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

[User]
[Star Trek TNG] Why are more melee weapons not employed against the Borg?

If not melee only, then more conventional firearms or something that uses a slower-moving projectile (since shooting guns on a starship could understandably be disastrous). It reminds me of Stargate when the guy had a personal shield like the Borg so O'Neill just throws a knife through it since it wasn't calibrated to stop slow-moving objects, just projectiles. Bullets are going to move slower than beams of light (plasma? I'm not sure what phasers shoot) Worf had luck with his mallninja knife in First Contact, Picard did ok with a Thompson. I wonder if it's a case of keep it simple, stupid. Granted the Borg are portrayed to be very strong in comparison to humans, but it seems like they also move kind of slow and giving your guys a chance with blades is better than having them stand there wondering why their phaser isn't working until they get assimilated.

[Assistant]
They would adapt, and then all melee/projectile weapons would be useless. Star Trek shields are capable of stopping physical objects.

At least phasers can have their frequency changed, giving the weapon another chance to be effective, melee weapons have no such capability.

Add to that, getting that close to a Borg drone is a great way to get yourself assimilated, after all you're in arms reach with a melee weapon.

(I'd also avoid comparing Star Trek shields with Stargate's. Different tech, different results, strengths,  weaknesses.)


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

[User]
Does my friend running water on his roof really cool the house down?

I live in Thailand as a volunteer English teacher currently and my friend insists that it's cooler if he has these little sprinklers creating artificial rain on his roof. He says it's something to do with it creating a gap of air or something but it sounds to me like really bad science as I really don't feel any cooler in the house when this rain is running... So my question is whether there's actually any truth behind what he says or whether it's just bad science/the cultural norm around here ( a lot of households do it and everyone i have been in has still be really hot! )

[Assistant]
Yes, this can work.  The air gap thing sounds like BS though.

When his roof is damp/wet, some of that water will evaporate into the air.  In doing so, it will take some heat with it.  Every bit of solar energy 'used' to evaporate the water is a bit of solar energy that isn't heating the house.

For a simple experiment, put room temp water in a spray bottle and mist yourself with it.  Now blow air over where the mist landed, and your skin will feel cool- cooler than when you blow on dry skin.  That's the evaporation effect at work.

HOW WELL this will work depends on a number of factors.  Your friend will experience a greater cooling effect on windy, low humidity days (which promote the most evaporation) and the least effect on calm, humid days (when evaporation will happen much more slowly).


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

[User] [Westworld] How much debt would a 7 day holiday at Westworld put me in?

[Assistant]
Westworld's most basic package is 40,000 dollars a day, so, let's do the math.

40x7 = 280,000, not including travel expenses there, so let's chalk up another thousand.

281,000.

All expenses in-park are gratis, so food and board and equipment is free. All the price comes down to admission.


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

[User]
[Dredd Film 2012] Did Judge Dredd know the detonator wouldn't go off?

In the 2012 film Dredd did Judge Dredd know that the detonator on Ma-Ma's wrist would not have enough range to blow up the Block or did he take the gamble when he threw her out the window?

[Assistant]
Nope. Didn't have a clue. He didn't exactly have many options, though.

If he tried to take her into custody, it would have been impossible to transport one of the biggest drug lords in Mega City 1 to  the Halls of Justice. Even worse, she'd probably try to off herself out of spite.

If he killed her stone dead, he was definitely not walking away from it.

His only real option was to get her out of range or interfere with the signal as quickly as he could, and gravity presented the fastest facilitator. He gambled on it being enough.


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

[User]
Why are there laws when it comes to war?

It's people killing eachother, so I have no idea, how someone could make laws about it.

[Assistant]
There are two separate questions here - why and how.

I think the 'why' is fairly obvious - there are some pretty horrific methods of warfare and ways of carrying out violence.  In the past it was simply accepted that as an army passed through an area it would rape, loot and steal everything not nailed down, prisoners taken would be tortured and forced to work or fight for the enemy.  This largely is no longer the case.  Chemical and biological weapons are more or less unused, certainly by major powers, as are mines and cluster weapons.  We consider these things too horrific or non-specific - that is, they mostly target innocent civilians.  There was no such thing as a war crime before the 20th century - now we have a somewhat functional justice system capable of holding people to account for their actions during war.

As to how these laws are enforced - it's entirely possible.  More or less by mutual agreement, gas weapons were never used in world war 2. Chemical weapons have never (with the arguable exception of Vietnam, but that was officially 'deforestation') been used in open conflict without the total condemnation of the international community, similarly with biological agents.  It works because the amount of damage using such a weapon would do to a country's diplomatic prospects (trade sanctions, general mistrust from other countries, maybe even war) is just not worth the risk.  Often these 'non-conventional' weapons, warfare targeting the civilian population, and similar strategies are used in response to the other side using them.  So by taking them off the table entirely, countries no longer need to stock up on chemical or biological weapons in the first place because they know with fair certainty that nobody else is either.


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

[User]
Is there a difference in the quality of happiness experienced from 'engineered' activities like video games compared to the happiness experienced from 'natural' activities like rock climbing?

I've been thinking about the types of activities people fill their lives with in modern times compared to what people did in the past and wondered if there is any way to differentiate the levels of happiness or satisfaction obtained from those activities. Things like video games and content streaming sites have been designed to make people feel happy, and as a result people keep coming back to these activities, but it seems that, personally, these things do not give the same 'quality' of happiness or satisfaction as something like riding my motorcycle in the mountains. Why is that?

[Assistant] In terms of reward experienced during these activities, no. Studies have shown that the neural reward experienced from gaming can be similar to or greater than that of other highly enjoyable activities, such as sex or even drugs. Happiness, however, is very multifaceted, and you could argue that certain engineered hobbies like gaming may produce less happiness because of their negative consequences such as obesity, loneliness, etc.


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

[User]
Best way to install multiple programming tools while keeping everything "clean"?

I just got a new laptop and in my previous one I found myself many times full on garbage files of different frameworks or programming languages and sometimes I had issues when trying out some new tool because the other things that I had installed were getting in the way, what is your alternative to keep your PC clean while working with multiple technologies?

An idea I've been looking into was making virtual machines for different technologies, but maybe there are other solutions.

[Assistant]
Creating separate VMs for each language or framework sounds like overkill to me.

A lot of this comes down to using the right packaging tools. For instance, npm in Javascript; Maven/Gradle in Java; pip+virtualenv in Python; "go get" and vendoring in Go. The idea is to keep all of your dependencies scoped to the specific project that uses them.

Your project directory (and your version control repository) should contain all the information needed to build the project, without requiring anything to be installed system-wide except for the language and runtime environment itself. If you decide to uninstall a language that you're not using, you can just reinstall it later and you won't have lost anything important.


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

[User]
ELI5: How/why do old games like Ocarina of Time, a seemingly massive game at the time, manage to only take up 32mb of space, while a simple time waster like candy crush saga takes up 43mb?

Subsequently, how did we fit entire operating systems like Windows 95/98 on hard drives less than 1gb? Did software engineers just find better ways to utilize space when there was less to be had? Could modern software take up less space if engineers tried?

Edit: great explanations everybody! General consensus is art = space. It was interesting to find out that most of the music and video was rendered on the fly by the console while the cartridge only stored instructions.  I didn't consider modern operating systems have to emulate all their predecessors and control multiple hardware profiles... Very memory intensive. Also, props to the folks who gave examples of crazy shit compressed into <1mb files. Reminds me of all those old flash games we used to be able to stack into floppy disks. (penguin bowling anybody?) thanks again!

[Assistant] A large chunk of a game's size comes from things like textures and audio files. Older games had very small, simple textures if they used them at all. In contrast, newer games tend to use high-resolution images that take dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of megabytes just by themselves. Likewise, audio in old games was pretty simple. Older systems synthesized sounds, allowing the game to just supply some basic instructions to control them. Now, audio is typically recorded and stored with the game, making the overall size larger.


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

[User]
ELI5: I open a big bag of chips, Family sized. I take my portion, and also fill 3 zip lock baggies with those freshly opened chips. TWO DAYS LATER the chips I put in the zip locked bags are STALE. 2 WEEKS later, the chips in the original bag are not stale.

I thought I would be saving money, saving the chips in fresh zip locked bags, but no. Stale as Hell. I am old. I don't do it anymore, I'm just wondering why, when I leave the family sized bag folded over/barely closed, WHY do they still taste fresh, and my "freshly" sealed goes bad within 2-3 days? Cheers!

[Assistant] Bags of chips are not full of air, they are full of nitrogen (I think) or some other chemical mix that keeps things fresh and reduces moisture and bacterial growth. As soon as you open the bag this dissipates.


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

[User] Could someone explain the difference between who and whom LI5?

[Assistant]
*Who* is a subject, while *whom* is a direct object.

To compare, look at another pronoun:

*He* is a subject, while *him* is a direct object.

Examples:

*Who* let the dogs out?

To *whom* did you write the letter?

*Edit:* Thank you to thearchduke (below) for further simplifying!


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

[User]
If you were to put 10 box fans in a straight line all facing the same direction (like dominoes); would the air coming out of the last fan be stronger than a single box fan?

I know there are probably a lot of variables to deal with here but I'm not sure what they are.

[Assistant] Sure, each box fan causes a pressure drop from one side to the other. The magnitude of this drop is roughly related to how much kinetic energy is imparted on the air (i.e. how fast it ends up going). 10 box fans won't cause 10 times the pressure drop of a single fan but it will certainly be fore than a single fan.


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

[User]
[CMV] I think car alarms are a waste of money and don't prevent theft

These days, when you're walking through a parking lot, and you hear a car alarm go off, which is your first thought?

A. Some dumbass set off his car alarm.

B. Some dude's getting his shit jacked!

I'm sure most people would say A.  Now, if a car alarm has been going off for 20 seconds, which do you think:

A. Some dumbass's car alarm went off for no good reason.

B. Some dumbass can't figure out how to shut off his alarm.

C. Some dude's getting his shit jacked!

I'm more inclined to think its A or B.

Now, let's take it a step FURTHER.  What if someone is driving down the road in a car that has an alarm going off?

A. That dumbass can't get his alarm to shut off!

B. Some dude's getting his shit jacked!

Again, I'm less likely to think B.

I think the extreme number of false alarms on car alarms has made them completely ineffective and anybody that actually thinks an alarm will stop a theft is delusional.  Change my view.

[Assistant]
Court testimony and gathering nearby attention.

If somebody's car was stolen from a parking lot, or broken into, suddenly you have valuable information that you previously categorized as useless.  Not only that, but car alarms are loud and gather attention.  The last thing thieves want is attention, and certain cues can tip you off to someone who does not own that car.  If you look over and see something suspicious, you could be a valuable witness even if you write it off as some dumbass who doesn't know how car alarms work at first.


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

[User]
All time zones converge at the earth's poles.   So for scientists working near either the north or south poles, what time zone do they actually use?

Another way to say it:  what time/date is it at the location of the north and south poles right now?

How did scientists determine this time/date as the official time to go by at the poles?

[Assistant]
At the AmundsenScott South Pole Station, they decided to use New Zealand time (UTC +12), because all official travel to the station comes to Antarctica out of Christchurch.

Since the North Pole is an iceflow in the Arctic Ocean, it does not have a permanent settlement that would require them to figure out a time zone standard to live by.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is everything bigger in America except the bathtubs?

As an American visiting the UK, one notices everything is just a bit--sometimes quite a bit--smaller. Coke cans, roads, cars, houses, all hit with a shrink ray. Makes sense, since there's less room to work with over here.

That is, until you get to the bathroom part of the house.

There you may luxuriate in the bathtub, which normally is long enough for average Britishers to submerge their entire bodies in water ***without having to scrunch their legs up like every American has to do!***

On noticing this, I feel I've been cheated. It's not like we don't have the space for these huge tubs in our houses. So ELI5: why did North American builders make this pact with the devil to only install small tubs in houses? Why, oh why?

[Assistant] Most American adults don't take daily baths, so the bathtub is mostly there for kids and so that the realtors and assessors can check that box saying they have a tub to raise the value of the home.  Bigger tub = more floorspace taken up = less room for other activities.


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

[User]
[CS:GO] Why does a molotov cocktail cost $400?

It's just a bottle filled with gasoline or alcohol with a rag soaked in oil. Do the terrorists only use the finest liquor for their molotovs?

[Assistant]
It's actually a highly advanced model that :

- can be set alight indefinitely and only explode upon throwing
- can be put away safely to use later if you light it too early
- has been wind-tunnel tested for maximum aerodynamics and consistent throwing
- includes the latest in glass-compound technology giving it its anti-shatter and bouncing properties
- weight saving design that doesn't slow you down for carrying it

...so naturally it'd carry the price tag. The terrorists only want the finest when blowing up wooden crates in empty villages.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Can Matt Murdock/Daredevil eat spicy food?

This applies to both comics and MCU. In the Netflix version, Murdock at one point notices Claire has opened a cut on her back from across the room because he tastes copper in the air.

So, with a sense of taste *that* heightened, can he eat anything remotely spicy? Or would even a few drops of sriracha be completely debilitating?

[Assistant]
Human have much more detailed vision then other species- comes with being highly intelligent fruit eaters. Other species tend to see better at long distances, but what to most mammals is muted fuzzy shades is to a human a brightly coloured mass of details. So are we overwhelmed by the sheer amount of color and patterns around us?

Generally no. To us, everything's a normal amount of colour.

Same here. It might have been an issue after he first got his powers, but at this point its his normal. Spicy food tastes, to him, exactly as spicy as spicy food normally does.


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

[User]
How Do People Balance So Many Paradigms At The Same Time?

I'm a recent graduate and I'm trying to balance C++, MySQL, React, JS, PHP, Front end web design all at the same time. And by balance I mean, become proficient at.

I honestly have no idea how people do this. It's like playing 10 different musical instruments a day and you're switching instruments every hour. And we know nobody does that. People just stick to 1 instrument. Especially when there's so much depth within each of those paradigms.

I feel like I cannot become a master in any of those if I'm doing all of those at the same time. The best I can manage is basic level understanding and can't go that deep.

But so many people do it and its considered the bare minimum to become a proficient in at least 4-5 paradigms. How?

[Assistant]
Software engineering is not about "writing code", it's about "solving problems", and while a musician doesn't switch between many instruments (though some do), a carpenter would be pretty terrible if all he could do was swing a hammer.

Your work product is not the code you write, but the problem you've solved.  A musician's work product is the music itself, played or written.


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

[User]
What's wrong with scientism?

I am physics student who is very new to philosophy. So, please forgive my ignorance. I have noticed that on a lot of philosophical subs tend to be hostile towards scientism. Not to mention "Stemlord" jokes and so on.
And on the other side, if you read Hawking he would say philosophy is dead and so on.
Since both of the field are based on rationalism, why is there antagonistic relationship between them?
And finally, can you recommend books to get better view of this schism from philosophical perspective.

[Assistant]
> Since both of the field are based on rationalism, why is there a so antagonistic relationship between them?

There isn't: when people criticize "scientism", they aren't criticizing *science*, they're criticizing the view that *there is no significant theoretical inquiry other than science*. And they're critical of this view, as it seems evident to them that there *are* significant theoretical inquiries other than science, like mathematics and philosophy.


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

[User] ELI5: What is physically different between a high-end CPU (e.g. Intel i7) and a low-end one (Intel i3)? What makes the low-end one cheaper?

[Assistant]
The process to make computer chips isn't perfect. Certain sections of the chip may not function properly.

They make dozens of chips on a single "wafer", and then test them individually.

Chips that have defects or issues, like 1/8 cores not functioning, or a Cache that doesn't work, don't go to waste. They get re-configured into a lower tier chip.

In other words, a 6-core i5 is basically an 8-core i7 that has 2 defective cores.

(Just for reference, these defects and imperfections are why some chips overclock better than others. Every chip is slightly different.)


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

[User] ELI5: Data Compression. How can information be reduced in size and still be the same?

[Assistant]
Let's do this in a really simple, visual kind of way. Here's two ways of expressing the same thing:

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

17 W's.

Now, they both show the same thing. But the second takes up only 6 characters (including the space), while the first takes up 17 characters

The same basic idea is how data compression works. If you've got a piece of information that repeats itself a lot, you can compress it like that.


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

[User] ELI5: When Charlie Sheen was fired why didn't the producers just sue him for not doing his job and not have to pay him ridiculous amounts of money to end his contract?

[Assistant]
Entertainment contracts are... complicated. And Charlie and his team know how he could continue to meet the demands of his contract and get paid.  The contract probably (read: it absolutely did) have termination payments and such for various reasons and clauses for outs for both sides.

For whatever reasons, the producers decided to go the firing route, preventing him from riding out his contract and causing conflict.


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

[User]
Eli5 How do mirrors in videogames work?

Especially in RPG type games where a mirror can reflect your custom character in whatever combination of clothing/hair you can think of.

[Assistant]
Actual game developer here.

Depends on the type of mirror.  There are many methods of making mirrors in games, its a notoriously hard thing to do.

One method is where you make the mirror actually render out the scene a second time from a different perspective inside of the mirror, doing some wacky things with render textures and messing with the near-clipping plane of the secondary camera to make it all look right.  Coding this is a pain in the ass and it basically doubles your rendering load, but the results look super good making it great for RPG character creators.

Another method is raytracing.  This only works if you are using a raytracing based render engine in the first place, the way raytracing works is that the camera shoots out a virtual ray at each pixel, and wherever it hits it shoots out rays to each light source in the scene to figure out how that point is lit.  The results look very good, though it can also be very computationally heavy to render a game that way.  With that method its actually super easy to make a surface that reflects rays that hit it, and from there everything just works out.

Another rare but still sometimes used method that could be used if theyd geometry permits it is just creating an entire second copy of the world behind the mirror and make the mirror just be like a window.  From there adding in another character model that mirrors the original isnt hard.

Other methods exist that have less fidelity.  Reflection mapping for instance is super common for objects in game worlds made out of a reflective material like metal or the surface of water, this involves displaying parts of a pre-rendered skybox (which could even be made based on the objects surroundings) based on the relative angle of the camera and the normal vectors of the mesh.  This is nice because it looks pretty damn good for what it is but its also super easy on the GPU.


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

[User]
[Halo] Is the UNSC officially the strongest faction in the known universe post war?

I recently finished the Kilo-Five book trilogy, there was a part when the Infinity was "helping" the arbiter with the civil war and  margaret parangosky said something along the lines of "Oh that's cute, he still thinks they're the ultimate power in the universe" and that got me thinking.

Obviously the Infinity is one of if not the strongest vessel in operation that we see, granted we never see it go up against a super carrier or anything but it the odds seem in its favor. But Id have to imagine that the majority of fighting age humans are dead and the UNSC must be having major economic ramifications after decades of fighting a losing war against aliens and human elements.

Do you guys think that the UNSC could be considered the strongest at the moment? This is before the halo 5 thing btw.

[Assistant]
Post war, everyone is hurting.

The UNSC has a crippled military, only able to project its might through Forerunner retrofits of older vessels and a few new designs incorporating the most advanced technology in the galaxy.

Civil unrest is rife, and ONI oversteps its power often, leading to discord inside the high command.

Their main advantage is that their technology is home grown, they know how to build it, they can rebuild it. With a little time, the UNSC will recover.

The immense Covenant fleets are spread out amongst warlords, lacking in maintenance and irreplaceable. The Sangheili are starving, with little infrastructure or the ability to build it.

The Jiralhanae and other Covenant Loyalists have little materiel or military might, they are a sideshow.

The UNSC, Separatists, and Loyalists are three men in a hospital ward. Mr UNSC just survived a serious illness, and is getting better, Mr Separatists just went through a traumatic injury, and is still in critical condition, and Mr Loyalists is terminal.


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

[User]
I can't help but feel that the United States has only made the world a worse place to live since the 1950's. CMV!

I've recently been doing a major project in school in which I study how the US has treated Third World countries during the Cold War and what I've found is truly disturbing to me. I'm a history buff, so I already knew that we were never really great at supporting democracies, but I recently discovered that a lot of governments that we propped up killed mercilessly and used death squads to maintain power. And worse yet, a lot of the dictators that we supported were even worse than the Communist governments we were trying to stop. I've read a great deal about how dozens of pro-US, right wing dictators murdered thousands of people all over the world, but with the exception of Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and Kim-Il Sung, I can't find a lot of Communists who did the same.

[Assistant]
The question you should be asking is, compared to what?

What other post-WWI power would have done a *better* job of maintaining a modicum of world stability?  The Soviets?  God no.  Germany?  Of course not.  Britain?  Not possible, Britain was a shadow of its former self.  China?  Not an industrialized power, did not have global reach.  France?  ditto Britain.


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

[User]
why in programming languages we need constants?

I mean, to a newbie like me it seems insignificant to tell that a value IS CONSTANT, when I can just declare as a variable and give it a value and then not change it at all during the process, I'm quite sure that I'm wrong but I couldn't find someone that can make that clear to me.

[Assistant]
Most things aren't really NEEDED in programming, it's all about organisation and showing your intent so that it can be maintained easily.

For example, we just as easily could have everything in one file. There's nothing really stopping us right? But we still bother to separate everything out into separate files so that it is easier to maintain. The same applies to constants. They are showing our intent (that the value should never change), meaning that if someone is reading our code they understand this.

As a side note, it can also be useful for the compiler for doing some things (where it actually becomes a necessity).


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

[User]
[300] Who was that giant dude and why was he a member of the Immortals?

Did he do badass shit that merited a promotion? Did Xerxes like him a lot? He seems out of place, in my opinion, in the midst of all these black-wearing swordsmen, especially since they have to chain him up to take him to battle.

[Assistant]
Do you believe *everything* that Dilios told his soldiers about the Battle of Thermopylae? Remember, he was the lone survival of the 300 and was tasked by Leonidas to tell the story and rally the rest of the people to war against Persia.

So he made a few embellishments to make Persia look bad. So what?


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

[User] ELI5: If child molesters or killer of children have a tougher time once in prison, why can't they lie about what they when asked by inmates?

[Assistant] Word gets around.  Criminal convictions are public records in most places, and it's not hard to get a friend outside to look up what a guy is in for if you're suspicious of him. A lot of people do try to lie about it, but if anyone really gets suspicious, it won't work well.


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

[User] ELI5: How does the electric meter on your house keep track of the energy you've consumed?

[Assistant] The standard electric power meter is a clock-like device driven by the electricity moving through it. As the home draws current from the power lines, a set of small gears inside the meter move. The number of revolutions is recorded by the dials that you can see on the face of the meter.


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

[User]
[Wedding Crashers] Did the Clearys think that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson were their relatives?

Were they just all cool with incest?

[Assistant]
Presumably they assumed they were from the grooms side (even though they sat on the brides side IIRC) so it wouldnt be incestuous.

That being said, being the sons of Ned, the brother of Aunt Liz doesnt necessarily mean a blood relationship. Aunt could be a term for a cousin or even a close, non-blood female relationship.

Alternatively, they were in the elite upper class. Maybe closer blood ties to keep the bloodlines pure arent as rare and antiquated as we think.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do I find it easier to jog up 2-3 flights of stairs than walk?

(This is similar to other ELI5's but I haven't quite found what I'm looking for) I think about this question daily climbing up 5 flights of stairs at school. If no one is around I jog up them because I find it easier and actually find myself less out of breath at the end.

[Assistant] It's because when you're moving faster you have momentum on your side helping with the force required to commit the action.  Walking requires you to increase you to re-accelerate each time because of momentum lose.


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

[User]
Direction for a nihilist.

Hey everyone. As a nihilist, I'm a little lost. Some of my core opinions to clear things up; Life is meaningless and more painful then pleasurable, humanity is going to go extinct eventually and there's no afterlife or God. I've tried other ideas and even convince myself not to believe these but I gravitate back eventually. Given this, what reasonable argument is there against suicide? Any action feels like a net loss and the only thing even slightly convincing that I've come across to live is hedonism, which still feels very pointless. I'd like direction in my life and some meaning from a philosophical standpoint because suicide isn't pleasant obviously. Any tips?

[Assistant] So, you might think there are some logical problems in your view, but it might help to clarify your view.  Why do you think life is meaningless?  Do you think anything in life is meaningful or good?


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

[User]
ELI5: If music CDs are burned with the opening tracks towards the center, how are open-world video game discs burned?

Like Fallout 4, for example. You can walk anywhere, do anything, talk to anyone, at any time. How is that all rendered onto the disc when its not exactly chronological?

**EDIT**: thank you everybody! I appreciate you all taking the time and I learned a lot from all of your answers! I read through each and every one.

[Assistant]
Ignoring the hard drive element of modern games, for games that *did* run entirely from the disc, the non chronological nature of their storage wouldn't have been a problem. Unlike a music CD, it wasn't necessary to read the disc from start to finish in one go. (Indeed, even with a music CD, you can use track select to change the order in which it is read.) When a game needed to load more data from the disc, it would know where on the disc that is located, and start reading from that point.

There would still be some care taken with data placement - the time taken to find the correct location on disc (seek time) is a factor in the overall loading speed, especially if the system is constantly jumping around for fragmented data.


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

[User]
[Arrowverse] How is their way of neutralizing villains even tolerated by any governing body.

By this I mean their methods of incarceration.  It always drove me nuts how Flash and Arrow were just locking people up without any sense of due process.  In Flash, they always lock up the villain of the week up completely in solitary.   It was just a roughly two meter cube and filed away as handled.  Arrow was even worse, as it involved literally trafficking them to some "uncharted" island off the coast of China.  Sure. They're off the streets in a safe place.  But they're is literally nothing said about being in solitary 24/7 without so much as charges let alone a trial.  What gives them the right to just go "Yeah.  Jinx really messed things up at the Casino.  3 people died while she was playing roulette. No. She didnt lift a finger to make it happen.  She just kept placing bets and winning so the kitchen exploded. Shes locked up safely in Star Labs now.  You're welcome."  We're literally rioting over this kind of treatment.

Just note I'm not trying to spark a debate over what's going on currently.  I'm just wondering how they can think this is the right thing to do.  Fucking kill me, because I'm not going to let Cisco put me in that fucking cell indefinitely. It's a fate worse than death imo.

[Assistant]
Flash: Initially, they have the only facility that can hold metas so they get a bit of leeway.  Once an actual prison that can hold metas is built, they no longer hold people without trial in the pipeline (excet short term).
Arrow: It's a straight up black site that the government doesn't know about.  Eventually Argus finds out but they are in no place to judge.


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

[User] Why don't phones have to be ejected like flash drives when plugged into a computer?

[Assistant]
Because they have their own power source. They can finish/abort any write operations on battery power whereas a USB drive relies on the machines power source.

Fun fact: the power contacts in the USB port are longer so they stay connected last when the port is withdrawn. So its possible for a device to know when it is being disconnected. However, the time period of this event is possibly too small for meaningful work and/or the loss of serial communications makes it impossible/complex.


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

[User] ELI5: How did ancient civilizations know so much about the solar system with limited technology?

[Assistant] Ancient civilizations were able to track the stars and objects in the night sky.  While they didn't have telescopes, they had far less light pollution, allowing them to see a lot more stars far more easily than we can.


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

[User] How much weight does the planet change on a daily basis because of energy bombardment from the sun compared to losses?

[Assistant] Estimates for the total mass of material that falls on Earth each year range from 37,000-78,000 tons.The loss rate is only about three kilograms of hydrogen and 50 grams of helium (the two lightest gases) per second or about 95,000 tons.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it that when both a man and woman sing the same exact note in the same octave, the man's voice still sounds lower than the woman's?

Is it an auditory illusion (we only perceive it to sound lower), or something with the vocal chord structure?

[Assistant] Men have a lower Timbre (tone color) then women do.  It is like comparing the sound a saxophone makes compared to a flute.  Even if they are playing the same note, you can hear the difference in the timbre.


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

[User]
[x-men] Do Magneto's powers shut down in heat via the Curie point of metals?

Magneto controls magnetic fields, so he can use them to affect matter that responds to them - moving metal, for example.

My understanding of magnetism includes the Curie point, discovered by Pierre Curie (husband of Marie Curie). The Curie point in a substance is when it's so hot that the magnetic properties of the particles it's made of vibrate enough that they're not aligned - their magnetic poles point in different directions from other particles, so the overall ability of the substance to respond to magnetism is negated.

By that logic, wouldn't fighting heat-based heroes (eg: Sunfire) distort the materials he's trying to affect with his powers?

Are there any scenes where that's been used to defeat him?

[Assistant]
Depends on the version of magneto we are talking about.

At his absolute peak, he is basically a reality warper because he controls electrons themselves.

Most iterations allow him to control "metals" and his power being described as "magnetic manipulation" is just a way to describe his power and not the actual mechanism.

The few instances of "metal magnetism" magneto would not be able to if the metals were no longer magnetic.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Did Vader and Palpatine ever come across Force Sensitives in the substantial ranks of the Empire? What happened?

[Assistant] Simple, they were either killed due to the dangers posed by a force-sensitive or they were trained in the dark side to a degree. They would become assassins, elite guards or were simply tasked to hunt down Jedi.


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

[User]
ELI5: Would earthquakes be dangerous in the wild?

We all know earthquakes are dangerous because they have the capacity to cause large structures like buildings to collapse and potentially kill people, but assuming humans lived in the wild, would earthquakes simply be a minor inconvenience or would they still pose some form of danger.

(I'm referring to earthquakes that occur on land and not those out at sea that cause secondary catastrophes like tsunamis)

[Assistant] Potentially. If you're in a hilly or mountainous region, you have to worry about landslides and avalanches. If you're in a forest, falling trees. If you're on or near the fault line, you might fall into a new hole or crack.


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

[User]
What does the thesis committee talk about when they ask the audience to leave the room?

In my department it is customary during the defense exam that the committee excuse the audience (these days by means of breakout rooms) at the start (before presentation ends) and end (after presentation is done) of the defense exam. They talk for about 5 min each time. I am defending my PhD soon and this issue is playing with my mind a bit more than it should. I wonder if anyone could let me know what is being discussed at these two points of time. Thanks in advance.

[Assistant]
Most times we'll discuss your work, your qualifications, quick discussion of any unfinished business. But think of it like a wedding: "if anyone has a reason to stop this, speak now or forever keep your mouth shut." They want you to pass at that point.

Most times they just talk about what you'll be doing next and what lunch is gonna look like.


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

[User] ELI5: Do obese people, on average, take more from the tax pot (extra healthcare etc) or add more (because they die earlier and don't collect as much pension or old age healthcare) relative to the average person?

[Assistant]
EDIT: see lung_doc's reply below which is much more betterer than this one.

Research has unfortunately shown that healthy people do cost more to society than unhealthy people. Despite the expensive medical procedures associated with common cancers and heart disease caused by bad diet / smoking, a healthy person who lives a long full life will inevitably face these issues in old age and for is likely to need more treatment over a longer period of time. Also, longevity is an inevitable drainer on the pension pot.


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

[User] [ASOIAF] Why doesn't Thoros of Myr and his Lord of Light bring back every member of the Brotherhood without Banners that dies?

[Assistant]
Thoros isn't a real red priest, well he wasn't a real believer in the Lord of Light even after he was sent off to them as the youngest child of 8 siblings. he cared too much for fighting and drinking to ever take the religious part seriously, which is why he was sent to Kings Landing - King Robert shared similar interests and kept Thoros at court as a drinking companion who competed in tourneys  regularly to the amusement of the King. He never swayed the King from the faith of the seven, but he never really tried because he didn't believe it himself.

when Beric fell he didn't know what to do, so he performed the rituals he had been taught as a red priest and somehow Beric woke. perhaps it was because magic re-entered the world when the dragons were born, but after that many of the tasks he used to perform just because he was a priest and was doing what he was taught actually worked - like seeing visions in the flames and actually lighting swords on fire using prayers.

he performed the last kiss many times to many fallen companions, but it only ever brought back Beric and only after they were sent out to capture Clegane.

he even refuses to use the last kiss on the body of Catelyn Stark when they find her rotting in a river. Beric passed the flame to her. he was broken after being brought back so many times, he didn't remember his own lands, his castle, his people, his fiance, he even forgot who knighted him. Thoros did him no favors by bringing him back - he was carrying out a ritual he was taught as a child - it never brought people back before and after he was worried who would come back, Beric is quoted saying "fire consumes. it consumes and when it is done nothing is left. nothing" and thats the truth and why Thoros doesn't bring back everyone. Beric is a rare case in that he was one man in a thousand who still fought for justice when he was brought back, he didn't know why or for who, but he fought for it. we see the ill effects when he passes on the gift to Lady Stoneheart who cares not for justice and just wants to see the Freys hanged - even if they had no hand in the Red Wedding.

Thoros doesn't really have control of his power, according to him his god uses him as a tool, but to us maesters it seems more likely he never really had any power and magic somehow finds its way into our lives and disrupts them.


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

[User]
Is joining the Green Lantern Corps a death sentence?

Do any of the corps die of old age or peacefully?

Edit: Or retire?

[Assistant] If you are the type to retire, to lack the willpower to stick to the job until you are to decrepit to do so, then you lack the willpower to join in the first place.  As for old age or peacefully?  Yeah it happens, but don't kid yourself, the job is inherently dangerous.


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

[User]
Is the Earth getting heavier?

Over millions and billions of years, I would assume the earth got heavier/more mass as meteors, asteroids and comets landed here.
Would billions of years of radiation from the Sun increase Earth's mass?

Does Earth's mass increase over time?
If so, what does that mean? We gonna move closer to the sun?
With the exception of human space exploration, do we lose mass too?

[Assistant]
There are two competing processes, and we don't know for sure which one is larger. Earth is probably getting lighter a bit.

Earth loses about 100,000 tonnes of hydrogen each year from the atmosphere, 1000 tonnes of helium and smaller amounts of other gases.

The amount of dust hitting Earth has been estimated to be around 40,000 tonnes per year, but with a significant uncertainty - it is not impossible that this number could be larger than the atmospheric loss.

Other things:

The energy of sunlight escapes again as light and infrared radiation, it doesn't contribute.

The interior of Earth loses energy at a rate of about 44 TW, corresponding to  0.5 gram per second or 15 tonnes per year.

We shoot a few tonnes per year into interplanetary space with rockets, and a few hundred tonnes to Earth orbit (but most of that falls down again over time).

Hydrogen from solar wind is included in the atmospheric loss estimate.


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

[User]
How do scientists know that the red shift means the universe is expansing and it doesnt mean that other stars are moving away from us through empty space?

How is the red shift of stars any diffferent than the red shift i would get if I launched a rocket away from earth wirh a bright light. Both indicate they are moving away from us?

[Assistant]
Those are both the same thing.

Imagine a round inflated party balloon with a bunch of ants crawling on it. If the ants move randomly, every ant tends to see about half the other ants moving away from it and half moving towards it, at various angles. In order for an ant to see *all* the other ants moving away, one of two things would need to happen: Either (1) all the ants would have to decide to move away from that one ant, or (2) the balloon would have to be continuously inflating. But (1) gives that appearance *only* to that one particular ant, whereas (2) gives the same appearance to *all* the ants, so, from the point of view of an arbitrarily selected ant, (2) is scientifically more probable.

In the real world, the Universe is like the balloon, and galaxies/planets/etc are like the ants. The reasoning is the same.


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

[User] [The six million dollar man/the six million dollar woman] How comes that they were both equally expensive?

[Assistant] They built the Six Million dollar man first so when they went to build the bionic woman they gave the same budget since it was enough last time.  When you get a budget of six million dollars you spend all six million because if you only spend 5 then when you go to build your next cyborg your budget will be 5 million.


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

[User]
[Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius] Where does Jimmy get the money for all of his inventions?

A miniature rocket-ship, an underground lab, and a robotic dog that can explode and put itself back together. He appears to live in a middle-class neighborhood, where is all this money coming from?

[Assistant]
Most of his inventions appear to be made of scrap and spare parts.

As jimmy does all the plannning and the  majority of the labour himself, its only the material costs he needs to shoulder, and it appers he scavanges for it.

Its also possible he dismantles old inventions once he has used them for their purpose, reyclying the materials.

Also Jimmy is a GENIUS, well ahead of anyone when it comes to building scientific inventions, things that seem complicated to us are a solved problem to him.


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

[User]
[Superman] Its often shown that Superman's parents knew he would have powers on Earth. If they knew about yellow sun light, why didn't they just shine this kind of light on themselves (or any kryptonian)?

It seems like with a whole planet of supermen, an exploding star would be a minor threat...

Also I think I remember synthetic yellow light giving superman powers.  Why couldn't kryponians on krypton do this?

And if it had to be starlight, why wouldn't more kryptonians just leave the planet?  If there was a city on the other side of the country that would give me god like powers for just being there I would go there immediately. They seem to have the ability for intersteller travel.

[Assistant]
Their planet was under a red sun. It would take more than just "shining light from a yellow sun" on themselves to overcome the red sun's effects.

As for why they stayed on Krypton, that varies from continuity to continuity. The big thing that has stayed the same since pretty the very introduction of Krypton as Superman's homeworld is that no one believed Jor-El that Krypton would be destroyed.


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

[User]
Does most atmospheric oxygen come from plants or bacteria?

Both bacteria and plants produce oxygen during photosynthesis. How does the biomass of photosynthetic bacteria compare to plants, and which produces most of the oxygen that we breathe?

[Assistant] Actually, in terms of simple volume the vast majority of the atmospheric oxygen on earth (70-80% of it ) is created by marine algae. There are around 7,000 different species of algae on Earth and they collectively produce over 330 billion tones of oxygen each year. Since water covers about 71% of the planet it is not surprising the volume of oxygen produced is proportionate. However, when you consider the vast areas of land that support little to no plant life, it is clear that, on a basis of volume, the algae in the ocean is more productive than the plants and trees on land.


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

[User]
ELI5:In a motorcycle transmission, why is Neutral almost always between 1st and 2nd gear?

and why isn't it before 1st, wouldn't that make more sense?

[Assistant] So that when you're emergency braking and shift down (down, down, down, down, down) you end up in 1st, rather than neutral.  This way, once you're done braking and look behind you to see some guy in a truck that may not be able to stop as fast as you, you can go (rather than trying to shift into first before taking off).


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

[User]
[MCU] What does it take to hold an Infinity Stone?

What is required for a being to hold an Infinity Stone in their bare hands? What about if they have gloves on or something?

Its established that only beings of great power can wield Infinity Stones. But what exactly does this mean? Is it a matter of constitution and biology? Or is it something more abstract like worthiness?

The Red Skull is shown to be beamed away when he holds the Tesseract in his bare hands. Many others who have tried to hold the Power Stone have failed as seem by the Collectors montage.

However, both Ronan the Accuser and the Guardians of the Galaxy together successfully hold the Power Stone. Jane Foster is mortal, yet holds the Aether and does not die. Nick Fury handles the Tesseract with gloves on without suffering ill effects. Loki, Thanos, and Ebony Maw have all been shown to hold the Tesseract in their bare hands as well.

Are all Infinity Stones equally powerful? Could Thor hold an Infinity Stone? What about Captain America? Or the Hulk? What about your average mortal like Hawkeye or Iron Man?

Additionally, how can Infinity Stones be safely stored? We see the Tesseract burn through the steel of the *Valkyrie* plane, but the Tesseract is shown to be handled by metal instruments and even stored in a seemingly plain old case without problems. Ditto for the syringe Rocket uses to obtain the Aether or the Vision housing the Mind Stone.

[Assistant] The Stones hurt people to the extent that their element is harmful to life. This means the Soul Stone can be held by anyone without any ill effects, because it is literally the stone of life. Meanwhile, no one with a physical constitution worse than the Hulk can hope to hold the Power Stone and live. The Guardians only survive because Peter's Celestial powers work best when he uses his heart, so Gamora, Drax, and Rocket's act of friendship moved him and gave him a brief moment of control over his powers. As for storing, the stones are generally quite hot (Fury burns his hands grabbing the Space Stone's Tesseract container), but they only start burning through steal after extensive abuse.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect] Did the Reapers in the current cycle acknowledge that they could theoretically lose to Shepard?

Yes they were conventionally winning in that by Priority: Earth they were basically overrunning the galaxy but Im referring to everything that could go wrong went wrong i.e citadel was still out of their hands for the majority of the war, the leviathans were back, they had taken some serious losses relative to other cycles, the galaxy was effectively united and their main enemy being Shepard just wouldnt die.

Was there any acknowledgment on their end that they could have lost albeit a remote possibility?

[Assistant]
Not on their part, but in one of the DLC the leviathans mention that Shephard is the first person in millennia the Reapers have seen as a genuine threat.

They're arrogant, but not stupid. They know things are not going as they should be.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do we shelter kids from what the real world is like instead of teaching them the reality of it?

We try to make everything fair, everyone gets a trophy, nobody fails a grade, teach them not to judge things at face value.

Then they grow up watching adults act as hypocrites and slowly realized the reality of how the world actually works.

[Assistant] Because life in reality is extremely complicated. Children's ability to comprehend the world around them is something that develops gradually as they age. So we simplify things greatly at first and gradually expose the child to the real world more and more as they become more capable of understanding it.


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

[User]
ELI5: Marijuana potency is listed a bunch of ways at dispensaries. What do THC, THCA, CBD and Terpenoid percentages actually mean?

I'm pretty sure I know what the THC does, but really have no idea about the others and how they effect my body.

[Assistant]
THC is the primary psychoactive chemical in cannabis.  It's associate with the "high" feeling.

THCA is a form of THC that is not decarboxylated and cannot be processed by the body.  This is why eating pot doesn't get you high, it needs to be vaporized, incinerated, baked and bound to fat, etc. which converts it into THC.

CBD is cannabidiol, which is associated with relaxation or calming effect on the nervous system.

There are 80 other chemicals that effect the human body in cannabis but these are the main ones.


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

[User]
[Predator] How long have the predators seen Earth as prime hunting grounds? How long have they hunted humans in particular?

So, going by the fact that both the Predator and AVP film universes have the predators fighting the xenomorphs as some of their ultimate prey despite xenomorphs being simple animals, we know predators will gladly hunt non-sapient species that happen to be tough to bring down. Predator civilization also seems to be much older than human civilization, and predators are said to live for hundreds of years at the least. Given all this, how long have the predators been traveling to Earth, and how old are their species potentially? Are they old enough to have traveled to Earth during the heyday of the dinosaurs and maybe go on a good old-fashioned Tyrannosaurus hunt (after all, Mesozoic Earth was the tropical conditions they prefer anyway)? Did they not find Earth until some time during the Cenozoic maybe? Are humans what theyve always gone to Earth for and they didnt get interested in the planet until humans had evolved? How long have they been hunting humans for at any rate? Cavemen were as intelligent as modern humans, just with less knowledge, they had the same intellectual capabilities as us, could plan and adapt to new situations, etc., and predators are shown to enjoy a good melee fight. Do you think the predators would throw down with the greatest warrior in a prehistoric tribe perhaps? Or did they wait until states developed with full-fledged armies who had developed martial philosophies and could understand the Predators as fellow warriors?

Or, (controversial) were humans totally irrelevant to them until we developed bombs and assault rifles?

[Assistant] It's unclear when the Yautja originally came to earth. It's theorized to have happened at least 10,000 years ago but only in the avp film continuity. Novel and comics continuity it appears to be similar but without any concrete information like the pre-sumarian civilization in Antarctica. Earth was for a long time treated as a lesser hunting ground with ice age animals hunted sparingly by younger hunters. The predators either uplifted humans to act as hosts for xenomorph hunts or eventually humans proved themselves as worthy game with metal weapons. The earliest known human hunt is from around the 1600s but evidence does point to earlier hunts in the mid 1200s to 1300s without much substantial evidence. That said different clans have different tastes in prey so some have abandoned earth as mega fauna went extinct and others have exclusively used it for Xenomorph hunts and others still only to hunt humans as we have developed. It's not until the late 1800s that predators began seeking out humans for prey after several humans killed or grievously wounded hunters proving themselves as challenging game instead of just dangerous when predators were handicapped.


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

[User] ELI5: They say 70% of taste is smell. When we smell, let's say a public restroom, are we actually inhaling and "tasting" particles?

[Assistant]
What is meant by this maxim is that, contrary to what you might believe, the taste buds on your tongue don't do much actual tasting. They can detect if what you're eating is sweet, salty, bitter, sour or "umami" (a word which describes the savoury "meaty" taste of a good stock, the taste that's enhanced by monosodium glutamate). Your taste buds can't do much else.

Everything else associated with taste is in fact detected by the nose, using the same receptors as those which detect smell. This is why if you have a really heavy cold everything tastes bland: the mucus in the nose prevents the smell receptors from working. The tongue still works, though, so you can still tell if something (like the pills you're taking to try to stop your head hurting) tastes bitter.

When you walk into a smelly environment like a badly-cleaned public restroom, you are of course detecting the various complex molecules that are floating around in the air. You breathe in, the nose detects these molecules and sends signals to the brain: that's "smell".

When you eat, the food in your mouth releases various molecules that find their way into your nose where they trigger those same receptors.

So it's not so much that you're tasting the molecules that you're inhaling; more that you're smelling your food as you eat it.


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

[User]
ELI5: what is a Roth IRA, how does it work, and what are the benefits?

As a very financially illiterate person, Im just now entering the adult world and trying to start being smart with my money. Any tips/advice on how to navigate opening an IRA would be lovely!

[Assistant]
I has to do with when you pay taxes.

A regular IRA, your money comes out of your pay, and goes into you retirement savings BEFORE taxes.  You are not taxed on this money.  Later, when you are retired and you start getting payments from your retirement savings, you pay taxes on the payout.

A ROTH IRA, you **DO** pay taxes on the money, BEFORE you put them money in. But you DON'T pay taxes on the payout when get your retirement money out.

So you do you want pay taxes NOW or Later?

Some people like the idea of not being taxes now, because they think that leaves them more money now, which for example, means more actual money they can put in the account. (the more you put in sooner, the bigger it can grow)

Some people like the idea of paying taxes later, because they assume their tax rate when they are old and retired will be lower than their tax rate when they are young and working.


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

[User]
ELI5: What happens to the weapons and gear of fallen soldiers?

From my inferences in modern conflict you can't just leave AK's in a foreign country because civilians can acquire them. Please explain to to me what happens to all this excess military equipment.

[Assistant]
Hey, US Army Infantryman who is actually in Afghanistan right now here.

In an Infantry platoon it is the Platoon Sergeant's job to maintain accountability of all men, weapons, and equipment. He does this by maintaining a MAL (master authorization list) given to him by the Company's Armorer when weapons are signed out from the arms room.

When a Soldier is injured or killed during combat operations he/she is put onto a MEDEVAC (medical evacuation) vehicle, whether it be a helicopter or some form of ground transportation. Prior to the Soldier being loaded all of his equipment is stripped off of him/her and retained by the unit. If the Soldier carried a crucial casualty producing weapon, like a machine gun with a higher rate of fire than the standard M4, it will be given to the next most qualified person along with all the ammo. This is to try and maintain the combat effectiveness, AKA how many bullets you can throw at people, despite having less people.

As for the gear, after it is recovered back to a FOB (Forward Operating Base) all gear that was worn by a casualty is inspected by people certified to determine whether it is serviceable. If an item is not serviceable and the casualty is still alive the inspectors will make an effort to send the item to the casualty's home. It is not uncommon for Soldiers who received gunshots to their helmets to get to keep those for life.

Enemy equipment is another story. In a perfect scenario where we eliminate the threat and have time to investigate any enemy equipment is gathered by a TSE team (Tactical Site Exploitation) on the spot and processed similar to a crime scene. Bagged, tagged, photographed, and turned into Military Intelligence for processing so they can determine ways to fight better against the enemy's weapons and equipment.

In other situations enemy equipment is destroyed on the spot to permanently prevent the enemy from using that against us.

TL;DR Platoon Sergeant is responsible for recovering friendly equipment to the best of his abilities and repaired as quickly as possible. Enemy equipment is analyzed by Military intelligence or destroyed on the spot.


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

[User]
Do people shed more hair in summer like animals?

Yes, I know we are animals, but do we lose our winter coats? Do we even have winter coats, or by using clothes has this biological feature been lost to us?

[Assistant]
No. Hair is not shed. It's the undercoat that's shed. The undercoat is the super fluffy part of an animal. You can see it if you have a dog or cat by blowing gently on their fur so you can almost see the skin. The top coat is where you see their patterns and most of their coloration. Undercoat looks like a fuzzy, lighter color than the top coat.

Humans don't have this undercoat so we don't shed seasonally.


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

[User]
[LOTR] Why was Frodo corrupted by the Ring?

It's largely regarded that Frodo technically failed in his question to destroy the ring, for he would, if not for the intervention of Golum, put the ring on and did the same thing as Isildur. Obviously the ring itself is constantly trying to manipulate the wearer, and likely tried to goad their desires or interests for this. However, until that point, Frodo had been relatively unscathed with a few lapses here and there. What in the end drove Frodo to fail? What desires did he have that made him want to keep the ring?

[Assistant] The ring would corrupt anything and anyone because that's its power. It is an evil ring made by an evil power. That Frodo lasted as long as he did before succumbing to it is a testament to his inner strength. But even Gandalf, a divine being, would be corrupted by the One Ring.


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

[User]
[Supernatural] Where do the pagan gods come from?

The protagonists of Supernatural primarily fight demons and other foes from Christian lore.  However, they have occasionally interacted with pagan gods.

Where do the pagan gods come from?  I don't remember this ever being explained.

[Assistant] The pagan god Loki was revealed to be a fallen angel, Gabriel. Samhain was a demon powerful enough that the Celts just shrugged and said "yep, that thing's a god." Others may have actually been created by human worship; we know that the pagan gods were more powerful when they had numerous worshippers, and it stands to reason that some of them were actually born through repeated religious ritual.


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

[User] ELI5: How is Time Warner Cable only worth $45 Billion but a simple app like WhatsApp is worth $16 billion?

[Assistant]
Valuation of companies is a very, very tricky business. TWC is actually a lot easier to value than WhatsApp, as its assets and liabilities are very well understood. As it doesn't actually compete directly with Comcast (for regulatory reasons too complicated to go into here), it was significantly just a question of figuring out TWC's net worth and expected profitability, both of which are easy to do if you've got the right numbers (which Comcast presumably did).

But when Facebook bought WhatsApp, they were probably thinking not only about WhatsApp's actual current and future revenue, but about (1) acquiring potentially valuable IP for Facebook's own use, (2) eliminating potential competition for Facebook by simply buying it out, and (3) preventing another competitor, like Google, from buying it first. That means that they were valuing the company not based simply on its current financials, but of the implications of its technology on the market as a whole. Basically, it seems that Facebook probably thought that it would likely *lose* money if it didn't buy WhatsApp. Now we value the company based on Facebook's revenue and profits, not WhatsApp's.


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

[User] Mathematicians/cryptographers, what is the significance of the three-number security code on a credit card? Wouldn't it be just as effective to add 3 more numbers onto the credit card number?

[Assistant]
This has nothing to do with math and cryptography and everything to do with practical use of cards and fraud prevention.

In short, when you read a card (whether using an imprint machine or a magnetic stripe reader), only the main number is read, not the security code. With computer systems that process credit card transactions, they are legally prohibited from storing security codes.

As a result, if someone steals the card number, they are (in theory) unable to make additional charges to the card because the card number doesn't come with the validation code, and the validation code is required to validate a transaction.

(This all gets much more complicated in the case of computer systems that perform recurring transactions.)


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

[User] ELI5: Why would wealthy CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg give themselves a $1 salary?

[Assistant]
So first to clear up the "salary" concept: at the executive level, the salary is often much less than the other compensation--Zuckerberg owns a lot of shares in Facebook, and probably receives either direct profit from that, or by selling them, or receives stock options, etc. as executive. When you hear about the $10 million payout that execs get, it's usually like $2 million salary, $3 million in shares, $5 million in stock options, or something similar. So salary does not actually dictate how much someone earns (see Zuckerberg's net wealth). So now the question is, why would he specifically choose $1 to be his salary?

The number 1 reason is media attention: "Zuckerberg compensated entirely by stock options" is a lot less zingy (and doesn't make him look as good) compared to "Zuckerberg earns $1 salary as Facebook CEO!". It makes it sound like he's doing it just for the company or something altruistic (despite the fact that he receives massive amounts of money outside of the salary system).

There may be some minor bookkeeping reasons for it (like it makes it easier to do your taxes if you have at least some declared salary) or helps him get the right tax break, but for that, it probably doesn't matter if his salary is $1 or $1000, as long as it's very low. That particular number is entirely for media.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Why do humans have so many in high placed positions of Starfleet and Federation?

Weren't Humans a junior member to more technologically advanced nations like Vulcans and Andorians and so on?

[Assistant]
There is a theory that humans are pretty much insane by any other species' standards, and that the only ones capable of herding humans and making them work together with other races are other humans. Leaders of other species simply do not know how to work with human insanity, while human leaders not only know how to do this, but can also use this "insanity" to their advantage.

Because of this, humans are pretty much always selected for leadership roles.


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

[User] ELI5: What do companies like Mastercard, Visa and American Express actually do, and why do some establishments take some and not the other?

[Assistant]
Payment industry expert here.

The "card brands" as they are known, do surprisingly little. 1) They market their brand (commercials). 2) They operate a payment network over which transactions move (from cardholder to merchant).

And for #2, they only do a part of that (like the middle 20-40% of a transaction). Your bank (the one who issued you the card), the merchant's bank, and a bunch of intermediate payment processors all process transactions as well. Each one of them (and the card brand) take a little slice of the transaction.

The one exception is American Express. They are an issuer (they directly issue cards - not a bank). Also, they acquire merchants directly; they don't use an acquiring back or independent sales organization (ISO).

The reason some merchants accept cards from one or more card brands is because they have to pay interchange fees to their ISO or acquiring bank to process transactions. They have to weigh the cost of paying these fees with the benefit of being able to accept those types of cards. This is why so many places don't accept AMEX (because their fees are high - high cost) and Discover (not many cardholders - low benefit).


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

[User]
ELI5: If the concord Jet was so great in 1986, why don't they make a modern day version that's even better and fixes the original problems?

a 3 hour flight from new york to london. why is this not a thing, if they could do it in 1986 why, with todays technology can they not make it even better.

[Assistant] We could, but its still expensive and few people would pay the extra price to just get there more quickly. Supersonic flight is just naturally less efficient than subsonic and as such will cost quite a bit more.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does x86 represent a 32bit OS when x64 represents a 64bit OS?

[Assistant]
Technically, the official name for x64 is x86-64. x86 is the name of the instruction set of a CPU. An instruction set is quite literally a set of instructions, all CPUs with the same instruction set will output the same thing for each input. x86-64 was a modification to x86 made by Intel's competitor, AMD, because x86 was 32 bit and because of this, couldn't support more than 4 GB of RAM among other things. It was designed to be reverse compatible with x86 programs.

The name of x86 originates with Intel's naming scheme, where all their early processors were named in 4 or 5 numbers, ending in 86, beginning with 8, but had their middle numbers changed. So the x stands for the numbers in the middle, like 8086 or 80486. They were given the variable x since they could be many different numbers, and that is why it is called x86. x64 comes obviously from the new 64 bit platform.


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

[User]
[Marvel] If Kitty Pryde we to run straight into Cloak's cloak while phasing, would she (A) phase through Cloak himself and end up behind him? or (B) end up in the Dark Realm inside his cape?

I know phasing works through physical planes, but does it work through magic portals (like inside Cloak's cloak)? If so, how does that work?

[Assistant]
I'd say she goes through.  Cloak's power is to open a portal, which is generally confined to the interior of his cloak, but it's still a portal.  Kitty would still be affected by it, even while phased.

I do wonder what would happen though if she phased through the *outside* of his cloak while the portal was open.  i.e. does the portal have a "back" if so does it still act as the same portal?  Or does it only work from the single direction.


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

[User]
Tools like Quillbot in academic writing

I'm currently writing a manuscript and as part of the the literature review, I discuss several studies and highlight their findings. In communicating these findings, I find myself paraphrasing components of these studies' methodologies (always citing the article, of course). When something sounds awkward  in my writing, I'll feed my sentence through a tool (Quillbot AI) that refines my writing. It seems to do this through a complex algorithm that alters syntax and diction while preserving the sentence's original meaning. I find that it's quite effective, and you can run it multiple times to select the optimal iteration of your sentence. Would using a tool like Quillbot be an ethical issue? To be clear, I'm not copying and pasting chunks of articles and feeding them through the bot. I am using it to refine my own writing, which in this case involves paraphrased  information from other articles.

[Assistant] Sounds like youre using this as an automated editing tool like Grammarly. Its probably ok? But, it seems more like a scale of ok to not ok instead of a binary, so it will depend on just how much of what type of work the tool is doing for you.


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

[User]
Water in a vacuum, why does the boiling stop?

I have a vacuum chamber that I use for freeze drying.  It works really well.  Aside from the foods, I have done some  tricks for the kids where I put water in a clear glass and put it in the chamber.  I turn the machine on and it does what one would expect, after a few minutes as the pressure drops the water begins boiling.

But  then what happens after a little bit the water stops boiling.  Pressure continues to drop. The water just sits there, motionless.

If I release the vacuum stir it (maybe it super cooled?) And then try again, I get little to no boiling.  I tried it in plastic (less of a smooth surface so perhaps there was more condensation points) but still the same thing, no boiling.

When I replace the water with fresh tap water, it will boil again but then do the above.

What is going on?  I expected the water to boil until gone.

[Assistant]
It sounds like you're not boiling the water, but degassing it. Once all the dissolved gas has been removed from the water it stops bubbling.

What kind of vacuum chamber do you have? What pressures are you reaching?

At room temperature you need to be reaching pressures lower than something like 20 mbar to boil the water in 'vacuum'. This required pressure would likely also be driven even lower by the cooling effect from evaporation.


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

[User] ELI5: How does icey-hot work?

[Assistant]
Creams like icy-hot (cf Bengay, Deep Heat, etc.) have menthol in them, which is the same stuff that is in mints  which is why it sort of smells like them. Menthol is a chemical, and chemicals can cause reactions in our bodies if they latch onto special nerves.

The nerve endings that menthol can latch onto (which some scientists unhelpfully named TRPM8) have been proven to help us detect cold temperatures. Normally they work by the body making its own version of Menthol whenever it feels cold, but by putting pure Menthol on them it makes it feel REALLY cold.

Now, the second bit is a bit trickier to explain, but is basically the same way. Another chemical in the cream, called Methyl Salicylate, gets broken down by the body to make Salicylic Acid, which acts a bit like Aspirin. One of the things that Aspirin does is to open up your veins to let lots and lots of blood flow through them. This is the same thing that happens when you blush, or go red-faced, and if you touch your cheeks when that happens they're hot, right? That's where the heat comes from.

Edit: apostrophe's go where?


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

[User] ELI5: why do car batteries lose their ability to be charged after sitting unused for a while?

[Assistant]
I believe its because of sulphation in the battery plates. Sulphur crystals form in some of the plates, and this damages/degrades the plates. The sulphation occurs as the battery discharges normally. When you leave a lead-acid battery to sit unused/uncharged it starts to slowly discharge and undergo this process. The damage/sulphation is proportional to the level of neglect, and even in normal use there will be a degree of this degradation with successive discharge/recharge cycles.

If not maintained properly, after a period of time the battery will reach a point where the sulphation damage is so bad that the battery (at best) can only be partially recovered. Usually, by this point, it is simply unserviceable and a new one is required.


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

[User] Why is ice slippery? It is more slippery than other materials that seem to be equally smooth.

[Assistant]
The answer to this is actually more complicated than you would think.  It all boils down to the fact that the surface layer of the ice underneath the object is partially melted.  However, the reason for how this top layer melts is somewhat of a scientific controversy.  People used to believe that the pressure exerted causes the ice to melt, however, this appears to be false.
The two current theories are that:
1) The friction of the moving object causes the top layer of the ice to melt
or 2) The top layer of water molecules are unable to bind correctly to the layers underneath and thus stay in a quasi water-like state.

TL;DR There is a little bit of liquid water on top of that ice, and liquid on top of something smooth makes it slippery.


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

[User]
[The Incredibles] What happened to all the supervillains after the superheroes disappeared?

It's not like the public could just sue them into going away. Did the lawsuits only start coming in after most of the villains were put away?

[Assistant] Some simply stopped because the gamesmanship of fighting against the heroes was just as uch a part of their lives as it was for the heroes defeating them. Additionally, much like there were government divisions dedicated towards stopping the superheroes, there were also black ops divisions sent out towards the supervillains. Some were simply captured and brain-wiped, since the technology was shown to be available. It let them return to society under assumed names and new identities, harmless and their old lives and talents forgotten. Some were rumored to be offered positions inside of the government or other research facilities, some were said to be told if they simply left their antics alone they'd be left alone, while others were dealt with in less savory ways. Without "superheroes" acting as a countermeasure, the full weight and might of military, black ops, and other forces would be brought to bear on them, which for most was considered far more of a risk than getting beat up by another guy in a costume. A few punches from Mister Incredible was preferable to a sniper shot to the skull.


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

[User] Is it possible for a moon to also have its own moon?

[Assistant]
It is possible for a moon to have it's own satellite, yes.  Whether it would be classified as a "moon" or not would be up to the academics, but a loose definition is:

* A distinct, whole object
* A solid object
* In orbit around a more massive body

The mass of the satellite orbiting a moon would most likely be very small in relation to that moon.


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

[User]
ELI5: How come when it is extra bright outside, having one eye open makes seeing doable while having both open is uncomfortable?

Edit: My thought process is that using one eye would still cause enough uncomfortable sensations that closing / squinting both eyes is the only viable option but apparently not. One eye is completely normal and painless.

This happened to me when I was driving the other day and I was worried Id have to pull over on the highway, but when I closed one eye I was able to see with no pain sensation whatsoever with roughly the same amount of light radiation entering my .

I know its technically less light for my brain to process, less intense on the nerve signals firing but I couldnt intuitively get to the bottom of this because the common person might assume having one eye open could be worse?

[Assistant]
You have a blink reflex when exposed to bright light. Ideally, you're exposed to a light that's too bright and you squint or close your eyes to prevent any damage.

You might ask, "Surely only closing one eye shouldn't help, since the open eye could still be damaged, right?" And you'd be absolutely correct. This is a glitch of the human nervous system.

Essentially, this glitch occurs because your brain registers bright light by adding together the amount of light received in both eyes. If one eye is closed, that eye is receiving the same amount of light, but the brain is only registering half of the original amount.

Fun fact, some people (Ze Frank is a notable example) don't have this glitch. You can (but don't, it's not good for your eyes) test this by shining a light in one of your eyes, blocking the light from getting to the other eye, and watching to see if your non-lit pupil constricts. Normal people's pupils will both constrict if one eye is exposed to bright light. In the case of Ze Frank and others, only the pupil receiving the light will constrict.


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

[User] ELI5: How long does it take for food to store as energy (fat) within a human body? Why does the body burn muscle instead of fat when starving?

[Assistant] Think of fat like a savings account, and muscle mass as expenses. If you spend a little more than you take in in a particular month, you can withdraw a little from savings to cover the difference. But let's say you lose your job and have no money coming in (Starvation). Spending your savings is only going to work for so long, but you can extend that length of time by spending less money (reducing the amount of muscle mass). This way gives you longer to find a source of food to save your life.


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

[User]
CMV: Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency/Blockchain technology is NOT viable as a future currency

Greetings,

Through personal experience with Cryptocurrency trading and mining, it believe that it cannot sustain as a future currency that people use universally. It seems that at this point, Bitcoin and other cryptos are being used like a **commodity**. It hold value and people are using it for investment purposes instead of using it to buy goods. On top of that, volatility of the prices could cause goods to require a ridiculous amount of crypto (like Germany and the wheel barrel full of money) or shoot up in price where people just hoard as much as they can for investment purposes.

Is it possible that the decentralization of cryptos could stand as a prevalent technology and currency in the future?

[Assistant] Anything is a currency if people think it is. Humans used pretty stones as money. Then gold. Now its just paper. Look at diamonds. The price is artificially high. The earth has so much of it but because people value diamonds as rare the price reflects its. The US dollar bill use to be backed by gold and silver. You could take it to a bank and get that much in gold. Now its backed by nothing except other governments saying it is. Crypto is controlled by the people using it. The more people use it the more it will be worth and the more it will be accepted. A dollar is the government saying you can buy X amount of things with this. Crypto is the people saying you can buy X amount of this. When governments fall crypto will allow people to trade with each other without the government. Look at Venezuela, their dollars arent worth the paper its printed on so they are resorting to crypto because their government keeps diluting their money without their say. The longer crypto is around and being used the less volatile it will be. People that are just using it as an investment are hurting the market more than anything. For it to be valuable you have to use it. A diamond is just hard compressed carbon but because people use it as a status symbol, diamonds are valuable just like gold.


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

[User]
[Batman TAS] What makes Joker so afraid of the IRS and jail?

He was trying to clean his name in that episode (Joker's Millions), but surely someone of his caliber shouldn't be afraid to go to jail if something goes legally awry.  Does he prefer to be put in straight jacket than to be given free rectal exam in the showers?

Maybe that was merely warn kids about the real life "villain" that is the IRS, but I was asking about the in-universe reason.

[Assistant]
Given the Joker's habit of "committing to the bit", there is a chance this is him doing a "meta joke"; Joker will poison Gotham's water supply, shoot a police chief's daughter and try to brainwash Robin, and go toe-to-toe with Batman nightly. But deal with the IRS?!? No Thank you!

In reality the Joker doesn't give a crap about taxes, buy it promotes his image of being crazy and chaotic.


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

[User]
ELI5 What causes your stomach to make audible 'grumbling' noises when you're hungry.

The 'grumbling' noises that your stomach makes when you're hungry are sometimes louder than others. What causes it to be so loud that it can be heard by others?

[Assistant] Your tummy and digestive tract as a whole use muscles  and sphincters (Valve like muscles) that contract slowly to move large masses and gas. When full, the release of gas within the tract by valves create a grumbling noise that is muffled by masses of food. When hungry, the movement and pressure release of gas isn't muffles by anything, allowing the noise to be more noticeable.


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

[User]
ELI5: What's the difference between LCD, LED, and Plasma HDTV's?

ELI5: What's the difference between LCD, LED, and Plasma HDTV's?

I have no idea which one to really look at when buying a HDTV for Gaming & Netflix. They all look ok, but what's the difference?

[Assistant]
**LCD - Liquid Crystal Display**

Behind every pixel on an LCD display is a set of RGB subpixels containing the liquid crystal cells. An electric current varies the amount of light the cell allows through, a color filter sets the cell as red green or blue. LCD's need a backlight, which is usually flourescent lamps.

**LED: Light Emitting Diode**

Any TV marked as LED is actually an LCD. The difference is the backlight, which uses a matrix of white LED's instead of standard bulbs. The advantage with an LED TV is that the amount of backlight can vary across the screen, increasing contrast and allowing deeper blacks

**Plasma**

Plasma TVs have each subpixel being it's own flouresent bulb, so there is no need for a backlight. Plasma had a bad reputation for "burn in" where a stationary image left on screen for a long time (like a game HUD) affected the subpixels and left a ghost image even when watching something else. Modern plasmas have technology to counteract this.

**OLED - Organic Light Emitting Diode**

OLED tvs are true LED TV's and work similar to Plasmas, in that each subpixel is an individual LED with no backlight.  Like a plamsa TV this allows rich colors and contrasts, but OLEDS can be printed at much higher reolution than Plasma TVs, allowing for 4K resolution, or more subpixels per pixel.


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

[User]
ELI5: How has coaxial, a very aged standard, stood the test of time and maintained its status as the primary way of transmitting cable and internet signals?

This has sorta been answered before.  But Im specifically interested in how coaxial, a cable type that *predated* the internet, and HD/4K resolutions, is able to handle both of those things (at the same time even).

Its just incredible.  I feel like when they invented the cable type, they must not have known just how capable the standard would prove to be.

[Assistant]
It has always been a very high information throughput media. Think about the standard cable that was sent across it pre-internet. It may have only been standard def (480p), but they were simultaneously sending dozens of streams down the line.

Because the signal is analog, they can split the data streams onto different frequency channels and handle a huge amount of data transfer concurrently.

The primary advances in the technology have more to do with the equipment hooked to the cables rather than the cables themselves. The equipment is able to use higher frequencies and filter noise better to maintain a solid signal.


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

[User] ELI5: why do suicide rates increase during the holiday season?

[Assistant]
Christmas is usually a time when families and loved ones get together to celebrate. During the holiday season, people who are lonely feel more alone than ever because everyone else is celebrating with their loved ones while they are on their own.

Add to that that, in the Northern Hemisphere, winter is cold, dark and hostile and many countries rarely see the sun, making seasonal depression a lot more common and intense than usual.


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

[User]
[QWOP] What happened to that poor country that this is their best athlete?

Did they have a Polio epidemic or something?

[Assistant]
The small country had a program similar to Make A Wish where this disabled athlete was allowed to compete in a small, token way in a single event.

There was an uproar among a small but very vocal and influential portion of the populace, believing this athlete would bring shame to the country and set them as the laughing stock of the world.

The remaining athletes all declined to compete, after the registration deadline had passed, and left this one Olympian as their sole representative.

At the competition itself, his competitors also bowed out, forfeiting their chance at an easy win to let QWOP, as he became affectionately known, to bring home his nation's first gold medal in their Olympic history.

It was a great show of solidarity in the face of discrimination.

QWOP was hailed as a hero of his homeland. The feel-good special they aired before the event covered most of this. It was a tear-jerker. You should try to find it on YouTube.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How is the Millennium Falcon so durable?

In the movies we see it ram or smack other ships (tie fighters), we see it slam and skid in the ground, all while only suffering minor skin and antenna damage. It's like a racing video game where your car is indestructible.

Is the ship actually that tough? Was the whole thing reinforced with the intent of it inflicting ship-to-ship damage? All other ships (besides the Ramships) seem to fall apart whenever they make physical contact (like a plane would).

Edit: lots of thorough, entertaining, and all-around great answers here, thank you everyone!

[Assistant]
The falcon is made with superior materials, by a system known for tough as nails ships, modified over the years by smugglers, gamblers, and rogues to be even tougher, faster, sneakier, with better shields, guns, sensors, and enough storage for at least 42% of Lando Calrissian's cape collection.

The falcon is correllian built, and Correllians build ship hulls tough. We're talking heavy duty, capital ship class superstructure materials in a ship that doesn't even clock in at corvette class.

Remember those ramming frigates used in the Battle of Scarif? A Correllian built design still in use two HUNDRED YEARS after they entered service. Those little ships are about 50% drive by mass, and the drives are strong enough to push a star destroyer around with ease. The frames of those Ram ships were tough enough to take the strain of force from that push, and not bend.

By contrast, a Tie is a stamped-out, mass produced, cheap design with no shields and no hyperdrive.

The Falcon bashing a TIE out of its way is like bashing a toy car with a sledgehammer.