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

[User]
ELI5:  How can your body tell that your hair has grown to it's desired length?

Body hair, for example, stops growing once it hits the desired length.  How does each hair follicle know when to stop making new hair?

[Assistant] It's just controlled by growth time. So arm hair follicles crank out hair for say 2 weeks, stop, the hair falls out, they rest, then the cycle starts over with a new hair. Hair on your head has a longer hair-producing part of the cycle, leading to a longer hair.


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

[User]
[Indiana Jones] How did they make a Snake Generator that still worked once the city was buried in sand.

I mean, there could be underwater water supply.   And maybe the species is very territorial.  But how are the tunneling rodents or other cobra food down there?

[Assistant] Yea, it'd be hard to maintain a snake generator with Jones era technology... More likely that the tunnel was designed to be a breeding ground for this rare snake or the snake found it naturally comfortable. He just happen to fall in there during the snake orgy.


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

[User] ELI5:  Why can't people drink the water in Mexico but fruit that was grown in Mexico and watered with non filtered water is ok to eat?

[Assistant] The water is a problem because of bacteria. Bacteria will not survive being absorbed by the roots of a plant and turned into fruit. Water sprayed on the surface of fruit could potentially be a problem, but the bacteria that live in water wouldn't survive long out in the air and sun.


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

[User] ELI5: How exactly does a VCR player work and how do we get video and sound of the actual VCR?

[Assistant]
A VCR is a video cassette recorder. Basically it's a plastic container filled with lots of magnetic tape. You can make part of the tape magnetic and part of the tape unmagnetic using something called a tape head. This changing level of magnetism is how you store data.

The video signal to the TV is just a electrical signal that control how a image is shown. Thing of it like a wave that goes up and down depending on how bright or dark a section of the TV should be (This is a simplification.) This wave start at the top left of the screen and goes line by line to the bottom.

Instead of sending this signal to the TV you instead send it to the VCR and it makes the tape more or less magnetic depending on how bright or dark the image should be.

Sound is stored in a separate are of the tape in the same way. The electronic signal that would make the speaker go in and out is stored to the tape.


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

[User]
[Pokemon] Why can't I just use a revive on a pokemon I want to catch but accidentally faint?

I want to catch a pokemon, but oops, I fainted it. Why not just hit it with a revive, spray it with some potions and heals, then continue the capture?

[Assistant]
Remember, you dont challenge a wild Pokmon, it challenges you.  If its appearance triggers a formal battle, that means it is at least considering joining your team.  Being captured in a Pokeball means that it has agreed to join you.  Even a sleeping, paralyzed, frozen, or trained Pokmon can bust out if it pleases.  You really think that fire breathing dragon or supercomputer tank is gonna stay with you if it doesnt want to?

However, if you faint a wild Pokmon, the challenge is over.  And it wont want to join a trainer who overuses brute force and then tries to cheat things into going their way.

TL;DR: Just like college sex-ed teaches you, consent is healthy.


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

[User] Why are warm-blooded animals more intelligent than cold-blooded animals?

[Assistant] Advanced brains are pretty fickle and gluttonous. To perform properly, your brain requires a rather large amount of oxygen and calories and a rather narrow temperature band. Cold-blooded animals don't have the metabolism to provide that much energy to the brain, or the proper thermoregulation ability to keep an advanced brain nice and cozy.


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

[User]
How did the 1918-19 Spanish Flu end?

I know there are competing theories as to how the flu began and we know with a fair degree of certainty why it was so virulent, but how did it seemingly suddenly end? Herd immunity? Better medical precautions? Something else?

[Assistant]
As always when it comes to epidemics and pandemics, a combination of factors.

The 1918-1919 H1N1 pandemic had two waves, with those who had contracted the flu in the first wave gaining immunity to the flu during the second wave. The second wave did result in more fatalities than the first wave, but that was due to the virus mutating to a deadlier strain which was then spread primarily by soldiers being transported to crowded hospitals on crowded trains whilst soldiers with the milder strain remained near the front line.

This second wave killing off more of the population results in less viable hosts to carry the virus. The elderly, who are typically prime candidates for other flu strains, had picked up partial immunity to the 1918 strain of H1N1 from the 1898-1905 outbreaks of the H3N8 Russian flu subtype. With most of the adults either already infected/dead, being treated for the flu, or already immune from the first wave, it essentially caused what has been termed social distancing during the current SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) - hosts were unable to encounter fresh hosts for the virus and, without a host and being an obligate parasite, the virus begins to die off.

Mutation, not to a deadlier strain, but to a milder strain, is also another factor. This occurs genetically when the virus is not encountering as many hosts, thus having to mutate to cause milder symptoms so that hosts with the new milder strain will spread it more easily. However, its easier to recover from a mild strain than a severe one, so still fewer people died from the 1918 H1N1 strain.

These factors, combined with medical treatment of flu sufferers, made the 1918-1919 H1N1 pandemic a flash in the pan (compared to other pandemics - smallpox, bubonic plague, and so on); it was virulent, but it was short-lived. It was short-lived because it was virulent, it was almost *too* good at what it did, to the point that the virus ran out of viable hosts to continue the pandemic.

Now, none of that is to say that H1N1 is gone, it isnt. H1N1 was responsible for the 2009 swine flu outbreak, as well as avian flu (A/duck/Alberta/35/76 - Influenza type A/origin: duck/found in Alberta, Canada/ strain 35/ identified in 1976), and is ever-present in a small percentage of the human population. The 1918-1919 H1N1 pandemic essentially ran out of steam and fizzled out.


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

[User]
[MCU] Wakanda reveals itself to the world and starts trading. How much is the world economy changes?

Sorry in advance for broken English.

Let's assume that Wakanda decided to go full open borders and starts offering their advanced tech machinery to the rest of the world, the can offer a "" small"" quantity of said machines but their are bastly supperior to the rest of Earth's ones.

Let's also assume that Wakanda gas basic knowledge of trading, taxes and how economy works.

[Assistant] From what little we saw of Wakandan medicine, that would have an incredible impact. A lot of their stuff seems to require vibranium, so that stuff has limited utility unless they're also willing to sell significant amounts of the metal. For everything else, Chinese copies start popping up with astonishing speed.


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

[User]
[DC] What does Commissioner Gordon think of Metropolis and Superman?

Also what is their relationship like?

[Assistant]
Well in the current canon Superman has been depowered and his identity publicly released, and Gordon is Batman. There was a Batman/Superman storyline where they teamed up and Gordon was pretty apprehensive about this whole thing. He didn't trust Superman and wanted him off the streets.

It is however unclear if Gordon always felt this way about him, or only thinks of him this way because he now knows that Superman is Clark Kent and is depowered (and therefore being reckless by fighting crime).


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Why doesn't the Ministry of Magic (and other institutions) not use guns in defence against/in offensives against Voldemort and others? Are firearms an effective counter?

Against handguns (based on spells in the movies) wands are useless as the reaction times and requisite names of spells take too much time to say. To turn a gun into a piece of jelly would take too long to mention the spell name etc. is it simply a case of "being above" the use of muggle weapons or not being aware of their existence/unable to get their hands on them?

Thanks in advance.

[Assistant] Mostly due to high-strung arrogance on the wizarding world's part.  They see themselves as being beyond Muggle conventions and inventions in varying degrees; Arthur Weasely finds them curious and fascinating while Tom Riddle views them with the utmost contempt, for example.  Magic can do almost anything the user desires, so what could a Muggle possibly do that would compare?  For this reason *alone*, anybody packing heat that knows the first half of the Killing Curse has the advantages of technology, speed, *and* surprise.


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

[User] ELI5:Without proper dental care, how did people thousands and hundreds of thousands of years ago keep their teeth from completely rotting out?

[Assistant]
By not eating a modern diet of refined sugar.  Much of the tooth decay seen in modern people is the result of refined sugars which encourages more bacterial growth in the mouth than would have been found in ancient times.

Not saying they didn't have tooth decay but they didn't have it to the extent that we would if we stopped brushing our teeth.  Our teeth would very quickly rot away.


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

[User] Are there any buildings large enough to be affected by the curvature of the earth? How large would a building of this size be? Also, what engineering methods are used to counteract this?

[Assistant]
It has a small impact on very long individual structures like suspension bridge spans. Compared to a flat surface the tips of two towers are approximately hL/R further apart where h is the height of the towers, L is their horizontal separation and R is the radius of the Earth (6370 km).

Plugging in numbers:

* Golden Gate Bridge: 1280m main span, 227 m height -> 4.7 cm
* Akashi Kaiky Bridge: 1991 m main span (world record), 283 m height -> 8.8 cm

As suspension bridges are flexible anyway this is not a big effect.


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

[User]
[D&D] Hypothetically, could a group of Bards execute someone via Roast?

The Cantrip 'Vicious Mockery' is used by Bards to deal damage via insult. If someone were restrained and unable to resist, could they be insulted to death? If bards did a roast of someone, could it be potentially lethal?

[Assistant] Absolutely. Vicious Mockery isn't entirely just taunting and insults, it's laced with arcane power. It's a really, really minor spell, but it IS magic. Given enough Bards, or enough time, they could even 'Mock' an Ancient Dragon to death.


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

[User] [Despicable Me] According to the intricate lore of the Despicable Me franchise, Minions choose to serve the most evil being. If all of the Minions simultaneously decided to ditch Grus ass and serve North Korea, how fucked would the rest of the world be?

[Assistant] North Korea lacks a reliable supply of bananas. Minion love for bananas is greater then their desire to serve the most evil person/regime. Minions will happily settle for a less evil master is it means they can satisfy their banana cravings.


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

[User] Eli5: How do things like walmarts straight talk work? They say it's the same networks but half the price. What, if anything, am I sacrificing if I switch over to it?

[Assistant] Its what in the industry is called an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) they lease bandwith at certain prices and keep the service bare bones i.e. no roaming, limited service areas, smaller data packages etc. The savings are then passed on to the consumer.


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

[User] Is there a maximum temperature my microwave oven can heat something up to?

[Assistant]
Yes, although it is very, very hot. The heat an object loses is proportional to it's surface area and the difference in temperature between it and it's surroundings. Bigger object loses heat faster than a smaller object, hotter object loses heat faster than a warm object.

So, at some point your object in the microwave will be losing more than the 1,000W you are putting in. Assuming it doesn't dry out first. Or catch fire and destroy your microwave.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do terrorist groups like ISIS publicly announce when one of their leaders has died?

Isn't that counter productive?

[Assistant] Many such groups avoid it.  Mullah Omar, a big Taliban leader, was dead a couple years before it came out.  Still, they can't Weekend at Bernie's a terrorist leader forever and if they spin it right they can make their dead leader into a martyr to inspire their followers.


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

[User] ELI5 why do some games only work on windows?

[Assistant]
Games are rarely made completely from scratch, instead they're built using existing tools and frameworks which are known as APIs, or application programming interfaces.

An API is a list of documented functions and the parameters they take that perform a known action when called, an example of an API to draw a circle might be:

drawCircle(int x, int y, int radius);

You don't need to know how it works internally, only that so long as you use the API as documented it should give you the outcome you expect.

Those APIs themselves may be built on other APIs, which may be built on other APIs. In many cases you'll eventually hit upon an API which is part of the operating system itself.

In gaming, the big one is called DirectX and is the Microsoft API for, amongst other things, game programming. It's an abstraction layer built around other APIs such as graphics card drivers that presents a unified interface for development on Windows machines (and the XBox consoles).

If you're writing an application and part of the API hierarchy depends on APIs that are only available on Windows, then the application can only run on Windows.

Now there are two ways around this:

1. Certain APIs are designed to be completely independent of the operating system they run on. Often times these APIs have a general way of doing things, but can be re-compiled using special flags that will utilise specific operating-system specific APIs for the sake of performance, but the key thing is that their actual API (the functions exposed) don't change between hardware or operating system type.

2. The reverse of 1, people take platform specific APIs and emulate them by creating a substitute version on a platform that was not intended to run them. This is how the popular Linux application 'Wine' works.


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

[User] ELI5: When we really have to pee, why does walking or moving lessen the need "to go" in the moment?

[Assistant]
Needing to urinate is something which can be suppressed by the sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system activity, or becomes more obvious when parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system activity predominates.

Exercising shifts the balance towards the sympathetic nervous system.


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

[User]
In 1796, Edward Jenner, considered the founder of vaccinology in the West, successfully inoculated an eight-year-old boy against smallpox using vaccinia virusfrom cowpox. How?

When first making a vaccine, how do scientists extract (harvest?) a virus and make it administrable to humans? After a vaccine is successfully made, can it just be made synthetically from then on?

[Assistant] For the original cowpox inoculation it was literally just direct contact between the cow lesion and the boy. There was no vaccine per se just the concept of vaccination. Older vaccines used compromised virus by heat or chemical means - sometimes viable sometimes not. In the case of smallpox It worked because cowpox virus is capable of causing limited infection in humans but not well adapted enough to cause severe disease. Vaccinology has advanced much more as our molecular tools have advanced since then and instead of using live pathogens with altered tropisms, or that are inactivated or attentuated , we can now deliver pathogen components that are not capable of infection along with chemical adjuvants.


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

[User]
ELI5: What happens to cars that are recalled due to safety issues?

First, thanks for clicking. After the recent GM recall, I was wondering about what manufacturers actually do to the cars they recall. Do the people who have to turn in their cars get a new/temp car or just a new one all together?

[Assistant] Typically, you just go to your local dealership and they fix the car for you. Rarely will you get a new car, or a loaner car, since these fixes are often things that take only a few hours. They're really no more inconvenient (usually) than standard maintenance.


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

[User]
How do you find a singular purpose without turning to religion?

TL;DR: half-educated fool seeks to sacrifice himself for something now that sacrificing yourself for God is no longer an option. Where to go if I also want to avoid humanism?

I've been doing some thinking which, in a nutshell, amounts to the following:

1. The idea of God used to give a singular purpose to life back when it was a dominant force in human consciousness, i. e. all of my instincts, wishes, goals in life, in short - all of my freedom would be subjugated to something external to me. This subjugation is a good thing because it allows me to act with certainty and resolve, since the need for action would not be contingent on my or any other human being's changing desires.

2. Such a faith in God has become impossible for a significant amount of us  and there really is no turning back, i. e. I could decide to perform the role of a person with faith, I may believe that one ought to have faith, but none of that would give me the single-minded release from doubt that actual, living faith would provide. The nonbeliever who has converted to religion has as much self-doubt as the atheist.

3. This leaves two options:

a) Embrace human freedom and live for the sake of myself and other human beings. This is a bad option, because it either:
 - means embracing purposelessness and meaninglessness, since there is no one correct way to go about life and action, including action that we generally tend to value positively, becomes always subject to scrutiny and doubt (it's not enough to do good, you have to know why);
or
 - amounts to little more than an appeal to nature, in other words I do whatever I do because this is who I am as a human being with given desires and needs (caring for myself and the people around me, participating in community, being productive, and so on) - and saying that I am this or that way, doesn't mean I must be this or that way, or that that is the only way to be.

b) Find something else outside myself to subjugate myself (humanity) to.

b) is what I'm interested in here. I'm aware and have read a bit of French existentialists like Camus and Sartre that deal with so-called radical freedom, but they put a positive value on that.

I'm also aware that some sort of totalitarian ideology might be the answer here, but then again those on the right side of the spectrum (fascism, national-socialism) seem to embrace irrationality and nihilism (action for the sake of action, war for the sake of war, the State and the Leader as substitutes for God, because why not) and those on the left (Leninism) seem to still be grounded on the idea of human progress and flourishing (regardless of what happened in practice).

I'm also aware that most of what I said sounds abhorrent, as well as that it might be a problem simply by virtue of the way it is set up and that it may not be necessary to view life this way.

Thanks for reading, would be curious to hear the perspectives of people more versed in philosophy than I am. Been in something of an philosophical / existential slump for a while now.

[Assistant]
I would say that there is a significant underpinning here, which you might do well to abandon. That is: what's so bad about doubt? What's so great about certainty? Embracing doubt is the path to knowledge, confidence, contentment; chasing certainty is the path to disappointment at best, unjustified (and possibly harmful) dogmatism at worst.

So, again: what has you so worried about doubt? And why do you want certainty so badly?


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

[User] [Divine Comedy] Where do the peasants & common people go when they die?

[Assistant]
Dante only mentioned famous people for 2 reasons.

1. They were easily recognizable to the audience. You know Helen of Troy, you don't know Joe the shit scooper.

2. The Inferno was basically he own personal burn book. He showed off his policies and social values by saying "fuck these people in particular"

Plenty of poor people went to heaven and Hell, they just don't matter.


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

[User] ELI5: 1. How was O.J. found not guilty the first time? 2. How was he then found guilty in the civil trial? 3. What's the difference between those two trials and how can you be guilty in one and innocent in another?

[Assistant]
he was not guilty in the criminal case.  but was guilty in the civil case.

the main difference is the proof standard.  in criminal case they use "beyond a reasonable doubt" so ie >90%.  in civil they use "preponderance of the truth" so ie >50%.  also the charges were not exactly the same either.  i don't know exactly, for in the criminal case he was charged with murder.  and in the civil case the suit was for wrongful death.  maybe someone can correct that.

criminal cases are totally separate from civil cases.  so double jeopardy does not apply.

and to make things even more fucked up.  state courts and federal courts are "separate sovereigns".  so if you were found innocent of criminal charges in state court, you can be tried again for those same criminal charges in federal court.

and then, there's a thing called a "grand jury" which is another separate entity.

tl;dr law is complicated and confusing.


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

[User] If arrows spun, would it improve their flight stability in the same way as spinning bullets?

[Assistant]
The tail feathers keep an arrow straight by applying a small amount of drag at the rear so that it will always point into the wind. The feathers function like the stabilizers at the tail of an airplane.

Arrows can spin a little, but generally they dont spin fast enough for the gyroscopic action to be adequate on its own. The tail feathers can be adjusted to spin the arrow, but that adds more drag. Its a trade off, because the arrow is already fairly stable.

To fly without a tail the arrow would need to spin pretty fast.


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

[User]
[Johnny Bravo] Does Johnny have the most weird bad luck streak ever?

So the guy is handsome and totally in shape, he has some corny pick up lines but he's 100% confident and genuinely nice, he's not a pump and dump pick up artist; so what gives why can't he find a girl to even give him a chance?

[Assistant] Because he happens to live in a fictitious world where ALL women have self-esteem and see right through his beauty and confidence to the narcissistic, irresponsible, immature, emotionally stunted momma's boy that he is. In real life, he would have far more luck with women who were damaged, going through a rough patch, on the rebound, or simply needed a little pick-me-up or meaningless pleasure from a handsome man. In his world, however, they're all paragons of emotional health and have their lives figured out and want more than Johnny could ever offer.


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

[User] I'm eating a very old apple pie, which my wife is convinced would make her sick - are some people physiologically more tolerant to dodgy food, or are people just more/less risky with food intake?

[Assistant] Everyone's body will respond differently. Some people have food sensitivities that other's don't and different tolerances to fat's, spices, dairy etc. If you were both to eat something teeming with Salmonella you would both get sick, your immune system would determine how sick each of you got though. A lot of food isn't nearly as spoiled as one would assume as well. An old apple pie would probably have dehydrated crust which wouldn't attract many microbes, and would be loaded with sugar which is a very effective preservative. So ya, you can eat an old apple pie, leave a Mc'D's apple pie in your car sometime, it will look the same a month after it was served to you.


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

[User]
ELI5: G-force - What is it and how does it injure/kill?

How does it affect our bodies?

[Assistant]
G-Force is just a shorthand way of referring to a force using the force of gravity as a reference.

So 1G is the same as the force we feel due to gravity.  This feels like almost no force at all because we feel it act on us all the time. 2Gs would be twice the normal force of gravity and 3Gs would be 3 times the force etc.

It injures you and kills you the same way force from anything else would. It crushes you causing your internal organs to compact and your bones to break.


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

[User] ELI5: How can shipping companies charge for insurance on your packages? Shouldn't they just be required to safely ship your stuff and have to pay if they mess it up?

[Assistant]
Let's take UPS as an example. If they lose a package that you shipped with them, they will refund you the full cost of shipping plus $100 for the contents of the box, no questions asked. They set $100 as the default value for a package to cover the most common scenarios. If the contents of your package is worth less than $100, you don't need to do anything else.

The problem is that they have no way of determining the value of something you're shipping, and they can't "try harder" not to lose it. If they didn't require you to state the value up-front, everyone who lost a box could claim there was a $5,000 antique inside and they'd have no way of knowing.

So instead of requiring you to prove the value, they just offer insurance. If you insure the contents of a box for $5,000, they won't verify the value, they just promise to pay you $5,000 if they lose the box. It doesn't matter if there was just sawdust inside - if you paid the $50 for insurance, their guarantee is to either deliver the box safe and sound, or to pay you $5,000.

Suppose they charge $1 for every $100 you want to insure it for. If they know that they lose fewer than 1 in 100 packages, they come out ahead on average.


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

[User] ELi5:Why is it that our fingers tend to form a fist when we are relaxed and not stay straight?

[Assistant] It takes work to stretch them out or to close them entirely. The resting state is kind of in between. Your muscles and all that are fibers stretchy fibers and stretchy stuff likes to be in the middle of the two places it could possibly stretch to.


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

[User]
[Dragon Ball] Why do bits of rock float up off the ground in the presence of sufficiently strong ki?

Ki manipulation is the standard means by which warriors across the universe acheive feats far beyond that of Earth's ordinary populace. In addition to providing flight abilities, energy blasts, and greatly enhanced physical attributes, the use of ki has some other notable side effects, all of which seem to exist purely to enhance the spectacle.

Of these effects, one of the most common is spontaneous levitation of rocks and other sedimentary particles, known to some as "chunky updraft." When a sufficiently strong ki user channels their power, bits of debris will start floating up off of the ground in response.

My question is, why is that? What are the physics of chunky updraft, and how do they relate to the use of ki?

[Assistant] I think it's because Ki is energy, and a person emits some of this energy when they channel it. This is (I suspect) the reason that power levels can be measured with a scouter - it "flows" from the persons body to their surroundings. At high enough levels, this energy can move objects and even cause atmospheric effects like lightning.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do apples turn brown/red after cutting and leaving them in room temperature for a bit?

[Assistant] When an apple is cut open, an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase is released from the cells of the apple and reacts with the oxygen in the air. This causes it to turn brown. It's similar to rust forming on metal. But, if you put lemon juice on the slices, it helps slow down the browning. Lime juice works too. Both are high in vitamin c (ascorbic acid) and have a relatively low pH (acidic). Oxygen will work on the ascorbic acid in the juice before it works on the polyphenol oxidase in the apple, slowing down the browning of your apple slices.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can animals sense things like earthquakes, bad weather and magnetic fields when humans can't?

Why are humans unable to learn those things, at least without learning about it scientifically when it comes naturally to the animals?

[Assistant] Not sure about magnetic fields, but with regards to earthquakes and bad weather, animals are actually not much better than humans at sensing these things in advance. When they do, it can mainly be attributed to a much better sense of hearing than humans have, both because of a wider spectrum of hearing (either below 20Hz or above 20kHz), and a greater sensitivity to sound in general. This greater sensitivity to sound allows them to react based on less information than a human requires, and then combines with a stronger reaction to the fight-or-flight response, resulting in the animal going for cover for seemingly no reason.


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

[User] Eli5: how does DNA code editing work?

[Assistant]
I assume you mean how we genetically modify organisms?

Step one is obviously to figure out which gene you either want to insert or remove.  That's just long, tedious work sequencing the genome and then doing experiments to figure out what each gene does.  Think this bit of DNA codes for a certain protein?  Get rid of that bit, let the organism grow, and see if it still makes that protein.  If not, your hypothesis was correct!  We can use all kinds of chemistry, including borrowing the enzymes that living things use to copy and edit their own DNA, to chop up the DNA we want to insert into something else and isolate the section we want.  We can use other enzymes and chemistry to combine different pieces to make bigger, more complicated sections of DNA that code for multiple proteins.

To actually manipulate the genes, we have a couple different methods.  One of the coolest things is almost literally a "DNA gun".  It launches your bits of code (the base pairs) at the target cell's nucleus with a lot of energy, smashing into its DNA, hopefully with enough energy to smash them together.  Obviously, this has some problems: you may not get them to merge together, you may just smash everything to bits.  You may also end up putting your new code in a bad spot on the DNA, that either means it can't get used, or messed up an important bit of code that was already there so the organism can't grow correctly.  After firing your DNA gun, you sit back and wait to see if it grows and how it grows to see if you got the results you want.  If you did, you save that specimen and let it reproduce, preserving the change in new generations.

The more accurate way that we use now is to use a species of bacteria (*Agrobacterium tumifaciens*) to insert the DNA.  The bacteria almost works like a virus, inserting part of its own DNA into the plants it infects.  Normally, this means the plant starts growing tumors and dies.  But when we genetically modify the plants, first we change the bacteria's DNA to the code we want the plant to have.  Then we infect the plant with the bacteria, which inserts that new code we want the plant to have, then it dies off, leaving us with our new plant.  This is way better than bombarding the plant's DNA because we can modify the bacteria to target parts of the plant DNA that we want changed, making it far more accurate.  It's also far more likely to, you know, not smash the target DNA to bits.  To change the *bacteria's* DNA, we use the same bombardment techniques, but recall that part of the step is to grow the organism to make sure it has the DNA we want in it: that's very time-consuming for a plant like corn that takes years to mature.  But bacteria grow in hours or days, so it's far easier to check.  In addition, the bacteria DNA is a lot simpler, so it's much easier to affect the part we want.  We also sometimes use a type of virus called bacteriophages - viruses that only infect bacteria.  Viruses work by changing DNA, right?  So get the virus to insert its DNA (which we've modified) into the bacteria, which then inserts it into the plant.  Viruses are even easier to work with than bacteria, because they're not truly alive it's harder to mess them up and "kill" them.


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

[User]
[General] Why are a lot of Devil-type characters so young? (By cosmic being standards)

Trigon. Aku. the Crimson King. What these characters have in common is that they're Devil-type characters who are the most powerful forces of evil in their respective universes, yet are incredibly young compared to other cosmic beings.

For example, the Crimson King is merely hundreds of years old, yet is vastly more powerful than IT, who in turn is older than time itself.

Why do you think writers do this? Why have their devils be only hundreds to thousands of years old yet have them as powerful as other major cosmic entities who are old as or even older than time itself?

[Assistant] I can't speak to the Stephen King example, but a lot of them are tied to humanity. Characters like Mephisto are the manifestations of evil as humanity understands it, and are fueled by human belief and sin. So compared to the beings that were around when the universe was born, they're young, since they were born the same time humanity got on its feet.


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

[User]
ELI5: If there's actually an advantage to using foam, solid or liquid soap over the other 2

I've heard people talk about how one is better than the other but never really specify why.

There may be nothing better, but if there is which is the most advantageous to use and why?

[Assistant]
A recent study has suggested that solid soap can retain germs on its surface. You can dislodge a lot of them by simply rinsing it off, but it does provide a minor benefit in that a dispenser type soap can help sidestep that problem. However, if reusing the bottle one needs to clean it thoroughly or else you're potentially just in the same boat, getting germs inside of it.

So a bar of soap may be less desirable in a social setting like a public restroom, where it can pass through many hands and not be subjected to the tightest level of cleanliness.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do some people get less severe hangovers or no hangover at all?

[Assistant]
Hangovers are mostly a result of dehydration (except for the nausea, which is a typical result to ingesting anything that toxic).

Moral of the story, some people are better at hydrating before/during/after drinking, and some are better at retaining water.

Of course, certain drinks can help or hurt. Argument's sake, a redbull vodka contains sugar and caffeine, both of which are diuretics and will result in greater water loss and result in a worse hangover.

If you're trying to avoid a hangover, try to avoid mixed drinks (go for shots/neat/on the rocks), and be sure to hydrate before, during and after. That gatorade before you go to sleep will do wonders.


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

[User] What makes one type of steel mechanically stronger than another?

[Assistant]
Metallurgy is.. complicated! There's a lot that goes into deciding how a metal behaves with respect to common properties like tensile strength, malleability, etc. but most of them come down to how defects/irregularities (material dislocations) in the crystal lattice that forms the material moves through it when stress is applied. When you bend and deform a material, what's happening is the stress is being relieved through movement of dislocations.

For example, the existence of impurities, such as carbon (the presence of which is what makes steel "steel"), can block dislocation movement. On top of that, stuff like microstructure, the microscopic arrangement of domains, impurities and different phases within the metal also affects it. You can refer to how heat treating a steel by heating it up and quickly cooling it in water can harden because the speed at which the impurities inside move as it cools affects which phases form. Basically you can describe most of the properties and behaviour of a steel member through the percentage of carbon, the presence of other metals to make it an alloy, and the heat treatment it has undergone.


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

[User]
[The Dark Tower] Did the Old Ones attempt to ascend the Tower?

It's likely considering they harnessed the Tower's energy to create and/or power many of their hi-tech doodads.

If that's the case, though, what did the Old Ones *see* when they ascended it and reached the top?

And if the Tower is an extension or manifestation of Gan, then why didn't Gan exercise some cosmic foresight (specifically that access to this tremendous power would lead to very bad results) and either lock them out or repel them with the same space-time distortion mojo experienced by our intrepid hero?

[Assistant]
The Tower did not allow the Old Ones to ascend, the Tower is sentient and even then will allow only those with the correct lineage and sigils to reach the top-even though the Crimson King was of Eld blood, he was not allowed to the very top.

Even though it seems there are some world-ending events going on, the Tower was never in any danger. The Tower resets the world everytime Roland reaches the top and who knows how many times he has made his journey.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why doesn't Boyle's Self Flowing Flask work to power a generator?

I had a friend bring up Boyle's Self Flowing Flask  Generator idea to me and I having trouble explaining to him why this won't work, could use some help finding my words.

**Edit** Never mind, I was describing it in too general of terms and he was misunderstanding me. The terms output and input was throwing or conversation off.

[Assistant]
First, the flask is an imaginary device. It does not exist. If you try to build one, it doesn't work right.

Second, any device that is designed to run on and on using its own momentum *only* works if you don't draw energy away from it. As soon as you draw energy away from it -- by requiring it to do work -- it quickly grinds to a halt.

For example, you can use a moving car to generate heat by friction, but very soon the car just stops and stays stopped! In fact that's how brakes work. Unfortunately even the smallest amount of friction -- like water rubbing against the inside of a pipe -- is enough to eventually stop anything, so no machine just runs forever without a push. And that gets *much worse* if you hook up a generator.


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

[User] ELI5: What was the appendix used for before it became obsolete?

[Assistant] The current best theory is that it isn't entirely obsolete. It functions as a place where various microorganisms that live in your gut can survive even if you have diarrhea, or if you eat something that has antibiotic properties. Those microorganisms can be pretty important to proper digestion and good health (you don't want to have just any old random bunch living inside you), so having an internal refuge for them is useful.


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

[User]
Why do fruits get bruised?

Specifically Apples, Pears, and Bananas. If they get bumped or banged around, why do they discolor on the inside?

[Assistant]
Fruit contains an enzyme called polyphenoloxidase as well as phenolic compounds.  When the fruit is intact they are seperated by cellular structure of the fruit.  When the fruit is damaged they come in contact and the polypholoxidase oxidizes the phenolic compounds.  The newly oxidized phenolic compounds turn into brown spots.

Another way for the phenolic compounds to oxidize is if they are exposed to the oxygen in air by breaking the skin.  This is why a half eaten apple quickly turns brown on the exposed interior flesh surface.

Edit:
You'll also notice that it is much more difficult for oranges to become bruised.  This is because citric acid can be oxidized very easily and will "steal" the oxygen from oxidizing the phenolic compounds.  If you dip apple slices in lemon juice it will take them much longer to turn brown for this reason.


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

[User]
Are comets constantly shrinking? That is to say, are they losing mass through their dust trail?

That is to say, are comets like Halley's comet going to disappear one day?

[Assistant] Comets are constantly losing mass. There is a finite number of passes a comet can do before it "turns off". However, common belief is that the comet won't just disappear but rather change. Comets lose ice more than they lose dust. It is assumed that eventually a comet could develop a surface that is a good enough insulator to allow it to stop the mass loss. However this would fundamentally change the comet into something else that does not behave or look like a comet.


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

[User]
Why is computer emulation so difficult?

Let's take the example of SNES emulation, why is it so difficult to get it accurate?

[Assistant]
If you want to translate a newspaper in another language that you don't know anything about, what do you do? (Can't use Google Translate!!)

You take a French-English dictionary. Every time you see a word, you have to look at the correspondence in the dictionary and write that down on a piece of paper. It will take a while, but you will eventually know what it means and can somewhat read it. It's not gonna be perfect though, because the grammar will be all wrong.

You have to do the same thing with programs meant for a different computers. You can easily translate instructions to one another, but you have to fake what's supposed to happen in that CPU since they don't work the same way. You have different registers (temporary places where you can put a value for the computer to use), flags, interrupts, etc.

There are even some bugs on a CPU that you have to emulate. Those bugs are not necessarily well documents in official docs, but you have to program them in your emulator because otherwise the program will behave differently than on the original CPU.

Emulating instructions and changing the internal state of an emulate CPU is really complicated. One is a simple instruction and a SNES might be a couple hundreds instructions on a Intel CPU!

Add to the fact that a CPU register is inside said CPU, it is very quick to read and write to. When you have to emulate that register, it will sit in the RAM memory, which is much slower, so your emulations will be much slower because of that too.

Also, if a program is optimized for a SNES CPU because of certain quirks it has, that optimization is most likely lost in the emulation process too.

Emulators sometimes take shortcuts so they can run faster, but in that process, they lose correctness. If you don't see much of a difference when you play a SNES game, then it doesn't really matter for the end-user if the CPU is not perfectly emulated..


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

[User] ELI5: Why is "hello world" always the first thing you write on computer programming applications?

[Assistant]
In the past, the hardest thing about writing a new program wasn't the programming language.  It was understanding how your programming tools worked.  To use C as an example, in order to write your first program, you would need to:

1. Understand how your text editor worked, a non-trivial task on a text only, mouseless computer.
2. Understand how the file system worked, and how to save your program with the correct file extension to the correct location.
3. Understand how to run your compiler.  This was before graphical interfaces, so you couldn't just click a button.  You had to exit your text editor, type something like "cc -Wall hello.c -o hello", see if there were any syntax errors, and they pull up you text editor to fix them again.
4. Understand how to execute your program once you got it to compile.

That is a lot of things to figure out, "Hello, world!" is an exercise in getting them right.


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

[User] [X-Men] Why does Gambit use playing cards instead of something like coins which would be deadlier at a high velocity?

[Assistant]
Cards are actually pretty ideal given his powers.

He can change the kinectic energy of the card itself, so they can fly just fine. Larger things take more time for him to charge, so the low mass of cards is helpful there too.

So they are a readily available inconspicuous extremely light thing to carry around. 52 coins would be much more cumbersome.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why isn't cannibalism more common in extremely poor regions?

I'll start off saying I'm not supporting the idea of cannibalism. But I was thinking, in regions full of turmoil/extreme poverty, where people are consistently starving to death, why isn't cannibalism more of an issue?

I know there's a huge difference between humans and all other animal species, but a lot of meat-eating animals wouldn't hesitate to eat their own species if they were dying (whether the meal had died prior, or was killed with the intent of consumption).

[Assistant]
The reasons below combine to make regular cannibalism either explicitly illegal or at least a strong taboo across most cultures:

- Empathy & attachment

People aren't likely to eat their deceased friends or family because it feels wrong (due to human empathy and the association between one's physical body and personhood). We develop a natural disgust to the thought of consuming human flesh for this reason.

For the same reason, families/friends of the deceased would not permit you to consume the deceased without resistance.

- Religion & ritual

Many religions (especially tribal ones) often place religious significance on deceased bodies or view it as being connected to the afterlife. To consume a body would then be viewed as a sin or offense to god in such religions; cannibalism would lead to self-shame/guilt, ostracization from society, and sometimes outright punishment.

- Legality & slippery slope

Similar to religious rules, it is often illegal to consume human flesh. If society allowed the consumption of human flesh to be a legal activity, there is only a thin line that separates the consumption of someone who is already dead and killing someone for the purpose of consumption.

- Societal selection via disease

You can get a lot of diseases from human flesh that you wouldn't get from another animal's flesh. People/tribes in the past that constantly ate human flesh would have had higher rates of death & morbidity and thus, these societies/practices would have felt selection pressures against them.

- Societal selection via war/competition

Only impoverished, weak nations/tribes would resort to consumption of human flesh for the purpose of survival. Such nations/tribes would have likely been conquered by a more powerful neighbouring nation/tribe or self-destruct due to poor economic conditions (negative selection pressure).


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

[User]
Two Questions. First, Black holes are said to have infinite density. If that's the case, wouldn't their gravitational influence instantaneously suck in the entire universe? Second. If a singularity just 1 dimension, how does a black hole have spin? Don't they need multiple dimensions to rotate?

To further clarify.

The first question. If they had infinite density, wouldnt that mean that an object at the event horizon would feel the same powerful pull as an object 50 light years away, or even further?

The second question. I think i did a well enough job asking but if you need me to be more clear about the question, i'll gladly update with an edit.

[Assistant]
The characterisation of a singularity in any particular way is not very useful for knowing about what's really going on inside a black hole.

There are good reasons to expect that there are no singularities and the existence of singularities in General Relativity is generally taken to mean we can't trust it once we get close to the singularity. Additionally there is very little reason to expect the interior of a real black hole is anything like the interior in the non-dynamical black holes we often talk about.

Real black holes have to form, and they interact with their environment. So they are dynamical. There is good evidence, but it wasn't immediately obvious, that the exterior of the stationary black holes describes the exterior of real black holes well though.

When we talk about the rotation of a black hole, you do yourself a disservice by imagining that this has anything to do with a rotating object inside the horizon.

To talk about what the rotation means from a physical point of view let me first give an analogy, Imagine you have some object that isn't perfectly level, so in some places it is higher and other places it is lower. If the object isn't changing this height is "non-dynamical" but if you are moving around the object the height you're at will be changing. We call a perspective where the height isn't changing under your feet a stationary perspective.

How does this relate to rotating black holes? Well something that is stationary closer to the black hole will be orbiting the black hole according to something stationary further away. Furthermore, if you throw something into the black hole which has some angular momentum the rotation of that closer observer will speed up. It will in fact speed up in exactly the same way as if you imagine the horizon was a rotating object which gained the angular momentum of what fell in.


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

[User] ELI5: How is the ketogenic diet at all healthy if you're eating lots of fats, which clog arteries?

[Assistant]
Put in a very simple way:

Fat does not clog arteries by itself, fat deposits on blood vessel walls as a protective measure, against damaged caused to the lining by other things, mainly, sugar. its a protective measure to prevent further damage to the vessels, and to the blood constituents, the issue is that damage accumulates and so does fat unless lifestyle is changed.

In the early 20th century when people saw clotted arteries with fat, calcium etc, they erroneously assumed that those dietary elements were the factor that was causing the issue, without realising that they were blaming the defensive measure for the problem. Sadly medicine is this giant machine that takes ages to acknowledge information is inaccurate, and even longer to start changing how it deals with it, it takes decades.

And analogy: They saw a huge traffic jam, they saw shinny lights (cops) and blamed the cops for the jam, instead of realising the cops are there because there was a car crash, which is the true factor to blame for the jam.

Ketogenic and vegetarian diets are good to help reduce and even reverse those issues, because you are removing the factors that cause damage to the inner lining of the blood vessels (excess sugar), also helps with diabetes as you prevent constant insulin spikes which lead to insensitivity.

Fats are needed by the body, and quite healthy in themselves, yes, even saturated which is quite important for you, the issue is also how much you eat.

TL:DR: Sugars be the evil, not fat, fat just cool dudes helping you and getting all the blame.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why did the Trade Federation listen to Sideous in the first place.

How did Sideous become respectable enough for the Trade Federation to listen to him? He seems to be a weird guy in a hood at first glance and can't openly say he is Senator of Naboo or has control over Damask Holdings.

[Assistant] No joke in Legends Sidious sent a mid level trade federation guy a parot that was ultra rare.  Then sent maul to kill off the higher ups promoting the parot loving Nute Gunray into a controllable but high up position.  One has to admit old Sheev atleast has style.


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

[User] [MCU] How close was Dr. Strange to dying on that mountain with the sling ring? Was there any other ways for him to return/escape? Do we know how many people were tested in this way?

[Assistant]
Well he was on the top of Mount everest, not really any way to escape that. And as they said when he got there, he would freeze to death in a few minutes.

We don't know how often she does this, but presumably not often, as mordo reacted with "oh no not again" implying she doesn't so this often, and he doesn't approve of it.


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

[User] [Full Metal Alchemist] If alchemy can practically make anything except a living human, how come alchemists don't make their own money and still need to work for someone else?

[Assistant] Literally one of the taboos of amestrian alchemy is "Don't make gold", and that one is strictly enforced by the government. So if someone were to suddenly pop up with shit tons of gold and they happen to be an alchemist then off with their head.


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

[User] ELI5: How do cinema projectors have such high quality compared to personal home projectors?

[Assistant]
They got a light source (think: a bulb) that is consuming so much energy it's crazy compared to the tiny box you got in your own living room.

And bulbs always create excess heat that needs to be cooled away with active cooling. i.e, fans. Fans are noisy.

But no-one in the cinema cares, because that projector is in it's own room, with a glass window. No-one in the audience hears the fan.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does it require energy to hold something heavy in a stationary position?

In physics today we were going over how work done (or energy) is equal to force multiplied by distance moved, but our teacher was unable to explain clearly why it requires so much energy to hold something stationary. If the object isn't being moved what is the chemical energy being converted to?

[Assistant] The physics class should also cover force diagrams. That heavy object has a downward force from gravity. To hold it above the ground requires an equal force upward. If you're holding it, this upward force is exerted by your muscles and skeleton. Your muscles require your body's energy to maintain that force. So while you may not be doing work by how physics defines work, you're still using energy to apply a force.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do mosquito bites itch?

Just, why?

[Assistant]
When a mosquito bites you it injects saliva into you which acts as an anticoagulant.

Without this the mosquito's proboscis would become clogged with clotted blood.

This saliva is full of proteins which your body recognizes as foreign, kicking off an immune response. Immune cells called Mast cells release (degranulate) histamine.

Histamine encourages inflammation (why you get a bump) and makes you itch, among other things.

Some anecdotal  reports indicate that if you apply heat to the bite you can denature the protein and stop the progression of the histamine reaction. You would have to use enough heat to accomplish this, but not enough to burn your skin.


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

[User]
[X-Men] What is the difference between Magneto and someone with powerful Telekinesis?

Okay, so my knowledge about Magneto mostly comes from the movies, where his powers most of the time seem indistinguishable from high level telekinesis limited to metals.
But I've heard and read several times by now that in the comics, he also has other powers related to magnetic forces.

My question now is, does he posses any power that a sufficiently powerful telekinect couldn't mimic or is there any aspect to his power that greatly differentiates it from pure telekinesis?

And also, how powerful would a user of telekinesis need to be, to perfectly mimic his powers?

[Assistant]
He can manipulate the magnetic and electric currents in your brain.  Alter earths magnetic field.  He can sense electrical and magnetic fields around him.  And can create and manipulate magnetic fields of various intensity and size at once.  A telekinetic person can match many of his abilities but not all.  They can crush a persons head but can't mess with their brain chemistry.  They can't sense an approaching machine or person from a distance.  They can pick up a bunch of coins but can't separate the nickel iron and brass used to make those coins.

Aside from just how ridiculously powerful he is magneto is just very very specialized in his powers.  He's a scalpel to a telekinesis hacksaw.  They both can do similar things but one is far more capable of precision than the other.


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

[User]
[MCU] About the snap...

Dr. Hulk struggled trying to snap. It was hard for him to do it. How come iron man snapped like it was nothing at the end?

While Dr. Hulk took on the gauntlet, it took him couple of seconds for him to snap like he can't do it. Iron man, snapped easily without struggle at the end. In other words, Dr. Hulk couldn't control his hand that well while iron man was stable and snapped easily.

[Assistant] Prof. Hulk was bringing back half of t he universe while trying really *really* hard to bring back Nat.  Tony had one focused goal, eliminate Thanos and his forces, nothing more nothing less.  That's a lot more simple of a goal and easier to think of in a Snap.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is a single 70% chance different to Ten 7% chances

Like. I know they are different and that one is less likely. But could someone explain this in a way that I can explain it to my partner? I know it is true but cannot remember anything about why and how to explain my point.

[Assistant]
Imagine two bags, each filled with 100 marbles.

The first bag has 70 red marbles and 30 black marbles.

The second bag has 7 red marbles and 93 black marbles.

A single 70% chance would be reaching into the first bag one time hoping for a red marble.

Ten 7% chances would be reaching your hand into the second bag, grabbing a marble, putting the marbles back and then trying again until you try 10 times.


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

[User]
ELI5: how does the body regenerate blood after donating?

Also when the blood that has been donated is regenerated why/how does the body know it is back to its needed amount?

[Assistant] After you donate blood, the number of red blood cells in your blood decreases. Red blood cells are responsible for carrying oxygen and this decreased oxygen in the blood is a stimulus for the kidney to secrete the hormone erythropoietin. This then travels to the bone marrow and stimulates the production of more red blood cells. This is a great example of a negative feedback loop.


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

[User]
Is it really so easy to get dismissed from a PhD program?

Ive been accepted into a doctoral program starting in the fall. Im excited and terrified (mostly excited though, really). One thing thats scaring me is that after reading through the student handbook it seems like they drop the possibility of dismissal a lot. Having a bad semester or having an advisor be dissatisfied with the students progress are both potential causes for dismissal. Am I missing something? Otherwise that seems like a very tenuous position. I would think after a while the school would have put enough time and money into a student that dismissal wouldnt be as looming a threat.

[Assistant]
All that stuff needs to be in the handbook because it would be a nightmare to drop a problem student without it. It needs to be something of a looming threat - if you totally check out or turn out to be a raving loon they ought to be able to boot you without an act of congress.

So: just don't check out completely or be a total nutter.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do you get sick and throw up when taking antibiotics on a empty stomach?

[Assistant]
Quite simply because the agent in the pool itself is irritating. Taking lots of medications can cause vomiting on an empty stomach because they boost acid production or irritate the stomach lining. It can also be you don't have enough juices in your stomach so the medicine is just gooping up in there.

Eating allows the medicine to be diluted and absorbed easier. It either causes more acid production which dilutes the medicine or it helps soak up the created acid/irritating agents.


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

[User]
How effective are vaccines?

I've heard that the vaccine for Covid-19 would only be about 60-70% effective. Not sure if that is 100% correct or not, but I know it wasn't 100% effective. So, what I was wondering, does that also mean that vaccines for small pox, measles, polio, etc. are also not 100% effective? Or even down to 60-70% effective? Or is that effective rate dependent upon what it is meant to go after? Or is it based on the person getting the vaccine and how their body accepts it? Or both? None? Other? Thanks!

[Assistant]
Vaccines arent 100% effective. They will not guarantee that you wont get the disease theyre designed for, and they generally dont protect against diseases they arent intended for.

However, they do reduce the likelihood of a vaccinated person catching the intended disease. Some of the common vaccines are almost 100% effective; its how weve eliminated polio. Other diseases like the flu are trickier and only run at 40% effective. It depends largely on how the human immune system interacts with the disease. For some diseases, like polio or smallpox, the bodys really good at remembering the vaccines signature and will kill any of the associated disease quickly. For flu, theres lots of slightly different strains, and our body isnt as good at fighting them, so the immune system might not recognize the specific flu as a bad thing. There are other reasons, but those get extremely complicated.

But the important thing is how many people are vaccinated. For example, take a disease that, on average, one sick person will transmit it to one non-vaccinated person in a 10,000 person population with 1% with the disease already. Its gonna get most of the population sick eventually if theres no vaccine. But if everyone takes a 40% effective vaccine, only a small fraction of the population will get it because the first 100 will only infect 60, that 2nd group only 36, and so forth.


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

[User] What happens if you give a patient a non-compatible blood type? Eg. an O- patient is given AB+ blood.

[Assistant]
Medical laboratory science student here.  O type blood does not have either A or B type antigens, and thus do not identify AB blood as self. Because of this patient's with O type blood have antibodies against the antigens present on AB type blood. When an O type patient is transfused with AB blood the O type patient antibodies bind to the AB type blood and activate complement on the cells. Complement is a process in which holes are opened in the cell membrane to cause an influx of liquid until the cell explodes. Your body is then overwhelmed with the destroyed cells and is unable to filter out all of the debris causing renal failure.

Sorry for wall of text BTW. On mobile.


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

[User] ELI5: How does Deep Freeze spray/gel work? Does it have the same effect as putting ice on the muscle, by withdrawing heat from it, or is it some chemically made artificial cooling sensation?

[Assistant] Deep Freeze uses peppermint oil (previously levomenthol, but they reformulated due to changes in the law). This causes a sensation of coolness without an actual lowering in temperature. However the body reacts in a similar way, by reducing blood flow to the affected area, so it does cause a reduction in swelling similar to if an actual ice pack had been used.


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

[User]
[TWD] How many people survived the zombie apocalypse?

Is 90% of the population now the undead? 99% I'm at the start of season 8 and I was thinking the whole community of Alexandria just outside of Washington DC may be had 100 or 150 people when Rick and group got there...the other communities including the Saviors all in that general area have around a thousand people tops...

[Assistant] I wouldn't leave out the possibility of a few thousand military and elites living in a special bunker or something, or on an aircraft carrier. Maybe... low hundreds of thousands? We haven't seen much of the other countries.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does it burn if you burp through your nose after drinking something carbonated?

[Assistant]
They contain small amounts of carbonic acid and there will be some of this left in the gas that you release. Your nose is far more sensitive to such things than your mouth is, so you feel the acid burning more than your mouth.

You can test this with a green chili. Place one on your tongue and place one up your nose and see which one is worse.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we istinctively move when we need to pee? How does it help with "keeping" it where it is until we find a place to relief ourselves?

[Assistant] Muscles. The bladder muscles weaken when you need to pee so moving around helps to contract those muscles and prevent you from peeing yourself. Eventually though, they weaken too much and you'll let loose. Hopefully you find a toilet or bush before then.


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

[User]
ELI5:If the big bang was the beginning of the dimension of time, how could anything (the big bang) actually happen during the "pre-universe" where no time actually passed?

in other words, how could something change in a world where there is no time in which it can occur?

[Assistant]
Words like "during" and "pre-" don't make any sense when you're talking about the beginning of time. "During" and "pre-" are concepts that we came up with because we perceive the universe in a way that suggests that time is moving in a particular direction. If time is an arrow pointing from left to right, "pre-" means to the left, and "during" means to the right of the beginning and to the left of the end.

Looking at the universe this way all our lives, we come to believe in causality. Events don't just *happen*; they happen because they were caused by the events that happened before them. The cause happens and then the effect, always in that order. We may not be able to explain the cause of an event, but we believe that all events are preceded by events that cause them.

The theory of a Big Bang contradicts that cause-and-effect belief. It supposes that there was an event at t=0 that had no preceding cause because there were no preceding events at all. If it's difficult to imagine, it is because we believe so strongly that events must always come after that which caused them.


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

[User]
ELI5: If a food product has a "reduced fat" alternative, why do companies still sell the "regular" kind, and not just sell the reduced fat as the main product?

For example, the last time I was at the store I bought the regular Cheez-Its and the reduced fat Cheez-Its... they both tasted the exact same, so why not just sell the reduced fat versions and do away with the "regular" kind since it's a healthier alternative?

[Assistant]
A) "reduced fat" doesn't mean healthier at all, as most of the time they just increase the amount of sugar in the product to offset the missing fat. In terms of calories, their pretty much the same.

B) "reduced fat" on the label is a much better selling point than it is a statement of fact. People can very easily convince themselves to buy junk food that they wouldn't have otherwise bought if it has "reduced fat" on the label.


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

[User]
ELI5: during the economic crisis, a lot of countries went into several billions or even trillions of debt. But where did all that money go in the first place?

And I'm not talking specifically about the USA. But also about Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal for example.

[Assistant]
When governments are not able to raise enough tax revenue to pay for the things they want to buy (by which i mean, funding social programs, maintaining infrastructure, military spending, etc) they make up the difference by selling "bonds".  A bond is basically just an agreement between the government and the investor that in exchange for an investment of say, $10,000 today, the investor will get $10,500 next year (or whatever, the actual amounts aren't important yet).  What's important is that the more confidence investors have in your ability to make good on your promise, the more willing they will be to invest that money (the US government can sell bonds at incredibly low rates because it's considered to be such a safe investment).

So, what happened during the great recession, is that as their economies crashed, tax revenues crashed with them, and all of a sudden governments had to borrow tons and tons more money than they really wanted to, in order to pay their bills (you can't really just cancel national pensions or health care or whatever, every time the economy stumbles).  Unfortunately, some of them were forced to borrow *so much* money, that investors started to worry that they might never actually get paid back, and started to demand higher and higher interest rates on their bonds.  At a certain point, this becomes a bit like payday loans on a national scale, where you're trapped just forever borrowing and borrowing to make this week's payment.  Now, if a country controls its own currency, one way out of this mess would be to just let the currency inflate, which makes it easier to pay your debts (among many other effects), but this wasn't really an option for the Eurozone countries, because they couldn't control the Euro.  So, instead, they were forced into counterproductive "austerity" programs to cut spending in exchange for emergency loans from the rest of the eurozone.


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

[User]
ELI5: I have been eating a frozen pizza every day for the past 3 months (supreme makes it healthy right?), what will happen to my body if I keep up this trend?

I have not gained any weight, but is there anything else I should be worried about if I continue this delicious diet?

[Assistant]
Post the nutritional facts and the quantity you are eating if you want a real answer.

But you are likely consuming too much sodium and carbohydrates while not getting all of the vitamins and minerals your body needs.


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

[User] Judit Polgar, Hungarian chess Grandmaster, was apparently raised by her parents as an experiment to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age. Where there conclusive results of this and has it been done elsewhere?

[Assistant]
Studies are quite consistent that by far the single biggest predictor of whether someone becomes a highly skilled chess player is how much time they spend playing chess - and this is true even for kids whose parents forced them to play, so it's not just a case of people who are naturally talented choosing to play more. What's true for chess isn't necessarily true of other fields, though.

Notably, Judit has two sisters who went through the same training, and she isn't the one who seemed most talented as a young child - just the one who played most.


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

[User]
Tesla's "free energy" solution

Been hearing a lot about it on here lately...about how it got squashed because people couldn't make money off it, etc.

Done a little browsing around but haven't found much concrete information about it.

Explain like I'm five!

[Assistant]
There is no such thing as "free energy". When someone tells you there is free energy one of three things is happening.

1)They are trying to sell you something.
2)They are omitting a lot of facts
3)They do not understand the basic laws of physics.


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

[User]
Could you ever have a highly maneuverable spaceship (like Sci-Fi's X-Wing or Tie Fighter) in real life?

Could you ever have a highly maneuverable spaceship (like Sci-Fi's X-Wing or Tie Fighter) in real life? And what are some theories on how it would fly?

[Assistant]
Any real star fighter would fly more in the sense of the ship in asteroids (the classic 2D video game) but in 3 dimensions.  A burn would give the ship velocity in one direction whilst manoeuvring thrusters could re angle the ship whilst still on its trajectory and make for another burn. With clever enough manipulation this could make for a pretty manoeuvrable space craft as it could change to any direction particularly quickly but it would not fly in the conventional sense you see In movies.

As jaa101 pointed out the motion of the x-wing and tie fighter is typical of atmospheric flight where interaction with a fluid medium is needed to generate lift to keep the aircraft airborne. This doesn't translate to space at all.


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

[User] Some animals can generate electricty, and others can supposedly sense the Earth's magnetic field, but is any animal known to generate a magnetic field of its own?

[Assistant] No significant magnetic fields. Any animal that produces electric current will produce a corresponding magnetic field, but it wouldnt be strong enough or directed enough to be noticeable or useful for the creature.


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

[User]
Explain how "currently in the US whenever someone without insurance uses emergency medical services to save their life, how do the taxpayers end up paying for it"?

Just how exactly does this work? The (in)famous court case kinda only cited it, didn't really explain how.

[Assistant]
Let's say John Smith doesn't have health insurance.  He runs into a medical emergency (maybe a car accident) and goes to the ER.  He makes OK money, but he can't afford the $60,000 bill they slap him with.  So, the hospital negotiates with him and waves all their fees.  He just has to pay for the doctor, the medication, and the tests.  The hospital still has to make money, but it waves or renegotiates fees with uninsured people all the time.  So, they raise costs across the board for others.

Now, let's say Fred Johnson doesn't have health insurance, and he is very poor.  He's had some health problems but hasn't gone to the doctor to get them looked at because he can't afford it.  He keeps putting it off until it's an emergency.  He goes to the ER, and they have to admit him.  Bills end up running about $100,000.  He has no hope of paying those off, so he doesn't pay any of it.  Well, if he had gotten preventative care and had gone to a doctor when the problems first started, it might have cost a couple hundred bucks.  Now, the debt is $100,000.  He's not paying for it, so who eats those costs?  Everyone else who goes to the ER.  The hospital, the doctors, the drug companies, etc... none of htem get paid for what was done for the patient.  So, prices are raised on everyone else who can pay.

The new health care mandate is going to make it so both John and Fred have insurance.  John makes enough money to pay for health insurance.  Now, he has to.  Fred does not make enough money to pay for health insurance.  Before, single men (even if they were very poor) could not get Medicaid for insurance.  Now, if they make under a certain amount of money, single men can get health insurance.  Fred might get Medicaid insurance now, or he can buy private insurance, and because he doesn't make much money, the government will give him a credit on his taxes every year to pay for most of the cost of his insurance.  Tax payers are basically paying for Fred to get insurance, but now Fred can get medical care when his problems first arise, when they're not expensive, instead of waiting to go to the ER when it is an expensive medical emergency.

Before, John Smith wasn't paying for health insurance.  Now, he is.  By paying the premiums as a healthy man, he is now helping insurance companies to pay for the preventative care of people like Fred Johnson.  Initially, expenses might go up as Fred and people like Fred all go in for doctors' visits for the first time in years.  Before long, expenses are going to go way down because insurance companies will be paying less money for emergency care.  Hospitals are not going to have to write off almost any hospital visits because almost everyone will ahve insurance.


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

[User]
[Spiderman] What happens to the radioactive spider that bit Peter? What was the spider going to be used for anyways?

Always wondered what happened to it. And what was supposed to be the purpose of a radioactive spider? Did anyone know its bite would result in giving the victim powers?

[Assistant]
It bit another student named Cindy Moon, who became the hero Silk and the spider then promptly died from the radiation. A student named Carl King, who was at the exhibition, figured out the that spider must have made Peter Spider-Man and tracked down the spider and ate it. The resulting mutation turned him into the Thousand, a collection of 1,000 spiders.

The spider wasn't intended to be radioactive. It was caught in a lab demonstration accidentally, so nobody knew that it existed until after it bit Peter and Cindy.


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

[User]
How do I convince my parents to let me study philosophy next year in college?

Hi all,

I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'm at a complete loss, and I would like to hear your input.

I'm 17 years old high school senior. Next year I'll be going to college and I have been set since I was 14 to study philosophy later. The reason is my fascination for the subject, and how much it's changed me since I was in middle school.

The only problem is that my parents want me to study to become an engineer. They said that they're the ones who pay for my tuition, so they have a right to say what I get to study. My father says it's a compromise: I get to go to college, but he gets to say what I do. I said that he cannot control my life and tell me what to study, he says that in this case just pay for college yourself.

But I really don't want to study engineering. While I find it interesting, my heart is not in it. I really want to study philosophy, and have been reading on my own on philosophical topics since I was 13. I feel extremely frustrated about the whole ordeal.

My father says that studying philosophy is useless, as there is no real life application. He says that I am trying to escape the real world, and hide in childish fantasies. He says that once I'm an adult, I will thank him for choosing engineering as it will secure me a job (he didn't say this in a condescending tone, but in a rather supportive one, before you get super angry against my father). I tried explaining to him what philosophy does, and how it isn't *useless*, but he says that these things don't matter at all. He kept arguing that I should focus on things that matter, like taxes, accounting, coding, etc.

I agree with him that these things are primordial to live, but there is more to life than just practical things. To give you a picture of my father, he's the kind of man that thinks everything that isn't popular is "pretentious", his idea of the good life is barbecueing, beer and watching sports on TV with his friends from high school. He's a really hard working man, and for that I respect him a lot. He's sacrificed a lot for me and my sister so that we could go to college. But he doesn't want me to study philosophy, and to be honest I don't know what to say, because I am 60% sure that if I study philosophy, I'll have a really difficult life.

I've actually considered moving to Germany or France, where the tuition is really low so that I can get to study what I want without crippling student debt.

I'm really at a loss. I'm sure some of you on this subreddit have had the same problems. How do I convince my parents of the utility of philosophy, my passion for the subject, and that there isn't only practical things in life?

Much love, F.

[Assistant] Offer a compromise. You can say you'll get a philosophy minor and a practical major. If he doesn't want to pay for that, then offer to take out loans for the additional minor credits. Since you need gen eds anyways, the only additional credits you'd need is a small handful. If we're only talking about undergrad anyways, then if you're dedicated to self study you can easily learn as much as you could with a major with only a minor.


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

[User] ELI5: When held at gunpoint by a shooter, why is it said that telling the shooter personal details about yourself make them less likely to shoot you?

[Assistant]
The average person with a gun isn't a hardened killer.  Odds are pretty good they've barely used their weapon before, and odds are even better that they'd rather not be doing what they're doing.

So reminding them that you're a real person that they could be hurting will often make them feel regretful and guilty - which makes it more likely you'll be on your way safely.  The advice I've always heard is just to let them know that they're in control of the situation, give them your wallet/jewelry/whatever if they ask for it, and don't try to escalate the situation unless they try to hurt you or try to kidnap you.


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

[User] ELI5: How did we realise the mind is in the brain?

[Assistant]
Most human cultures large enough to have major medical practices or dedicated healers were able to observe that injuries to the brain can cause changes or impairments to the mind.

It took more studies to get a more precise understanding, but the connection between the mind and the brain is pretty intuitive from just what can be observed.


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

[User]
How does Leo Strauss' reading of Plato's Republic differ from the traditional / standard views?

What are the most fundamental differences in Leo Strauss reading of Plato's republic?

[Assistant]
Strauss's most well-known and (in)famous difference is that he views *The Republic* as a work of political satire. Strauss argues that there are subtle cues in *The Republic* that Plato's Socrates is not *seriously* advocating the kind of political order he is describing, and that this, along with the dialogical structure of *The Republic*, indicates that the work is to be read as a metacritique of the project of political philosophy.

An important part of Strauss's interpretation is the role of the Guardian class - the philosophically trained people who are necessary for *Kallipolis* have, on Strauss's view, no actual interest in governing, because, being philosophically trained, they realize that the best life is one of pure contemplation, not political activity. They must therefore be *forced* to lead the city, but, for various reasons, this is incoherent (IIRC, Strauss argues, for one, that the population would only force them to lead if it recognized their wisdom, but it could only recognize their wisdom if it were itself wise in the first place).

So, at the most fundamental level, the Straussian view is that the ideal city of Plato's *Republic* is not only impractical, but theoretically incoherent. This introduces an unbridgeable divide between philosophy and politics, and leads Straussians to be broadly skeptical of the task of political philosophy.


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

[User] ELI5: How peeling scotch tape in a vacuum creates radiation.

[Assistant] The phenomena is triboluminescence.  It's not entirely understood by science, but what we think is happening is that when the tape is peeled, it creates charge (e.g. one surface keeps an electron when they're ripped apart).  That charge quickly recombines, which--in air--ionizes the air and makes light.  Absent of air, it seems the charge leaves as X-rays.


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

[User] ELI5: why is it that long distance shooters tend to use bolt action rifles? Can a magazine fed semi-auto not do the same job?

[Assistant]
A semi-automatic weapon uses either some of the recoil from a shot, or gas from the shot to cycle it's action.  This means that the action begins moving while the projectile is still inside of the weapon.  The motion of the action moves the gun, and can affect the accuracy of the shot.

A bolt action stays in place and remains a solid unit the shooter manually works it.  This reduced amount of motion leads to greater accuracy.

Great strides have been made in making the actions of certain semi-auto weapons more stable and accurate, and there are a lot of solid options available.  At the end of the day though, if we're talking the absolute best weapon with each type of action, in the hands of a highly skilled shooter, the bolt action will win out.


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

[User]
[Evil Dead]Why can't Ash be possessed?

We have seen the evil spirits, or whatever they are, at least temporarily possess the living to kickstart a killing/infecting spree. Ash seems to be immune to any kind of possession.

[Assistant] Because he was infected before, the deadite couldn't get him inside before the sun came up purifying him and rendering him resistant to possession forever. Sometimes spirits still try, this is where evil ash came from.


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

[User] Are borders on maps drawn at high tide, low tide, or somewhere in between?

[Assistant] Mean Sea Level is the usual standard datum for mapping. Because high and low tides can vary in magnitude, as well as having seasonal and weather related variation imprinted on them, mean sea level is the most readily  applicable standard in most cases. Because MSL also acts as the standard datum for ~~nautical and~~ topographic mapping, everything is much neater using this as a standard (although, let's face it, simplicity rarely comes into these things).


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

[User] ELI5: When you turn down or up the volume on devices with either a wheel or button, what actually happens that allows it to sound quieter or louder?

[Assistant]
A volume knob or wheel is an example of a device called a *potentiometer*, which is a device that adjusts the voltage going down a wire by increasing or decreasing the electrical resistance.

If the resistance increases (if you turn the volume knob down), then less voltage makes it to the speaker, the cone vibrates less intensely, and the sound is quieter. The opposite is true if you turn the volume up.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does the NES light gun work?

Many of you probably have at least heard of the light gun attachment for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I was wondering how it works, because as far as I know, there isn't a sensor or anything used separately from the TV.

[Assistant]
Its quite brilliant actually.

When you hit the trigger the screen went black for 1 frame, the next frame kept everything black but made the targets appear white. The gun could detect the change from black to white so if it picked up white it knew it was pointed at a target and you got a hit. If it only detected black it knew you missed.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Per his propaganda, how did Palpatine survive the Jedi assassination attempt and how did he get his scars?

Were the clone troopers sufficient to fight off the Jedi? The scars on his face do not look like lightsaber injuries so what happened to Palpatine?

[Assistant] He never clarified how he was attacked, only that he was. His explanation for how he survived was timely intervention from guards and Darth Vader, a Jedi who saw through their lies and remained loyal to Palpatine and the Republic.


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

[User]
[Black Mirror] How long until the government realizes that "blocking" is stupidly dangerous?

Wouldn't blocking increase the murder rate?

In an emotionally-charged argument, blocking someone will surely anger them more.

If you block someone during a violent argument, they can still hurt you. They can still touch you.

However, you can't hear what they are saying, you can't see their faces and know what they are looking at, you don't know what they are planning.

Also, they can't see you, and they can hurt you with no guilt because you are no longer a person, you are a faceless white blob, and your pleas for mercy will literally go unheard.

How long until the government decides that the risks of blocking aren't worth the nebulous "benefits"?

[Assistant] Another question is also raised, isn't being put on "the list" and being blocked by everyone effectively a death sentence?  How would someone who is blocked by everyone ever buy food?  Hold a job?  Receive medical care? Etc.  Not just because of the stigma, but because you literally couldn't communicate with anyone.


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

[User]
If the speed of light is the maximum speed an object can move then isn't there a maximum temperature?

From my limited experience I understand that heat comes from particles moving and bumping into each other. The faster the particles the higher the temperature. So since particles are moving arent they bound by the speed of light? And if that's true isn't there a maximum temperature since the particle speed is limited?

Or maybe i'm just confused...

[Assistant]
Temperature is technically defined as the amount of internal energy/entropy of the system. Now let's just ignore entropy for the moment, as that's a much larger discussion. In the non-relativistic picture you are correct in saying that energy and velocity appear to be linked in a simple manner. E=0.5 mv^2 . But as we get to higher velocities, E^2 -p^2 c^2 =m^2 c^4 becomes the equation of interest. Let's for the moment, throw out the m^2 c^4 since it's just a constant term that shifts the energy up uniformly for each particle. E=pc, this E being just kinetic energy alone. 'p' is the particle's momentum. p=(1-(v/c)^2 )^-1/2 mv. So as v->c the first term, called gamma, goes toward infinity.

tl;dr, we can keep adding more energy even if the velocity doesn't continue to increase.


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

[User]
CMV: Gender identity is a useless construct that appropriates the actual mental illness gender dysphoria.

In my view, gender identity is identifying with a characteristic that doesn't describe you, like identifying as tall when you're a short person, or identifying 20 when you're actually 60. There are people with actual gender dysphoria which is similar to body dysmorphia and it is a serious condition that currently is best treated by transitioning, in that case identifying as another gender is a therapeutic tool and the only solution to the mental illness. When people claim to be trans or nonbinary or any other type of non-cisgender without the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, it appropriates a mental illness and is basically the same as someone claiming to have OCD, depression, anxiety, ETC... without actually having them.

EDIT: my view has changed I understand the other side and thanks to you guys see gender identity as a spectrum. Thank you guys.

[Assistant]
To change your view on this, it might be helpful to think about gender dysphoria as a spectrum rather than a binary (yes/no) kind of thing.

For example, I've known people who have a gender identity that doesn't match their biological sex that experience milder forms of gender dysphoria.

It's not intense enough to require therapy or a formal diagnosis (which is expensive for many to get). Rather, a few lifestyle factors can be changed to mostly manage it. Gender transition isn't absolutely necessary either (and indeed, for people who are non-binary, transitioning wouldn't help things).


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

[User] [DC/Marvel] Could Poison Ivy control Groot?

[Assistant]
Probably not. Since he's a sentient and fully cognizant lifeform, Groot's likely too intelligent for her to control.

Ivy's plant control power generally has little to no influence over other sentient plant lifeforms like Swamp Thing and Harvest.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] During the Clone Wars, are Jedi forced to be generals? Is it a voluntary thing? Can you flunk out and lose your command?

The main ones we see all seem into it: Obi-Wan, Anakin, Plo, and so on.  But what about someone who's a pacifist.  Would they get assigned a generalship regardless?  Or what if they're fine with war, they'd just really rather work in the library, but they're not important there so they could be easily reassigned?  Can any Jedi just go to the temple and request an army?  Is there any way to suck so badly at being a general that you lose yours?  Krell is mentioned as having casualty figures so bad that it's obvious.  Was he ever given a PIP by Yoda and told to shape up or he can't command anymore?

[Assistant] In the old Clone Wars comic (published between Episodes 2 and 3) had a storyline that showed a group of Jedi who had collectively decided to not participate in the war (each had there own reasons). Mace Windu was sent to talk with them and see if they could be convinced to reconsider, but they werent going to conscript them into being generals.