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

[User]
[Batman] What would happen to Joker if Batman just..... stopped?

Title says it all. Joker robs a bank/plants a bomb/ kidnaps some guys all in order to bait The Dark Knight yet once again. He has a pretty simple plan. Do the crime, torture some guys, fight Bats, maybe if he's lucky piss him off/ hurt him a bit, win/lose the fight. ( He technically wins either because insanity and whatnot). But something's wrong..... horribly wrong....

The scenarios.

1. Bats just doesn't show up.
2. Bats just shows up to meet joker says after everything he went through he doesn't give a shit anymore, and leaves.
3. Same as 2. but he actively tries to kill Joker and he notices. Joker now knows Bats is actively trying to kill him in this situation.

different scenarios not based on initial situation.

1. Joker finds out from one of his goons that Batman kills now, and he doesn't look particularly remorsed about it either.
2. Batman just shows up to joker and kills himself right in front of him (I know it's a bit harsh, but let's just pretend the years of trauma and depression finally caught up to him.)

[Assistant]
There was actually A comic where he though that batman was dead, and he became sane again. He got A family, and A job. But when he figured out that batman was alive, he gone insane again.

So, he would be an actual person (Again)  if batman stops.


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

[User]
What was the climate like on Pangaea? Were there any strange (to us) weather phenomena due to all continents being merged together?

Since the ocean currents would behave differently, and the landmass was distributed less evenly, surely that affected the weather patterns. How was the climate of Pangaea different than the modern era?

[Assistant] I understand that the oceans moderate the temperature, and away from the oceans, the summers are hotter and the winters are colder.  That's how it is in the continental United States.  I've heard that the middle of a supercontinent would be a desert, because of the extreme  seasons, and because rain clouds originate from the ocean and might exhaust themselves of rain before they drift that far inland.


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

[User]
ELI5:How can companies that sell "aged" goods (e.g. wine, cheese) predict the demand for their goods so far in the future?

Any demand for goods can fluctuate constantly, so how do companies with long-term manufacturing/aging process reasonably match their supply with a demand years in advance?

[Assistant] Wine and cheese are pretty common and basic items so the demand for them is pretty stable through time. They look at their previous sales and current demand, look at population growth, and then predict how much wine will be in demand in say 10 years. Unless something major happens there is no reason for wine and cheese demand to suddenly plummet.


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

[User] ELI5: How did the first people find land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean like Hawaii when it seems like finding land in the space of vast ocean is like throwing darts blindfolded?

[Assistant]
Sea-going civilizations have a good deal of knowledge of the surrounding area from their fishing activities.

Beyond this, cloud formation and tidal patterns can give you clues about islands long before you can see the actual island.

However, the most likely method for groups like Polynesians would have been simply following birds. Migratory birds "island hop", so all you need to do is know the difference between various kinds of birds and follow the right ones.


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

[User]
[Warcraft] How would the events of Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft differed if Arthas had listened to Medivh and taken his people to Kalimdor?

Basically, what happens if Arthas never falls and the Scourge claims Lordaeron without a war?

[Assistant]
- The Lich King picks a different Champion.  Someone not quite as skillful and driven as Arthas.  Maybe Kel'Thuzad ends up the leader.  Maybe Anub'Arak.  Maybe Garithos gets his mind touched and manipulated down the road to corruption, he's a skilled warrior, and certainly enough of a pompous ass to fall to his own hubris.

- The humans exile themselves *again* after having finally gotten settled after the first two wars.  They're good at this by now, and most of the humans escape unscathed.  The few left behind get gobbled up by the horde, and turned into undead.

- Quel'Thalas remains behind and attempts to defend the Sunwell, which they can't move.  They fail, and die horribly.  Sylvanus Wind~~rider~~runner still gets brought back as an undead.

- The human forces arrive in Kalimdor, and are manipulated into fighting with the horde and the Night Elves.  Anything they retained in strength from not getting overwhelmed by the scourge, they lose by infighting with the other not-really-our-enemies living folks.

- The scourge rampages over the mainland, makes it to Kalimdor, makes it to the Tree, and Archimonde gets killed by the wisp trap thing, just like what happened in the regular timeline at the end of Warcraft III.

- The events of WCIII Frozen Throne continue more or less unaltered.  Illidan still attempts to destroy the Frozen Throne through a giant magical earthquake, and is still stopped by Malfurion.

- Only the end changes.  With a Champion who isn't quite as powerful or skilled as Arthas, Illidan emerges victorious at the end of the Frozen Throne campaign, and destroys the Throne, ending the Scourge forever.


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

[User] ELI5: Whats the difference between Sunni and Shia in Islam?

[Assistant]
After the prophet Muhammed died, Muslim people had to decide who should lead them.  Some thought the most qualified among them should be chosen by the faithful, others thought that god had decreed that it should be a family member.  The former came to be know as Sunnis, who felt Abu Akbr should lead muslims, the latter came to be know as Shias, who thought Ali should lead.

In modern times, Shias give more authority to their clerics to interpret the Koran and lead the faithful, while Sunnis emphasize a more personal connection.  It that sense, Shias are more similar to Catholics while Sunnis have more in common with protestants.


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

[User]
Could an enclosed vacuum impart sufficient buoyancy to overcome earth's gravity?

Given current material, design and fabrication knowledge, is it theoretically possible that, by incorporating sealed internal chambers into an object's design and printing the object in a vacuum, one could create a sort of "permanent vacuum balloon" that would achieve lift in Earth's atmosphere?

[Assistant] The problem is that it'll be only marginally better than hydrogen or helium. A cubic foot of helium provides about 31 grams of lift, while a cubic foot of vacuum will only provide 5 more- 36 grams. (Rough numbers, quickly googled). This is because relative to air, helium is already nearly "weightless"; the additional lift from removing the mass of the helium would be significantly less than the structure to withstand a vacuum.


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

[User] ELI5: How did France come to be so highly regarded in the culinary world?

[Assistant]
Part of it is the French revolution.

Abolition of the guild  resulted in that anyone could become a butcher, baker or cheesemaker and is was easy to open restaurants. Many aristocrats was killed of fled so  there was a large number of competent cooks and servats that needed  of find work. So what they made before for the rich started to be sold to the public and you the beginning of the French cuisine. So a part is that the cuisine of the aristocracy moved out of their homes.


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

[User] ELI5: How did a 32 year old Martin Shkreli get to have so much power at such a young age?

[Assistant] The short answer is that he had a knack for biotech stocks. He self-taught himself biology and chemistry and was able to comprehend complicated papers and study results that most people in finance cannot understand without the help of expensive industry consultants. This can be very helpful in taking short position against stocks of drug companies that have failing products, which so many in biotech do. Very few drugs in development ultimately get FDA's approval. It can also help you assess what company is undervalued based on its drug portfolio. His knowledge, apparently, also allowed him to convince a lot of people to invest in his firms.  Because they believed he really knew what he was talking about. It turns out that a lot of his investments, especially those made at his hedge funds, were simply too risky. He may have been cocky about his expertise and underestimated how much the biotech sector was influenced by other factors outside his control.


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

[User]
[MCU] How does the blip affect siamese twins?

Does it blip the body, or just the half belonging to the chosen person? And if the person gets separated, does the left over part die?

[Assistant]
We watched ~~planes~~ aircraft fall out of the sky. The snap clearly didn't make special considerations to ensure the survival of the survivors in its immediate aftermath.

If only one of the conjoined twins is disintegrated, the remaining one won't be having a good time. Assuming they were conjoined in such a way that the body parts you can designate as the survivor's are a full set of the necessary ones, they're still definitely going to bleed out.


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

[User]
Confusion about the definition of socialism

So when I look up the definition of socialism, it says its the government controlling the means of production. However, whenever someone is talking about the government redistributing wealth, people say thats socialism. But how is that socialism? Isnt the definition of socialism just the government basically owning businesses? Wouldnt wealth redistribution be a different thing, since the government isnt actually owning the means of production, theyre just taking from one person to give to another?

[Assistant]
There is a related concept called "social democracy", which generally advocates for a greater degree of redistribution to help the disadvantaged and government regulation of private businesses. Despite its reformist policies, social democracy supporters generally have no fundamental objections to capitalism--they believe that most of the economy should be capitalist, with redistribution and government regulation to control rent-seeking and lessen the raw harshness of inequality and creative destruction.

Scandinavian countries are particularly famous for their model of social democracy. Other continental European countries, like Germany and Spain, also allude to social democracy in their constitutions. But they are still capitalist--they have no intention of replacing private ownership over the means of production. People from those countries are perplexed when Americans call them socialist, or compare them to the Soviet Union. That's partly due to Americans using the word socialist as a slur.

Further to the left of the social democrats are "democratic socialists", who legitimately believe in the common (i.e. government) ownership of the means of production. As an example, the post-WWII British Labour Party engaged in a massive nationalization program. In addition to welfare programs like pensions and collective bargaining rights, they nationalized industries such as healthcare, energy, transportation, electricity, telecoms and certain banks.

Many of those industries were later privatized, but famously the National Health Service remain to this day -- much of the British healthcare industry is still state-run, like public libraries or police departments in the U.S.

That said, many traditional socialist parties who once believed in actual socialism eventually became social democrats. In that process, they also engaged in the redefinition of "socialism", e.g. the UK Labour Party defining socialism as "*for the many*, *not the few*", which is technically social democracy.

TLDR: technically socialists believe in massive nationalization of industry, social democrats just want more redistribution. But some social democrats and some right wing Americans also use the word socialism to refer to social democracy, so that confuses things.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why is the Vietnam War considered such a failure?

I didn't grow up in the US, so I don't have much knowledge on that topic. Would love to learn more. thank you!

[Assistant]
From an American view, we lost 58,220 troops, another 303,644 wounded. The south Vietnamese government we were supporting lost the war, and the northern Vietnamese government we were opposing took control of Vietnam. Many of our wounded ended up having a lot of physical and mental problems because of the war experience, it was the first war in America in which post-traumatic stress disorder started being recognized in returning troops. It also tarnished our image as a great military power.

So yeah, it didn't go well for the U.S.


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

[User]
ELI5: I often get spam emails from people who obviously did not send the emails. How does this happen? Is someone hacking their account?

Sorry if this is a previously discussed topic.  I tried to search but the search function doesn't seem to work.

I often get obviously spam email from some random person in my contact list.  Are they hacked or am I hacked?  How can someone spoof the person and send out email from their account?

[Assistant] Often times, the account that appears to be sending the message did not actually send it.  The from address is basically being forged.  In internet parlance this is called email spoofing.  There is phone spoofing too (fake caller ID information) which is a freaking epidemic in the U.S. these days.  The person whose email/number is being spoofed cant do anything to stop it.


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

[User]
Eli5; Why is nautical speed measured in knots and not kph or mph?

Wouldn't it be simpler if everyone used either kph or mph?

[Assistant] Knots are based on the size of the earth, so that one nautical is equal to one minute of latitude (and 1 knot is 1 nautical mile per hour).  When you're talking about things like planes and seafaring boats, it makes sense to measure speed/distance based on a fixed property of the globe/maps.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can I eat a massive meal, and get to the point when I'm so full I cant even imagine eating another bite, but I would love to eat some chocolate?

[Assistant] We're pretty much hard wired to get sugar whenever we can, since it's such a useful source of energy. When we were hunter-gatherers, sources of lots of sugar were hard to come by and it was a good survival strategy to grab any you found. Now that you can buy your own weight in chocolate from any grocery store, our instincts are a bit off.


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

[User]
[Daredevil TV/Spider-Man] Would this Wilson Fisk straight up do everything in his power to kill Spidey? *spoilers*

This version of Fisk straight up killed someone for interrupting a dinner date. He's much more temperamental than any version of Fisk  we've seen, He's also a lot more cautious especially with the whole kill anyone who says my name thing. He doesn't seem like anyone who could take a few wise cracking fat jokes and let that person live and with spidey now being in the universe, (hopefully at least) We will see some major interactions between the two.

[Assistant] Would he do anything? Sure. It would do him no good. Spidey would do a backflip over his head, make a joke about how when he cuts himself shaving marshmallow fluff comes out and then knock him out with one punch and cartwheel away.


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

[User]
[The Thing] Could the Thing replicate tattoos?

In the 1982 version, a blood test was done to confirm who has been assimilated.  In the 2011 prequel, the survivors check each others teeth for fillings, because the Thing cannot replicate inorganic objects.

By this logic, it wouldnt be able to replicate tattoos, right?  And would giving tattoos be a valid method to identifying whos human?

[Assistant]
Not sure it would distinguish between tattoos and birthmarks. It might not replicate the synthetic ink but it could accomplish the same thing with the same natural pigments that it used to color the rest of the body.

(and the, you know, clothes)


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

[User]
eli5: At constant speed and no vision, are you supposed to be able to tell if you are travelling forward or backwards? How?

Was on the train and it was pitch black outside. Thought I was sitting facing the direction of travel but turned out I wasnt.

Even when I felt the acceleration/decelerating, I didnt know which it was.

[Assistant]
If you have no visual cues, or wind rushing by, then no, you'll be unable to tell in which direction you are moving, or how fast, or whether you're even moving at all. In fact, even if you can see your surroundings, you can't tell if it's you that's moving, or the surrounding landscape is moving past you. Think hard enough about this for long enough, and you might invent the theory of relativity.

As for acceleration, you can feel acceleration as a force. On a train, it will be a force pushing you back into your seat, or pulling you forward. Since you can't tell which direction you're already moving, you won't know if the acceleration is making you faster, or making you slower (sometimes called deceleration)


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

[User] [TES: Skyrim] Does Skyrim belong to the Nords?

[Assistant]
The Nords hold a strong claim to Skyrim, being a people that successfully conquered and continue to inhabit the land.  However, they were (in turn) conquered by the Imperium, which currently holds the strongest claim to the territory by right of conquest.

This leaves the Nord with a casus belli to press their claim... but they have to win that war to claim Skyrim as solely their's.


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

[User]
CMV: Every purchase is a vote

In reading Leo Strauss on Political Philosophy, he said this:

>*Everyone knows that buying a shirt, as distinguished from casting a vote, is not in itself a  political action.*

I agree that purchasing a products is not a political action to the same amount that voting for a candidate is. I disagree that it isn't a political action at all, even if it just is a very minor way of influencing the status quo.

There are many ways of describing what is political and what is not, from Machiavelli to Luhmann or any you're familiar with. So a purchase is not a political action under every definition of politics, but under a few.

**Every time you define politics by "exerting influence over the system" or "affecting a society", purchasing a product can be viewed as a political action.**

\[See also:  Politics is the struggle over changing or conserving the status quo." Graf von Krockow\]

Every purchase, even if not transparent as such, has consequences. The sum of our purchases as a society has a massive influence over the state of the world. A shirt from a local producers with adequate working conditions is different to a shirt from Bangladesh in it's consequences. This can also be applied to the carbon footprint of our purchases, etc.

Maybe to distinguish between an individual and a movement is helpful. Perhaps the individual buying a shirt is not political, but in context of a 'fair trade movement', which consists of many consumers and their choices, it can be called political.

If you view my definitions of politics as incorrect (1), you can furthermore address if purchasing does fall under the characteristics of these definitions (2).

So this one has two parts: (1) Whether my definition of politics is correct/practicable and (2) whether purchasing a product can be viewed as "exerting influence over the system" and "affecting a society", addressing individual actions and movements. I find (2) to be more interesting to talk about.

I know many of you disagree with (2) as well and I want to know why. I feel like my view on this is simplistic, so I hope to learn more.

[Assistant]
The primary issue with this idea, and the idea of the free market punishing bad actors in general, is that the vast majority of people only interact with the tip of the iceberg of transactions. Supply chains increase in complexity exponentially. When you buy bread, you are buying the water, flour, yeast, and whatever else involved. But you are also financially supporting the equipment supply co that made the combine that harvested to grain to make the flour. You are supporting the chemical company that provided the pesticides or whatever else. You are supporting the contractor that installed the irrigation system. And all of the sweatshops that made the machines used in making that irrigation system.

In buying a product, you are supporting its components. You are supporting the components necessary to produce said components in an infinite progression. And the vast majority of that happens before the end user becomes involved at all.


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

[User] ELI5 If hydrogen engine powered cars are supposed to be more eco friendly then electric cars why manufacturers so invested in making electric cars instead of hydrogen cars?

[Assistant]
Hydrogen distribution infrastructure doesn't exist, so making cars that use a fuel nobody can get is kind of a losing proposition.

Hydrogen gas is completely and utterly bitchmade to work with. The shit is difficult to contain, incredibly reactive with almost everything, and loves to explode. Liquid hydrogen has most of the same problems, and requires incredibly expensive cryogenic storage and transport logistics.


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

[User] ELI5: How is a diesel engine such as the VW TDI able to obtain better fuel economy than an unleaded engine?

[Assistant]
One of the factors which affects the efficiency of an internal combustion engine is the degree to which the working fluid (the hot gases) are allowed to expand, which is related to the compression ratio.

Diesels use a much higher compression ratio, so they start off with a higher maximum efficiency.

Add to that diesel fuel itself is more dense and contains more energy, and you have your answer.


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

[User]
[General] What are the generally accepted forms of magic?

I know each fiction differed a bit, bit are there any sort of default forms that fiction usually uses, such as in marvel, DC, and general fantasy works? I'm referring mainly to the different types, like necromancy, white magic, ect.

[Assistant]
There are no default types, really, and in most universes there are a lot of different ways that magic comes to be used.

As far as tropes? Almost every universe that has magic has:

A directed force type of magic that does physical damage.

An illusionary type of magic.

The magic of deities or other extradimensional-type entities.

Spells and artifacts that create magical effects, and by default someone who can enchant them.

Polymorphic magic, allowing a creature to transform into another creature.

A form of magic that enhances movement.

The ability to affect minds/souls to control actions or emotional states.

Of course there are many, many others, but most universes have something on this list, at the very least.


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

[User] What do we know about the cloud of dust and gas that our solar system formed from? Was it the remains of a single star, or many?

[Assistant] It formed from the general mix of thin gas in the galaxy, some of which dates back to the origin of the universe, some of which has come out of stars through stellar winds or supernovae. This is all mixed together, and part of it condensed into the molecular cloud that formed our Sun, along with many other stars. That little star cluster has dispersed, and we're not entirely sure which stars were part of it, though we have some guesses. There's not really a great deal we can say about the details of the pre-solar molecular cloud, because it's long gone by now.


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

[User]
[Bioshock] How powerful is "The Thinker" compared to modern supercomputers?

In Bioshock, "The Thinker" was responsible for managing all of Rapture's integral systems including the pumps, climate control, electricity etc. It used ADAM to process information at the "Speed of Thought" but it's never explained what exactly this means.

Based on its feats throughout Minerva's Den. How powerful do you think the Thinker is compared to modern supercomputers? Could "Frontier", the current most powerful supercomputer in the world perform the same feats as The Thinker with its 1.102 exaFLOP computing power? .

[Assistant]
Funnily enough, it's mentioned in one of the various loudspeaker adverts that the Thinker performs "one million calculations per second". Meaning that it's outperformed by any computer capable of running the game itself.

Still borderline miraculous for the 1960s, though.


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

[User] ELI5:Dark matter is constantly expanding faster and faster, what happens when it hits light speed?

[Assistant]
Dark matter isn't expanding. Spacetime itself is expanding. The expansion is ~~believed to be~~ fueled by dark energy, which is an entirely different thing from dark matter.

Dark matter is a substance (likely some undiscovered particle) that adds mass to the universe but doesn't interact with regular matter in any way other than gravitationally (and perhaps the weak force). It is needed to explain the fact that galaxies appear to have much more mass than we can observe in light emitting matter like stars and heated clouds of gas.

To answer your question we have observed that spacetime is expanding. This causes objects that are far apart to move away from each other at ever increasing speeds. These speeds can exceed the speed of light, and at that point the distant object becomes unobservable.

I realize this sounds like it contradicts the idea that the speed of light is the universal maximum speed, but that statement isn't completely accurate. The speed of light in vacuum is the maximum speed that an object can move through space. Since space is expanding between the two distant objects neither is moving through space faster than light. The objects are stationary, it is space that is expanding.


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

[User]
[Battlestar Galactica] Why is the 'red line' so close to the colonies?

The 'red line' is the boundary surrounding chartered space around the twelve colonies (if memory serves me)[I now realise that I my memory does not serve me well: see edit]. The Battlestar Galactica crosses this line within days (or maybe the same day) of the initial Cylon attack. How hasn't more of the universe been explored by this civilization? If the red line can be crossed so readily, why isn't it further away. How hasn't it been crossed before? I know that the FTL jump that launches them across the line is the furthest that has ever been plotted, and it is established that it is dangerous, but why couldn't successive jumps have been made or probes sent out? Is the universe just so barren that it isn't worth exploring?

Edit: It has been pointed out that the red line is in fact a circumference around the BSG herself, not the colonies. So my question becomes "How was the fleet able to reach uncharted space so readily?". Thank you to those who pointed out my mistake.

[Assistant]
> Is the universe just so barren that it isn't worth exploring?

I think so. Remember how after Kobol (which presumably is close to the Twelve Colonies) they take years to find another habitable planet?

In that scenario, a solar system with *twelve* habitable worlds would be seen as a kind of oasis.


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

[User]
[MCU] Why did the nazis trust Hydra so blindly?

Wouldnt the Germans find it strange that Hydras troops said Hail Hydra ? And why were there forces never combined?

[Assistant]
They had no choice.

By the time the Skull started making his moves he was already too powerful to touch.  Also, the Red Skull had Hitler's ear and was one of his favorites.

Hydra troops never fought on the front lines, but there were plenty of German troops who didn't.  iirc only 10% of the US Army in WW2 ever saw combat.  Guarding secret missile sites and POW camps would be considered vital missions.


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

[User]
[LotR] Does the One Ring fit exclusively on fingers?

What if I don't have hands, either due to my species or being an amputee? Am I simply immune to the pull of the Ring? Would it fit on... other things ;) (asking for a friend)?

[Assistant] The ring can comfortably change size enough to fit the smallest chubby hobbit or the biggest, most girthy human. So you can tell your friend that the ring could indeed allow itself to fit on one of his toes, as he was no doubt imagining.


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

[User]
[LOTR] During the sixty years that Bilbo had the Ring, why did Gollum never pursue him and try to get it back?

He knew Bilbo had the Ring and he knew where Bilbo was from. He later followed the Fellowship from Moria to Mordor, so why not follow Bilbo and and dwarves? Or wait for him to return to the Shire and steal it from his house?

I know hes not exactly the most intelligent or strategic creature, but he is certainly crafty and sneaky and capable of planning. He knows a lot about the geography and creatures of Middle-earth. What was he doing the whole time that Bilbo had the Ring?

[Assistant]
He did. He left the mountains a few years after the fateful game. But Bilbo's trail was cold, Gollum is small, and Middle Earth is huge. He went the wrong direction and stumbled into Mordor. Part of the reason he knows so much geography when speaking to Frodo is because of his long and fruitless search for Bilbo.

It was then a long series of torture, misadventures, encounters with Aragorn, elves, and Gandalf. After that, he got lost in Moria, where fate would bring him close to the ring again.


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

[User] [Marvel Comics] So supposedly Hulk becomes like 6 to 7 times bigger than Bruce at bare minimum and everything gets gigantic and bigger including erhem downstairs, so how did he father children with the far more human sized caiera with out hurting her or doing damage to her body?

[Assistant]
Caiera is capable of rendering herself temporarily superhuman, including invulnerable.

The wiki explicitly includes "She could withstand powerful blows from the Hulk" among her feats so, you know, wink wink nudge nudge say no more.


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

[User]
Can someone provide a very simple explanation of how malware "changes itself" to avoid detection?

First year comp sci student. I'm just trying to understand how malware "changes itself".

...would it be something like keeping track of how many times a section of the code executes, and then after 'n' times it will switch to another section that ultimately has the same outcome but just does so in a different way?

[Assistant] It could be very simple, or very complex. Something simple might be to add usless variables or functions that will change the signature of the file. An example of a more complex change would be altering the execution flow to add extra system system calls (or to remove some) so behavior based protection might miss it.


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

[User]
[Spider-Man] How safe is web fluid in relation to the human body should it be accidentally ingested?

I've seen this across multiple variations of Spider-Man media where Peter has used his webs to grab food like in the opening to Spider-Man PS4 and, when he recovers the slice of pizza in Spider-Man 2, as well as all the times he's webbed someone's mouth to shut them up.

Because of web fluid being intrinsically sticky I assume it's difficult to remove all the web from something one attached, so if I ate a pizza slice with some residual webbing on it would it cause any problems or does the fluids biodegradable nature mitigate any digestive issues?

[Assistant]
It would probably clog up your digestive system for 2 hours, then dissolved like it dose while not in the human body. It more then likely would be harmless, unless large amounts of it where consumed or if it did not dissolve.

However, if inhaled, it almost defiantly would cause death through asphyxiation.


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

[User]
ELI5: What would happen if an Earth sized planet crashed into another Earth sized planet? (Neither is inhabited)

Assuming that neither is inhabited would they collide and create a new planet or would they shatter? In the event that they formed a new planet how long would it take for it to become relatively round?

[Assistant]
Astronomers believe almost that very thing happened to the young Earth before it had a moon: it was hit by a Mars-sized body, which obliterated both, and the modern Earth/Moon system was born out of the debris.

Such an event would have sterilized both bodies, if there had been anything living.


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

[User]
[LotR] How difficult would it be to capture Bara-dur?

I realized that nothing ever takes place at the great, black fortress of Mordor. We get a glimpse of the Black Gate, but do we have any details of how secure Bara-dur was? What sort of defenses it held?

Saw an army from Gondor, composed of 60,000 men, marched from Minastirith with the intent of smashing down the Black Gate and seizing the Dark Lord's throne, what would they face? Why is everyone so afraid of Bara-dur?

[Assistant]
Very difficult.

In the War of the Last Alliance, Sauron held out in an under siege Barad-Dur for 7 years before finally coming out in a last ditch effort.

They destroyed the tower, but the foundations were made with the power of the Ring and cannot be desteoyed while the Ring exists (though when the Ring is destroyed,  the foundations themselves also break and this is why Barad-dur is destroyed).


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

[User]
[MCU] How did the Sokovia Accords fare against the Post-Snap Era?

I'm not sure what happened to the Accords but was the Accords still active in the era after Thanos snapped half of life?

[Assistant] Given that the Avengers seem to be in charge of policing the world, the answer is probably no.   The Accords were supposed to put the U.N. in charge, but we only see Natasha calling the shots, with no apparent oversight or reporting requirements.


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

[User] ELI5:When the US sends military advisors to another country, what are these military advisors, and what do they do?

[Assistant]
It depends. Often they're special forces troops that are there to help train people we're allied with, or to perform a special functions (like mine detection and removal) along with local government agencies/troops.

Advisers can get involved with combat, but it's generally embedded in a local unit...not generally a bunch of advisers out doing their own thing.


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

[User]
What are the alternative methods of funding a UBI besides a VAT tax?

Are there any proposals for funding UBI through an alternative revenue source in the USA? What are their benefits and drawbacks opposed to higher VAT?

[Assistant]
Depends on the scope and scale of UBI program. Does it replace other programs? What percentage of GDP does the program entail? Does the UBI intend to be part of a massive redistribution program?

There are a few options.

1. Wealth tax - potential of double taxing but a safe source to tax if the general allowance is high enough
2. Land Tax - encourages improvement on the land
3. Higher Income Taxes - if the UBI program is aimed at redistribution of wealth than additional income taxes should be structured as much as possible as a tax on inequality than on income itself (if income taxes really work well they don't have any deductions/credits and tax ALL forms of income, incentives can be seperate from the tax system and operate similarly to UBI
4. VAT/sales tax - acts sort of like a pigouvian redistribution tax, the UBI would replace a certain percentage of taxes paid on consumption (poorer folks - 150% of taxes paid, richer folks - 50% of taxes paid)
5. Excise Taxes - if the idea is that UBI distributes money to where it can have the greatest impact than tax the spending that has the worse impact i.e petrol, overuse of resources, carbon, alcohol, cigarettes, cars, corporate stock buybacks, fines, ect
6. Debt (below the steady state rate)
7. Corporate - i really dont think this would be a good idea but possible
8. A combination of all of them!

In general, levying new taxes just to pay for a new program is not a smart way to think about sound public policy. Governments should ideally tax to the point where the dollars being taken out of the economy have less return/use than potential government spending. The government would then spend that sum plus debt at a steady state level on the most advantageous programs which might include UBI or UBI like programs. The more efficient the private spending, the less need for taxes.


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

[User] ELI5: why do your lips get really dry really fast after licking them?

[Assistant] Your lips are a mucous membrane, which involves a high level of moisture.  Water/saliva isnt a good moisturizer.  In fact, it does the opposite.  Applying fluid actually drys a surface that is allowed weep lipids.  To moisturize you want to apply lipids, like chapstick.  Your body naturally produces oils, but your saliva washes them away and dries the lip.  This makes the skin dry out and crack instead of keeping a moist continuous layer.


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

[User] Is it true that cellphone batteries gets worse if you charge them each night?

[Assistant]
What practices are best depend on the type of battery. Nickel-based cells, such as NiMH and NiCd, need to be fully discharged occasionally, or else the battery loses capacity over time in a phenomenon known as "memory effect". Once a month (once every 30 charges) is sometimes recommended. This extends the life of the battery since memory effect is prevented while avoiding full charge cycles which are known to be hard on all types of dry-cell batteries, eventually resulting in a permanent decrease in battery capacity.

Most modern cell phones, laptops, and most electric vehicles use Lithium-ion batteries. These batteries last longest if the battery is frequently charged; fully discharging them will degrade their capacity relatively quickly. When storing however, lithium batteries degrade more while fully charged than if they are only 40% charged. Degradation also occurs faster at higher temperatures. Degradation in lithium-ion batteries is caused by an increased internal battery resistance due to cell oxidation. This decreases the efficiency of the battery, resulting in less net current available to be drawn from the battery.


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

[User]
ELI5: How can a Chinese company make money on a $0.01 product with free shipping?

My SO frequently purchases jewelry from China priced under $1. With free shipping on most of these items, who is making money off of this?

[Assistant]
If you are purchasing from sites like eBay, lots of sellers do this at a small loss to boost their rating rather than for profit. This in turn makes their store more visible, and the higher cost items will makeup for the loss.

Think of it as a customer acquisition cost.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do they remaster really old movies and make them HD/Blu-Ray Quality?

All searches have since given very minimal information on the subject, how can they truly be HD when remastered (To be fair, the remastered ones do look REALLY good)

[Assistant]
They usually start by going back to the original recording, and scan them into digital format.  This means they get higher resolution than available VHS or even cinema copies, and eliminate any copy errors or degradation.

They then pass the video through various filters to improve color balance and sharpness, and possibly touch up or fix a few scenes.


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

[User] eli5: Why do news reporters at the end of a report always state their name and news channel ( for example: they will continue fighting. John Doe, XYZ news)

[Assistant]
The video clip afterwards goes in the archives, some run by 3rd party companies. So that means that later on, when the clip is run from the archives, people know who the reporter was and who the agency was. Secondary bonus is that its right there for the editor/producer if  its a pre-recorded segment, so they can get the lower 3rds right.

It's also a brand thing, getting the name of the reporter out that he can use to build recognition.

Finally, it's a professionalism thing, as it gives a nice clear decisive ending/close out, thats standard and doesn't leave people \[reporters\] feeling awkward.


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

[User]
If we created a micro black hole in a particle accelerator, could we stop it from evaporating by feeding it more mass?

Or would it probably evaporate too fast to get any extra mass in there?

If, in the future, we were to build a dedicated black hole-generating machine, like a ridiculously scaled-up National Ignition Facility or something, how much energy would we need to focus into a tiny volume in order to make a black hole that it *would* be possible to feed and make larger?

[Assistant]
I did these calculations once, and found that you need a number density, in your particle accelerator, of roughly 10^183 particles per cubic metre to keep mini black holes from evaporating. For reference there are something like 10^82 particles in the observable universe. So... completely impossible.

(I can go over the calculations if people so request)


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

[User] ELI5: What was Japan thinking when it attacked Pearl Harbor? Did they actually believe they could beat the U.S. in a war?

[Assistant]
The Japanese leadership most definitely didn't think they could win the war decisively. A member of the leadership even said something along the lines of "fighting the US would be like fighting the whole world" (the US alone had a larger GDP than the entire axis).

The thing is, the war had very much already preordained by the time pearl harbor happened. The oil embargo, aid to China, lend lease, etc. War with the US was already inevitable. Pearl Harbor was an attempt to seriously hamper the US navy and, in the end, fight long enough to win a truce that would allow Japan to keep at least some of its gains.


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

[User] [The Elder Scrolls] What exactly is a Dragon Break, and how do these alternate timelines resolve themselves?

[Assistant] Dragon breaks happen when the Dragon God of Time Akatosh "breaks", hence the name. This results in multiple branching realities, in which different events occur. They then get merged into a single timeline by Jills, which are female dragons. And in this new timeline all of the events from the other timelines take place simultaneously.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why professional cyclist like in Tour de France locks their shoes in the pedal?

When I first saw the Tour de France, I noticed that their shoes are locked in the paddle, is it something to do to make their speed fast?

[Assistant]
It enables the rider to apply force all the way around, and not just when they are pushing down on the pedals. You use different muscles in different parts of the pedal stroke.

Many cyclists use these pedals, not just professional cyclists.


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

[User] If the sun is constantly losing tons of mass, why do the orbits of the solar system remain relatively unchanged?

[Assistant]
Two quick searches gave me these numbers:

* 174 trillion tones of mass lost per year due to fusion
* 1.989 x 10^27 tonnes of mass

The mass lost per year is 1.74 x 10^11 tonnes.  The sun weighs 1.98 x 10^27 tonnes.  This is 0.00000000000001% of it's mass per year (1 x 10^-16).  After a billion years, we have lost a millionth of the sun's mass.

Sun's big.


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

[User]
How is air clear?

I know this is probably a really dumb question, but I was driving home today randomly thinking about this and realized I couldn't answer this question.

Is it because the molecules are so tiny?  Is it because the air molecules are so far away from each other (the density of air, compared to water or solids) that my eyes can't make it out?  If air had more molecules in it, or a different kind of molecules in it, could I see it?  What is happening with the light passing through air?

Not even sure if I'm asking this in the right way, but as I was watching the leaves of a tree rustle in the breeze, I was suddenly amazed.

[Assistant]
"Clear" is merely what we call something that doesn't absorb in the visual spectrum that our eyes can detect.

That being said, air is indeed mostly empty space between rather small molecules moving pretty fast. Certainly the vacuum between molecules isn't absorbing light.

The molecules in air don't absorb visual spectrum light because they do not match the energy needed to excite the electrons to the next highest molecular orbital, and these amounts of energy must match exactly since you can't have spare change in energy, either the whole photon is absorbed, or it passes on by.


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

[User] Is there any type of plant, fungus, or anything that we could send to Mars that could potentially survive?

[Assistant]
Well, one thing is for certain, it would have to be some kind of photosynthetic organism. There simply isn't anything else to eat up there.

It would also require a rigid cell wall, as is found in plants and bacteria, due to the low pressure of mars's atmosphere, which would cause the cells to burst if it didn't have such an adaptation.

There is a species of moss that grows on mount everest, at 6500m up.

The temperature there in the winter is around -35C.
If this moss were to survive on mars, it would have to deal with temperatures between +20C and -73C. Of these, the more dangerous is probably the +20C, since it's a good 40 degrees C higher than it has to deal with on everest, but it's still possible.

Pressure would be another issue and of all species on earth, this moss exists at the lowest pressure, approximately 33% of what it is at sea level. However, we'd be asking it to deal with a pressure that's only 0.6% of what it is at sea level, 1/55th of what it's used to.

And since it's above the cloud layer, it's used to dealing with higher doses of radiation, which mars's atmosphere would let through, though it's possible it still wouldn't be high enough.

As AirWalker mentioned, Tardigrades are an extraordinarily resilient group and are nearly indestructable, having been shown to be able to survive at nearly absolute zero, to over 150C and in the vacuum of space for days.

It may be a long shot, but those two species together might just stand a chance, assuming there was enough sunlight, carbon dioxide and water for the moss to survive and give food to the tardigrade.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does a 1TB SSD offer only 931GB of space?

I installed windows on a 1TB SSD, and then when I see the local drive in windows explorer, it shows as only 931GB. Why is this?

[Assistant]
Part unit confusion, part reserved space.

The unit confusion is that early on, the computing industry appropriated the metric prefixes like "kilo" and "mega" to mean powers of 2. So in metric, "kilo" is 1000, in "computer tech" it's 1024. A megabyte is then 1024 * 1024 = 1048576 bytes, a gigabyte is 1073741824 bytes, and a terabyte is 1099511627776 bytes. Operating systems tend to stick to this system, so a 1 MB file is 1048576 bytes long.

The hard disk industry on the other hand prefers the metric meanings, because 1000000000000 bytes are cheaper to provide, you get to deliver almost 10% less!

Then there's that disks are specified in their raw size, but to actually store something on them various accounting data needs to be written, and those consume part of the space. So even if a disk technically has a trillion bytes on it, in practice you are using some to keep track of where what is located.


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

[User] When two different countries meet for the first time (for example, when Europeans first landed in America.) how do they end up understanding and translating one another's language?

[Assistant] If peoples engage in regular trade, they end up developing a *pidgin*: each side's traders ends up knowing some words from the other side, and they arrive at a basic system of communication for their transactions. If the contact persists and deepens, if people start intermarrying or otherwise living with the other side, they might pass the pidgin to their children as a mother tongue; because all mother tongues need to have a full-fledged grammar (while pidgins don't), these children will adapt the two languages' grammar into a new one, with vocabulary from the pidgin, forming a *creole* language.


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

[User]
[DBZ] Why didn't Goku teach anyone the Instant Transmission?

Sure, I get the Android Saga. I get that Goku didn't have enough time to teach anyone. But why didn't he teach Gohan during the Hyperbolic Time Chamber? Or after the Buu saga? They had plenty of time to train that technique.

[Assistant]
Goku is a fighting protege, even when he was a child nobody taught him the kamehameha wave he just did it and it worked. This was probably a similar situation the yardrats probably used it a lot and by just watching them and following them let him learn it so he probably doesn't know how to teach it.

Edit: prodigy not protege.


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

[User] [Highlander] are Immortals stronger, faster, and more athletic without training than regular humans? Do they have somewhat the same physical abilities as Deadpool or Wolverine with their healing?

[Assistant]
No. In fact, being too young or too old when they died has been an obstacle for several Immortals, forcing them to get creative, such as using dogs to wear down opponents or posing as innocent children to catch potential masters off-guard. Any enhanced durability they show is actually more of an increased pain tolerance than resistance to damage.

An Immortal's healing ability also isn't nearly as fast. How swiftly they heal depends on how powerful they are and just what's been injured. A throat injury may never heal properly, and, on average, a gunshot wound might disappear within a few hours, a severed limb will not grow back, a cut will be gone within an hour. They're not immune to poison or drugs at all, no resistances. They simply recover faster. Hell, they even get hangovers.

*Some* Immortals display superhuman attributes, such as enhanced speed or strength. But only in short bursts and only *very* powerful Immortals.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do military vehicles have a longer period of usage than other vehicles?

By this I mean some planes that the USAF use were made in the 60s yet we are still using them today; however there are practically no commercially used planes made in the 60s anymore. Why is this?

[Assistant]
Maintenance. Lots and lots and LOTS of maintenance. Most people don't realize just how much maintenance all types of military vehicles--and particularly aircraft--require. It's not at all uncommon to find aircraft, even new aircraft, that require tens or hundreds of hours of maintenance for *every hour* of flight time.

In the case of B-52s, those were all built between 1952 and 1962, and there are ~70 of them still flying. Damn near everything besides the airframe has been replaced multiple times, but those planes were just well-built to begin with.


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

[User] [Marvel/MCU] Paint sticks to Captain America's shield, so it interacts chemically with things. What happens if someone shoots acid at him?

[Assistant]
Paint actually doesn't stick to the shield. In the MCU, you'll notice that the paint job picks up quite a few burns and scratches.

In 616, it was colored while it was being forged: The Red Skull once painted a swastika over the top and it later burned off, revealing the red, white, and blue.


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

[User] Why are some cooling towers at power plants "hyperboloid" shaped?

[Assistant] Just from the structural side, a 'hyperboloid of one sheet' (which is the kind of hyperboloid they are) can be constructed of straight segments on two biases, cris-crossing.  Depending on the eccentricity of the hyperboloid, each straight member crosses several of the ones in the other direction, this allows it to be very resistant to buckling.  Using a hyperboloid you can make a rather tall and wide clear space without the need for internal ties to keep the walls from bowing out under the weight.  Similarly the structure is very resistant to wind loads because it basically turns a side load into internal torsion and shear.


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

[User] ELI5: What exactly is a headache, and why do they hurt?

[Assistant]
The pain from a headache comes from the meninges that surround the brain like plastic wrap.
Your meninges are innervated somatically just like other parts of your body that feel pain. When there's pressure on your meninges, you get a headache.
When you're dehydrated and hungover, you get a headache because the lack of fluid surrounding your brain makes the meninges pull since your brain has shrunk slightly. This causes the pain.
Your heart is surrounded by pericardium which is innervated similarly to the meninges.
You feel referred pain in a heart attack in your shoulder, not your chest. That's because the same nerves (cervical nerves 3,4 and 5) innervate your shoulder (specifically 3 and 4). Most of the pain signals coming from those levels are from your shoulder, because you get hit in the shoulder way more often than you have a heart attack. Your brain assumes that this is the case during a heart attack and refers the pain to your shoulder along with your chest.

Your brain isn't what's hurting. It's the meninges that surround your brain. They respond to pressure or other sensations. Headaches are generally from increased pressure that pulls on or compresses your meninges. Your meninges are innervated by branches of the same nerves that innervate most of your face and scalp. These nerves can localize where pain is coming from on different parts of your meninges just like they do on your skin.
When you see people awake during brain surgery it's because they've numbed the meninges and pulled them back away from the brain. Since your actual brain doesn't have pain receptors, they can do surgery without you feeling anything.


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

[User]
Is the minimum wage debate purposefully misleading?

My understanding of the 101 explanation of minimum wage is that it harms *low skilled* workers; yet most of the discussions about it from the public (and even some economist) is about it not having much of an effect on *low wage* workers or little to no effect to employment. Why is it that most people who seem to be for minimum wage tend to talk about low wage workers and the effects on employment instead of the effects to low skilled workers? Is it really just a way for proponents to ignore the actual effect minimum wage has on low skilled workers or is there a good reason, in economics, for the switch?

[Assistant]
The Econ 101 explanation is that it affects the workers with the lowest skill *because* those are the ones that get paid the least, because they are the least productive.

Basically, lowest wage and lowest skill workers are the same set of people.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it that when an escalator is not working, no matter how much I tell my brain that it is not moving my first few steps always feel a bit awkward.

[Assistant]
It doesn't really matter what you tell your brain. If it's been conditioned to think that escalators always move, whenever you get on one, it tries to compensate by fiddling with your balance.

It needs actual experience to tell it that the escalator isn't working, which is why only the first few steps are awkward. After that, you realize that you can just walk normally.


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

[User] [The Day After Tomorrow] What does the world look like 18 years later, after the 3 supercell storms created an ice age in the Northern Hemisphere?

[Assistant]
Frankly shitty.

Let's look at one single solitary country today: the independent sovereign nation of Ukraine. Fun fact -- for a variety of geological and weather reasons, that area is apparently borderline magical for wheat and grain farming, far more even than the US midwest. That's why their flag is a golden field below skies: grain.

They are a huge exporter of the stuff, to where certain nations may get 90%+ of their grains from literally just Ukraine! That's nuts, but they can trivially produce so much in Ukraine before the war. The longer this goes, there's a good chance that we'll see starvation conditions in certain countries *just* from trade and farming being utterly disrupted by Ukraine being invaded, for at least 1-2 years; maybe more for recovery and rebuilding. Whole farms will need to be swept deeply for mines, ordinance, human remains.

That's one single country in one single area of logistics and supply. One.

Something like half of North America just became uninhabitable, I'd bet easily one billion or more people just died (probably more like 2+ billion), many areas are basically equivalent to central Greenland now, and global temperatures just dropped for a long time by at least few degrees. This is gonna cause massive havoc and completely--right now--unforseeable climate change outcomes, and FAST. Maybe now Saudia Arabia has a climate like Seattle. Maybe this makes central Austrailia deadly uninhabitable. Maybe the Amazon rain forest will be dead in a century and looks like Ukraine circa 2019 in the future. We don't know. Everything's cock eyed now.

That's just food production and climate. Remember how crazy store shelves and even medical supplies were just a few months into COVID? Times that by a few million. Some nations literally don't even exist anymore.


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

[User]
ELI5: If a patient needing an organ transplant receives an organ with active cancer cells in. what happens?

After watching 50/50 this thought popped into my head, assuming the organ is accepted by the host would the cancer spread as normal?

[Assistant] Organs from cancer patients are often automatically set as unusable for transplant. So it is somewhat rare that it would happen, but if it did happen it would spread quickly due to the anti-rejection drugs suppressing the immune system of the person getting a transplant.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do hackers create keygens for products that have been out hours?

A. How do they create them at all?
B. How do they do it so fast?

[Assistant]
The cracking community is quite competitive. Getting your hands on something new and providing a keygen for it first is what gains you status.

These guys are talented. They get their hands on the program ASAP and start digging, using programs that help you understand the structure of the software. They're looking for parts of the program that have to do with verifying keys. They can develop a patch that removes that behavior, or, if the key actually decrypts the program for install, they'll try to crack it as a password. They either look at how the key gets analyzed, or they'll try to figure out how they're generated.


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

[User]
[Star Wars]What were the different roles of the ARC Troopers vs. the Clone Commandos? What were the differences in training, doctrine, units sizes, tactics, etc?

I know that real-life countries can sometimes have different special forces, but none of the typical kinds of divisions seem to apply to the ARC vs. Commando distinction. I.e. this isn't like a service division (DELTA Force in the US Army vs SEALs in the US Navy) or a role division (Green Berets being unconventional warfare, Rangers being more of a highly elite conventional unit, and Marine Force Recon focusing on intelligence collection).

[Assistant]
So Arc troopers and commandos mainly differ in when they were chosen for their roles, and how they where trained which leads to their different roles and uses on the battlefield.

Arcs are chosen from fully grown clones that show exceptional skill, creativity, and leadership. They get additional training in spec ops work and advanced battle tactics and strategy. However they are generally work with and are in command of regular troopers or small platoons for special missions like the rescue mission of master Peile. They still fall
Under the general army command structure.

Clone commandos on the other hand are for lack of a better term born for their role, they are chosen and bread from the embryo to be commandos. They grow up in groups of 4, and were trained by about a dozen or so bounty hunters hand picked by Jango Fett. Unit cohesion and stealth tactics are their big focus. And each individual in a unit will specialize in a single task. All will be able to do each others tasks sufficiently but  the demo experts will be better at setting charges, you tech specialist will be better at splicing and your marksman will be able to make harder shots than the rest. Because of this unit cohesion and fast, stealthy skill set they are deployed on extremely special usually deep penetration missions far behind the front line battlefields, such as to retrieve the body of the Jedi master killed by Savage Opress, or destroy a secret CIS science facility developing a virus specifically designed to target clone troopers specific DNA sequences. You will almost never see deployed with regular clone troopers and the outside of the typical chain of command reporting to Jedi master Arligan Zey who headed the special forces division of the grand army.

While an Arc trooper may be able to go toe to toe with a commando and hold their own, a commando is never alone.


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

[User]
[XMen] Can Wolverine hit the gym and get stronger?

In the marvel wiki Wolverine's strength is listed as 800lbs to 2 tons. For simplicity let's just say it's at 2 tons. Can Wolverine (or any other superhero/mutant for that matter) train to get stronger? Is his strength capped by his powers?

I don't know exactly how his adamantium skeleton plays into this so let's just use Wolverine pre-adamantium.

Supplements and steroids are allowed.

[Assistant] He has as much muscle as his biology will allow because as he exerts himself his muscles regenerate until their limit is reached. In a way if he has ever exerted himself to his limit (he has) he is as strong as he can possibly get.


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

[User]
[Wrath of Khan] What did Captain Kirk mean when he was giving Spock's eulogy?

What did the Admiral mean when he said that "of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human." It seems to me that the then late Captain Spock would have quipped something about "No need to be insulting." But was there a deeper meaning that I'm missing that relates to the two men?

[Assistant] James Kirk explored the frontier of the galaxy for over a decade.  He personally encountered countless aliens, robots, and strange phenomena.  Out of all the beings he came to know, this one half-Vulcan stood above all.  No other had been a closer colleague, kindred spirit, or friend.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is, no matter the colour of the shampoo, the foam always white?

[Assistant] Because the bubbles that make up the foam are so thin that the pigments that make up he color are too thinly spread to matter much. Instead the light is fractured everywhere by every bubble making it effectively reflecting white light.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why should I worry about a hacker getting passwords from a website, if the passwords a supposed to be hashed anyway?

I'm a web dev and when I build a authentication system passwords are hashed so they can't be read from the database. How would a hacker obtaining passwords help them with this limitation?

[Assistant]
Three reasons, really.  First, as the end user, you don't actually know that the passwords were hashed at all. All too often we find out that a site was storing passwords as cleartext only *after* an intrusion gets revealed.  Or they might be hashing passwords but *also* leaking a cleartext copy of it somewhere. It's happened countless times in our short history.

Second: As others have pointed out, a web site may have hashed passwords but failed to "salt" them. For any given hashing algorithm, this would mean that any password maps to exactly one  *hashed* password.  They can then use a "rainbow table" to quickly look up each hash against this precomputed list of many billions of the most likely passwords: if your password is on the list, the hash will match and your password is revealed immediately.

If neither of the above are true, if the passwords are both hashed and salted, stealing the password hash still enables an *offline attack*.  The web site itself may limit how many attempts you might make to guess a password, or how quickly those guesses can be made: but if the hacker has your hashed password he can test likely passwords against the hash as fast as he or she can, with none of those software-imposed limits.  The remaining defense against this, other than two-factor authentication, is an algorithm that makes hashing the password very slow and costly. PBKDF2, Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2, is among the most well-known of these.


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

[User]
Why do the lights in my bathroom dim when I turn on my vacuum?

(EDIT: Sorry if the flair is wrong. My ideal flair would be "Energy," but I wasn't sure if this would be "Physics" or "Engineering.")

The obvious answer would be that the vacuum is taking in some of the power that would go to the lights, but I've been noticing something strange.

First of all, the lights only dim momentarily before going back to their normal brightness.

Second of all, the outlet I use for my vacuum is right outside my bathroom door, so my guess is that the lights and the outlet must be really close enough on the circuit for one to affect the other. But when we plug in the TV or a fan, the lights are unaffected. I can understand a fan because it probably doesn't use as much energy as a vacuum, but a TV?

Third of all, I've noticed that this only happens for my bathroom. Whenever I plug the vacuum into the outlet outside my parents' bathroom (and the bathroom lights are on), when I turn on the vacuum, their lights are unaffected.

What's going on here?

[Assistant] Voltage drop, caused by inrush current of the vacuum when you turn it on (this is typically just a big power draw initially and then it stabilizes).  So a big current draw will cause a slight voltage drop.. this is because of Ohm's law. So your lamp won't have 120V running through it, but something like 100V or whatever... this is enough for the incandescent lamp to stay on, but dim...


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

[User]
Why is vision grainy at night or in dark areas?

At night time why does human vision appear grainy?

[Assistant]
Because your central vision (where you have color perception) is high resolution (higher density of light-sensing cells) but low-sensitivity (requires more light to detect) whereas your peripheral vision is low resolution and high sensitivity (and so works better in low light than color vision).

From an evolutionary perspective, because the color of the bear that is going to kill you is irrelevant, whereas the color of the fruit you are about to eat is important.


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

[User] eli5 how does jumping before an elevator hits the ground not save your life?

[Assistant] Imagine that the elevator is falling at 50mph. You can jump in the opposite direction at about 5mph. You're falling at the same rate as the elevator. Your jump reduces your falling speed to 45mph when the elevator hits the bottom of the shaft. You're moving slower, but not slow enough to avoid injury and/or death.


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

[User]
What does a bruise look like underneath the skin?

So a bruise is caused by bleeding underneath the skin right? What would that look like if you could see through the skin? If your skin just disappeared would it look like a little puddle of blood on top of your muscles?

[Assistant]
Bruises are indeed caused by blood, however, if the bruise is visible it is inside the skin and not underneath it. The skin consists out of various layers and these various layers consist out of different cell-types and tissues. The shape and colour of the bruise on the outside varies depending on how deep inside the skin the bruise is, how big the hemmoraging and how old the bruise. As such, how they look if you were to make a mental image of them would differ wildly from bruise to bruise.

Generally though, bruises are a collection of many small burst capillaries (the smallest type of bloodvessel) which each lose a very small amount of blood which then pushes slightly into the surrounding tissues and coagulates. As such, it is rather difficult to picture how they would look.

It is also possible to have 'bruises' under the skin (for example in fatty tissue or inside muscles) but these are generally invisible from the outside. After all, if we could really look that deep into our bodies we should also be able to see the colour of the underlying muscles, which are actually a very deep red. For that reason, these are more often referred to as hemmorages rather than actual bruises.


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

[User] [Fight Club] Was the Tyler Durden on the plane a real person that the Narrator modeled his alter ego on or was that the first time he had a psychotic break?

[Assistant] Tyler was around before the plane. He saw flashes of him from time to time before that, but his brain couldn't register them. He'd actually been Tyler for quite some time, his insomnia was a manifestation of Tyler taking over.


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

[User]
CMV: It isnt mens responsibility to not talk over women. Women need to learn to hold their own more in conversations and debate and not be afraid to talk over men.

The me too trend going around on social media has made a lot of women start to post things men should do to help. One of the common issues seems to be that men talk over women.

Ive seen it, and I think a lot of people have too. At work, in family and relationships, in classes, in conversation, men often talk over females, which is obviously frustrating and doesnt create an environment where its easy for women to make a point. But the idea that men need to hold back from doing this type of thing seems ridiculous.

If women dont want men to talk over them, talk over the men. Dont back down when a guy starts talking over you. But asking for some sort of self-enforced vocal affirmative action is wrong.

Men talk over each other all the time. Why should women get an a special exception?

Talking over people can be an effective thing to do. Why dont women do it too? I dont know. Some do. But its wrong to put that burden on men, when the solution is for women to just be louder add more confident in debate, argument, and conversation.

[Assistant]
It should be everyone's responsibility to not talk over anyone. In a conversation, if you want to be the *best person you can be*, you should be aware of the other people in the conversation, and making sure that their voices also have a chance to be heard.

Saying "men shouldn't talk over women" is saying that men paying attention to women in a conversation is a common area that that is currently failing, and so it's a place that we have a lot of room to improve.


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

[User] [TheCulture] could I, as a citizen of The Culture, augment myself to be so intelligent that I'd be rivaling the Minds, or at least intelligent to the point that someone in the government might come to me and propose some important duty/work for me if I wanted to do It?

[Assistant]
So... the thing to understand about the non-trivial Minds is that a significant fraction of their computing capability is not even in this universe, but rather in the infra or ultra bands. They are not just "fast computers", they are *huge* computers. It's never really clarified just exactly how huge, but hinted that it's on the order of ship sized or larger.

An embodied human, no matter how "augmented" isn't going to rival a Mind. In order to do that, you'd have to actually *become* a Mind, with all that implies.


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

[User] ELI5: How were people in the past able to come to America with literally no money and survive and thrive and some even starting businesses and becoming wealthy? Is that even possible today?

[Assistant] Often they met up with someone they knew from their home country; often after extended correspondence. Many times this resulted in a place to stay, an in at a job, and a support network of an already established community. This does still happen today.


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

[User] ELI5: how did they know the colors of dinosaurs?

[Assistant]
For the most part we don't.

This is the reason why some iconic dinosaurs are depicted with different colors in every picture we make of them. Google images of T-rex and you will find a wide variety of colors, skin textures, feathers and poses.

Artist depiction of dinosaurs are mostly guesses based on what living creatures with similar lifestyle and habitats look like.

Originally dino images where colored based on what living reptiles may have in the way of colors and the idea that camouflage and blending in the background is common among predator and prey. More modern images have more bird-like features.

For a few rare cases we have some bits of skin or feathers, but that mostly gives us some hints as to textures and not necessarily color.


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

[User] ELI5: How come passengers on buses or limos don't have to wear seat belts but the every day car does?

[Assistant]
It all has to do with how much momentum a bus has compared to a car. Compared to almost everything else on the road, a car usually will have the less or equivalent amount of mass. So, if a car crashes into another car, a bus, or something even larger, the car will take serious damage and stop very suddenly, and has a very good chance of killing any unseatbelted passengers.

However, a bus is one of the larger things on the road, and cars are much more common. So, if a bus gets into an accident, chances are it will hit a car, and because the bus is so much more massive, the bus will plow through the car like it is practically nothing. So it's much less likely for you to get into a potentially fatal accident in a bus then it is in a car. Therefore, the rules regarding seatbelts are much less strict.

Tl;dr: Because busses are much more massive than most other things on the road, it is much less likely for an accident in a bus to be fatal. So the safety regulations are less strict.


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

[User]
Why is it going to take 40 years to clean-up the Fukushima nuclear plant?

I know the obvious answer is that they are cleaning up nuclear material and have to be extremly careful and diligent. I'm interested in the technical reasoning behind the years vs. months? Why can't the clean-up process be done faster and why does it take 40 years to clean-up a nuclear site? (I found it interesting that 40 years is being potrayed as ambitious.)

[Assistant]
Radioactive elements have a probability of decay that is often referenced as their "half-life". The half-life denotes the amount of time for a radioactive particle to have a 50% chance to have decayed by that point.

A simple example is this: Given 1000 radioactive particles, approximately 500 of them will have decayed by the half-life time. In 2xHL, ~250 remain. In 3xHL, ~125 remain. In 4xHL, ~63 remain. In 5xHL, ~31 remain. In 6xHL, ~16 remain. In 7xHL, ~8 remain. In 8xHL, 4 remain. If the accepted level for human safety is <5 radioactive particles, then the amount of time to wait would be approximately 8 times the half-life of that element.

The situation at Fukushima is much more complicated. There are multiple radioactive elements, combined with cleanup efforts. They estimate that the combination of the natural decays of the radioactive elements combined with cleanup efforts will take approximately 40 years.


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

[User]
Evolution Question: How did complex organisms (with many interdependent organs) evolve? Wouldn't all of the organs have to appear simultaneously?

Since none of an organism's organs would survive without each other, how did they come about? Similarly, how did the bee/flower relationship evolve?

[Assistant]
As with most questions in evolution, the answer is basically: very slowly.

In a lot of cases the organs don't necessarily come to fruition at the same time, but they do grow in cohort together. And there are hundreds of stages in between which are interesting.

This is why you get all of the weird phenomena like your reproductive organs starting up with your kidneys in your torso and then later on before birth travelling down to their rightful place (Some dogs, other mammals as well but particularly dogs, have testicles stuck in their torso which need to be surgically removed because of this).

If you want to see anything human specific, a great way to see how things evolved is to watch an embryo develop. We're made in such a way that often the only way to completely create a human body is to follow the steps evolution took, just to put everything in the right place. That'll give you a good idea as to what evolved when and with which other organs.

Odd fact, in the last couple of months of pregnancy a foetus develops a full body coat of hair which it then sheds before birth, called the Lanugo (if the baby is premature enough it will be born with this coat). Most people have no idea why this happens but it is actually an artefact from when we were still monkeys. They were hairy all over obviously, and Chimps tend to develop this lanugo at a comparable stage of gestation, which they then keep.


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

[User]
[X-Men DOFP] What is the future like for the normal humans

What is the future like for 'normal humans' the humans that never helped mutants, never were about to give birth to mutants, and were not involved in fighting mutants.

Is this a thing in that timeline or is the whole future a dystopia?

[Assistant] Originally the sentinels just targeted mutants, and then it was humans who helped mutants, humans who could produce mutants and then just all humans since everyone can eventually develop a latent x gene and produce mutants.


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

[User]
ELI5:How is it legal for clubs to require men to pay more than women to enter a club.

If it were races everybody would be freaking out saying its illegal.

[Assistant]
In california the supreme court ruled it unconstitutional so it isn't legal there.

In other states the courts have not found it unconstitutional, because (according to the courts) it wasn't a means to discourage men, but a means to increase the number of women attending, like seniors discounts, or student discounts.


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

[User] eli5: Why are IPv4/IPv6/NetBIOS addresses and names needed in networking when every device has a unique MAC address?

[Assistant]
The MAC address does not give any description of where the device is located or how you can send a packet to it. If we were all just using MAC addresses for all traffic then every router at every ISP needs a list of all the devices in the world and where to find them. This would be extremely difficult to maintain. The current system of addresses is based on the geographical and logical location in the network. A router only needs to look at the first bits of an address in order to know where it should send the package next.

You can compare it to a post address. We technically do not need to write the street name, post code and country on every letter we send in the mail since most people have a unique name. However it is very helpful to the post office to know if the receiver is living on the other side of the city or in the next country. The way we have it now they can only look at the post code and sort it into rough boxes that can be sent in different directions. A post office in New York City does not need to know your street address in Los Angles and only need to know what post code range is used for the west coast cities.


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

[User] ELI5: How can companies get away with "By doing XXX you give permission for us to YYY" signs? Isn't that not how permission works?

[Assistant] If the sign was there before you agreed to be in the building, then they're in the clear.  It was a condition of going into the building.  If, however, they added that later, then you might have a case.  Being filmed was not part of the agreement that you made when you agreed to live there.


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

[User] [40k]Why is there so much infantry or ground combat? Why not just blast every engagement from orbit?

[Assistant] Cause nine times out of ten whatever's being fought over needs to be kept at least partially functional. Hive worlds need hab blocks, agriworlds need farmland, mining worlds need equipment, and forge worlds need manufactorums. The only time the imperium actually destroys a planet is when it is already lost, such as deep rooted chaos corruption, heavy tyranid infestation, or recently realized tomb-world status.


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

[User]
Want to quit my PhD

New here, so I would not be surprised if posts like this are pretty common, but I am at a point where Ive realized that the PhD is just not for me.

For context, Im in electrical engineering and I joined the program originally just for a masters degree back in the fall of 2019. Toward the end of my masters, my supervisor basically talked me into staying for a PhD and I basically decided why not? Itll just basically be a continuation of what Im already doing. Fast forward to now, and Im just ready to be finished. Ive realized that I dont honestly care about the PhD and Id rather just work an industry job.

I actually tried to quit about a year ago, but my advisor gave me some things to consider, so I postponed my decision. A year later, Im still feeling pretty much the same and my research has hardly progressed since last year.

I know that I want to quit, the hardest part for me is the impact it will have on my advisor and my research group. Im on an externally funded project and my absence will definitely leave a hole. My plan would be to finish out the semester and in that time write out processes and help train other students to be able to fill my role as best as possible, but I still fear the response of my advisor. I have a good relationship with him, but he is also pretty quick to get pissed off.

Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Tl;dr: I want to quit my PhD, but I feel bad about the repercussions that will have on my advisor and colleagues. But I know that I dont want to finish this degree.

[Assistant] Thats very considerate of you to think of not leaving others in a lurch. It sounds like your advisor may have an inkling this was a possibility and should probably be preparing. You can probably feel fine quitting like any other job: two weeks notice. If you can leave some breadcrumbs for others to follow your work Im sure that will be appreciated.


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

[User] ELI5: How do rock climbers carry enough gear and supplies with them to sleep/ eat/ drink while on a face for several days?

[Assistant] Climbers try to load up their bodies with fats & water before the climb. During the climb they'll eat mainly high-density proteins and carbs/sugars (rations, beef jerky, trail mix, dehydrated fruit). Climbers carry backpacks, and for anything bigger they'll use cylindrical haul bags which they leave behind resting on a ledge and when they reach the next ledge they use the attached rope to pull it up.


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

[User]
[General Sci-Fi with Space-faring] Why do many stories involving space fleets use the command and organizational structure of a modern water-borne navy, instead of an air force or space command?

Is this a throw-back to early Sci-Fi before an air force or space program was a separate entity in it's own right? Or is it because it involves the operation of massive "ships" that are more akin to ocean vessels than aircraft? Or something else entirely?

[Assistant]
In most cases it's a legacy effect of the operation of ships. Large space-borne vessels tend to be more like submarines than planes (even though the comparison is still relatively superficial) but fleet of starships also tend operate in formations and conditions more akin to naval behaviours than Airforce.

There may also be an element of redundancy to it. Once you have a space fleet, there's no reason to have an aquatic navy. It just stops being particularly useful. However, an planetary air force remains useful in dealing with atmospheric incursion and general security. So, there may have been a conversion, similar to what happened with Cavalry, where the name 'Navy' was simply passed over to the next nearest comparison after it's original role became obsolete.


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

[User] [Harry Potter] Hotwarts was built about thousand years ago when gothic style didn't exist yet. Was it rebuilt larer in a new architecture?

[Assistant]
The castle is incredibly magical, capable of not only reparing damage, but changing it's structure, room layouts, number of rooms etc.

It's very possible that the castle changes shape over time to accommodate what it's professors think it should look like.


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

[User] ELI5: how does the human body create stones like kidney stones?

[Assistant] For kidney stones, your kidneys reabsorbs roughly 95% of the calcium that is reabsorbed into the body. You also excrete excess calcium from your body through your urine so your kidneys do that function as well. In an organ that is heavily involved in processing calcium, it's easy to see how excess amounts of calcium could build up and crystalize in the kidney. Think of it like sand going through a filter, some times the grains get caught in the filter media, once there's something caught in the media, more grains are likely to build up in that area until you have a complete blockage.


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

[User]
[The Dark Tower] How exactly did Roland's world 'move on'?

I've only seen the movie, not read the books although I'm vaguely familiar with them.

[Assistant]
In-world: much great technology and history was forgotten about, or how to make it work. This is explained in The Wastelands between Shardik the bear and the people of Lud maintaining machinery they don't understand, among other instances.

Meta-world: all levels of the Tower are figments of King's imagination. They are fleshed-out, living worlds in his mind, but only as long as he thinks about them. So when he moves on to another book, the world that he created languishes. Roland moves between these stories in the meta-story, linking pieces together.


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

[User] ELI5:Why does my cigarette consumption increase exponentially when drunk.

[Assistant] Actually there is a physical explanation for that: Alcohol makes your vessels expand and nicotine make them shrink. So when you smoke, drinking feels better, and when you drink, smoking feels better. We are so lucky!


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

[User]
[The Wizards Of Oz] How often do random people end up in the land of Oz

So how do people even get to the Land of Oz anyways and how often do people get there is what I'm trying to get at. So hypothetically if some random 15-year-old Zoomer tiktoker is picked up in a tornado in the OZ universe are they taking to the Land of Oz? Are Outsiders ending up in the land of Oz a regular occurrence? If so what happens to Outsiders that end up in the land of Oz?

[Assistant]
There have only been a handful (of humans and their pets, at least) that have ever made it to Oz. The primary deterrent is the fact that Oz is surrounded by a deadly desert with noxious fumes and whose sands will kill you and turn you into sand. At some point the entire realm has been put under an invisibility spell.

Prior to the spell, getting there simply required a means to travel over the desert, either by hot air balloon or tornado or some other means. Magic also works as a method of transport.


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

[User]
Can you ask to be removed as an author from a paper?

I am a co author on a paper of a former fellow PhD student. I contributed minimally to the paper (extracted DNA from samples and sequences). The topic is something I know about and researching during my current postdoc.

The issue is that I dont think the methods is done correctly or the data interpreted properly. We have yet to see the final manuscript (I got a sneak peek of the partial manuscript).

Can I ask to be removed as an author from the paper? Or is any publication seen as good? I want to progress within this field and dont know how bad it would be if my name is on a subpar paper.

[Assistant] Situations like this are not uncommon.  An approach to handling this that I've used is to (1) provide them comments on the manuscript expressing concerns and (perhaps) ways to fix it and (2) let them know that it might be a lot of work, that you understand that they might not want to/are able to do the edits, in which case you don't want to hold them back so its okay to just leave you off of the paper.


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

[User] ELI5: Selling shares on the stock market always works instantly. How is it possible that there is ALWAYS someone looking to buy what you have at market price?

[Assistant]
Because when you say sell it at market price, you're saying 'Sell it for literally whatever someone is willing to pay'

If there was literally no one willing to pay anything for it, the stock price would hit zero.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Does the super soldier serum bring the subjects to the same comparative level of physical performance or does it amplify their existing genetic/physiological capabilities a set amount/percentage?

For example, would a female super soldier be physically weaker than a male super soldier (assuming average pre-serum baseline differences in strength)? Or specifically, since Steve Rogers and Bucky both received a serum, but Steve Rogers was originally much weaker than Bucky pre-serum, would that disparity still persist post-serum? If not, why not?

[Assistant] Unclear. The creator died and simply explained they'd be the absolute height of their potential. Some of the females who get the serum are a bit faster and a bit less strong. But it's hard to tell or compare since Steve is the only one to ever get the OG formula and treatment.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are bezels needed on electronics like cell phones, TVs and laptops?

[Assistant]
Just to follow on from some of the earlier answers : LCD screens have multiple layers to them, so need to have somewhere to route the cables to the middle layer. You can't do this from behind without drilling a hole through the back layer - which is the backlight - and leaving a dead patch on the screen.

Even if you put all these wires on one side, the remaining three sides still need something to hold all the layers together - putting glue between them would hurt the image quality.

That said, there's no reason the frame couldn't be made from a transparent plastic, transparent aluminium, or another see through material. It would look ugly from an angle where you can see the layers, which is probably the only reason it hasn't been done.

Edit to add : Also, light bleeding. You probably don't want light from the backlight illuminating the stand during a dark scene - as some would be leaking out the bottom and sides of the screen without going through the image layers, the surroundings would be illuminated bright white, which would produce glare on the picture that could drown out darker scenes.


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

[User] ELI5: What makes the patterns on the surface of water? Eg. the ripples in one part and complete stillness in another? Is it just the wind or is there more to it?

[Assistant]
There's a *little* more to it. Ripples are initially created by a disturbance of the surface, whether it's wind, a fish, a bird... etc. The ripples move outwards in concentric rings from the point of the disturbance.

Where it gets interesting is when those ripples collide with something. That can be the edge of the lake, a reed, various other static objects, or other ripples.

When they encounter static objects, ripples behave differently depending on the angle that they strike. They can either be reflected (bounced) back, they can be distorted around the object, or they can be absorbed. This can change the "intensity" (amplitude) of the ripples, and change their direction.

When ripples hit other ripples, several things can happen. If they are the same amplitude, and happen to collide at the right time, they will cancel each other out, and this results in a patch of perfectly still water.

If they collide at the "wrong" time, they can enhance each other. This results in an increase in intensity (amplitude), and the ripples get bigger. However, they will move slower, as the energy is "changed" from movement into amplitude. So you get a patch of very disturbed water.

Look into how electromagnetic waves behave when they interact with each other - ripples work in pretty much the same way.