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

[User] [General] If reincarnation involves souls going from a dying being to a newly born one, where do all the new souls come from, given that there are many more living beings in the world now than there were in the past?

[Assistant] It's a nonlinear universe. You have roughly equal chance of being reborn in the past as you are of being reborn in the future. You might even be reincarnated *in the same time* and live contemporary with a few of your other selves.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] So what do the Jedi do with force sensitive people they find who are above the age cut-off or are otherwise turned away? Seems dangerous to let an untrained force user just run wild.

I was thinking about what would happen to little orphan Ani if he were turned away.

[Assistant] They don't train them. the galaxy has many force-sensitives who are not part of the Jedi Order, either because they were born into cultures with their own Force-Traditions, or because they were born outside the Republic's borders and not discovered by the Jedi.


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

[User] If you've ever put your hand around a fan's intake, you notice that you don't feel air get sucked inwards with the same speed it gets blown outwards. How come?

[Assistant] The air is being directed out of the fan in a specific direction. The air being "grabbed" is being taken from many areas. Also, the air being pushed out has the effect of continuously pushing air on the other side that is "in the way" of the air stream.


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

[User]
If a space shuttle accelerates in space, what stops it from accelerating with no friction acting on it ?

I am aware that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, but if a ship was to say sling shot round the moon using its gravity, why doesn't the ship just keep on accelerating  to infinite speeds?

[Assistant]
when you stop applying a force you stop accelerating.  that's newton's law.  force free motion is uniform motion (no acceleration), not accelerated motion.

if you want to keep accelerating you need to add thrust (or for instance use gravitational attraction)


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k] Have Necrons ever 'tolerated' humans, Eldar, or Tau living on a planet that's also a tomb world?

Not just sleeping Necron not being woken up by the racket, but both parties being aware of eachother and living semi-symbiotically or Necron knowing, but not revealing themselves. Would the Necron ever allow this arrangement, assuming the other race didnt automatically try to kill them?

[Assistant] The Silent King joined forces with Blood Angels to fight Tyranids in the Gehenna Campaign. But that's about it. Other leaders among the Necrontyr sorta have a stick up their exhaust port about working with "lesser beings."


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do computers get slow?

And how can I prevent it?

[Assistant]
It can vary from computer to computer, but its usually a combination of a few things:

* Startup processes - the more you install over time, the more that runs in the background

* Wear and tear - over time you may lose performance as the hardware itself ages, especially with hard drives

* malware - bad software is bad, and will cause a lot of problems over time

* Driver issues - drivers are instructions for your computer. Out of date drivers can cause your computer to be pretty inefficient.

A simple analogy is this:

You start out a lean, fast, runner. Over time, you start adding things to your running regiment. As you add things, it takes you a little longer to get out the front door. You get out eventually, but maybe it takes you 1 minute instead of 15 seconds.

Since you've got these other things on your mind, when you try to do things while juggling, sometimes it takes you a while. Normally you can run and wave to the neighbor within 30 seconds of leaving the door, but now you have that morning weather software and the news software that slow you down a bit, so you don't get a chance to wave until about a minute out the door instead.

You try cleaning up your regiment with some new techniques(new drivers) so that you do your regiment more efficiently, and that helps a little bit here and there. Some regiments run better thanks to your new techniques, others aren't effected - some might even be worse than before. But you take what you can get.

One day you end up getting sick from a virus, and *everything* goes to crap. Your running slows down, you have a hard time trying to wave to the neighbors, and some days you can't get out the front door.

At that point, sometimes starting fresh can help - you strip yourself back down to your basic new-runner state, (reformatting), and go from there. But its been a while - your joints might not be as good (hardware getting older), so maybe you need 30 seconds instead of 15. Still better than where you were though!


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

[User]
Should I put an anarchist/anticapitalist organization on my resum when applying for research internships?

I've been part of Food Not Bombs at various locations since last June. It's become a large part of my life, and I feel that it's contributed significantly to my personal and political growth. And I'm proud of what we do. But of course the politics of FNB run counter to the norm, and other volunteers have gotten into clashes with the authorities in the past. On the one hand, that connotation might scare recruiters off. On the other, though, I feel that omitting it would provide an incomplete summary of myself, my life, and my accomplishments. For what it's worth, I'm in linguistics/computational linguistics.

[Assistant] Depends what jobs you're applying for, and how much else you have on your resume.  Don't forget that you can have two versions of your resume, one with and one without, and send the appropriate one to each job.  For example, if you're applying to work at the federal government, maybe don't include an anarchist group.  But if you're applying to work for a charity, do.


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

[User]
CMV: Disco is awesome and the 70s look like they were real fun.

Yes yes yes, it was a time when minority and female rights were shit and we shouldn't glorify that in any way. But it was also a period of intense EMERGING from these traditional views of ultimate white patriarchy. Natural hair for black people was in, the Black Power movement -- all these things might have been tumultuous, but it was a time when it was becoming more mainstream to embrace these ideas.

Also, the world wasn't constricted in the shackles of cell phones, internet, social media, all that crap. If you went on a road trip, you were out there with nothing but a map, your wits, and the help of others. It was a true adventure. Also, wasn't it like, safer to walk around downtown at night without having to worry as much about being raped and robbed? I mean, I know crime happened plenty, but I've heard over and over again that it was much safer and easier to be out at night, hitchhike, and talk to strangers.

Well, tell me, why did the 70s suck? Why is it viewed as such a cheesy time that people seem to hate? Why do people cringe when they hear Disco music? Have you seen videos of soul train? That shit looks like it was so much fun!! Also, the club scene looks like it was actually people DANCING, not just people grinding up against each other. Tell me why the 70s were in fact NOT awesome, especially if you were alive during that decade.

[Assistant]
Crime in America peaked in the year 1980, by just about every measure.

Crime has been falling ever since.

The 1970-1980 period saw the greatest increase in crime, in all categories, America has ever known.

So no, it wasn't safe to go outside.

We feel less safe now, because we are constantly bombarded by news/media.

But in terms of the actual quantity or crime, it's been downward trending since the year 1980. The 70s was terrible on that front.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the difference between Coke Zero and Diet Coke?

As far as I can tell, the ingredients are identical, and they seem to taste the same to me.

[Assistant]
Very little.  Coke Zero was created because marketing at coke and elsewhere determined that men consider "Diet" drinks to be effeminate (girly), and so they made a product that could more easily be marketed towards men who are trying to limit calories.

They definitely have subtly different flavoring ingredients though, but the primary flavor is the same (aspartame).

Same with Pepsi MAX!  It's just marketing.


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

[User] Does the vacuum of space have a temperature?

[Assistant]
The thing is, space isn't really a vacuum. It's a *very very* thin gas. So if you look at a big enough volume, you have enough gas particles to define a temperature. The overall picture is in the galactic disc we have "cold" molecular clouds that are <1000 K, in a "warm" ionised medium that's about 10,000 K, and that's inside a "halo" of really hot ~1,000,000 K gas.

However, if you float an object (like a guy in a space-suit) in this 1,000,000 K gas, they won't feel like it's 1,000,000 K because the gas is so thin that its atoms only rarely bump into the object, and so it really feels like a vacuum. The temperature of the object will really depend on radiation - how much light it's absorbing from nearby stars, and how much light it's emitting itself.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do we know the calorie content of food when not everything that burns is digestible?

Like cellulose, it produces a lot of energy when burnt, but gives you zero energy if you eat it because humans cant digest it.

[Assistant] Calories are just a measurement of energy, like joules. Just because the human body can't digest and use some of those calories doesn't mean they don't exist. Calorie counts on food nutrition labels tell you the total number of calories in that food, but they don't tell you how many of those calories you'll actually digest. For example, the more processed a food is, the more calories our bodies are capable of absorbing (the processing did some of the digestion work for us). The health of your digestive system also plays a major role in how many calories your body gets from eating a food. If two people ate the exact same bag of chips, one of those people would probably absorb a few more calories from the chips than the other person, but neither would get as many as are on the label.


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

[User] ELI5 Does teeth whitening actually remove the yellow or just paint over it and is it unhealthy?

[Assistant]
It actually bleaches out stains. Peroxide is the most common whitening agent used (either hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide) and they work by oxidising stain molecules. This breaks the molecules apart.

However your tooth enamel can also be damaged by the peroxide if used too often, too long, or with too much strength. Especially if you have a cavity and the peroxide gets past the outer enamel into the softer parts of the tooth.

So essentially if used properly it's not unhealthy, but has a lot of potential to weaken your teeth leading to severe damage later if used improperly.


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

[User] [Marvel] I'm thinking of opening a restaurant in NYC. How am I expected to cover these insurance premiums? How do people stay in business??

[Assistant]
Well, depends on where you're opening up.

Here's the thing- If you're in Manhattan, build a fallout shelter that can hold a full house, invest in plate glass windows for your storefront and outside seating, and find the money to pay the premium. Why?

Because everyday people will pack into your restaurant to eat and have the chance to see a superhero going about their business. If you've got a good straight line view of the Baxter building, Avengers Tower, Avengers' Mansion, anything like that, you'll make bank every hour you're open.

You'll make more than enough from superhero tourism to make up for the increased premium. You will also be living in the safest place in town crime-wise, except for the obvious- occasionally you might have the Thing go flying through the front of your restaurant , the Moloids might emerge through the floor or who knows which alien race will attack, and yes, they will always make a point of coming to your neighborhood.

The upside is that you will get paid out by the insurance company, justifying your previous premiums, and you'll often have really cool leftovers from the battle you can frame and have even more superhero groupies come to your place to see. Plus, Damage Control comes to do the cleanup at no cost to you.

If you're not in Manhattan? Well, you probably get no superhero tourism, so it's up to you if your business model can support the extra costs. How do you stay in business? The old fashioned way- serve good food, have service your customers like, keep your restaurant clean, and try to attract clientele that attracts other clientele. And yes, that means despite dimensional warps and the occasional Hydra mecha attack.

Nobody said living it up in the big city was easy.


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

[User] [General] How big would a Ringworld be?

[Assistant]
Well it depends on the ringworld.

A dyson ring that completely encircles a star is absolutely huge.  The "normal" size would usually be the same as the orbit of the earth (with a radius of basically 1AU).  The goal is to have the ring in the liquid water zone of the star. In the case of a star like Sol, the size of a ringworld would be almost 1 billion km in circumference (300 million km diameter). However, a bigger/smaller star may have a different sized orbit for liquid water and thus a different sized ring world.

If we are talking just ring sized megastructures, then there is a far greater variety and almost any size can be made.

For example a standard Culture Orbital is usually 3 million km in diameter (with some being bigger, Vavatch was 14 million km for example).

A Halo ring is smaller at about 16,000 km in diameter (with some being made up to 30,000km).

Widths of the various rings will depend on the design.


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

[User]
[WH40K] What if the Emperor survived the Horus Heresy

We know that the Emperor's fight with Horus during the Seige of Terra mortally wounds the Emperor and forces him to be on the Golden Throne for the next 10 millennia, barely clinging on to life. But say, in an alternate timeline, the Emperor manages to win against Horus with only moderate injuries. How does the Warhammer 40,000 universe change with the continued existence of the Emperor?

[Assistant]
The Emperor decides to make Chaos a priority. Psykers are hunted down and killed. Psyker Space Marines and Librarians are forcibly inducted into the Grey Knights or die during the 666 Rites of Detestation. The Legions probably remain as they are instead of being broken up into Chapters. Corax wouldn't be suicidally depressed, as the Raven Guard would be restored.

The Cult of the God-Emperor is brutally repressed, with Saints being treated the same as any other psyker. Lacking a central figure to worship, more and more citizens turn to the Chaos gods. An expanded Grey Knights and more zealous Inquisition keeps Chaos at bay, but the Imperium is rent by many small wars over belief and religion.

The Emperor finishes work on the Webway project, and starts his next big project to completely seal off the Warp by reverse-engineering the Cadian pylons and constructing them all over the galaxy.


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

[User] [Marvel] If youre worthy of picking up Thors hammer in one universe does that mean youre able to pick up Mjolnir from another universe,for example can MCU Steve pick up 616 Mjolnir?

[Assistant]
Obligatory *that goddamn hammer* statement....

ahem

Nope. Each universe has its own rules, and each Odin has his own rules. Some universes, like Earth-1610 (you know know it as Ultimate in some references), have no worthiness restriction.

Vision was able to lift it on Earth-199999, he hasn't in -616.

Incidentally, Steve *did* lift it in 616. More than once.

Obligatory *that goddamn hammer* comment...


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

[User] [Secret of Mana] How does everyone survive being shot out of a cannon as a form of long distance travel?

[Assistant]
The main companions and monsters demonstrate that all life in the Secret of Mana world are very durable to physical damage. The main characters can all take direct hits from lightning bolts, fire-balls, and having large boulders dropped on them -- multiple times.... and they wind up totally fine.

They might have to rest in a bed or eat some candy to recover.

The creatures can take a magic sword to the face many times before they succumb to some kind of explosive destruction during death.

Being launched out of a canon and falling back to the earth at terminal velocity seems well within the physical punishment the characters can take. They must be extra durable due to magic or the genetics of their species.

When the boy character got exiled from his village at the beginning of the story he was punched in the face by his former friend multiple times. The physical damage indicator did not register the damage. Therefore the life of this world only suffers damage from powerful monsters, enhanced weapons, or supernatural powers.

The main boy character also falls from a waterfall into knee deep water (very beginning of the story) and winds up totally fine.


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

[User] Why are pigeons so successful as an urban animal?

[Assistant] An important element that nobody's mentioned yet is that pigeons, unlike a lot of other bird species, do not have to find insects to feed to their young. Instead they produce a secretion called "crop milk" that they feed their young with. (the whole pigeon/dove family does this.) Most other terrestrial bird species have to shift to an insect diet during the breeding season, which limits them to breeding in areas with enough vegetation to support a good insect community. Because of crop milk, pigeons can breed successfully even where there is no vegetation at all.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't we just "make" water?

What conditions need to be met in order for 2 Hydrogen atoms to bond with an Oxygen atom to make a water molecule?

 Why can't we just pull Hydrogen and Oxygen from the atmosphere and create drinking water?

[Assistant]
Hydrogen bonds very easily, and so it is relatively rare to find hydrogen just floating around the air, minding its own business.  On the other hand, water vapor is a fairly common component of the air, and in most places it is easy to harvest.

TL;DR it's easier to find water than elemental hydrogen.


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

[User]
Since COVID-19 infections grow exponentially, is it possible to determine how far back it really began (whether in the US or elsewhere)?

I ask this out of curiosity, since people speculate "I think I had it back in December 2019."  In the US, initially people thought it only began in March of 2020, and later determined that some people died from it in February.  If the infection rate pattern follows a mathematical curve, can we follow that backwards to an estimated time of arrival?

I also know very little of the subjects involved, but I had heard something similar in regards to other things.  Please don't hurt me.

[Assistant]
It is tricky to track this back purely using maths. It is generally true that the spread happens exponentially, however this only really applies after a certain threshold of cases.

If for example the first people to be infected were people with extremely small social circles, or closed social circles (a group of people that has no contact with any person not belonging to that group, like a small isolated village for example) the spread would have happened much slower. Since we can not know what the social interactions of the first infected people looked like, there is no way to extrapolate the spread of the virus into the past purely using maths.

The way studies have found potential early infections is by detecting antibodies. Specifically there was a study done in Italy that tested blood donations made in 2019 for Covid19 specific antbodies and they have been detected in samples collected as early as september 2019.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't humans tolerate high temperatures of water when they can tolerate high temperatures of weather?

Hey Reddit,

Say, for example:

An average person can stand to be outside in 35 degrees Celsius weather, but if they put their hand into a bowl of 35 degrees Celsius water, they immediately can't stand it and take it out. Why is that? What is the difference?

[Assistant]
There are two things going on: how well water conducts heat and how well you can sweat.

Water conducts heat much better than air, so when you put your hand in hot water your hand gets hot much faster than it would in the same temperature air. On top of that, sweating is your body's main cooling mechanism and it works very well in hot air, but it doesn't work at all in water.

So, in hot water, your hand it warming up faster and can't cool down.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it so hard to grip things tightly right after you wake up?

[Assistant]
While you sleep, your body makes a chemical that helps keep you motionless during your active dreaming. In some people this can take a few seconds or minutes to end when you wake up. This can sometimes do things like you are describing.

In its scariest form, there are people who wake up paralyzed every morning!


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

[User] EL5: Honestly, what the fuck could happen if my iPad stays on when the plane lands? (I'll check this in 15 minutes when I'm on the ground)

[Assistant] Nothing electronic-wise. Its so you 1)Will pay attention if there is an emergency and not be listening or music or distracted. 2)In case there is a hard landing they don't want those things flying around the cabin (hence stowed). Off is so you won't be tempted to grab it anyways.


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

[User] Are there any harmful effects of school uniforms?

[Assistant]
Influencing the perceptions of masculinity and femininity in developing children (so another process of gender socialisation that promotes traditional gender norms) as well promoting a binary gender classification.

-  Happel, A., 2013, Ritualized girling: School uniforms and the compulsory performance of gender, *Journal of Gender Studies*, 22(1): 92-96.


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

[User] [SW TFA] Finn refused to kill villages that were armed and dangerous yet a few hours later, at most he seems to take delight in gunning down his friends, co workers and colleagues that he has known his entire life, and again later on the battlefield he kills with abandon, is he psychotic?

[Assistant]
There is a pretty substantial difference between killing villagers and killing soldiers.

It's also a pretty huge leap to assume that any of the stormtroopers were his "friends". If any of them had been asked to gun Fin down a week before his departure, do you think they'd have balked?


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

[User] [Star Trek: TNG] Why does the Enterprise carry civilians aboard when it keeps getting into dangerous situations?

[Assistant] The Enterprise is primarily a scientific exploration ship.  Most of the time its doing relatively boring studies and experiments.  We only see the small percentage of extraordinary events which is to be expected when venturing into the unknown.  Most of the civilians are the family of a Starfleet officer or scientist, they know the risks, but its nice as an officer to not be away from your family for years at a time on a deep exploration duty.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do animals let us domesticate them? / Why can't we domesticate some animals?

[Assistant]
You should read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.  He talks a lot about why certain animals and plants were domesticated and why others weren't.

As far as animals that won't let us domesticate them--some aren't suitable because their panic instinct is so high they aren't dependable.  Zebras can be ridden like horses, but since they are used to being attacked by lions and cheetahs, they will dump you and take off the first time something freaks them out.  They also get mean as they get older and can really injure you with bites and kicks.

Rhinos would be great war animals, but you have to feed them tons and tons of food and when it's mating season, then males will fight to the death, so that would be inconvenient for breeding.

The Jared Diamond guy has lots of other examples too.


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

[User]
ELI5 What real value does a stock market provide? And what value does high speed trading provide to that market?

Honest question. I don't see how high speed trading is beneficial to society and to a certain degree wonder about trading stock in general.

Thanks in advance for showing me the way

Edit: thanks for all the response so far. I mainly posted this with the questions of high speed trading in mind. I understand how and IPO provides value initially, but my more general question about the value of a market is about what happens after the IPO. Thanks again for all the responses.

Edit 2: Lots of debate back and forth about HFT. I think I have a clearer picture of each side of the story. Thanks for all the input. I'm going to mark it as explained (but not because of any one particular answer, a bunch of them together), but feel free to keep up the discussion.

[Assistant]
If you know that you can trade your ownership in a company on an open market you'll be much more willing to invest in that company. More people investing in economic growth is beneficial for everyone as it grows the economy.

With regard to high speed trading it doesn't really have the same benefit.  But there is concern that artificially limiting trades based on an arbitrary definition of what "high speed is" might hamper the market.


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

[User] What is the most basic form of life that still displays sleep-like behavior?

[Assistant] It seems to be the tiny roundworm C. elegans, not coincidentally one of the most intensely studied basic forms of life. It does something sleep-like called lethargus before each time it molts. This tends to suggest that sleep goes way back in our evolutionary history, for whatever reason.


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

[User] What is an itch and why do we absolutely HAVE to scratch it? Furthermore, please explain why my back and my ass cheek itch more than anything else.

[Assistant]
An itch is your bodies way of letting you know there is an irritant present on your skin. When a bug crawls across your hair, it itches right? Your body wants you to get this bug off just on the off chance it will harm you. Your also feel the tingle when anything brushes against a hair, or sweat runs down you back. It's your body trying to protect you from bugs.

Itches can also mean an irritant is on the skin. If you have a long lasting itch, you brushed against something you are either allergic to, or something that is damaging your skin. Your body wants that irritant off. It causes you to vigorously scratch the surface of your skin to remove the irritant.

The above explanation would explain why you feel you absolutely have to scratch the itch, but as to your back and ass itching... If the problem persists, go see a doctor. It's probably related to the summer heat and you sweating. You might also want to make sure you rinse all the soap off your back when you shower.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do so many products in the US have French on the packaging despite Spanish being the larger minority?

I assume it's for stylistic purposes and makes it look fancy. A tradition in products since long ago, maybe? I would just imagine there being more Spanish speakers that would appreciate a translation on packaging rather than French, so why do so many products have only French?

[Assistant] It's because many products share the US/Canada market, and Canadian law *requires* packages to have French on them.  So it's easier to just make the one French/English packaging and sell it in both the US and Canada than it is to make two different versions.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do chess programs simulate playing at different levels?

In other words, how does my chess app know what a novice, intermediate, or advanced player would do at a given point during a match?

[Assistant]
The simple answer is they really don't know what their opponent will do, nor can they predict it.

What the programmer can do, however, is adjust how many moves ahead the computer can "think" and have it select the moves that grant the greatest number of win states. So if you move your Queen forward three spaces, in the few moments of time between you locking in your move, and the computer moving to block your Queen (for example), it has looked at your possible moves that include your obvious "next move equals Checkmate" to you opting to move a random pawn for no reason. It then looks at how it could respond to each and every choice you might make and determined that the move with more "wins" for it involve blocking your Queen.

To put it another way, if you've seen 'Avengers: Infinity War' the Computer basically does the Dr Strange thing and looks at the 14 Billion possible futures, and in only one of them does the computer win, so that's the move it makes.

If the computer is to be virtually unbeatable, it can be permitted to look at every possible variation on the game at hand (of which there is a huge, but still finite number) and stick to moves that equal wins. Alternatively a 'Novice' AI might only be allowed to see one or two moves ahead, or maybe just be forced to move pieces at random.

Of course, with advances in AI technology it's entirely possible to have the Computer "learn" from its opponent and make predictions based on that. However while these exist to a certain degree, the majority of Chess AI that you find online will fall into the above explanation.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is the NBA predominantly a black man's sport?

Was watching a game with friends when the question came up. Someone said it's because they're raised playing it, my black friend tried to argue that it was because black people are generally more athletic. Hopefully someone can solve this dispute.

[Assistant]
Basketball is a popular urban sport.  It doesn't require much space.  A court is inexpensive, durable and requires no maintenance and the can easily be used for other community functions.  The only equipment you need is a ball and the shoes on your feet.

In the early days of the NBA, it was seen as a **Jewish** sport, since there were a lot of Jews living in urban areas playing the game intensely.  Due to complex socio-economic factors, the wealthier Jews moved out of the dense cities and the poorer Blacks moved in, leading the Blacks to play more basketball.

You also need to factor in that Blacks still generally come from lower socio-economic backgrounds, have less educational & career opportunities than other races.  This leads many of them to pursue athletics as a way to achieve success in life.

Blacks have a small advantage over whites.  On average, it's not really that noticeable but when you're only picking 500 of the best athletes in a country of over 300 million, that little edge starts to make a big difference.

It's interesting to note that, as the Hispanic population in the US continues to rise (especially in urban areas), the NBA has aggressively started marketing the sport to Hispanic viewers.  It probably won't be long before we start seeing more (American) Latino players in the league.   We already have some big names, like Carmelo Anthony & Brook Lopez.


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

[User] ELI5: When documentaries get footage of criminals, and they do not call the police, why do they not get in trouble from hiding information from the police?

[Assistant] In most jurisdictions there is no mandatory reporting requirement for things like drug offenses. Some jurisdictions do have mandatory reporting requirements for things like child abuse or planned murder (for example), but even in these cases, the reporting requirements are sometimes only applicable to people holding professional occupations (e.g. Doctor, Lawyer, Teacher, Social Worker, Psychologist etc.).


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

[User] My 5 year old asked me "daddy, how does a medicine know where to go once it gets to the stomach?" after watching me take a pill for a headache. That got ME thinking and now I'm curious cause we always take it so normal on the everyday life.

[Assistant] Medicine doesn't "know" where to go (at least, not yet).  Ingested chemicals are dissolved in the body and reach areas they are able to go.  In your case, a pain-reliever (like an NSAID) dissolved in your stomach, was absorbed into your blood stream, was distributed across the systems in your body, including crossing the blood-brain barrier, and had an effect on your brain.  Because it had an effect on your brain and you felt its effect, you perceived that it "knew" where to go when in reality it went many places, you were just unable to perceive all of them.


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

[User]
[MCU] Which of the Avengers could resist the Purple Man's powers?

Say the Purple man was never stopped and decided to go crazier with power, he wants to take over the world in true supervillain fashion. So of course he goes after the Avengers.

How many could he actually control? And with them could he take down the others?

[Assistant]
Purple Man's powers are virus based, so Vision could resist as well as Iron Man, War Machine and Black Panther as long as they are in their armor.

It's unknown if alien species are affected, so Thor would be potentially immune.

Hulk has a dual personality and a strong healing factor, which may offer full immunity or partial immunity where Kilgrave can control Banner, but not Hulk or vice versa.

We've seen magic is capable of bypassing physical disabilities, so Doctor Strange and Wong could likely resist the symptoms of Purple Man's personal virus and, if nothing else, could always astral project so they couldn't be used against their friends.


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

[User]
Objections to Mathematical Formalism?

I would consider myself a formalist in my understand of mathematics since to me it seems like the only way to hold modern mathematics together. What are the major objections to it?

[Assistant]
Godel's incompleteness theorems is often the reason why Hibert's formalism project came crashing down. If formalism is true then it would be the case that we could construct a computer that could iterate through strings of symbols to produce proof after proof, which seems too good to be true in light of the incompleteness theorems.

A result of his incompleteness theorem is that mathematics cannot be formalized in any way, such that the formalization is both consistent (will produce only true theorems) and complete (will produce all true theorems.)

The completeness theorem states that mathematics cannot prove its own consistency.

So why is this a bad thing?
1) How would you know if a formalization such as PA or ZF is consistent? If you use some metatheory, you would have to prove the consistency of the metatheory as well. You can appeal to intuition or some infinite metameta...metatheory, but the first is not formalism and the second doesn't show how maths is analytical.
2) Inability to show something is a not a theorem. How do you know that 0=1 is not a theorem in mathematics? Maybe after a million derivations you would get that result. And if that result does come out, would you accept it or would you need to reevaluate your mathematics? Should you ascribe a 50% chance in believing non-theorems since mathematics would have a 50% chance of being consistent? Seems rather dubious!


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

[User]
ELI5: How Middle East terrorists groups makes money?

I've heard that that central american terrorists groups make money throughout drugs, but I've never heard how middle east terrorists groups make money and sustain themselves.

[Assistant]
Depends on the groups.

- Donations from countries like Iran, Saudi arabia, UAE,

- Extorsion and protection money

- small and medium businesses (hezbullah was found to even been peddling used cars)

- Investment banking.

- Drugs and weapons, While they do prohibit their consumption, selling them to non muslims seem to be ok.


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

[User] Why do all the planets orbit in the same direction?

[Assistant] Conservation of angular momentum. Our solar system started out as a large, slowly rotating cloud. Parts of this cloud collapsed to form the sun and planets, but the rotation of the whole around the central axis remained.


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

[User] [Half-life] How does Gordon Freeman wield a firearm while climbing a ladder? Does he have four arms or something?

[Assistant] It's not hard to climb ladders carrying a bunch of stuff. Find some roofers and offer them a bunch of cold beers, then you can see how humans climb up and down ladders while carrying an armload of tools and still drinking from a can.


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

[User]
Why do mosquitoes bite some people, but not others?

Im just curious is it the type of blood some people or their scent? My mom and I both have always gotten bitten every time we leave the house living in Florida and my dad only gets bit maybe once a year, If that.

[Assistant]
Two main reasons:

1. Taller people tend to attract more mosquitoes since they exhale more CO2 and mosquitoes use CO2 to locate their target.

2. The bacteria on the surface of your skin give a certain odor that can be attractive or repulsive to mosquitos. This can cause some people to attract more mosquitoes becuase they smell better to them and vice versa.


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

[User]
[StarWars] does the Earth have enough resources to make a death Star? If not how many Earth sized planets might it take?

Everything I find talks about price or how long it would take to make but not how many resources it would take.

[Assistant]
Yes, assuming it doesn't include any really exotic materials.

The Death Star is somewhere around 120 - 140 km in diameter, which is only about 1% of the Earth's size.  The Earth's crust is 5% iron, so you could probably strip mine the hell out of the planet and have enough resources.


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

[User]
Wanting to read all or most of the works of important philosophers. Need help organizing.

Hello Reddit.

I'm trying to do what the title says, but I can't organize a route to follow. I've started reading all the works from Plato and then I want to go with Aristotle, but from there I don't know where to go.

I find more appealing the takes of more modern philosophers i.e  Kierkegaard, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Sartre. But everyone recommended to have a strong foundation of western philosophy before reading some of them. So I decided to start a journey to have a strong grasp on it, but I also don't mind some eastern philosophy in between.

The problem is, that I don't know how to lay the path ahead to do so. What will be your recommendation on that? A list of the philosophers I need to read will work fine, I can then dig on my own how to approach them.

Sorry if this is too much to ask or for any grammatical errors, english is not my main language.

Also thanks in advance for anyone that takes their time to help me.

UPDATE: Thanks a lot to everyone that has commented. After reading all your comments I came to the conclusion that I can read whatever piqued my interest and that reading that much beforehand is not something mandatory. This started when I wanted to read some Nietzsche, but I saw recommended in a lot of posts to have a strong background to grasp it correctly.

[Assistant] The typical advice here is usually the opposite, start with a philosopher youre interested in, and you can use secondary literature to helpfully give you precisely the background you need to understand them rather than waiting decades to start reading what interests you. Usually you can ask for a specific philosopher if any of their works are easier to start with or if any secondary literature is more highly recommended (or just use the search bar on the side as these questions get asked a lot and theres tons of good advice already that you can access immediately).


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

[User]
[Dredd 2012] What was the point of shooting that one hostage-taker with a hotshot round?

At the start of the movie, Judge Dredd faces a thug who is using a woman as a human shield. He fires an incendiary hotshot round straight into his mouth, which kills him and burns his head away.

Why didn't he just fire an ordinary bullet?

[Assistant] Dredd was out of his regular ammunition. He could have used something like armor piercing but went with the hotshot because he could cycle the ammo in through voice commands without alerting the perp.


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

[User]
[Invincible] Did the time Omni-Man spent in th Flaxan dimension influence his decision to return to his Viltrumite roots?

He spent a long time away from Earth, his wife, and his son. Did the time away from them made him revert to his original persona?

Edit: I'm specifically talking about the comics.
>!Later in the comics Robot becomes evil because of what of happened when he was in tbe Flaxan dimension, so is if possible the same thing happened to Omni Man?!<

[Assistant]
Nah, the inciting incident was Mark developing his powers. The Flaxan dimension has no psychological effect on people, especially not someone whose already Immortal like Omni-Man.

Your example is flawed because the way the character changed was because of the events that happened to them in the dimension and not the mere fact of staying there.


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

[User]
Is programming as a career consistently and generally stressful?

I have been learning programming on and off for the last 10 years. I started with c++ then jumped on the mern bandwagon a couple years ago.

Unfortunately I've not been able to finish a project because i have just been constantly discouraged by hearing stories about tight deadlines, snooty and evil co-workers, 60+ hours per week.

Even though i do enjoy computer science very much and most times do enjoy actually programming, there is something in me that just rejects this lifestyle. I burn out very easily with projects. It also doesnt help that i have bad anxiety disorder.

If it is such a toxic environment, is it even possible for someone like me to thrive in an industry like this? Or will i just be bottom of the barrel just struggling to survive? Does anyone have a similar story?

[Assistant]
No. It just depends where you work. Startups and video games tend to have a bad rep for having long hours and high stress, but big corporate gigs are usually 9-5 and relatively relaxed. I've averaged about 35 hours/week working over the past decade in corporate enterprise software.

I'd say it does take more work at the beginning of your career when you're competing for promotions with a ton of other juniors and need to distinguish yourself.


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

[User] [Star Wars/Marvel] How would Thor be affected by Palpatine's force lightning?

[Assistant]
I don't think Force lightning is actual electricity. It's more like pure hatred manifested as energy.

I imagine Thor would be affected the same way most beings are- that is, suffering immense agony. That said, he's probably strong enough to power through the pain and introduce old Sheev to his very good friend Mister Ridiculously Large Axe.


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

[User]
Why are ceramics used for things like heat shielding?

I was thinking about how ceramics are used in shielding and things like tiles on the Space a shuttle and realized that I don't know why they are so good at dissipating heat.

[Assistant]
There are a few things you want in a heat shield. You want something that can withstand high temperatures, absorb a lot of heat, but also not cook your astronauts.

Ceramics tend to be very good thermal insulators. They have a high thermal capacity, but do not conduct the heat they absorb very well which is good because you need to keep the heat away from the space craft. So you make ceramic tiles. But since they dont conduct heat very well, they have no choice but to keep heating up since they arent dissipating much heat.

You solve this by painting them black with a layer of what is essentially glass. This gives the tiles a very high emissivity. Emissivity is a measure of a materials ability to reject heat as radiation. The black ceramic tiles were able to reject up to 90% of the re-entry heating back into the atmosphere.

So you have 90% being dissipated as IR radiation, and the remaining 10% being absorbed by the tiles and staying there due to the low thermal conductivity. These are simply properties of ceramics that make them desirable as heat shields. You could go deeper, but its akin to asking why copper makes good electrical wire. Since radiation is very slow for small temperature deltas it takes a hours to cool all the way to ambient but that doesnt matter because even though the tiles will still be hot at landing they dont transfer that heat.

Lets say you used a metal heat shield instead. Well metal also has a high heat capacity. But its also an excellent thermal conductor. It will transfer that heat into the aluminum frame of the spacecraft during re-entry, which could damage it. It also means you will be hearing the interior of the craft, since the metal frame is now conducting heat further inward.


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

[User]
Could adamantium hurt superman?

like if wolverine were to hit superman with his claws would it damage him?

[Assistant]
Wolverine wouldn't be able to do shit, but say darkseid had an adamantium sword, he could cut superman.

Yes adamantium is strong, but wolverine is not (compared to superman). His claws would bounce off, both them and superman undamaged.


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

[User]
ELI5: When you deposit to a bank, does the bank just store the money

So let me explain in more detail here. When it comes to a bank accepting a cash deposit to your account and you get said amount accredited to your account what does the bank do with said money. It's not like they would want to keep billions and billions of dollars of cash stored somewhere because it was deposited. How does that all work?

[Assistant]
The way modern banking works is heavily reliant on what we call 'fractional reserve banking'. When you deposit money in the bank, a portion of that money (say, 10%) is set aside and actually kept in the bank. The other 90% of the money is made available for loans from the bank.

That is, effectively, what a bank's main business is. In return for putting your money in the bank, you get some money as interest, and the bank uses your money to give out loans, which will in turn be repaid to the bank with more interest.


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

[User]
ELI5 What happens when a country doesn't pay its debts?

Can they just ignore the debt like it never existed? Are there real reprucussions for the government or impacts to the econony?

[Assistant]
Sovereign Debt Crisis is what to google.

The immediate thing that happens is a bond market crash.  Everyone who owned that countrys bonds is suddenly out all of their money.  That can cause a contagion crisis elsewhere.  Those wiped out investors often owe money other places and this leads to further defaults.  If its a small country, it might be contained but if its a large country like the United States, the whole world financial system would melt down.

A follow up problem is the country in question would have big problems taking on any debt going forward (who would buy it?).  So if they are running any deficits, they would need immediate budget cuts to stay afloat.  Bear in mind, the bond market crash will cause a decrease in the wealth of the countrys people which will cause a decrease in tax revenue which will increase their budget deficit.

So, its really bad.  No one would ever do this on purpose.


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

[User]
[Post-Doc] Would it be bad to leave a lab before fellowship is awarded?

My PI wants me to submit a grant in a few weeks that, if awarded, would cover my salary for the next two years. However, I have been miserable and I'm searching for a job right now. Would it reflect poorly on me to submit this grant and then leave before its awarded?

[Assistant]
I dont have answers, but some questions that might help you think through this...
* Would the grant follow you to a new location?
* If it does, would it require you to keep working with your PI on this project?
* Could you write the grant so it let you stay at the current place but didnt require you to include your PI?
* Have you looked up rules about withdrawing your grant application?
* Edit: If the job would be changing careers (leaving academia), would it even matter if it looked bad to withdraw the grant application?


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

[User]
[Stranger Things]Was Chief Hopper's offer to Doctor Brenner genuine? [spoilers]

In episode eight, Chief Hopper offered up Eleven to Doctor Brenner for access to the Upside-Down. He said once he and Joyce had retrieved Will from the Upside-Down, Doctor Brenner could have Eleven and the conflict would be finished.

Apparently, there wasn't any trickery involved.  Hopper led the Institute right to Eleven's location.  For someone who lost his own daughter, it seems really out of character for Hopper to just sell out one child in hopes of rescuing another.

Since Eleven and the Demi-Gorgon ended up straight-up murdering everyone from the Institute that went to the high school, and Eleven subsequently vanished, we never got a chance to see things would have played out.  Was Hopper playing it straight, or was he trying to trick the Institute?

[Assistant] I think Hopper was a realist. He knew that if the U.S. Government wanted El, there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it in the long term. But in the *short* term, he could tell them what they were likely to find out anyway in exchange for a chance to save Will, which they otherwise wouldn't get. In his mind, he wasn't really sacrificing El since he was positive they'd eventually find her anyway.


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

[User]
[Starwars] I've used knifes and vibroblades and managed to not cut my hands off. As soon as I talk about getting a light saber everyone talks like I'm going to disembowel myself. What gives?

Edit: yeah I'm not going to try any of that mystic blocking blaster fire. I just want something I can pull out if my pocket if a couple of tradoshians with deathsticks try to forcibly evict my small intestine. How much gyroscopic force do they really have though?

[Assistant] Lightsabers are much harder to handle than bladed weapons mostly because they don't balance in the way that bladed weapons do.  For a blade weapon, the appropriate balance point is just above the hilt.  However, for a lightsaber, the blade is practically weightless, meaning that you can't swing it the same way you would a bladed weapon.  If you do, you are likely going to overdo it and the blade is going to go much farther than you anticipated due to its lack of weight and bizarre balance point that is in the middle of the hilt now.


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

[User] [Metal Slug] How are the protagonist able to take down tanks, planes, helicopters, and other massive war machines with handgun fire?

[Assistant] Like Marvel's Karnak, they aim for the absolute weak points. For anyone else, shooting a handgun at the front end of a tank does nothing, but for them it creates vibrations that damage the engine, loosen the treads, and heat the ammunition to the point that they explode.


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

[User]
If you were thousands of feet below the ocean's surface, would a few photons still occasionally make it down to you?

I know that it's pitch black beyond a certain depth in the ocean, and I'm guessing that it becomes increasingly difficult to find a single photon at certain depths, but do any photons find their way down into zones which are otherwise pitch black? What's the farthest down we would expect to find a single photon?

[Assistant]
The intensity of light follows an exponential decay curve, so the deeper you go the weaker it is. At some point, the light becomes so weak that you can measure the light in terms of how likely it is to detect a single photon of visible light within a certain period of time.

So, that probability never becomes zero, exactly, but it can get low enough that you can compare it with the light coming from the black-body radiation of the surrounding water.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Does killing Palpatine in order to save his son redeem Anakin under the principles of the Jedi Order?

It seems that these are the actions of a man overwhelmed by arguably selfish passions. At the very least, these motivations are more selfish than if he had killed Palpatine to save, for example, the countless billions of strangers that the Emperor ordered the deaths of?

**EDIT:** For additional clarity, isn't it exactly this type of passion that turned Anakin to the Dark Side to begin with?  Emotional attachment to his wife, now to his son?  It seems like Anakin's last act is very Sith-like in nature.

[Assistant]
Under the principles of the Jedi Order, absolutely not. Their rules and philosophies were rigid and, well, wrong about a lot of things concerning the human condition.

Clearly, in the eyes of the Force, yes, Anakin was redeemed, but *not* because he killed the Emperor. Anakin's redemption was due to his letting go of the anger which ruined him, it was all about reinserting himself in the selfless energies of the Force.

Sacrificing his life to save his son without any thought of personal reward was the proof that Anakin had returned; the Force had no considerations for past transgressions.


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

[User] Why are sloths so slow?

[Assistant] Sloths move slowly to conserve energy. Their musculature is allll about using as little energy as biologically possible for a complex organism. This gives them great survivability as well because anything that might want to hunt them down would struggle to locate them unless they fall since movement is the most often focused on stimuli for predators.


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

[User] ELI5: Why doesn't fire from gas powered devices (grills, lighters, etc.) spread to their fuel containers?

[Assistant] Fire is a reaction with oxygen.  Inside the container, there is little to no oxygen and the gas itself takes up the space.  If you shot a propane can and it ignited, it wouldn't explode it would just have a flaming jet coming out the side as the gas only ignites once it leaves the container and meets oxygen.


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

[User]
How do oxygen meters measure oxygen level externally through the thumb or index finger?

I was recently in the hospital for a respiratory illness and the nurse measured my oxygen level with a thing that clipped to my index finger. How does it work? Does it have to do with pulse?

[Assistant]
Basically:

It passed a special light through your skin, and this light reflects off your inner fluids. Blood cells with oxygen will reflect slightly differently than blood cells without. As a result, the sensor in the clip can begin to decode the light, and determine how much blood has oxygen vs not.

Imagine shining a flashlight through a dusty room. You could count every dust particle in the room, or, assuming there's good air mixing (blood flow), measure just a cubic foot of air and extrapolate.

In this case, blood cells look different when they have oxygen vs when they don't. So they measure blood flowing through your finger and extrapolate.


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

[User] [Skyrim] Was Ulfric Stormcloak a hero or a menace?

[Assistant]
Ulfric literally allows criminals to remain undisturbed in his lands as long as they limit their attacks to non-nords.

according to Brunwulf Free-Winter

> "Whenever a group of marauders attack a Nord village, Ulfric is the first to sound the horn and send the men. But a group of Dark Elf refugees gets ambushed? A group of Argonians, or a Khajiit caravan? No troops. No investigation. Nothing. There's a group of cutthroats out there right now that Ulfric doesn't lift a finger to bring to justice, as long as they don't threaten Nord land."

He's quite literally failing his most basic duty as a ruler, and that isn't even considering stuff like not allowing Argonians into Windhelm or the neglect of the slums the dark elves are forced to live in.


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

[User]
[Halo] Post-Covenant War, is humanity allies with the Elites?

Or is it more of a, "I won't mess with you if you don't mess with me" sort of deal?

[Assistant]
In general yes,  the UNSC proper and the Sangheili as lead by Arbiter are allies who cooperate amicably and conduct joint operations in many areas of space.
In reality there are factions on both sides, such as ONI and Jul 'Mdama's reconstituted Covenant that are actively hostile to each species.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect/General Sci-Fi] Would species with digitigrade legs be faster than those with plantigrade? (eg: turians, salarians, and quarians)

Their legs more closely resemble those of dogs, cats, horses, and deer. Would that allow them to run faster?

[Assistant]
Possibly, but for the best effect they'd need a different muscular structure in the legs too, more focus on strong tendons and so on. And if it comes to that, speed isn't the same as endurance- humans are remarkable for their long distance running abilities, and in theory a human can outrun a deer over a long enough distance.

In fact, the Rarmuri tribe of Mexico has honed long distance running to such an incredible degree that they quite literally hunt animals by chasing them until they collapse dead from exhaustion.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Do any automatic blasters exist? Why don't we see many if they do, why don't they if they don't?

I can think of a million places where automatic, or even semi automatic blaster fire would be great, but one place specifically is against the Jedi. Apparently overwhelming them is a viable attack method, and its been proven time after time that firing a bolt at a time doesn't work.

[Assistant] Sure they exist, and are quite widespread. The RT-97c is one example, the DLT-19 is another. They don't do much damage per bolt, but have a high rate of fire, this is due to the power source of the weapon having a finite discharge rate. Jedi are still capable of countering this high rate of fire because it comes from one source, they are very good at deflecting all the bolts coming from one direction. The optimal method for dealing with them is to flank them, they can't defend from opposing directions simultaneously.


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

[User]
[Marvel] How does Spiderman stick to walls through shoes?

From what I understand Spidey has tiny hooked hair that allow him to climb flat surfaces and I can suspend my disbelief to the point that his gloves are fine enough for the ones on his fingers to still work but I cannot think how they would work through the soles of his shoes.

[Assistant]
The hairs thing is actually in the minority of how their powers work. Spider-Man's ability to cling to surfaces is closer to his Spider-Sense where it a massive exaggeration of what spiders can do.

Wall crawling is more about creating attractive forces between Peter and whatever he is clinging to. He's essentially creating molecular bonds between himself and that surface in order to stick to things. Which is why he can often be shown wearing relatively thick shoes. The power comes from his skin but isn't limited to it.

This also why it can have the most absurd adaptations like Kaine's burning mark or Mayday Parker who can stick other people to surfaces sort of like magnetism (another force wall crawling has been compared to), something she claims the rest could probably do to if they tried.


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

[User]
ELI5, Why Do the Bloods Hate the Crips?

I've seen so many programs on both gangs, but it seems like they never explain why they hate each other. It's been on my mind for a while--thanks!

EDIT: Thanks for the responses, everyone! This has always been an interesting topic to me and I really appreciate all the answers I've gotten.

EDIT2: After reading some comments, I realized that I may have worded the question incorrectly. It should be read as, "Why do the Bloods and Crips hate each other?". A majority understood this is what I meant, but I apologize for any confusion.

[Assistant]
The short and sweete is that the crips are not all one gang.  They are an alliance of gangs.  But there is a good deal of violence and war within the alliance.  One day a gang within the crips pissed everyone off.  So they were picked on relentlessly, that gang approached the LA gangs who were not in the crips alliance and formed what came to be called the bloods.

The answer is that they hate them because they have always hated them.  Like a family feud the orgins are less important then the various crimes that are commuted during the feud.


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

[User]
How are humans able to fart gas out downwards if gasses naturally rise in the body?

Inside of a human's rectum, shouldn't solids sink to the bottom gasses rise to the top? How can we fart gas followed by solids? Doesn't physics say it should be the other way around?

[Assistant] The human digestive system is blocked off at several points by several sphincters. This prevents too-early passage of food as well as back-draft from gases. Since most of the gases build up in the final stretch, called the large intestine (which way shorter than the small intestine, but a bit wider), it simply becomes a matter of pressure build-up within a closed container. Once the pressure inside is bigger than the air pressure outside, any opening of the outside sphincter causes the gases to be expelled until pressure equalizes.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] What is the average wizard capable of without a wand?

We've seen numerous examples of wizards using magic without wands or other similar objects, but what exactly are they capable of without them? How does the wand affect their abilities?

[Assistant]
For the most part an average wizard is less useful than a muggle without a wand or magical artifact.  Few wizards can do wandless magic and fewer still can do so as a part of their daily life.

Frankly a wizard without a wand is only good for kvetching about muggles being useless.


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

[User]
[Dredd 3D] Why are the only law enforcement officers brutal judges? Do Hab-blocks have meter maids, neighborhood watch or officers?

Dredd himself admits that judges can only respond to 1% of crimes. In peach trees, they havent seen a judge in years.

For petty crime, such as vandalism, minor theft, parking violations etc, do the citizens of peach trees have a local security detail? The have an administration that runs the utilities and emergency services (war lockdown etc) surely they normally would have some sort of security.

Maybe one reason gangs like MaMa rise is because she provides law and order herself.

[Assistant]
Well I'll have to refer to the 2000 AD Judge Dredd in order to answer this.

You first have to look at the scale of the setting. Megacity One houses roughly 800 million people in what is now the Eastern United States. This doesn't sound too bad until you consider the actual living area is about half that. The rest is used for other essentials like factories, roads, iso-cubes, ect. So the population density is higher than Delhi's.

For petty crimes, an honest Judge will send you to an Iso-cube for a few days or weeks. A corrupt or simply brutal judge will shoot you on the spot. If no Judge is around, then it's up the civilians; mob rule. And that can go anywhere.

For administration, megablocks like Peach-Trees were designed to be self-sufficient and independent establishments. It's more accurate to call them small towns than blocks. The only city wide security is a less-than-stellar monitoring system. Which can potentially track every person in the city but there's nowhere near enough people to for this to be feasible.

MaMa came to power because she killed everyone to challenged her. She offered nothing.


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

[User] ELI5: What are the non-religious reasons for opposing gay marriage?

[Assistant]
* the gov't has in interest in supporting traditional, children producing marriage
* homosexuality is a psychological disorder, not a lifestyle, and the gov't should not support it
* gay unions are fine, but that's not what the word marriage means, so that word should be reserved opposite sex couples

I don't want to suggest these are particularly *good* reasons, but they are reasons people use.


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

[User]
[General Superheroes] Can those with healing factors (Captain America, Wolverine, Deadpool, etc) or alien biology (Superman, Thor, etc) get drunk by drinking large amounts of Vodka?

So in this situation at the Heroes Bar (a side business of the Hero Cafe) everyone is having fun, getting wasted after saving the multiverse from destruction. However, Cap, Wolverine, Deadpool, Superman and Thor are sitting in the corner with some others that can't get drunk with a few beers due to their biology or healing factors. Deadpool suggests downing kegs of Vodka and other high alcohol volume beverages, which the group are willing to try to have some semblance of inebriation.

They partake in Vodka keg-stands, Everclear chugging, and 92% Whiskey shots. Does this make any difference to the advanced healing factors/alien durabilities of the heroes present? How could these guys hope to get wasted without getting Thor to smuggle down some Asgardian Ale or ordering some rare Kryptonian Absinthe from Space Amazon?

[Assistant] Alcohol is a mild poison and most healing factor heroes can immediately recover from it. Some like Logan still feel its effects, but for far shorter periods of time. However, for beings with stronger healing factors, stronger poisons can accomplish the same thing alcohol does for us. In *Superman: American Alien*, Deathstroke mistakes Clark Kent for Bruce Wayne and poisons him with the most powerful toxin on the planet. All it does is get Clark drunk.


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

[User]
[Wh40k] What system Imperium of Man has in place to solve military equipment failures, replacement parts?

All machines and technology will and does eventually break down. The causes of equipment failure are too numerous to be listed, but the point of this thread is not to talk about reason why, rather the Imperium of Man's response to it.

So, imagine this scenario: Bob and his fellows tankers are driving along one day when a wheel from their tank falls off. How do Bob and his fellow IoM tankers fix it?

[Assistant]
First, if Bob or his tankers touch it and an Adeptus Mechanicus designee sees them doing it in any way improperly (eg pretty much any way a guardsman has ever fixed anything according to the Mechanicus), they're going to die. Either figuratively due to chiding and lectures on the fragility of the machine and its spirit spirit or in the most egregious cases literally torn limb from limb by an.. well not enraged because the Adept might not have the emotion portion of his brain anymore, but certainly you'd understand the feeling as displeasure. This is unlikely to happen on any average local model or Leman Russ and probably extremely likely on a Baneblade that has a dedicated initiate of the AM along exactly to fix it.

If there are no AM gearheads around because they're all dead or because they're busy dealing with other more important matters like how best to activate some incredibly dangerous archeotech, Bob and crew fix their tank like any other tanker from any other century that has ever had tanks. If they do it under fire, some of them probably die. Or all of them. If they do it on the field during a march, they fall in and catch up after they're done as best they can. The spare parts are either obtained from a store of spares carried on the tank, from a depot, scavenged from a dead tank, or jury rigged from anything available at hand. The spares are made in various places and transported along with the rest of the unit and as needed or available like any logistics chain.

The most important difference is that the tank isn't fixed until someone has said a prayer and offered incense to the Machine Spirit. That is not a figure of speech. If you don't appease the Spirit, the tank may fail in the middle of battle.


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

[User] ELI5: Do all the instruments/speakers that we hear produce sound that can't be heard by us?

[Assistant]
Basically whenever you have a resonance somewhere, you have overtones, which are harmonic oscillations at a higher frequency. So when you strike a string tuned to 1kHz, you will also have frequencies at 2kHz, 3kHz, 4kHz and so on and so forth. This is a large part of what makes up the characteristic sound of instruments. The volume of each overtone is typically lower the further away from the fundamental frequency it is, but in theory will always go all the way to frequencies which we can't hear.

Besides music instruments, you will have these oscillations on any moving part. The membrane of a speaker also oscillates, and it'll also have upper tones beyond what we can hear, even if it's a subwoofer.

So yes, they will. It may just be so low that you'll have a hard time measuring it.


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

[User] Is there a point in space where if you look at one half of the night sky you would see the light from stars and the other half would be darkness because there are no stars beyond you in the universe?

[Assistant]
The universe doesn't have an "edge". It's unbounded, and possibly infinite in size.

The *observable* universe is just the sphere from which light could have reached us in the time since the Big Bang. If you teleported to the edge of the observable universe, you would still see stars and galaxies in all directions. The more distant stars and galaxies would look younger, as they were in the earlier history universe, because their light took longer to reach you. You'd see this from any point in the universe. The universe basically is the same everywhere.

That said, you *could* get this sort of view, if you were sitting outside of a *galaxy*. Almost every object you see in the night sky is a star within our own galaxy. Some are star *clusters* within our galaxy. Some are planets, and the Moon. And there are three galaxies you can see in the sky with the naked eye, but they are faint cloudy objects rather than point-like stars.

So if you sat like 20,000 light years above the disc of the Milky Way, you would see the Milky Way full of stars below you, but you would not see any other stars in the rest of the sky. You might see a few faint cloudy galaxies, but that's it.

So you can get a view that's mostly starless except for a chunk of the sky, but you won't get it at the edge of the universe, because the universe has no edge.


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

[User] [Die Hard] Did Hans have a Plan B in case the FBI decided against cutting the electricity?

[Assistant]
He knew their standard operating procedures.  The only reason the FBI wouldn't have cut the power would have been if they didn't believe it was a terrorist takeover, also known as an A-7 scenario.  Hans would have upped the ante and began executing hostages in order to convince them.

If for some reason that didn't work, they had enough C4 to flatten a city block.  They could've blown the safe along with the building and slipped out with the bearer bonds in the confusion.


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

[User] [MCU] Why didn't Thanos use the snap to also erase the memories/records/etc the survivors had of those snapped so they wouldn't be missed?

[Assistant] He expected praise and adoration from a saved populace after they got over the initial shock. He wanted them to remember what they lost, what they gained, and who was solely responsible for what he considered their new bounty.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do criminals in movies always ask for unmarked bills. What is the difference between marked and unmarked?

[Assistant]
"Marked" bills have had subtle distinctive markings added, or their serial numbers have been recorded, as an anti-theft measure.  These bills were never intended to be handed out to customers; they're something for thieves to take so that the police can identify them if they're found in possession of the marked money later on.

"Unmarked" currency is just regular cash.


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

[User] ELI5: How do quantum computers theoretically work and how are they so much more powerful and intelligent than regular computers?

[Assistant]
You have two kids, a "traditional kid" and a "quantum kid".

You hide a piece of candy in a room and tell the kids to go find it.

The traditional kid goes from place to place, until he find the candy. If you come into the room at random times and ask him "where is the candy" he will either tell you where it is or that he hasn't found it yet. Or you can just wait until he finds it and reports back to you. Either way you will get an answer that is 100% correct.

The quantum kid is a little different. He looks into all the places at the same time, which is faster, but comes with two drawbacks:

*  The kid will keep looking until you actively ask him

*  The kid has a chance to be wrong

So to get a good result from the quantum kid, you have to ask him multiple times and the place that he tells you most often is likely to have the candy.

If there are enough possible places, the time to ask multiple times will be significantly less than the time used to get the definitive answer, this is where quantum computing gets its power from.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are pictures rectangles when camera lenses are round?

[Assistant]
* Lenses are round because it's easier to make them that way and rectangular lenses cause weird problems.

* Pictures are rectangular because it was easier to make film rectangular and it also matches humans' natural field of view better than a circle would.

* Digital camera sensors are rectangular because we are already used to photos shaped that way.


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

[User] Are there any works of philosophy which critique behaviorist psychology, similar to how Deleuze and Guattari's 'Anti-Oedipus* critiqued psychoanalysis?

[Assistant]
ieks criticism of Dennett in *The Ticklish Subject* might be what youre looking for.

Im not sure what parallel youre looking for in mentioning Deleuze and Guattari. Do you want something stylistically playful and experimental, or did you mention that text just as an example of criticism of psychoanalysis, or is there something else about that text youre drawing attention?


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

[User] Eli5: Why is some skin (like a bald head) very shiny while most skin (even when oily) is comparably matte?

[Assistant]
Shiny usually means smooth (note that the reverse isnt always true).

Skin most places is rough because of pores, hairs, wrinkles, fingerprints, etc, so its matte, whereas skin on the scalp is pretty much just skin over bone, so its shinier. You'll notice older bald people dont have as shiny scalps.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] So, by a conservative estimate, just how many Starfleet vessels have had to deal with Nazis in some way?

Whether by going back in time, holodeck malfunctions, finding alien planets where Nazis are somehow a thing, etc.

[Assistant]
Three, or four (if you count DS9 as a StarFleet vessel):

NX-01 - Enterprise - Traveled through time as part of the "Temporal Wars" and interacted with the Nazi regime that was being supplemented with future tech.

NCC-1701 - USS Enterprise - Came in contact with a planet that had been (through a violation of the prime directive) guided by a Federation historian towards National Socialism.  The scientist believed he could help the society achieve the same high efficiency, economic output and scientific advancements seen under the Nazi rule without the "downsides" - racism, genocide, etc.  This plan failed comprehensively and the entire planet was nearly lost.

NCC-74656 - USS Voyager - during an incident with the predatory hunting species The Hirogen, Voyager is taken and its crew is forced to participate in an elaborate holographic reenactment of WWII in France. The Hirogen play the part of the occupying Nazi's and the crew play a variety of roles in the US Army and French resistance.

Deep Space 9 - Cardassian Designation Terok Nor - Miles O'Brien and Dr. Julian Bashir regularly reenacted the Battle of Britain and participated as members of the Royal Air Force, in opposition to the German Luftwaffe.


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

[User]
ELI5: How can SEARS declare bankruptcy and only plan to shut down only a part 142 of its 700 current stores.

 Shouldn't they shut down all stores and let the court decide how can they sell of inventory and pay off the companies they owe ?

[Assistant]
There are two primary types of corporate bankruptcy.

Chapter 7 bankruptcy is basicially saying "We're fucked, were selling off everything we own, and we're only paying what we can to people we owe money to and closing up".

Chapter  11 is a reorganization plan, stating "we're fucked, you're not getting as much as we owe you, but give us a chance to pay down what we can while we figure out a way to survive".   The courts will reorganize the debt, eliminating some of it, and the company remains in business.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do rechargeable batteries get weaker over time? What's "wearing out"?

[Assistant]
The rough idea of how a battery works is that there's two chemicals. They want to merge, creating one waste chemical + electricity.

A rechargeable battery uses chemicals that can go in reverse. If the rechargeable battery has a ton of waste chemical, you can put in electricity and then it will un-merge and make the two original chemicals.

Thing is, processes like these are like any other process in life - they are not perfect. Instead of converting at 100% perfection, it might convert at 99.999%, which means that *tiny* bit of the conversion goes elsewhere - probably a separate unusable chemical, or some of the energy is wasted as heat.

Eventually both the original chemicals and the waste chemicals turn into enough crappy unusable chemicals and everything just clutters up.


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

[User]
CMV: Donald Trump hasn't done enough in his presidency to warrant being called "The worst president ever"

 I want to start this post by clarifying that I did not vote for Trump and I do not consider myself a conservative or Republican. I also do not agree with a large majority of Trump's actions and statements nor do I think he's done a great job being president.

That said, when various media outlets and individuals declare Trump to be, "The worst President in the history of America" , or something similar, I do not feel Trump's Presidency has warranted such a statement, in light of past presidencies.

I don't have one specific person in mind who I believe was the worst president in U.S. history, but rather several examples of presidents who contend for that title.

For starters, George W. Bush lead the U.S. into what I would consider unnecessary and costly wars. Wars that cost the U.S., Iran, and Afghanistan many lives. I won't get into all the details as to why I consider it egregious, but from a surface perspective, to me it seems far worse than anything Trump has done. Andrew Jackson allowed terribly racist legislation to exist while president. James Buchanan was very pro-slavery and wanted to slavery still exist in America. He also tried to help Kansas become a slavery state. And what about all the presidents that were impeached? I could provide more examples, but I'm hoping that most here will get my point.

It's not that I think many of the things Trump has said and done aren't egregious. It's that I don't think he doesn't yet deserve such a title. Terrible wars, laws that degrade human life, incompetence, collapsed economies, and bad decisions blemish other presidencies far worse. Trump, might check some boxes, but I don't believe his presidency, is that bad just yet. Saying such a blanket statement is unhelpful and only furthers the political divide in the U.S.

[Assistant]
* America began forcibly incarcerating infants at the behest of the Administration for the first time since the Japanese internment of WWII - not as a side effect of some other policy or enforcement but as a direct, calculated program meant to intimidate legitimate asylum seekers and refugees

* No other President has come anywhere close to Trump in terms of violating the Emoluments clause

* We gave up a verifiable deal meant to restrict Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon, while Trump simultaneously entered into a handshake deal with the North Korean Kim regime, one of the most notoriously unreliable governments on the planet, and has already given away military exercises and granted the regime legitimacy in exchange for exactly nothing

* The deficit has been exploded by new tax cuts

* Russia has very likely compromised our electoral systems and exactly nothing has been done for almost two years

* We have begun the process of destroying our alliances with most of the Western Powers, all in favor of Russia

* Trump has unilaterally started a trade war where no protectionist tendencies previously existed

* Trump has unilaterally pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, which will likely cause climate change to be even worse than it was already going to be

* He has at multiple points interfered with the rule of law to the point where most of the democratic norms we relied on in this country are gone.

To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, There was a dream that was America. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile.

Trump is screaming at the top of his lungs.


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

[User] Is it "morally wrong" to offer coronavirus jabs to children in wealthy countries when people at greater risk in poorer nations remain unvaccinated?

[Assistant] Dunno why you've got morally wrong in quote marks, but probably yeah. Even if we have unequal regard for our nation over others (Something Philosophers generally regard as unjustifiable) allowing Coronavirus to fester in other countries allows it to mutate in ways that which eventually make the immunities created by our vaccines ineffective. If we have equal regard for people regardless of nation then it seems pretty self evident we should, beyond any issues around shipping and distribution.


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

[User] ELI5:if my ears, nose, chest etc are blocked up with mucus and I do a big snort and swallow the snot/mucus/gunge, does that get rid of it via my stomach or go straight back to where it came from?

[Assistant]
If you swallow something, it goes to the digestive tract. Mucus get made by (some, not all of) your mucosal membranes, which are all over the place, including your nose, eyes, rectum, throat, inner mouth, and a bunch of others. So, no, it ain't going back to the thing that spawned it.

Keep in mind, ingesting excess mucus, like during an illness, can lead to stomach upset.


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

[User] How does salt "enhance the flavour" of other substances if the salty taste sensation is independent from other taste mechanisms?

[Assistant] many foods are coloidal suspensions. the coloid stability depends on the electric double layer, this is, charges around it than keep it from sticking to each other again. when you add salt to the system you are adding charges, this has the effect is reducing the double layer thickness because there's more charge available and the double layer is more efficient. this has the effect of reducing the volume and maximize the area of coloid because they don't tend to aggregate anymore. more area means more contact with your receptors, and so more flavor on the food.


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

[User]
1 USD is now equal to 1 Euro. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Who benefits?

I can't wrap my head around exchange rates and it is making me sad. I don't know who benefits from low or high exchange rates and I don't even know what is desirable.

[Assistant]
If you're exporting it's a good thing. It makes your prorudt cheaper for foreign companies looking  to buy so you may be able to sell more.

Having a stronger currency means exporting becomes harder but importing is easier. Essentially you can buy foreign goods and they won't cost you as much.

In this case European exporters  may benefit as well as US consumers. And vice versa.


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

[User]
[DC] Has Batman or Superman ever just completely fucked up?

Maybe nobody dies but B/S gets their ass kicked, the bad guy gets away with the big painting or the mayor's Arkham passcode or whatever, and there isn't some quick follow up where Alfred/Lois gives a pep talk and second time around they get it right or Batgirl swoops in to give a helping hand and fix things. Has something like that ever happened?

[Assistant]
Batmans biggest one has got to be letting his plans to neutralize the JLA fall into enemy hands.

For those unfamiliar, Batman (being, yknow, the goddamn Batman) had secret plans to take down the individual members of the Justice League should they ever go rogue and pose a threat to Earth.  These were non-lethal plans, mind you.  One of his rogues gallery not only found the plans, and not only modified them for lethal purposes, but unleashed them all at once.  It was only because Batman knew of the plans at all - having designed them in the first place - that the League survived.

Pretty sure theyre still sore about it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do well established brands (eg. Coke) still market themselves so aggressively? What do they stand to gain when they're already a household name?

[Assistant] All that marketing is how they continue to stay a household name. These aren't video game achievements where once you reach them, you never lose them again. If these established brands stop marketing themselves, they will start losing market share.


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

[User] [General Superhero] For a typical Human being, what does it take mentally, physically, psychologically, etc to be a strong superhero or vigilante?

[Assistant] 100 push-ups! 100 sit-ups! 100 squats! Then a 10 km run! EVERY SINGLE DAY! Never, ever use the A/C in the summer, or heat in the winter, to strengthen the mind! Eat 3 meals a day! Just a banana in the morning is fine!


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

[User]
[Frankenstein] [Dracula] can Frankenstein's monster be turned by a vampire?

He's basically a reanimated human, and unlike a zombie he still has to eat, sleep, etc to stay alive. If a vampire drank his blood and forced him to drink its blood, would he turn?

[Assistant]
In the original story, he's basically just a tall human. Scary, sure, and very strong but there's no indication he's actually *supernatural*. He's an artificial human, but still human. I'd say he'd be transformed normally by a supernatural vampire like dracula, although a biological vampire virus he might be better able to shake off with his physical prowess.

In the more pop-culture interpretation, he's more openly inhuman, essentially a rotting corpse that's being forced to move with electricity. So i don't think so- to a supernatural vampire, he has no soul to corrupt, and for a biological one he's a dead host.


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

[User]
[Yugioh] How sentient are the monsters (like toons)?

KaibaCorp's holographic devices show some level of tangibility with the real world (or at least some very, *very* real effects blurring the lines). But it seems that the monsters have some degree of awareness to their surroundings? Particularly toon monsters, which seem incredibly sentient and react accordingly to banter between the duelists.

This begs the question of how sentient these monsters are? It would take an insane amount of programming and personal design of responsive AI to create what they've created. Also, why do toon monsters seem to exhibit a level of awareness beyond monsters?

[Assistant] The regular Kaibacorp holograms are not remotely sentient, it's all AI.  The toon monsters react more because it's funnier that way, so Kaiba (or was it Pegasus at that point) made them that way.  Now Shadow Games are a bit different, with the magic in play there the monsters due start to gain some sentience.  In some rare instances, monsters with a deep connection to a duelist can manifest some of their personality into a hologram in a non Shadwo Game, but that almost never happens.


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

[User]
[40k] Why were other Legions horrified at Angron being so brutal?

 **"Never afraid of extreme measures, Angron had let slip his World Eaters in the most vicious way imaginable. Remus had once heard his primarch say that Angrons Legion could succeed where all others would fail because the Red Angel was willing to go further than any other Legion, to countenance behaviour that any civilised code of war would deem abhorrent. Seeing what had been done to Prandium, Remus understood completely. This was no honourable war, this was butchery and destruction embodied. The primarchs great work could surely never have contemplated war with so terrible a face."** Pg.32 Age of Darkness

This quote shows other Legions were horrified at how brutal Angron was, but why? They can be ruthless as well, just not as much as Angron and Kurze.

[Assistant]
Kurze didn't have huge body counts on average. He'd skin a planet, then the next dozen or so would surrender with token resistance. Angron, meanwhile, did this on every single planet he attacked.

Perturabo and his legion would grind a world's defenders to dust, and to be fair he *did* have something of a reputation for being a meat grinder, but people just plain paid less attention to him than Angron because, you know, Perturabo.

And to be clear, people, including other primarchs, were horrified of the above two. The experience was probably just fresh in his mind and he downplayed the other two for that reason.


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

[User] ELI5: How can we talk on a cellphone to anyone in the world and hear a response instantly, yet news stations have that awkward delay, when usually the reporters are fairly close to the station?

[Assistant]
Because they're using satellites, and you're using a cell network. So, why don't they use something like a cell network?

Well, have you ever had a dropped call on your phone? Of course you have. It's annoying. But for a live television interview, they really want to avoid that. So, they get dedicated satellite time for it. Unless something really major happens, that connection isn't going to be interrupted. They would rather pay more money and deal with the lag than run the risk of the interview not happening when they've scheduled it for.


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

[User]
[IT] I'm an FBI investigator, and recently I've been looking over the town of Derry. What the fuck.

This small Maine town has a death rate six times the nation average, not taking into account child death rates which are even *worse.* And none of this is new, there's been almost a pattern of sorts going on for years, why the hell hasn't the FBI or the state police taken notice of this phenomenon?

[Assistant]
You should probably take a day off and investigate it yourself. Check the sewers, the answers are almost certainly there.

Better not tell anyone where you're going, they'll just going to block you with bureaucratic red tape.


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

[User] ELI5: How do companies like Walgreens make money selling gift cards for things like iTunes when the cost is the same as the value of the card? Who benefits from this and doesn't the company lose money when factoring in shipping costs?

[Assistant]
The cost to the store is not the same as the face value of the card - they make a small profit. And Apple makes money, too, even selling the card at a discount, because some percentage of card value is never used, and even if it is used, it gets people to shop there, and they may spend a few extra bucks.

And even beyond that, it makes Walgreens a desirable place to shop. People will pop in to pick up a gift card, then also buy toothpaste and some M&Ms.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do I look so much less attractive in a picture than a mirror image?

Whenever I look in the mirror, I see a stone cold killer. Ready to fuck bitches left, right and centre.

.

Then I look at a picture of myself...and I'm just a fat asian.

Why?

[Assistant]
It's the Mirror

For one, they flip your image. The You you're most familiar with, then, is actually an exact opposite of how you look to others. Granted, it's an intuitive reversal, so it doesn't bother us when we see it, but it implants a self-image that's intrinsically wrong.