU/GPU output video to the framebuffer directly after the point the screenshot tool would be able to catch it.

I get around this (when streaming via Discord, for example) by just turning off hardware acceleration in the browser.


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

[User]
[DC] How does the Flash not get bored when performing complex/tedious tasks at super speed?

How does the Flash not get bored when performing complex/tedious tasks at super speed?

For example if he had to count every coin on the ground in a major city, it would take him milliseconds from our perspective but how would it appear to him from his perspective with heightened senses?

[Assistant] An occasionally cited secondary power is that Barry and Wally have a subconsciously and consciously regulated perception of time, and they can go into a trance state of sorts when doing tedious things that wouldn't be considered mentally taxing.


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

[User]
[Black Mirror] Why would sex be coded into a street fighter-esque game?

Seriously though, do age-rating bodies no longer exist? If they do, does this age-rate the game as 18+, as it is essentially a form of porngraphy? Why would you put sex in when it blocks out millions of potential buyers who are under the age of consent?

[Assistant]
A pretty fundamental aspect of modern game development is asset re-use. Presumably at some point, a feature-complete avatar system was created and distributed for developers to use in their VR experiences. (consistency is important for immersion, imagine if your hands "felt" different in every game) Each developer extends said template for their own uses, adding features like "falcon punch" on top of the existing ones. As for why this template can replicate a sexual experience, well, why not?

As for age limitations, we don't know if kids are even allowed to use the VR hardware, so that may not be an issue. Alternatively, there could simply be limitations put on children's avatars. This is a good workaround for the age-rating/blocking you brought up. Children simply aren't physically capable of the same things as adults in virtual spaces. (Think Ken doll anatomy)


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

[User]
CMV: The foreign policy of the United States encourages unfriendly dictators to pursue nuclear armament as fast as possible if it's feasible and to never give up nuclear weapons under any circumstances.

The United States has a long history of invading/attempting to overthrow the governments of and meddling in the affairs of foreign countries unfriendly to them. This behavior is a consistent trend over it's history, and one that has become more prominent since it's rise as a global superpower. Due to it's desire to assert itself as a global superpower and curtail unfriendly interests, it either creates or overthrows dictators who are unfriendly to it's interests.

Consequently, any dictator who is unable to partner with the United States for geopolitical or ideological reasons is essentially forced to pursue nuclear weapons research as fast as possible, such as Iran. Any trust in the US to not engage in hostile action if not nuclear armed is completely null, given the US's history of overthrowing countries that oppose them. Consequently, if a dictator wants to remain in power he has to make the risk of a nuclear exchange a possible one if he is invaded or overthrown violently. Any expectation of honesty and not being at risk of foreign intervention once research into nuclear weaponry is ceased or limited is a bullshit paper agreement and both sides know it.

Essentially, in steps
1) The US has a history of regime change, and overthrowing both democratic and undemocratic governments that oppose their interests.
2) Any claims from the US to the contrary are either lies or justifications and therefore any promises they that they will not do so cannot be trusted.
3) Dictators wish to hold onto their power, and are afraid of being overthrown, either by military intervention or backed coup.
4) The United States has overwhelming conventional military power, and has a history of effectively destabilising other governments internally.
5) If a dictator wishes to prevent either from happening to their regime, they must pursue nuclear weapons to either 1) Make a conflict nuclear instead of non-conventional, making the US less likely to start one 2) Increase the risk of a nuclear launch/detonation in the event their government is destabilised.

[Assistant]
Thats not enough to get the US coming after you. Take for example: Turkmenistan. Turkmenistans an authoritarian dictatorship, its closest allies include Iran and Russia, its got a disastrous human rights record, gives Muslims preferential treatment over other religious groups, and its even rich in oil and gas. Basically its geopolitical and ideological opposite of the US with 0 nuclear weapons.

So how are US-Turkmenistan relations? Fine. They cooperate on normal government stuff like regional security programs, trade, and environmental efforts. Theyre not besties but theyre not going to war.

The problem for most dictators is they need an evil other to demonize, and the best way to do this is to use a group the general publics already suspicious of. Like the US. And then once youve created a race of demons thats the source of all evil in the world, why arent you using nukes to destroy them? Youve got to escalate to cover up your exaggerations.


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

[User]
ELI5: What exactly are skin tags and why do they appear on certain people more than others?

Are they like moles, or warts? Or something else entirely?

[Assistant]
Sometimes a cell can't control how fast it divides. The result is a tumor, or just a bunch of cells where they shouldn't be. This is what a skin tag is, but they are not usually dangerous.

The skin in general tend to get these a lot but heavy use or dry areas get them even more often. Genetics and certain diseases like HPV can increase their number.

If you are worried about new or fast growing skin tags, see a doctor.


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

[User] ELI5: Why were the European Colonists not ravaged by American disease unlike the Native Americans who were ravaged by European/African disease?

[Assistant]
There's a great CGPGrey video on this on YouTube. Its called Americapox or something.

I think it largely states that it was due to the americas not having domesticated animals which humans stay in prolonged contact with (in densely populated areas like cities), and that most dangerous diseases spread from animals to humans.


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

[User]
[Joker-2019][Spoilers] Question about Thomas Wayne

Was he really Flecks father? Did he plant evidence that Fleck was adopted? Also, how much of Pennys story was true?

[Assistant] Thomas Wayne in most incarnations is a kind man who genuinely wanted to help Gotham.  A lot of how he appears in Joker is due to Arthur being an unreliable narrator and only seeing him from speeches where he misunderstood what happened in the subway murder (Thomas had no idea it was self defense) and his mother's twisted view of who Thomas Wayne was to her.  Penny probably had a mild flirtation with Wayne while in his employ and just blew it up in her head.  "Love your Smile" is a bit flirty but nothing out of line for a boss to put on the back of a photograph especially in the 1970s.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are dentists, optometrists, etc. not part of the "standard" medical community? In other words, why doesn't all insurance cover vision/dental?

I know there is a political and historical answer to this, but I don't know what it is.  What I do know is that doctors are saying tooth health is related to heart health, and while perhaps teeth are just cosmetic now that we have grocery stores, blenders, and Thick-it, living with no teeth isn't exactly normal or healthy.  Same thing goes for glasses and contacts--why the heck do we not put all health-care providers in the same bracket?  I really don't know.  I'm sure the answer is money, but I'd like to know the story.  Thanks Reddit!

[Assistant]
Great question! The primary answer is money - if these services were covered, health insurance would cost (significantly) more.

Secondary, there are politics involved. For a multitude of reasons, dentistry and medicine developed as parallel fields. As such, dentistry is treated as a separate and unique entity from medicine, with its own regulation bodies and schooling.

A (contentious) argument might be made that these aren't quite as "medically necessary" - many people can get by without dental checkups and fillings for years with no ill-effects, whereas cancer treatment or management of heart failure has an immediate and recognizable impact on your health. The cardiac risk arising from poor dental health is itself a controversial topic.

Nonetheless the bottom line comes down to money - these are very expensive services (dentistry especially) and in many cases the money simply isn't there.


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

[User]
[Naruto] Is there any difference between "real" Naruto and his shadow clones?

Does it matter which of his versions is the last one standing when all others are dispelled (can he dispell his "original" body)? Is the real Naruto stronger than the others? Is there any benefit to attacking the real Naruto?

[Assistant]
The shadow clones ultimately are still just copies made of chakra. Even the strongest most realistic one is just a portion of his chakra. Nothing physical, no organs or anything like that.

No he can't dispel his original body, through quick movements and distractions he can switch with the clone though. That's basically what the technique is where they replace themselves with a log or something.


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

[User]
ELI5: When you get a "refurbished like new" phone as a warranty replacement from your carrier, where did it come from and what did they actually do to refurbish it?

I'll give you the tl;dr:

My 3 month old Samsung Galaxy s5 broke and the service representative determined it was a no fault hardware failure. They are sending me a "refurbished like new" phone.

.....I'm wondering....since the S5 has only been out since April, why would they have a reliable supply of refurbished phones already?

What do they do to refurbish them? Am I going to be getting someone else's problems, or are the refurbished phones just as good as new ones?

[Assistant]
In most jurisdictions, it's illegal to sell a product as 'new' once someone has purchased it and opened the box, even if they immediately returned the product right afterward.

Many of these 'refurbished' phones are just open box purchases that were returned for whatever reason, so they are sold as 'refurbished' at discounted rates even though they are virtually new and unused.

Sometimes refurbished actually involves fixing a damaged or heavily used unit (e.g. by repairing a broken screen or a faulty battery, replacing the outer casing etc.) to bring the device up to a like-new condition.

Items which are certified refurbished usually come with a warranty just like the purchase of a new product and appear to be in new or almost new condition.

The only problem with refurbished items is that there may potentially be a hidden fault (which has not been identified/fixed) that caused the previous owner to return the phone in the first place. So you may be unknowingly getting a phone that already has some sort of hardware problem that's potentially a ticking time-bomb.


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

[User] Would it be possible to link a telescope on Earth with one on Mars to see farther and more clearly the same way that telescopes in different locations on Earth can be linked?

[Assistant]
Yes, but there's a lot of things that make it tricky.

Firstly, you need to know the distance between telescopes down to a precision that scales with wavelength. So if you're doing radio frequencies, you need to know the distance down to like 10s of cm or tighter. That's doable even even across the entire diameter of Earth if you're careful, but from Earth to Mars it gets tricky, especially as the distance is changing over time (this makes combining the signals a lot more complicated as well!) For visible light we're talking like 100s of nanometres, which is doable on-site for telescopes physically next to each other, but is tricky to do across the Earth, let alone from Earth to Mars.

Secondly, you need to combine the signals somehow. For low frequencies, you get data slow enough you can save it to disk and combine the signals digitally. But even with all our modern infrastructure, this can be too much data to send through the internet. For the Event Horizon Telescope, they literally shipped the hard drives around the world to combine the data, because at that scale it's the most efficient and least error-prone way to do it ("Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway"). So getting that much data from Mars to Earth is a genuine problem. It's even worse in optical and infrared wavelengths, because the frequency is so high that it's just not practical to save that much data, so instead we physically combine the actual beams of light, which isn't really doable beyond telescopes on a single site.

Finally, resolution isn't everything. We actually have ground-based infrared interferometers with much higher resolution than the James Webb Space Telescope. Having a big collecting area is also really important, as that gives you high sensitivity. Also, interferometers only give you resolution in the direction between the telescopes. You'd get very high resolution along the Earth-Mars axis, but low resolution at right-angles to that. Basically, each "pixel" would be extremely long and thin - basically you're getting a high-resolution 1D image of some object (although as Mars and Earth move relative to each other, you could build up a proper 2D image over time).


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

[User] [Star Wars] Do darkside force users also say, "May the force be with you." Or do they have their own thing?

[Assistant]
"May the force serve you well." - Common one from Lana Beniko.

Edit: Adding some details. The Sith seek to enslave the force, treat it like a servant. The Jedi try to harmonize with the force and be one with it. Different philosophies.


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

[User]
[Pirates of the Caribbean] At the end of Dead Men Tell No Tales, Poseidon's Trident has been destroyed and thus every curse on the sea broken, how can Davy Jones actually be back? (According to the end credit scene)

So at the end of POTC 5, every curse in the sea has been broken and Will is finally freed from the Flying Dutchman and returns to Elizabeth.

In the epilogue, we see Will having a nightmare where Davy Jones walks into his house while he sleeps with Elizabeth. He wakes up, scared, realizes it was just a dream and goes back to sleep. The camera pans down and we see barnacles on the floor, indicating that the it maybe wasn't a dream.

Now, as a thought experiment, how can Davy Jones plausibly be back? What part of "breaking every curse on the sea" revives him? And if every curse is broken, why would he still be a fish monster and not human?

I know the easy answer is bad writing, that it's just a stinger they threw in there to entice fans. But what would be an in-universe explanation?

[Assistant]
Potentially every curse being broken means every curse is rewound to a point before it was enacted. So Davy Jones never enacted the curse that allowed him to cut his heart out and place it in the Dead Man's Chest, thus bringing him back to life.

This therefore would mean that he is back to being human though. So therefore the lobster claw would have just have had to have been a dream, and walking out of the sea can bring water and barnacles with you even in human form.

Alternatively, maybe Davy Jones transforming into a non-human form isn't considered a curse; it was just a normal effect of becoming one with the sea so effectively. In this scenario, either he survived his heart being stabbed, or his heart being stabbed allowing him to die was considered a curse, and with that curse broken he was able to return to life.

One other possibility is that the dream was way more metaphorical than it appears. That despite Will believing he is free of the Flying Dutchman, there is actually something that still draws him to it (perhaps the fact that someone needs to ferry souls to the afterlife still). Thus Will may be sleepwalking and still unknowingly piloting the Flying Dutchman in his sleep, and his subconscious envisions this as Davy Jones returning to claim him.


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

[User]
[War of the Worlds] How did The Martian Invasion affect the 20th century?

In 1898, ships from Mars carrying war machines and an invasion cadre landed in England and killed thousands of people before succumbing to bacterial infection and viral spread.

How did history unfold afterwards?

[Assistant]
Well, there have been numerous interpretations across various universes, so you've got your pick.

* **Global Dispatches**: tells us how several politicians, writers, and elder statesmen of the era were affected by the invasion. Teddy Roosevelt seems to have published a book on how to hunt the big buggers. The Chinese take advantage of Europe's general pandemonium to shake off their colonial yoke some fifty years early. Jules Verne is traumatized in the destruction of Paris; for Picasso, it's business as usual; and a young Howard Philip Lovecraft has disturbing dreams in which the Martians call him one of their own trapped in a human body.
* **Famous Monsters**: decades later the Martians have another attempt at global conquest after they annex the inhabited parts of the moon, in a conflict known as the second War of the Worlds (or Worlds War II, if you will). However, by this point there are some defectors and refugees from the Martian Reich, including one or two famous actors
* **The Massacre of Mankind**: by the 1920s, Germany has begun some aggressive expansion when one of their scientists, some dickweed named Einstein, figures out how to reverse engineer Martian tech to cheaply and effectively mass produce aluminum.
* **Scarlet Traces**: suggests that the British government puzzled out the secrets of space travel from scraps after the invasion and is on their way to exploring the solar system by the 1930s, putting them head and shoulders above other global superpowers.
* **Killraven** over in the Marvel Universe leads a resistance against Martians who've actually returned and successfully conquered the planet.


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

[User]
ELI5: What makes Swiss bank accounts special?

I hear them mentioned all the time in movies about embezzlement and corporate corruption.  What makes them easier to use for that?

[Assistant]
Swiss banks rarely disclose information to foreign governments.

So the IRS rolls up all 'we think this guy is evading taxes tell us how much money he has in your bank.'

To which the swiss bank will reply 'lol nope'


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

[User] How does orbital resonance really work? What causes them and why are some unstable?

[Assistant]
Lets take, for example, the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt:

For asteroids in the asteroid belt, the biggest influence on them by far is the force of gravity from the sun. There is, however, a very minor effect from the gravity of Jupiter. Because force is proportional to the inverse square of distance, we can model the effect of Jupiters gravity as a tiny nudge that occurs when the asteroid and Jupiter are at their closest.

If there is no orbital resonance, this kick always occurs at different points in the asteroids orbit, so the tiny kicks do almost nothing. If the asteroid is in orbital resonance with Jupiter, then those kicks occur at the same spot in its orbit each time, and can, over the course of a few million years, amount to a huge disturbance, resolving itself when the asteroids orbit is either sufficiently perturbed so that it leaves the resonance, or it hits something, or it is flung out of the solar system.

However, not all orbital resonances are unstable. Sometimes, the regular boost is such that it will act to oppose deviation from the resonance. Some examples are Jupiters moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede are in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance, and Neptune and Pluto are in a 2:3 orbital resonance. Arguably, the stability of the Lagrange points could be called 1:1 orbital resonances, but that is kind of the is-a-hotdog-a-sandwitch of orbital motion.


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

[User]
CMV: Being profiled by police is not exclusive to racial minorites.

You often hear how people in minority communities are subject to profiling by police and that white people don't have too deal with that. I would like to object to that notion.

When I was younger, (I'm now 30) I would be pulled over by police multiple times every month. This would be in different counties and different towns by multiple different departments. I only received warnings until my first speeding ticket at the age of 24. Also I drive about 25,000 miles a year due to work, so it's not like I didn't have a lot of opportunity to speed and get tickets. The reason given on why I received a ticket and not a warning was because I had received a warning two weeks prior.
Throughout my twenties, I had been pulled over more times than I could count, I have been questioned over having Advil in my car, been pulled over for having my third brakelight out by an officer who had only one headlight working and been questioned on where I was going so many times I can't even remember. It got to a point where if a police car was behind me, I assumed I was going to be pulled over (and I was usually correct)

Eventually, it just kinda stopped. I don't know why or how, but it did. I got one more speeding ticket two years ago, but both times I went to court and the fines were taken away. I thought it was my car at first, because I had a non stock exhaust, but I got a different car that was a completely stock Honda Civic and still got pulled over just as much. My current Impreza is modified and the only time I was pulled over in it was the previously mentioned ticket two years ago when it was still unmodified.

One thing I want to point out is that in all these events, I never had any problems with the individual officers themselves. I treated them with respect, regardless of my feelings on the situation. If I was rude or belligerent, I imagine the circumstances may have been different. I have never had any kind of criminal record with law enforcement and the only thing I have ever had is these two speeding tickets.

I don't want anyone to think that I am disparaging minorities or calling me racist it anything like that. I just wanted to share the experiences caused me to form this opinion.
Thank you

Edit: Everybody keeps saying the difference is that racial profiling is what minorities are referring to. Most of my stops by police happened at night so they couldn't even see my race and the car I drive during most of this was registered to my dad and not me, so even if they looked up who it was registered to, it would have no bearing on the color or my skin.

[Assistant] When people talk about racial minorities being profiled and targeted by police, theyre not suggesting that white people dont get pulled over. Just that white people dont get racially profiled and pulled over for being white.


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

[User]
CMV: The US military should not reinvade Afghanistan, nor get involved in a new Middle East conflict.

So I know that this is a popular view on reddit. My friend and I got into an argument earlier, and he didn't convince me of his point. So I'm coming here to see if there's a more rational argument.

To be blunt: the US was so scared of communism in the 80's that they funded Islamist extremists to repel the Soviets from Afghanistan. These extremists turned into Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and whatever other groups. The US caused the current problem in Afghanistan. and then we go for 20 years, do some good, some bad (drone strikes), and then Biden pulls out like an idiot, leaving our equipment, American civilians, and our Afghan comrades that helped us fight to fend for themselves. We needed to leave, but absolute horrible execution by the Biden administration. To round out this point: The US created the Taliban as it is today, as well as Al Qaeda. Our interference caused the current suffering that the Afghan people experienced for four-five years '96-'01, and now are experiencing again. The US lost the afghan conflict. The enemy that we went to destroy is now in control of the country, and we don't have a fighting force there anymore.

We just lost 13 US service people in a suicide bombing in Kabul carried out by IS-K. Biden drone striked one of their hideouts in retaliation. I reason that this was a decent response, because the idea of invading again is absolutely absurd to me. If someone disagrees with this, I will elaborate more. But drone strikes, are mostly bad. We absolutely do not know who all drone strikes kill, it doesn't matter what civilian deaths are reported. There are countless more that died than what our military reported. For all we know, that IS-K compound was a family compound of 30 people, and 10 of them were IS-K. Drone strikes create more extremists.

And just foreign conflicts in general. Has the US ever succeeded against a guerilla force? I don't think so. Even in general, besides Korea and maybe Syria and Libya, I don't think the US has helped in recent times when getting involved in a foreign conflict. Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, all ended not in the way the US wanted. So tax dollars, resources, and American lives all lost for nothing. Not to mention the innocent natives that lost their lives.

Getting involved in the Middle East is not for revenge, honor or to help a country. Like we invaded Iraq because of 9/11, but we're allies with the Saudis even though they funded a majority (I think a majority) of the 9/11 highjackers, even when they were in the US.

All in all, joining to the military because you think you're going to be a savior in a foreign country is ludicrous to me. Yes, you may improve the lives of some individuals, but in the long run, that's not how it works. It seems like so many recent veterans understand this after their service. It seems like such bullshit to me.

Does anyone disagree and want to discuss? I want to hear the real opposing side, not something based on feelings and the idea of being a superhero in the US military.

[Assistant] One thing you got wrong was that it was Bidens idea to leave Afghanistan. Both Obama and Trump wanted to end the Afghanistan war and bring our soldiers out of there, but Biden was the only one to actually do it. Lest we forget Bush got us in there to begin with, promising a quick war.


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

[User]
Continually revisions feels like torture

I am doing my MSc in wastewater treatment. My dissertation  underwent 6 revisions before it was submitted for external review. I also have a paper that has been submitted about the same work which has been through many reviews.

I just got back a lot of reviewer comments on that paper and I cannot bring myself to address them at all. It feels like torture continually revising the same work over and over. I would rather drop out at this point than read one more sentence. I burst into tears everything I think about having to do it.

How do I force myself to work when I would literally rather have my teeth pulled out than open my laptop?

[Assistant]
Read the reviewers comments.  Then put it all away for a few days.  Come back and read again.  A second reading after a few days is less emotional.

Plan a strategy how to go about responding.  Which ones require simple text edits, which more reading, and if any which require experiments.

Remember that the reviewers aim was actually (and this is often forgotten) to help you bring the work to publication.  They gave their time freely to make this manuscript better.  They are not your enemy, just people trying to help.


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

[User]
ELI5: How are "binned" CPU's or GPU's different from their "lower-quality" counterparts?

When a chip manufacturer makes a chip like a CPU, they occasionally "bin" these chips. Some of them are inherently better than others. What about those binned chips makes them better, though? If I were to take two CPUs with the same make and model and crack them open and smack them down under a microscope, what about the binned CPU would make it better than its lesser sibling?

[Assistant] CPU making isn't a perfect process.  A lot of it relies on purity of the silicon wafer that's grown in a lab.  Impurities in the wafer may degrade performance.  Secondly, the lithography process in which the chips are made isn't perfect.  It relies on the traces to be etched on to the silicon by exposing it to UV light.  Think of an overhead projector in school with a transparency on it.  The areas that are black on the transparency don't react with the solution the silicon is submerged in while the areas that are clear cause the solution to react with the silicon.  A CPU maker ideally wants 100% of the chips on the wafer to work, but some of them don't get etched correctly so parts of the chips get disabled and maybe you get an i3 instead of an i7, or maybe you get a 2070 instead of a 2080.


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

[User] [Serenity/Firefly] How sentient are the Reavers, do they have any organised hierarchy, how do they fly their ships and do they kill, rape and eat other Reavers as well?

[Assistant] The Reavers are humans driven mad by an experimental drug. If they are organized enough to wage war and fly starships, then it would be safe to assume they have some kind of hierarchy. I'd wager they organize tribally and probably have a an order based on who is the baddest motherfucker in the tribe.


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

[User]
ELI5 - If the human body replenishes its cells and has a new "set" every seven years, how do tattoos stay intact?

Sorry if this is a stupid question, I feel a bit dopey for asking! I read that the human body replenishes all of its cells as it grows (the Trigger's Broom thing) and that, on average, humans have a new set of skin cells every seven years. If this is true, how is it the case that tattoos stay intact when the skin cell is replaced? Obviously the ink isn't built into the cell itself, so how do they stay on the skin when the cells are brand new?

Apologies if I'm off-base on anything I've written :)

[Assistant]
The ink from the tattoo is not part of your skin cells, the ink is lodged in between your skin cells. So you can replace all the skin cells you want and the ink will still be there.

Tattoos fade over time not because of skin cell regeneration, but because the body knows the ink molecules are foreign objects and your white blood cells will be chipping away at it for the rest of your life.


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

[User]
Why is Hiroshima and Nagasaki inhabitable after the nuclear bombings? Shouldn't there be lingering cancer-causing radiation?

Would your answers be the same if more bombs were exploded over those cities?

[Assistant]
There are a few answers here.

First. When the bomb explodes there is a large radiation burst, which then goes away. This would not necessarily cause an area to be radioactive, as the radiation is only there while the bomb is fissioning.

Second. When you fission atoms, the waste products are what cause contamination. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs fissioned less than 1% of their fuel. As a result there was very little contamination, and most of it got spread into the atmosphere and dispersed. This would keep residual contamination low enough to not have much of an impact.

If you detonated present day weapons, or weapons designed specifically to contaminate, you may make an area uninhabitable.


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

[User]
Has a solution been discovered for the curvature of space-time due to the hydrogen atom?

If not, could one do so if the exact locations and momenta of the electron and proton were known using current theory?

[Assistant] Sure, you could create a stress-energy tensor for the hydrogen atom, plug it in to the Einstein field equations, and see what you get, but the question is "are the Einstein field equations still valid on the quantum scale?" We don't really know how gravity works on really small length scales.


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

[User] [Dune 2021 Movie] why are all Harkonnen soldiers bald?

[Assistant]
Part of what makes soldiers disciplined is looking the same. Uniforms, haircuts, training, etc. It makes your army more effective, and creates a better spirit de corps.

In addition, though, hair makes us look like people. In studies, bald heads creep people out more. Its an uncanny valley sort of thing.

Theyre heads are shaved to take away their individuality, and to scare the enemy.


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

[User] [Fantasy] Why do wizards always love to live in towers?

[Assistant]
A couple reasons.

1. Towers are highly defensible, especially if you've got ranged attacks (like, say, fireballs and lightning bolts)

2. Towers are smaller than entire keeps or castles, thus easier to build somewhere isolated where one can devote one's self full-time to studying magic without interference. Especially if one's work requires the creation of or harvesting of parts from monsters, isolation is preferable as it prevents escapees from wreaking havoc, which tends to be the kind of thing that gets a wizard slain by knights or adventurers.

3. On many worlds the stars hold the key to some of magic's deepest secrets. A tall tower in a remote place makes for an excellent observatory.


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

[User] Why is string cheese stringy?

[Assistant]
String cheese is basically a type of mozzarella cheese.

At the factory, when the curd is still hot and the machines (or workers) are manipulating the curd, instead of kneading the curd into itself to form a normal mozzarella ball, they stretch it and knead it into a stick lengthwise, gradually lengthening it over and over, creating many layers. The curd has to have the right moisture content to do this, too moist and it just melts together, too dry and it will not stick to itself even if you press it firmly.

When the curd has reached the correct consistency they stop and usually put it in a brine solution to absorb salt, then package it.

When you peel the ends of the cheese, it will break off in strings because those are the layers that the cheese was folded into.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does your stomach hurt minutes after getting hit in the gonads?

Balls.

[Assistant] Testes originally form in the abdomen near the stomach and kidneys.  The  nerves and blood vessels remain attached in that region, even after the balls drop. So when a guy gets kicked in the balls or otherwise has his nuts squished, the pain involved travels up from each testicle into the abdominal cavity, via the spermatic plexus, which is the primary nerve of each testicle, and then to the spine.