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

[User]
[Guardians of the Galaxy] Why didn't the Asgardians come to the Nova core's aid.

Okay, forget the the obvious reasons and focus on the in-universe answer.
Its been established that heimdall can see every corner of the universe. Nothing escapes his eye, normally. its also been established that the Asgardian's watch over and protect the nine realms. When Vanir were under attack by the Marauders, the Asgardians came to their rescue.

 Why didn't the Asgardians beam down and assist the Nova core when they were under attack by Ronan, who possessed one of the infinity stone,  an artefact just as powerful and destructive as the Aether. If the Asgardian's took extra precautions dealing with the Aether, you would think they beam down and stop Ronan from wiping out an entire planet full of billions of innocent lives. Ronan was just as much of threat as Malekith and the aether.

[Assistant] Unfortunately in the grand scheme of the Universe, Xandar is a blip in the trillions of lives found across the universe. Asgard is unaffiliated with any of the established xenos empires. Ronan's attack on Xandar to outside observers is simply the latest conflict in the long war between the Kree and Nova Empire. Furthermore, Asgard only intervenes when there's a multidimensional invasion. For example, the Jotuns invaded Earth around the Dark Ages until Odin and the Einherjar repelled it.


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

[User]
Is c an arbitrary constant? Could there have been
another universe that formed where c was different?
If so, how would that universe be different?

I mean, suppose there were two more universes that formed identically to our own, but one's speed of light was 1.5c, and the other's was 0.5c, what effects would that have on the composition or structure of those universes?

For example:

* Would galaxies form? Or stars and planets? Black-holes?
* Would atoms/molecules even be stable?
* Would time behave differently? Would gravity or the strong/weak forces be different?
* And finally, would the formation of complex life be possible in them?

[Assistant] The speed of light is like *,* in that it's a geometric ratio. It's always going to be exactly equal to 1, as long as you describe it in terms of the ratio of a distance to the amount of time it takes light to go that distance. If you use other units for distance and duration, you'll get different numbers, but they will always reduce to 1.


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

[User]
ELI5: What would it be like to be in the bottom of the Mariana Trench if the ocean was drained?

Would you be able to breathe easier than at sea level? Would it have an effect on your weight?

[Assistant] The air would be quite dense, about 4x that of sea level, and might result in a mild case of decompression sickness if an individual were returned to sea level without regular stops, but milder than an actual scuba dive.  Breathing would be very efficient, though.  It would be very cold, getting only a few hours of daylight depending on the orientation of the trench (I don't have any images handy).  Gravity would hardly change at all, with the 7 mile depth being only a tiny fraction of Earth's overall radius.


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

[User]
[MCU] Thanos's flagship is called the Sanctuary II. Was there ever a Sanctuary I?

If there was, what happened to it? If there wasn't, then why add the II?

[Assistant] That open "air" asteroid field with Thanos' chair where the Other hangs out and talks with Loki and Ronan is called Sanctuary.  Not much of a ship as far as we've seen but they've at least invested some nice stair lights into it.


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

[User]
[Dune] Why isn't Leto II known as Leto III?

Leto the tyrant, known as Leto II, and his twin had an older brother who was already named Leto II. What gives?

It's even brought up as a question (iirc in Heretics of Dune) some three thousand years after the God Emperor's death, but is then immediately hushed as blasphemous.

[Assistant]
Regnal numbers don't normally count until the actual title is assumed. Prince Charles is not called Charles III and if he died before becoming King he would never count in the numbering.

I propose Leto II was only a nickname for the presumed future head of the Atreides house.


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

[User]
CMV: Climate Change is the Most Important Issue Facing Humanity Today

Among all humanitarian issues in the world, I believe that climate change has the greatest change to destroy all of humanity as we know it. With an uptick in recent extreme weather events, I feel that the unprecedented destruction caused by climate change is nearing. Yet, no one seems to make a big deal about it because it is extremely difficult for humans to think about the future impacts of a present, slow moving issue. Furthermore, I think news coverage of the issue makes people believe climate change's existence and impacts is an even sided argument because there are one v. one debates, when in actuality 97% of climate scientists believe in climate change.

I think this issue is extremely overlooked by the general public and lawmakers because it has become a partisan issue when it is a humanitarian problem. In my mind, this is such a grave issue because war, poverty, and disease won't be issues anymore when the earth becomes uninhabitable. Many actions by the media and government feel like childish attempts to gain money and/or power, all while the earth is slowly dying.

What do you think? CMV!

[Assistant]
>when in actuality 97% of climate scientists believe in climate change.

What, exactly, do you think this proves?  It doesn't prove how much warming there will be.  It doesn't tell you how much damage that warming will do.  It says nothing about which mitigation strategies will be effective, which ones won't, and how much they will cost.  Pointing it out is basically just a religious shibboleth, a way of shouting "I Science!" without actually bothering to think beyond a tribal signal.  Have you thought about any of those other  issues?


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

[User]
ELI5: It seems like "everyone" is getting cancer. Has is always been this way, like since the dawn of time, or is this something new, or...?

I've checked *all* of the explained cancer-related ELI5s, to no avail.
In modern times (at the present moment), it seems that cancer cases of any/all types are growing exponentially.

Is this simply because better medical technology is giving us more awareness of the subject?  Or has cancer *always* been this prevalent?  ...Or?

P.S. I'm sorry if I'm missing the buck here in finding the answer, or if someone has already covered my ELI5 request.

EDIT:  I'm going to go ahead and risk a shitstorm by saying this...but, I realize that there are "CHEMICAL ADDITIVES IN FOOD AND TODAY'S HUMANS ARE SO DUM FOR EATING THIS SHIT AND SMOKING CIGZ".  There is more to this ELI5 than your soapbox on modern man's GMO/Terrible Lifestyle.

[Assistant] Cancer is what kills you if nothing else gets to you first.  We've made long strides in general health and treatment of many diseases, which has caused us to live longer, which makes cancer a larger percentage of total deaths than it was further back in history.


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

[User] ELI5 Why do dry-wipe pens stop permanent markers from working on a whiteboard? Bonus question: How can you counteract this effect?

[Assistant]
The ink in dry erase pens are suspended in a solvent, and when the solvent dries it leaves behind the dry ink. This ink can just be wiped away because it's not absorbed into the dry erase board.

Permanent markers work the same way, except the ink doesn't wipe away. It still doesn't get absorbed into the dry erase board but it doesn't wipe away because of its formulation.

Long story short, the solvent in the dry erase marker ink also works on permanent marker ink, and then the permanent marker ink binds to the dry erase ink instead of the board.

To answer your second question, there are industrial sharpies that use different solvents that might prevent erasing on a white board.


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

[User]
ELI5: Can a planet without conditions similar to earth support any life at all, or have we just not found organisms that require other conditions?

So if a planet has an atmosphere of 90% hydrogen and we say it is "uninhabitable." Does that  mean no organism at all could survive? Or is it that we just don't know about organisms that could survive in those conditions?

[Assistant]
It's the latter. We only know life on earth -- life as we know it. It's possible there could be exotic forms of life elsewhere, but we have no idea what it would look like or how to find it. So we focus on the life we understand, because that's what we're best at finding.

To some degree though, we know the chemicals our life is based on are probably some of the best for "life". Carbon has specific properties that make it very nice for replication and other life functions. Silicon is very similar to carbon, which is why you often hear about people looking for "silicon based life" -- it's the most likely other element that could produce organisms that follow similar mechanics as ours.


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

[User]
Would'nt a black holes gravity tear us apart before we get any where near it's event horizon?

So after watching interstellar i watched a couple of interviews with some physicists, and the topic of discussion always seem to be what would happen at the event horizon or inside a black hole. However something that's alluded me is, why aren't we already getting torn apart by the gravity when we get some what near it.

Like the stars we see getting eaten by black holes, where this acretion disk is formed and it's ripping off matter from the star or just ripping it apart completely. Is this something that happens because of the size of the star?

[Assistant]
>Is this something that happens because of the size of a star?

Yes. Tidal forces depend on two factors.

The first is the gradient of gravitational force, which increases the closer you are to the centre of the black hole (this is relevant because for larger black holes, the tidal forces at the event horizon are much weaker than that in smaller black holes).

The second is how large you are. For a large object like a star, the tidal forces are huge because the difference in gravitational force acting on the close and far end is large.

These two factors influence the difference in force across the object, which the phenomenon of tidal forces arise from.


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

[User]
How do you avoid being a crank?

With the immense popularity of the "What type of cranks does your discipline attract?" thread, I am afraid that I could be a crank myself one day. I try to avoid this by trying not to have opinions about fields in which I am not an expert in or are adjacent to mine, but I could still be a crank in my very own field.

The best thing to do, it seems, is to be humble and avoid certainty. Any other suggestions?

[Assistant] Fundamentally, a crank is someone who disagrees with a discipline's theoretical framework and/or methodology (in a Kuhnian sense, not in an academia is a shadowy cabal of masonic Jews sense - although there are also cranks of that flavor). So the best way to avoid being a crank is to professionalize within a given discipline, do good discipline-specific work and earn a reputation as a good scientist. Then, not only are you less likely to make bad assumptions and unfounded arguments (which is what most cranks do), but you will be able to square the less orthodox ideas you have with accepted theory, which is more right than wrong in most cases, and present them in a way that gets you taken at least somewhat seriously.


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

[User] ELI5 why do space rockets take off from a upright position instead of taking off of a runway like a plane, reach 40,000 ft and entering space from there.

[Assistant] A rocket has to go really fast to reach speeds fast enough to orbit, and the atmosphere is thickest close to the ground. So a rocket tries to get out of the thickest part as fast as it can to save fuel, then it turns sideways to get to orbital speeds. Basically it would waste too much fuel going through the atmosphere like a plane.


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

[User]
When physicists refer to "nothing",  what does that really mean?

Arguments have been made that Hawking's statements that the universe can create itself from nothing are self-contradictory, because it breaks causailty.  My hunch is that those making such arguments are just not familiar with the more complex aspects of physics, but then again, neither am I.  I've heard of particles "popping in and out of existence", but I'm not sure what that really means.  Can anyone explain to the layman what physicists mean when they say something comes from nothing?

[Assistant]
You're probably talking about Lawrence Krauss' lecture "A Universe from Nothing."

What he means is that if you count the total energy density of the universe as positive, and the gravitational potential energy as negative, it cancels out to zero.


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

[User]
[Pokmon] I went on an adventure, one thing led to another, and now I've tamed Arceus and captured it in a pokball. Are there rules for this situation?

Is it legal to use in gym battles? Can I breed it to make more arceuses? Arcei? If so, am I allowed to sell the eggs?

[Assistant] Legendaries can't breed, generally.  There are exceptions, but Arceus isn't one.  And why would you not be allowed to use it during Gym battles?  It's your pokemon.  Not everybody has the skills to capture an Arceus.  Having one on your team is reflective of your skill as a trainer.  They wouldn't take that away from you.


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

[User] [Venture Bros.] So What's the Purpose of the Guild of Calamitous Intent?

[Assistant] Basically they're an oversight body for supervillains-- the villains abide by a bunch of inefficient rules and stick to small-scale crimes like revenge and bank robberies rather than world domination plots, and in return organizations like the military, OSI, NSA, etc. let them have their fun with their nemeses rather than just wiping them out.


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

[User] ELI5:"Time heals all wounds" What exactly is happening here? Why do you feel less "hurt" as time passes?

[Assistant]
It takes time to understand and process what happened, your hormones and emotional state have a chance to return to relative normalcy, and you adjust to your new existence as a slightly hurt person.

Imagine the string of an instrument being plucked, it strongly vibrates, and the disturbance dissipates over time.

Your current emotional state is sort of the sum of all the things that have happened to you, but the more recent things have a larger effect. So over time your wound is "healed."

Obviously, in terms of physical wounds, if it isn't permanent damage then the passage of time allows your body to repair itself. So because time allows us to adjust to emotional hurt, and to repair ourselves from physical hurt, it heals "all" wounds.


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

[User] Did the 1918 pandemic have asymptomatic carriers as the covid 19 pandemic does?

[Assistant] As far as we can tell, most if not all viruses have the potential for asymptomatic carriers. Do we know for sure that the 1918 Spanish Flu did? Not with direct evidence. That kind of testing just didn't exist back then. But we can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that yes it did.


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

[User]
[pokemon] It seems like all anyone wants to do is collect/battle/dress up their pokemon. Does no one in this world have a real job? Is the universe nearly post-scarcity?

Hear me out, I have been around 4 different regions (kanto, johto, hoenn, sinnoh) training my pokemon. Everyone and their mother has a set of pokemon, and nearly everyone i talk to only talks about pokemon.

The people that have jobs, outside of shopkeepers, usually also have pokemon ready to battle whenever. "bird keeper" "cyclist" "fisherman" "psychic" "rock star" "sailor". These seem more like hobbies than jobs. I've never battled someone named "Sewage treatment manager" or "retail sales rep". Does anyone NEED to work in this universe? I mean, pokemon centers are free and there seems to be a small army of clones keeping things together (looking at you officer jenny and nurse joy). We can digitally store  our pokemon in computers and then re materialize them. We have advanced technology!

So, are people just working their jobs because they want to? No one actually needs to work, so people just do whatever they enjoy to occupy their time? Is money just a way to reward people for going beyond what is required of them?

**edit:** lots of great answers in this thread! Thanks everybody.

It more or less boils down to:

reduced scarcity -> more free time/money -> increase in recreational sports -> more frequent encounters with amateur pokemon trainers.

reduced scarcity -> less monetary competition -> more generous patrons -> sponsored pokemon gyms/trainers/competitions -> increase in public interest of pokemon training.

[Assistant]
I think there are a couple of ways to look at it. The Pokemon universe, while not post-scarcity, certainly benefits from reduced scarcity, what with all the magic creatures providing near-unlimited energy and work. So there probably is a smaller number of "real" jobs out there.

But also, the player just doesn't run into everyone in the world. While you're out catching and training Pokemon, you'll certainly run into Cyclists and Fishermen and Hikers because they're out and about. You won't come across Middle Manager Jerome because he's inside a corporate building working all day before he goes straight home to Housewife Maude who has been busy taking care of family commitments. You will, however, run into their son Joey because it's summer vacation and he's out showing off his top-percentage Rattata.

But the player's bubble of interaction certainly doesn't comprise the entire Pokeworld.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do you have to wait a while before cracking your knuckles a second time?

I just dont get what exactly happens during the time period of cracking your knuckles and being able to crack your knuckles again.

[Assistant]
When you crack your knuckles (or anything that cracks, really), you're expanding the area inside the joint, which is full of sinovial fluid (natural lube). As the volume expands, gasses in the fluid cavitate and come out of solution and make a pop sound as they rapidly expand.

The 'wait' is because you have to wait for the gasses to dissolve into the fluid again.


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

[User] Why do spiders legs curl up when they die?

[Assistant] Their legs operate on a sort of fluid mechanic, as in, they dont have muscles contracting their legs, they have fluid sacs that move their legs like a hydraulic system of sorts.  When they die, they lose control over the hydraulics and they release pressure, curling up their legs.


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

[User] ELI5: Whats the scientific term for the tingling sensation (almost like a ground) that you feel when you say gives me the chills, and why does it happen?

[Assistant]
It is technically called Piloerection! And its The same reason a dogs fur or spine-fur sticks out when its threatened, scared, or cold. The chills or goosebumps are typically a fear/excitement/body temp reaction.

Back when humans used to be super hairy - when wed be aroused, threatened, or cold, out hair follicles hardened, and continue to do so because of instinctual reaction to external stimuli. In fear or threatening situations - the hair follicles stiffen to make the hair stick and and appear bigger so that your enemy or threat will be more inclined to back off. In cold weather, your body does this to thicken the fur to disallow airflow and keep you warm. As far as excitement goes, like when you hear a good opera and you get chills - its because music that good can make you feel vulnerable, which circles back to fear. Your attention has become fixed on one thing for an extended amount of time, so now youre aware or your surroundings suddenly and your hair puffs out to threaten other predators into thinking your bigger.


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

[User] [Star Wars] How would the Clone Wars have been different if Thrawn was the genetic template for the clone army instead of Jango?

[Assistant]
Thrawn would have been a terrible choice for the clone army, because he's a strategist, not a foot soldier. Yes, you want your foot soldiers to have some intelligence and initiative. That's why they used Jango rather then some muscled up thug.

But Thrawn has too much ambition, and his prime skills are too strategic and big picture. An army of Thrawn's would be a million Generals and no Privates.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do live YouTube streams of TV shows get away with it?

I've spent all day binge watching live YouTube streams of South Park, Family Guy and American Dad on my TV and it's been great

But I've been wondering how these streams survive considering that when full episodes of TV shows are uploaded to YouTube they are always quickly removed due to copyright.

[Assistant] Because streams cannot be easily automatically processed by Youtube's ContentID system. Someone would have to report the stream to the copyright holder, then they would have to contact Youtube to shut down the stream.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is actually happened when your eyes adjust to light?

Examples: walking out of a movie theater during the day - when someone opens the blinds in a dark room.

[Assistant]
Two things happen: the fast response and the slow response.

**Fast response to light:**

Your iris dilates and makes your pupil (the hole in your eye through which light enters) larger so more light can get in.

**Slow response to light:**

When its dark, a chemical referred to as visual purple (I think its technical name is rhodopsin) gets secreted to your retina which makes the nerves more likely to fire when any photon hits it. That takes a lot of time to fade out of your eyes when its bright which explains why it takes so long for your eyes to adjust.

**Fun factoid:**

Some historians believe pirates are associated with eye patches not because of eye injuries but because of the need to rapidly go between the extreme Caribbean sun and the extreme dark below decks. Your eyes can adjust to light independently. So a theory is that pirates would switch the patch from one eye to the other to allow them to see well both above and below deck when fighting for control of a ship.


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

[User] ELI5 What do mosquitos do during they day?

[Assistant]
First of all, any individual adult mosquito only lives for about a week.  During this time, mosquitoes will eat (fruits, nectar, other sweet substances), rest, and find mates.

Female mosquitoes will also find hosts from which to gather blood.  They need the blood of animals to help with egg production as the blood is rich with proteins.  The process by which the proteins in the blood are broken down and then reformed into eggs can take two to three days, depending on species and habitat conditions.

Like many flies, mosquitoes lay their eggs in water; in doing so, the female will dip her ovipositor into the water over and over and create a "raft" of eggs.  Eggs hatch into larvae in as little as 48 hours and become adult mosquitoes in one to two weeks.

Did you have any other specific questions about mosquito behavior?


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

[User]
[40K] Can a Chaos God starve to death?

Let's say everyone in the Galaxy promised to be on their best behavior and not spill any blood or fight for a few thousand millennia, would Khorne actually die after some time?

[Assistant]
The Cabal did have the plan to have the Horus Heresy succeed so humanity would burn out and deny a massive chunk of sustenance from Chaos, so they at least think so.

And also in Fantasy, Slaanesh grew so bloated from consuming souls when the End Time blew up the world that s/he went into a food coma and was sealed off by surviving Aelves, so the opposite happens too apparently.


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

[User]
What happens to bacteria once it dies?

After I boil water to kill bacteria, am I just drinking their corpses?

[Assistant] Yes, the denatured remains of proteins and other cellular components is present in any boiled water containing bacteria. The heat will denature secondary and tertiary structures of proteins, but usually not the primary structure.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we round 0.500 up to 1?

[Assistant]
Because you have to round in one direction or the other, and we decided to pick up.

Note this is not universal.  In some financial accounting, you "round towards even".  3.5 would round to 4, but 2.5 would round to 2.  The idea is to try to make the rounding errors cancel out.


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

[User]
ELI5: The Illuminati

People are always talking about the 'evil' and 'secret' organisation known as the Illuminati. Whenever I look it up I find hour long YouTube documentaries on pop music videos and subliminal messaging.

I don't get it. Can someone give me the gist of this whole thing?

[Assistant] Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society founded in 1776. Due to it's secrerty, people have made up tons of conspiracies saying that the Illuminati secretly runs the media. No one knows for fact if it's true or not.


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

[User]
[Pokemon] What have Jesse, James, and Meowth accomplished for Team Rocket?

It seems like all they ever do is chase one kid and his Pikachu and waste Team Rocket funds on elaborate machines that ultimately blow-up with nothing to show. What exactly have they done for the organization that not only warrants special communications with the Big Boss, but also special assignments to catch Pokemon in specific regions (looking at you X and Y series)?

[Assistant]
They're deeply loyal for one, and suck ups. No matter what mission they are offered, they will take it. Not to mention, they're quite powerful Pokemon trainers in their own right, who can contend with and sometimes beat Gym Leaders and Pokemon league levels of talent. You want to have somebody like that on your side, especially with James, who has a remarkable gift for bonding with Pokemon.

As for these machines? The three of them are some of the greatest enginners in Team Rocket, capable of constructing stealthy submarines, electrical containment systems, and all variety of contraption, all seemingly out of thin air as they almost never have money. When tested, these designs almost always have flaws, but after their initial field testing of the prototypes, the designs are sent back to Rocket Labs to be refined and produced.

They also have the knack of ending up right in the thick of things, be it gym challenges or legendary Pokemon encounters. It's valuable to have eyes on the ground, and they serve as an effective decoy. Their high visibility makes them serve in some ways as the public face of Team Rocket-which works just fine. Team Rocket is seen as a bunch of bumbling wanna-be gangsters, who don't really pose much of a serious threat, and allows the real efforts to operate in the shadows.

On their own, their schemes almost never get anywhere, but they produce valuable research and intel for the organization, and all they need is an occasional video call and someone to bail them out of jail.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are dominantly slashing weapons curved? Why do some curve backwards, which some curve forwards?

[Assistant]
Few curve forwards and those ones are usually more for special purposes. Medieval polearms with backward hooks such as bills were intended to allow you to grab onto riders and de-horse calvary, or pull shields away from their bearers, for example.

For the ones that curve backward and away from the point of impact, it's so you can cut better and reduces the chances that your weapon will get stuck. When the edge of your swinging weapon is straight and you connect, it's harder to slice the weapon out and do further damage than if it's a curved edge like a cutlass. Weapons like the longsword were largely "hit, then pull backward from the direction you just swung to hit again". With the cutlass or katana, you "hit and continue slicing to pull your weapon free" to do more damage, cut tendons and increase bleeding, you don't just pull it back.


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

[User] What is everyone's favourite philosophical quote?

[Assistant]
I don't know where this Deleuze quote is from (I think it's from an interview?) but it's on the back cover of one of his essay collections:

>If you don't admire something, if you don't love it, you have no reason to write a word about it. Spinoza or Nietzsche are philosophers whose critical and destructive powers are without equal, but this power always springs from affirmation, from joy, from a cult of affirmation and joy, from the exigency of life against those who would mutilate and mortify life. For me, that is philosophy itself.


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

[User] Do contact with the virus work as booster shots for vaccinated/recovered people?

[Assistant]
Kind of. The shot results in a predictable dose of antigen exposure, response, and zero risk of actual infection.

An exposure to the virus will absolutely provoke a response that will have a booster effect, but how much of a response will vary tremendously based on the nature of the exposure, and theres obviously a risk of infection. Even asymptomatic infections cause tissue damage in lungs, so one would want to avoid that, if possible.

The booster effect exists in both cases, but they are not equivalent in safety, magnitude, or consistency.


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

[User]
ELI5: at what point does electricity stop in water?

Obviously if we put live electricity in the sea, the whole ocean wouldnt then become dangerous with it. At what point does the electricity stop? What stops it?

[Assistant]
Depends on how you "put electricity" in.

When lightning hits the ocean, it can more or less flow in any direction through the water, and the power dissipates accordingly.

Just think of it expanding (hemi)spherically from the point it hits: the further it gets, the larger the area it covers becomes. The larger the area gets, the smaller the current per area becomes, until it is not noticeable any more.


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

[User] How do we get Vitamin D from the sun? Is it like photosynthesis in any way?

[Assistant]
Photosynthesis is a process where photon is captured and its energy transported across a chain of molecules for the purpose of storing the said energy. This process is well-controlled at various steps, and organisms have evolved over the years to use the best spectrum of light available.

In humans the majority of Vitamin D synthesis requires sunlight at one stage, but the UV light just provides the activation energy to convert one isomeric form of provitamin D to another (i.e. there is no active storage of energy). This is a spontaneous process not requiring cellular machinery, and the effect is limited to the substrate and product.


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

[User] ELI5 Why nutrient information like sugar and calories, isn't/doesn't have to be on alcohol?

[Assistant] The FDA requires all nutrition labels on food; however, alcohol used to fall under the jurisdiction of the ATF, who didn't require any labels; it however is now under the jurisdiction of the TTB, and they currently don't impose nutrition labels requirements unless the beverage claims "lite/light", "table wine", etc. In mid-2016, new laws were approved for nutrition labels on alcohol, such as the inclusion of sugar, manufactures have until mid-2018 to comply (mid-2019 is they are small companies).


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

[User] [Star Wars... The Prequels] During QuiGon's funeral Palps lets it slip that he is the dark lord (Wait, was that my inside voice?) and the Jedi all confront him. How differently do the rest of the movies play out?

[Assistant]
Palpatine dies, Dooku continues the war and doesn't win. Chancellor Padme Amidala becomes the first woman to lead the Republic, Anakin confesses his love for her to Kenobi who talks with him about Satine and his regrets, Anakin leaves the order and that's it. The Sith are done for good.

At some point Kenobi meets with Ventress and takes her as apprentice.

Bill Organa adopts a lot of the kids stolen by Palpatine, some of them join the Jedi Order, others don't, but they all are carefully watched by the Order.

Slowly dying some of the Clones find about the implanted chip, the Republic fixes it..

Darth Maul is the last Lord of the Sith, and keeps plotting to bring down the Jedi Order and kill Kenobi.

Luke and Leia join the Jedi order. Ventress becomes their Master.

When Yoda dies, Kenobi becomes the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. He regularly visits his friend Anakin Skywalker in Naboo.


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

[User]
When does cancer become terminal?

People with cancer survive with an operation or some sort of medical treatment but when the doctor says it's terminal, when exactly does that happen and what does it mean? Is it possible to survive after the cancer has been termed as terminal?

[Assistant]
Quote: *Terminal illness or end-stage disease is an incurable disease that cannot be adequately treated and is reasonably expected to result in the death of the patient.*

Cancers typically become terminal when the growth of malignant cells impedes major organ function or have reached a level of metastasis (widespread growth throughout the body) where surgical removal is no longer an option and chemotherapy or radiation are either unsuccessful or would only further weaken the patient's body, and the only option left is to make the patient comfortable as they die (how long this takes is entirely based on the particular type of cancer and case specifics).

There have been many cases where a prognosis of "terminal" has been reversed due to aggressive treatment via new techniques or simply by virtue of the tumor growth stopping or reversing on its own, but **this is not common**. Often the media makes major news out of people surviving Stage 4 cancer, but these should not be considered statistically relevant cases, rather as remarkable ones due to various special circumstances.


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

[User]
ELI5: Is a carb a carb? How do different carbs effect blood sugar levels, insulin, glycogen and diabetes?

I read that a carb is a carb and if it fits your macros then dont worry. But then I also read that sugar is terrible for you and you should eat complex carbs because of blood sugar levels. Whats this all about? Blood sugar, glucose, insulin, and diabetes? Can someone ELI5?

[Assistant]
As far as calories go its the same thing as far as your body is concerned. The difference is in how fast they are put into your bloodstream.

100g carbs in a bowl of oatmeal is going to be released into your bloodstream over a few hrs. Giving you a constant blood sugar level.

100g carbs in a soda will hit you bloodstream almost instantly, spiking your blood sugar, which will cause your body to produce a lot of insulin to deal with it.

The difference is how long it takes your body to get the carbs out of the food.

As well, if the goal is to eat less calories, drinking a soda will add calories without actually making you feel like you've eaten. As well it can make you crave more carbs when your blood sugar drops back down.

So carbs and calories that make you feel full and are released slowly are better in that sense.

So yes, if it fits your macros it's fine as far as calories are concerned, but if you get 1/3 of you calories from sugar in a day you'll probably be left feeling hungry and grumpy and craving food from having low blood sugar at some points throughout the day.


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

[User]
Philosophy of thermodynamics

I'm starting my PhD in engineering in two months on the topic of 'sustainable and energy efficient building'. Because I am very into philosophy, I want to tackle this subject in a deeper way than the normal engineering approach. Specifically, I want to grasp the true concepts behind energy, entropy (and the related exergy).

When thermodynamics came about (Carnot, Clausius etc.) there was way more attention (and appreciation in my mind) for the philosophical concepts of energy/entropy etc. Nowadays, the focus lies on the mathematical side of things, forgetting what it all effectively means.

 I would love to read all the classic authors myself, but, because the PhD is not in philosophy but engineering, I do not have the time. Do any of you have good references on the (philosophical) meaning of energy, entropy etc or some historical evolution of these concepts?

[Assistant]
A readable but solid high-level introduction to these topics is Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan's *Into The Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life.* It's more science than philosophy, but it deals with the concepts well, and has a very, very broad scope.

I also really liked Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers' *Order out of Chaos* (written by a chemist and a philosopher respectively), but it's perhaps a tad dated now.


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

[User] ELI5: How do people sing in tonal languages? If the melody is falling but the tone of the word is rising, how does that work?

[Assistant] At least in Chinese the tone of the word is ignored. You just follow the melody. The context will take care of identifying the correct meaning of the word. Also, most of the time the text is displayed in subtitles (on TV, DVD etc.).


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

[User] [GoT/ASoIaF] What exactly is Arya and Gendry's relationship?

[Assistant]
They're fond of each other, but not to the point that they're willing to give up the possibilities of their lives.

Having grown up an impoverished nobody, Gendry can't bring himself to abandon a life of wealth and respect as the Lord of Storm's End for the sake of a boat, and an uncertain tomorrow.

And having grown up as a noble lady, trained only to marry and breed, Arya can't bring herself to abandon a life of freedom and adventure for the sake of the castle she always had, and the opportunity to live out her days as Gendry's brood mare.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do engagement rings work?

Kind of never learned that part when I was young.
So how is this process work? after a man gives a woman the ring, she carries it with her and then takes it off on the wedding day? do the couple go for ring shopping after the proposal to find a ring for the man? I've seen people put their wedding ring on both left and right hand, does it matter?

Thanks.

[Assistant]
Short version:  Do whatever makes the two of you happy.

Long version:  Emily Post documented the rules of polite society in the 1920s.  It has been the standard of American tradition.  For very formal couples or people with an eye to please their elders, this might be a useful read:

>THE ENGAGEMENT RING

  >It is doubtful if he who carries a solitaire ring enclosed in a little square box and produces it from his pocket upon the instant that she says Yes, exists outside of the moving pictures! As a matter of fact, the accepted suitor usually consults his betrotheds tastewhich of course may be gratified or greatly modified, according to the length of his purseor he may, without consulting her, buy what ring he chooses. A solitaire diamond is the conventional emblem of the singleness and endurability of the one love in his life, and the stone is supposed to be pure and flawless as the bride herself, and their future togetheror sentiments equally beautiful. There is also sentiment for a sapphires depth of true blue. Pearls are supposed to mean tears; emeralds, jealousy; opals, the essence of bad luck; but the ruby stands for warmth and ardor: all of which it is needless to say is purest unfounded superstition.   10
>  In the present day, precious stones having soared far out of reach of all but the really rich, fashion rather prefers a large semi-precious one to a microscopic diamond. Fashion, however, is merely momentary and local, and the great majority will probably always consider a diamond the only ring to have.   11
>  It is not obligatory, or even customary, for the girl to give the man an engagement present, but there is no impropriety in her doing so if she wants to, and any of the following articles would be suitable: A pair of cuff links, or waist-coat buttons, or a watch chain, or a key chain, or a cigarette case. Probably because the giving of an engagement ring is his particular province, she very rarely gives him a ring or, in fact, any present at all.   12
>  The engagement ring is worn for the first time in public on the day of the announcement.

>BUYING THE WEDDING RING

>  It is quite usual for the bride to go with the groom when he buys the wedding ring, the reason being that as it stays for life on her finger, she should be allowed to choose the width and weight she likes and the size she finds comfortable.


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

[User]
Why do we use parsecs instead of 3.26 lightyears?

I just learned this in school so I know near nothing about parsecs, so sorry if the answer is obvious. I just don't see the reason to say parsecs instead of using lightyears everywhere, you know, using one word and not multiple ones would be less confusing. Or are there certain things you can only do with parsecs?

[Assistant]
Parsecs are definitely the convenient unit for astronomy. For some reason, light-years have become the standard unit used in communication with the public. Light-years are an easier concept to grasp (i.e. the distance travelled by light in one year), but parsecs really are more convenient to do maths with.

The parsec comes directly from how distances to stars are measured. As the Earth goes around the Sun, we are constantly seeing stars from different angles. This causes stars to move in little ellipses in the sky. This is called "parallax". The size of this effect tells us how far away the star is. You can see a similar effect when driving in the country. The fenceposts by the road appear to be moving really fast while the distant mountains appear to the be totally stationary.

A star is one parsec away if it moves in a little circle with a radius of one arc-second (1/60th of 1/60th of one degree) over a year. If its little circle is half an arc-second, it's two parsecs away. If it's 1/10th of an arc-second, it's 10 parsecs away. So, given that astronomers like using arc-seconds to measure angles in the sky, using parsecs makes the mathematics really simple. It's a geometric unit that we can measure directly. Light-years are less direct, because we can't directly time how long it takes light to reach us from a distant star - we have to calculate it from the speed of light and the distance.

There's also a convenient trick that 1 km/s is extremely close to 1 parsec per million years. Alpha Centauri is a bit over a parsec away. So if you know your speed in km/s, you can very easily calculate how many years it would take to reach Alpha Centauri or whatever.

So the real question is: if we actually use parsecs all the time, and they're more convenient units, why do we teach kids about light-years? It's probably because they're just a little bit easier to teach, but that's very much a social question rather than an astronomy one.


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

[User]
Why does fallen fruit begin to grow mold while fruit still attached to the tree does not?

My guess is that the tree as some form of defense against fungi but I am at a loss to what mechanisms make up that defense.

[Assistant]
When the fruit falls, it gets squashed, bugs and ants start biting into it creating a nice entry for mold.

Sometimes fruit also gets moldy while still on the tree, typically when birds peck on it or wasps start biting it.


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

[User] ELI5: When soap breaks down the cellular membranes of cells why/how is it safe to use on our skin?

[Assistant]
Our skin has a layer of dead cells on the top, as well as natural oils that form a somewhat protective barrier against certain things like soap.  When your hands dry out after washing them a lot, that is your oil barrier being removed.  Individual cells and viral particles pretty much don't have as thick of a lipid (lipids are fats/oils) layer as our entire skin surface does, so the soap degrades them more quickly.  Our bodies are also able to produce much more oil to keep our skin healthy than each little particle can, so after our hands dry out some we still have living cells beneath the dried out dead ones that can generate more oil.

However, not all pathogens are extremely susceptible to the killing effects of soap, which is why scrubbing and washing off vigorously for \~20 seconds is so important: good soap in the right concentration actually forms small little bubbles called micelles which surround dirt, pathogens and other debris, and allow them to become much more water soluble.  That slippery feeling is the soap working, so make sure you feel that before you finish scrubbing, and continue to scrub as you wash away with warm water!


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

[User]
[X-Files & MIB] Would Fox Mulder from X-Files be able to discover the Men in Black agency in Men in Black?

Also, would it change anything if Dana Scully were helping Mulder?

Edit: I forgot about their memory wipe, would Mulder be able to convince them to let him join their ranks instead of getting wiped?

[Assistant] Yes, multiple times. And every time he did, they'd neuralize him, pour some bourbon on his shirt, and dump him on his couch. He'd find out the hard way if it really was possible to get brain cancer from chronic neuralization.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are some animals born with the ability to walk, while others take years to learn?

I've seen birthing videos of different animals (chameleons, horses, giraffes), and they all start walking almost immediately, while humans and other primates take months, if not years to develop. Why is this? Is there a benefit to humans being immobile at birth?

[Assistant]
An article from Scientific American from 2009:

Compared with other animals, human babies take much longer to learn to walk. Does this have something to do with our big brains?
Mahmoud Dhaouadi, via e-mail

John Bock, an anthropologist at California State University, Fullerton, provides a reply:

A HORSE can walk within an hour after birth. A newborn baboon baby can cling to its mothers hair while she jumps through the trees. Even among  our closest evolutionary relativeschimpanzees and bonobosbabies are far more agile than their human counterparts. Thats because humans are born with brains that are largely immature, leaving babies with little control over their movements. This uniquely human attribute is the result of a lengthy evolutionary battle between big brains and narrow pelvises.

One of the first traits that differentiated humans from our ancestors was upright gait. There are several hypotheses about the emergence of this trait, but it seems to have offered a way to move more efficiently in open environments such as the savanna. Although our earliest human ancestors were very apelike in terms of their brains, their upright gait had changed their pelvis to look much like our modern one. This reshaped pelvis came with a narrower birth canal, making childbirth more difficult.

Meanwhile the new roaming grounds afforded advantages in acquiring resources and negotiating social relationships to those with flexible, problem-solving behavior. Over time, natural selection increased brain size in these early humans. But at some point, the selection for bigger and bigger brains collided head-on, so to speak, with the narrow pelvis. If babies heads got any bigger, they would get stuck in the birth canal and kill both mother and child. Although natural selection worked to maximize what could be donefor instance, babies heads compress as they twist their way around the bones in the pelvisthere simply is not enough room for a big, mature brain to pass through.

As it turned out, the evolutionary answer was to let the brain keep growing outside the womb before it matures. So in contrast to other mammals, humans have a good bit of development to do after birth. The result is a relatively undeveloped infant who needs lots of care and can do much less for itself than other newborn primates.

Physiologically, why is the sound of fingernails on a blackboard so unnerving? Is this effect particular to human beings, or are other creatures similarly affected?
Rowan Snyder, via e-mail

Neuroscientist Josh McDermott of New York University explains:

PROBABLY A COUPLE of factors combine to make such sounds unpleasant. The first, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the presence of high frequencies. The range between two
and four kilohertzapproximately that covered by the highest octave of a standard
pianoseems to contribute the most to the nastiness of the sound. It is unclear why people tend to fi nd these frequencies unpleasant, but we know that noise-induced hearing loss most commonly occurs in roughly this region, so it is conceivable that the aversive reaction partly reflects the ears vulnerability.

The spectrum of screeching sounds is also much noisier than that of an instrument; that is, there is a strong random component to the sound. The noisiness probably results from the fingernails repeatedly catching on part of the chalkboard surface before sliding forward.

This catching and sliding also causes rapid fluctuations in intensity, giving the sound a rough character.

Roughness is known to be unpleasantcar manufacturers, who aim to produce minimally unpleasant engine noise, for instance, find that smooth sounds with minimal variation in intensity are preferred by listeners over those that are rough. Its a bit harder to say why sound roughness is considered unpleasantas far as we know it is not harmful to the ears.

Some scientists have proposed that screeching sounds are acoustically similar to screams, a sound to which we might plausibly have evolved an aversion. If this hypothesis were true, one might expect to find similar reactions in nonhuman primates, which also produce screams. Thus far only one species of monkey has been tested, and it did not
display the same aversive response to screeches that humans have. It may therefore be more appropriate to simply regard screeching sounds as a perfect stormcombining two properties that we know to be unpleasant, resulting in a single sound that is awful to listen to.

Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Ask The Brains."


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

[User] ELI5:What happens in your body at concerts when it feels like your heart is about to vibrate out of your chest when they hit super low bass notes?

[Assistant] Sound is effectively just waves of air moving at different speeds and sizes. While most of them are so small you can really only sense them with your ears, as you start to get really low, the waves start to get a lot bigger, to the point you can actually feel them. That feeling is the air physically vibrating your body, usually with what's called a ground sub. Some Front of House Engineers do this on purpose to get that "concert feel", and the wavelengths that do it best are actually below your threshold of hearing, in terms of pitch, but can be powerful enough to knock even a grown person over.


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

[User] ELI5: How was the speed of sound initially measured?

[Assistant]
A clever trick is to beat a drum exactly once a second, then walk away, looking back. As you recede, the sound will get more and more behind the sight of the drum being beaten, until eventually it's in synch with the *next* beat. Then you know you're exactly one sound-second away. Do this in several directions to average out errors, and you have the speed of sound.

Doing this with a group of 11 year olds we got to within 5% of the correct value.


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

[User]
How do relativistic effects affect planetary orbits?

I imagine its just some tiny little correction, but I'm curious about order of magnitude how large that correction is and qualitatively what its effects are.

[Assistant] The only planet whose orbit is noticeably affected by relativistic effects is Mercury. Mercury's orbit precesses around the sun, to a degree slightly larger than predicted by classical Newtonian gravitation. I've seen qualitative explanations of how relativity causes the extra precession, but most of them are misleading imo and what it comes down to is the relativistic equations predict the observed precession.


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

[User]
Could a cosmic ray set off ammunition or explosives?

I've read about how cosmic rays can cause errors in computers.
I've also read about how they can damage genetic information.

This got me to thinking.

Could a cosmic ray set off the primer in a cartridge, resulting in a bullet firing unintentionally?

Or could a cosmic ray unexpectedly cause explosives to detonate?

I'm guessing it would come down to the amount of energy a cosmic ray could potentially deposit and how it interacts with something it passes through.     But I don't know much about either of those things.

[Assistant]
You may have read that cosmic rays have very high energies. That's true, but incomplete: they have very high energies *for such a small particle*.

They can cause errors in computers because transistors have been scaled down to microscopic levels, so the ionization caused by cosmic rays is meaningful at that scale. They can damage genetic information because the DNA molecule is storing information at scale of a few atoms, so if ionization breaks the molecular bonds then atoms may recombine in weird ways.

But at a macroscopic level their energy is negligible.

Ok, there's an exception to that. There are some *ultra high energy* cosmic rays where a subatomic particle may have an energy equivalent to a fast baseball. That's really a lot, but at the same time, higher energy particles traverse matter almost unaffected, depositing only a very small part of their energy.

So no, they can't cause a bullet to fire and they can't detonate an explosive.

> the amount of energy a cosmic ray could potentially deposit

Lower energy cosmic rays are the ones that deposit more energy in matter proportionally to the distance they travel, and it is negligible at a human scale.

> how it interacts with something it passes through.

Matter is made of atoms, and atoms are full of electrons. When it passes through it kicks electrons off their atoms. This may cause weird recombination and modify molecules such as DNA. It can also collide with an atomic nucleus moving it out of its place - it implies something for highly sensitive electronics but not much for humans.

Also note that these things about errors in computers and damage to DNA are mostly a concern in outer space, but fortunately on Earth we're protected by the atmosphere. The radiation level we receive on the surface is low enough to say we don't have to worry about it.


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

[User]
[Mortal Kombat] How do seemingly normal Kombatants sustain such horrific injuries without getting killed?

So I was invited to partake in a tournament called Mortal Kombat and while I havent had my first fight Ive managed to watch a few. I saw this lady in blue with fans stab someone in both of their eyes and they managed to get back up and keep fighting. I saw another dude who looked like he was covered in electricity stab another guy in the gut and throw him with his spear and again the guy just got up like nothing happened. What the hell? How are these people not dead? More importantly am I going to be able to just walk away if someone just impales me on a spear?

[Assistant]
A Mortal Kombat tournament is two things. First, of course, its a sport.

Secondly, it's backed by very powerful supernatural forces.

A blood sport where one guy gets his neck snapped 30 seconds in isn't very entertaining, nor is one where its a literal god vs a bunch of normal humans.

The powers behind it likely balance things out a bit, and this includes making normal humans tough enough to meaningfully take part rather then being vaporized instantly.


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

[User] [Twin Peaks] What IS Bob?

[Assistant] Bob is an extradimensional entity that feeds on the fear of others. He does so by possessing the bodies of people and committing crimes for the specific reason to hurt others. Some may call him a demon but he is something more than that. The fact is we don't know a lot about the Black Lodge so it is hard to pin down what he is.


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

[User] Is there a difference in the energy required to freeze water, and the energy required to melt ice?

[Assistant] No, except that the values are exactly opposite. Freezing water releases energy, melting ice absorbs energy. For the same mass these values and equal and opposite. (This is all, of course, allowing for no change in the temperature)


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

[User]
[Generic Urban Fantasy]How much force is required to put a stake through a vampires heart and,realistically, what are the best ways to do it?

Let's assume that vampires have no form of supernatural endurance, and that we are operating in a universe where staking does kill(or at least paralyze) the vampire.

EDIT: this thread concerns the method of staking, not killing vampires in general.

[Assistant]
You're welcome to do the accompanying scientific research if you're of a macabre bent, but quite honestly it's a pretty simple question with a pretty simple answer:

Men have been stabbing each other in the chest with pointy sticks for a very long time, very effectively. If they can do it, you likely can.

As to how, any way you can direct a sharp piece of wood at the enemy's chest with equivalent power to an angry male human will do the trick. The more complicated your scheme, however, the more points of failure.

That being the case, the simplest ways tend to be best and most effective. If you don't fear melee combat, approach from a position of ambush, aim well and with good form, and push through the target.

If you fear your skills are not up to the task, take up archery, and find someone to make footed arrows, or make them yourself.


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

[User] Why is liposuction limited to a certain amount? Why can't doctors suck out 100 pounds of fat from a person that needs to lose 100 pounds?

[Assistant] You can't take out a lot of adipose tissue, as a big cavity will result, and then a seroma will form (fluid pocket).  You'd also wind up detaching the skin from the body in a way - a sort of Morel-Lavallee type lesion, and might wind up with skin necrosis.


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

[User] ELI5: How has FloJo's 100m world record remained unbroken for so long compared to men's 100m sprint?

[Assistant]
The wind gauge was incorrect during her world record time, which should have disqualified that specific run. She was still the fastest of the bunch on each other heat. The IAAF decided not to penalize her for the illegal tailwind, so her record stood.

It's also speculated that she was using HGH, and her retiring the year before mandatory drug testing was instituted. One person came forward and claimed to sell her some, but it was dismissed at the time. The Olympic committee at the time claimed they singled her out and did rigorous drug testing, and failed to find anything, though the doctor who did the examination was accused of covering up failed drug tests on other occasions.


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

[User] The difference between Gold and Mercury on the Periodic Table is one Proton. If I add one proton, solid Gold turns into a silvery liquid metal that's extremely toxic to humans. How can the addition of a single proton have such a profound effect on an element's properties?

[Assistant] if you add one protons, an electron will be added too (captured from the environment) and also the organisation of energy levels of electrons will be different. From this, it will change the properties of the atom.


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

[User] [Toy Story 2] In the final episode of Woody's Roundup, Woody has just jumped the ravine when the episode ends. Would he have made it to the other side?

[Assistant]
Its the ultimate unknown because the show was cancelled before that episode aired.

At least it was until 2013, when a group of nostalgic sixty-somethings and a bunch of hipsters who admired the retro-kitsch of the original series, backed a Kickstarter campaign for something called Woodys Roundup Returns. Having successfully secured the rights to the show and obtained a broadcasting partnership with Netflix, the shows producers started a heavy publicity campaign. The first episode of the new series aired in early 2014. Aside from a few minor changes  Bullseye was now a talking character voiced by Dave Chapelle and Stinky Pete the Prospector was now just called Pete the Prospector to avoid alienating the stinky demographic  the premise of the show was exactly the same, picking up exactly where the last episode had left off. And yes, Woody successfully jumped the ravine.

The show was universally reviled by both fans and critics alike. In order to make it relevant to todays youth, certain new story elements had been introduced. Woody would routinely bust meth dealers and in the second episode a new character was introduced, a chronic crack addict and police informant called Whizz, evidently inspired by the Bubbles character from *The Wire*. This didnt gel well with the old-timey Wild West theme of the show. Additionally, the writers introduced a will-they-wont-they love story between Jesse and Woody, as she struggled to overcome the demons of her past and learn to love again. The writers also had a quota of at least one large-scale explosion per episode. The actors performances were leaden and tired and the humour often laboured, so much so that a laugh track was introduced in episode 8 Woody in the Rootin Tootin Projects. Amid declining viewing figures and a lawsuit from Netflix, Woodys Roundup Returns was quietly canned in May 2014.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why didnt Obi Wan take a Padawan during the Clone Wars?

He though Ahsoka was going to be his Padawan at first, but she was assigned to Anakin. But he was still more than prepared to take another Padawan of his own, so why didnt he?

[Assistant] Obi Wan was one of the High Jedi Generals.  He was too busy dealing with the war to have a Padawan.  Neither Mace Windu nor Shaak Ti the other High Jedi Generals listed on Wookieepedia had Padawan during the clone wars either.


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

[User] If friction causes particles to heat up, why do we use fans to blow air against ourselves to cool down, and how does that work?

[Assistant]
When you sweat in still air you form a layer of saturated vapor above the skin, which eventually reaches a vapor-liquid equilibrium, meaning you can not evaporate more sweat because the air around you can no longer absorb any more vapor. The fan blows this layer away replacing it with air that more sweat can evaporate into. The heat needed for the evaporation (turning liquid into a gas requires energy, which is provided by your body) then cools the body.

Of course friction takes place, but the amount of energy exchanged via friction is neglegible against this mechanism.


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

[User] [DC] I've heard it mentioned that Superman's weaknesses are kryptonite and magic. Is he any more vulnerable to magic than humans are? The way he's more vulnerable to kryptonite?

[Assistant] It's not that he's more vulnerable to magic, but that it even works on it. So the right spell can turn Superman into a frog, just like it'd turn any other human into a frog. Magic can do things to Superman that his superpowers can't do anything about.


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

[User]
why are you responsible for you decision to drive drunk, but not your decision to have sex drunk?

I know this is somewhat of a legal question, and law doesn't have to be philosophically consistent. but ignoring the law, how would you make a consistent rule about intoxicated consent and drunk driving?

[Assistant] Actually, just a little caveat to your question, under certain laws, like Ontario Law, you aren't always *fully* culpable for damage caused by drunk driving. Anyone who's ever done bartender training, for example, will be thoroughly made aware that establishments that serve alcohol can be held in part responsible for the damaged caused by a drunk driver that became drunk on their premises. Bars, taverns, whatever have been deemed obliged to ensure their patrons are not served too much and if they are served too much that they do not operate a vehicle. To the extent that a drunk driver can even sue a bar for the damage he/she caused.


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

[User]
[Infinity War] What would happen if you used the Infinity Gauntlet twice?

Spoilers ahead I guess.

If Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet twice, would everyone die or just three quarters?
As in, would it kill half the population first, and then the other half, OR would it kill half the population, and then half of the remaining population?

[Assistant]
Funny answer is \- the other half dies.

Real answer \- happens whatever the Gauntlet wielder wishes to happen, since Infinity Gauntlet bestows nigh\-omnipotence, and it's not locked into "Kill Half of the Universe" mode on snap. It did precisely what Thanos wanted it to do, and if he were to use it again, it would do whatever he wished for again. Or it might melt off his arm, depending on how exactly it works in MCU.


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

[User] [Star Trek] Is the policy of allowing families to serve with Starfleet personnel on board starships seen as a general success? or do you think the policy will be abandoned?

[Assistant] Allowing for a family life aboard a research starship is important for boosting morale and allows for some of our brightest minds to research and explore for years at a time.  After all, these are not warships.


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

[User]
ELI5:How does alcohol disinfect a wound or a given object?

I'm intrested in the actual process that microorganisms suffer.

[Assistant] Great question actually! Alchohol has a denaturalising effect on cell proteins. Bacterial cells are made differerent from ours, so with the right concentration in water (70% is considered ideal), the alcohol penetrates into the bacteria and only attacks our outer layers which turn hard and prevent further damage.


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

[User]
CMV: The STEM acronym should not change to STEAM to include the arts. Change my view.

Recently I have begun seeing a trend of people saying STEAM major or STEAM field, meaning Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math.

Art fundamentally does not belong in this group. I am not saying that art majors are not important and that they should be discounted by any means, however these are just opposing fields.

The individual STEM fields are all different from each other in their own ways, however they incorporate similar basic principles (scientific method, problem solving, quantitative reasoning, mathematics, etc) that allow them to be grouped together that the arts simply do not have.  This allows STEM to give a clear and concise idea of the types of disciplines being discussed. This re-branding devalues and convolutes what it means when we are telling kids to go into STEM fields. I find it hard to see a justification for how an art background qualifies someone to be in a group with the rest of the STEM disciplines. Change my view.

Edit: I dont believe that saying creativity is important in STEM is a justification for adding the art to STEM. Of course creativity is important, as it is in almost every field, but I do not believe that art is the only place that creativity can be derived.

Edit 2: Really surprised and excited by all of the good feedback I got on this one! Here's what I have learned so far from reading your comments:

- It seems that the fundamental question that needs to answered is what is the definition of "Art" in this context? Throughout the comments it seems like there was a lack of a consensus on what is truly meant by "Art" in this scenario. Clearly a tough question to answer, but is it more specific to humanities like history, literature, languages, and philosophy...or literally all forms of Art?

- The movement to add the "A" to STEM seems to primarily be a push from educators who feel that STEM is being much higher valued at schools and that the Arts are being left behind in this movement. STEAM is not necessarily saying that Art is the same as the rest of STEM but it is saying that it deserves an equal place in education at the rest of the STEM disciplines do, a point which I would agree with.

- Art and the traits that it enhances through learning it are vital to the STEM fields and people in general to have a well-rounded education. Without the Arts many of the great innovations in STEM would not be possible.

With all of that being said, I have learned a lot today but still hold to my original opinion that the change from "STEM" to "STEAM" is unnecessary. Until there is a clear definition of what courses, disciplines, and careers are being referred to with "Art", I feel as though the addition of the very broad term "Art" waters down the original intent of the STEM movement. If we are unable to define what is considered "in" and "out" for STEAM, then how can we expect the young students to understand it?

I still fully understand the necessity and the power that the arts have in society, and by no means do I think that should be negated. However if the main reasoning behind the creation of "STEAM" is to help Arts not get left behind in schools, then that is not a valid justification for adding it to a group of disciplines where it just does not have much in common. Overall, the addition of the "A" simply does not make sense in this context, and it draws away from the original intent behind the STEM acronym.

[Assistant]
I think you're missing out on the history of the use of these terms.  First of all, STEM and STEM are terms in *education*.  They're not "fields."

STEM was prioritized in education because students (especially marginalized ones) find them intimidating... it's very easy to feel frozen out and isolated in them.  People weren't choosing to major in them despite their benefit to society.  So it makes sense educators might focus on them in a particular way, encouraging students to go into them.

But then, the pendulum swung too far the other way: people encoded the message "STEM is all that matters."  This is a problem, because arts education facilitates creative and problem-solving thinking in ways STEM courses can't: we were churning out people who smugly thought their majors were all that was important in the world, but their critical and creative thinking was, in some ways, weak and undeveloped.

This is a practical education issue.


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

[User]
[Addams Family] what accounts for the Addams' enhanced durability?

In the 1960s series you see members of the Addams family use torture devices recreationally, and very cavalierly do rather dangerous things like use crossbows aimed at one another.

In the 1990s films they survive various things which would kill a normal human such as drops from great height, electrocution, being exploded, or drinking poison.

Is there an explanation for their increased durability?

[Assistant] Selective breeding with abnormal and unusual partners. The branches of the family tree have at various points been linked to sasquatch, the loch ness monster, the elephant man, and count Dracula. While most will dismiss it aa flights of fancy the family's long history of enjoying less than traditional forms of beauty and regular exposure to dangerous and toxic environments has led to several abnormal adaptations. The family has by design or by chance created themselves as physical superior albeit aesthetically unattractive specimens. They are like our ancient neanderthals ancestors that had blood more resistant to infection and bodies built for colder climates and rougher living. They're still human just with adaptation and genetic predispositions that allow for faster recovery from and greater resistance to harm and toxins than your average person.


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

[User] ELI5:What is the current state of Afghanistan? What has the U.S accomplished/not accomplished?

[Assistant]
That's a really complex question, but I'll try and answer it for you.

The US has removed the Taliban from power, although they're still a very dangerous threat for the nation, with an estimated 20000+ members. Since 2001, over 5 million Afghanis who fled the country due to the dangers of living under the Taliban have returned. In 2011, over 8 million Afghani children were attending school (including over 3 million girls) when in 2000, there was barely 1 million attending school (with less than 500k being girls). Health care in the country has improved drastically, with the amounts of lives saved by improved healthcare estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. US is currently training the Afghani Army to be able to handle it's own domestic and foreign security, so that US/ISAF forces aren't responsible for their protection.

**However**, the Taliban are still a very real threat for the Afghani people, and that's evident by the Taliban being responsible for 75% of the 3000 civilian deaths in 2013. There's still over 2 million refugees in various parts of the world, majority being within Pakistan. Because opium grows so well in Afghanistan, a large number of farmers grow it. US hasn't found a way to convert these farmers to other crops, and doesn't want to just destroy the crops, out of fear the farmers will turn to the Taliban to protect their fields. So as a result, opium production in Afghanistan has increased to the point it now produces some 90% of the world's opium.

So the people's daily lives have been improved greatly, but there's still **a lot** to be done, and plenty of dangers for the people.


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

[User] If all foetuses start as female before being changed by male sex hormones, what purpose do female sex hormones serve? [biology]

[Assistant] The fallacy that all foetuses are female has been around for quite a while. Every foetus is genetically either male or female while being anatomically bi-potential. Bi-potential genetalia, nervous, and endocrine systems await hormonal influence in order to differentiate towards the target sex. Without hormonal influence at the right times in foetal physical development the result is incomplete sexual development and differentiation.


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

[User] ELI5: How do the different types of anesthesia work? How can you be knocked out through intense pain and woken back up at the anaesthesiologist's will?

[Assistant]
General anesthesia uses a variety of drugs to cause unconscious. They all take advantage of receptors already in your brain (primarily GABA receptor) to achieve this. When GABA is activated it inhibits and slows brain transmission eventually resulting in unconciousness. Even with unconscious your body will still have a response to pain( increased hr, bp and reflex movement) so to controller these we give opioids such as fentanyl to block pain transmission, and muscle relaxants to prevent movement.

Spinal anesthesia uses the injection of local anesthetic ( think novacaine for your teeth) near the spine to block transmission of pain signals. So even though your body is reporting pain the brain never receives it.

Local anesthesia is the same type of numbing medicine as the spinal, but is injected directly into the area that they are working on.


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

[User]
ELI5: Nutritional Value

How do companies and chefs determine the fat, carbs, fiber, ect. of their products and dishes?

[Assistant]
You can burn things to determine calorie content, and you can also separate things by weight with a centrifuge (after blending) which can separate, for example, protein from fat.

After this has been done once (or a few times) however, you can use already-known information about your ingredients to calculate how much of each nutrient ends up in the finished product. For example, 1/4 pound of ground beef (from a certain part of the cow, or certain combination of different parts) cooked a certain way would have a known nutritional value. McDonalds wouldn't need to test each product individually, and could instead use that known value to figure out nutritional content of a double burger, for example.


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

[User] [Marvel]Did NASA, or any space program, know that Titan had life on it?

[Assistant] Thanos' homeworld of Titan is not the moon of Saturn with the same name, but rather a planet orbiting another star. As such it is almost certainly far too far away for any space agency to have even detected the fact that it exists, let alone whether it has an atmosphere indicative of life.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is ibogaine, a substance known to aid fantastically in treating/curing drug addiction, illegal for medical use in the USA?

[Assistant]
From Wikipedia:

>Ibogaine is classified as aSchedule I-controlled substance in the United States,and is not approved there for addiction treatment (or any other therapeutic use) because of its hallucinogenic, neurotoxic, and cardiovascular side effects, as well as the scarcity of safety and efficacy data in human subjects.

So basically, it has some pretty serious side effects, and there ~~are~~ aren't enough human studies to demonstrate that it's safe, or actually useful at treating specific illnesses/symptoms.


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

[User]
Can temperature decrease in a closed system while entropy increases?

For example if I have a bowl of water at room temperature, it will slowly evaporate, will that increase entropy while decreasing temperature, or will the pressure increase keep the temperature the same? Is there some other way to do it?

[Assistant]
A sufficiently interesting example: if you have an isolated vessel, with a wall separating it into two chambers, and you have a real (ideal doesn't work) gas in one of them and vacuum in the other, when you remove the wall the gas expands to fill all the chamber. This is called free or Joule expansion.

Entropy increases because this process is obviously irreversible. Temperature changes; for almost all gases in most conditions this is a decrease (though there are a few exceptions), in that case here's your example.

Note this cannot work with an ideal gas, as these have U = 3/2 NkT, so that since U is constant (as the vessel is thermally isolated and no work is ever performed on the gas) then also T must remain constant.


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

[User] ELI5:If things like Google Now and Siri are so good at voice recognition, how come youtube automatic annotations are so terrible?

[Assistant] Siri and Google only have to understand a few things, but if you want to translate general speech like in a youtube video you must understand everything. If Siri doesn't quite understand what you've said, she can assume that what you were saying was a question, as that was the purpose of Siri. The youtube annotation translator can't make nearly as many assumptions, which means it has to rely much more on its actually translation ability, which is not great.


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

[User] [Horror] Could a tar pit stop Michael Myers for good?

[Assistant]
Current canon: yes.

Michael is just a man. An extremely evil man, but he still requires oxygen to breath and food to eat and falling into a large tar pit is a death sentence if no one tries to rescue him.

The problem is people underestimate Michael and that gives him a chance to keep going. He is not a supernatural force, just an extremely evil person who keeps getting lucky when avoiding capture or escaping.


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

[User] [Harry Potter] Why do wizards even have house elves? From what we've seen magic can easily be used to do most household chores, so why bother with an elf? Is there anything wizards actually need or want that only house elves can do?

[Assistant]
There's really not a lot a elf can do that a wizard can't do themselves. But that could be said for most domestic servants. The family of the house *could* cook their own meals, change their own sheets, drive their own car, or restock their own pantry, but they'd rather have someone else do it for them. It's the same with elves.

Also, a big one is food prep. Hogwarts for instance has a small army of elves preparing the food for the meals, which is then teleported up to the Great Hall. Certain parts of the process can be automated, but you still need someone at or near the stove to keep things in order; there's no going "poof, it's a ham". If a wizard wants a quality meal at home and doesn't have the time to cook it themselves, an elf or elves need to get involved.


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

[User] Do the pupils of heterochromic people contract and retract at different rates? Does eye color affect the speed at which your pupils contract/retract?

[Assistant]
Not at all. Eye color is just basically the pigment present in the iris.

Also some clarification on ophthalmologic terminology, pupils dont contract - they constrict. They dont retract either. You probably mean constrict and dilate as youre referring to the pupils.

Contract is a generic term for a muscles action, while retract is term used for the eyelid (e.g. Lid retraction, or pulling up your eyelids - the action of your levator palpebrae superioris muscle).

Now going back to your question, do the pigments in the iris change pupillary dilatation/constriction? Nope. Not at all. Dilatation/constriction are regulated by reflex arcs, controlled by the ANS (autonomic nervous system). Your oculomotor nerve is responsible for constriction, while sympathetic nerves control dilation. The iris pigment has absolutely no relevance with the reflex arcs/nerves.

Hope this helped!


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

[User] Eli5: Why does a head cold slow you down so much both mentally and physically?

[Assistant] Am not a doctor and have no physiological or medical background but at a guess I'd say the body is directing as much energy and resources to the core site of viral or bacterial infection. This can leave the rest of the body a little...logey.


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

[User] [ELI5] When women are ovulating, how does their body decide which egg goes next? Is there a specific order or do they just randomly fall out?

[Assistant]
There is an element of randomness.

The group of cells that produce a single "egg" is called a follicle.  They respond to a hormone known as Follicle Stimulating Hormone (or FSH for short), released by a part of the brain.  When more FSH is released in the early part of the menstrual cycle several follicles, around 15 to 20, will start to respond by becoming more mature.

As the follicles mature they start to produce other hormones of their own.  These hormones do two things (well, more than two, but two that matter for this topic) at the same time - they start to reduce the amount of FSH that is released, and they start to make that particular follicle more sensitive to whatever FSH does still get released.

It might then be easiest to think of this as a competitive process.  The follicle that has the quickest and strongest response both matures faster and prevents the other follicles from responding to the signal.  Eventually this dominant follicle matures to the point of ovulation which results in another set of hormone changes that allow the rest of the cycle to proceed.  Some of the follicles that matured to a certain point but didn't become the dominant follicle will "die" at this point, and a new set will start to mature in the next cycle.


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

[User] ELI5: Canada is raising interest again to prevent a recession. How does this work?

[Assistant]
First you have to realize its all related to inflation. Inflation simply means that goods and services cost more now than they used to. Next you have to understand the law of supply and demand and how they relate to pricing. If supply is high and demand is low, prices go down. If demand is high and supply is low, prices go up. Combining these two, we can understand that prices are going up, because demand for those good and services is going up.

So how does changing interest rates affect this?  Well when interest rates are low, companies and people tend to take on more loans, since they are able to get that money cheaply. With more money to spend, they want to make use of that money, so they buy goods and services. But as already discussed, that means more demand, which means prices go up even more. But we dont want prices to go up now, we want prices to go down. The only way to make prices go down is to either increase the supply more than the demand (something that a government cant do in a capitalist society) or decrease demand. How can they decrease demand? Raise interest rates. With higher interest rates, companies and individuals do not borrow as much. As interest rates get higher, not only are they not borrowing as much, they are instead saving more and more of the money they do have.

So raising interest rates lowers the amount of money being spent on goods and services, which lowers demand, which lowers prices.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Starkiller Base insanity.

Ok, questions  I searched but couldn't find good answers:

1) They say it's an FTL weapon, why does the beam visibly crawl through space?

2) Since planets are like millionth the size of a star, how does it eat a star?  And just gets 1 shot per star?

3) Shouldn't striking multiple planets require multiple beams, rather than 1 beam that splits for no apparent reason halfway there?

4) What are the odds of all 5 target planets being so close they can all be seen form a 6th planet?  How small is that galaxy anyway?

[Assistant]
The official explanation for the oddities surrounding the actual blast from Starkiller base is that it creates a rip in hyperspace, hence why a planet that's halfway across the galaxy from the target system can see the shot.

As for how it eats a star, it seems it doesn't eat the whole thing - only enough to destabilize the star to the point where it falls apart - not into a nova, but simply dissipates the rest of the starstuff.


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

[User]
ELI5: if a lightyear is the distance light travels in one year, how do we know something is 1000 light years away? Would we not have to wait 1000 years before we know, or do we use something other than light to measure objects in space?

I know VERY little on the subject so would appreciate a basic explanation please!

[Assistant]
For distant stars and galaxies, there's some highly educated guesswork based on apparent speed and brightness, but for closer ones, there's actually a really intuitive method called **parallax**!

It works like this: suppose there's some distant object like a mountain that you want to know the distance to. Notice that as you walk sideways, closer objects like trees appear to pass you much faster than the mountain. This is the parallax effect.

To use it mathematically, simply measure how far you walked, and how far you had to rotate your head to keep the mountain in view. Now the start point, end point, and the mountain itself form a triangle, of which you know the measure of one side and two angles. Using trigonometry, this is enough information to determine the remaining sides, which are the distance between you and the mountain!

It would be difficult to walk far enough on earth to see a measurable change in the location of a star, but we can "walk" the entire earth just by waiting 6 months for it to be on the opposite side of its orbit. This enables us to calculate the position of nearby stars, without actually going to them.


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

[User]
[Highlander] An Immortal in Afghanistan is decapitated by shrapnel in a drone strike piloted remotely from Nevada. Who gets the Quickening?

As far as I'm aware, the Quickening goes to the one who kills the Immortal. Would that still happen here, despite it not being a duel, and the killer not being present? Would it go to the nearest survivor? Dissipate back to the Source?

[Assistant]
In the tv show, if an immortal is beheaded outside the presence of another immortal the quickening is lost and just disappears.

If the guy piloting the drone is an immortal then its kind of iffy. Im the show there was a plot line about a guy who would use a crew of guys with machine guns to incapacitate other immortals and then behead them while they were recovering. He still went through the effort of cutting their head off with a sword though so its probably a necessary component in getting the quickening. Is guess the quickening would still be lost.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do people sleep with pillows? Is this just social conditioning, or are there physiological reasons to use them? Are there cultures that get by just fine without them?

[Assistant]
People have been sleeping with something to support their heads in almost every culture since at least the ancient Mesopotamians. For a long, long time, the gold standard for everyday people was a carved wooden stand that held your head at a comfortable angle while you slept on your side, or a shorter one that went under the nape of your neck if you liked to sleep on your back. A well made one could last for years or decades if you were careful with it. The wealthy used down pillows that were a lot more expensive and had a tendency to wear out after a couple years, requiring more frequent, costly replacement.

Slightly more recent, Eurocentric history shows pillows stuffed with hay, wool, or rags (or some mix of the three) being used by commoners. Down pillows were still the height of comfort and sophistication for the wealthy though.

Modern polystuff pillows mimic the comfort of down at a fraction of the cost.


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

[User] [Mythology] What are possible uses for a fragment of adamantine, a mythical metal that cannot be shaped or damaged by mortal means?

[Assistant]
Assuming it's got a sharp point, you could use it to make a scribing tool that will mark anything.

Considering it's supernatural properties, and assuming magic exists too, then it might be able work as a kind of focus or battery for magical power.


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

[User] ELI5: What makes mirrors reflective?

[Assistant]
For this, its important to understand what light is, an electric and magnetic field that changes in strength as it travels as a wave.

When it hits a conductor, like a metal, the electrons in the metal move freely, riding the wave up and down like a beach ball on the ocean.  But when those electrons move, that motion causes another electromagnetic field to form.  The one from the electron ends up canceling the one that is the light going forward, and youre left with only the one from the electron going backward.  Hence, reflection.

Whats weirder is that the electrons have a limit on how fast they can move, and if the light is too high a frequency, the electrons are getting pushed from both directions rather than riding the wave, so stay still.  So they stop reflecting.  The properties of the metal in question change their upper limit on how fast they can move, which causes certain metals to stop reflecting certain colors at different parts of the spectrum.  Copper stops reflecting in the red, gold in the greenish-yellow, and silver or aluminum in the UV.  This is why metals have different colors.


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

[User]
[ELI5] What actually makes security hacking work?

I just don't get it. Is it some glorified way of installing viruses? What really is it, how do people get access to stuff like that?

[Assistant] The most common form of hacking secure networks is by social engineering ways into legitimate accounts. As long as *someone* has access to the data, it will always be possible to get access to it without permission. Direct hacking is also possible, but often unnecessary, and much more complicated to explain.


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

[User]
What would happen if Elon Musk decided to transfer his net worth to liquid cash, then spend it?

Would it destroy the economy, or would it fix all our problems?

[Assistant]
It wouldnt do really anything.

He is worth $200 billion. Say he sells it all in a fire sale and nets $150 billion. He just exchanged $150 of assets for cash. If he uses the cash it ripples as that is income for someone else who can spend and so on. If he doesnt spend the bank will lend it out over time for whatever the needs of the lenders are. If he kept it in physical cash that may make a small dent in the economy but nothing notable (there is $22.3 trillion of cash in the USA. .15 trillion probably wont change the world)


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

[User]
[DC] Why dosent lex Luthor cure cancer or something?

This has legitimately been bugging me. Lex Luthor is the most intelligent man on Earth in the DC Universe. He bulit is Fortune from scratch all by himself. But he waste all of his time and effort fighting Superman and the Justice League. Im being dead serious he is a genius with tech like that he could cure cancer or something solve world hunger or the energy crisis. Why doesn't fix all the worlds problems when he is more than capable?

[Assistant]
He doesn't want to cure cancer. He wants to ~~turn people into dinosaurs~~ beat Superman.

While he hides it a lot better than those guys who dress up like clowns, or wear their furry suits to commit crimes, or dress up like clowns in furry suits, but Lex Luthor is still an irrational person with mental health issues.