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

[User] [Terminator] Does the flesh coating a Terminator's endoskeleton have an "Expiration date"? Or can it live for as long as reasonably possible?

[Assistant] It seems to live as long as a human would. We see a few examples in the movies of the original Terminator living for decades after it was sent back in time, and its flesh appears to age like a human would.


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

[User]
What are some good academic philosophers from Africa? (contemporary or historical)

I want to broaden my worldview.

[Assistant]
Frantz Fanon might qualify. He examined the psychological effects of colonization on indigenous African peoples, and argued that brutal counter-violence is a legitimate means of overthrowing colonial governments.

His two majors works are *Black Skins, White Masks* and *The Wretched of the Earth.*


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are healthcare costs in Canada, France, etc. so cheap compared to USA? How can they charge so little and still provide good service?

Do their doctors, nurses, etc. get paid less than they do in USA? Is their technology obsolete? I don't get it. The TIL about the correlation between bankruptcy and medical debt caused a bunch of discussions in the comments. One man in the US said that his newborn child had to remain in the hospital for two weeks and it cost him almost $200,000. Meanwhile, a Canadian man had a similar experience and it only cost him $14. I just don't understand.

[Assistant]
When one person (in this case the government) is the sole purchaser of a product they have far more negotiating power than someone who has to compete with other purchasers.

The government says "We'll pay you for price of production + 10% profit and nothing more" either they accept it or they lose an entire country to sell to.

The medical tech is state of the art in any rich, developed country, doctors DO get paid more in the US to compensate for the more litigious society and more expensive training they go through, but depending on the country you compare to, it's not a huge difference.


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

[User] [General] Why are cybernetic body parts always blatantly noticeable? Wouldn't future humans want their robotic body parts to look the same as their natural body?

[Assistant]
Fashion.

There are a lot of natural looking body parts available too, it's just that you don't notice them.  Since you only notice the obviously robotic ones it gives you think that the only ones out there are robotic.


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

[User] What's the difference between fermented and rotted foods? And how can you know when fermented food is unsafe to eat?

[Assistant]
Fermentation and "rotting" are assessments of value. Technically speaking, any microbial process on food can be construed as fermentation. If it isn't the kind of fermentation you want, you would call it rotten.

Fermentation is a three way war between yeast, bacteria, and mold, the three major decomposers contending over our food. The following is slightly simplified, but roughly speaking:

* Yeast produce alcohol, which kills bacteria and mold.
* Bacteria produce acids, which kill mold and yeast.
* Mold produces digestive enzymes and antibiotics, which kill yeast and bacteria.

(To be sure, some exception exist.)

The operating principle of fermentation is summarized by this saying:

*One form of filth kills another form of filth.*

Humanity intervenes to pick which combatant we want to win for each particular food because we desire some effect from the fermentation-- usually flavor and preservation against decay by the others. For sweet fruit, we want yeast, not mold nor bacteria. For cucumber pickles, sauerkraut, kimchee, and kombucha, we want bacteria and yeast that support them. For salami and soft cheese, we prefer mold, and sometimes bacteria. If anything other than the desired microbe takes hold of our food, even if it is technically edible and nontoxic, we would call it rotten. Moldy fruit, for example, is generally considered rotten. Our intervention usually comes in the form of innoculating the food or controlling the environment or saltiness or other factors to favor one of these over the others.

Some products, like rice wine vinegar, go through all three. Rice starch is converted into fermentable sugars using koji mold; yeast turn the sugars into alcohol; acetobactet then turns the alcohol into acetic acid, the main acid in vinegar.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do pregnant bellies "pop out" the belly button while fat bellies result in a cavernous belly button?

[Assistant] The back of your belly button is attached to the internal "wall" of your belly. Your belly fat grows outside that wall and surrounds your navel. A baby grows behind that wall and pushes against the navel from the inside.


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

[User]
[Heroes] Given the ability to kill people for their powers, how many people would go full Sylar?

I'm just wondering exactly how tempting this would be. What percentage of junkies would murder to be a telepath?

Your average person would start to resemble the NSA, keeping tabs on every special they knew just in case they didn't deserve it.

[Assistant] Like Sylar's power specifically or just a general kill people for powers deal?  Because Sylar's power actually came with the overwhelming urge to kill people for their powers.  When Peter got it, he went nutso.  When Sylar lost it, he became a homemaker.


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

[User]
[Thunderbirds] Why do they exist?

These guys seem to serve no legitimate function. If they are truly a rescue operation, how do they respond to real disasters? A jet, submarine and rocket don't exactly stack up against large scale landslides burying thousands in rural communities.

And how is their tech so advanced anyway? Hover bikes? Space travel? Aren't they just a small wealthy family?

[Assistant]
Firstly remember that in the 2060s International Rescue's technology isn't that much more advanced than any other - just look at the Fire Flash or Sun Probe. Hover Bikes and Space Travel are commonplace - you may have heard of the time they rescued the crew of a pirate radio station that not only had their own satellite, but broadcast directly from it, with the hosts actually living up there.

Also remember that the Tracies are more than just a small wealthy family, they're billionaires with agents all over the world, some of whom, like Lady Penelope, certainly contribute. Once a machine is designed, they have components manufactured all over the world from different companies.

How do they design them? Brains is a genius, and Jeff is an astronaut who went to the moon - he also knows a lot about design of this type of machine.

Thirdly, the Thunderbirds themselves are far more than a "jet, submarine and rocket".

* Thunderbird 1 is a VTOL rocket/plane hybrid capable of flying at Mach 20 used to recon disaster sites - it's capable of reaching anywhere on Earth in under an hour and a half.

* Thunderbird 2 is a heavy equipment transport ship capable of flying at Mach 7 used to transport IR's main rescue machinery to the disaster zone. This is where you underestimate them most, by forgetting about this aspect - the Thunderbirds themselves are mostly just transport, its the pod vehicles that really do the rescuing usually. They have at least tens of different specialized machines.

* Thunderbird 3 is their rocket, mostly used to reach Thunderbird 5 but also for any space rescues that may occur. Again, not a true rescue vehicle but still essential.

* Thunderbird 4, you're right. It shouldn't be a main Thunderbird, just a pod vehicle, since its uses are highly specialized.

* Thunderbird 5 is their satellite used to monitor for distress calls and coordinate rescue missions. Its highly important to IR's operation.

Finally, how do they respond to real, big disasters? They don't. Even with a Mach 20 rocket, International rescue are rarely the first responders to a disaster. Thousands might die in a disaster, but no one can prevent that, and standard rescue organizations are more than capable of dealing with the aftermath, 3 or 4 guys from IR don't make much difference to that.

A common situation International Rescue deal with is where people are trapped, but alive, but trapped where no one can reach them or save them. This is where their specialist machinery is useful.

Rescuing survivors after an Earthquake is a job for the local organizations and requires hundreds of people. Rescuing people trapped in a burning building, badly damaged by the Earthquake which will collapse and kill them if any normal rescue operations take place, that's when you call International Rescue.

They also deal with much more outside the box situations, such as terrorist attacks. When the Fire Flash was trapped in the sky because of bombs attached to its landing gear, only International Rescue had equipment that allowed them to pull off a landing without disturbing the bombs, which saved the lives of everyone on board and prevented a highly dangerous crash of a nuclear powered plane.

So all in all, they have a clear purpose and situations which they deal with. They aren't a few guys who go out to help in every disaster relief operation around the world, they're a few guys who come to save people that no one else can save.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do graveyards not run out of space to bury people?

Surely at some point we're going to run out of space?

[Assistant] They do. There are some grave sites that have made above ground cement storage facilities so they can stack the bodies, but in general once a cemetery is full, it is full. We do however have a massive amount of land to make new cemeteries, but they might not be in prime locations.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does chicken that has bone in take longer to cook than chicken without bones?

[Assistant]
The act of cutting out the bones exposes more of the meat to heat during cooking. All the surfaces that were in contact with the bone are now "outside" once the bone is removed. This allows more heat to flow into the meat so it cooks faster.

A whole bone-in piece is thicker and you need the inside temperature to heat up to a certain point to reduce food poisoning risk. Thicker pieces require longer times for the heat to penetrate.


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

[User]
ELI5: How is Sochi so unprepared if they've had years to get ready?

For example, many of the hotels seem like they aren't even finished being built and the games are in a few hours.

[Assistant] Because Russia is incredibly corrupt. Many of the people who were hired to build things deliberately stole some of the money, put too little resources into construction, and then lied and said that things were going well.


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

[User]
Why aren't we using gravitational potential batteries instead of electro-chemical ones for large scale power storage?

I have heard of an idea that we could dig holes and put weights on vertically moving platforms. When there is excess power generation motors lift the weights. When the power is needed we simply let the weights descend turning electric generators. It seems to me that this way of power storage can be build on a huge scale and would be much simpler to make than enormous batteries. With power storage for cities solar panels and wind turbines can store power for cloudy windless days. Why aren't we using this technology? Is it even possible?

[Assistant] We do, there are many power stations with two pools, top and bottom, at night, they pump bottom to top with excess power, during peak they run top to bottom through turbines.  So these would be gravitational batteries using water as the working fluid.


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

[User] ELI5: Why did America have 60hz TVs while Europe had 50hz and why does it effect the speed old video games run at?

[Assistant]
In America the electrical system uses Alternating Current set at a rate of 60hz. This means the current of electricity changes from positive to negative 60 times per second. In Europe, the rate is at 50 times per second, or 50 hz.  The first TVs worked by painting the screen with electrons in a left to right and top to bottom pattern, so it would draw a line of pixels horizontally, then it would step down and reset the brush, and paint the next line, similar to how you would type on a typewriter.

It also had to do this entirely in one polarity of the electrical system, so it had to do it 60 times per second in the US, because if it wasn't finished drawing the screen, the image would not be drawn correctly. To help this a technique called interlacing was created to draw only half of the screen during each cycle. So instead of drawing every line, it would draw every other line. This is all the same in Europe, except that because their electrical system switches polarity slower, they have more time available between refreshes, so their televisions run at 50hz like their electrical system.

These issues are mostly limited to Analog TVs, which are being phased out, as Digital TVs can access pixels independently, rather than having to redraw the entire screen to refresh anything.


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

[User] Is there a mutation that adds new genetic information?

[Assistant] As a basic example, you can have duplications. Instead of having one copy of gene A in the haploid genome, a duplication gives you two. Now, the two copies are free to accumulate different mutations. Say, A stays relatively conserved, still performing its original function, freeing up the second copy to change more freely, becoming A* with a different function. And there's your new information and functionality.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does the universe keep expanding if no energy can be created.

They teach in science classes that all energy is conserved and you can only transfer energy to something else, possibly making something have kinetic energy or potential energy. However, we are also taught that the universe is always expanding. Wouldn't that need infinite energy to make that possible?

[Assistant]
Think of it this way; if you slowed down a bomb exploding, you could see all of the dust, dirt, particles, detritus, and shrapnel moving away slowly.

Now imagine being created out of that explosion. Maybe your a little fire guy living on a speck of dust and your life happens super fast. From the time your people are created until they die off thousands of fire people generations later is less than a 10th of a second.

The entire time, that bomb explosion is still happening. The parts are flying away farther and faster.

After several seconds or minutes, all the fire is finally out and all the dust has settled.

We live in the Big Bang. The explosion is still happening. The dust hasn't settled yet.


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

[User]
What did Sren Kierkegaard mean when he said this?

"People commonly travel around the world to see rivers and mountains, new stars, birds of rare plumage, queerly deformed fishes, ridiculous breeds of men  they abandon themselves to the bestial stupor which gapes at existence, and they think they have seen something."

[Assistant]
Generally speaking, Kierkegaard was all about inwardness. He was disgusted by what he saw as people's superficiality and their lack of care for their souls. He felt that people had unthinkingly accepted Christian dogma instead of making a decisive, individual choice to accept or reject the challenge that Christ represents.

Kierkegaard wrote using a variety of pseudonyms who had different mentalities, so in order for us to tell you what Kierkegaard meant by any quotation, we need to know which of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms was writing the passage.


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

[User]
[Terminator/The Culture]. What would the Minds do if they encountered Earth after Skynet nuked the planet?

Would they leave Skynet alone and allow it to continue the war against humanity?  Or intervene in some manner?

[Assistant]
They would intervene. The Culture doesn't have a prime directive or no-contact policy. It doesn't interfere too much or go around handing out advanced technology to young civilizations like candy, but it will often go out of its way to prevent unnecessary large scale death and suffering, even if that requires manipulation or espionage.

An example would be the events of Player of Games. The Azad Empire was cruel, sadistic, and expanding, so the Culture toppled it. Not with military force mind you, but subtly enough that their main agent didn't even realize that's what he was doing, and with a method that represented the metaphorical triumph of the Culture's way of thinking over the Empire's, because that's their style.

As for encountering Earth post-Judgment Day, given the state that humanity and the planet are in, they might intervene more directly to stop Skynet from causing any more harm (they would probably try to rehabilitate it) and aid the humans.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Why isn't the threat of mutually assured destruction able to stop powers in the Alpha Quadrant from going to war?

The Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, and a bunch of other major Alpha Quadrant powers have the capability to produce tri-cobalt warheads. One tri-cobalt warhead is capable of making a star go supernova and also destroy its surrounding systems. This is like the "nuke" of the 24th century, yet MAD is essentially non-existent, and because of that wars between major powers is a common occurance.

[Assistant]
The thing is, that's not mutually assured destruction.

During the Cold War, the US and Russia could each have wiped out every one of the opponents meaningful population centers in a single move. The other would have just enough time to register the incoming missiles and launch back. But consider this: What if instead of fighting the US, Russia's primary opponent had been the British Empire at the height of their expansion, with military facilities in every territory.

They could do a lot of damage, but they could never count on destroying every vestige of the British government. This would make for an asymmetry that breaks the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Similarly, the Romulans or the Klingons could destroy Earth, and in return, have Romulus or Quo'nos destroyed. But the coordination it would take to have warbirds lying in wait around every star that the Federation has a colony at would be *staggering*.

There is a limited form of MAD in play - neither side is willing to be the first one to use the tri-cobalt option,  because it *will* bring retaliation in kind. But since neither side could wipe out the other at once, conventional warfare remains on the table, rather than merely the proxy war you see between nations of Earth using nuclear weapons.

TL;DR: Tri-Cobalt warheads are terrifying, but they're still not capable of *assuring* civilization-wide destruction. There's just too much civilization.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do migraines cause nausea and vomiting?

[Assistant]
* One theory is that your body think's its being poisoned.
* When you brain gets conflicting signals from your various senses then it thinks one ore more of them is being fooled by some sort of dingoes thing.
* So it triggers reactions to purge you of poison you may have consumed.


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

[User] Is the recording of my voice really what my voice sounds like? Why does it sound more "nasally" than when I hear my voice directly?

[Assistant] Hearing your voice externally (like from a recording) is always going to seem "off" to you. The reason behind this is that a recording lacks the vibrations and internal harmonics you also hear when you normally speak.


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

[User]
The work that i have to do is too hard, how to approach my manager about that.

Hello! I recently finished an internship at my current company and they hired me to work full time after it.

After the internship, my manager had an idea about a project and said that I should do it alone (it is an idea that even he and some senior developers think is not 100% doable).

They gave me some indications about how to proceed to start doing the app, as a proof of concept, but every day that I come up with a code that works and I think is a good start for the project, some things change and I must redo it to over and over again. And I can not do this anymore, it is burning me out. I don't even understand clearly the starting indications that they gave me because of a lot of inside technologies and inside company terms.

Whenever I ask for clarifications I get like 2 pages of explications that are not clear and very disorganized and when I ask for more clarifications they say that we are going to talk later because they have some work.

I try to not be annoying and ask too many questions but I feel that I am stuck with this project.

It is really frustrating for me. What do you think that I should do?

(edit)
Eventually, I talked with my manager and he understood me, and the situation that I was put in. Thanks, guys!

[Assistant]
>I try to not be annoying and ask too many questions

Be as annoying as you need to in order to accomplish the project. If they aren't giving you good instructions, that's their fault and they should correct it.


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

[User]
What is the difference between combustion deflagration detonation and explosion?

Im very confused between these four terms. I've been researching fire and how it works and I ended up with these ones. From what I understand

Combustion is the process of fire.
Deflagration is when fire travels slower than sound.
Detonation and explosion are the ones that confuse me and is an explosion a type of combustion?

[Assistant]
Flame front speed < speed of sound --> deflagration

Flame front speed > speed of sound --> detonation

Combustion means fuel and oxidizer reacting. Sometimes the fuel and oxidizer are contained in the same molecule (for example: nitrocellulose), but more commonly they are separate molecules (for example: gasoline and oxygen). Combustion can result in fire, deflagration, or detonation.

Explosion is a term which means deflagration or detonation.  Other energy releasing reactions besides combustion could result in explosion, for example: a nuclear device going supercritical.

A flash fire is a deflagration.

It all comes down to pressure rise. If pressure is able to rise high enough then it results in detonation in which the flame front is traveling at supersonic speeds. This could be caused by a rapid reaction with a lot of energy released or by enclosing the reaction in a restricted volume (think hand grenade).


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

[User] [Doctor Who] Why didn't the Doctor question Amy as to why she shot at the girl in the space suit?

[Assistant] Because at this point they thought the astronaut was the enemy, while The Doctor may have been confused as to why she actually shot the astronaut (a very drastic measure), he probably wouldn't have questioned her directly until he knew more about what is going on.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can quitting drinking kill an alcoholic?

[Assistant]
With heavy/long-term use, alcohol creates big changes in the alcoholic's brain chemistry and body. When an alcoholic suddenly stops drinking, the brain's systems basically go haywire with the sudden change. Areas that were constantly excited by the constant alcohol are now pretty quiet, and other areas that were constantly quieted by the alcohol "wake up" and freak out, leading to seizures, heart strain, shaking, anxiety, etc. While that alone can be fatal, if the alcoholic has other health issues, the extra strain on the body can cause problems there and lead to death, particularly with underlying heart issues.

As an aside, a friend was just talking about this the other day and said that quitting alcohol is so dangerous compared to quitting other drugs because of how deeply the alcohol penetrates into the brain. Other drugs are slowed/stopped by the blood-brain barrier, remaining mostly on the surface of the brain or in the bloodstream, but alcohol is able to pass through.


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

[User]
Aren't some experiments very hard or expensive, and thus not reproducible? Why isn't this a problem?

One of the tenets of science is the idea that experiments should be replicated to be verified. But some experiments are too complicated to be so.

Giant expensive experiments like the LHC, or complicated ones like the Phoenix landers, experiments that depend on a given political will like the collecting of moon rocks, some things that are sheer luck like finding the Antikythera mechanism and maybe even some truly opporunistic experiment like the Voyagers that depended on a very precise planetary alignment to get their slignshots  those are things that are probably not being replicated, or at least not in the exact way. We sent other probes to mars and the outer solar system, but never to the exact same spot the previous ones were ("yes we don't see those Voyager bubbles but maybe they're there and not here").

So what happens when one of these experiments come up with some incredible piece of data? How can scientists assure themselves this wasn't a fluke, a experimental error or the aliens playing a prank on us?

[Assistant]
So the trick with particle colliders, is that you generally build two or more experiments simultaneously. RHIC has STAR and PHENIX still operational, LHC has ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, LHCb all running simultaneously. That's how we "verify/reproduce" the data.

Recall a few weeks ago, the hubbub over the mass bump in the CDF experiment at Tevatron. They claimed it was a bump in the data approaching 4-5 sigma over background. But the sister experiment at the Tevatron, D-Zero, did not find the bump, so it's likely to be improper background subtraction/error etc.

And finally, each time we build new experiments we reproduce the old data. LHC has been "recovering the standard model" in its initial turn-on. Reproducing results that other detectors have seen before it.


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

[User]
[General] What prevents ramming in space combat?

Obviously FTL travel would not feature movement in a classical sense but there are many science fiction settings including very fast conventional ship drives.

Even fairly small sized objects moving at relativistic speeds would devastate most targets including planets.

A lot of books and movies featuring widespread space combat won't really go into this issue at all although Star Wars for example has shown it as an effective tactic that for whatever reason has been very much underutilized.

What are some explanations authors or genre enthusiasts have come up with to explain the lack of using collision tactics with spaceships?

[Assistant]
A common explanation are energy shields that prevent relativistic objects from hitting the ship by either repelling it or by distributing the kinetic energy across the whole shield surface.

That's also why these kind of settings feature energy or plasma (ship-) weapons instead of ballistic ones, because these can supposedly break through them or at least make them weaker until they collapse.


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

[User] [Star Wars] What's the average life span of humans? Can rich humans use modern tech to prolong life? Also, can Jedi/Sith live longer than normal humans by attuning themselves to the force?

[Assistant]
In Legends, Admiral Pellaeon was active in the military and quite healthy well into his 90s. There was also a Republic Senator prior to the Clone Wars who was in his 160s, although he was usually described as being one foot in the grave.

Whether the Force grants those who are attuned to it and use it expanded lifespans was never really truly resolved in Legends, some sources considered that it did (given the Force's connection to life, those who use it are essentially mainlining life energy) and others that didn't share the same inclination.

Canonically, we have yet to see an upper age limit on humans, or whether or not the Force expands lifespans.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is there so much smoke produced after a fire goes out?

Even if the material seems to burn clean before it goes out.

[Assistant]
When something burns hotly, it burns cleanly. When you take away the flame, it has enough embers and residual heat to continue smoldering, but without the heat of the flame the result is incomplete combustion resulting in smoke and soot.

Details:

What is smoke? It's soot, and carbon compounds, tar, aerosols, un burned fuel, and other components of incomplete combustion. When a fire burns brightly and hotly, it efficiently combines oxygen with carbon to make carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and with hydrogen to make water vapor.

If all of the hydrocarbons and organic material being burned are done so cleanly, then there is very little smoke and instead an almost pure reaction resulting in carbon dioxide and  water which are odorless and transparent gases. IE not smoke.

When a flame is extinguished but there is still a lot of latent heat, the process of burning is snuffed out resulting in incomplete transformation into the water and carbon dioxide, leading to incomplete compounds which create the soot.


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

[User]
Is the path of PhD -> industry -> tenured/permanent community college professor realistic in the current market (in engineering)?

I see many community college job postings list industry experience as desired, but the job market is so poor for tenure-track positions at 4 year universities that I'm curious if the overflow of applicants is changing hiring patterns with regard to industry vs academia experience. My question: are people with only industry experience after completing their PhD (no post-doc or 4 year adjunct positions) getting pushed out of the tenure-track community college professor market? Anecdotally I know PhD->industry->TT CC prof was possible in the past but the surrounding market seems to have changed since then. And taking the collective advice of this subreddit, I do not want to enter adjunct/temp hell unless only briefly to gain experience before moving to something permanent.

[Assistant]
I've been teaching at a Florida CC/state college for 20 years. The chances of getting a full time continuing contract position with out adjunct experience is pretty close to zero. We are hiring very few full time teachers. The last one in our (nat sci) department was an adjunct for eight years. The new physics prof was full time at a  university and had published several articles.

I've been on one hiring committee for a full timer. We placed heavy emphasis on teaching ability. The people who got to a second interview did a teaching demo. Let me say you better be a solid lecturer and be comfortable using multiple learning tools. A PowerPoint presentation from the publisher isn't going to cut it.

If you want to be a polished candidate plan on spending a lot of time in Hell.

Once you hit full time status there is a five year evaluation period before you get a continuing contract.

I wish you luck in your pursuit.


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

[User]
Does the sky rotate along with the earth?

As the earth rotates on its' axis, so do the land and all oceans that are in it. How about the sky? Does that also rotate? If yes, then why? Because it's not physically attached to anything on the earth.

Also, if the sky does not rotate, then, let's say we are in USA and we stay in sky suspended at the same spot for a few hours (may be in a helicopter) then wouldn't we be in another country when we come down since the land below us has already moved?

[Assistant]
The sky rotates. You can say it's not 'physically attached' to anything on the earth, but obviously it touches the surface and surface objects everywhere. As the earth moves, it creates friction against the lower portions of the atmosphere, which create friction against higher parts of the atmosphere.

Consider that the equator is rotating at roughly 1000mph, if the atmosphere did not move with it, you'd have roughly 1000mph winds because you and everything on the ground would be plowing through it at that rate.


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

[User] When metal is hot enough to start emitting light in the visible spectrum, how come it goes from red to white? Why dont we have green-hot or blue-hot?

[Assistant]
All objects emit black-body radiation. This comes in the form of electro-magnetic radiation. The intensity and spectrum (color) of this radiation depends on the temperature of the object.

At room temperature and below, the radiation is too low frequency to be able to seen by human eye, but objects do glow at infrared, and that is why heat vision cameras work. At about 500 degrees celsius, you can start noticing objects to glow at red. Increasing the temperature further makes them brigther, and whiter. And if you continued to heat the object beyond about 6000 celcius, then the glow would transition from white to blue.

The reason why you wont find green hot objects, is because when the objects spectrum peaks at green, it will also emit a lot of red and blue, and this mixture gives the overall white look.

The reason you wont easily find blue hot metals, is because everything evaporates before that. How ever, some stars are hot enough to glow blue.


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

[User]
[Marvel] The Hulk: What are the upper limits of his Clap attack and how does it work?

So I tried to kill a fly yesterday.  I clapped my hands and got REALLY close, but the fly wasn't even phased.

I went to a concert the other day and 11,000 people all clapped at once.  It was kinda loud, but the orchestra wasn't blown over.  I didn't even feel a breeze.

What's up with this Hulk guy?

[Assistant]
Well, that's why one must use protection when dealing with the hulk. When you get the clap from him, he thrusts so quickly that he shatters the speed of sound.

"Before you can scream "wrong hole!" he's hit it so hard that you won't be able to hold on.


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

[User] [Resident Evil] At the beginning of 4, Leon is following a slim lead that the President's daughter might be in rural Spain. Then it turns out she actually is there. Why doesn't the entire US military then swoop down on this tiny Spanish village?

[Assistant] They don't know exactly where Ashley is and if she is in immediate danger.  There is a very good chance if someone more aggressive and overt then Leon or a small commando team shows up they will kill here immediately.


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

[User] ELI5: How come my hands get slipperier when they're wet with water, yet laytex/nitrile/rubber/whatever gloves are such a pain to put on wet hands?

[Assistant]
Presence of adhesive forces between skin, water and those materials?

Basically, in plain terms, water is "sticky" for those materials, so when there's a touch surface between those materials and wet hands, due to the adhesive forces there's *increased friction* as you try to slide the material over your skin. Increased friction = more resistance = harder to put on gloves.


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

[User]
Are there any modern defenses or defenders of Plato's overall philosophy?

Do any modern philosophers argue that Plato was more or less correct in his major assertions about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics?

I take "Plato's overall philosophy" to be roughly the positions that (1) our world is a defective version of a more real and perfect realm of Forms; (2) knowledge of these eternal Forms is imprinted on each person's immortal soul before birth; and (3) we live good lives to the extent that we contemplate and come to better understand these Forms, especially the Form of the Good.

Which contemporary philosophers are most thoroughly Platonistic?

[Assistant]
Lloyd P Gerson's work might be a good place to start.

He argues for a definition of Platonism as characterised by 5 negative theses: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism.

Someone who defends all five 'antis' would be a true Platonist according to Gerson and he defends this view against its naturalist opposite, arguing also that positions seeking a compromise between the two are doomed to inconsistency.

You can find a couple of his lectures on this on YouTube or read his new book Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy.

Another modern philosopher who makes a case for Platonism, and does a really good job of placing Platonist positions (e.g. in philosophy of language) in dialogue with contemporary theories, is Julius Moravcsik.  I'd recommend his Thought and Language or Plato and Platonism.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it easier for non-native English speakers to sing, than to speak, with good pronunciation?

[Assistant]
That's because we repeat the sounds we hear, instead of processing the sound from scratch.

Imagine speaking like drawing a horse, isn't it easier to copy one from your drawing book than drawing one from a blank piece of paper?


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

[User] [Marvel] So if you have seen an Iron Man movie, you know what Tony sees when he is inside the Iron Man suit. What does Eddie see when he is inside Venom? Or anyone when they are in a symbiote?

[Assistant] Im pretty sure the host just sees everything as they/the symbiote would normally. With that said IIRC the symbiote compensates for not having spider-sense by having full awareness of its surroundings in every direction (think Daredevil-lite), so how that plays out Im unsure of.


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

[User]
How do marsupials clean their pouches? Do they smell terrible?

I was thinking about how disgusting a human pouch would be. Can someone elaborate?

[Assistant]
Much like grooming other parts of the body, they lick them clean. The frequency of pouch grooming has been observed to increase when the joeys are in the pouch.

Source: Russell, E. M., & Giles, D. C. (1974). The effects of young in the pouch on pouch cleaning in the tammar wallaby, *Macropus eugenii* Desmarest (Marsupialia). Behaviour, 51(1), 19-37.


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

[User]
[Futurama] Why is Leela considered such an outcast/freak for having one eye (a relatively minor mutation) when earth is full of bizarre, alien creatures?

I know a lot of people are going to argue its because she is a mutant and not an alien. But Leela doesn't find out shes a mutant till late into her life. If people were judging her for being a mutant, surely it would have been pointed out to her earlier in her life right?

[Assistant] I think it's related to the Uncanny Valley. She looks enough like a human that instead of people identifying her as "other" and saying "It's an alien", their lizard brain goes "That's a sick human. Expel it from the tribe before it spreads disease!"


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why didnt the Gungan Army take over Naboo?

Meesa not a Gungan or nothin, but meesa been wonderin dis for longo time! Republic didnt have muchen military until the Clone-BangBang-Conflict, de Naboo only havin security volunteers, but weesaer, I mean, the Gungans, which meesa totally not apart of, had bombad army and secret underwater city! Why theysa no drive out the Naboo?

[Assistant] The Gungans have near enough total control of the subaquatic areas of Naboo, and kept to themselves and well away from the Naboo. Naboos surface is 85% water. The Gungans have no need or will to conquer Naboo. The state of the Republic military isn't of any consequence to the Gungans anyhow.


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

[User]
[DC] Does Batman have a plan for Mr. Mxysptlk? How would the Dark Knight handle him?

Mr. Mxysptlk is pretty much omnipotent, able to warp reality as he sees fit. Having had experience with unpredictability fighting Joker, what's the Batman's course of action?

[Assistant] Batman would convince Mxy to temporarily make the universe lighter and softer. You know: Eyebrows on the cowl. Atomic batteries in the Batmobile. Bat-shark-repellent. Mxy gets his kicks by making everyone look ridiculous. But it's a fun kind of ridiculous. And we'll miss it.


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

[User]
ELI5: How come in the United States stores post their prices before tax?

Would it be better to know the "actual"  price?

[Assistant]
In the US, there isnt a general VAT, the taxes is different from state to state even city to city and as far down as different insitutions in those cities. It is easier for the retaliers to just put the price minus tax on the lables, as it would be the same nationwide, but the tax would then be applied at the cashier.

Also there is an incentive to post prices without tax in the US because it "helps keep the prices low". compared to the retailers that do write the taxes on the price tag. If the retailers dont have to put the price + tax on the price tag, there isnt any reason for them to do it.


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

[User]
ELI5: If the universe is expanding in all directions, does that mean that the universe is shaped like a sphere?

I realise the argument that the universe does not have a limit and therefore it is expanding but that it is also not technically expanding.

Regardless of this, if there is universal expansion in some way and the direction that the universe is expanding is every direction, would that mean that the universe is expanding like a sphere?

[Assistant]
Here's a 2D example. Take a semi-inflated balloon. Glue a bunch of pennies on the surface of the balloon. The 2D surface of the balloon is an analog to our universe. If someone starts blowing up the balloon even more, each of the pennies is moving away from each other, and the surface area of the balloon is expanding. From our 3D perspective, we can see the shape of the balloon. But if your entire universe is the 2D surface of the balloon, it doesn't really have a shape. It just is. And somehow, it's expanding.

You can take the same principles, and add another dimension to be our universe. The planets and stars and galaxies are all of the pennies glued to the surface of the balloon.


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

[User] [Harry Potter] What responsibility for the deaths of any student in the third floor corridor does Dumbledore have when it is his staircases sending them there?

[Assistant]
First and foremost, the stairs of Hogwarts aren't "his". Dumbledore doesn't have any control over Hogwarts itself. Hogwarts is a massive castle full of thousands of magical enchantments. It's full of a thousand years of secrets, many of which Dumbledore does not know. He isn't responsible for anything that the castle itself does.

That said... Wizard kids dying is kind of just something that happens. It sucks, but it's a part of wizard life. Wizards constantly surround themselves with dangerous animals, substances, and objects. Every wizard carries a wand, and that wand is constantly capable of doing horrible things, purposefully or by accident. Potion explosions, centaur riots, spells-gone-wrong, high-speed broom collisions... it sucks, but this shit happens. It's not surprising that wizards need muggles to keep their numbers up. Hell, the Weasleys having a bunch of kids are only being logical. It's like medieval peasants having 10 kids, you know? Some are inevitably gonna die, so you should have as many as you can.


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

[User] ELI5: How does lightning put nitrogen into the Earth?

[Assistant] The atmosphere is about 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen. Lightning tears the molecules of these two gasses apart and they recombine back to the original gasses or to nitrogen oxides. These nitrogen oxides combine with water vapor to form nitric acid which rains down and reacts with soil particles to form nitrates which plants can use.


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

[User] Humans can easily identify other humans using their faces alone, but we generally can't easily distinguish one member of a species from another by face alone (e.g. a lion from the others). Do animals have the same ability to recognize each other (same species) from face alone?

[Assistant] Good question, some animals are capable of face recognition, such as Chimpanzees. To humans most chimpanzees look the same, although chimpanzees can distinguish each other by seeing each others faces most of the time. Some other common methods animals use to distinguish each other are by smell and sounds.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do water droplets break on a flat surface, but bounce on a slanted surface?

So imagine you have a dropper full of water. If you were to let a drop of water go every few seconds, above a level surface, each drop would hit the surface and break (or disperse, dunno what the right word would be).

But, if you drop the water on a slanted surface, it sometimes bounces off that surface and goes in a different direction. Can anyone explain why this happens?

Also, I hope this applies to Chemistry. Feel free to let me know if it doesnt.

[Assistant]
It's sort of in-between chemistry and physics.

A water drop contains many water molecules. These are holding together due to surface tension; they would much rather be surrounded by other water molecules than by air, so they try all try to "squeeze" into the ball. Surface tension isn't super strong (otherwise the water droplets would be much bigger), so they're juuuust managing to hold together.

When a drop of water hits a surface, don't think of it as a water drop, but rather as a collection of water molecules that are trying to hold hands. They all have slightly different movement vectors (different directions and speeds), and when they get abruptly stopped by the **flat** surface, they can't hold on to each other and scatter in all directions. If you have a **slanted** surface on the other hand, most of them will actually bounce the same direction, and therefore it's easier for them to hold on to each other.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are there so many conspiracies about 5G in particular, but not for preexisting cellphone networks?

[Assistant]
Basically all new techs have some kind of conspiracy nutters (Ive still got a non-gmo, anti-microwave aunt). Same thing happened with cell phones, and WiFi, and every tech that cant be seen.

The only reason the 5G conspiracy is more common is that a significant portion of the US has recently taken a departure from reality. The formerly tiny corner of the internet that substitutes is own reality went from a fringe to now a significant portion. That means that more people with low passive critical thinking abilities are seeing hubbub about something they dont understand...and only see the conspiracies instead of the scientists saying its just non-visible light.


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

[User] How do electronic devices detect battery percentage?

[Assistant]
The voltage of a battery decreases as it is being depleted. The device measures the voltage and uses that to determine the battery percentage.

Note that the voltage doesn't go from max to 0 during a full cycle, but rather form its maximum value to some lower value, which the manufacturer has determined is the lowest voltage that device can still operate at correctly with certainty. When this voltage is reached, the device will shut itself off to prevent reaching the point where operation becomes unpredictable because the voltage dropped too low.

But it's more complicated than that because the voltage doesn't drop in a linear fashion with reduction of battery capacity. So it's not just a matter of setting 0% to the minimum voltage, setting 100% to the maximum voltage and just interpolating the rest. The manufacturer needs to calibrate the system that determines the battery percentage by running measurements of how the voltage drops with use. This logic is then implemented in the device and used to convert the voltage into a percentage.

There are more factors in play, but the final conclusion remains the same: The battery percentage is based on calibration measurements performed by the manufacturer to map measured voltages to battery levels. The better the manufacturer has captured all possible factors that can contribute to battery life into the algorithm that does this conversion, the more accurate the percentage estimate will be.


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

[User] [WH40k] Are Chaos incursions a problem on Tau worlds? How would they manage them?

[Assistant] The T'au have very weak presence in the Warp and can't produce psykers, therefore they ignore Chaos and are ignored by it in return. What little Chaos influence might be felt across their Empire is due to corruption among client races, but given that the T'au remain firmly in control of the higher echelons of power this has not had the chance of causing serious damage (yet).


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

[User] ELI5: Why does a new pair of glasses temporarily distort your depth perception? What causes this?

[Assistant]
Glasses have two effects: focus, and magnification.

The focus is what you want to change.  The reason you need glasses is that your eyes are miscalibrated, and they need a focus adjustment.

The magnification is a side effect and generally not wanted.  It's the reason that people with powerful lenses look like their eyes are either way too small (nearsighted) or way too big (farsighted) - the lens is changing the apparent size of their eyes.  The reverse happens, too: your new glasses are putting objects in focus, but they're also distorting their apparent size.  If you're nearsighted and you just got a more powerful prescription, objects look slightly smaller than they used to.  That messes with your depth perception, because your brain thinks everything is slightly farther away than it is.

The depth perception distortion will go away as your brain adjusts to the new relationship between how big something looks and how far away it is.


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

[User]
[Star Wars]Why was the Emperor so easily killed?

So I watched the final scenes of ROTJ yesterday, featuring the lovely leering Emperor trying to lure Luke to the dark side. As I've been reading the Thrawn Trilogy I've learned a little more about Force capabilities. It seems to me that the Emperor was too easily killed by Darth Vader.

Darth Vader was standing right by Palpatine's side just before he elevated the Emperor and threw him down the pit. Here arises

Problem #1= Force users are able to sense the emotions of those around them. Strong dark Jedi can go even further and invade thoughts to lift images/ideas directly from minds. The emperor should have been able to feel Vader's thoughts turn to compassion for his son. Compassion would have been followed by stronger emotions of protection/ vengeance/ murder. Sure, you can make the case that Vader didn't have a concrete plan that extended past lifting the Emperor up and away from Luke to end the latter's suffering and that chucking him down the pit was a spur of the moment decision. You can go even further and make the case that Vader was powerful enough to cover his sense from the Emperor. Fine. The emperor would have sensed that Vader's sense went "stealth" and this would have put him on guard. Either way, the emperor should have still felt a major change in Vader's sense and anticipated some sort of intervention. He didn't and this leads us to

Problem #2= Even basic Force users develop a "danger sense". This isn't as sophisticated as the previous "emotional sense" I mentioned earlier but it is fairly accurate and is a major factor in a Jedi's hardiness. A Jedi's danger sense flares before his surroundings attempt to harm him. The warning time varies, but it effectively puts a Jedi on guard, allowing him to heighten his senses and watch for attack. The Emperor's danger sense failed to warn him that an attack was imminent. He simply continued to elatedly electrocute Luke. This is problematic because danger sense doesn't depend on Vader's ability to conceal his sense, it is an independent function of the overall Force that binds us all. But somehow Vader got the jump on the Emperor and was able to lift him in the air.

Problem #3= Now that Palpatine is in the air he KNOWS hes in danger. His longtime ally and servant just interrupted him, and bodily lifted him up. Palpatine now directs his Force lightning at Vader in an attempt to stop him. This fails, and suddenly hes thrown down a very long pit with a sudden stop at the bottom. This powerful Force user, capable of Battle Meditation that mobilizes multiple fleets across light years simply allows himself to fall ALL the way down without attempting to halt his descent. He doesn't use the Force to levitate himself to a safe landing. Why not? Palpatine is intelligent and resourceful. His rise to power is evidence enough of that. Was he immobilized by fear? Surprise? I don't buy it.

[Assistant] Palpatine was a highly sadistic individual. When he was torturing Luke, he was high on his pain and the Dark Side. Vader could probably have waltzed up to him with a Twi'lek dance troupe banging cymbals and he wouldn't have noticed. By the time the rush of sadistic glee wore off enough for him to be able to touch the Force to save himself, it was already too late.


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

[User] [Diablo 3] In combat, the wizard sometimes exclaims "if only they could see me now". Who are "they"?

[Assistant] Li-Ming trained in the Yshari Sanctum, under the tutelage of Isendra (the sorceress from Diablo 2) and other powerful archmages and magic users. Isendra has since died, but others like Valthek remain in the Sanctum after Li-Ming set off to find her own path to glory. She's referring to everyone who taught and mentored her, as well as those she studied with.


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

[User] ELI5: Would there be any way to "improve" the internet if we could start it all over?

[Assistant]
Tons of stuff we could improve on.

For starters, the early days of the internet were like a small, rural community where nobody locks their cars or homes.  Many of the protocols rely on a fundamentally high level of trust.

We could build encryption into everything.  We could build out the email system in such a way that servers *don't* implicitly trust the sender to tell the truth about where the mail is coming from.  We could improve DNS to include public keys.  We could build some sort of trusted identity service into the protocols.

We could scrap the web and start from scratch with a system that's cleanly designed to do what we actually want with it.  The browser was originally designed to handle static pages with a few pictures & it's become a graphical, dynamic platform for thin-client applications. HTTP is a horribly inefficient protocol that we could replace with SPDY or something similar.  We could build a sane HTML/CSS replacement.  We could standardized on something more well thought out than Javascript for client-side scripting.  We'd be able to give browsers & servers WebSocket-like functionality that's not just a hacked-on afterthought.

We could probably make some big improvements to TCP/IP as well.  Starting with IPv6 addressing & probably building the system around jumbo (or larger) frames that make sense on today's high speed networks.

If you wanted to be *really* forward looking, you'd probably design a protocol for communicating with other planets that didn't require a full handshake & frequent acknowledgement of received packets.  If you're transmitting data over interstellar distances, a 30-minute round-trip time really gets in the way of things.


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

[User] [Pokemon] Are there laws against humans eating pokemon seeing how many pokemon have human level intelligence and can communicate?

[Assistant]
Slowpoke tails were a delicacy, but they seemed to be kind of a black market thing.

That said, fishing is still a viable profession, and presumably most fish that people eat are Pokemon, so it probably depends on the Pokemon.  Just like in real life, which animals you can eat also depends.  You can't generally go around cooking cats, dogs or horses.


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

[User] [DC comics] how are meta-humans treated by the general population in comparison to Marvel's mutants?

[Assistant]
It's a mixed bag, locality to locality.

In Central City, The Flash is supported by both the general population and law enforcement (maybe his day job in forensics gives him an advantage). However at the same time he does take down other metas.

OTH Superman is still loved by a lot of people, but open opposition spearheaded by Lex Luthor is still valid, so much so that in an alternate reality he does become president of the USA.

For the most part, you can say metas are feared until they can demonstrate value to society, and even then, some distrust still exists.


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

[User] Eli5 - How the heck did squatters (people who refuse to leave a home) get "rights"?

[Assistant]
People who just move in to a place they don't own and won't move out aren't "squatters" in the sense of legal "squatters' rights".

Historically, this was there so that land owners couldn't just ignore property and their tenants "forever"...like a decade. So there's one kind of squatters' rights called "adverse posession" where, if you can show that you lived there and paid taxes for a really long time, you can take posession. Basically, the actual owner abandoned it and literally did nothing to assert ownership for years.

There's another kind where the squatters \*were\* legal tenants but their lease/time ran out, "holdover tenants." They can't stay forever but you can't just forcibly kick them out the day their lease ends either...they get something like 3-7 days depending on jurisdiction.

Then there's "unknown persons"...people who just show up and start living there. This is \*not\* the same as trespassing...you can throw a tresspasser out right then and there. But if they show up and start living on your property and \*then\* you figure it out, you clearly weren't paying that much attention to your property in the first place. And then you have to actually evict them.


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

[User]
Marx's "materialism without matter"

In *The Philosophy of Marx,* Balibar states that "Marx's materialism has nothing to do with a reference to *matter*" and calls it a "materialism without matter". What exactly is meant by this?

[Assistant]
Well, ask yourself this: what does Marx actually do? Answer: he relates cultural productions back to their material ground, by which is meant very specifically the productive forces and organisation of *labour* in a given society. Henceforth, theories of all sorts, such as conceptions of how the economy works, what justice is, how society should be organised etc. are traced back to their material ground and unmasked as products of ideology. The matter here refers to the economy, it is not an ontological thesis about what kind of stuff ultimately makes up the world.

There is a great reading of the triad Kant-Hegel-Marx in Habermas *Knowledge and Interest* (first 50 ish pages) in which Habermas basically argues that the notion of labour, in its historical specificity, comes to take the role of a historicised version of transcendental subjectivity in Marx. The world is the correlate of a synthesis, but not the theoretical synthesis of a timeless subject, but the concrete productive synthesis of a concrete historical community. Before we know the world, we work on it, and the world as shaped by our labour is what grounds our theoretical dealing with it.

The silliest thing you can do is fall into the trap of taking materialism to be an ontological thesis in the first place. This is often done in shallow polemics against idealism where idealism can mean the most ordinary things. Some Marxists even end up forced to admit that ideas can have an influence on the world (what could be more obvious) but only because ideas are themselves material (embodied as brain patterns etc.). Such arguments are unnecessary because the Marxist criticism of idealism has nothing to do with denying a causal force to otherworldly entities.

[I cant guarantee that this is how Balibar himself understands the question but this is one reasonable way of looking at it]

You might also want to look into Alfred Sohn-Rethels tracing of the concept of substance back to the emergence of systems of currency in the ancient world (briefly: a coin keeps its identical value throughout all its changes of shape and colour. This, he argues, forms the model for the thought of substance)


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

[User]
ELI5: Why aren't Republicans more supportive of marijuana legalization?

Prohibition is a function of "big government" that infringes on personal liberty - two things the GOP supposedly hates. Legalization brings more revenue - which Republicans love (who doesn't?) Yet there's no big push to legalize it  - why?

[Assistant]
The GOP has *never* been opposed to "big government". GOP Presidents have presided over some of the largest expansions of government in history. The term "conservative" as applied to politics, means resistant to change. That's what the GOP is. They want things the way they've always been, or even the way they used to be, because the way they've always been has been good for them.

Also, most of their voters are old, white, and don't like drugs. They've lost the black vote, they've lost the Hispanic vote, they've lost the women's vote, they've lost the educated vote, and they've lost the youth vote. They can't afford to lose the grumpy, old, white men's vote.


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

[User] ELI5: How do random number generators work?

[Assistant]
For pseudo-random number generators, take a process that generates a chaotic, but deterministic string of numbers. Index into it at a somewhat random location (called a Seed) and use that.

For example, Pi is chaotic (non-repeating but deterministic).  If you are looking for random numbers between 0-9, you can take a 'seed' which is just the number of decimal places to go to, and start reading decimals. So this algorithm with seed 542 would be: 9 0 7 0 2 1 7 9 8 and so on.

This is deterministic, anyone with the same algorithm and seed would get the same numbers. But unless you know what to look for, it will appear to be random.

Non-deterministic random number generators will use a process that is not repeatable. The common way this is done is to use sensor noise. For instance, take a microphone, and measure something. Like if a microphone is sensitive to xx.yy, measure to xx.yyzzzzzzzzzzzzzAA. AA is likely to be raw noise and totally random, for the purposes of a generator.  Other common systems include cameras pointed at lava lamps (really!) or looking at the higher order bits from images. While theoretically if you set up the exact same physical experiment (with the sensors in the exact same state of being/wear) it would be deterministic, practically, due to physical process, those trailing bits are essentially random.

There are other ways to do it too of course, but those are the common ones.


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

[User]
How do we differenciate between dark matter and black holes?

you cant see them, you can only calculate their position by studying their gravital influence on other objects.

how do you know if you got a black hole or dark matter?

[Assistant]
Dark matter is a general term for the missing non-luminous matter that makes up about 80% of the mass of the universe. There have been multiple candidates for this, and not all of them were exotic particles. This did include black holes, but also mundane objects like brown dwarfs (massive Jupiters, not quite big enough to be a star). These were ruled out as the main component of dark matter, because if dark matter is made up of small dense objects like black holes or brown dwarfs, they would from time to time line up with a star, and their gravity would bend the light of the star and give us a "lensing" signal. But all of the "lensing" we see can be explained by the visible stars, so there doesn't seem to be some large hidden population of individual massive objects. Instead, dark matter is generally considered to be some sort of subatomic particle that doesn't interact via electromagnetism. Neutrinos already act like that, but they are too light and move too quickly. So we're looking for something that's basically like a neutrino but more massive.

When we talk about "dark matter" these days, we usually do mean a smooth distribution of subatomic particles spread across the galaxy. This behaves very differently to an extremely dense massive object like a black hole. Dark matter forms massive but very spread-out galaxy-sized halos with gentle gravity slopes. A black hole only significantly affects stuff that's very close to it, but it has an extreme effect on stuff nearby, ripping stars apart to form accretion discs that become very hot and bright and rotate incredibly fast. Dark matter is almost like a "fluid" (technically a "collisionless fluid" following the Boltzmann equation), because it's made up of a smooth distribution of subatomic particles, while black holes are individual massive objects, as massive as a star or more.


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

[User]
I think the culture of 'going away for college' at age 18 needs to be re-thought. CMV.

High school grads are just too young and irresponsible to live away from home en masse. CMV.

[Assistant]
Yep, sure are. That's the short answer. These high school grads are dumb, irresponsible, and entirely prone to make mistakes.

The upside is that these high school grads are dumb, irresponsible and entirely prone to make mistakes. Leaving home at 18, with the possibility of return to the nest if the mistakes are too damaging or numerous, is a good way to take the training wheels off on life. Without family there to stabilise them, they are likely to spend too much money, do too much partying and generally be pretty dumb. Just as we learn something from falling and scraping our elbows when we're young under the watchful eyes of our parents, leaving the nest to go to college is a way for a person to engage with the responsibilities of the 'real world' without being all-in quite yet. They acclimatize to the world away from home gradually, and instead of risking ruining their lives when there is nobody there to bail them out, they risk having problems when there are support systems still in place to catch them (though perhaps not without a bit of bruising).


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

[User]
[Doctor Who] How close to his timeline can the Doctor travel?

In most stories where one clue given ahead of time would have given the Doctor the advantage and/or saved lives it is explained that you can't interact with your own timeline. Now we have seen for example the 10th Doctor meeting Martha Jones from her perspective for the first time before The Doctor met her for the first time from his perspective which is arguably interacting with his own timeline but indirectly (it change the way there dialogue went since Martha was talking about her first meeting the Doctor). How far can you take it? Could The Doctor for example make the decision that once he survives this encounter with lets say the Cyberman he will travel back in time weeks before the battle and without directly interacting with the Cyberman or himself install a trap? Would that mean there would be know a trap he hasn't installed yet (from his perspective) but was installed there weeks ago from the perspective of that places timeline?

[Assistant]
He can only cross his own timeline for cheap jokes, is what #10 tells Martha. Anything more can make things highly unstable. In "Father's Day," #9 and Rose overlap their timelines several times, which creates a vulnerable point. Then when Rose saves her father's life, that tips things too far and the resulting paradox is too much for the timeline to handle. This is what the reapers show up to fix.

See also why adult Rose couldn't touch baby Rose, even though in a later episode, adult Amy could touch young Amelia. This is probably because the timeline had much bigger problems to deal with, although it could also have been a stable causality loop, which made it okay.


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

[User]
ELI5 why people clap to music on 2 and 4, and why does clapping on 1 and 3 mess musicians up?

I recently saw a montage of musicians stopping their performance to stop crowds from clapping on 1 and 3 and asking/teaching them to clap on 2 and 4. All of them looked like clapping on 1 and 3 was making it more difficult for them. I asked my mother about this who has been first chair for clarinet in many concert bands and she had never heard of this. Any insight would be appreciated.

[Assistant]
American music is based on syncopation, which is when weak/off-beats are stressed. In a bar of four, the strength of each beat goes: *Strong, Weak, Less-strong, Weakest.*

Different instruments serve different roles in every genre of music. In jazz, the bass is expected to play on beats 1 and 3 at the very least because the bass represents a more harmonic function in the ensemble. A drummer is playing every beat and subdivision in some way, but they are also emphasizing beats 2 and 4, because they hold a rhythmic function. (This way, bass and drums are doing a kind of call-and-response thing which is a trait inherited from various African musics.) Hand Claps, as an instrument, serve a similar function as the drums in that their role is to accent 2 and 4. When you clap on 1 and 3, it sounds unnatural because you are playing agains the role of the instrument in this genre (and in American music in general).


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

[User]
How they capture the galaxy's photo?

Can i ask? How is it possible to capture the galaxy's picture? If we are on this galaxy like milky way. How? You have to like fly a drone to capture something below from above, right? So how?

[Assistant]
Are you talking about scale shots of our Galaxy that show the arms and everything?  Those aren't photos. They're renderings based on what we know about our Galaxy.

For someone to get a scale photo like that they'd have to travel thousands of light years to get far enough above or below the ecliptic to get a shot, slow down, then travel thousands of light years back.


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

[User] Is it possible for someone to 'grow out' of an Allergy?

[Assistant]
Sensitization to a certain allergen is something your body will never forget, there are a sort of memory cells in your immune system that will forever remember how to produce antibodies to a certain allergen.

However, the presence of IgE antibodies is what determines whether or not you have an allergic reaction. The memory cells that determine whether or not your immune system will make massive amounts of IgE are activated by an IgE receptor, which means some IgE has to be present in the patients blood for the immune system to kick in.

After prolonged abstinence of whatever the patient is allergic to, it is possible that the IgE concetration is too small to be sufficient to start up the allergic reaction. You have de facto outgrown your allergy.

Some patients that suffer from more severe types of allergy are tested every two years in our lab to check for IgE concentration in blood.


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

[User]
ELI5: why do we clap excessively at the end of a formal performance (play, ballet, etc)? Where did that originate?

I certainly understand why we applaud at the end of the performance. However, I was at the Royal Opera House in London for a ballet the other night, and when it finished, we clapped for ~5 full minutes. In addition to clapping for the whole group and main ballerinas individually, the curtain closed and re-opened for applause 3 more times. It got me thinking, where did this originate? How did it become standard to applaud for several full minutes?

[Assistant] It is really just kind of a ritualized release of energy built up during the performance - from the highs, lows, awe, dread, excitement and what not. People have stomped their feet, jumped up and down, flailed about excessively at various times in our cultural history to express this energy in different ways.


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

[User]
Why are low sodium diets suggested for high blood pressure when low sodium levels result in higher renin production and therefore higher blood pressure?

I've recently learnt at University about the renin-angiotensin system where low sodium levels result in increased renin production and therefore higher levels of angiotensin and aldosterone which result in more water conservation which ould lead to higher blood volume and therefore pressure. However, people always seem to suggest low sodium diets for those with high blood pressure issues. Why is this? Is my understanding of the renin-angiotensin system wrong or is there another mechanism in play?

[Assistant]
The latter. The purpose of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system is essentially to control blood pressure, blood volume, and sodium balance. Like you mentioned, reductions in sodium stimulates renin release. However, that is just one of multiple renin-release stimuli. The more correct way to see it is: (1) decreased circulating volume (low BP)-> (2) renin release-> (3) increased sodium reabsorption/decreased sodium excretion-> (4)BP correction

The issue here is high blood pressure (aka hypertension; HTN). Water follows salt, so high sodium diets will have lots of salt in the blood vessels, which promotes water movement into blood vessels, thereby increases wall tension and inhibiting renin release. *For those w HTN, a reduction in sodium is unlikely to increase renin as the HTN is often due to high blood sodium and HTN inhibits renin release*


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

[User]
[Fighting Games] How do some of these fighters travel?

Some fighters are normal dudes (for a given value of "normal"), but then there are the weird ones: the Martial Arts Demon, the Animated Machine, the Literal Devil from Hell. How do these guys get from Tokyo to Los Angeles to challenge Karate Jim or Boxing Tom to a three-round fight to the death? Do they fly coach on Delta?

[Assistant]
This is the responsibility of the tournament organizers. You have to pay for hotel and travel for all the talent. They often have bizarre "riders," requirements in writing that state what they must and must not have.

Scorpion *hates* brown M&M's. Guile requires hair gel. Chun-Li...never mind.


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

[User] Why doesn't the human body reject new blood (i.e. from transfusions) in the same way that it often rejects new organs?

[Assistant]
Donated blood is separated into packed red blood cells, plasma, and platelets and leukocytes are discarded. None of the transfusion products will present the recipient with antigens to induce rejection so long as the product is appropriately matched to the recipient (by ABO and Rh). The most basic explanation is because these donated blood products lack specific cell-surface proteins (HLA) recognized by the immune system.

Transplanted organs on the other hand, do express these cell surface proteins and therefore are under surveillance by the immune system. If the immune system detects foreign proteins in the body, it will attack those proteins to defend the body against a perceived threat.


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

[User] How would waves be any different if there was a superocean like Phantalassa. Would they be larger and more dangerous or calmer and would anything else be different?

[Assistant] The amplitude of waves in the ocean somewhat depends on the wavelength of them. For a longer unobstructed path, wind can have a larger compounding effect, leading to larger waves. The southern ocean is a good example of this, as it encircles the lower latitudes of earth (up to Antarctica) pretty much unobstructed. As a result, you'll routinely see 20 meter or higher swells going through there. Any scientist stationed at McMurdo has certainly earned his or her sea legs lol.


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

[User]
I hate Valentine's day. CMV

So I am a Valentine's day Grinch, and no, I am not single. I don't like the idea that you have to show someone you love them on this specific day, because it is what is expected of us to do. Despite the pagan history, I really think it's just filler between Christmas and Easter and it's a giant cash grab.

I don't see the appeal of sitting in a restauraunt that is swamped with people (when other random nights, it would be empty). Nor do I see the appeal of cooking dinner (or having dinner cooked for you) at home, again, only reason being that you have to do SOMETHING on this day otherwise, you're a jerk of a partner. I just think if you really loved someone, you don't need someone to tell you which day you should show them that. You would do so on random days, throughout the year.

I guess the same could be said for other holidays though this one, more than the others for me seems to like to guilt one person into feeling they have to buy things for the other. I do celebrate other holidays though and can't really explain my way out of that, so CMV!

[Assistant]
It isn't Valentine's Day. It is **St.** Valentine's Day. It is a minor feast on the traditional Roman Catholic Calendar to celebrate the feast of St. Valentine.

Valentine assisted the martyrs during the persecution they suffered under the rule of Claudius II. The Emperor was also involved in a bloody war and thought that gaining recruits was difficult due to attachment to family, so the Emperor put a ban on marriage. St. Valentine continued to marry couples in secret. He was killed for doing this.

How you choose to celebrate St. Valentine's Day is up to you. But we should at least appreciate it for being the day in honor for a man who died for others to enjoy marriage.


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

[User]
Taking a medical leave?

Hi all- this is an academia/mental health combo issue! Basically I am facing the prospect on taking a medical leave for my next semester (second semester of my third year undergrad). Throughout middle and high school, my academics were stellar. Beginning college I did incredibly well, earned a 4.0 GPA, and have maintained it up until the COVID break in March. That semester I became really mental Ill and failed all my classes- never done anything like that before in my life and it was so incredibly upsetting to me. Im trying to come to the terms with the fact that I wont be able to focus on school and do well if Im dealing with all of my problems (mental illness and severe ED). Im scared I might never go back, and simply that Im postponing my graduation each time I withdraw from or fail a class. Wondering if anyone has any thoughts/experiences about a dilemma like this. Much appreciated!

[Assistant] Please contact the counseling office on your campus and get in and talk with those folks. Tell them exactly what's going on and also your concern about never finishing. They have heard this before and are experienced in helping students deal with problems and be successful academically. If you need to take an official medical leave (rather than just not enrolling for a semester or a year) you should be able to maintain contact with them through that time. Maintaining contact with professionals who's whole careers revolves around student problems and coming to campus for counseling will go a long way toward helping you get better and get back to your studies.


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

[User]
Is it possible to build a truly empty box?

I mean a box that is not just devoid of air or even matter but no photons, neutrinos, nothing. Not even EM fields.

One obvious problem would be the inside edges of box would occasionally decay and release photons into the box but could they be somehow prevented from travelling too far inside by a large gravitational or EM field outside of the box?

What's the most empty anything could conceivably be?

[Assistant] You can't have no EM field. Electromagnetism exists, you have to deal with it. The only thing you can have is the EM field at the lowest possible value. That's what physicists call "vacuum". But even in the vacuum, you still have some energy and some quantum fluctuations. Vacuum is not empty.


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

[User] Experimental fusion rectors on earth require temperatures hotter than the sun. Since the sun has the process of fusion at 15million degrees, why do we need higher temperatures than the sun to achieve it?

[Assistant]
The sun has a very low rate of fusion and only generates about as much heat as a compost heap in it's core, or 276.5 watts/m^3 .  This lets it slow-burn for billions of years without refuelling, and because the sun is enormous, this meagre heat output per cubic metre of solar core adds up to an impressive total heat output, but it's no use to us for generating power on Earth and we need fusion to occur much more quickly in order to be a practical compact terrestrial power source.  Our reactor can only be so large due to engineering constraints and we need it to produce many megawatts of heat from the tiny quantity of fuel in it.

It's like the difference between the geological heating in Earth's crust due to the decay of radioactive isotopes, and a nuclear fission reactor.  There's a lot of crust, and all those decays add up to 1541 TW of heat, but a block of granite sitting on a table will be cold to the touch and can't be used to boil water and turn a turbine because there aren't enough decays going on in a reasonably sized granite block to generate a useful amount of heat and it's only when you have thousands of cubic kilometres of rock that interesting things are able to happen from this slow trickle of radioactive heating.


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

[User]
Why doesnt a strong USD cancel out inflation?

I live in Japan. Right now the yen is really weak, so youd think things would be really expensive. But theyre not. Theres been minimal inflation.

Meanwhile, over in the US the dollar is super strong right now. Which should make things cheaper but theyre not. Theres massive inflation.

These two forces are literally reinforcing each other and making prices completely out of sync between countries. Before in Jan 2020 a Big Mac was $4.82 in the US and 390 / $3.55 in Japan. Now a Big Mac is $5.15 in the US (7% inflation) and still 390 in Japan (0% inflation), but converted to USD, now only $2.83 because of the weak yen.

Why is inflation and currency value both pushing in the same direction rather than cancelling each other out?

[Assistant]
It's complicated. There are several factors. I'll talk about the US:

1\. A lot of inflation was caused by the easy-money policies of the Fed in 2021. That creates domestic inflation which is not easily compensated for by cheaper imports.

2\. In the US imports only make up ~13% of GDP. Then you have to remember that the USD has not risen so much. The dollar index is up ~11% comparing the start of the year to today. So, at the most an 11% reduction in 13% of purchases. Not enough to make much of a difference.

3\. Many goods that the US buys in dollars are priced in dollars anyway.

For Japan see the reply by 12chihuahuasyapping.


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

[User]
[Jack and the Beanstalk] What was the motivation of the old man who traded Jack the magic beans for a milk cow that didn't produce milk any more?

Was he desperate and just needed a quick meal? Was he trying to con Jack?  Was it an elaborate setup to kill the giant?  Did he even know the power of the beans?

[Assistant] He probably had a magic bean plant but was too old to climb the stalk himself, so he traded some of the bean for a cow. Yeah, it didn't give milk but that might have been a nutrition problem. A poor family might not feed the cow enough to give milk. The cow could start producing again if fed properly. If not, well you got steaks and ribs for the winter.


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

[User] ELI5: How do recycling factories deal with the problem of people putting things in the wrong bins?

[Assistant]
Sometimes they don't- they can just send the whole load to the landfill instead of processing it if there's excessive trash contamination.

But recycling facilities usually employ either humans to stand on the conveyor lines and separate recyclables from trash, or automated equipment that does the same thing.


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

[User] ELI5: why do we forget nouns like names of people and places, which we know. And this happens just the exact second when we need that name from the brain.

[Assistant]
* Your memories are not like computer files they are more like a series of "clues": your five senses and emotions factor into memories
* A theory about sleep and dreams is that (among other things) it's memory consolidation. Your brain organizes memories while you sleep - one correlation is that people who learn new things in a classroom or formal training report lots of dreams when they sleep.
* Some memories fade or become disjointed because they are not used. That person from your teen years that interacted with -a lot - is now "the dude with the shirt" because the memories weren't used, or weren't used that much.
* You can recover some of that, so when the "the dude with the shirt" send you a FB request, your brain will try to get as much as it can - but will fill in the blanks with new information.
* Your brain can store lots of information - it's the recall and access where the problems occur.  If it's not used, the "links" decay as memories that are used take priority.

So a name of a person you don't interact with that much, a place name you haven't used, that word you need - your brain has prioritized the recall of other, more used memories. And now you're caught short.


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

[User] ELI5:How are cockroaches able to survive nuclear apocalypses but die when hit with cockroach spray?

[Assistant]
Cockroaches couldn't survive nuclear apocalypse. The explosion itself would kill roaches, just like any fire would. Radiation is less of an immediate threat to roaches than to humans, bu it would still kill them.

Cells are most sensitive to radiation when they are dividing. Humans and other mammals have cells that are dividing all the time. In fact, chemotherapy works because cancer cells divide rapidly and the radiation from chemo kills rapidly dividing cells (that's also why you lose your hair and why men become infertile during chemo - hair cells and sperm cells divide rapidly).

Roaches and many other bugs don't have cells that divide all the time. Instead, a roach's cells only divide around the time it molts, which is about once a week when it's growing up. Molting is when a bug sheds its old exoskeleton as it's growing bigger. Since cells are usually vulnerable to radiation when dividing and a roach's cells only divide about once a week, there's only a small window during each week when radiation would kill a roach.

If there were enough radiation in the area to last a couple weeks it could still kill roaches since the young ones would have to molt at some point. Short blasts of radiation that disappear quickly would endanger humans a lot more than roaches, but fallout from nuclear weapons would stick around long enough to kill roaches too.

There's also no reason this is specific to cockroaches. A lot of insects are more resistant to radiation for this reason.


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

[User] ELI5: why does "the big, red, house" sound much more correct than "the red, big, house"?

[Assistant]
While not everyone follows them, generally in English if there are multiple adjectives, they are done in a particular order:

* Quantity or number
* Quality or opinion
* Size
* Age
* Shape
* Color
* Place of origin or material
* Purpose or qualifier

So most people will say "big, red house" so that's what you're used to hearing.


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

[User]
Is the moon essential to any life on earth?

In other words, would there be any implications on the formation of life without the moon?

[Assistant]
The moon stabilizes Earth's orbit. Without the moon, Earth's axial tilt would change over time, with major effects on the climate. Life could still exist, but it would have to keep evolving to keep up with this climate change.
Also, intertidal marine ecosystems are adapted to tides. These communities would be quite different without tides.


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

[User] How do overturned tables provide such good cover from gunfire?

[Assistant]
Most of the tables are made in China. China has a nasty habit of martial arts duels and gunfire breaking out in restaurants. To combat this and keep from having to buy new tables whenever the old ones are destroyed by gunfire (and also to keep customers safe), China now makes tables that are actually wood layered with lightweight metals and kevlar, preventing bullets from punching through.

These 'safety tables' are now must-buys for practically any public eatery in the world, and have made millions for the Chinese. All you need is some varnish, maybe some cork, and a new tablecloth, and you're fine. No one will notice, no need to replace the entire table.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does 2^0 equal 1?

This is probably asked alot, but I never seem to understand it. Please halp!!

[Assistant]
We define the exponents of a nonzero integer*a*such that they satisfy the relationa^(b)a^(c)=a^(b+c)for ay integersb,c witha^(1)=a. In order for exponents to be well defined, we thus needa^(0)=1.

Basically, 2^0 is 1 because it makes it possible to get from 2^(2)\*2^(-2) to 1, since 2^(-2) is equal to 1/4 and 2^2 is 4 so it should equal 4\*(1/4) which is 4/4 which is 1.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is it that makes some TV shows look cheap?

I don't know how to describe it exactly, but some shows just look... cheaper.  I'm hoping whoever reads this knows what i mean... older Canadian shows have that look, some BBC shows have that look, older Korean Dramas (and some recent ones) have the look...I thought I had figured it out -- it was something to do with static camera work, but I was watching something recently that had that same 'cheap' look and the camera work was the same as any other show. So now I'm not sure, and I'm just curious about what it could be...

[Assistant]
One significant thing is lighting. People underestimate both in photography and in video how bid a difference professional lightimg makes, but it is also something that is wasy to not invest in or not do right and think the audience won't notice as much.

One other really interesting thing is frame rate, when shows suddenly look "cheaper" on your new hd  tv. For years things like soap operas among other shows used a faster frame rate from movies (i am not sure exactly why). This trained our brain to expect a certain type of show when experiencing a faster frame rate (something most of our conscious minds can't detect). In many modern HD tvs, the tv adds extra "in between" frames to get everything up to a faster rate, but the side effect for many of us is that these tv shows and movies now look cheap, until we have finally retrained our brains.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why don't women's pants have functional pockets?

They need them just as much as guys, but don't have them. It's so stupid.

[Assistant] It has to do with figure profile. Hour glass curves are disrupted by full pockets. You can make it more complicated by mixing in advertisers and designers picking up on needing an alternative storage container(s), and seeing the purse as a cash cow. But in this case, the aesthetics came first.