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

[User] ELI5: How can it be that koi fish live an average of 15 years outside of Japan, 40 years in Japan, but the oldest koi fish lived to be 226 years old?

[Assistant]
I'd venture that the lifespan of the Koi depends largely on how they're cared for and the knowledge of their caretaker rather than on the location alone. The Japanese often being anal about all things traditionally Japanese, they probably have very strict protocols that the casual Koi owner doesn't or can't follow. This would explain the discrepancy, as well as the climate of where they're raised.

As to how a Koi reached 226 years old, it's likely a one-time (or very rare) instance and not a normal lifespan. Every species of animal or fish, including humans, has specimens that will live far longer than normal. This can be explained by chance, diet, living conditions, and genetics.


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

[User] [Pokemon] How are gym leaders and elite four decided?

[Assistant]
Gym leaders simply develop enough of a reputation that people start traveling the world just to challenge them, and they eventually take on followers and build a gym for those people to hang out and build their skills.  Eventually the Pokemon League recognizes that gym as official and issues them a badge to hand out.

As for the Elite Four, they're specially scouted by the Pokemon League.  Some of them are former champions, former Gym Leaders, or just people who fit the criteria of being "elite".


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

[User] ELI5: how is it that gravity is strong enough to hold the massive body of water around the globe, yet we can move freely without feeling any pressure from the force of gravity?

[Assistant]
This question is best answered with another question.

What force is pulling the oceans off of the earth?

you are correct that the pull of the earth isn't that significant, but when its the only force acting on an object its gonna win every time.


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

[User]
Performing research at a teaching college with few resources in my field. Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

I just finished my first year teaching at a small four-year college (\~1800 students) and got a great performance review. Yay! However, my department head let me know that one of the requirements of the promotion process (since I'll be up for promotion in two years) is to perform research, and I feel like an idiot admitting this, but I haven't got the foggiest idea how to go about it at my school. My bachelor's degree is in microbiology and my master's degree is in tropical medicine, and my school only has a small teaching lab set up for microbiology classes and nowhere where I could perform scientific research, or mentor students doing so.

I could perform research on teaching methods, I suppose, but I have no background in that and don't even know where to begin. Gather data on one instructional method versus another? Compare one class's performance to another? (I teach the same class online and in-person, and I guess I could compare the outcomes of the two and get student feedback, but I don't know if that's enough information to go on.) Any ideas, folks?

[Assistant] That's a tough one. Would the department chair give you some more guidance or suggestions? What kind of work are other faculty members doing? Can you collaborate with one of them to get you started off? It seems odd to require research from a teaching faculty member without a lab or a terminal research degree.


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

[User]
ELI5 how do we keep people alive during heart transplants?

In other words when there's no heart attached to the body to pump blood how to we keep the brain and other organs functioning? Also bonus if someone explains how a working heart stays working when moved to another body.

[Assistant]
During an operation the circulatory system will be put onto a bypass machine which circulates and oxygenates the blood.

Your heart has its own internal electrical conduction including little natural pacemakers called nodes. If you restart this current the heart and give oxygen to the cardiac tissue the heart will beat again at a constant beat.


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

[User]
Rayleigh scattering

I have never been able to full wrap my brain around the concept. I understand it makes the sky (and pretty irises!) blue, and deals with scattering of radiation by particles. I don't understand why it affects some wavelengths more or less (eg, it isn't random across the spectrum), or how it works, or anything.

Also, the wikipedia page is insane. Zero-to-math in a paragraph.

[Assistant]
Imagine you have a gun which can shoot a stream of balls, and you have some basketballs floating in the air. If you shoot slower beach balls, they won't bounce off (or scatter) as wildly as when you shoot faster ping-pong balls.

Light is kind of the same way. We're shooting different "sizes" of light which have different energies at air molecules. Blue light has more energy and a smaller size (wavelength) than red light, so it gets scattered more.

 So for the sky, if the light didn't bounce off at all and just went straight through, the sky would look black. The only light you see from the sky is light that has been scattered. Since blue light is scattered more, it looks blue. That's why the day-time sky is blue. When you're looking at a sunset, the light is more or less coming straight at you. Since blue light is scattered more, less of it comes straight through as opposed to red light. That's why the sunset (and sunrise) skies are red and orange.


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

[User] ELI5: What is it that makes whiteboard markers eraseable when all other markers are permanent (when used on whiteboards)?

[Assistant] Dry erase markers use an oil that doesn't stick and dries in a "film", while everything else uses an ink that isn't designed to dry to be erased (although you can use the oil of dry erase markers to erase permanent marker off a whiteboard)


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

[User]
[Vampire related shows] Why do vampires need to kill someone to get blood?

I remembered a show called Death Valley (mtv), had an interesting concept of vampires working as prostitutes. They would have sex with victims in exchange for blood in return. In the comics, Buffy and show true blood, vampires offered protection to humans in exchange for humans giving them blood.

So why haven't vampires opted to a more conservative and less murderous route of getting their nutrition? Surely, draining some blood and waiting for the well to refill is far better than draining it dry completely.

[Assistant]
So the main thing is that in most cases, once a vampire begins drinking, they lose control and won't stop till there's nothing left. Most vampires are passionate beings without the ability to control their unnatural urges. Worse, most vampires soon stop caring that they end up killing humans because for them, humans are like Pringles cans full of tasty blood.

You get the occasional "good" vampire who has strong self-control, but most vampires don't pick people with enough morals and control to become their progeny.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do we still work 8 hours a day?

So many people are unemployed because machines can do many of the jobs that existed 50 years ago.
Why isn't the time people work just lowered instead of staying the same for decades?

[Assistant]
Actually overall there has been a gradual decrease in the average work hours. At the turn of the century work weeks were close to 60 hours per week.

In the 70s the 40 hour work week became the norm and today the average worker works 33 hours a week. As you can see we are moving to less hours but the rate of change is very slow and intangible thus does not make us feel like we are losing work hours.

In other developed countries there are 25 hour work weeks and some have just a 20 hour work weeks.

Edit: all these people posting their own personal workday are being totally unhelpful to the OPs question about general society.


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

[User]
How can NASA get in orbit around other planets?

I have been playing KSP for a while and this came up recently:
How does the NASA get into orbit around mars or jupiter (for example)? To save fuel i imagine they aerocapture, but is it common? Also, is there a limit on how much stress we can put the spacecraft in the atmosphere?

[Assistant]
They use rocket motors, not aerocapture. Once the spacecraft gets in position near a planet, they orient the engine to point more or less opposite the direction of motion. Then they do an orbital insertion burn to get down to orbital velocity. Usually this leaves the craft in a highly elliptical orbit, so they keep doing burns at the apsids until they get the orbit they want.

This is part of why they're not going to orbit Pluto, getting out there in a reasonable time is going to take a lot of fuel and a couple of gravity assists. It will be going very fast when it gets there, which would require a lot of fuel to burn off. The other part of the reason is because they want to go to the Kuiper Belt.


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

[User] Could you have a binary set of moons that orbit a planet together? Not 2 moons in separate orbits, but a pair or moons rotating around each other and orbiting a planet as well.

[Assistant]
These orbits are very difficult to get. The two moons would need to be quite far from the planet, the planet would need to be far from its star (the planet would need a very large Hill Sphere, like Neptune).

In such a situation, a binary moon would be stable.

How it would form is another matter. The angular momentum needed is way out of whack.


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

[User] Eli5, what's the clear sticky fluid that comes out after someone squeezes a cut like a pimple?

[Assistant]
Plasma (the watery part of blood, without any blood cells) and/or interstitial fluid.

Blood is made of a bunch of stuff in a solution of water. Theres big stuff (cells, platelets, big proteins) and small stuff (dissolved salts, other ions, small molecules.)

If you cut your skin, but dont make a hole into a big capillary or other blood vessel, the water and small stuff can escape, but big stuff stays inside. Kinda like a pasta strainer, holding in the pasta but draining the water. The red color of blood comes from red blood cells, so plasma is clear.

Theres also interstitial fluid. The water in your body is in 3 main areas: inside cells, inside your blood, and everywhere else. The third part is called interstitial fluid.


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

[User]
Is there a point as the temperature drops that it stops feeling colder? in other words, once a certain temperature is reached does it all just feel the same after that?

Lets assume no wind is involved.

[Assistant]
You don't feel temperature directly, you feel the rate at which heat leaves your body. So it really depends on the material's heat conductivity and how it's arranged as a heat sink.

Generally, the rate of heat transfer is inversely proportional to temperature, all else equal, and since you can't reach absolute zero, there is no maximum rate of heat transfer. Thus, there is no limit to how cold things 'feel' in this sense, but you'd probably damage your nerves and skin before you got anywhere near that cold, so this isn't really a meaningful statement. At some point you'll just destroy your sense of touch, and it will feel very painful and quickly cause numbness, not a sense of coldness.


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

[User] [Star Wars] If Duchess Satine didn't get killed, would Obi-Wan have gone into exile by her?

[Assistant]
Probably not.

Vader and the Emperor would know of his connection to her and try to find her to get to him.  Capable as she is, she doesn't seem the type to lay low in hiding with him, and he'd distance himself from her for her safety.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k]If ork fungus can grow basically anywhere that has some moisture and nutrients, shouldn't every planet in the Galaxy basically be covered with them after 65 million years?

So this is really a two-part question. Question one. If they come from a fungus and thus they can grow pretty much anywhere, how can there be any imperial worlds where there are only small pockets of orks in the remote wilderness? They can grow basically anywhere. This would seem to imply that if a planet has an atmosphere, some nutrients and some water, they can grow quite literally anywhere. Shouldn't they be covering any planet that's not a lifeless rock? Since they don't, why not?  Approaching a bunch of full grown Savage ones in the wilderness periodically to keep their numbers down might kill some big ones, but they should be basically in every unhabited wilderness if we were on a planet that has any spores in short order.

Question two. They have been around for 65 million years. They have faster than light travel and travel somewhat randomly across the galaxy. That should be enough time to get some spores on every planet in the galaxy many, many, many, many times over. Why are there any planets that don't have them?

[Assistant]
They might have been around for millions of years but so had their main rivals the Aeldari. It's only been 20,000 years since the Fall, and 10,000 since the Great Crusade. If we assume the Eldar surpassed the Orks and kept them in check for all that time, it would mean they'd been kept at managable numbers galactically, with their habitat limited to only a few systems until such a time as they were needed to fulfil the role the Old Ones created them for.  Also before the Crusade the Galaxy was teeming with all manner of alien races who probably had their own methods of keeping the Orks at bay, or at least restricted to the Ullanor system.

With the Eldar reduced in number from trillions to a few hundred million literally overnight when Slaanesh awoke their main competition was gone and so the Orks took advantage of the Age of Strife to venture out. The Warp Storms slowed them down enough so that they never got much of a foothold anywhere, and any native species learned to deal with them quickly.

Then comes Big E and his xenocidal crusade and wipes out every race that could be considered an Ork predator so their numbers skyrocketed to the levels seen by the 42nd Millennium.


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

[User] ELI5: How do trains not slip when it's raining or when going uphill?

[Assistant]
I used to drive a train for a number of years. Trains have compressed air powered sand dispensers that drop sand onto the track just in front of the drive wheels. The crushed sand provides grip on steep / wet / slippery rail lines.

The downside is the onboard sand reservoirs deplete quite quickly so you have to use them a little sparingly.

Cheers.


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

[User]
How many chicks can a chicken have?

I have chickens and they lay (generally) eggs once a day. If I had a rooster would the rooster just keep fertilizing the eggs and the chicken keep laying them? Is there a point where the chicken/rooster just says "fuck this" and stop?

[Assistant]
Different species of birds have different clutch sizes, or number of eggs theyll sit on in a nest. Some birds will lay a specific number, and if they lose them they wont lay any more until next breeding season. Other birds will continually lay eggs to replace lost ones, provided they have good nutrition. Chickens are the second type.

Their clutch size seems to vary a lot, but from what google is telling me theyd probably stop at most at 15 or so eggs. Can they successfully sit on that many eggs and raise that many chicks? Debatable, but its possible.


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

[User]
[MCU] Can the Dr. Banner be killed if he's unaware of a threat?

He says he tried to shoot himself and it failed, but he knew what was coming.  Same when he jumped out of the helicopter or was thrown in the pit by Widow.

What happens if someone snipers him from a half mile away or if Project Insight had come to fruition?

[Assistant]
The 2008 film *The Incredible Hulk* is seemingly meant to be part of the MCU. Banner's whereabouts at the end of that film correspond to the start of *Avengers*, and they even use clips of the film in background TV screens during *Avengers*.

That film went into more detail about Banner's transformation being based on stress -- not necessarily just rage, but **any** stress, including fear. This would explain why he reacts instinctively to shooting himself, transforming to survive.

Because of that, yes, it seems probable that he'd die if he were sniped while calm.

Reminder for sanity: please do not confuse the Edward Norton 2008 *Incredible Hulk* film with the Eric Bana 2003 *Hulk* movie. The latter has been known to turn viewers into mindless green rage machines.


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

[User]
CMV Children under 7 have no right to be in a fancy restaurant or bar, and these places have every right to ban them if they choose to do so.

There seems to be a lot of controversy around this topic.

-

Recently, there have been some news floating around about various restaurants and bars that have been tired of young children disrupting the area (e.g, children screaming, running around, babies crying etc). I know that babies can't control much so it's up to parents to not being them to places such as fancy restaurants and bars where people pay not only for the food, but the experience as well.

-

Now, the opposite of the argument is that this is 'discrimination'. Some parents advocate that they teach thier children to be respectful. Also, on an episode of 'What would you do?' everyone seemed ok with the small child crying at the fancy restaurant.

-

So what's your view? As a parent, do you feel like you are being discriminated against or do you feel like this is not a problem to be worried about? As someone who isn't a parent? Do you feel like it's the right thing to ban children? Or do you not mind at all?

[Assistant] I say that you should judge people by their actions, not by who they are. If someone is quietly eating in a restaurant then it doesn't matter if they are under 7 or not. Similarly, if someone is noisy and disturbing the other patrons then they should be asked to leave, whether they are 7 or 27 years old.


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

[User]
[Several/Multi]How do these hordes of alien locusts, these aggressive biological hegemonizing swarms (Zerg, Tyranids, 'Bugs') do the non-military parts of their hegemonizing?

So I've been looking at a few different versions of the Milky Way Galaxy, and I've found these interstellar hordes of alien locusts, these aggressive biological hegemonizing swarms, in a few of them. I've found three where the creatures are just called 'bugs' so far! I've found a few commonalities in most of those galaxies so far -- for example, most have some form of psychic powers, though the details of those vary.

My main question is, how do they get a functional interstellar economy? The worker broods don't seem to have the most psychic powers, and they're just animals, no matter how well directed by the hivemind. How do they get the energy to do what they do, refine materials the way they'd need to, and do every other part of a 'civilian' economy to be the threat they are? As near as I can tell, they mostly aren't grey gooing things or deconstructing asteroids, or even using fusion for their energy, so what gives??

Edit: the most interesting of the 'Bugs' are the ones the jingoistic Terran Federation is fighting. Those seem to have more plasma weaponry and less psychic powers, near as I can tell. What about them?

[Assistant]
I don't know about others, but Tyranids effectively do "grey goo" everything.

When they conquer a planet, everything on the planet (flora, fauna, atmosphere, natural resources, even the invading Tyranids themselves) get turned into a big pool of liquid biomatter, which is used to feed and create every Tyranid organism.


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

[User] Did the families of languages develop after human ancestors migrated across the world, or was there an ancient 'first' language that all the langua families descended from?

[Assistant]
Quick Google search tells me that PIE language existed around 5500 years ago, and the oldest reconstructed language, Proto Afro Asiatic was spoken 12 -18 kya.
At that time, almost all the planet has been populated , and no doubt, thousands of languages existed already.
Keeping in mind that humans could speak at the very least from 100-150 kya, but likely much earlier, there is no way to trace the languages back that far.
So, we will never know.
But, even apes and orcas have 'dialects', so it is entirely possible that there were no single first language. In other words, the dialects might have existed before our ancestors could be called humans, and their system of signals could be called language.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is The universe "flat"

[Assistant]
This doesn't literally mean the universe is flat like a piece of paper; it's not a literal description of the universe in the way we understand the word "flat".

A spherical universe would be like the Earth: if you go in any direction for long enough, you would eventually end up back where you began. In a spherical universe if you flew in any direction you would eventually end up back in Earth.

Evidence suggests that this is not the case. Look at a map, not Google Earth, but a real map. If you put your hand on Ghana and keep walking east, you're going to walk right off the map and onto the table, and you're going to keep walking until something stops you.

A flat universe means that the universe doesn't have a curve to it that would result in you ended up back where you began, which would certainly happen if you completed a circumference of the Earth. Whether or not this means the universe is truly infinite is still a matter of debate, but the consensus is that the entire universe is infinite but the observable universe is very much finite; after all, the speed of light is the fastest you can travel in space, but the "speed of space", i.e. the rate at which the universe expands is much faster, therefore the unobservable invisible part of the universe that cannot be observed because it is older than light and is further away than light can reach us from, is considered effectively infinite as we have no means of establishing its size.

Think about that using this method: imagine you cannot see, and your knowledge of reality only extends to how far you can hear. You are confined to your home, so the furthest you can hear is the road outside. This is the absolute limit to your knowledge, but does it mean that there is nothing beyond?

A universe that is truly flat, i.e. truly infinite in every definition of the word, would have infinite energy, thus infinite mass. Think of it like a procedurally generated video game: no matter how far you go, there is no limit to what you can discover.

A spherical universe would have finite energy and thus finite mass, so there is a fixed and undeniable absolute maximum to how much the universe can support. A natural process of the universe is entropy, which is the natural decay of the universe caused by energy being lost. In an flat universe, entropy could be reversed because there is infinite energy, so electrons and protons breaking down would be like sand being washed from the beaches and ending up somewhere else: the energy survives. In a spherical universe, this would not be the case: energy that is lost is lost forever, and there is an inevitable and inviolable fate where the universe will die.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do I get cold-like symptoms in the mornings

Almost every morning, I wake up feeling like I have a full-on cold. This includes a runny nose, headache, sneezing, etc. By midday, though, they're all gone. What's happening to me?

[Assistant]
Most likely you are allergic to either a pet or dust mites.  It is easiest to rule out, so start with this.

Pet:  Your pet sleeps on your bed.  It's dander/hair is on your pillow/sheets.  In your sleep you breathe in this stuff all night long.  Your body reacts with cold-like symptoms.

Dust mites:  You sleep in your bed, dust mites and dead skin fall off, you breathe them in all night long.  Same reaction

Fix:  Ban pets from the bedroom, wash your sheets and dry them properly.  Double up your pillow cases, washing the outside one every time you do laundry and the inside one every other time.  Vacuum, dust, and clean your pillows (beat them outside, tumble dry on low, or whatever setting they indicate).

If you still get these symptoms after two weeks, you should see a doctor about A) chronic sinus infection (laying down exasperates it, standing/sitting up drains and relieves pressure) or B) sleep apnea.

Solutions provided in order of likelyhood and cost effectiveness.

Source:  Allergic to cats, dust mites, trees, and grass.  Been there, done that.


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

[User]
[MCU] What war did Secretary of State Ross get the Medal of Honor in?

And for what?

[Assistant]
Vietnam.

"After his company had lost 55 out of 88 men in an attack on an entrenched, full-strength Vietnamese company of elite marsh troops, Private Ross placed his light machinegun ten yards in advance of the foremost supporting riflemen in order to absorb the initial impact of an enemy counterattack. With machinegun and small-arms fire striking the earth near him, he fired with deadly effect on the assaulting force and repelled it. Despite the hail of automatic fire and the explosion of rifle grenades within a stones throw of his position, he continued to man his machine gun alone, holding off six more Vietnamese attacks. When the eighth assault was launched, most of his supporting riflemen were out of ammunition. They took positions in echelon behind Private Ross and crawled up, during the attack, to extract a few rounds of ammunition from his machinegun ammunition belt. Private Ross fought on virtually without assistance and, despite the fact that enemy grenadiers crawled to within four yards of his position in an effort to kill him with hand grenades, he again directed accurate and deadly fire on the hostile force and hurled it back. After expending his last rounds, Private Ross was advised to withdraw to the company command post, together with eight surviving riflemen, but, as more ammunition was expected, he declined to do so. The Opposing troops launched their last all-out attack, converging their fire on Private Ross in a desperate attempt to destroy the machinegun which stood between them and a decisive breakthrough. As his supporting riflemen fixed bayonets for a last-ditch stand, fresh ammunition arrived and was brought to Private Ross just as the advance assault elements were about to swarm over his position. He opened murderous fire on the oncoming enemy; killed 40 and wounded ten of the attacking force; broke the assault single-handedly, and forced the Vietnamese soldiers to withdraw. Having killed or wounded at least 58 enemies in more than five hours of continuous combat and saved the remnants of his company from destruction, Private Ross remained at his post that night and the following day for a total of 36 hours. His actions throughout this engagement were an inspiration to his comrades and maintained the high traditions of the military service."

Hes a dick, but that doesnt mean he wasnt a damn fine soldier.


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

[User] ELI5: how did hell become so tied to burning and fire? Why is there this almost unanimous depiction of eternal hellfire and not many icy, frozen-over hells?

[Assistant] In the bible Hell is called the lake of fire.  There are other torments described in Hell but it is mainly fire that never goes out.  Gehennafrom the Greek refers to the "Valley of Hinnom", which was a garbage dump just outside of Jerusalem. It was a place where people burned their garbage and there was always a fire burning there.


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

[User]
[Marvel] How come Ant-Man's strength doesn't change when he shrinks, but he grows stronger when he gets bigger?

In the Ant-Man movie, they go into detail about how shrinking doesn't actually make you smaller, it just reduces the distance between your atoms (or something), so as a 1-centimeter tall man you can still punch with the force of a 200-pound man. This is why Ant-Man can still punch Falcon and send him to the floor while shrunk.

So how come when Ant-Man transforms into a giant, he gets so much stronger that he can tear apart airplanes and throw shipping containers? It's not consistent.

And also, why do Ant-Man and Yellowjacket spend so much time throwing toy trains at each other when they wouldn't get hurt by them, since they are still regular-sized people in terms of strength, and Yellowjacket was even hit by the train when it ran him over and it did nothing to him?

[Assistant]
Short answer: It's the Pym Particles. Not even Hank Pym can explain it.

Long answer: Hank was bullshitting Scott on how the Pym Particles work to prevent Scott from leaking it to Darren Cross on the off-chance Scott decides to defect.

>why do Ant-Man and Yellowjacket spend so much time throwing toy trains at each other when they wouldn't get hurt by them, since they are still regular-sized people in terms of strength, and Yellowjacket was even hit by the train when it ran him over and it did nothing to him?

It's a distraction. They're throwing toy trains at each other because in the heat of battle, they subconsciously think the train carriages are tons of steel and wood instead of plastics poorly made in China.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do asylum seekers spend all their savings, risking their lives to board a dangerous sea vessel to flee the country instead of just travelling by a conventional means?

What's preventing them from heading to the airport and boarding a plane?

[Assistant]
Usually because they
 would have 0 chance of obtaining an entry visa legally. Even if they manage to get an asylum seeker status, the process is very long and means living in a refuge camp or hostel for years while not allowed to work.

People who abuse the system in order to get into certain countries made it near impossible for genuine refugees to get help.


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

[User]
Would it be feasible to have an electric car that was charged via solar panels built into it's frame?

So for instance, if you built the Model S with solar panel like material on the top of the car, would you be able to extend range significantly?

What challenges to such a system existing need to be overcome before it becomes a practical method of not having to recharge an electric car?

[Assistant]
The maximum solar energy available in any given area is limited to a maximum of around 1kW/m^2. In space it can get up to 1.4kW/m^2, but the atmosphere attenuates it a lot. The average energy available due to cloud cover and day/night cycles is 140W/m^2. The average car engine can produce around 100hp (76kW) or , but on average uses closer to 20-50hp (15-38kW).

So, in order to power a car steady state, perfectly efficient solar panels in the best possible light conditions would need to cover 15-38 m^2, which is somewhere between the exposed area of a Ford Focus and a Suburban. Unfortunately, solar panels are between 12-20% efficient, and average lighting conditions are 6x dimmer than the best case scenario. These factors add up to require about 35x the area of the car to be covered in solar panels, which turns it from a nimble compact craft into a sailboat.


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

[User] [Deadpool] Does Ryan Reynolds know that Deadpool knows that he is Ryan Reynolds?

[Assistant]
Ryan Reynolds campaigned to create a cinematic universe in which Deadpool knows that Deadpool is Ryan Reynolds, and dressed up as Deadpool in order to sell the concept of, and then promote the resulting cinematic masterpiece known as, *Deadpool*, in which Deadpool states that he is aware of both Ryan Reynolds and Fox' Deadpool promotional efforts, so not only does Ryan Reynolds know that Deadpool knows that he's Ryan Reynolds, Deadpool knows that Ryan Reynolds knows that Deadpool knows that he's Ryan Reynolds.

Fuck, this was more complicated than counting parentheses in Lisp.


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

[User] Have there been any works of modern philosophy defending slavery?

[Assistant] Some people think that incarceration, community service, or other "punishments" can count as state-sanctioned slavery.  So it is possible that people who argue that forced community service is slavery, could be arguing that slavery is justifiable (in a very limited context).


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

[User]
ELI5 why was there a tort reform to stop frivolous lawsuits, but companies like Apple are allowed to sue over rounded corners.

Just watched Hot Coffee and I'm puzzled.

[Assistant] The hot coffee mcdonald's lawsuit was actually not frivolous. The details of the case are often left out. The plaintiff wanted her medical bills covered. She required skin grafts. McDonalds was serving its coffee dangerously hot, hot enough to cause 2nd degree burns when delivered. They refused to settle, and that same location had previously settled several similar burn cases.


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

[User] ELI5:how high would an ant need to jump from to die on impact?

[Assistant]
Height fast becomes meaningless as the ant would quickly reach terminal velocity (where the pull from gravity matches the air resistance and you don't fall any faster) so whether you push it off a table or out of a plane it will hit the ground at the same velocity. Ants are very light compared to their body size so they fall very slowly (edit: with a very slow terminal velocity that is).

That combined with their very tough but deformable body means that they will not die on impact as they do not have that much energy to absorb as a result of falling slowly, and the energy can easily be absorbed and spread about by its body. Just to further make them tougher they also have a nervous system and circulatory system that is distributed throughout their body so an impact to the head is less likely to be fatal compared to that on a human.

Many other small animals are able to survive a drop from large heights because they have a low terminal velocity.


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

[User]
Is a metric and a metric tensor the same thing?

Hi all, I am new to differential geometry, but I am reading about metrics and metric tensors now. My understanding is that metric tensors tell you how to find the length between 2 infinitesimally close points, while a metric provides a distance measure between any 2 points. My question is: are the 2 concepts equivalent or otherwise connected? If you have a metric, i.e. a distance measure, can you always find a metric tensor? What about vice versa? Save me!

[Assistant]
A metric tensor is an object defined on a differentiable manifold. Specifically, a metric tensor is a map which, at each point *x* in the manifold, takes in two tangent vectors and spits out a number. For a fixed point *x*, this map behaves like the familiar dot product from linear algebra. It can be used to define the length of tangent vectors and the angle between tangent vectors. Integration of the metric tensor over a curve in the manifold can then give the length of that curve. In this way, some authors talk about the metric tensor as giving a way to measure the distance between infinitesimally close points.

A metric tensor, however, is *not* a metric. A metric on a set *X* (called a metric space) is a map that takes two points in X and spits out a number that is interpreted as the distance between those two points. This map must satisfy certain properties to be a metric. In particular, the "distance" between any two points must be 0 (if the points are the same) or strictly positive (if the points are not the same).

A metric tensor is not a metric because, for one, the metric tensor is really not just one map, but rather a map that depends on the point in the manifold. The map varies from one tangent space to another. But, more important, even when restricting the metric tensor to one particular tangent space, there is no requirement for that map to be a metric. In particular, the "length" the metric tensor assigns to tangent vectors need not be strictly positive for non-zero vectors. In fact, in relativity, the metric tensor does *not* assign positive length to all non-zero vectors.

A metric tensor *can* be used to construct a metric on some manifolds, but the metric tensor must have the property that the length of any non-zero tangent vector is strictly positive. We say that the metric tensor must be positive-definite. Manifolds that have a metric tensor with this property are called Riemannian manifolds. It is then possible to define the distance between any two points in the manifold in such a way that that distance function is a true metric.

How do we do that? By measuring the distance between points along curves. So suppose we have a differentiable manifold with a positive-definite metric tensor and we want to measure the distance between points *x* and *y*. We consider all paths in the manifold that begin at *x* and end at *y*. Each of these paths has a length L. We then simply declare the distance between *x* and *y* is the shortest of all these possible values of *L*. There is some machinery needed here to prove that this minimum length always exists, but once we have that, we have a metric.

The converse is false in general. That is, given a manifold which is also a metric space, the metric (the distance function) is not necessarily derivable from a metric tensor. Why? It turns out that we can prove that in the construction above, the shortest path between *x* and *y* is essentially unique. (There are some extra caveats to this, but they are unimportant.) But there are plenty of metrics we can construct for which there is no such "unique shortest path". For instance, suppose we measure the distance between points in the plane using the "taxicab metric", i.e., the sum of the absolute difference in the x-coordinates and the absolute difference in the y-coordinates. This is the number of "blocks" a taxi has to travel along a grid-like street system to go from *x* to *y*. Then any "staircase path" between *x* and *y* in which all the stairs are parallel to the x- or y-axis is a path of shortest length from *x* to *y*. But this path is far from unique.


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

[User]
If the Fed is buying US bonds with tax money and if the US is issuing bonds because it doesn't have enough tax revenue where the extra money is coming from?

While writing this the thought that came to my mind was that with printed money but I'm not an expert, what do you think?

[Assistant] The fed buys bonds on the open market (not from the government). This happens with "new" money, the fed buys bonds and then increases the balance of reserves. This is how the fed creates new reserves and in turn expands the money supply.


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

[User]
[Starwars] Why don't all the Jedis carry two lightsabers?

It seems that Jedis usually prefer to fight with two lightsabers when given the chance. There have been several fights where an ally was hurt and the other Jedi used his lightsaber to fight (e.g., Anakin when Obi-wan and Anakin fought Dooku in revenge of the sith). So why don't them bring two lightsabers in advance?

[Assistant] IRL wielding 2 swords is an incredibly rare thing to practice: most historical martial arts argue that it's better to control one sword with two hands, have a shield or parrying dagger in your off-hand, or even have one empty hand for counterbalancing and grappling. In the case of Anakin, we see a talented duelist with incredible force-sensitivity using his force-enhanced improvisation ability to counter the far-superior skill and experience of Count Dooku. It's not his preferred method, though, and after raiding the Jedi temple and having the opportunity to grab dozens of lightsabers he continues to fight the way he was trained, with one blade. Note that in the Clone Wars 2d cartoon Dooku actually tells General Grievous that he can only beat Dooku by "using the unconventional attacks", ie attacking with multiple lightsabers simultaneously.


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

[User]
ELI5: If blue light disrupts your sleep cycle, why do people fall asleep in front of the TV?

There are countless articles and videos where experts will tell you to not be in front of a screen right before you go to bed. The reason given is that blue light inhibits the release of melatonin and prevents you from becoming sleepy. If that's the case, why do so many people fall asleep in front of the TV? If blue light really does have this effect, it seems like it must be pretty minimal, and it doesn't seem like it would be a major cause of not being able to fall asleep.

[Assistant] Blue light makes it *harder* to sleep, but not impossible. It might delay or inhibit melatonin release but if you're tired enough, then you're falling asleep even in broad daylight, let alone in front of a TV.


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

[User]
I'm in a really unfortunate situation and I don't know what to do. Help?

I've been in a PhD program since 2015, working and paying for it out of pocket. I'm a social scientist in Canada. The time and effort I've put into this program have strained my mental health and my relationships and I'm finally done. I've got a completed dissertation and even published an article based on one of the chapters (atypical for my program). My advisor says I'm ready to defend, I should just run it by a member of my supervisory committee first. That professor came back and basically said "this is fundamentally flawed. You don't have the background to do this work." I asked what I should do about it and he said "I don't know." He doesn't want me to start from scratch this far in and still be unlikely to pass at defense.

My supervisor is standing by me. He's been great, actually, very supportive and available. Our rules state that I can proceed to defense if he approves it, even over the heads of the supervisory committee members (who do not sit on the defense committee). He's put together a committee that is more in-line with his expertise than with the dissenting supervisory committee member's expertise and says he thinks it will pass (one way or another--he's not ruling out the possibility of failure).

Some additional details:

\-My previous supervisor was denied tenure and basically fired from the department.

\-My new supervisor took over a few years ago and has been primarily driving the dissertation, but has limited expertise in my area.

\-The dissenting committee member is quite senior and certainly knows quite a lot about the topic I'm studying and thinks that it's fundamentally flawed and doesn't properly engage with the literature in that space.

\-I've been told that multiple people have failed defenses in my department in recent years. It's not unheard of at all.

\-Imposter syndrome is definitely a thing, but it feels like this validates mine. What have I been doing all this time? The dissenting supervisory committee member was polite about it; he acknowledged the work and effort that went into it.

I'm at a loss. If I had known this would happen I don't think I would have entered the program at all. I'm experiencing a crisis. I can't sleep. I feel sick all the time. It's had ramifications for my personal life. I have to make a decision about what to do really soon (within weeks).

Anyone have thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I just want to thank everyone in the community for coming out. I've been reading your thoughts and they've given me a lot to think about. I wish I could share more information but I'm trying to preserve what little dignity I have left (heh!). It's looking like I will probably make some changes in consultation with my advisor and move forward with the defense this term. If I fail, I may be able to resubmit with revisions. If I pass, I will never set foot on the campus again. Either way I will update you all.

[Assistant] Can you go and sit with the senior dissenter and ask (perhaps with your new advisor) what should and can realistically be changed to make this a defensible thesis? Surely they are aware of your situation and need to work with you in a positive and fair manner. Stacking the committee is one approach, but another one is to try to move it forward.


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

[User]
Do I get the same nutritional value from a popcorn kernel unpopped as a popped popcorn kernel, if so, why?

I'm sorry if this has been answered already, I've looked through a couple posts after I looked up "popcorn", I'm very drunk right now and I'm eating popcorn and I must know.

[Assistant] Most likely - most/all of the biological compounds will not break down at the ~100-150 degrees Celsius (increased boiling point due to pressure).  It may be slightly more nutritious as the protein will be denatured (protein absorption is promoted by cooking).  That said, you would have to break the kernel up to get the whole nutritional value from kernels.  If you didn't you wouldn't get nutrition and would end up with Machinegun Anus Syndrome.


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

[User]
[Westworld] What if two guests get in a gun fight?

What if a guest playing a black hat and one playing a white hat, like in the saloon shootout, both go into man in Black mode and just stand there eating bullets not even trying to dodge.  How does the park keep from completely breaking immersion if someone on both sides is acting like a terminator?

[Assistant] The bullets probably start hurting more and more and then they are both tackled by hosts and dragged apart. The Black Hat gets dragged to jail and the White Hat gets dragged into bed by some woman host.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does glass shatter "uniformly", like all at once?

[Assistant] Actually, it doesn't. It shatters at the speed of sound in glass. It's just that this is about 4,000 meters per second. Meaning that even an almost thirteen foot long sheet of glass would shatter in a thousandth of a second.


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

[User]
Is there any underlying reason we say protons are positive and electrons are negative? Would it work if we just switched both in all our equations?

What I mean is, is there any reason we say protons are positive and electrons are negative; so if we just switched every equation would they be just as correct?

[Assistant]
yes.    We could have called them blue and red.  Or red and blue.  Or up and down.

You can multiply both sides of an equation by -1, and it is still equal.

in fact, calling electrons positive would have made current a bit easier in typical situations because charge carriers would move in the way of the current.


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

[User]
CMV: A car, new or used, is the worst investment you can make.

Edit 1: I said "investment" but not in the sense of wanting something out of the car when sold. I meant like it's a bad choice to spend money on cars because of the reasons given.

EDIT 2: My opinion has been changed! I now see that they're worse ways to spend money. And now realize that it's actually not that hard to maintain a car. Thank you all for your very well thought out responses!

EDIT 3: Just to clarify, where I live I rarely hear of car theft, I was just saying it could happen at any moment. Like anywhere in the world where there is crime.

Just to clarify I like cars. I consider them necessary evils. They break down, require constant maintaining, contaminate the environment, can get stolen, etc.

On that last note, the amount of cars stolen everyday is absurd. And on top of all of this, even if you have let's say a new car that doesn't require that much maintenance as an old one. At any given moment, someone or something could hit it, scratch it or downright destroy it! When it comes to car accidents, I believe it not a question of "if" it's more a question of "when".

I take care of my car, and sure enough a few months ago a person hits me out of nowhere, and just yesterday I almost got hit again!

And even worse still is the fact that at any given moment, someone could come and take away all your hard work and money invested into your car!

[Assistant] If by "investment" you mean the car fails to make you money over time, you're absolutely right. But cars offer something incredibly valuable to most people: convenience and privacy. In that sense, the ability to transport yourself anywhere at will and have your own private space while doing so is worth far more than the money you put in. So you're getting a large return on investment. If so many cars got stolen/broken/etc that people didn't feel they were worth the added convenience, then your argument might make sense. But currently, the benefits they provide are larger than money you put down, so in that way they are a good investment.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does it feel faster when coming back from somewhere rather than the ride on the way there?

[Assistant] If you're talking about going to an unfamiliar place, it's because the brain is processing a lot of new information and is thus more aware of itself and the passing of time due to its heightened alertness. On the trip back, the brain recognizes most of these cues, and is thus in a lighter stage of alertness and less aware of every detail.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do hunters wear camouflage and blaze orange?

I understand that blaze orange is for visibility purposes, but doesn't that contradict the point of the camo? Is there some weird thing about how deer can't see orange or something?

[Assistant]
Most of the animals  hey hunt are not good at seeing color(especially the colors near the reds and yellows) but in the other hand the bright orange is a good safety to ensure another hunter doesn't shoot you.

the actual point of camo anyway is not to hide thru color,  but to blur your outline so you are harder to see at a distance.


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

[User] Why do grapes and raisins differ in health benefits?

[Assistant]
What differences specifically are you referring to?

By weight, raisins have much higher caloric content, but that's just because a lot of the weight in grapes comes from water. That means 100g of raisins obviously contains a lot more sugar than 100g of grapes. Raisins also have higher mineral content (e.g. iron, calcium, phosphorus, etc.) for the same reason.

If you standardize by the *number* of grapes/raisins instead of by their weight, though, those differences disappear. Eat 50 grapes or 50 raisins and you'll get roughly the same amount of sugar, calories, iron, etc.

Even when accounting for the difference in water weight, there will still be less of many vitamins, polyphenolics, and flavonoids in raisins than in grapes, though, and those are often among the health benefits people talk about. There's two potential reasons for the differences. First, these are all complex organic molecules and are prone to degradation during the drying process. They basically break down into either simpler or related but different molecules that in most cases our bodies can't use in the same way as the originals. Second, grapes are actually still alive and undergoing cellular processes during the drying process and so they're relying on and consuming some of these molecules, particularly the ones associated with stress and oxidation responses in their cells because the progressive drying damages all of the cellular components.


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

[User]
[MCU] How have the events of the past few years affected popular culture?

I'm talking about things like sitcoms, television dramas, popular novels, pop songs and the like.

Examples: The confirmed existence of aliens must have had *some* impact on the science fiction genre, right?

Likewise, learning that people with super powers exist in real life must have given television writers storyline ideas (like a cop show adding a recurring villain with telekinesis, or a sitcom starring a plucky office girl who gets into mischief thanks to her telepathy, and so on).

Has there been any impact of this sort?

[Assistant]
Well, the Church of Thor has been gaining traction. They're mostly regarded as a bunch of fringe nutcases, but they look likely to get legal recognition as a religion. The man (god? alien?) himself refuses to answer questions about it, but there's a rumour he paid a visit to their headquarters in New Mexico shortly before a major electrical storm which caused quite a bit of damage.

There's been a lot of talk about sponsorship, but so far none of the Avengers have gone for it; the professional athletes are safe for now, although they're getting rather less recognition.

Superheroes are now one of the most popular gimmicks in the WWE.

The most interesting effect has been on the fashion industry. Several different labels have come out with superhero-inspired collections, and capes have come back in a big way.


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

[User] ELI5 : How are game engines made and why are they necessary for games and why are there so many of those?

[Assistant]
A game engine is a lot of reusable code that different game studios can use to make their games.

Game development teams do not want to spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel with each game. Rewriting code on how to handle physics, how to handle a hitscan bullet, how to handle a projectile weapon, etc. This code is essentially going to be the same in every game that uses them, so why spend a lot of time writing it for each project?

This leaves the game developers the time to actually code the stuff that makes their game *different* from others.


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

[User]
ELI5: The powerful laser removing rust

How!

[Assistant] It's Laser Ablation, which is more or less "burning" off the rust. The laser used is probably a high intensity Nd:YAG laser(neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet), or a laser that gives off a wavelength of light that metals absorb and convert into heat easily. It's the same concept as laser cutting, but only "cutting" the top layer of the workpiece.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't you re-freeze defrosted chicken?

Fresh chicken is fine if left out for several hours right? They usually have it sitting in the window at Deli's for hours, and then you put it in your fridge for up to a few days.

But if you freeze it, then when it defrosts, you can't refreeze it? Why can't you defrost it to fridge temperature, then refreeze it again, at least a few times (assuming the total period of time at or near fridge temperature isn't greater than the amount of time normally acceptable when unfrozen?

[Assistant]
I've never been able to find a source that explains this clearly. The issue is not thawing in the refrigerator and refreezing, although that will somewhat degrade the quality. The problem is thawing at room temperature, which allows bacteria to grow at very high rates.

Re-freezing does not kill the bacteria, it just stops the growth. Cooking to the proper temperature does kill the bacteria, but the higher the bacteria count the more likely is it some will survive, and in many cases the proper temperature is not reached. Cooking to 167f and holding for 10 minutes should kill all the bacteria. But that's a pretty high internal temperature and most people won't cook chicken that well.

As for 'fresh' chicken at delis: that 'should' be kept hot if cooked and cold if uncooked. Cooked chicken is pretty safe because most of the salmonella should have be killed, so there's nothing left to grow.


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

[User]
[DC Comics] Why didn't Kryptonians, a space-faring race that must have encountered other yellow stars, conquer the entire universe with their powers?

Seeing how powerful one Superman is, imagine a whole race of them all over the universe. Clark can't be the first Kryptonian who discovered the whole yellow sun power battery thing.

[Assistant]
They did have a conquering imperial phase in the past. Apparently, the rise to power of religious leaders put an end to that, as the primary Kryptonian religion was about worshipping their sun, Rao. Their religious leaders felt that super powers gained from other suns was an affront to their leader, and that the corruption with power that came from those yellow suns was in fact the work of demons.

Their Imperial Phase ended, and Kryptonians became tradition bound to remain on their home world, a tradition that remained a cultural prohibition, centuries after the religious caste lost power, and the secular Science Council took over ruling Krypton. Several members of the Kryptonian military, such as General Zod, wished to break that rule, to leave Krypton, but alas, their cultural taboo towards doing so was too great.

(As for why they didn't conquer EVERYTHING, the Galaxy is full of other superpowered races, as well as the Green Lantern Corps.)


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

[User]
[40k] Are the Tau Necrontyr

They both have no warp signature, they both have the same skull shape,  they both have a thing for magnetic weapons and hover tanks, and both have short life spans.

[Assistant]
First off, neither the Necrontyr nor the Tau lack a warp signature. They're just extremely weak. If Humans are a torch, Tau are a match, and Eldar are a bonfire.

Second, the Tau and Necrontyr seem to have some significantly different anatomies, despite similar heads. If the Necrons are representative of Necrontyr bodies, then their feet and leg structure is different, they have more digits on their hands, more narrow rib structure, and generally different posture.

Third, the Tau have short biological lifespans, but don't seem to be plagued by cancers and other degenerative diseases, which were the bane of the Necrontyr.

Fourth, the Eldar also have a thing for magnetic weapons and flying vehicles. In fact, Tau tech is more in line with lower-grade Eldar than with the techno-sorcery of the Necrons.

So, taken as a whole, it's unlikely that they are the same species.

BUT. And there's a big but. SOMEONE does seem to have been helping the Tau. Whether it's the Necrons, the Old Ones, or some unknown other player, remains unclear, but there have been several odd occurrences throughout Tau history that are just way too convenient to ignore.


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

[User]
CMV: The people who claim to be "pro-life" but are against things like welfare, helping refugees, or increasing education funds are misusing this label

(Note: be sure to look at the edits.) Pro-life sounds, at face value, like it would be a label that most people would be for, however it is used only for discussion on abortion. People can be anti-abortion and call themselves pro-life even when they are against many measures used to help people after birth.

While one cannot go policing labels, I think that it is rather silly to call oneself "pro-life" based on merely your stance on abortion. Especially when (in the US) the majority party that is anti-abortion is also anti-wealfare, anti-immigrant/refugee, largely prejudiced against a number of minorities, and anti-comprehensive sex ed (it seems to me that having sex ed that involves conversation on contraceptives rather than only abstinence would reduce abortions).

I would argue that people who are for measures that help people in general and for measures that would reduce abortion rather than outlawing it are actually more pro-life than most people who claim to be pro-life. CMV!

Edit: I'm going to be a bit more specific. I am not referring to all conservatives/republicans in this. A few of you have pointed out that many people want *reform* of welfare, immigration, and what have you - but this isn't about people who want comprehensive reform. It's people who want to cut funding with no further consideration or cut the programs altogether.

Additionally, I am not arguing about the morality of abortion. I am arguing that only being anti-abortion does not make you pro-life if you are against programs to help retain life or quality of life, or are for programs that kill. Because of this, using pro-life rhetoric when you are not comprehensively for betterment and longevity of lives is hypocritical, divisive, and unhelpful to general conversation around abortion and even unhelpful for the pro-life movement.

I am looking for: 1) someone to convince me that the label means something to those that hold anti-abortion views but are alright with sacrificing some life or quality of life for other things (because now, to me the label seems empty - mere emotional rhetoric to guilt people into staying silent).
2) reasoning behind using the term or benefits (for actual rich discussion and/or for the pro-life movement) of using it when one is not comprehensively for life that isn't rooted in "well, this is their party and they're far right so that's what they think" - especially when said person is openly of a Darwinist opinion that many anti-welfare folx seem to be of.

Honestly, I feel sort of bad that my tips brain felt that this was the best subreddit for this because I mostly want to see conversation around this topic and topic tangential to it. But, I would like to be less hostile towards the labels that people use in general and regards to this argument, so I suppose it's good.

Edit 2: After sleep and another look, my initial question is not the best way to put together my thoughts on the issue. The people that would hinder the pro-life side are few and far between who *actually think and say* that certain lives don't matter (not that they don't have biases that make more issues with that... But that isn't relevant I don't suppose). So, these people are more straw men than actual people. So if they aren't prominent in the conversation, people would not address them, perhaps. (But I would argue that those people are becoming more vocal and the movement may have problems if they start in on the abortion debate more heavily. At that point there may be more issues)

While I would still like input on that portion of my post, I think the main focus that I'm still not sold on is how are these labels (pro-choice too - it's a problematic label though "pro-life" has extra weight with the "x lives matter" movements and soforth) are good for the movement. I think that they rely on guilting the other side into silence and don't do anything to help bring about conversation of or solutions.

Is there any context that would make these terms make more sense in terms of argument? How are these labels actually helpful? If they aren't helpful then why aren't people lobbying for other labels (other than even more divisive ones like "anti-choice" or "anti-life")

[Assistant] "Pro-life" doesn't mean pro-all-life, and has never meant that. Do you think similarly that pro-choice people mean to say they are pro-all-choices when they use that label? You can't separate the term from the context in which it exists and from which it derives meaning.


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

[User] [DBZ] When 2 Characters fuse, do they also share memories?

[Assistant] Yes. They share memories, powers, and even their personalities blend together. We see this a bit when Super Buu fuses with Piccolo, he obtains his intellect and strategies, as well as techniques. Although that isn't a true "merger" so much as a possession, the same principals apply for Gotenks and Vegeto/Gogeta.


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

[User]
ELI5:What happens when I boot up my computer?

How does my computer go from being off...to working? What data comes from where? How is it loaded?

[Assistant]
Your computer has a PROM - a "programmable read only memory" - which is similar to regular computer memory except that the stuff in it is hardcoded.  It was put there in the past and it doesn't go away when you turn off your computer, and your computer never stores new stuff there.  (Technically this isn't entirely true, since what your computer may actually have is EEPROM which can be rewritten if an update is needed, but you can ignore that for now).

In that PROM are a few programs that were written to be run when you first turn the computer on.  When you turn the computer on, its processor starts running code from a specific memory location, and the designers of the computer knew which memory location that was so they put the PROM right there.  Your computer turns on, and the processor starts running instructions from the PROM.

Usually the first thing run is some sort of POST - a *Power On Self Test* that checks out a bunch of things and makes sure the computer isn't badly malfunctioning.  If the POST fails it knows how to display some text on your screen to tell you what's wrong, and it may stop right there and do nothing more.

What runs after the POST varies a lot.  It may be some sort of very very simple operating system, often called a "boot monitor" or "power monitor" or something like that.  Or it may be a "boot loader".  Even if your computer does start running a "monitor" (super-simple OS), chances are that monitor program is configured to try a boot loader first, though it may give you a chance to hit a key in the first few seconds to make it do something else.

Anyway, usually one way or another, a program called a boot loader runs.  It's a program that looks at the very beginning of whatever device your computer is set to boot from - usually a hard drive, but maybe a CD/DVD drive or perhaps a network interface.  Let's assume it's a hard drive.  It knows to look at a specific place at the logical beginning of a hard drive, read whatever is there into regular memory, and then start running whatever it just put in memory.

So, on your hard drive there's an area with a name like "boot sector" that has a program that will be loaded and run when your computer boots up.  And this is the program that, in most cases, knows where on the disk to look for your operating system.  Windows, OS X, whatever - this program finds it on your disk, and loads that into memory, and then jumps over to that part of memory, to start your operating system running.

From this point it gets even more varied, depending on what kind of operating system you have.  Each operating system has a bunch of stuff it's been programmed to do when it first starts up.  Some of these things include:

 - Set up device drivers - pieces of computer code stored on your disk that the OS knows how to find, that include all of the logic for interacting with various devices and interfaces like USB, Thunderbolt, your graphics card, etc.

 - Begin managing memory protection and CPU multitasking, and start assigning time slices to other processes.

 - Run through a series of startup scripts that have been supplied by the user - often the company who packaged the OS for you, but maybe some were added by you, and plenty were probably added by programs you installed that want to do something at startup or start themselves running.

 - Bring up a display & window manager program, and start it with a few things, like maybe a menu, and a user login window.


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

[User]
Why are some languages (Kanji and Traditional Chinese, for example) written as "pictures", so to speak, and western languages are based more on syllable structures? Is there a historical reason for it?

Why have some languages evolved to be picture languages, whereas western languages are usually based on syllables? It can't be random. There's got to be a certain historical reason for it.

I'm sorry if the term "picture" language is incorrect, I tried to think of a better way to describe Kanji/Trad. Chinese and this is the best I came up with. :/

[Assistant]
Writing was independently invented in only a handful of places on earth, and all modern writing systems are descended from the ones invented in Mesopotamia and China. They actually seem to have begun similarly, using pictographs to represent first whole words, then evolving these into more abstract forms (logograms) that could be combined to create a more flexible system capable of representing abstract concepts. They then started to develop phonetic components that represented sounds rather than entire words or concepts. This is where they split.

Mesopotamian-derived systems continued to develop more and more phonetic components and eventually dropped the logographic aspects entirely. Such systems, which have been adapted to nearly every language on earth, now use entirely phonetic components to represent only sounds and not concepts.

Chinese did not: instead more and more logograms developed, and they began to reduce some logograms to very simple abstract shapes that were then combined to build up new logograms. Sometimes phonetic components were (are) included, but each individual character is an abstract logogram representing a concept rather than a syllable or phoneme. There are some advantages to such a system, but it didn't spread as widely as the phonetic systems, partly due to cultural isolationism and partly due to geographical reasons, but mostly because it's much harder to learn than a phonetic system.


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

[User]
[Lord of the Rings] Is there any hope for Middle Earths future if Sauron claimed the One Ring?

Im curious as to if there would have been any hope for the future of Middle Earth if Sauron ended up with the One Ring. Would civilization as they knew it be completely doomed? Would there be a chance of any of the races rising up again? Would the gods of the universe have intervened at any point? Or would Middle Earth pretty much become a hellscape overrun with dark creatures and madness?

[Assistant]
Short of the intervention of the Valar there would be no chance. Even the destruction of the Ring was a slim hope only borne out by divine providence.

Sauron was very big into industrialization, so for a picture of his rule, think more smoggy, dirty 19th-century England than anything.


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

[User] ELI5:why are horses legs not repairable?

[Assistant]
Horses can't lay down for long periods of time, it's bad for them.  If they're not sleeping, they're standing up, and prolonged laying causes all sorts of problems.  Given how long it takes to heal broken bones, sedating them for that long isn't an option.

Horses are also generally a nervous, skittering animal that want to be free to move around.  It's very difficult to get them to stand *still*, and when you try to force them to it makes them even more nervous, which makes them more likely to get jittery, which makes it more likely they'll stomp with the leg that's broken, which would just make the leg worse.  Given how heavy horses are a cast just isn't going to cut it, they have to stay off the leg.  But you can't lay them down and you can't hold them still in a sling, so that's pretty much all the options gone.

For all of that, their bones just don't heal well, and given the nature of what horses *do* (gallop around at 30 mph) even a slightly-less-than-perfect fix to their bone can easily break again.  Bone breaks on any animal aren't guaranteed to heal perfectly, but on a dog or a cat you've only got a few tens of pounds of animal to hold up, and if they end up not being able to run and jump like they used to that's mostly ok, they can settle down and be lazy.  Horses can't, they're big animals and running is their thing.

Attempts have been made to repair horses' broken bones, but it universally does not end with a positive quality of life for the horse.  At best you'll get a horse that can walk, mostly, with a decent amount of pain, and the trauma and pain of setting and healing the bone is often too much for the horse.  Given the lack of success we've had for the literal millennia we've been riding horses, the most humane thing to do is euthanize the horse so that it doesn't suffer.


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

[User]
CMV: Buying sex is ethically okay, as long as the person you are buying it from is not in direct danger caused by their lack of capital. Selling sex is always ethically okay.

 I live in a developed west european country, and I frequently visit the foreign sex workers here. I dont see anything wrong with it, ethically speaking. Every girl ive seen has spoken english, and appeared to be healthy, comfortable, and in charge of their own business. In my country human trafficking is quite rare according to statistics, so i assume i have never bought sex from a trafficked person. Thats why Im mostly okay with what im doing, with some occasional, minor doubts. Im not rich and thats why i dont buy sex nearly as often as i would want to.

The places i dont go to are those thai-massage places. I know for a fact that i could get my dick wet in those places paying something like half of what i pay to other escorts. But i also know that the girls in those places are trafficked, more often than not. Why the police here does nothing about those places, i dont know. Maybe its just legally difficult.

Here i see where i seem to have drawn the line. Im okay with the fact that a woman is selling herself, and Im the buyer, as long as its her decision, and the decision is not based on life and death circumstances. What then constitutes a life and death circumstance for me? Lack of security, food, shelter, basic necessities which we all need in life to survive.

If some ice princess from Czech Republic would rather have sex with me than go to work in a factory back where she comes from, getting a salary that is indeed low but that would get her all of the basic necessities she needs, thats fine by me. If some girl from Thailand would rather have sex with me than starve, then thats not okay with me. Im not saying she shouldnt do it, im saying she needs to find an another customer, because im not touching that situation with a ten-foot pole.

[Assistant]
This is really icky.

> If some ice princess from Czech Republic would rather have sex with me than go to work in a factory back where she comes from, getting a salary that is indeed low but that would get her all of the basic necessities she needs, thats fine by me

This is kind of contemptuous.

> appeared to be healthy, comfortable, and in charge of their own business

You are not necessarily the best judge of this.  More importantly, you aren't unbiased.

> so i assume i have never bought sex from a trafficked person

The fact that you are ok with not being sure is really sad.


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

[User]
[Aliens] Why didn't the colony on LV-426 send a distress signal?

All the rescue team knows is that they "lost contact" with the colony. Why were the colonists unable or unwilling to ask for help when they were under attack by the xenomorphs?

[Assistant] The link between the command center and the dish was severed. You'd have to be at the dish itself to send a message (that's why Bishop had to go), and by the time they knew something was wrong, it would have been suicide to go out there.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is a system of income tax better than a system of purely consumption tax?

[Assistant]
Consumption tax is regressive, because it penalizes the poorest.

Consider: The first few thousand anyone spends each month is for necessities. Rent, food, heat, lights, water, etc. The poorest barely get by, paying for these. If you tax them, they can afford even less of what little they can buy to survive.

The wealthy have far, *far* more income than what they need to just get by. Once they pay for their necessities, they have a chunk of discretionary income that they can, should they choose, spend on luxuries and nice-to-haves. Taxing them at any stage is not as much of a burden on them as it is on the poor.

Income taxes with marginal tax rates seek to redress this inequity by having the wealthy foot more of the social bill so that the poor don't have to eat even more poorly than they already do or not be able to afford shoes for their kids. Income taxes are better for society. Less so for the wealthy who whine about their, ahem, "suffering" at the hands of the taxman.


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

[User]
Why do most philosophers believe in free will?

I've been a hard deterministic for my entire life. I just can't wrap my head around free will. Our brains are made up of chemical pathways, so all of our decisions/thoughts/behavior must be determined by biochemistry and genetics. Or they are determined by environment, which also isn't our fault.

I know most philosophers support combatibilism/soft determinism. I've spent 6 years trying to understand that position. I've read every article I can. I've read the Stanford philosophy encyclopedia. I've tried to be as open minded as I could for 6 years. I still can't wrap my head around it.

Can someone here just ELI5 it for me? Why does free will exist? Please don't just link me to stuff to read. I'm apparently too stupid to get those articles. I need to have someone explain it to me.

[Assistant]
One thing you might consider doing is trying to reformulate an argument for the existence of free will you have come across. You said you have investigated this for 6 years but still cannot wrap your mind around any of the positions for free will.

I think you might have more success if instead of someone explaining a pro-free-will position to you again, you might have better luck if you yourself try to explain a position that advocates free will. And you might get feedback that way. If you are able to explain and reformulate an existing position that advocates free will then that will go a long way in understanding these positions.

You might never agree with them but at least you can wrap your mind around them.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Why does Hogwarts doesn't teach wandless magic? The magical african school Uagadou teaches both wand and wandless magic to its students.

Wandless magic is less powerful but very convenient.

For example, you're in a life threatening situation, you don't have access to a wand or you were disarmed. Being able to cast spells with no help like Apparition to get out of the danger or Accio to retrieve your disarmed wand can save your life.

Wandless magic seems like a very important skill for self-defense. The Defence Against the Dark Arts subject would very much benefit from this. After all, how many times had a innocent wizard been killed while disarmed or while in a situation where they didn't have a wand?

Wandless magic seems also useful for more mundane things. For example, your wand is broken for whatever reason and you need to light your chimney. With wandless magic, you could do it.

[Assistant]
^^^^Because ^^^^Rowling ^^^^retconned ^^^^her ^^^^own ^^^^wandlore.

Four reasons:

1. As others have said, it's beneficial for the Ministry to control the populace.

2. Wandless magic is just a convenience for ordinary life. Yes, it's a huge advantage for combat magic, but the majority of the population wouldn't benefit from it. It's a cost analysis kinda of thing. For some things, like nonverbal magic, educators decided the benefits outweigh the extra effort in teaching this skill. For others like wandless magic, they decided it's not worth it.

3. More complex magic still needs wands anywaythe students at Uagadou still use them for some spells.

4. The various magical communities around the world are insular and not very cosmopolitan. Most wizards in Britain probably don't even know about African wandless magic and, short of traveling there, have no way to learn it, nor is there enough international coordination to invite an African teacher to Britain.


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

[User] How does dye stick to a fabric so hard that it hardly comes off even with modern detergents?

[Assistant]
For most fabric. The dye is first added then fixed with special chemicals. The details vary a lot by the colour and chemistry but often the fixing agent activates at very high temperatures that wont happen in a normal wash. You can bleach many fabrics by boiling them in running water.

Polyester is different. It doesnt absorb liquid under normal conditions so its typically bulk dyed. The polyester yarn is made with coloured plastic pellets so the fabric itself is coloured.


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

[User]
[Eragon] How has the ecosystem of Alagaesia changed with the extinction of dragons and lethrblaka, two Apex predators?

Two apex predators are eradicated. How does the ecosystem change?

[Assistant]
It's a complex system. Especially since in the latter years of the dragon riders, there were very few, if any,  "wild" dragons. Dragons wouldn't eat the cattle of the farmers they protect for example.

However, the flourishing of game animals, deer especially, would be expected.  The rise in population of game animals like deer was a good thing for other predators, like wolves (or Urgals if you consider them beasts), though.

Wolves, Urgals, and people, likely kept the population of other animals from getting too out of control.


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

[User]
Question on babies, bright loud toys, and evolution.

So I was taking care of my 3 month old niece, and noticed she was really attracted to her neon orange rattle.  My question is, isn't this attraction contrary to a favorable reaction in nature? Aren't animals typically hard wired to avoid small bright colored things that move? Especially in the case of something that rattles. I feel like hundreds of thousands of years living alongside poison dart frogs, coral and rattlesnakes should've killed off any babies attracted to that kind of thing.

[Assistant]
Just about everything human babies do is deadly. They make noise to attract predators. They will fall off high things. They play with fire or sharp objects. They put poisonous, sharp, choking-hazard things in their mouth.

The evolutionary advantage is that it FORCES caregivers to give them constant attention. Humans are helpless for years. The more they can do as babies to force someone to care for them, the better off they will ultimately be.


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

[User] [Netflix's Castlevania] if he is only half vampire, how come Alucard seems to be stronger than most full vampires?

[Assistant] Vampires vary incredibly in strength among each other. Carmilla alone, for example, would probably be able to beat most if not all of her vampire foot soldiers. While Alucard is only half vampire, he is half of *the* strongest vampire ever, so he's still more powerful than weaker full vampires.


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

[User] ELI5: What exactly is alcohol, and why does it kill basically everything?

[Assistant]
'Alcohol' describes a group of chemical compounds that are created by yeasts when they break down natural sugars in grains or fruits during a process known as 'fermentation'.

There are different types of alcohol (eg ethanol, methanol and propanol) but what they all have in common is a 'hydroxyl' group, which is a chemical structure that is very effective at bonding to other molecules. This tends to dissolve the molecules that it bonds to.

That's how alcohol kills microbes - by dissolving their protective membranes and then reacting with the stuff inside.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Superman's moral code and him ending up as one of the "good guys" is arguably the result of the Kent's positive influence, and we see formative examples during his childhood and teen years. What elements of his upbringing contributed to Luke Skywalker ending up as one of the "good guys"?

[Assistant]
Owen may have been paranoid about Luke's dreams of joining the academy and flying away from Tattooine, but he was still a good father figure. And Beru was equally as kind and understanding as Martha Kent.

Not to mention that Obi Wan had a small presence in Luke's young life. A VERY small one because of Owen's influence, but it was there, always gently guiding him.

Also Luke was extremely lucky to find a group of friends that weren't looking to join the hutt cartel or jump into the pit of criminal activities that Tattooine is famous for. His friends were mostly good people with constructive goals. Hell, Biggs even went to join the rebellion before Luke did.


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

[User]
How does transparency work?

As far as I can tell, there aren't little holes for the photons to jump through in my window.

I'm curious to know the mechanism behind transmitting light through a transparent material in addition to the obvious case of how it gets through the air we breathe.

[Assistant]
So there are two different primary mechanisms for transparency.

1) Materials have what is called a "bandgap". In this bandgap, electrons in the material cannot have certain values of energy. That is, imagine a ball - you can give the ball any energy you want. But in a material, if you pretend the electrons are balls, they can actually only have certain energy values.

Now in order for a material to interact with light, the light must be absorbed. So lets say you have an electron at some energy which tries to absorb the photon. If the total energy of the electron after the absorption was not allowed in the material, then the photon can't be absorbed at all, and the photon just passes through. This is the mechanism of transparency for many everyday materials.

Also aside from just the energy, the momentum of the light must be conserved. This leads to a more complicated process, but sufficed to say that absorbing X energy and Y momentum from a photon can be prohibited in a material, meaning that the light won't be absorbed at all.

2) The second mechanism of transparency is where the photons have too much energy to interact with the electrons. In order for the electrons to interact with the photons, they have to pick up the photon energy.

Imagine you are sitting on a swing. If someone pushes you nice and slow, you will start swinging and absorb their energy, and your swinging frequency will match up with their pushing frequency. But if some asshole comes up to you and starts quickly hammering on your back then you're not going to go swinging really quickly, you're going to sit there and vibrate while all that energy in your back dissipates and rattles up the chain.

The same process happens in electrons - if the incident photon has an energy too high then the electron can't respond fast enough to capture that energy. Therefore, the photon will pass right through the material. This is the mechanism of transparency for things such as x-ray beams going through your bones.

As you can see, transparency is actually a very difficult topic and is quite complicated.


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

[User]
[ATLA] How did the Dai Li hide the war when Uncle Iroh was attacking Ba Sing Se and almost conquered the city?

How did they hide a massive battle right outside from the Earth King and the citizens? Wouldn't they hear the explosions, see the massive mobilization of troops, and have lots of casualties?

[Assistant]
Have you seen Baa Sing Se on a map? It's estimated at ~100 miles in diameter. There are many miles of farmland, mountains, and lakes between the Outer Wall and the central districts.

The common citizens all know about the war, it's just the king who it's kept secret from.


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

[User]
[Walking Dead] - Where are all of the dead kids at?

Throughout the whole series; there have only been a really small handful of dead children walking about (on screen); the little girl carrying the teddy bear in the first season, Carol's daughter and the Governor's daughter...  Is there a current in-universe theory as to why there aren't more children walking within the herds?

[Assistant]
Most of them were eaten before turning.

Getting eaten kills you pretty fast because of blood loss, but one can turn within minutes to hours of death. An adult's body is more for a walker to eat its way through, so it's more likely to last long enough to become a walker. But a child's body is more likely to be eaten before the moment of turning.


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

[User]
What happens when Inflation goes down in the USA but stays high in Europe?

Energy costs stay high in europe for the forseeable future, but not in the US.
Will the Euro loose value relative to the $ if inflation stays at 9% in europe?

[Assistant]
Yes, this is a negative for the Euro as a currency (and also the Pound).

However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the value of the euro on the forex markets will continue contracting. After all forex markets are forward looking. Part of the reason that the euro *has* fallen in value relative to the dollar is because of the expectation of these price rises. So, to some extent the change is already "priced in". We will see to what extent in the next few months.


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

[User]
CMV: America is woefully unprepared for a major disaster

Examples include an invasion by a foreign country, civil war, nuclear attack, running out of fossil fuels, EMP blast, severe worldwide drought, asteroid strike or a massive volcanic eruption like the entirety of Yellowstone national park erupting.

Surviving the event itself will be easier than surviving the days, weeks, months and years afterward.

If all things electric shutdown because of an EMP blast including semi trucks, there goes 99% of the food supply for major cities. If the EMP goes off in the winter, many northern cities will see millions of people freeze to death in the cold. So, now everyone rushes to the supermarket to raid for food and those are scenes of major bloodbath and murders. Even if you have food and water storage, you may be dozens of miles away from land that can produce food through fishing, hunting or farming in the long term and that journey into the countryside may be more risky than what it is worth

At this point, horse drawn carriages will become a necessity and we don't have too much of those right now.

Meanwhile, the Amish are not as severely effected by this disaster as they are MUCH more self reliant than the average American. It might be a great idea for the federal government to consult with the Amish on an American disaster plan.

The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic we saw people fist fighting over toilet paper... imagine when people start fighting over food...

[Assistant]
>Examples include an invasion by a foreign country

Who has the power to credibly project any kind of significant conventional force onto American soil? No other country could invade, let alone try to establish a beachhead, and not be instantly  destroyed by American forces present in the continental United States. Any country that tried this would promptly be wiped off the map afterwards as well.

The only two neighbors bordering the US certainly don't have the capability either.

The only thing the United States isn't "prepared" for would be a full out nuclear attack from a country like Russia and maybe China. Then the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction kicks in though, and you are  left with no winners. The only way to be "ready" for a situation like that is to have retaliation capacity, which the US has in spades, with a nuclear submarine fleet.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are witches of the occult often portrayed as green-skinned?

[Assistant] The Wizard of Oz movie. It was of course in GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR and they wanted the witch to look weird and otherworldly, so they chose green. It was also a colour that looked really vivid. The look was so iconic and terrifying to children of the day that it became the de facto image for witches.


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

[User] Why did Spiderman go with a red and blue color scheme in the first place?

[Assistant] Spiderman was originally a professional wrestler, not a superhero.  This was in the heyday of wrestlers having super "loud" and colorful costumes, so that's what he went with.  When he became a superhero, he just kept the same costume.


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

[User] ELI5: How can one web browser be faster than another?

[Assistant]
Super ELI5 answer: Imagine you gave two people a box of Lego and a rough picture of something you wanted built, you can build that many different ways and with varying degrees of efficiency, both will get it done but one technique will come out on top.

As with most things, one technique isn't the absolute best way to go about it, so while say (rough example) Chrome might be better at multiple tabs because it keeps all its Lego blocks (tabs) on separate bases, Firefox might be better at one or two tabs because it doesn't have to stand up and move when it wants to go and work on a different Lego construction.


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

[User]
[Avatar] What powers airbending?

We know from the show that firebending is powered by the sun and waterbending by the moon. Also, according to word of god, earthbending is powered by plate tectonics and the energy of fault lines. What is the power source of airbending?

[Assistant] Well you've got all these separate entities responsible for or aiding bending - fire with the Sun, water with the Moon, and earthbending with well, the Earth. So possibly airbending has its source with the spirit world. Airbending is the most spiritual element, and you generally won't see spirits, so it's plausible that some spirit force could be powering airbending.


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

[User]
[Supernatural] What power do demons have against angels?

In season four, we learn that Castiel's garrison fought through hell to save Dean, sustaining numerous losses. What can a demon do to kill an angel? At that time, only angel blades could kill angels, and not enough angels had died for those to be in abundance, as we see with Crowley's reign in season ten. We have to assume demons have some sort of advantage over angels, but what is it? How does a demon kill an angel without an angel blade?

[Assistant]
It didn't specifically had to mean losses in terms of dead angel.

We see that people who are send to hell arrive there with bodies so it is possible that angels are unable to enter hell without a meatsuit. Seeing how (at least at the beginning) it was very difficult for angels to find vessels that are from the right bloodline and are willing to consent the losses he mention could have refereed to the lost of precious viable vessels which is something that demons could be able to destroy in a fight against angels.