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

[User] Where does the natural number "e" come from and why does it appear in so many fields of science?

[Assistant]
Exponential growth or decay with the base e is the solution to the equation "the rate of change of something is proportional to how much of that something there is," or in mathematical terminology, dx/dt=kx and x(t)=Ae^kx where A and k are constants. So this arises in things like population growth (when there are more people, more babies are being had), radioactive decay (when there are more atoms, more decays are happening), compound interest (when there is more money in the account, there is more interest), etc.

The two main ways to calculate it are to take the limit (1+1/x)^x and make x very large, or to calculate the sum 1+1/1+1/(1x2)+1/(1x2x3)+1/(1x2x3x4)...=1+1+1/2+1/6+1/24+1/120...


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

[User]
How would I go about becoming a public policy economist, or go into economic research?

Besides just working for whatever university I graduated from.

[Assistant] Probably depends on what exactly you want to do? Original research? Probably a PhD. Work at a think tank or local government? Masters would suffice. You can probably get an entry level position with a bachelors at a Federal Reserve, think tank, or government org, but your career progression will be limited without a graduate degree.


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

[User]
ELI5 - An outline of the Republican Nominees

Hey guys

Australian here. Could someone please give me a run down of all of the Republican nominees (or at least the main ones) with information like what they stand for and what the public (or various subsets of the public) think of them?

Cheers!

[Assistant]
**Mitt Romney** is the former governor of Massachusetts and prior to that he was a businessman. He is very wealthy. He is a social and economic conservative, but many voters feel he may actually be more moderate based on his history of changing his official stance on certain key issues.

Romney ran for president in 2008 and has an extensive campaign network.

**Rick Santorum** is a former senator and he is extremely socially conservative. He is known for likening homosexuality to beastiality and pedophilia.

**Ron Paul** is a social and economic libertarian. He believes government exists to take away individual rights and he wants to remove as much of the government as possible. He also doesn't believe in financial regulation or much of the current US foreign policy.

**Newt Gingrich** is the former Speaker of the House. He is an economic conservative but his record as a social conservative is somewhat suspect. One of his major campaign issues has simply been to bash Obama.

**Rick Perry** is the current governor of Texas. He is a religious social conservative and financial conservative. He is in many ways comparable to George Bush.


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

[User]
[Moana] Now what ?

SPOILER:

I did it! I was able to retrieve the heart of Te Fiti's and I can now create life itself! ....but how do I use it ? It appears that it only works if you insert it on Te Fiti's chest piece. Is there anyway to use it ? Do I need some special device ?  All it does is glow. Plz don't tell me that all the work I went through was for nothing.

[Assistant] I recommend putting it into the side of a large hammer so you can hit things with it. You're just a puny mortal, unable to channel or control the immense power of the Heart. The hammer will allow you to use it to some minimal extent, but nothing close to what happens when wielded by a goddess.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are we more sleepy when doing something as opposed to trying to sleep?

[Assistant] Sleepiness comes in waves. If you went to bed when you were sleepy, you'd be fine. But most people decide to go to bed when they are sleepy. Then they brush their teeth and dick around on their phone for an hour, and the moment is past.


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

[User]
[Marvel] How powerful is magic? And what can i do with it?

So last night on the news i heard about some dude named Juggernaut who, through magic, could seemingly never be stopped once he gained sufficient speed. And my cousin Vinny got a tip from some huge dude in space that Doctor Strange is "more powerful by far than any of your fellow humanoids" simply by being a magician.

To what extent can i use this magic myself? Can i enchant myself to be indestructible or all-powerful, even on a universal scale?

[Assistant]
Unless you're predisposed to it genetically (such as having a certain X-gene configuration), learning pretty much any form of sorcery will be an arduous process. But, the potential power you can obtain from it can be nigh-limitless if you apply yourself correctly. You can also obtain magical power through a Faustian pact or by possessing a magical artifact, but both of these can have serious consequences and drawbacks.

Just know that there are powers which dwell beyond the veil, and be aware that everything has a price that must be paid.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't a nuclear reactor power the pumps that cool its reactors?

If a reactor core isn't cooled, it explodes I guess. Most (if not all) are cooled by cold water pumps powered by electricity. Why can't those pumps be powered by the reactor itself?

[Assistant]
Nuclear engineer here. This is hard to really explain all the details involved. But here is the short answer.

A reactor doesn't make electricity, it makes steam. The turbine and generator make electricity. So if they can't work, then you can't make electricity.

During normal operation, the main generator will power the plant.

After a reactor scram, there isn't enough steam to run the turbine generator, so your electric systems now need offsite power or emergency generators.

Every plant has one auxiliary feed pump that runs on either steam, or diesel fuel....or they have a passive cooling system that can run for a short time. (Hours).  These are meant to buy time, they aren't a final cooling solution. They will either run out of water or overheat if you don't get power back eventually.

For reference: Fukushima unit 1 had failures cause it's passive and steam powered cooling system to be unavailable. Unit 2 used its small steam powered cooling pump until it over heated and failed 70 hours later. Unit 3 used its large steam powered cooling pump until it depleted the reactor's steam inventory 32 hours later and began to overheat and stall, finally failing.

So we do use reactor decay steam to run auxiliary feed pumps, but ultimately you need to restore normal decay heat removal to bring the plant to cold shutdown.

Also. The reactor doesn't explode. The core will melt. And the metal will rust so rapidly, that it absorbs O2 from water, leaving H2 (explosive hydrogen gas) that can later get outside, mix with oxygen, and explode. But that's not a reactor explosion.


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

[User]
Why dont plants suffer from the effects of aging and cancers like mamals do?

So bare with me its been a while since my last biology class.

If the semi-conservative replication of DNA causes degredation over time which leads less and less acurate copies of DNA strands is attributed with causing the visable effects of aging, and higher occurances of cancers.

Then how can plants such as redwood trees live for hundreds of years with out simply dying of old age ?

[Assistant]
Trees can get cancer, but because of harder cell walls in plants, they can't traverse throughout the "body".

As for old age, technically nothing dies of old age. People die of pneumonia or heart attacks or stroke, which is attributed to old age. Similarly, a long lived tree is more likely to be burned down or struck by lightning or get a deadly fungus.


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

[User]
ELI5: If sweating is a required process to regulate internal body temperature, why don't antiperspirants and deodorants cause health issues?

The body has to remain a certain temperature in order to function properly. Sweating is one of the ways the body tries to cool ourselves down if the body is too warm. Antiperspirants stop sweating. Why don't they cause us to fall ill?

[Assistant] Simply because you don't apply antiperspirant all over your body. We put it on in our pits as that is a place where it's easy to sweat and also for the moisture to allow bacteria (which smells) to grow. If you don't sweat under your arms, you can still sweat on your face, back, arms, legs, belly, etc.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] In Episode one, there is debate over there really being an invasion on Naboo...

What was stopping all of the governments from sending a few reporters or what not over to check it out. The distance is hardly an issue seeing as the main characters made it back and forth relatively casually.

[Assistant]
Qui-gon and Obi-wan WERE the investigation. They were dispatched to see what was up when Naboo claimed to he attacked, and the Trade Federation denied it.

Then the whole treachery and crash landing thingbl happened, then the escape, and finally they informed the Senate that the Trade Federation had, in fact, invaded Naboo.


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

[User] [Game of Thrones] Drogon is the largest/most powerful dragon out of Rhagael and Viscerion. Is it because he was the only dragon of the three that was never imprisoned?

[Assistant]
Yes. Imprisonment causes dragons to malform and dwarf, this was proven several times in the history of Westeros. Of course, the dragons were imprisoned fairly late in their development, when it made little difference.

Of course it is possible that Drogon just hatched the strongest of the 3 , and was the most glutonous atop of that.


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

[User]
[DC] Could you trap superman in another Dimension?

Lets just say you have the power to create or Transport people into other dimensions, something like the mirror Dimension in marvel could you trap superman or would he be able to get out of it? If he can how?

[Assistant] Yeah. That's basically how the phantom zone works. Superman has trapped characters like Zod and Doomsday there so it stands to reason he can be trapped there too. Also Superman can't travel dimensions.


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

[User]
[Medieval Fantasy] What would be the best way for a Human army to defeat an army of Tolkien-style Elves in the field?

What tactics, equipment, and weapons might a human military have to adopt to fight such powerful foes in a total war scenario?

[Assistant]
Tolkien-like Orcs with Tolkien-like suicide bombers using Tolkien-like gunpowder kegs to break their ranks, then overwhelm them with sheer Tolkien-like numbers.

Sorry, couldn't help that last one.

Look, the army of Elves at Helm's Deep was getting their asses handed to them with the boom-swarm combo. The Orcs only lost that one, really, because that guy with the shiny stick showed up with the army on horseback. Without that, your soldiers would be eating meat for days.


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

[User]
ELI5:Do fish get electrocuted when lightening strikes water?

really curious, because i saw lightning strike a pond a few days ago.

Edit: Spelling. I graduated from college n stuff.

[Assistant]
Saltwater is a much better conductor than meat, so they are fine. Fresh water, however, is a worse conductor than meat.

So any fish directly between the spot on the water where it hit and the ground beneath that is dead.


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

[User]
How important are journal publications, really?

Disclaimer: not trying to come across as arrogant or entitled, just trying to work out where I'm going wrong.

PhD candidate in English lit here (university in the US), I have a question about how much journal articles actually count these days. So here's my issue: I have 3 articles in top journals, and they're decent ones at that - all received glowing reviewers reports, all accepted for publication (though not coming out until late 2021/2022). Nevertheless, when I went on the job market for the first time last year, I had zero success: rejections from every job/postdoc/fellowship, no interviews/requests for more material.

I was kind of surprized by this -- everyone tells me that just one publication is enough to go on the job market with a "good" chance of success; one of my peers recently got an R1 job with just 1 article in a top journal. I'm in my 6th year and I have more publications than many junior faculty -- I wasn't expecting a job, but I thought I would at least get some interest (so did my advisor). Obviously I was wrong, but I'd be grateful if anyone has any thoughts on what the situation re publications actually is.

Is it that publications are subject to the law of diminishing returns, ie. you need one but any more after that aren't adding anything? Or does this indicate  that there is something seriously flawed with my dissertation project/how I come across in my application? Or is this simply what a massively over-supplied job market looks like from the ground and I just need to keep plugging away at it? Would getting even more publications help, or should I focus my energies elsewhere?

Any thoughts would be really appreciated.

TO CLARIFY: I'm currently ABD, but when I applied for jobs starting Fall 2021, I said that I would defend by April 2021 (I could have done this, but since I didn't get a job I pushed it forward a year to keep my funding/visa)

UPDATE: I want to say how much I appreciate the responses to this post. I've seen some really vicious anonymous comments on the academic jobs wiki but everyone here has been amazingly kind and helpful. TBH it's restored some of my faith in academia (the people if not the system).

[Assistant] The problem is that you can't logic your way through this; there is no logic to the dire job market in the humanities beyond its being weighted toward those coming from elite institutions (and even that's no longer a guarantee). Publications help, unless they don't. References help, unless they don't. Your research area helps, unless it doesn't.


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

[User] [Batman] What is the best example of Batman's intelligence and planning ahead?

[Assistant] Definitely the suave decision to include Manta-Ray Repellent in his Oceanic Repellent Bat Spray Repository on the Bat-Copter. It turned out to be shark that came after he and Robin, but had the beast been a Ray, the Caped Crusader would be lucky to have seen another day!


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

[User]
[Batman] Would Batman, given the opportunity, save his parents' lives, knowing that doing so would prevent him from becoming Batman?

Assume that doing so would spawn a new timeline, not create a paradox. However, Batman as he is would cease to exist after that fork. Batman also knows all this beforehand. (Obviously).

[Assistant]
From a comics standpoint, it's been shown that if he were presented with the opportunity to choose impulsively, like if you basically just dropped him off in the past, his first reflex would certainly be to stop it, without considering the long term implications.

There's a very famous Bronze Age tale called "To Kill a Legend" where Phantom Stranger offers Batman the chance to stop his parents from being murdered in a parallel Earth, which he accepts.

Batman and Robin arrive in a world that's virtually identical to theirs except it's 20 years behind the main world.

As soon as they arrive Bruce makes plans to look for Joe Chill and stop him, while Dick is more hesitant and decides to investigate this dimension, so he can see what the potential fallout of creating a world with no Batman is.

Dick finds out that this earth has absolutely no superheroic/superpowered presence at all, so if there's no Batman, there likely wouldn't be a single superhero around to pick up the slack, which makes Batman even more important to this world.

Anyways, Dick goes out to intercept Bruce at crime alley, going back and fourth between whether he should stop Batman from stopping this Wayne murder or not, saying that the results would be tragic in either case. At the end his nature as a superhero wins out and he summarizes that, destiny be damned, they can't willingly allow people to be murdered no matter the possible consequences/benefits.

Before Dick can reach the Waynes though, he sees that Batman already made his choice and witness him knocking out Joe Chill and saving all three Waynes.

The Phantom Stranger whisks them back to their world, without informing them of what happens to Bruce in the alt-timeline.

An epilogue reveals though that the alt-Bruce will still becomes Batman anyways, even with his living parents. Only instead of being inspired by tragedy, he's inspired to greatness by witnessing and being saved by Batman-Prime's heroism.


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

[User] ELI5: If temperature is how fast atoms shake, how does absorbing a photon by black object cause it to shake harder than bouncing it back by white object?

[Assistant]
You may have heard of the law of conservation of energy. Energy can never be created or destroyed. When the black object absorbs the photon, all of the kinetic energy is transferred to the object. Since the energy needs to go somewhere, it goes into heating the object, or causing the atoms to shake.

But when the white object reflects it, the photon bounces off. If it is a perfect elastic collision, which essentially means the photon bounces off without losing any energy, the object shouldnt gain any kinetic energy (shouldnt heat up / atoms shake faster at all) this is because the photon still has its energy, so none has been transferred into object.

In reality not all atoms are absorbed by black objects and not all are reflected by white objects, but on average more photons are reflected off the white ones rather than absorbed.


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

[User]
Which businesses get rich when inflation is high?

I know it's a good time to have debt, I think, because the relative value of the debt declines (if I understand correctly?) but do any businesses profit, if their own costs are also high?

[Assistant]
Fixed rate debt works the way you say. For variable rate debt, you have to remember that the Central Banks will raise interest rates.

A business that has negotiated fixed prices on it's inputs is in a good situation. That's especially true if there are no fixed prices on it's outputs. If it's competitors have not locked in prices on their inputs then this business is at a significant advantage.


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

[User]
[Matilda] Why didn't CPS get involved regarding the girl?

Matilda's parents are negligent with her mother disappearing to go to bingo daily, she was wandering around the streets when she was three years old and her father never enrolled her into a school until he could use it to sell a car. Also, the FBI were watching her house daily. *Daily*. Could they not have let the local police know?

[Assistant] She has three meals, isn't being beaten or molested, and isn't raising any red flags through behaviour in school. A parent's legal requirement is to keep the child fed and clothed, there's nothing that says they have to love their kids.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did Alan Turing's first conception of a "computer" work?

I am in the midst of reading Alan Turing: The Enigma, and I am loving it.  However, the biographer writes in the style that the reader has a strong grasp on unconventional mathematical concepts (Set theory, Group Theory, Computable Numbers, etc.).  I am knowledgeable in mathematics, nothing past calculus, but still, I cannot seem to be able to grasp what the book is trying to say about Turing's idea of a computer that 'reads' and 'writes' on blocked tape.

[Assistant]
The way that a Turing machine works is that it has a long tape with information on it and a device that reads information off of the tape and can also write information onto it. The tape is divided into small blocks that each contain a piece of information. At some point in the tape there's a series of instructions, and the device reads the instructions one at a time and follows them.

The instructions contain commands about what to do with other information on the tape, and can sometimes tell the device to skip over instructions or jump back to previous instructions. There are many different sets of instructions that a theoretical device could understand, but Turing was interested in finding out which set of instructions was the absolute smallest while still making it possible to write instructions for basically anything.

The bare minimum set of instructions a device must understand to be able to follow basically any kind of procedure is called "Turing complete." Turing complete sets of instructions have commands for doing basic math on numbers on the tape, moving information from one part of the tape to another, comparing two things on the tape, and jumping from one instruction to another based off of that comparison.

Any Turing machine which has these instructions can, in theory, be given instructions on how to do literally anything. It can be given instructions on how to clean a room (obviously with the addition of some instructions that talk to other circuits the Turing machine is connected to), to come up with a theory for the most efficient way to clean a room, to simulate every atom inside of a messy room, or even simulate a human brain which will ponder the philosophy of cleaning rooms.

Turing complete instruction sets can contain more instructions than that, but they must have those kinds of instructions. An example of an architecture which is not Turing complete would be one that can only do math calculations but offers no way of skipping over instructions. If there is no way to skip over instructions then it can't make decisions because it always has to do every instruction and can't skip over the ones that are irrelevant.

In the modern world Turing machines are used universally for computing. Real world Turing machines do not have infinitely long tape like the theoretical version did, instead they have memory circuits. They store information as ones and zeros instead of just drawing it on the tape, and the device that deals with the instructions is the processor. Sometimes there will be more than one processor and they will cooperate to run multiple programs.


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

[User]
What are the differences between your field in Europe vs in the USA?

I suppose the approach to things like children education varies and it'll reflect in the Academic world as well.

[Assistant] Archaeology.  In Europe it's typically part of the History or Classics Department.  In the US it's part of the Anthropology Department.  This results in very different areas of focus and different approaches towards the subject in general.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does banging on electronics still seem to "fix" them?

We all know this idea. Just now, my cable remote stopped functioning and despite flashing lights, it wouldn't change the channel until I gave it a good hard smack. This has been the way for fixing basic electronics for as long as I've lived. Is this purely coincidental or is something better than shifting the batteries happening here?

[Assistant] It depends on the reason that your electronics are broken.  In some cases, there may be a loose connection that you reseat by banging on it.  You'll probably notice that the more often you perform "percussive maintenance", the more often you need to do it, as the connections are getting worse because you're actually causing damage at the same time.


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

[User] What is the Greek debt crisis and how does it affect the strength of the Euro?

[Assistant]
The Greek economy is in a lot of trouble. The greeks spend a lot more than they earn in taxes, and so have been borrowing money for a while. They have now borrowed a lot of money. People who lend Greece money think that Greece is not likely to pay them back, so they are demanding more interest in exchange for the higher risk of lending Greece more money when Greece already owes so much money.

In this situation, Greece can no longer afford to continue borrowing at the market rate. The problem is if Greece cant borrow, it cant pay out what it owes. This is called a fiscal crisis. Its as if tomorrow you had 100$ and 200$ of bills. You're simply in a lot of trouble.

The usual situation here is to "devalue" your currency. This means you simply announce that today if 1 Greek Drachma was worth 1 dollar, tomorrow 1 greek drachma is only worth 80 cents (or something like that). Then when you owe people a Drachma, you can print some extra drachmas (so if there are 100 Drachmas currently in society, you print 25 more and hand it to the creditors. Since there were 100 and now there are 125, this is why the drachma is now worth only 80 cents).

Usually people get angry when you do that, and raise interest rates. But it is still manageable.

The problem is that Greece is part of the Eurozone. This means they no longer have control over their currency --- they dont have the power to devalue it any more. This means that the usual escape route for such a situation, as bad as it is, isn't available. So the outlook is actually worse. Now the problem is that when they started the Eurozone, they made some strict rules about government spending so that any individual government couldn't come up in this situation. Over time, they started turning a blind eye to poorer countries like Portugal, Greece and Ireland who were clearly not able to keep up but were pretending to using some accounting tricks.

Now Greece can't borrow money from the market (because people don't want to lend Greece money because they are pretty sure Greece won't pay them back and they are mostly correct) without paying very high interest rates. But if greece collapses this is bad for the whole of Europe, so some richer countries like Germany decided to step in and help Greece out. This is mostly altruistic in nature and expensive for Germany but they will do it any way, because if Greece defaults, this is bad for a lot of people as a whole.

The problem is that the debt that Greece owes is owed to banks in Germany, USA, England, etc. So none of these countries want Greece to collapse (because then they definitely won't get their money back). So they want to help Greece so that Greece recovers and eventually pays the money back rather than collapsing into Anarchy. So they force Greece to go into "austerity" (i.e. stop spending so much money and raise taxes). Greek people don't like this because they are mostly used to large pensions and retiring at 55 and now Germany is saying that they can't do that any more. So they riot and protest. Germany says that they aren't helping Greece with free money unless Greece becomes a little better with managing its money (because Germans don't get to retire so early and don't have such nice pensions either, so why should Germany give Greece money to live better than themselves?).

This turns out like a bad family fight where everybody accuses everybody of being bad and stealing from each other. Meanwhile, the Euro depends on every constituent country being strong, and now it is revealed that some countries are not economically doing well. Furthermore, Portugal and ireland seem to be somewhat in the same boat as Greece is, just a little better off, so people are questioning if they will soon follow. Everyone is very scared because they don't understand who might collapse and what needs to be done to prevent a collapse.


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

[User] Why does squinting slightly improve vision?

[Assistant]
Squinting limits the directions from which light enters your eyes, which limits the number of rods and cones that activate. It also limits the amount of light entering your eyes, which can be helpful if you are in a very bright area (creates less strain on your eye muscles and receptors). If you have abnormal vision, squinting can reduce the confliction of different receptors firing in the back of your eyes, which can lead to clearer images.

Try this: take off glasses/contacts if you have any, and curl your fingers so that only a small hole exists in the center of the curl. The hole should be very small, like a pinhole. Then, look through that hole, and you should be able to see very clearly. This works because light is only entering your eye from a small number directions and does not activate as many receptors. Your brain only has to interpret the image from these receptors, and not try to synthesize a large number of images from many receptors, as would be the case with an unaided eye. If you have impaired vision, these images normally become confused in the brain, creating blurry vision unless corrective glasses or contacts are worn.

Squinting works by reducing the amount of light entering your eyes, which both **reduces strain on muscles and receptors** and **limits conflicting images of the world**.

EDIT: Grammar.


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

[User] [IT Chapter 2/ Coraline] when the losers bully Pennywise and doubt his powers, we watch him shrink and claim the he destroyed worlds. Im pretty sure that (in the book), the Other Mother says just that about herself. Could these two beings be related?

[Assistant]
The Other Mother is likely a creature of the Prim, the void between worlds, similar to It, but probably a different creature.

You also can't take Its boasts at face value. He claims to be on the same level as Marturin, but he was soundly defeated by a shard of the dying Turtle's power sent through the multiverse. Meanwhile It can barely stay awake for a few months at a time, and has been trapped in a cave for several million years.

It also had definitely not destroyed any worlds. He's been trapped in that spot ever since Gan sang the multiverse into existence.


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

[User] ELI5: How can someone be shot in the brain and not die ?

[Assistant]
Clinical Neuroscience/Neurosurg MD, PhD Candidate here.

Quick rundown:

1) If major arteries or connecting arterioles (Cerebral medial, posterior, anterior, basal or carotid) are hit, there is a high probability of death. If not, things get interesting:

2)If not, then its down to what brain matter is destroyed (And this is how researchers attributed function to area:

Frontal lobe: Non life essential (See Patient Phineas Gage), destruction results in change of personality, executive function (higher moral, thought, rationalising and inhibition processes.

Temporal lobe ( lower side): Non life essential (See Patient: HM), destruction may result in loss of memory functions (hippocampus), loss or intensification of primal emotion (fear anger etc) (amygdala).

If you drew a line from ear to ear along the top most point of your head, this is roughly (slightly more anteriorely) where the motoric and sensory cortex would be. Damage here results in loss of the ability to feel, or move.

Parietal lobe (top side): Non life essential, damage may lead to cognitive  changes, however its very possible that no obvious changes may be seen.

Occipital lobe (back of head): Non life essential, vision loss.

Deep brain (Di-encephalon, Mes encephalon etc.) and brainstem.
Traumatic damage here is almost certainly deadly.

Most important life functions are breathing, arousal, and decending motoric tracts.

3)
Lastly, infection is a major concern. High dose Antibiotic (probably broad spectrum) is necessary.

TLDR: 1) If you dont pop a major artery, 2) You can hit non life-essential brain matter and 3) Survive infection, you can survive a shot to the brain and not die.


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

[User]
[DC] Martian Manhunter's biggest weakness is fire. So why doesn't he just use his intangibility to avoid it?

If he's caught by surprise, fine, he gets hurt; but no doubt he's been in a situation where he's anticipated a fire-based attack and succumbed to it.

[Assistant] His weakness is due to a mental block, and not related to his physiology in any way. If he knows the fire is there, it will hurt him even if he is intangible. The only way to protect himself would be to block out all external stimuli, which would render him ineffective in combat.


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

[User]
If a laser can impart momentum to a light sail, does it mean it has recoil?

Using space-based lasers to accelerate (or decelerate) ships is a near-future tech that's often taken as granted by futurists.

It sure sounds awesome, but if it can impart momentum doesn't that mean that it will be submitted to some sort of recoil? Would they need to carry chemical fuel or have a backwards-shooting laser to compensate?

If so, is it a significant challenge to manage, or pretty easy once you already have high-power lasers in space?

[Assistant]
Yes, a space-based laser being shot at a light sail would gain exactly as much momentum (but in the opposite direction) as the momentum of the light it sends out. This is true of any photon source; the momentum is in most cases completely negligible, but here we're talking a laser capable of pushing a light sail, so presumably it's very powerful (or over a long period of time).

Laser + light-sail setups are not widely regarded as practical for a number of reasons, therefore there's no single consistent approach to how they would be (hypothetically) set up. The solution to "recoil" would depend on the setup. You could use a sufficiently massive laser base that the momentum it gains is negligible - in the extreme case you just stick it onto an asteroid or moon, blurring the line between a "space laser" and a "ground laser". You could use some alternate kind of thrusters, including chemical thrusters, to compensate.


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

[User] What would our experience be like on earth if the milky way was colliding with another galaxy?

[Assistant] In the span of a human lifetime, you wouldn't even notice anything was happening. Over the long-term, the odds are very good that nothing at all would happen to our solar system as galaxies are almost entirely empty space, but there would be a small chance of a collision with other bodies or that the Earth or our solar system is ejected during the merger.


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

[User]
[2005 War Of The Worlds] why did the first tripod keep switching between people buster and building buster shots?

The tripod starts shooting people but then it starts firing blasts powerful enough to destroy buildings. Why not open with that? And why keep switching back to the peewee people buster shots if you have shots that can destroy buildings?

[Assistant] It's tough to say without knowing more about Martian weaponry or combat doctrine. There may be a difference in charge or cooling cycles that encourages switching back and forth between fire modes (compare a main battle tank crew switching between the main gun and a co-axial 50 cal as appropriate targets present themselves), or it may be part of a psychological warfare plan to keep the enemy off-balance about the true maximum firepower of any given tripod.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are rechargeable batteries only 1.2V?

A lot of devices expect 1.5V batteries and report 1.2V rechargeables as empty sooner. Wouldnt it be better to make rechargeables 1.5V as well? What is preventing that to happen?

[Assistant]
The voltage generated in a battery is due to specific chemical reactions between the electrodes and the dielectric. This is more or less predetermined by what the battery is made of.

There are other features more important in a battery - safety, reliability/rechargeability, size and energy density, current carrying capacity, cost etc. Modern commercial batteries have to optimize the above. The voltage is a very very minor issue ultimately because voltages are easily and efficiently adjusted by external circuitry. There is essentially no point to making a battery $10 more expensive just to try to eliminate $1 worth of external circuitry.


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

[User] ELI5: How can your eyes focus on the information on "smart glasses" that is so close to your eyes?

[Assistant]
Previous answers are missing something crucial: **a system of lenses** is used to refocus the light rays from the screen so that they appear to come from much further away.   The same system is used for "red dot sights" on guns, heads-up displays in cars and airplanes, etc.

To give more detail: light rays from an object spread out in a wide fan.  The lens and cornea of your eye must bend those light rays so they converge on a single point at the back of your eye.  Your eye only has so much "ray bending power", so that if the object is too close to your eye, the light will fan out too widely, your eye can't bend it to a point, and it ends up as a fuzzy spot.  Adding  extra lenses makes the light rays fan out less, so your eye can bring them to a focus.


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

[User]
ELI5: Dependent versus independent variables

I swear, I just for the life of me could never understand the difference between the two in a way that stuck with me. I need a literal ELI5 here.

[Assistant]
Independent variable: the variable that changes separately from other variables, which means you are changing it.

Dependant variable: the variable that changes due to the change in the independent variable.

Example:

The setting on your stove is the independent variable, how fast the water boils is the dependant variable.


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

[User]
[Stargate Universe] How did the Ancients produce food on their ships?

Now that the expedition has had a chance to live and work on Destiny for some time, we've gotten a new look at Ancient technology from a far earlier era than we're used to. One of the first things the expedition had to do was get to creating and maintaining a garden for the purpose of producing enough food to sustain the crew, as the food they brought with them was fast running out. They ended up taking over a larger room on the ship for this purpose, but that begs the question as to how the Ancients ate during the era of their technological development in which they created Destiny.

Did they also grow large amounts of food onboard the ship? Did they have some sort of long-term storage of pre-made food? Did they have a decent enough map of the galaxy to simply know where to either FTL to or gate to in order to get crop supplies? Did they stop off at home now and then to resupply? Did they have matter reorganizers a la Star Trek?

TL;DR: HOW DEY EAT?

[Assistant]
It's important to note that Destiny, prior to the arrival of the Expedition, had *never* had a living crew on board.  She was designed to automate autonomously until the Alterans came calling in their distant future; the plague and their war with the Wraith interrupted that timeline, and Ascension -- and the grand comprehension it brings -- made the Destiny redundant at best to those who could manage it.

As the Alterans would have had a good understanding of Destiny's systems, and access to as many ZPMs as they wanted, powering the ship for bidirectional Stargate travel to and from the Milky Way, Peagasus, or other colonized galaxies would have been within reach for them.

With the Tau'ri power restrictions removed from the equation, the Alterans could have easily kept food, life support, and other perishables restocked pretty much indefinitely after taking up residence aboard the Destiny.


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

[User]
[Warcraft] How do you imprison classes that can teleport/generate portals?

Mages, Druids, Death Knights, Monks and Shamans.

Also, what's stopping a bunch of warlocks from casting Ritual of Summoning to bust people out of prison?

[Assistant] Magical barriers are regularly used to imprison practitioners of magic. Depending on the specific enchantments, they can be anything from force-reactive barriers to magical null-bubbles that prevent magic from affecting the interior.


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

[User] [King of the Hill] what do you think the Hill Family and Co is up to today?

[Assistant]
Hank and Peggy are probably doing pretty much the same as we left them socially and professionally.

I assume Bobby's got a shit job but does some obscure YouTube sketch comedy on the side as a creative outlet, and that he and Connie drifted apart as she became more successful and the class divide was finally insurmountable.

Lucky has probably taken on some disciples to his redneck Zen by now, with him and them and Luanne and the kid having grown into some sort of work-averse commune. He's too inherently humble for it to cross over into a full-blown cult despite what outsiders think of them.

Bill's probably killed himself, Dale obviously moderates The_Donald, Nancy's trying to work her way up to national news, who the fuck even knows with Boomhauer.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do flies see things so much faster than us?

Im out here trying to swat a fly and I swear it starts moving the millisecond I begin my swing, its crazy.

[Assistant]
We are much bigger than flies. Even our brains are orders of magnitude bigger than them. So the time it takes for signals to travel from their eyes to their brains are much shorter because they're literally millimeters (or less) away.

Also, because their eyes and brains are much simpler, they need less time to process information before making a decision. And because they're so small, they've evolved to watch out for pray far larger than them going after them, hence their big, protruding eyes that can see in all directions.


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

[User] ELI5 why do some boats have 4 engines with 300 HP. Does the horse power stack?

[Assistant]
This phenomenon usually happens with outboard motors, where the entire motor pivots and turns. A single 1200 HP outboard motor would be impractically enormous. 4 x 300 HP gives you the same total power but in a much more convenient package. Because you can hang the motor out the back, it also takes up way less space inside the boat hull than one 1200 HP would.

You also get the advantage that if one engine dies, you still have 900 HP to work with. If you have only one 1200 HP engine and one engine dies you have nothing. This advantage drops off really fast in $ terms, so it usually manifests as two motor installations, very rarely three.

More than three is purely for packaging efficiency, not redundancy.

Depending on how fast the boat is and how the drive works, there can also be speed reasons. Going very fast requires a very fast propeller and it's easier to spin smaller props quickly. A 300 HP prop is a lot smaller than a 1200 HP one. Four smaller props putting out the same total power is a lot (lot!) less propeller weight and complexity and draft.


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

[User] If the Flash can run on water, how fast would he need to run or move his feet in order to run on air?

[Assistant]
The problem isnt air density, it's the fact that he is surrounded by air.  When running on water, his foot hits the water surface but his leg rises through air.  The difference in density between the two is what allows him to apply more downward force than upward.  Trying to run on air, though, his leg would go up and down through the exact same fluid, meaning he would apply the same force in both directions.

You also mention surface tension of air,but air doesn't have a surface.


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

[User] ELI5: How does breastfeeding reduce the risk of developing breast cancer later in life?

[Assistant]
Breast tissue remains immature in women until lactation. There's a reason your breasts feel swollen when you first become pregnant: immature lobule glands are changing. The longer you breastfeed, the more of these cells mature. The source of many cancers are immature versions of these cells.

There's a lot of interesting research going on right now though about the wider causes of breast cancer. Even light at night may play a role. Most breast cancer does not have a detectable cause or family history component.


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

[User] If the Higgs field has its lowest potential energy where there is a significant presence, does that imply that with enough power we could create a Higgs-free region? What would such a region be like?

[Assistant]
> ... If the Higgs field has its lowest potential energy where there is a significant presence, does that imply that with enough power we could create a Higgs-free region?

As far as we know, no.  The Higgs field is defined over all of space, just like all other fields are.  To use the electromagnetic field as an example, we can say "this region of space has no EM field" because the electromagnetic field's vacuum state (lowest-energy state) is zero, but the reality is that there is still an EM field there, it is just in a state where it's as *if* the field were not actually present at all.

However, we cannot say that for the Higgs field because the Higgs field's vacuum state (lowest energy state) is nonzero.

We cannot create a "Higgs-free region" with "enough power" because adding energy to a system creates a higher-energy state (an excitation in the field).  That is how we would create Higgs bosons (which are those excitations).  To create a lower-energy state it would be required to remove energy from the system, but if the system is already in its lowest-energy state then by definition it is not possible to remove more energy (otherwise the system would not have been in its lowest-energy state to begin with).


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why are Imperial Stormtroopers trained to fire from the hip?

This is a common tactic used by Imperial Stormtroopers during the Galactic Civil War. (and to a lesser extent Republic Clone Troopers during the Clone Wars) Isn't firing from the hip much less accurate than aiming and firing from a three point stance?

[Assistant]
They have an HUD inside their helmets that assist with aiming. Their armor is made to assist them in combat and help protect against energy type weapons. This allows them to see the status of their squad mates and their commanders to efficiently give orders.

The HUD was something that was introduced standard to all troops after it's great success by the special ops troopers during the clone wars, however the normal troopers receive a "watered down" version that only allows for basic support.


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

[User]
If time stops completely at the event horizon, how can black holes grow?

It is my understanding, that the supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies became so massive because they were swallowing up surrounding matter for billions of years, not because they were so massive from the beginning. On the other hand, if time stops at the event horizon, it shouldn't be possible for matter to fall through and increase the mass of the whole object. This seems like a paradox to me.

I understand that time doesn't stop for the observer falling onto the BH. I'm asking about what happens from the point of view of an external static observer (us, Earthlings).

My best guess is that it can be explained as the infalling matter somehow "settling" on the surface of the event horizon - but even that would have to happen in infinite time, right?

So which is it? Is it that black holes don't grow, or that time doesn't really stop at the event horizon? Or maybe neither and there is some freakish explanation I havent thought of? ;)

[Assistant]
The phenomenon goes by the name *black hole complementarity.* Matter *both* falls into the singularity *and* stays fixed for eternity at the event horizon. Both things occur. This may sound like a paradox, but it really isn't, because no knowledge of what transpires within a black hole can ever filter out of it, so there's no actual contradiction, but merely an apparent one.

In a very real sense, there are two black holes. One is the black hole that exists to infalling matter; it's a point of zero volume and infinite density. The other is the black hole that exists to all observers who do *not* fall in; it's a spherical shell of energy that grows over time as more matter gets mushed up against it.

Since from the outside a spherical shell gravitates exactly as it would if it were a point, we can tell no difference between the two. But the tiny void just outside the event horizon roils and churns at the quantum scale, and the fluctuations that are present there are determined by what's fallen into the black hole. This is the source of Hawking radiation: If the universe ever cools to the point where black holes can radiate their heat away  and it is not certain this will occur  then all the information that fell into the black hole will emerge again, bit for bit, albeit in an entirely homogenized form.

Black hole complementarity is a relatively new idea in physics, only having been first articulated back in the early 1990s. But in the years since, it's been universally accepted as the truth, as much as any notion that can't be experimentally tested or compared with observation can be.


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

[User] How does radiation (radioactive) affect electronics?

[Assistant] There are kinematic effects, where an atom gets displaced and creates a vacancy in the crystal. This can be caused by any form of radiation where the particle has high enough energy to unbind the atom from a lattice but these are usually rare events. Another effect is through neutron radiation, which can trigger a decay of an atom while still in the crystal and form a substitution impurity. Both will increase the resistivity of the metallic connections and dope semiconducting parts which will eventually lead to failure of the device.


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

[User]
[X-Files] What percentage of Mulder and Scully's cases are we seeing?

There must be lots of cases where the unexplained phenomenon actually turns out to be a hoax or something. In my headcanon, this is like 80% of their caseload, and those cases just never get aired on TV.

It would explain why Scully remains so skeptical, since she'd actually be proven correct most of the time.

Any evidence either way on this?

[Assistant]
I'd say it's probably a ratio of about 3:1 for every mundane case to extraordinary X-File. Scully certainly seems more than willing to discount cases without further investigation just because nothing has turned up within the first few hours, even though by the end of her first year working with Mulder, she'd witnessed events that are overtly paranormal and/or connected to a major conspiracy. This isn't even counting the following years where she was abducted, diagnosed with cancer, and almost murdered several times due to strange events.

Even though she seems to be almost naturally stubborn in her skepticism, there still has to be times when it's reaffirmed through cases going nowhere. I'd say there's an average of 3-4 weeks between the cases that are shown in the FOX documentary, and in the meantime, there's either 1-2 cases where nothing turns up, or Scully goes on a reading binge where she consumes a bunch of material that reaffirms her beliefs in reason and skepticism (scientific journals, books by people like James Randi, etc.).

As for what Mulder does in-between major cases, he probably reads deeper into whatever paranormal topic he's into at the moment, or he thinks heavily about Samantha's abduction and other past events, both of which end up reaffirming his beliefs. Also, lots of porn, which is bound to have serious effects on him as well.


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

[User] [MCU] Is T'Challa's identity as the Black Panther public after Civil War? He took his mask off in front of dozens of special forces guys. Can they all be trusted to hush it up?

[Assistant] T'Challa makes no attempt to hide his identity. Being the ruler of Wakanda and being the Black Panther are one and the same. T'Challa is the Panther and the king, as were his father, his grandfather and so on before him.


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

[User]
How do I know my code runs on different machines?

Let's say I write a program in C. That programm compiles to assembly code and that code gets assembled to machine code. Given the plethora of different processors out there, how can I distribute my binaries and know they run on different machines? When you download a program on the internet, you often see a Windows, MacOS, and Linux version, but why would there be different versions depending on the operating system and not on the machine? My thought process is: If my binary runs on machine A, it will probably not run on machine B, because machine B has a different instruction set. I'm not that deep into assembly programming, so I'm just guessing here, but I'd assume there are so many different instruction sets for different machines, that you could't distribute binaries for all machines. I'm also guessing that when I use a compiler, let's say gcc, that it knows different architectures and can given certain arguments compile for different machines. When I distribute non-open-source software I would of course only distribute the binaries and not the C code. But then I wouldn't be able to compile on my target system. So how would this work? Does it have something to do with the OS? Does the OS change instructions to match the system's architecture?

[Assistant]
It's not just the instruction set alone. For example, every operating system provides different system call interfaces. They differ in the kind of services provided by the system calls (like reading/writing files). And the convention how a system call in the operating system is invoked from the assembly differs as well.

That's one of the reasons that you need to compile separately for each ISA/OS combination whenever a program runs on the CPU's instruction set directly. (ISA = instruction set architecture)

If you want to compile only once and have it run on all platforms, you need something like Java that compiles to CPU independent bytecode. But then, you need a virtual machine to run those Java programs. And that virtual machine again is compiled separately for each ISA/OS combination.

For C, you need to compile your code with a compiler that's configured to produce code for your target ISA/OS combination. If you install a gcc on your development system, it's typically set up to produce code for your development system's ISA/OS combination. If you are developing on an x86 Windows but want to create your binaries for a Linux running on an ARM CPU, you need to install a cross-compiler that targets Linux for ARM.

You still need to be careful about writing your code in a portable manner, like using libraries that are available across your target systems. And your C code itself must be portable. For example, your code should not have any silent assumptions about the target architecture, like the size of a pointer.

Hope that helps.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does turning it off and back on help so often?

Its the general 1st suggestion for a quick fix.

[Assistant]
Imagine the computer is like an orchestra.

If one group within the orchestra were to fall behind, and then all of the groups started getting messed up due to the un-matched group. Rather than letting that one group try to catch up on it's own by speeding up or jumping forward in the music it would be easier for the conductor to simply stop everyone and start again with everyone in unison.

The same applies to a computer if one process or task falls behind, it can cause a cascading effect. Better to just restart and let everything sync back up like it should.


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

[User] How does a virus like Ebola lay dormant of long periods of time and then reappear again?

[Assistant] I don't believe that the Ebola virus is thought to have a latent state, as some viruses do (herpes and  HIV). Instead, there is the appearance of occasional outbreaks in populations which could give that idea. It is believed that the virus has an animal reservoir where it is alive and well and will make zoonotic transfer to humans, where it usually spreads like wildfire.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Does the Federation or any of its Strategic Competitors have any "Aircraft Carrier" type forces to complement their more familiar "Capital Ships" types of fleets?

To elaborate, the Enterprise and its usual opponents are equivalent to Heavy Cruisers or Battleships.

A Bird of Prey or a Voyager level ship is sort of like  a Destroyer or Destroyer Escort.

Since we've seen that Federation Shuttlecraft have strong enough shields to take a few hits, and are large enough to carry a few photon torpedoes, are there "Fighter/Bomber Carrier" ships in the respective fleets that we just don't see onscreen?

[Assistant]
The Akira-class was envisioned by the creator as a hybrid carrier, though it's never been depicted as such on screen. It has the shuttle bays positioned for a direct pass through the ship though, similar to a Battlestars flight decks.

The battle at the end of Disco S2 shows that Connies, Crossfields, and whatever S31 had were capable of putting a lot of small support craft on field.

I'd bet they developed dedicated fighters after Voyagers return though. In an alternative timeline where Harry doesn't get the Voyager posting we see he goes into small ship design. If he goes on to do that on his return and enlists help from Tom and B'elanna (Seven seems unlikely), they ought to be churning out the successors to the Delta Flyers since they proved so incredibly effective.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the advantage of using the recycled air button the cars A/C?

I understand its pulling air from inside the car vs outside but why does the recycle option seem like it blows a lot harder.

[Assistant] If you pull air from outside the car you have to heat or cool it a lot more to make it the right temperature then when pulling air that is already close to the desired temperature from inside the car. So the climate control slows down the fans to make sure the air spends more time over the coils to get to the correct temperature. The disadvantage of recycling air inside the cabin is that any smoke or humidity will take a long time to vent out. So the option is there so you can select between good ventilation or good temperature control.


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

[User] How can people sever entire legs and survive the blood loss, while other people bleed out from severing just one artery in their leg?

[Assistant] Is some cases, when a limb is severed, the major arteries are pulled inside the muscle and the muscle squeezed the open end reducing or preventing blood loss. This only works with complete severing. A partial severing of the arteries will result in severe hemorrhagic blood loss and rapid decline to death.


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

[User]
[The Lorax] Why Didnt The Once-Ler just replant the trees? Or that one seed by himself?

We can clearly see that the trees grow insanely quickly. Why didnt he just continuously replant the truffula trees? Or even once all the trees or most of them are dead, just replant that one last seed, and within a few years they are all back. Why didnt they just do that?

[Assistant]
Maybe he could.

And then the *next* entrepreneur finds the forest, and sees the market for thneeds, and builds *their* factory, and before long it's wasteland again. And again. And again.

That's the reason the message is "care a whole awful lot" not "plant a whole lot of trees". The death of the truffula trees is just a symptom. The problem is unchecked greed. And that takes more then seeds to fix.


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

[User]
[Iron Man] What was Tony's original escape plan involving Yinsen?

What was the "plan" that Tony said they need to stick with when Yinsen decided he need to buy Tony more time?

[Assistant] Based on his much-delayed SHIELD debriefing, Tony admitted that his original plan was (assuming the alarm hadn't been sounded) to draw as many of the enemy as possible close to the doors of his lab/prison, hopefully eliminating a good percentage of the opposing force with the door bomb and then picking off stragglers in the confusion.  As he leads the way out, Yinsen would follow at a safe (but fairly close) distance to provide some peripheral vision (HEY, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU) that the MK1 suit severely lacked.  Once clear of the cave itself, Stark intended to eliminate as much of the weapons stockpile as possible before snagging a vehicle and driving or walking to any nearby settlements where he could get a phone or radio.  Yinsen knew the area (his hometown was nearby, as we later confirm) and would've been a useful guide.  The suits "flight" systems were designed only as a last ditch disaster/escape mechanism and nearly proved fatal themselves.


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

[User]
[Warhammer: 40K] Can Techpriests copy STCs? How about forge entirely new ones?

One of the major weaknesses of the AdMech is that they shun innovation and invention, preferring to rely on blueprints (STCs) produced during the DAoT and beyond. People who discover new STCs are revered while people who invent from scratch are viewed with suspicion, even though the end result (AdMech gets new technology) is the same.

What's stopping a politically savvy Techpriest from inventing a new technology, then forging an STC for it and claiming that they discovered it instead?

[Assistant]
Nothing, and in fact some Forgeworlds have made their name by doing exactly that.  The trick with the AdMech isn't that they shun innovation, it's that they're well aware of the dangers that come from untested technology.  The prime example of that is Cawl, though he's barely even maintaining the veneer of it being STC.

The bigger trick is finding a Magos or Archmagos who is politically savvy enough to do that, and didn't get weeded out of the priesthood early because of their non-cautious ways.


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

[User] ELI5: How exactly does my pickle jar still smell vaguely of pickles after several trips through the washer?

[Assistant]
Basically the way soap works is that it forms molecular bonds with a lot of sticky and food type molecules. These bonds are generally stronger than the bonds between food and skin, or food and glass. Then when you introduce hot water to the situation you're adding energy, which is used by the molecules to jump from the weaker bond to the stronger one.

So why doesn't the vinegar brine of pickles leave the glass? Because the bond with soap isn't strong enough. Dried vinegar forms a very strong bond with glass, so it has to be physically unbonded (pushed off with enough pressure) not molecularly unbonded (chemically sticking to the soap).


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

[User]
[Spiderman] Can you just disable Spidermans webshooters?

If a supervillain wanted to hinder Spiderman, couldnt they disable his webshooters? How would they do this? Make some kind of jammer? Use an EMP? Anything?

[Assistant] His webshooters are mechanical, without any built in computer, and Spider-Man is extremely fast and precognitive about threats. It's certainly possible to disable his webshooters, yanking out the cartridges of web fluid would do it, but it's hard to get him to hold still long enough to tamper with his equipment.


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

[User]
How does artificial gravity work?

Yeah, I know this is a sci-fi question. But it seems like every sci-fi film and series I see that has artificial gravity has some sort of large windmill-like feature attached to their spaceship, so I assume it must be based on something. Is there a good reason for that, or is it just a case of one iconic sci-fi movie ages ago being copied till this day.

[Assistant]
Artificial gravity can work with a rotating space station. Centripetal acceleration would do the trick, as in the rotating reference frame you'd get a centrifugal force, things would appear to fall just like on Earth.

This doesn't come without disadvantages. Astronauts would get motion sickness unless you keep the rotation below 2 rpm. With such a slow angular speed, in order to get significant "gravity", you'll need a very big radius, which would come at significant cost.

In sci-fi movies there's a lot of nonsense. But sometimes you get to see two rotating habitats of equal size connected by a long tunnel that passes though the center of rotation. That would be a good compromise between cost and gravity intensity. But astronauts would get non-uniform gravity and coriolis forces as they traverse the tunnel. Also this kind of spacecraft would be very fragile and hard to accelerate without breaking it.


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

[User]
ELI5: What are sushi masters doing that is so masterful?

I know this is kind of an ignorant statement (this post is my attempt to combat that ignorance), but I watched documentary on a sushi master, and it looks like he takes a piece of raw fish, combines it with a clump of rice, and brushes it with a little sauce. And it apparently took him 30 years to master that, and he's still learning.

What about that takes decades to develop, and how is it different from someone with less experience combining the same handful of simple ingredients would produce?

[Assistant]
it starts by the chef choosing which fish to buy from the market.   is it a good fish?  a great fish?  what parts of the fish are good.  what parts are great?

once the fish gets to restaurant,  how do you cut the fish?  what angle
 do you cut it?  what's the action of the knife cut?  which parts of fish fit which dishes?

alot of making sushi is in the making of the rice.   what kind of rice are you using?   how much water?   what temperature?  how long are you cooking?  how much rice vinegar are you mixing in?  how quickly are you cooling down?  is the action that you're stirring in the rice making it more or less fluffy?  sticky? chewy?


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

[User]
[General RPGs] What does it physically feel like to level up?

What physical effect if any does my body feel when I gain another level? If I jump several levels due to a sharp xp gain do the effects feel greater or change in any way?

I imagine the feeling manifests itself in the form of a full body tingle. What do you guys think?

[Assistant]
have you ever after a long training pass looked back and suddenly realise that you did something that you couldnt imagien yourself doing some time ago? you are filled with confidence and you stratch your body, feel the muscles flexing and feel the power inside you, and you realise that something you can do now casually was something thats acutally incredible for the general population, and you feel that you can do that thing, that thing that used to be impossible and you used to joke about, you could do that, right  here and right now.

i think its something like that.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did the entire planet manage to agree to live on the same 24 hour clock?

I feel like maybe cause every civilization used the sun as a time keeper? I just want to know for sure.

[Assistant]
People (France) tried to introduce metric time and metric days, but it didn't last.

60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour started with one of the oldest civilization - Sumer.

Later, ancient Egyptians divided the day into two 12hour parts.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does the human body expel waste through urine and lose water? Couldn't the waste product in urine just be expelled in feces and keep the water?

[Assistant] Faeces and urine have two different sources. The former is the remnants of the food we've eaten after all the useful stuff has been extracted from it, including water. Urine, on the other hand, is the result of your kidneys filtering stuff out of your bloodstream that shouldn't be there. Since the blood is fluid the results of filtering it are also somewhat fluid--it's not really possible to completely remove all the dry stuff and leave the fluid behind, because doing that would clog up your filter really quickly.


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

[User] ELI5: In Newtons cradle, when raising two balls, why doesnt just one ball move from the opposite side with double the velocity of the 2 balls on the other side? Why do 2 balls move? Why cant the collective momentum from both balls all be transferred to a single ball?

[Assistant]
If all we had to concern ourselves with was conservation of momentum, it could easily do.just what you suggest.  Really it could create many different combinations of balls and speeds.

However in any collision there are two things conserved, momentum and energy.  Specifically in this type of collision all kinetic energy must be the same before and after.  If an equal mass is not sent flying at the end of this collision, then either energy or momentum is not conserved.

Math version for those interested:

KE1=KE2. (Kinetic energy is the same before and after the collision where no deformation occurs)
.5*m*v^2.     You asked what happens Masses if is 2 at the start, and 1 at the end.  Let's choose a speed of 2. And solve for our final speed.

0.5x2x2^2 = 0.5x1xV^2

4 = 0.5xV^2

Sqrt(8)=v

-----------------------

Also p1=p2.  P=m*v

2x2 = 1xV

4=v

If we try this change in mass, we get two different speeds.  Conservation of energy states it is sqrt8, while conservation of momentum requires that the final speed is 4. As both statements must be true, this possibility does not happen.

Now if the collision has some deformation, or another way to store/transfer energy, the energy equation will be a bit different, and you can have a different mass ejected.  But that isn't true for a Newton's cradle.


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

[User]
ELI5: What's preventing temperature across the globe to reach an equilibrium since air flows freely?

If I open the windows in my room, which has AC turned on and it's cool in the summer, it will quickly become as hot as it is outside, why isn't it happening around the globe?

[Assistant]
We perceive air as this uniform gas that's just everywhere, when in reality air actually clumps around itself and forms bubbles and pockets. These bubbles form when air of the same temperature and density clump together. You'll get bubbles of cold air, bubbles of hot air, bubbles of wet air, bubbles of dry air, etc.

In fact, wind is when these bubbles push against each other. The bubbles are so huge and so sharply determined by their heat and density and humidity, that they don't just blend into each other: they actually form a wall, or a front, and push against each other.

You may have heard the weather forecast talking about a warm front or a cold front coming in. That's a big bubble of one type of air pushing another. You get wind at the line where the bubbles meet, and one bubble is pushing the other.

Some airline turbulence is also caused by these bubbles, since they don't just push around horizontally on the surface of the earth but they stack vertically on top of each other into the stratosphere, too. So sometimes when there's turbulence or the feeling of a sudden drop while flying, it might be because the plane is punching through one air bubble into the next.


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

[User] How do satellites know their precise location?

[Assistant] We can track satellites using ground  based stations (IGS) and use the data to make corrections to signals from things like GPS satellites. This data is not always transmitted back to the satellite, so not all satellites know where they are, per se.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do humans strive to be better than one another (achieve higher education, become celebrities, masters of a certain skill, etc) while animals such as ants are fine acting as a single unit for a larger whole (never choosing to change their status among their peers)?

[Assistant]
It is difficult to answer the question when you juxtaposition it as humans vs animals "such as ants".

A key reason most animals (including humans) strive to be better than one another has to do with the aspect of evolutionary theory known as sexual selection. Most animals will seek a mate that improves the likelihood of their offspring being successful. Part of that is seeking the genetic makeup that improves the offspring. Another part is selecting a mate that will be the best parent.

In some species the sexual selection is mainly done by one sex, which results in competition in the other sex. One example is birds of paradise. Other species the selection is done by both sexes, which leads to competition in both sexes. Humans fall into this category.

Ants is an entirely different story, because their genetics is based on haplodiploidy. The entire colony are the offspring of the queen, so there is no genetic variation. When she mates she mates with ants that carry only her dna, so there is no evolutionary benefit in mating with x, y or z.


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

[User]
(General) is there a side-kick that was more powerful/popular than the superhero they follow(ed)?

What I mean is  was there a sidekick more respected, popular, or powerful than their superhero in their world? As in the general media and population were in unison in that regard.

[Assistant]
The Green Hornet & Kato. Kato did all the hard stuff, and he's always been way more popular.

The Hulk is Bruce Banner's *alter*-ego, but it's always the one to make headlines.

They're not exactly superheroes (just wizards) but in that Harry Potter series, Hermione actually solved three out of every four weird problems. Harry stumbled blindly into a lucky win the rest of the time.

Chewbacca was the brains, the brawn, the chief engineer, and the real mover behind one of the galaxy's most profitable smuggling vessels & crucial to the rebellion's success. Han was just the pretty face and sometimes the driver, but all *humans* assumed he was in charge.


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

[User]
In a binary star-system, should one star go supernova, what would be the effect on the other star (provided the original doesn't become a black hole)?

So I had this thought pop into my head based on a few assumptions, which may not be correct.

Assumption 1: Only stars massive enough will go supernova at the end of their life.

Assumption 2: Not all stars that go supernova will result in a black hole.

So this got me thinking, in a binary star system, should one star go supernova, and not turn into a black hole, what would be the effect on the other star?

I am sure some things like relative mass enter the equations, but I'm curious as the sun is not a solid, if there are any models that would predict the after-effects.

Would the shock-wave propagate through the plasma of the other star in such a way where it doesn't inherently break it up, or would the supernova break up the other star in its entirety.

[Assistant]
First, an aside on black holes:

Whether the progenitor becomes a black hole or not is irrelevant - the gravitational fields of a star and a black hole of the same mass are the same outside the surface of the star. In other words, at large distances, it's just as easy to orbit a black hole as it is to orbit a star.

The companion star in a binary system typically survives the supernova but with a distorted orbit. Some may even be completely ejected from the system, and are no longer gravitationally bound. As you say, the orbital change you get depends upon relative masses of the stars. The supernova shock wave does blow some small amount of the material off the companion star, but the evolution of the star otherwise continues as normal.


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

[User]
Do fans actually increase the temperature of the room, if the room is closed off?

Just thinking about it moving the air around, pushing all of the molecules against each other. Perhaps this creates friction and heat?

TL;DR It's hot as shit in my apartment.

[Assistant]
Technically yes. A fan just circulates air, which hastens equilibrium. Since the fan's motor generates heat, the fan technically increases the temperature of an isolated room slightly.

More importantly, however, fans cool you off even if they do increase the temperature because they hasten the evaporation of your sweat. That causes evaporative cooling, and that's what cools you off.


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

[User] [General] Are there books with non violent societies? As in laws are not enforced through strength or violence, but some other means?

[Assistant]
The Culture series takes place in a society where there are no laws or police. It's very hard to commit crimes because of the omnipotent godlike AI called Minds that monitor everything, because there is no poverty and everything is free (so it's hard to steal), and because everyone is practically immortal, so police is not needed.

If someone does manage to commit a crime, they have a process called "slap droning". What happens is a drone (a levitating, suitcase sized, sentient machine) follows you around for the rest of your life and slaps you if you're being a douche.


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

[User]
[DC / Martian Manhunter] How has J'onn J'onzz dealt with his fear of fire over the years?

There had to have been more than one situation in his career as a superhero where he had to deal with fire whether directly or indirectly, yet even far into his career with the Justice League it's been observed that a mere match can terrify him. How does he deal or cope with it? How has he dealt with situations involving fire?

[Assistant]
There was a Post-Crisis storyarc where J'onn decided to try and cure his fear of fire, after it rendered him helpless to assist the League and they nearly died because of it.

To this end, he enlisted the help of a reformed pyrokenetic supervillain named Scorch.

Through intensive psychic and physical training, J'onn was eventually able to rid himself of his weakness to fire.

Unfortunately, this kickstarted another JLA story, called "Trial by Fire" where, long story short, J'onn goes Dark Phoenix on the entire world.

As it turns out, the Martian fear of fire was genetically engineered into them by the Guardians of OA millions of year earlier.

Before that, they were actually a fire elemental species called "The Burning" who, in addition to all currently known martian abilities, could generate fire, and psychically fed off the destruction and violence they cause to grow stronger and reproduce.

The fear of fire was put into them as a way to save the galaxy from their proliferation beyond Mars, without completely exterminating their species altogether. The Green Martians' innate fear of fire has been what keeps them from reverting back to this savage and nearly omnipotent state.

J'onn removing those blocks from his mind causes him to revert to the form of a Burning, and he is taken over by the malicious persona of 'Fernus'.

Fernus has all of J'onn's physical and telepathic abilities with no restraint, in addition to being able to grow stronger the more the Leaguers engage him in battle and the more destruction he causes. Superman concedes that J'onn is in arguably the strongest being on Earth by this point.

Fernus attempts to burn the whole world down in nuclear Armageddon and use the resulting fire and cataclysm to reproduce a new army of Burning who can conquer the galaxy.

He nearly succeeds but is narrowly defeated by the JLA thanks to essential help from Plastic Man, J'onn consciousness buried within him, and a sacrifice from Scorch.

At the end of the story, J'onn regains a weakness to fire, but only under the condition that if it's a 'fire of the psyche', which was kinda vague but seemed to basically mean fires which have already killed lots of people, or started by malicious intent.

At some point though, that just got dropped, and he was back to being weak against fire in general.


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

[User] ELI5: Why heart muscles can work 24/7 nonstop but other muscles like biceps can't and get tired to they point the can't contract more?

[Assistant]
Cardiac muscle has a very different cellular architecture than skeletal muscle.

Skeletal muscles get tired and lose contractility because you deplete the muscles' stores of glycogen (basically the stored form of sugar). They lose their easy to access energy source and stop working as well.

Cardiac muscle feeds primarily on circulating fats, and are designed to harness this very efficiently. Because they aren't relying on stored energy but instead circulating energy, they don't need to worry about depleting their stores.


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

[User]
[Folklore] Can a vampire get trapped in a courtyard?

Vampires need permission to enter your house, so what happens if they're completely surrounded by a house? Could you trap a vampire by building a house around them while the sleep? Or even just claiming the land?

[Assistant]
The courtyard is part of the home as much as any other space is.  The fact that it's open to air doesn't change that.
If the vampire is in the courtyard, he's already obtained permission to enter somehow.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does bright light induce sneezing?

[Assistant] There is no definitive answer, but the leading theory right now is that in some people the nerves that trigger a sneeze run especially close to the nerves that control the physical reaction to bright light in eyes---so close, that triggering the latter triggers the former.


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

[User]
CMV: The best way to write out a date is YEAR-MONTH-DAY whether it's 2021-02-22, 2021 February 22, or any variations therein.

I feel like in English-speaking areas, there's two ways of writing dates. In the US, it's usually MONTH-DAY-YEAR and in the UK it's DAY-MONTH-YEAR. IMO, these are both silly, as they can be confusing.

For example, May 1, 2021 could be written as 05-01-2021 (US). In the UK, that could be construed as 5 January, 2021. Likewise, the opposite could happen in the US with a UK date.

If we agreed that it should be "vaguest to most specific" from left to right, then there would never be any confusion on this.

Additionally, writing dates with the year first helps when creating things like filenames. If you have a list like this, it would be incredibly difficult to organize it from oldest to newest, for example:

01-24-2021
05-08-2020
09-13-1982
...

Not to mention, that 05-08-2020 date could be confusing as described previously.

Whereas that same list with the YEAR-MONTH-DAY format could be organized very easily with no confusion:

2021-01-24
2020-05-08
1982-09-13
...

Of course, getting everyone on board with this would be tricky, as even the UK would likely feel weird writing out a date as "2021 February 22." But it would make more sense.

[Assistant]
> If we agreed that it should be "vaguest to most specific" from left to right, then there would never be any confusion on this.

This isn't a reason for any particular format, since it applies to all of them. If we agree that it should be one format, then there won't be any confusion regardless of what format that is.

> Additionally, writing dates with the year first helps when creating things like filenames. If you have a list like this, it would be incredibly difficult to organize it from oldest to newest, for example:

Writing the year first offers no practical gains, and has practical drawbacks. The year is the least significant bit of information in the date, followed by the month, and then the date (at least, until we discover time travel). For optimal communication, you want to put the most important bit first, so that the date is understood as soon as possible.

For file names, there are no practical gains. In any situation where sorting by date is of concern, far better implementations exist than any combination of D/M/Y, just like how Unix time is so much better than any of the nomally-used time formats. You should be tailoring the sorting to your needs, not using something so half-baked.


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

[User]
[DC] What effects do other types of Stellar bodies have on Superman and his powers?

We know that Superman is equivalent to a regular human under a red sun. Under a yellow sun, he's obviously Superman. If he's under a blue sun, his powers are supercharged. But what about other types of stars like brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, neutron stars, quasars, pulsars, magnetars or even black holes?

[Assistant] I believe that new canon is that it isn't just any Red, Yellow or Blue star or other celestial body type that affects Kryptonian physiology but only specific types that do. So in theory Superman could approach any of these but unless they are of an exact specific type they will have no effect on him.


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

[User]
[The Witcher series] Why are the Witchers on decline as a population and profession? how many are left?

i mean, yeah they can't reproduce sexually but it doesn't seem like finding abandoned kids is that hard. you find a house full of em in 3. even if 2 in 10 make it it should've taken a lot longer to decline from a full school occupying Kaer Morhen to the 4 dudes we see in 3. also as a follow up are any other schools still functioning like the wolf is by the time of 3? please avoid spoilers if possible for The Witcher 3 game as i just started it, i just finished Kiera Metz's quests and I'm only level 6. if not, go for it.

[Assistant]
Each school had a personal ruin and an overarching reason. The overarching reason is the decline in Monsters since the Conjunction of the Spheres. Yes, monsters breed. Witchers are also very good at their jobs.

So you see less monsters, people hold Witchers in less respect because they're not as valuable. They turn from heroes, to tradesmen, to hucksters. Sure, everyone's seen a wraith, or a drowner - but with proper precautions they'll leave you be. Something burns your village? Get the army! It was probably oru neighbours! And as Witchers fade from the world, old tales get retold, and certain memes gain prominence.

We don't know the exact reason each school fell to ruin, but we can take a guess at most. Mages certainly played into at least one, probably more. Their disinclination to help would tamp down on recruits, too. The trial of grasses does not DEFINITELY require a Mage (Leo, for example, was intended by Vesemir to take it) but it becomes exponentially more fatal without one. So let's hit each school. I've ordered them from definite knowledge of their downfall to supposition.

Wolf: The Monstrum incited hatred and lynch mobs, as likely intended by its anonymous author. That author also probably took place in the attack that destroyed Kaer Morhen, since a mob of peasants could not have taken the castle. This might be due to mages not liking the supernatural competition - even if most mages are not too threatened by a standard Witcher. Before the death of Vesemir they could potentially have recovered, but he was the glue that held the remaining Wolf Witchers together.

Cat: The Cat school slowly turned into assassins, thugs and brigands. Eventually an army was sent to root them out - all remaining Witchers had bounties on their heads.

Viper: Vipers come from Nilfgaard. There, Witchers may not enter cities. The place has a powerful, well disciplined army, a group of sun cultists and a deep belief in the state. We don't know what caused them to be scattered, but given the knowledge we have of the Great Sun, its integration with the state, we have three possibilities: 1) They pissed off an emperor, they were painted as non-human mutants for the religious angle and slaughtered by the army and the Loc Grim mages. 2) 'Formally' disbanded, their school falling to ruin and scattering the Viper witchers across the empire. Grandfathered out, if you like. 3) Informally disbanded - pressure put on them by the state, ensuring they had no recruits, and that the school would eventually crumble. This seems most likely to me, given what we learn in 2 and 3.

Bear: No clue. Probably a Skelligen school. Wore heavy armour and used heavy assaults. They used crossbows. Given that on Skellige, monsters are common but interclan warfare is more so (Mostly as minor skirmishes)? I'd assume they were gutted by the locals because reasons.

Griffin: Magickers above most. I'd assume that they were painted as evil sorcerers, a brush normally reserved for mages. So the peasants get the local lynch mob and incinerate them.

Manticore: I've got nothing. We know of them primarily from Touissant, so I'd assume something similar happened to them that happened to the Vipers. Even though Nilfgaard does not interfere, theoretically, with the internal affairs I've got nothing else to go on.


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

[User] [WH40K] Why isn't the Chaos Fleet much more advanced than the Imperium, considering that Dark Mechanicus can actually freely innovate?

[Assistant]
Exposure to Chaos energies tends to make you a little... crazy.

So producing a new engine powered by screams could be innovative science. Or it could be...

###*SCIENCE!*

That doesn't actually do anything better. With Chaos it's always going to be a mixed bag that tends toward the latter. Also take into account that with Chaos the more things change, the more they stay the same. You're dealing with gods of constant war, entropy/decay, intricate plots (for the sake of plans and schemes, not necessarily that go anywhere), and sheer pleasure. None of these are conducive to advancement.


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

[User] [The Simpsons] Lisa is upset with the scientist for not running tests on the "angel" but she herself hides the pirate history of Jebediah Springfield. How is this cromulent?

[Assistant]
IIRC, didn't Lisa choose to hide Jebediah Springfield's unsavory past because she knew how much he meant to her town as its founding hero? She deliberately chose to let the people of Springfield keep their romantic idea of who Jebediah was, because he gave the town a sense of meaning and a positive example to try and follow.

In contrast, the "angel" was just a *National Enquirer* style hoax that turned out to be a crappy marketing gimmick.

Her objection in that instance was that the scientist chose to abandon his supposed principles of evaluating the world he lives in based on verifiable evidence, and instead just bought into the supernatural explanation without properly questioning it. Moreover, by buying into it, he gave it a veneer of legitimacy because the general public knows that scientists aren't supposed to outright confirm a belief without making certain that the belief is based in objective fact.

I think these two situations are perfectly cromulent together.

In the first scenario, Lisa made a moral decision to preserve Jebediah's reputation for the sake of her town's emotional well-being.

In the second scenario, she gets upset with a man of science who abandons the scientific method and by doing so fans the flames of superstition and irrationality among her fellow townspeople.


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

[User] What is the current scientific consensus regarding the effectiveness of catharsis and venting in the release of emotions?

[Assistant]
There are multiple ways to perform catharsis.  One is through sharing your emotions with others (i.e., "venting").  Bernard Rime does a bunch of work on this.  Rime (2007) has suggested that the social sharing of emotions doesn't lead to emotional recovery. Why? Because when you share your emotions, you're also reactivating the memory of what caused your emotion in the first place.  This memory then reactivates your emotion.  So if you're sharing a positive emotion, you'll feel more positive.  But if you're sharing a negative emotion, you'll feel more negative.

Despite, the commonly held belief that the social sharing of emotions is relieving, Rime has consistently found that emotional recovery is not achieved when doing so.

So why do people share their emotions? It turns out that the benefits of sharing one's emotions aren't derived from the act of venting itself but rather from the person with whom those feelings are shared.  So if you tell your friend how angry you are, then she'll likely help you try to reappraise the situation or distract you from it (etc.). Your friend is helping you to regulate/modify your emotions (for a more accurate/comprehensive account of interpersonal emotion regulation, see Zaki & Williams, 2013).

There's also catharsis through expressive writing.  A recent study (Sbarra et al., 2013) suggests this can impede emotional recovery post marital separation.


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

[User]
[Gotham] If Gordon is OK with killing criminals in cold blood...

..then why doesn't he kill Joker when Batman hands him over to GCPD?

[Assistant]
I assume this is a reference to the Gotham TV show, which means Gordon has 20 years to reconsider his ethics before he's going to have that choice.

In the comics, he is emphatically not okay with killing criminals in cold blood; if he was, Batman wouldn't be able to work with him.


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

[User]
[Avatar The Last Airbender] What types of subbending could still be discovered?

We know bloodbending, lightning bending, metalbending, sandbending, plantbending, lavabending, icebending, and probably some others. What other types of subbending could be developed besides these?

[Assistant]
Weather-bending, from either air or water, is an obvious one. Steam-bending is specific, but logically follows from water and ice bending.

Based on the idea that fire-bending is more strictly energy-bending (it also controls lightning and explosions, after all), light-bending is a logical next step for that, and sound-bending makes some sense for air-bending (what is sound but air vibrations?).

Bloodbending might expand into other bodily fluids (yeah, yeah, get your jokes out the way) and maybe, with study, become full on body/flesh bending. The human body is mostly water, after all...


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

[User]
ELI5:Why is the Italian soccer/football uniform blue and not green or red?

Usually, an international soccer uniform is based on the country's flag, but I've always wondered why the Italian one has blue and white instead of red or green.

[Assistant]
They started wearing blue jerseys around 1911. Back in those days the house Savoye was a pretty big deal in Italy. The colour of their house was actually blue. So the colour was chose in honour of that family.

The Dutch teams play in Orange for the same reason. But in their case its the house of Orange.