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

[User] [Star Wars] Leia tells the Death Star people that Rebel base is on Dantooine, (a lie) just to save Alderaan from being destroyed. Why was the supposedly good princess willing to let some some innocent planet and it's (millions, if not billions) of inhabitants take the fall?

[Assistant]
> Our scout ships have reached Dantooine. They found the remains of a Rebel base, but they estimate that it has been deserted for some time. They are now conducting an extensive search of the surrounding systems.

If there were people there, the Empire would be interrogating them. Instead, scouts are searching the neighboring systems.

Dantooine system is uninhabited.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do computers struggle to emulate Playstation 2 games with a graphics processor that's better than an actual PS2's?

[Assistant]
Modern computers don't understand the instructions in a PS2 game. So they have to translate the instructions from MIPS  (the machine code used by the PS2) to x86 (the machine code used by PCs) in real time.

And you know how some words don't translate exactly into a single word in another language? Computer languages have the same problem. And console games in particular are often dependent on quirks of the specific CPU in the specific console to work properly.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are people turned down from jobs because they are "over qualified"?

Or what makes a person overqualified? Where is that line drawn of perfectly qualified and over qualified. I'm sure it has something to do with being able to stay "interested" in the work or something along those lines. Anyways, just curious.

[Assistant]
Imagine you have two applicants for a job flipping burgers at your restaurant.

One of them is a high school dropout. He's not going to be able to get a job that's much better than burger flipping, so he's probably not going to quit. Heck, you can probably force him to work unpaid overtime, and he won't do anything but whine to his friends after.

One of them is a Ph.D. There are lots of better jobs a Ph.D can get, and if/when she gets one, she's going to be out the door in a heartbeat. She's also much less likely to just sit there and let the manager abuse her; she may even try to sue you if you make her work unpaid overtime.

So it's actually *worse* for you to hire the Ph.D than to hire some random high school dropout. Thus, overqualified.


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

[User]
Why can I make a rumbling noise by tensing something inside my ears?

Every time I ask someone if they can do it they think I'm crazy, does anyone know what this is and why I can do it?

[Assistant] What you are hearing is the tensor tympani muscle. This is a small muscle in your ear that acts as a dampener of external sound. It attaches to a small bone in the ear and prevents it from oscillating, particularly when chewing.  This is why you can also hear it if you move your jaw in certain positions, it also tends to contract when you close your eyes tightly and quickly. You'll notice the sound will only last briefly. This is because the initial contraction of the muscle causes the bone to move creating a rumbling sound. Interestingly, some people have the ability to contract this muscle voluntarily.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do popsicles freeze in such a "soft" way that it's really easy to bite through them, but ice itself freezes so darn hard?

[Assistant]
It's actually a deliberate feature from the manufacturing process. They basically take the popsicle solution and mix it while freezing until it forms a thick slush, mold the slush into whatever form they want, and then send it to the hard freezer. This prevents large ice crystals from forming and makes the popsicle nice and soft while frozen.

If you have ever left your freezer open (or had your freezer stop working) you may notice that popsicles, after they melt and re-freeze, freeze hard just like regular ice.


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

[User]
What's your experience in journal clubs? Good or bad?

Hours of tedious summarising/preparation? Boring presentations? Or amazing new articles you hadn't seen?

I want to hear your journal club experiences :)

[Assistant]
Mediocre is probably the best word for it.  Presentations will vary by person but usually they're ok.  Most people haven't gotten into graduate school without knowing how to present at some level.  Articles will vary too but I've seen plenty of really cool findings and/or methods in journal clubs.

But the audience itself is what keeps things going.  It's supposed to be a discussion in theory.  In practice what usually happens is that graduate students rank journal club about 187th on the list of things they care about, somewhere between the Australian election and local laws regarding food truck sanitation.  So the discussion doesn't go anywhere since nobody cares.  On top of that the few people who do talk often have "/r/science syndrome" and have never seen a paper worthy of their time.  Yes you should read a paper with a critical eye but they'll spend their time talking about how the Cell paper of the week is the worst thing they've ever read.


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

[User]
Why does our brain have such a large capacity when humans just 10,000 years ago were looking for prey rather than contemplating quantum mechanics?

In terms of evolution, what gave our brains such a (what seems to be) huge capacity to become smarter and remember more and more things?

I understand there are social reasons: the birth of reason, academic communities, the Enlightenment etc. But these all happened in a matter of hundreds of years whereas evolution generally takes hundreds of thousands of years before a significant biological change can take place no? Why is our brain not less equipped to handle the huge amounts of knowledge and intelligence required to advance humankind nowadays?

Also, would it be conceivable that we might hit a ceiling where, objectively, we could develop further but the biology of our brains would hold us back?

[Assistant] I think what you're describing is called the ratchet effect -- because we have culture that is passed down across generations, each new generation doesn't have to start over each time but can pick up where the previous one left off.  If you want to be a physicist you can just read some books and take some classes and get caught up on what has taken your predecessors thousands of years to discover, analyze, and codify.  You aren't any smarter than those ancestors of thousands of years ago, you just have a massive head start.  Or in gaming terms, your ancestors left you enough saved games so that you don't have to start all the way back at the beginning of the level, you can just zip to the last completed checkpoint.


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

[User] Hi! Can someone intuitively explain why elasticity of demand is not constant on the demand curve. I do understand mathematically why this is the case, yet, intuitively, why when price is higher elasticity is higher. Can someone give a real-life explanation in which this makes sense?

[Assistant]
I mean, think about it.

Let's say there's a burger place offering burgers for $5. Now the price goes up by 50% to $7.50, that's a good bit more expensive but ultimately $2.50 more isn't that much.

Now imagine that same burger starts at $10 and goes up to $15, same percentage price increase but a much bigger absolute price increase. Of course you're going to reach more strongly to paying $5 more than paying $2.5 more.


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

[User]
ELI5: What happens to electricity when it dissipates.

Let's say you have a malfunction at a power station, and 50,000 volts go into the ground, and it dissipates.

What exactly happens? As we all know, energy can not be created or destroyed, so what happens to the electrical energy? Does it change into something else, or what?

[Assistant] The vast majority dissipates as heat. Some will go into chemical reactions in the soil. At the point of entrance,  a high current through a small enough area will get so hot that light will be emitted.


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

[User] I haven't consented to being born, so why is being euthanised/dying on my own terms not looked at the same?

[Assistant]
Death is the same as birth insofar as it's not a contingent experience. You don't get to consent about death. You have to die no matter what just as much as you had to be born. What you can consent to is how you die and when.

This difference plays a big role in the moral considerations for euthanasia and suicide.


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

[User]
[Ghostbusters] How would things have gone if the Ghostbusters never existed?

Would Gozer have effortlessly taken over the world? Would Vigo the Carpathian have re-appeared a few years later and done battle with Gozer?

[Assistant]
The Ghostbusters are goddamn heroes.    Even without them, the city was headed for a disaster of biblical proportions, including, but not limited to, the following:

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies

Rivers and seas boiling

Forty years of darkness

Earthquakes, volcanoes

The dead rising from the grave!

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!!!!!


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

[User]
[Star Trek TNG] Was placing a psychiatric counselor as part of the command crew a common practice in the Federation, or was Deanna Troi a special case due to her psychic abilities?

If it was a common practice, when did it start, and when and why did it end?

[Assistant]
The episode where she loses her powers, Picard says that all captains have a counselor, and he was just lucky to have one with empathic abilities.

It's a smart idea.  You want a mental health professional for the individual crew members, and also for the officers to judge the overall mental health of the crew.

It may have been started even before TOS, but they weren't commonly bridge officers.  They probably had an office somewhere near sick bay, just another blue shirt like Ezri was before the symbiote.  Kirk may have had one, but it wasn't his style, nor the style of Spock or Bones to visit one.


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

[User] [40K] If the huge Tyranid swarm surrounded the Eye of Terror, would the silence of the warp effect close the Eye?

[Assistant] No. The Shadow in the Warp doesn't calm the Warp the way a blank does. It simply overwhelms all other signals, like a fog. It would play hell with the various sorceries of the foul inhabitants of the Eye, but it wouldn't affect its power.


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

[User] [Captain Marvel] If Stan Lee, and the movie Mallrats exist in the MCU, what is Stan Lee famous for?

[Assistant]
Stan Lee has been writing graphic novels about superheroes the same way Tom Clancy writes novels about government operatives. Stan Lees work is fictional, but he researches real life superheroes to make his work more authentic.

He began his career shortly after WW2, when there was a lack of real life Captain America stories because Captain America had disappeared in the Arctic. To fill that void, Lee began writing about fictional heroes that could stop the likes of Red Guardian and other super powered villains.

His work is obscure but has a cult following. Many people believe that Spider-Man for example based his costume and gear on one of Lees more obscure creations of the same name.


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

[User]
Does "spinning for gravity" experience drag from the people?

Looking at a craft like that in "Passengers" which spins for "gravity" - Newton's First Law says once it's up to speed, it will keep spinning.

I *believe* work is being expended in constantly changing the direction of motion of the contents of the spinny bit (the "centripetal acceleration"). Does this slow the spinning of the wheel? What is the means by which the slowing happens? I can't get my head around "swinging people in a circle slows the spin"

Thanks!

[Assistant]
Rotational momentum has to be conserved. That means you can't actually *stop* rotating unless there is some force acting on it. No work needs to be done either - by the physics definition, work changes the kinetic energy of an object, but here the rotational kinetic energy is constant.

This is true for any circular motion. If you change the direction of something without changing its speed, you haven't changed its kinetic energy, and you haven't done any work on it.

You can also think of this mathematically, but this involves some vector maths. The rate at which work is done is the *dot product* of the force acting on the object and the velocity of the object. The dot product is zero for perpendicular vectors. In circular motion, the force is also perpendicular to velocity - the velocity points "forwards", in a tangent from the circle, the the force points "down", and these two vectors are always 90 from each other. So no work is done.

But the basic idea is that a force does not automatically do work - it only does work if it actually changes the *speed* of the object, and not just its direction.


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

[User] ELI5: What is intersectionality and why is it a buzzword among activists?

[Assistant]
Intersectionality means that we have numerous and diverse aspects of our identity, not merely one.

For example, you have a race but that is not the only thing which defines you. You have a gender too, a faith perhaps, a nationality, an age, a career, and many different aspects of your character. Intersectionality means that none of us are merely one sort of thing.

Intersectionality is being promoted today not only by activists but by Human Resources professionals in an attempt to combat the single-minded nature of Identity Politics which compels us to view ourselves and others as stereotypes who have only one thing defining them.


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

[User]
What exactly takes so long between when a nurse takes you in and checks your vitals and when the doctor finally comes in the room?

What is going on in between?

[Assistant]
reading the notes from the nurse, your past notes, etc. also, seeing other patients, writing notes for the last patient etc. it can feel like they're just wasting time, but they're likely just caught up with stuff. if it's a teaching facility, it can be even slower because they have to go over everything with the learner before and after.

that said, it's just from what I've seen as a learner. some doctors might just be doing whatever, who knows. this isn't a rule, just what I've observed. :)


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

[User]
Why is utilitarianism bad

All over the internet you constantly see people saying something is bad because "it's utilitarian" but the the whole concept of utilitarianism is to maximise pleasure and minimize pain.

I would also like to mention I don't think it's plausible nor would I do it as it requires too much self sacrifice however that doesn't make it bad.

[Assistant]
> the the whole concept of utilitarianism is to maximise pleasure and minimize pain.

This sounds great at face!

Here are some things we can that seem at face to significantly increase aggregate happiness: systematically execute the 5% of the population with the most chronic sadness, revoke all legal and moral notion of things like bodily autonomy and self-determination so that people's bodies and lives can be used in the service of most efficiently serving other people's satisfaction, morally oblige people to make themselves available for physical, emotional, or sexual abuse by any one person or group of people whose aggregate enjoyment of it would be greater than the suffering it produced.

There are a few options at this point, most obviously: bite the bullets and accept that things like these are morally obligatory, argue somehow that these things wouldn't significantly increase aggregate happiness after all, or modify the utilitarian thesis in some way that would exclude such results. People have tried, and continue to try, all three, which is why normative ethics is still a matter in some contention. But these considerations do undermine the intuition that it's just obvious that utilitarianism is correct -- or intuitions to something like this effect.


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

[User]
What is the weak nuclear force?

Whenever i hear about the 4 fundamental forces, i always hear 3 of them explained very to fairly well, and then we get to the weak nuclear force and whoever is explaining mumbles something about radiation and quickly moves on.

So, reddit, what is the weak nuclear force, and what does it do?

[Assistant] Calling it a force in the f=ma sense is misleading, it's better to call it an interaction. Basically it's a way for one particle to turn into another,  while absorbing or emitting a neutrino. The classic example is beta decay, where a neutron turns into a proton and an electron while emitting a neutrino.


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

[User]
Is The universe is infinite, there must be aliens out there somewhere. a mathematically valid argument?

My understanding is that this argument is an argument stemming from a lack of understanding of the nature of infinity and infinite series.

An infinite series does not necessarily contain all possible outputs, just an infinite number of outputs.

In my metaphor, aliens exist and aliens dont exist are both plausible outputs that equally likely to be contained by the infinite series of events that is the universe.

Furthermore, I believe the idea that the universe is infinite isnt necessarily proven to be true as its more accurate to say the universe is currently expanding, as we do not know if there is a upper limit.

Edit: thanks for the responses, I largely agree with everything said and was pleasantly surprised to learn a new concept, the Fermi Paradox, as that describes my frustrations with this argument of the infinite universe. Im not necessarily pro- or anti- aliens exist, more interested in the way people can misuse mathematical concepts to get their point across.

[Assistant]
This statement is more closely related to probability than series. If there are an absurd number of planets with conceivable ways that life could form on these planets, why wouldn't there be life?

But then we are confronted with the lack of evidence to support that argument. Enter: Fermi Paradox.


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

[User]
[TNG] How does the prime directive play into situations with isolated human colonies?

In S05E13: The Masterpiece Society The Enterprise comes across a human colony that has been isolated for several centuries and are somewhat behind from a technological standing point. Does the prime directive not come into play when the species is just an offshoot of humans?

[Assistant]
They're not an offshoot, they are humans. The Federation has no legal power over them, but no, the Prime Directive does not apply. Picard states this in the episode.

As humans who have created an off-world colony they are aware of the existence of aliens. There's nothing to surprise them with. Once made aware of the danger the comet fragment posed to their colony they asked for help. If they were covered by the Prime Directive then Picard would have just allowed the fragment to hit the planet and never would have told them it was coming.

Also, as a human, there was no reason not to give Hannah Bates asylum as she requested.


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

[User]
[John Carpenter's the Thing] A few questions about the Thing.

Why does the alien, when imitating people, spend a long time convulsing in their bodies before being able to defend itself or attack the uninfected?

Additionally, wouldn't it be far more advantageous to simply break off into smaller pieces (say, the size of a leech) and infect the others while they were asleep?

Last thing, supposing it got out and everyone on Earth was infected. . . would it actually change anyone's personality? The Thing seemed to remain dormant in a human until it became threatened.  Potentially, could the Thing infect every living human and basically result in a more harmonious society?

[Assistant]
Those convulsions are the Thing reconfiguring its body internally, growing things like teeth and tentacles. It *might* be able to infect by feeding people bits of itself, but it can't literally divide and conquer. Smaller pieces of the Thing tend not to be very smart, operating mostly on instinct.

We're not sure how it assimulates human minds. An individual Thing might believe itself to be human. The Thing might maintain the original human mind while having its own dives surfacing as impulses and rationalized thoughts. Or the Thing might *know* it's a Thing, and there's just enough of the original mind left to do a convincing imitation. It could even vary from instance to instance depending on how the human was infested.

A planet full of Things would probably be more peaceful, assuming they have a way of knowing each other, but humans would be extinct. From where we stand that's no improvement at all.

EDIT: spelling.


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

[User]
evaluating a teaching demo

For those who have served on a search committee for a TT job, what criteria do you use to evaluate a candidates teaching demo in class? What does a strong teaching demo look like to you? Thank you.

[Assistant]
I look for good design (appropriate length, not rushed, material flows/fits together), how likely it is to engage students (energy of the presentation, activities that help students work with or figure out parts of the content), and actual engagement with the audience (flexibility of delivery, responsiveness to points raised by the audience / questions asked, etc.).

Then theres also the actual content coverage and how well it matches the intended level of the class and the instructions given, which is secondary to the above but important to show the candidate has a good idea of the students they would be teaching.


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

[User] If I could travel back to the time of the velociraptor. Would the atmosphere composition and temperature on Earth kill me before the velociraptor did?

[Assistant] I think you'd be fine, until you tried to light a cigarette and burned your face off. The atmosphere was nitrogen, oxygen argon, CO2, like now, warm and humid, you'd not be in danger of oxygen toxicity, pO2 would be at most 0.35. In fact, the extra O2 would probably feel great.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do so many people dislike/discredit Mother Teresa?

I see a lot of people on Reddit who discredit her and point out that she isnt worthy of her status. Why is that? I have no clue.

[Assistant]
She wasn't terribly interested in helping the poor and the sick become less poor and sick.  Instead, she felt suffering brought people closer to God, and her "help" consisted almost entirely of trying to convert people as they suffered.

Given that her name has became synonymous with selfless humanitarianism, there is a large gap between her reputation and her deeds, and many would like to correct that misconception.


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

[User] ELI5: popular in movie scenes that are often nowhere near a hospital, while someone is having a heart attack someone will ask if another is a doctor. can a doctor actually stop a heart attack without medicine or equipment?

[Assistant]
>can a doctor actually stop a heart attack without medicine or equipment?

No.  The point of asking if anyone is a doctor isn't to have them stop the heart attack.  It's to have them diagnose the patient to make sure it actually *is* a heart attack, and to provide whatever treatment they can given the tools available to them.  For instance, giving the patient aspirin is one of the immediate treatment options that non-doctors might not think of, and aspirin is common enough that a bystander might have some on them.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the physiological cause of that deep seated anxiety lump in our chest during stressful or disheartening experiences?

[Assistant] The "anxiety lump" in your throat (when you're about to do public speaking, or when you're upset and about to cry), is caused by muscular tension keeping your glottis dilated to maximize air flow. The "clenched chest" or "heartache" deeper down your torso is caused by vagus nerve (which largely controls parasympathetic control of your organs) getting kicked out of "chill" mode by stress and entering "survival" mode, so it's going to tell the various organs to pump blood harder and faster, stop digesting, start producing cortisol and adrenaline, etc.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is water not a moisturiser?

When I have a shower my skin feels all ashy and I need to put moisturiser on it. Why does water seem to take the moisture out?

[Assistant]
Because water is not oil. Oil keeps moisture inside, while water removes the oil.
Therefore, after washing, your skin gets dry due to the moisture not being held in by oil. More true when soaps remove the oils, you can really feel the dryness.


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

[User] If a Higgs particle was the size of a human, how big would the sun be?

[Assistant]
As is tradition, 'size' is a word that has multiple meanings; one is sensical in this case, the other is not.

One meaning of 'size' involves comparing length scales. As the Higgs is a fundamental particle, this doesn't make much sense.

On the other hand, 'mass' makes more sense. If the Higgs particle was as massive as a human, how massive would the sun be? In this case, the Higgs mass is about 125 GeV/c^2 - which is about 10^-25 kg. A human is about 10^1 or 10^2 kg. So a human is 10^26 or 10^27 times more massive. What's 10^26 times more massive than the sun? Well the sun is 10^30 kg, and the entire observable universe is about 10^53 kg... so *if the Higgs particle was the mass of a human, the sun would be ten thousand times more massive than the combined mass of the entire observable universe.*

I hope this gives you a sense of scale of just how small a Higgs particle is, or more importantly, just how big you are.


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

[User] [Star Wars] I found a perfectly preserved capital ship in excellent working order. Only problem is it's like 3000 years old How effective would it be during the time right after the empire.

[Assistant] It'll probably keep up, ship design (especially capital ships) hasn't changed much over Galactic history. Legends-wise, the Hammerhead Cruiser was used for \~10,000 years and the Invincible-class Dreadnaught was fielded for \~3,000 years. In canon, the Jedi cruiser *Ataraxia* was in service for \~300 years.


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

[User]
If the universe is expanding and everything is moving away from eachother how do galaxies collide?

I can understand how "smaller" bodies like stars can collide but what affects large systems like galaxies to where their course is shifted?

[Assistant]
Break the motion of a galaxy down into two components:

The first is dependent on *metric expansion*, isn't really motion of the galaxy per se, and is what you're thinking of when you say that 'all things are moving away from one another.'  On a large scale that statement is true; on a small scale, gravity is much more influential.

The second is the *peculiar velocity* of the galaxy, which is its motion relative to the local rest frame (which is determined as an average of the motion of other, nearby galaxies.)

Just as stars move around in a galaxy (and don't separate appreciably due to metric expansion), galaxies can have peculiar velocities that show that they're interacting with one another, and not separating appreciably due to metric expansion.  Keep in mind that two galaxies, relatively close to one another, are still a very small, very local system on a cosmic scale.  So their gravitational interaction is still more significant than the metric expansion of space.

On a very very very large scale, the metric expansion of space does indeed exceed the effect of gravity, and so the net motion of galaxies is away from one another.


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

[User] ELI5: Why we can record sight and sound but not smell?

[Assistant]
Sight (light) and sound are energy in different forms. You can convert energy between forms and therefore record and reproduce it.

Smells are particulates in the air. You'd have to somehow convert molecules to an energy pattern, and then to "play back" the scent convert the pattern back to matter.

We can analyze components of scents and come up with a similar chemical composition that mimics it, but that's as close as we're going to get without fundamental leaps forward in physics.


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

[User] Do extremely loud sounds (150 decibels) at frequencies beyond human hearing (21kHz or 10Hz) still cause hearing damage or loss?

[Assistant] Yes. Ultrasonic sounds (above 20kHz) can cause some hearing damage but only from a prolonged exposure. At lower subsonic frequencies can cause your eyballs to vibrate making it difficult to see or focus. With rising amplitude sounds become more dangerous regardless of frequency. Above around 200 db sounds can cause fatal haemorrhaging and rupture of some tissues inside the lungs. Above that you have more of a blast wave. It becomes closer to being comparable to getting hit by a truck. When you pump energy into the wave the frequency doesn't really matter, it still hurts.


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

[User]
How do I resign from an adjunct position while maintaining good rapport with the department?

I've been an adjunct at a small liberal arts college for the past three years, while also maintaining a full-time teaching position elsewhere. I was hired for the adjunct position first, but then had the tt position at the start of a semester. I didn't want to leave the other institution hanging where I adjunct, so I stayed on. Once I saw how easy at was to be at both places, I stayed. I also was hoping to expand my network where I adjunct, and hoped I could get hired into that department eventually. Unfortunately my chair has zero interest in advocating for me for tenure track, as the department enrollment is too low.

Now that I'm growing a lot in my career (several research collabs, up for tenure early, etc), I'm super burned out being at both places. Where I adjunct, I have two research projects, and a student assistant. I want to keep the projects going, but I'm afraid if I leave, it will hurt my relationships where I adjunct in terms of keeping the projects going.

I'm to a point where I physically don't think I can continue there for spring. How can I approach leaving while maintaining good relationships?

[Assistant] I think everybody understands why somebody would leave an adjunct position for a TT one.  Just resign as early as possible, and send a nice note around the department saying how much youve enjoyed working with them and how much you hope to see them in the future.


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

[User]
[TWD] Why did Rick use a revolver as his police sidearm when all of the other officers used pistols?

* It also seems like an odd choice as a service weapon given how pistols had largely replaced revolvers as the police officers main sidearm.

[Assistant] He's a small-time sheriff in rural America, his department probably doesn't have a standard issue sidearm and he likely has to buy his own gun with either his own money or is compensated by his department, so basically he can carry whatever firearm he wants. In this case, it's a Colt Python in .357 Magnum.


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

[User] ELI5:How do we know how hot the core of the Earth is and everything underground if the farthest we have dug a hole is just 8 miles?

[Assistant]
One of the main ways we've learned about the earth's interior is by studying Earthquakes.

Scientists have learned a lot about how vibrations (which is what Earthquakes are) travel through different types of materials (solids, liquids, semi-solids.)

Imagine you take a big rock and put your hands on the side of it, while somebody else taps it with a hammer, you'd sense different things if the person tapped right next to your hands, or if they tapped further away, or if they tapped on the far side of the rock.  If your hands were really sensitive, and you kept a detail of what you felt, you'd learn a lot about that.  Then imagine doing the same thing with different materials, maybe a big jello mold, or an inflated basketball, or a bucket of water.  You'd pretty soon know what kind of vibrations would feel like from different kinds of taps in different places on different materials.

Scientists have sensors all around the world that measure earthquakes and other vibrations in the earth very precisely.  Let's say a big Earthquake happens in Japan, it will be detected in Japan and the nearby region, but also in America, and Australia and Europe.  By comparing the types of vibrations detected in those different parts of the world, and looking at how long they took to travel, scientists can infer quite a lot about the types of material that the vibrations were traveling through.

Then they take information from other scientists who have studied the kinds of stuff the earth is made of, and how those materials behave under heat and pressure.  When the different groups of scientists put their data together they are able to form a pretty clear understanding of the composition of the interior of the planet without having to observe it directly.


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

[User]
CMV: adding hot sauce to all your food is the culinary equivalent of adding ketchup to all your food.

Ketchup has been called the "Esperanto" of condiments in that it contains all major flavors. Some people use this attribute to give all their food a uniform flavor, which is often derided in cuisine.

However, I believe that there is a saucy hypocrisy afoot. Many of these critics and snobs who turn up their noses at the most institutional of Heinz's 57 will instead reach for the bottle of sriracha to the same uniform end--but now with some heat to further smooth any edges in their dishes.

Please, I'm a millennial and I have brunch tomorrow. I need my view changed before I lose all my friends!

[Assistant]
One big difference is that while it is uncommon for prepared food to be under-seasoned in terms of salt or umami, it is very common for it to be under-seasoned in terms of spice.

The reason is that people have vastly different spice tolerances and many people will send a dish back if it's even a little spicy.  There's next to nobody who does that for having a bit of salt.

So if someone really likes spicy food, they're almost never going to get it when eating out or eating prepared foods.  In those cases, adding hot sauce may make sense.


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

[User]
[Jurassic Park] Why the heck would InGen design a venom-spitting dinosaur?

My personal headcanon is that the Dilophosaurus in the films was intentionally designed in such an inaccurate way, to be more interesting to visitors in the park.

The frill makes sense, since it looks cool. However, why the heck would a non-venomous dinosaur created for a theme park be given the ability to spit paralyzing venom? Surely there would be no way this could be of any interest to guests. All it could possibly be was a security risk.

And if in Jurassic Park canon the ancient Dilophosaurus really did have venom, why couldn't that be removed? The scientists were able to make dinosaurs much bigger than their actual size, manipulate their ability to creatw lysine, and remove feathers. Why couldn't they simply remove the venom glands?

What gives, InGen?

[Assistant]
They originally didn't know, and the suits wouldn't let them kill an animal to find the venom glands.  From the novel:

>It was Muldoon's view that some dinosaurs were too dangerous to be kept in a park setting. In part, the danger existed because they still knew so little about the animals. For example, nobody even suspected the dilophosaurs were poisonous until they were observed hunting indigenous rats on the island-biting the rodents and then stepping back, to wait for them to die. And even
then nobody suspected the dilophosaurs could spit until one of the handlers was almost blinded by spitting venom.

>After that, Hammond had agreed to study dilophosaur venom, which was found to contain seven different toxic enzymes. It was also discovered that the dilophosaurs could spit a distance of fifty feet. Since this raised the possibility that a guest in a car might be blinded, management decided to remove the poison sacs. The vets had tried twice, on two different animals, without success, No one knew where the poison was being secreted. And no one would ever know until an autopsy was performed on a dilophosaur and management would not allow one to be killed.


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

[User]
ELI5: Magnet torrent links.  What are they?

What are they and how do they differ from regular torrent links?  How are they better or worse for the future of torrents?

[Assistant] A magnet torrent link is a unique set of numbers and letters that describe a specific file, like a fingerprint. Torrent clients can use this fingerprint to ask other clients if they have a file with the same fingerprint. If they do, they can send it from them (peer) to you (peer).


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

[User]
When a person is born deaf, what language do they think in?

I know they eventually learn how to read and understand other human beings, but what happens until then/what would happen if they simply never did?

[Assistant] To elaborate even further on the first two responses.  People think in pictures, mental images.  We don't begin to assign words to those images until we learn language.  People also have basic needs such as food and water.  In that case we are not thinking in images but rather based on instinct.  We then assign words to those needs.


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

[User] [Marvel] Does the Super Soldier Serum improve mental ability the way it improves physical ability? If so, to what extent?

[Assistant]
It does, and to the extent that Cap is able to do impossible trig in his head - on the fly - to ensure his shield strikes all five targets in the head, and then returns safely to him.

No non-meta, non-augmented human could make that shot, and especially not as consistently as cap.


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

[User] Why do images on a monitor become negtive when viewed from a certain angle?

[Assistant]
Newer monitors don't have this problem, but if you do see it, it's because it works not so much by outright blocking light from the backlight, but by redirecting it - it lets the right amount get through at a straight angle, and the rest gets diverted out to an angle you don't normally look at the screen at.

So what you're seeing is the "waste" light which will, naturally, be an inverted image.


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

[User] [MCU] If Banner stayed Hulked out for enough time, could Hulk eventually grow to possess as much knowledge, rationality, and long fuse as Banner himself?

[Assistant]
He definitely seemed a lot calmer and better able to control his anger after spending 2 years as the Hulk in Thor Ragnarok, though based on what we've seen so far there's no way of really knowing if there's an upper limit to his strength.

On the other hand, since time passes differently on Sakaar, we actually don't know how long he really spent as the Hulk. Thor tells him he's been the Hulk for 2 years, but that was 2 years for Thor. Who knows how long it was for The Hulk?


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

[User] Is sparkling water heavier or lighter than non-sparkling?

[Assistant]
There is not a "right" answer to this question- there is only different answers based on conditions.

The easiest condition is a sealed bottle of sparkling water which is not out gassing. In this case, you know that the CO2 is fully dissolved in the water, and dissolved CO2 essentially does not increase the volume of the water (it does ever so slightly, but it's like a second order effect), so there is extra mass in the water, but the volume has stayed essentially the same, so the water is denser, so a liter of sparkling water will weigh more than a liter of flat water.

However, once you take off the lid, it depends on the rate of the out gassing. Now, the dissolved gas becomes bubbles in the drink. When they become bubbles, the volume of the water increases. So now, when you compare a liter of still water with a liter of sparkling water, there are fewer water molecules in the liter of sparkling water, so it might be lighter. It depends on how many bubbles there are and how much dissolved CO2 there is still in the bottle.


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

[User] ELI5: In the expression, "Teaching grandmother to suck eggs", what is the meaning of the concept of sucking eggs?

[Assistant]
Sucking an egg is when you make two small holes in the shell, one in each end.  You then suck the innards out, leaving a pristine shell that can be decorated.

edit: to elaborate, crafting painted eggs is a stereotypical old timey female activity.  So to teach your grandmother how to do that craft would be teaching an expert something obvious, kind of like educating the Pope on Catholicism.  Make sense?


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

[User]
[X-men] What would happen if Magneto was close enough to a magnetar to interact with its magnetic fields?

Is he powerful enough to extract super-dense material from its surface and use it as a weapon? Would it just completely overwhelm him and rip the iron out of his blood? Could he strap a saddle on top and ride it like a bucking bronco through the galaxy? Any other interesting thoughts?

[Assistant] I imagine he would be torn to pieces. His power level fluctuates so vastly but there was one time where he ripped the core out of the planet and the exertion killed him (I think it may have been a what-if?). A magnetar would be thousands if not millions of times more difficult to wrangle.


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

[User] ELI5: How do heat seeking missiles seek heat?

[Assistant]
Infra red sensors.

Have you ever seen thermal imaging goggles? All objects that have warmth radiate in the infra red.

If you are hotter than your surroundings you glow in the infra red spectrum.

Engines, turbine exhaust, etc. Are all quite hot and therefore to infra red sensors seem bright, like light sources.


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

[User]
[Star Wars: ROTS] Was Anakin post-Dark Side turn and pre-Mustafar accident a contender to kill Palpatine had he wished to do so?

Ok, hear me out. There was a the movie-licensed game on the PS2 of Revenge of the Sith, where there was an "alternate" ending of Anakin killing Obi Wan during the final blow as opposed to getting maimed. Anyways, Palpatine shows up as usual, and Anakin basically kills him as well, a shock no doubt to Palps, and proclaims himself the new emperor of the Galaxy.

It was just a fun "what-if" the developers had put in I guess.

But my question is, is there truth to this act? Was Anakin (Darth Vader) before injury much stronger than Palpatine? We know that he is the chosen one, and possibly one of the strongest Jedi at this point. Was there any reason for Palpatine to fear him?

[Assistant] No. Anakin had the potential at that time to become more powerful than the emperor, but he was arrogant of his abilities as the Chosen One. It is stated and shown numerous times in both legends and canon that Vader would grow stronger than he was as Anakin, but was never close to being able to beat Palpatine in a direct confrontation.


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

[User] [Marvel] If Nightcrawler really was unfortunate enough to get stuck inside a wall, could Shadowcat save him?

[Assistant] No. Whatever got stuck is destroyed, it's not just sitting there inside the wall waiting to be phased out. If an iron beam smashed through someone's head, Magneto couldn't heal them by pulling the beam out of the sludge-like remains of their head; the relevant bits are chunky salsa. It's the same here.


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

[User] If our immune system refused to fight off the common cold virus, what symptoms would we experience?

[Assistant]
Death.

Without any immune response whatsoever, the cold virus would eventually kill you. Now, if your *innate* immune system didn't mount a defense, but your *adaptive* system continued to function normally, you'd experience no symptoms. Unlike more destructive viruses like influenza, when you get a cold, virtually all of your symptoms come from your body's response, not the damage the virus causes.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do you feel hot or cold even when the temperature is the same?

Why is it that sometimes my house is 66 degrees Fahrenheit  I feel warm and other times when my house is the exact same temperature I feel cold and have to put on a sweater?

I could understand if in one scenario I had just exercised or had gotten out of the shower, but in both scenarios I'm just doing stuff around the house.

Why does the same temperature feel different?

[Assistant]
Room temperature is measured as the air temperature. Air does not absorb radiated heat very well but you do!

One form of radiated heat is from the sun and lights. Lying in the sunlight makes you feel much warmer. While most places have moved away from incandescent lights, they did radiate a lot of infrared light that makes us feel hot.

Radiated heat can also come from hot surfaces. If your attic heats up, your ceiling can radiate infrared heat. That's why in the summer, the same temperature may feel warmer inside than in the other seasons.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do potatoes not taste sweet, while other starchy foods like corn and squash do?

Edit: I know the difference between simple and complex carbs, but corn and potatoes are both composed of starch, so why is the corn sweet?

[Assistant] Potatoes grow underground and are used to store nutrients for plants: they're basically really fat roots. Corn and squash are both the reproductive "fruits" of the plant. Starches and sugar are both made of the same molecules: carbohydrates. The only difference is that starches are several thousand times larger, which allows them to store nutrients denser and more efficiently.


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

[User] [Star Wars] When did the Jedi/Sith originally split, and what caused it?

[Assistant] The Jedi and Sith split off about seven thousand years before the films. The reason why they split off? The reason why most religions split, one group believed differently from the other; in this case it was the Sith who decided that they were okay with using the dark side and the Jedi disagreed - so they fought, and the Sith went into exile.


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

[User] what is happening in my intestines when, after holding it in, the urge to defecate goes away?

[Assistant]
It's an involuntary property of the smooth muscle in your rectum. If you don't empty your bowels, the urge goes away when your rectum pushes the stool back into your colon by reverse peristalsis.

TL;DR, you suck your poop back up into your colon to poop later.


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

[User] ELI5: How does radiation cause genetic mutations?

[Assistant] Ionizing radiation (the dangerous kind) can pass through your cells into the nucleus, where your DNA is stored. Your DNA is the code of how your body works and grows. The radiation can damage the DNA code, scrambling, deleting, or otherwise messing it up. Usually, this causes cell death or cancer. However, if this damage happens to cells used in making babies (sperm, egg), then this damage can be carried into the baby. That means that the changes can cause developmental mutations. However, this usually also means that the fetus can't form enough to actually survive.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do I always feel the need to wear a blanket on me when I sleep, even when it's too hot?

[Assistant] Armchair psychoanalysis: since a blanket was probably one of your first possessions as an infant and since you've slept with one almost every night of your life, there's probably a certain conditioned-in comfort factor to having your body covered while you sleep.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do people say Kony 2012 was/is a scam?

[Assistant] Part of it was Kony has been in hiding for the past several years and his army has been reduced to less than 200 people. The video kind of exaggerated these numbers, and seemed to focus upon Uganda, even though the Ugandan military has pushed Kony out of the country.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do small planes and helicopters have trouble flying low over things such as large craters and mines?

Okay, so Im reposting this from a while back because I never got an actual answer. Can anyone on this site explain this phenomenon? A good example would be the plane that crashed into the meteor crater in Arizona. I guess Im bad at the internet or I just dont know where to look, but I couldnt find a good answer.

[Assistant] So ...when wind flows over a crater or big valley one side of the valley has a huge downdraft pulling down on the plane/helicopter. Then, when the wind reaches the other side of the valley the wind shoots upwards in an updraft. If you are not extremely careful and cognizant of the wind direction and how if affects your flight then it's easy to screw up and crash. (Especially on the downdraft side of a crater/valley. )


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

[User]
[BTAS] Do you think they ever rebooted The Gray Ghost?

In BTAS there is a fictional show called the Gray Ghost, and I'm wondering if there was ever anything expanding on this series.

[Assistant]
Actually, there was a canonical DCAU Batman comic story about this.

As we saw at the end of the episode "Beware the Grey Ghost", the character saw a sudden resurgence in popularity.

Not too long after that a feature film went into production at a movie studio owned by Wayne Enterprises, intended to resurrect the character on the big screen.

The star of the movie was a new up and coming actor named Trystan Zale (read that aloud).

As a sign of genuine gratitude and respect, Bruce arranged for Simon Trent to make a cameo in the movie as a police chief and the Grey Ghost's confidant.

While shooting their scenes together though, it becomes apparent that Trent's acting skills have become kinda rusty, and he has a tendency to... drag out... lines..., and sound a bit hammy. Like his talents have gone ~~West~~ South or something.

Zale gets fed up cause Trent's acting keeps causing them to do take after take, and he snaps at Trent before storming off to his trailer.

Trent goes to Zale's trailer to apologize, and accidentally walks in on Zale in his true form- as Matt Hagan aka. Clayface!

As it turns out Hagan had invented the form of Trystan Zale to try and restart a new life and reclaim his acting career.

He also turns out to be a genuine Grey Ghost fanboy like Bruce, and the role was basically his lifelong dream as an actor.

Unfortunately, since Trent found out his secret, he has to kidnap him and think of a way to get rid of him. Long story short, Batman rescues Trent and beats up Clayface.

The movie barely finishes production without its star thanks to some desperate behind the scene work. It's implied that it's a so-so movie, but Bruce and Trent's kid grandson like it, which Trent says is just fine with him then.


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

[User]
[Avatar: TLA] What's to stop a waterbender turning someone's body into steam?

Katara has been known to generate mist from water, and many waterbenders are known to create ice. So the temperature of water is clearly within their control. What's to stop a waterbender simply boiling a person's blood, lymph, CSF or just whole body?

[Assistant]
It's really hard to do.

Most Bloodbenders can only act during a full moon and even then their really terrible at it (jerky movements, painful for the victim, trouble keeping control etc) so boiling blood wouldn't be a small task.

Plus, most people don't know what a lymph is. People in TLA world go by Traditional Chinese Medicine which doesn't get too specific into organs.


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

[User]
[Star Trek: TNG] How is Data able to isolate command to bridge only without any kind of confirmation code? Spoilers in body

In s4, E3, "Brothers", how was Data able to make all commands be required only on the main control deck, by using Picard's voice, but without any kind of verbal authorization code accompanied with it?

In most instances, when Picard tells the Enterprise to override or confirm anything, his voice command of whatever action he's wanting to perform, along with a verbal code is usually required. Data uses "Alpha Two clearance", but surely any kind of clearance codes commanded by the Captain would require some kind of secondary authorization, such as the verbal codes previously seen used.

How was Data able to get by with a command so serious as to override all commands from other areas of the ship, including commands from Picard actual, to the main control bridge so easily?

[Assistant]
You answer lies in your own question. "In most instances..." There's also a huge bunch of variables here. One, we don't know everything Data is doing. There are long cuts that show just the crew in engineering while they try to figure out what's going on. Data is using this time and his current access as a Sr. officer to consolidate all the control he needs to the bridge.

We also don't know what specifically he's been typing into the console he's working at on the bridge. We know Data has super human reflexes and dexterity. He could be rapidly typing in all sorts of commands when we're focused on engineering, using his knowledge of ship's systems to hack all the access he can out of it.

The lack of a verbal, secondary or what's known as Multi-factor Authentication of a specific security code is probably only required for things like Self Destruct or other events that would destroy the ship. Lesser activities such as isolated ship commands only to the bridge might not require that multi-factor authentication because

A) Data's been hacking at the system and we don't see all of what's he's done. He might've been able to lower the authentication requirements of the function he was trying to isolate from engineering.

B) Data already has a lot of security clearance as a Sr. Bridge Officer. He likely abused his access to maximum potential to reduce authentication requirements.

C) Isolating command controls to the Bridge only may not require Multi-factor authentication because it may be a common enough event due to a number of potential scenarios on the ship.

D) Because we don't see all of what Data's been typing away we can make the assumption that he could have easily manually entered any secondary authentications required because he's sitting at a terminal instead of verbally providing it.


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

[User]
[Dragon Ball] Why didn't Cell know he was completely outclassed when Gohan transformed into SSJ2?

Freeza couldn't (at least at the time) sense energy so he had no way of knowing exactly how strong Goku was after he went SSJ for the first time. Cell has no excuse. He has an intimate understanding of how ki works, suppressing and raising your powerlevel, and the sensing of energy.

Shouldn't he have known immediately that Gohan was far beyond his own limit?

[Assistant]
He thought that Gohan was doing the same thing that Trunks did (raising his power, but with an inferior body).

Cell thought that his form, being perfectly designed, would allow him to overpower Gohan anyway.


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

[User]
How did Humans in the past know that a specific organ does this specific function in the body?

How were we able to discover that the brain is the organ that controls most of the activities of the body?
Without the present technology that we have, How were people in the past able to tell that brain is a most important organ? (Was it because they observed some person got hurt on the head and his whole body and mental health got affected ? )
Because before technology
Just not the brain but also other organs..
And more important than this , How were they able to come up with medicines ? How did they know that this specific herb would cure this disease?

[Assistant]
Until the last few hundred years, they basically didn't know.

For example, the ancient Egyptians thought that the brain was a useless organ, and during the mumification process, threw it away, but kept all other internal organs in canopic jars. They thought the *heart* was the seat of conciousness.


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

[User] ELI5: How did we get from Jesus dying on the cross to a giant rabbit hiding colored eggs for Easter?

[Assistant]
Actually, it went from rabbits and eggs to Jesus, not the other way around.

Many pre-Christian religions had spring festivals celebrating rebirth and fertility, symbolized by eggs and rabbits.  The word Easter itself comes from such a festival.

When Europe was Christianized, rather than banning the old religious festivals, it was often easier to co-opt them and give them a Christian meaning.  That's part of the reason Easter occurs after the first full moon after the equinox, rather than on a fixed day.


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

[User]
How were they able to continue to operate Reactors 1-3 after the Chernobyl disaster?

After the Chernobyl disaster there were still 3 reactors that were operable and remained in operation for years afterwards. I'm not familiar with nuclear power plants, but I would assume that their operations are somewhat similar to other plants like refineries and chemical plants. You have to have operators in a control room, operators making rounds in the "field," and a maintenance crew to perform routine maintenance on the equipment.

So, how was the staff able to continue working at the site when the city had to be deserted due to the radiation?

[Assistant]
There are different limits for nuclear plant workers and the public when it comes to allowable radiation exposure. Plus rad workers are trained to work in those environments, wear dosimetry and protective clothing, and can decon the other units sufficiently to continue operation.

With the public you are concerned about unmonitored long term exposure. You cant monitor and put dosimetry on all members of the public. But workers can.


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

[User] Why can I reproduce sights and sounds in my head but not smells, tastes and "touchs"?

[Assistant] You might not have a very good sense of smell but really it just sounds like you don't pay as accurate attention to smell/taste/touch. Remembering/envisioning flavors is how cooks know that cacao and chilis will go together, but lamb and ice cream won't. Anyone who has ever tried to decide between perfumes has recalled scent. And as for remembering touch, I'd be willing to bet if you tried you could imagine the feel of rice and that of sand distinctly.


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

[User] ELI5 Why is using chemical warfare so much worse than dropping bombs?

[Assistant]
DOD chem/bio defense testing project manager reporting in.

Think of a bullet. You shoot it, and it flies until it either falls to the ground or hits something. In one second, its lethality is nonexistent.

A conventional bomb or mortar or grenade is a similar story - it goes boom once at impact and it no longer represents a threat. However, every so often, they don't explode, leaving UXO, UneXploded Ordnance. This is dangerous and people die from them if they go boom later.

A land mine is dangerous to non-combatants. After the war is over and a peace treaty is signed, some kid could walk into a forgotten mine field and be killed.

Chemical weapons have varying persistence - some hang around longer.

The G-series agents (tabun, sarin, soman, cyclosarin) vaporize and blow away rather quickly. Sure, there is still some left sticking to stuff, but for the most part, the hazard is gone.

We use thickeners in it so that it will stick to stuff when a chemical bomb explodes. This even makes tons of tiny, threadlike strands that are very lethal to the touch. It will stick to skin, clothing, masks, weapons, vehicles. Horrible stuff. It stays for a very, very long time.

VX is a persistent agent. It is mainly used as an area denial weapon, like a minefield. Spray it and it will hang around as long as motor oil does. Again, this will kill people after the war is over.

Sulfur mustard (HD) freezes at 55F. Spray it in a cold area, and it will not evaporate. It will stick to you if you walk through it, and when you get to a warm area, it will fuck you up.

Chem weapons hurt people who werent even around when they were being dropped. They kill non-combatants. They kill the next generation who was never at war.


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

[User]
i think that the united states constitution should be scraped and re-written. cmv

i'm not saying that we should forget everything in the constitution, but the words themselves are written in an earlier English that needs to be translated. i think that the incorrect or vague translations of the constitution leads to some ambiguity and allows for legal loop holes. these loop holes and ambiguity creates openings for those with power to infringe on the rights of others.

also the constitution is over 200 years old and doesn't cover many of the problems we face today. i don't know who should re-write it but my point stands.

[Assistant]
>  the words themselves are written in an earlier English that needs to be translated.

Um...what? Modern English has existed since 1550.

>  i think that the incorrect or vague translations of the constitution leads to some ambiguity and allows for legal loop holes. these loop holes and ambiguity creates openings for those with power to infringe on the rights of others.

Examples please.

> also the constitution is over 200 years old and doesn't cover many of the problems we face today.

That's what amendments are for.


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

[User]
[2012] If the goverments who builded the arks didn't planned originally to let the workers in, then how they intended to rebuild civilization without them?

I mean, as far as I remember the plan was put a lot of rich people in those arks and then wait to the sea levels to decrease and stablish a new settlement. But if the only people left in the world were only billionaires, politicians and monarchy, where were they going to get the workforce to rebuild everything in the case where they might not let the workers in the ships?

[Assistant]
Well first of all it wasn't ONLY going to be the rich who made it on to the arks. There were 9 arks planned on being built. 4 were ready when the event happened. So as planned there was going to be room for many more people, unfortunately the scientists were off on their timetable.

As for the arks that were ready, they were not all filled with just the rich. There were plenty of military personnel, scientists, and other key people included, ones that were going to take a lead role in the rebuilding of civilization. The wealthy were included because someone needed to fund the building of these ships. The deal was you pony up the money, you get a spot on the ship. It may be little comfort to a poor Chinese worker, but every one knew that a lot of people were going to die. Sure a lottery system may have been "fair" but fair doesn't get you the money and resources to build the ships, frankly Adrian was completely oblivious to the reality of the situation. And as for those wealthy people, when it was all over, their wealth would mean nothing. Billions of dollars in a bank won't do you any good. Oh sure they may thought that they would be upper class in the new world, but that fantasy would fade really fast. They would either have to learn a necessary skill and do their part or risk being exiled in to the wastes.


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

[User]
[X-Men] Does Mystique have enough control over her own biology to give her eyes more color receptors, like the Mantis Shrimp? Can she alter her ears in order to hear sounds outside of the normal range of human hearing?

can Mystique see the forbidden colors?

[Assistant] Theoretically yes. Her powers have been enhanced several times over, and the things you describe are well within the scope of other things she has accomplished, such as giving herself night vision, camouflage, and altering her scent.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does it feel so much better when someone else uses one of those scalp massager things on your head compared to using one on yourself?

I guess the same question could go for a lot of things, but I'm sticking with the head massager for this example.

[Assistant] It's expectation vs. reality mismatch. There have been studies done where humans operate a robotic arm and use it to tickle themselves. If the arm moves with absolute precision, the subject does not feel "tickled." If the robotic arm's movements are delayed by a couple of miliseconds, it tickles. The brain automatically models what it expects to happen. But you can't precisely map another person's actions - even if you agree on the pattern and timing, you'll likely be a few miliseconds out of sync. It's like "situational irony" in the body.


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

[User] Other than teaching, are there legitimate careers in philosophy?

[Assistant]
BA in philosophy, alone: Grad school (i.e. eventually teaching) or law school, most likely. In other fields, you'll use some of the skills you got, but actually having the piece of paper won't help much more than some other BA would.

BA in philosophy plus another Bachelor's: Lots of stuff. You can google the statistics, but it just tends to make a great supplement to everything else: law school, medical school, business school, other grad-school careers, plus a relatively very high mid-career salary.


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

[User]
[LOtR] while Saurons army of orcs are in mordor are gearing up for war, how are they fed?

Also what do orcs eat besides "moldy bread for three stinking days"? It doesn't appear that mordor has viable grazing fields for live stock or what not.

It just appears that there are also of mouths to feed and not much to feed them with.

[Assistant] The Southern part of Mordor is actually incredibly fertile, and is worked by thousands of slaves. It's like an enormous breadbasket that feeds all the legions of Sauron. Those Orcs had only had moldy bread because they were quite a way from the south, and there was probably also strict rationing at the time.


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

[User] Eli5Why is it that we all have different voices? I understand the idea of male and female, but Im referring to tones. Vocal performance. Range. Etc.

[Assistant]
In the same way that we all have similar hand and fingers but different fingerprints.

Bodies grow, they form differently and then they continue to develop organically. It's because we are not all identical as to why voices are different.


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

[User]
[Marvel MCU] Is Spider-Man's identity still a secret?

Spidey participated in Civil War fighting for Tony Stark in favor of the Sokovia Accords. I know his identity isn't in public knowledge, but is it safe to assume his identity is on file somewhere seeing how Stark used government assistance to fly Parker out to participate in the airport fight?

[Assistant]
Tony didn't need to involve the government as he has access to an entire fleet of private aircraft.  In fact, he went out of his way to avoid identifying Parker, even to his own teammates.

Knowing Stark, his gift to Spiderman at the end includes a number of identity-protecting features so that others won't be able to do what he did and find Peter.


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

[User] [Mass Effect] Whatever happened to explosive ammo mods? It's like they disappeared altogether when Thermal Clip guns hit the market.

[Assistant] Yeah, you uh...you don't want to try that on a thermal clip gun. It'll probably still auto-eject, but as a glob of molten metal and superheated steam. Heard about a guy in the Terminus who downloaded one of the pirated files and nearly spaced the whole ship when it ate through the airlock.


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

[User]
Relevance of Freud today?

Not sure if i should be posting on the psychology forum or psychoanalysis etc. but ill start here. I was reading Laclau's On populist reason to understand more about floating signifiers. All was good for the first two chapters or so until he started descending into Freudian territory. My impression of academic Freudian theory is that it is used to understand how past theoretical thinkers utilize his theory, or to understand revised (better) versions of his. But it seems to me that he (among other thinkers such as zizek, lacan?) interprets and take his concepts such as the oedipus complex, identification etc. quite literally. I am not sure if it is worth delving into the whole corpus of Freud's text into order to understand Laclau (or Lacan etc. for that matter). I wonder what you guys think?

[Assistant] Freudss theories have impacted nearly every field in the humanities and are well worth reading. Having a strong basis in Freuds theories allows you to develop your understanding of the psyche and humanity by allowing you to enter the conversation. Id highly recommend Ian Craib as well for an introduction to Psychoanalysis.


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

[User]
Need some help by those of you who have worked remotely or know someone who has! (Related to my third year thesis)

Hello everyone!

Im a 24 year old man from Sweden, who has been studying informatics & system development for three years come the end of July. I am currently writing my thesis about communication challenges for remote software developers, and to do that I need to interview remote developers and use their answers for data. If you yourself are currently working, have worked or know someone who has worked remotely I would be very happy to interview you or that someone. Of course complete anonymity is guaranteed! It seems hard to find remote developers in other ways, so I am now turning to reddit. If I fail to conduct enough such interviews it will see my thesis failed and there will be no graduation for me. If someone wants to help, but is either too busy or too shy, I could compromise an send a for of written interview instead.

Thank you!

[Assistant]
> It seems hard to find remote developers in other ways

So you're finding it hard to communicate with remote dev? You might be onto something :)

Outside that; happy to answer questions here or via DM. Preferably here.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why was Anakin the only human that could podrace?

I understand that he had force powered reflexes, but there are plenty of other humans that do very similar things like flying fighters/swoop bikes/speeder bikes, so why was Anakin the only one?

[Assistant]
Possible ignorance in this comment.

I doubt he was the only human who could, but was the only human who would. The others are Force sensitivities and by that age are preoccupied doing something else Forcey.


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

[User]
[Zombie Apocalypse] I've decided to wait out the zombies instead of just going about and trying to fight them. How long would it take for them to rot?

If a zombie apocalypse were to happen, how long would it take for zombies to deteriorate if most of the world was infected? Wouldn't they cause huge spikes in the insect and rodent populations which would eat their flesh until their would be nothing left as well as the sun beating down on all that rotten skin? If so, how long would I have to wait in a hypothetical bunker in order to ensure little to no zombies could harm me?

[Assistant]
Let me put it this way: If those things were normal corpses, they would have attracted flies within hours of death. In 2-3 days they would have become more maggots and bug poop than cadaver. In 1-2 weeks they would have been dirt and bones. Assuming an environment that's friendly to insects and bacterial growth.

But will insects and bacteria affect the living dead the same way as they affect the normal dead? Well, the living dead seem to be violating many long established rules of biology, thermodynamics, and the will of God. So maybe we shouldn't put too much stock on our old knowledge of forensic etymology as well.

In other words: It's a fucked up new world and no one knows shit anymore.


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

[User]
CMV: High-performance employees are often penalized for their superior work while low-performing employees skate by.

I give 1000% at every job. Everywhere I've worked, my performance is "rewarded" with more work and more responsibility. Some of my coworkers, who contribute very little to the team, aren't given the tough jobs because managers know they're not up to the task. At one job, several of my coworkers were allowed to work from home one day a week. It's because no one missed them, and they really weren't much needed to begin with. I, on the other hand, tried to work from home one day a week, which lasted exactly two weeks. I had to go back to the office because I was "too valuable and too necessary to be away." So my reward for good work is more work and less time off. We were all paid the same salary, by the way. Thoughts?

[Assistant]
If you can get more work out of someone for free, well...

This isn't a punishment, it's just taking advantage. You interpret it as punishment, perhaps, but for the employer this is just a calculation.

This is about leverage, typically (when no unions are in the picture) employers have all of it if you're not coming to the table with harder to find skills which provide the worker leverage. You can try to negotiate, but of course they may just say no or fire you. Only people who they are afraid of losing will have leverage. If they can replace you with another high performance person who won't ask for more, they'll likely do that.

 You can also work less or say no to increased responsibility if it doesn't come with increased pay, too. Although once they know you're unsatisfied they may replace you with a more easily managed employee who isn't critical of anything.

Don't expect employers to be ethical, lol. Unless you work for smaller businesses, most of the time they are 100% built to exploit you as much as they can.


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

[User]
[DC Comics] If a dying Green Lantern sends their ring out to find someone of great willpower, are there any safeguards to ensure that person isn't evil?

I mean, there are plenty of villains out there with an extremely strong will.

[Assistant]
Yeah- the ring isn't just an automaton that goes to the highest willpower. It measures various candidates on various criteria, not just willpower, and willingness to help people is included.

It's not infallible- see sinestro- but its at least able to weed out the obviously monstrous.


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

[User]
What causes that squeaky noise when you rub a wet finger over a mirror or other smooth surface?

why doesn't it work with a dry finger?

[Assistant]
There's two scenarios at play here: one where your finger is touching the surface, and the other where it's touching water. The surface has a higher coefficient of static friction, meaning it will do a decent job of keeping the finger in place despite other forces (it's sticky). The water, on the other hand, has a quite low coefficient of kinetic friction, meaning it's not good at slowing down objects that it's contacting (slippery).

Let's look at a finger moving along the mirror at a constant-ish speed. Your skin is kind of springy, it stays in a certain place and the further you pull it away the more it wants to go back. To start, the skin is in contact with the mirror (pushing aside the water). When the finger moves far enough to the side, there's enough force to pull the skin off the mirror. The skin then glides over the water until it's past where it would be if it were sitting still. As it gets to the point where it's not moving past the mirror, it sinks into the water and grabs the mirror again. Then the process repeats.

This repeating process of sticking and slipping always takes about the same amount of time to repeat (with the same mirror, water thickness, finger force) and it happens pretty fast. Anything that repeats like this is going to vibrate the air around it and cause a squeaking noise. It's really the same thing as a violin, but instead of vibrating a string with a bow you're vibrating your finger with the wet mirror.

The pitch of the squeak is how many times your skin slips back and forth per second. It doesn't work with as well with dry surfaces because there isn't as much difference between static and kinetic friction, so your finger is dragged along constantly instead of skipping.


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

[User]
[ELI5] Why Citizen Kane is often regarded to be the best film of all time?

I hear this everywhere. Why is it?

[Assistant]
Original storyline-- if many of the film's elements seem cliche, it's because Citizen Kane did it first, and everything else just was influenced by it.

Direction-- shots, editing, etc.

Pretty much, it set the standard (along with Casablanca).

Rosebud.


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

[User]
[MCU] The psychology of Ultron

What is his deal? Is he supremely arrogant? Fatally flawed in his logic? Intentionally self-destructive? It just seems that for something spawned of the greatest mind in the universe (the Mind Gem, not Tony) that he screws up an awful lot. The biggest screw up of course being that he didn't send a single body to the north pole to wait out the battle in Sokovia so just in case his plan didn't work he could rebuild.

And if anyone could chime in on exactly what the relationship between Ultron and the mind stone is, I am still unclear about this. Tony and Bruce were not making any progress on the Ultron program, so where did it come from? Did the mind gem lash out on it's own and force the integration to create a destructive force? Is that why Ultron was so evil? And why, when implanted into the Vision, tempered by Jarvis, it became something of great power but also great respect for life?

Is the mind gem just a raw intelligence that needs to be applied to some base program, either a human or artificial mind, and then it magnifies it to near infinite power?

Thoughts?

[Assistant]
Ultron, like most suddenly-AI programs, try to fulfill their primary programming. His was "Keep the peace." And so he decided the most effective way of keeping the world peaceful - after studying humanity through the internet - was to get rid of the humans, and repopulate the world with intelligent machines. The world had to evolve.

There is no relationship between Ultron and the mind stone. The latter was just the power source which enabled the Ultron program to become sentient.

The mind gem is not good or evil. It just is.

And the mind gem didn't spawn Ultron. Tony and Bruce did all the programming. They weren't copying the gem itself, there were copying it's containment device.


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

[User]
[DC/Aquaman] Do any underwater civilizations exist in freshwater lake and rivers?

There's a lot of Kingdoms and intelligent humanoid creatures in the ocean. But what about the lakes, rivers, and ponds? Are there any races or Kingdoms similar to the Atlantians there?

[Assistant]
Not that we know of.

The thing is, rivers and lakes are much, much smaller then the sea. While its very long, The Nile is only 2 miles across and 11 meters deep-  not much space for a civilization. Lakee Superior, largest lake, is 350 miles by 160- big enough for a city, but not enough for a kingdom.

Other places may (and do) have underwater bases and suchlike, but the sea is simply the only underwater area large enough to fit an actual civilization in.


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

[User] ELI5: How do underwater prey know a predator is hunting them?

[Assistant]
Through all the usual senses you'd find in creature on land. They might see the predator, hear it (water is a much better conductor of sound than air), "smell" it in the water, or feel something disturb the currents around them.

Some sea creatures even have what we would consider extra senses. They may be able to pick up on electrical activity, echolocate, or see into spectrums that we humans cannot.


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

[User]
ELI5: What exactly is 'First past the post' voting?

(Sorry if it's the wrong flair, culture was the closest I saw on my phone.)

I've been to the Wikipedia article and maybe I missed the explanation but I don't really get it.

Also I only recently got interested in politics.

[Assistant] FPTP is the voting method most people recognize, where the person or option that gets the most votes becomes the elected choice. The name is a reference to a race, where one person wins and everybody else, no matter how many, are all losers. That's why this form of voting gets a lot of flak; when there are lots of people or options in the vote, the amount any one needs to have the "most" can be quite small, and the number of people who don;t get their voice heard can be quite large. If 100 people are voting to paint their apartment building either white or beige, then 51 people is a pretty good chunk of the tenants if only a slight majority; but if every tenant had a different color choice, then the two old ladies who liked magenta would win, and the other 98 people would be pissed off.


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

[User]
[SCP/Marvel] How would the Foundation interact with S.H.I.E.L.D.?

In many ways, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Foundation have similar goals: to protect humanity and suppress information of the supernatural and extraterrestrial. However, S.H.I.E.L.D. employs a much more co-operative ideology to anomalous entities, and tends to get involved in the suppression of terrorism and political strife. In contrast, the Foundation exhibits a skeptical and wary view of the unexplained, and prefers to simply lock things away rather than take risks in using them. Additionally, the Foundation is transnational, and is rather aloof from standard global crises. How would these two organizations interact?

[Assistant] SHIELD would be one of those government agencies the SCP Foundation interacts with on an as-needed basis. Since SHIELD is good at field work and SCP is good at containment, they would trade intel and moderately dangerous artifacts with each other on an as-needed basis. They would politely remind their agents to say *nothing* about superheroes around each other, because them's fightin' words, and any direct negotiation would require O5 clearance.


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

[User]
[Iron Man 3] How was J.A.R.V.I.S tired?

Perhaps I misread the scene, but after Stark crash lands in the frozen woods, Jarvis says, "I really think I should sleep now, sir," and then shuts down.

Now I understand the *suit* losing power... But surely Jarvis is software running from some sort of server hub through a cloud, and not local to the suits? We see proof of that later with the House Party Protocol... Right?

So was Jarvis just being cute when he said he needed to sleep, or am I missing something?

[Assistant] He was thousands of miles from the central server, and something as complex as Jarvis couldn't possibly operate at full speed and efficiency over 3G. That had to be a local forked copy. Probably all the suits contain a self-stored unit that meshes with the main when in range, but can operate independently. Also protects against Jarvis being corrupted or compromised.


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

[User]
ELI5: Will screens continue to have more and more pixels indefinitely, or will we soon reach a point where humans won't notice the difference between, say, 1000 pixels per inch and 2000 pixels per inch?

I recently was looking at the specs of different generations of iPads and noticed that between the 2nd gen and 3rd gen (IIRC) the number of pixels per inch doubled, purportedly resulting in a significantly more aesthetically pleasing experience for the user.

Will screen resolutions continue to get better and better, or will resolutions eventually plateau? If screen resolutions will plateau, at what point? Are we likely to see it in the next decade? In the next century?

[Assistant] All of these answers are correct, but I'd like to add that viewing distance also plays a big role in one's ability to distinguish individual pixels. Just like a building looks smaller when it's further away, so do pixels. Therefore, when using a smartphone, which you hold inches away from your face, you'll want a higher density (smaller pixels, more packed together) than on a TV, which you view typically from many feet away (larger pixels). That's why your phone and your TV can have the same resolution, but wildly different screens.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Did Luke ever end up getting the power converters he wanted from Tosche Station?

Like maybe when he returned to save Han Solo from Jabba? He was quite unhappy when he wasn't able to do so the first time.

[Assistant] He didn't want to to to Tosche Station to pick up power converters, he wanted to go to Tosche Station to hang out with his friends. By the time he returns to Tatooine, he has more important things to take care of. Also, all the moisture farm equipment he needed to fix with power converters are all destroyed anyway.


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

[User] Eli5. What is a flame? I know energy is released and heat but what is a flame?

[Assistant] A flame is the light released by flammable gases reacting with oxygen. When you burn something, the first thing that happens is the heat causes large carbon-based molecules, like the cellulose in wood, to break down into smaller molecules, molecules small enough to be gaseous at those temperatures. These rise, because they're hotter than the air, forming that iconic flame shape as they do so. Then, because these are both hot and flammable, they react with oxygen in the air, which causes the release of light and even more heat.


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

[User]
ELI5:How do those laser distance measurers work?

I find it fascinating how a single push of a button finds a measurement with such amazing accuracy.

[Assistant] It measures the time it takes for the light to bounce back,  basically millionths of a second.   It then does some quick math, basically dividing the time by 2 and then multiplying that by the speed of light.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect] What if the Genophage had failed and everyone's worst fears about the Krogan had been realized?

Say the Reapers showed up to find a Universe entirely populated by sub-sapient life forms and Krogan.  Even the Geth have long since been stomped under webbed feet.

What then?

Or what if the Krogan managed to sterilize all habitable planets via ruinous nuclear warfare ala what they did to their home planet?

[Assistant]
The cycle itself would have been extended, Sovereign would have taken a look at the current status of the cycle and come to the conclusion that action need not be taken - yet.

The krogan aren't a dumb race. They've got incredible minds like Droyas and Okeer, respectively. But they're no Mordin and you won't find many, if at all, setting up facilities on Noveria.

First Contact War with the Turians would not have happened and the Skyllian Blitz can be struck from the books, too.

I don't recall how the First Contact war ended, but it ended well, for both the Turians and Humans, in that both races came out virtually unscathed.

With the Turians being ground into dust by Krogan onslaught, Humanity would have encountered Krogan vessels.

All down hill from there for humanity.


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

[User] ELI5: How do voice recognition applications like Siri know what we're saying?

[Assistant] First, it cuts the voice recording into really small segments, like 2/100 or 1/100 of a second long. Then, it multiplies each segment by a bell function to get a clear waveform in the middle with reduced interference from neighbouring samples. The waveform of each segment is analysed and compared to waveforms of known sounds. That way, you know which sound was being pronounced during each segment. Remove repeating sounds and you have a basic phonetic spelling of the pronounced phrase. Now you just need some process to match it to a dictionary of known words/phrases, and turn the phonetic spelling into real words.


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

[User] How do we know that gravity has infinite range?

[Assistant]
We don't, but that's the simplest explanation that fits the observations.

If gravity had a limited range, what would stop it from spreading beyond that range? Some other force? Some built in limit in gravity itself? Both alternatives would violate Occam's razor: explanations should not be needlessly complicated.


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

[User] ELI5- Why is it dangerous for a scuba diver to ascend too quickly?

[Assistant]
For the ELI5 answer, rising quickly does to your body what opening a can of soda does. Gas you breathe under pressure suddenly has much less pressure and comes out of your tissue like bubbles in a soda and causes damage.

It's important to note that if you are snorkeling or free diving, you can rise as fast as you want because you weren't breathing air under pressure.


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

[User]
[MCU] Could Thanos have snapped himself off?

When he snapped his fingers with the gauntlet and erased half of the universe, was there a 50% chance that he'd have been included in the erased part? Or, as the bearer, was he able to explicitly exclude himself?

[Assistant]
Thanos might have presented himself as a zealot trying to save the universe from inevitable destruction by horrible means. But the truth was that he was only fanatical about proving himself right. He was cast out of his home for his wild theories of genocide, and all he wanted to do was prove to his long-dead peers that his ideas had merit.

So even if he never said it out loud, he would have subconsciously excluded himself from the snap. But only because deep down, he wanted to stand in the new universe he created, which he assumed would be grateful and joyous at their salvation. Basking in the glory of his genius. And in his ego, he thought living the life of a humble farmer would prove he was never a genocidal maniac in the first place.


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

[User]
[Star Trek TNG] In the time when Picard is captain of the Enterprise, would an evacuation of earth be possible? How would the starfleet, earth's allies etc. (re)act?

If there'd be some doomsday scenario for Earth, would it be feasible (with that massive population) and if yes, in what frame of time?

I know there have been evacuations done by the starfleet earlier but to a much smaller scale on other planets. Is there any emergency plan for Earth-bound ~~humanity~~ intelligent life?

[Assistant] Evacuating Earth would be a logistical nightmare and couldn't be performed in a short amount of time (less than a month).  You would pretty much have to recall the entirety of Starfleet and any other ship that you could manage to bring into the effort.


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

[User] ELI5: Why the united nations doesn't authorize the removal of governments like North Korea's?

[Assistant]
A lot of reasons.

To start with, the UN isn't so much a world government as it is a collection of the world's governments, and they generally  generally being the key word here  frown on military action over a government's politics.

Second, the UN Security Council would have to approve military action for this to happen, and China (A permanent member with veto power) would never permit an invasion within its own sphere of influence. It's a lot easier to invade, say, Iraq when you have one Security Council member (The US) really pushing for it when the other members don't have a clear conflict of interest  which they most often always do.

Third, North Korea is a known nuclear power with one of the most massive artillery batteries just 30 miles from Seoul. They've been preparing for a military invasion since the "end" of the Korean War (Technically, it's still going on) and any victory from a military intervention would be pyrrhic at best.

TL;DR Politics and nukes.


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

[User]
[LotR] In the RotK film, how could the Witch-King defeat Gandalf the White and then lose to Merry and Eowyn?

Firstly, breaking Gandalf's staff doesn't make much sense to me. I thought there was something special about a Wizard's staff that prevents that kind of thing?

And if he could be so easily beaten by a Hobbit and Shieldmaiden minutes later, why couldn't/didn't Gandalf? Without a doubt he's far more powerful than them.

[Assistant]
Istari aren't there to fight, they are there to inspire and to advise.

Merry also had an enchanted dagger from the men the former kingdom of Arnor, of Westernesse make. Those blades were specifically meant to sever the bond between a wraiths spirit and flesh. If Merry didn't stab the Witch King Eowyn would never have defeated him.


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

[User]
[general horror] If a werewolf is a lycanthrope then what is a werechicken?

What is the naming convention here?

[Assistant]
Gallinthrope. *Gallin*aceous-Chicken an*throp*os-Man. From the Latin... And Greek...

If you use one or the other you're looking at something like "Gallihomo" or "Hippothrope," neither of which roll off the tongue.