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

[User]
What impact do those long and low cold temperatures have on insect populations like ticks, mosquitos, chiggers, butterflies, bees, in temperate regions?

Im a hiking, camping and trail running enthusiasts who often deals with ticks, chiggers, mosquitos, etc. I was wondering what will those low temperatures for the past 2 weeks will have on those populations.

[Assistant]
Some species of ticks can tolerate the cold for long periods, like the Deer tick.  Others will freeze to death.  Chiggers die below 42, but the eggs can survive. Mosquitos will die below 40, but if they have laid their eggs in water, the eggs will survive till the spring thaw.

Butterflies can die if ice crystals form on their wings and body.  Most that don't migrate to warmer climates will die.

Bees that have hives create their own heat source and can easily survive winter time.  They are inactive because of the lack of flowers, but active in the hive while waiting out their frosty lockdown.


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

[User]
[D&D/GeneralFantasy] Can adventurers "breathe" a tamed Air Elemental?

If yes, bonus questions:

* How long would it take a human adventurer to consume all of the oxygen contained in a large-sized Air Elemental?
* Would doing this be fatal or injurious to said Elemental?
* Could this method be used for deep-sea and/or space travel? Can the Elemental hold itself together in these extremes, or would it compress or dissipate?
* Rather than such extreme travel arrangements, could you store an Air Elemental in a Bag of Holding, allowing you to transport living things without them suffocating?

Thank you in advance for all of your outside-the-box-of-holding thinking! =)

[Assistant]
depends on the lore, but I've allowed it in shadowrun for example, where our creative summoner filled a room with water via a water elemental, sealed us hermetically in rock via earth elemental and filled the chamber with air via an air elemental. He then used another air elemental to zap the water outside and kill everyone in the room.

He's not allowed to play summoners anymore.


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

[User]
Why does E=mc^2 not have the 1/2 coefficient that KE=1/2 mv^2 has?

I understand the 1/2 for many energy formulas comes from calculus integration. Why do some formulas like E=mc^2 not have the half, and what is the non-math way to explain the significance of having that coefficient (in layman's terms)

[Assistant]
The full relativistic expression for the energy (combining rest energy and kinetic energy) for a particle of mass m and speed v is:

mc^(2) / sqrt{1-v^(2)/c^(2)}

When v is small compared to c, as it is for every material object we encounter in day-to-day life, that above expression takes the
approximate form

mc^(2) +(1/2)mv^(2)

That's how the factor of 1/2 arises.  The first term is the rest energy, and the second term is classical kinetic energy.

If v gets larger, the next, slightly better approximation is

mc^(2) +(1/2)mv^(2)+(3/8)mv^(4)/c^(2)

so that next term has a 3/8 in it!


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

[User]
How does body shape relate to swimming
performance ?

Here is a question from my swimming class. We have noted that girls are usually faster with kick exercises, whereas boys are faster with arm practice.

Boys think it has to do with the distribution of body fat (or possibly body shape), and girls think we are just lazy (and that we shouldn't be so rude!).

Has there been studies on the differences between male/female swimming?
Is there a numerical way to compare men's and women's records?
Is swimming more, or less "gender imbalanced" than other spots such as athletics?

[Assistant] Disclaimer: the mechanics of a human body -- with all of its density variations, oddly shaped limbs with multiple joints, varying cross sectional area, etc -- moving through a fluid like water can get pretty complicated if you try to break it down and analyze how men and women might be better at one type of stroke or movement compared to another. That being said, the difference in "arm practice" performance may be as simple as men generally having superior upper body strength to women.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does my wifi signal go from full to nothing and back even when I'm not moving?

Campus wifi, specifically. I know that signal strength varies, but why? Even when sitting in a dorm room, not moving about, why does it vary?

I've looked up technical explanations, but they're a bit over my head.

[Assistant]
Noise due to other wireless devices. Your signal strength is actually a measure of your signal to noise ratio. If extra noise is added, your signal strength decreases. That noise is coming from other devices in your vicinity.

Additionally, in a complex wifi network like a university campus, there are multiple access points. You might have been handed off to another one due to higher signal strength or for load balancing.


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

[User] [Lucky Luke] Why does Luke always ride off into the sunset? Wouldn't it be better to stay the night in a hotel room, and set off in the morning?

[Assistant]
Lucky Luke isn't really a peoples person, like he's charismatic and has no problems working with people.

But he rather spends his nights sleeping under the stars together with his best friend his horse.


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

[User] ELI5: How do registered sex offenders go to grocery stores and malls etc, where children just are naturally?

[Assistant]
The only restrictions are schools and parks: places where children are likely to congregate, especially unsupervised.

Malls/stores are fine; as long as they aren't within the radius of a school/park.


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

[User] ELI5: Why aren't noise cancelling headphones as effective in cancelling high pitch sounds as their in cancelling low pitch sounds?

[Assistant]
The way noise cancelling works is that it has a microphone pick up some noise and then a speaker produce that noise phase shifted 180 degrees. The resulting waveforms precisely cancel out.

However, the microphone can only pick up the noise as it's passing by and there's a delay before it can generate the phase-shifted sound. This means that you have to 'guess' what the future will hold in some sense.

High frequency waves embed more information and shift more often, meaning it's a lot harder to make guesses about them than low frequency waves.


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

[User]
[Mavel] If Spider-Man was a villain, who's rogue gallery would he be in?

I could see him being a Daredevil or Wolvie foe.

Whose*

[Assistant] Evil Spider-Man would probably be a Fantastic Four villain since they go way back historically, and Peter's combined mental acumen plus physical prowess would make him a plausible threat against the entire team, ala Doctor Doom.


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

[User]
ELI5: what forces us to wake up and how does it work?

You can wake up naturally or be forced to wake up by e.g. loud noise, pain, water.

How does it work?

Bonus question: Why is it possible to cut your blood supply to your arm and not be woken up for hours? (I slept on my arm for 6 hours, felt no arm after waking up)

[Assistant]
A part of your brain is always active even while youre sleeping. That part can monitor for natural dangers, which a loud noise, pain, water would all be perceived as, and wake you up.

edit: for your bonus question, youre not cutting off the blood supply to your arm when you sleep on it, youre squeezing a nerve, but Im not sure of the details so maybe someone else can take over that one!


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

[User]
ELI5:How do we know how certain battles took place?

I just watched the newest HistoryMarche video and it got me thinking. How do we know the details of a battle so thoroughly that we can make a video and present it? Like what flank collapsed, what flank held on.

I understand primary sources, secondary sources etc. but how would someone know. Was there a guy just interviewing the survivors after the battle, sitting on the hill watching and noting the battle?

[Assistant]
Depends on the battle.  For more recent conflicts like the colonial wars of the 18th century and later there is often meticulous note-keeping by commanders on both sides.

During the imperial age nations understood the immense value of detailed understanding of your army, your opponents army, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each.  Military leadership tasked officers with this specifically, and commanders filed post-combat reports detailing their actions and thoughts.

As a result, we have *extremely* detailed records of battles in conflicts like the US Civil War and WWI, right down to the exact number of men and what time of day things occurred.

Once you get into pre-industrial conflicts the record quickly gets a lot spottier.  Records are sparse, lost, incomplete, and/or heavily embellished.  Many medieval and classical battles are known only from a single secondary source and some archaeological evidence, and the numbers and details some guy wrote about 45 years after the fact are deeply suspect.


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

[User]
I've never read anything about feminism. Should I read The Second Sex, or go right to something more contemporary?

I did take a race and gender course and dealt with many feminist activists in my heyday as a college activist, but I never sat down and read a whole book on feminism.

Also I found Sam Harris' Free Will in the women's studies section where it's been hiding for god knows how long. It was so unbecoming that I personally had to go put it back. I just had to tell someone.

[Assistant]
I think you should read "Masculine Domination" from Pierre Bourdieu, one of the greastest sociologist of all time. The sociology of bourdieu is.. can't find the word.. impressive and puzzling. It will probably totally change the way you see the social word and in this case the status of wowen in the society. You'll understand that the oppression of women is way more insidious, therefore legitimized, then we usualy think.

(excuse the poor english, croissant here)


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

[User]
[Back to the Future III] Why does Maggie McFly look like Loraine?

In Part III of Back to the Future, Marty goes back to 1885 and meets his ancestors on his father's side of the family: The McFly's.

So, why does Maggie McFly look almost exactly like Loraine McFly?

Loraine's maiden name is Baines. She's not related to the McFly's at all, as far as heredity is considered.

Is this just a result of Marty's time-warped mind trying to make sense of what must be a very "heavy" week? Or are the McFly's and the Baines' more closely related than they thought?

[Assistant]
Seamus and George McFly obviously have similar taste in women.
There's also the chance that Loraine and Maggie are related to each other besides their husbands as there's no mention of Maggie's family which she left in Ireland, after Maggie and Seamus settled in other family members could have emigrated as well.


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

[User]
[My Hero Academia] How does Midoriya calculate what percentage of One For All hes using?

And for that matter how can All Might deduce how much power of One For All is being used?

Is it similar to how a person lifts weights or jogs for a long time?

[Assistant]
I don't think it's a literal calculation of the amount of OFA applied, it's more of an estimation of how much effort he feels he's putting into it.
Like he isn't literally putting 1,000,000%  into it when he does his 1,000,000% Smash, he's throwing his perceived limits out the window and putting everything into it.

All Might is a good judge of it because he's in the unique position of having gone through almost exactly what Deku's going through, going from a quirkless weak kid to having one of the most powerful quirks in the world.


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

[User] Is there anything in nature which can be considered as being infinite?

[Assistant] We *consider* the universe to be infinite in size (thus infinite stars, infinite galaxies, planets, etc.{No, this does not imply that there must be copies of Earth out there}). We *cannot show* that it is such, but the data is reasonably suggestive of this case.


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

[User] [General] What is the creepiest story arc in a super heroes comic you know about?

[Assistant]
The Sandman: 24 Hour Diner (Dr. Destiny). No question. The arc with the serial killer convention was pretty rough too.

The "Death of the Family" arc in Batman had it's moments, mostly thanks to the grotesque Joker design and some really gross implications that (fortunately) didn't come to pass.

"The Wolves of St. August" from Hellboy was a good one. "Crooked Man" too. Hellboy has always been a horror-themed setting but those stood out to me.


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

[User] ELI5 why does sugar turn brown when melted?

[Assistant] Sugar is a molecule made of a particular arrangement of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms.  When you heat up the sugar, this adds energy to the system that can be used to fuel chemical reactions that rearrange the bonds between these atoms.  Some of these compounds are dark brown in color and add caramel flavors to the sugar.  Similar reactions occur in meat when you cook it and get a tasty brown crust.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the historical difference between monks, priests, and friars.

I was watching The Name of the Rose with Sean Connery, and the other day I was reading World Without End by Ken Follett.  I'm confused by the difference between these classes of religious people.  What were their roles?  Are some higher ranked than others?  Do their roles overlap?

[Assistant]
A monk takes his vows and commits to a particular self-sufficient community consisting only of monks. He serves the church through devotion.

A friar takes his vows and commits to a larger area, a province, and is supported through donations. They will usually travel about their area and stay in a variety of places in the province they are committed to. He serves the church by working among laypeople.

A priest can be a friar, monk, or neither. He is an ordained member of the church which means he can perform rites and rituals such as giving mass, performing marriages, and giving last rites, things that a non ordained friar or monk cannot do.


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

[User]
[WH40K] What if the Emperor of Man was put in a dreadnought when he was critcally injured, instead of the Golden Throne?

How powerful would he be in a dreadnought? Would he still be as potent a Psyker?

[Assistant]
No, he would die instantly, and with him the Imperium. The throne is from the *Dark Age of Technology*, which is the only thing that keeps the body of the Emperor alive.. more or less.

Also without him on the throne, a warp storm will consume Segmentum Solar and end the Imperium for good.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Any other fine print I need to read ?

I am Lord Voldemort. I keep getting defeated by a child without any notable talent because I haven't read the fine print for my equipment.

I have read up on mother's love, wandlore and horcruxes. Anything else I need to know ?

[Assistant]
Usually it's not the fine print that saves Harry from Voldemort, but it's the simple thing that tends to separate heroes from villains - friendship and cooperation.

Harry gets fine-print saved thrice - Mother's Love, Mother's Love Redux, and Elder Wand Ownership

The rest of the time he gets saved because he is willing to trust others, and work with others, and act selflessly when required.  These all give him and the Order of the Phoenix a significant advantage over Voldemort.  Voldemort can take Harry 1-on-1 in raw skill, but Harry has too many advantages through friendship to really lose.


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

[User]
[General] if you expose an already sentient machine (such as a starship with a AI/identity of its own) to an animating object, such as the allspark or various other objects, what happens?

By "animating object", im referring to anything that turns inanimate objects into robots with some kind of identity of their own. Possibly using toonforce, if applicable.

[Assistant]
The setting of the *Apprentice Adept* series is a two-parter. One planet, two dimensions. Technology only works in one dimension, while magic only works in the other dimension.

When a robot character first crossed over, she was rendered inanimate. She needed to be enchanted into a golem before she could live in the magic dimension.


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

[User] How is a man made item dated to 3000 or 40,000 years ago? I understand carbon dating to a degree but that would just tell us the age of the material, not when it was fashioned into say, a crystal dagger, would it?

[Assistant]
Carbon dating tells you when a living thing died. It stopped taking in new carbon and all the existing carbon starts to decay if its carbon 14. The ratio of total carbon to carbon 14 is what tells you how hold it is. Less carbon 14, the older it is because carbon 14 has decayed away.

For a rock, they may use uranium isotope ratios in a similar way.

For the dagger that's in the news, they may have found stuff made of previously living material around the dagger and carbon-dated those things, then used their age for the dagger.


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

[User]
ELI5: What specifically do people mean when they say a song/abum has good "production"?

I hear this thrown around a lot. More money pumped into it? More skill? Better quality?

[Assistant]
The producer edits together the various sounds, taking the ones that will sound best, and mixing the loudness levels so that you hear the right amount of each thing.  For example, the various instruments and the vocals are almost always recorded separately and then combined.  In many cases, the producer is also responsible for deciding where the microphones should be located, and other decisions about the environment where the recording is being done.

In a song with good production, these  have been done well.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] How good a chef do I have to be before my cooking is preferable to a replicator? How fresh/ripe do ingredients have to be?

Presumably, the replicator pattern for an orange is based on using one of the most perfectly ripe, fresh oranges available as a template, then duplicating that (with some degree of error perhaps). The replicator pattern for ratatouille is based on having the one of the finest Provenal chefs cook the dish with the finest ingredients, then duplicating.

I guess I'm wondering how much the "replication error" factor makes replicated food less desirable.

Is it actually essentially undetectable, with the snobs who claim replicated food isn't up to the standards of "real" food being unable to tell the difference in double-blinded studies?
Or is there a slight difference, so that the most perfectly ripe, juicy orange is better than a replicated orange, but the replicated orange is still better than an average orange? Or a top French chef's ratatouille is better than replicated ratatouille, but an average amateur home cook wouldn't be able to beat the replicator?

Or would an average home cook/average fresh ingredient be able to beat a replicator after all, with replicated meals having a notably worse flavor, texture, etc?

How would a home cook of varying skill levels, or various qualities of fresh ingredients, compare to a circa 2160 protein resequencer, a 2260 food synthesizer, or a 2360 replicator?

[Assistant]
Honestly, depends on individual taste.

Some people will prefer even a bad cook over replicator food, because replicator food tastes exactly, perfectly, consistently identical every time-- the molecules are in the exact same arrangement, like building a lego kit according to the instructions. Standard replicator patterns are selected to be delicious, but the inevitable result is that they become monotonous. Whereas with food cooked by hand, there will always be little imperfections and variants so that it never tastes exactly the same twice-- the onion you used is slightly bigger here, the shrimp had a different diet there, you used one more grind of pepper than normal in the other, etc. Especially with species that prefer variety or novelty, such as humans, this can make a big difference in their enjoyment of a meal.


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

[User]
ELI5: How "hackers" can find all of somebodys personal information so easily, with nothing to go off of but a reddit account, or something similar.

I've heard of people getting all of their personal information like birthdate, full name, and location released on the internet because of a controversial reddit post or something similar.

How is it possible for someone to gain all of somebody else's information like this seemingly so easily?

Note: Not looking to do this to anyone, just genuinely interested and looking to learn how to better protect myself.

[Assistant]
Look through a person entire comment history. Most likely they have given out tons of information like their age, location, educational history, name, etc over time. Any photos uploaded from a digital camera will have EXIF data which contains information like location so thats always a valuable source of information. From here they can just Google and search social media sites with the information that they have until they hit a match or just can't find anything.

How is it so easy? People are just unaware of how reckless they are with their data. People really are just beginning to fully realize the implications of the fact that something stays on the internet forever.


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

[User]
CMV: I believe civilians should be able to own AR15s.

No one needs to own it, but that's not the question. The question is whether the government ought to prohibit you from having it.

There's plenty of things which we don't need but which we also don't think they government has any right to ban. Take Wild Turkey 101. Do you really need a 101 proof whiskey? No. Or what about a 7.9% beer? Don't need that either.

But, modern western democracy starts with the premise of individual liberty. You can have whatever you want; you're not limited to just that which you need. The burden is on the government to make the case that something needs to be forbidden.

So, I believe civilians should be able to own AR15s. Change my view.

Edit: This post only about the US, and want to keep most of the current restrictions on them today.

[Assistant] If your argument boils down to: the government should allow citizens to own anything regardless of its destructive potential (unless doing so would create diplomatic tension with other nations), then you seem to be ignoring the entire field of consumer protection. For the same reason you can't drive a car without headlights. Owning certain items poses so much of a danger to others, that freedoms need to be curtailed for the sake of having a safe society. You can argue over whether the AR specifically falls into that category, but you can't deny the government has a responsibility to regulate the safety of products sold to the public.


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

[User]
How did we discover that space was a vacuum?

Who first proposed that space was a vacuum?

What did they base their hypothesis on?

How did we ultimately prove space was a vacuum?

[Assistant]
"greek understanding of physics also progressed under Strato of Lampascus (c.335 - 269BCE.). He rejected the idea of a force pushing light objects, such as air, upwards to counter the force that pulls heavy objects down. He argues for the existence of a vacuum and showed that, because air can be compressed, voids must exist between the particles of which it is made up." - Source, a DK "Science Year by Year" Encyclopedia/book.
Later on it describes this "[Blaise] Pascal (1640's) also predicted that this pressure would diminish as higher altitudes. He asked his bother in law Florin Perier, who lived near a mountain, to test the idea. Receiving proof, Pascal suggested that air would thin out into a vacuum at still greater altitudes."
It also says this. "for centuries, it was believed that air had no weight. But in fact it exerts a measurable force per surface area of the earth. Blaise Pascal demonstrated atmospheric pressure by inverting a mercury filled glass tube over a mercury reservoir. The tube's mercury falls to create an airless space (a vacuum), but atmospheric pressure pushes down on the reservoir to maintain a column: the bigger the pressure, the taller the column."

I hope this provides you with some of the insight you wanted.


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

[User] [XMEN] So If wolverine can grow his bone claws back in a matter of minutes, why doesnt he constantly need a haircut or a shave?

[Assistant] He does need to shave and get hair cuts more often than most people do, and since he has claws at the ready, he can shave and give himself that awful haircut whenever he needs to. He likes how it looks somehow.


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

[User]
ELI5: What happens to the data from an install if I stop the install before it's complete?

I tried googling it, but I can't find any answers to this. Basically, if I am installing a game, for example, and it gets to 91% done, but then I have to stop the install because I need to go someplace and can't leave my computer on the whole time, what happens to that 91% downloaded/installed?
Does it stay, so I could finish the install later? Does it completely reset?

[Assistant]
the downloaded files will usually be stored in a folder designated by the system as temporary storage*. Some installers will check for this already downloaded data and resume where you left off. Others (e.g. Origin client) simply start over from the beginning.

The install itself (copying files from temp storage, creating registry entries, etc.) will almost always have to be restarted from scratch simply because it's easier (for the programmer) to just make the necessary changes than it is to check what changes have been made already.

*temporary storage just means the operating system is allowed to delete those files if it needs the space (some will even clear this area of old files on a regular basis)


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

[User] ELI5: Why is Stan Lee generally seen as the face and mind of Marvel Comics when the likes of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and even Chris Claremont barely get any credit despite they all contributed just as much, if not more, as him?

[Assistant]
Pick up an old Marvel comic and in many of them, there is a letter to the readers about this and that in the Marvel comics universe (Excelsior!) Stan Lee wrote most of these letters and often has a drawing or photo of himself beside it.  Also, he has often willingly put himself in the spotlight to speak for Marvel and comics in general.  So in a sense, Stan Lee is (and has been) the public voice and face of Marvel.  And lastly, ask any fan who the other people you listed are and they will know them immediately, if not intimately, so they do get credit by fandom, if not the general public.

Also, Ditko is a notorious recluse who does not want to be photographed or talk to anyone-look up the documentary In Search of Steve Ditko.


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

[User]
ELI5: What purpose do toenails serve?

I understand the purpose of fingernails, but you can't do with your toes what you can do with your fingers.

[Assistant]
I would wager to say that they're largely vestigial at this point. They originally served the same purpose as fingernails because our distant ancestors likely actually used their feet for things aside from walking (kind of like moneys).

At this point, it really just provides an extra layer of protection from falling objects and a point of frustration for when they become ingrown.

Edit: In case anyone hasn't come across the word, "Vestigial" is a term used to describe a feature or behavior which once had a biological purpose but is no longer used and has become "useless" to the organism that possesses it. A few other examples (some of which Darwin pointed out) are: wisdom teeth (they used to be very important because most humans would lose some of their teeth during their lifetime), male nipples, body hair (it used to be much thicker and helped keep us warm), ear muscles, tonsils, and the tail bone (coccyx).


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

[User] [The Duck Song] I am a respectable lemonade seller. A talking duck has been coming up to business asking for grapes when all I have to offer is lemonade. What gives?

[Assistant]
You have three choices. One is to see a psychologists to determine if you're suffering from paranoia.

 Second is to try and capitalize on this situation by letting people meet/greet the talking duck, by luring the duck with grapes everyday.

Third is to kill or capture the duck in order to keep it from visiting you everyday.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do people feel comfortable at different temperatures?

For example, I feel most comfortable with the thermostat set to around 80 degrees.  I have a friend that will literally start sweating when he comes over if I don't change it.  He sets his to 69, which I find unbearably cold.

We're both about the same size and build (5'10 ~165lbs) and both have lived in the same city (Orlando) for 30+ years.

[Assistant] There are a few different things at work here - different people have different levels of metabolism even if their physical sizes are similar. Also, there's the psychological aspect - the ambient temperature at which an individual *feels* comfortable, called the "thermal comfort". There are a variety of other factors as well, such as, clothing, recent activity levels, etc..


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

[User]
When talking about photons, what does "wavelength" actually mean?

When I think of waves, I'm accustomed to thinking of s-waves and p-waves, but it occurs to me that neither of these make any sense in regards to photons that are supposed to travel in a perfectly straight line with a constant speed. Individual photons don't have fluctuations of energy that I know of, either. So where does the idea of a "wavelength" fit in?

[Assistant]
s- and p-waves in quantum mechanics refer to the orbital angular momentum (s means  = 0 and p means  = 1).

Photons can certainly carry orbital angular momentum, but that's not what wavelength is.

For *any* particle, the relationship between its wavelength and its *linear* momentum is:

 = h/p, where h is Planck's constant.

For a particle with no mass, like a photon, E = pc.

So  = hc/E. The wavelength is inversely proportional to the energy.


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

[User] [Office Space] How likely were the guys to get away with their scam had they not messed up the decimal place?

[Assistant] At the time, in a smallish company, probably good odds. Today? Not at all. Software looks for that sort of thing. Which was true back then, but it was less common and with a smaller company they wouldn't expect someone to target them, especially for such a small payoff that would have taken years to add up.


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

[User]
Eli5 Why does the shower curtain try to grab me?

Why does the shower curtain come into the shower and even try to cling to you? Seems to do it most when its cold and the showers hot so i assume it has something to do with that.

[Assistant]
Hot air rises which suck new colder air in from beneath the shower curtain dragging it along.

If you don't pull the shower curtain to completely cover the whole opening it can suck in air easier and it won't try to grab you as much.


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

[User]
[Indiana Jones] What, in the end, finally ends the adventures of the great Dr. "Indiana"Jones Jr.?

He has had one of the most adventurous and interesting lives on earth. He has nearly died countless times. He has rescued countless artifacts in the name of archaeology and the preservation of our history. I am wondering if anyone has come across any records or source material that have catalogues this great man's final adventure and leap into the unknown?

[Assistant]
What stopped 'Indiana' Jones from his life of adventure? The usual- his knees.

The man eventually got too old to be in the field chasing cryptoartifacts. For a long while he supported his son Mutt and his adventures all over the globe, and could be occasionally found providing logistical to Mutt's team, and helping with his vast global connections and substantial financial assets. Instead of writing grants, he got to fund them.

As well, he had a long career in academia, and was often happy to be found hanging out a dig sites and regaling younger archaeologists with tales of old. He was published, as is necessary to maintain a career as a professor, but only as much as was required.

The quirkiest quality of Professor Henry Jones was his complete willingness to travel at the drop of a pin. If he so much as received even a vague invitation for his friends or associates, he would fly off and go see them. It was during one of those trips that he disappeared.

A friend called from Argentina asking him to check out legends of some artifacts from the pre-colonization days of the country, and never returned. One legend is that because of a curse put on him in the name of Kali, an anaconda claimed his life while he was sleeping in an indigenous peoples' campsite. The more popular theory is that refugee remnants of the National Socialist party living in Argentina finally got their revenge.

The simple truth is, like the many artifacts he chased, he was lost to history.


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

[User]
[MCU] Why didn't Captain Marvel take the gauntlet to space?

Why not fly up and put it on the moon or something? She's fast enough. Leave it there and come back and defeat Thanos's army. She's more than a match for Thanos himself and his army is fodder to her.

[Assistant] She is a soldier (Airmen) and arrived late to the fight.  All she knows is there is a plan and that plan is get the gauntlet to Scott and Hope.  She knows Cap is in charge and isn't in a position at the moment to clarify orders or question his plan.


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

[User] Do insects sweat or show any other type of physical signs to excessive heat?

[Assistant]
Death?

Okay, seriously now.  Insects are generally better at handling cold than heat.  Honey bees actually exploit this for protection/defense.  The Asian Giant Hornet can devastate a bee hive that is unable to defend itself during an attack on the hive.  Native Japanese bees, however, have evolved a defensive swarming technique where they envelope en mass the intruding hornet before furiously beating their wings.  The heat given off by their flight muscles, when accumulated in the swarm ball, can raise the temperature at the center beyond what the hornet can tolerate, thus killing it.  Professional/hobbyist beekeepers are also familiar with "balling" of a queen bee where the same swarming attack is used against an aging queen no longer able to lay eggs, a foreign queen that has somehow stumbled into the wrong hive, or just sometimes for no obvious reason a colony would reject a queen.


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

[User]
If no authority is just, should authority even exist?

Hi. Im not a philosophy student or graduate or anything, Im just a high-school student and poet who cant help but overthink.

The titled question is something which ive summed up as my understanding of how no single person or position of authority can ever be perfectly just, because no human being is perfect. This can range from a parent to the a government to the Supreme Court of a country. None of these positions of authority are completely just or fair. If this is the case, what is the argument to give these authorities so much power, without a guarantee of justice. Its a question which makes me think a lot and id like to know what this community feels about this.

[Assistant]
Well there seems to be two questions here. One is if no authority is just, should there be authority? To which the answer would seem to be no.

But the question in the body of your text seems quite different, as it asks, if there is no perfectly just authority, should there be authority? To which it seems reasonable to say yes, if there are authorities which are broadly just then this can be perfectly acceptable.


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

[User]
How do we all recover from paper rejection?

A paper I worked on for several years was rejected after multiple rounds of review over almost a year. I went for a hike and am now on Reddit, drinking beer and eating crisps in bed (feeling quite disillusioned).

(Postdoc in materials science in a European university)

[Assistant]
> drinking beer and eating crisps in bed

This sounds completely appropriate.

Allow yourself a day or two to sulk and wallow, that's fair. But then get back on the horse and start working through the comments, talk with colleagues for their input/advice in addressing them, polish up your story, try presenting posters/orally at conferences for more feedback, polish it some more, and resubmit.


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

[User] ELI5: What exactly does it mean for an object to have "intrinsic" angular momentum? How can angular momentum be intrinsic instead of dependent on the frame of reference?

[Assistant] Spin as a quantum property (aka intrinsic angular momentum) can be thought of as analogous to angular momentum in the macro world, but it's not even close to a decent analogy.  There is nothing actually spinning in an elementary particle like there is in a rotating macroscopic object.  Electrons, quarks, photons, etc. all have "spin" and the math really makes it seem like there's something moving in a way that we would see as spinning around an axis if it were scaled up to a large object.  But there's nothing actually spinning or rotating in any way.  Truth is, other than the math working so well, we have no idea what the property we call "spin" actually is.  What we do know is that the cumulative effect of lots and lots of electrons in an iron object (for example) spinning when exposed to a magnetic field can make the iron object spin on a macro level to preserve angular momentum.  So, bizarrely, even though nothing spins in an electron, put enough of them together and influence their quantum spin with a magnetic field, you can make a macro-sized object actually spin.  Quantum mechanics is weird.  No matter how strange you think it is, it's actually far stranger.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why aren't countries named universally in their native language?

For example, why does English language call it Germany rather than Deutschland and call it Japan rather than Nippon? It just seems like this adds confusion in language barriers.

EDIT:

Thanks for your input everybody.

**Explanation I deem satisfactory (paraphrased)**: Throughout history, worlds were so separated that you had to have a name for another place. These names could be derived from geographic locations, arts, writing, mannerisms, etc. This is unlike now where the world is so small (read: interconnected) and it is less of an issue to learn about other cultures and their languages as to what they call their land.

**Explanation I find unsatisfactory**: Because each language has different kinds of pronunciation.

I find this unsatisfactory because you can, and do, learn to pronounce words as you learn the words themselves. Just as you learn to pronounce the first and last names of people you meet which come from a variety of cultures and language origins. Then there are many instances like in this thread where you never pronounce it. You type and read it.

[Assistant]
Most of the countries' names are that way for historical purposes. A prime example would be Georgia (the country). Georgians actually call their country Sakartvelo, which can be approximated with Latin characters just fine.

But since they spoke a unique language and wrote in unique text (  ), people just started calling them "Those guys that like St George a lot" and the name stuck.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the role of cold temperatures in to make people more susceptible to getting sick eg. catching a cold?

When I was a child, my mother would tell us not to be in the cold for too long as we would catch a cold  but it seems inconsistent with germ theory..

[Assistant]
Ooh, this one is interesting and multifaceted. It's not actually being out in the cold itself that does it, although there is some evidence that cold weather hampers our immune response.

But for one thing, most viruses replicate and survive more easily at cold temperatures. It's why the flu seems to disappear in the summer and why a fever can be helpful. A viral particle in cold weather stays infectious for longer.

Winter means fewer hours of sunlight, which means less chance to boost your vitamin D production, which can reduce your immune response.

And to top it off, cold air holds less moisture, and the heaters we use inside dry the air out further. This dries out your sinuses, which makes them less effective at trapping viral particles - and considering we all spend more time inside during the winter, that means extra time for you to sniff up a viral particle sneezed out by your family member or to pick up some snot your friend who came in with a wintery running nose smeared on some surface.


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

[User]
What's the minimum statistically significant amount for difference in income pay between genders where you could say that it's truly unequal?

*of difference, and in percentage

As in, at what percentage difference does it become clear that employers are systematically paying women less than men for the same job?

[Assistant] I think you're confusing statistical significance with practical significance. In theory, you could find a 0.01% difference in pay to be statistically significant with a large enough sample size. What you're asking is at what point do we say the magnitude of difference is no longer reflective of inequality. That's an ideological question, not a statistical one.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What happens when someone gets hit by a blaster bolt?

I have been doing some research lately to try and answer the aforementioned question: what is the effect on someone who gets hit by a blaster bolt? For the purposes of the question, let's say the bolt is hitting bare flesh, not armor of some kind.

Are blasters just made out of the same stuff as lightsabers, and therefore go right through the flesh? Is it just a heavy hit, like getting struck by a rapidly moving solid object?

And how is it that armor of any kind would be able to protect against these bolts?

[Assistant]
Depends on what you have it set to, kind of like the Dominator in Psycho-Pass.  Various levels of pain like the trainer droid Luke fights while on the Millennium Falcon.  Various levels of stun for the various types of beings in the galaxy, various levels of kill, fire blasters, blasters that use tibanna gas as ammo and are really more of a pulsegun, lasguns, etc.

Armor can be ablative, so it is just stuff in the way meant to evaporate when hit.  It can be reflective material, it can be stuff like cortosis weave which is really really good at dissipating heat and shorting out lightsabers, it can just be insanely strong/dense metal, etc.
Or, yknow, personal shield devices.


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

[User]
How quickly does the temperature change from the surface of the sun to the near absolute zero of the interstellar medium?

I've often come across references to the average temperature "at the surface of the sun" being ridiculously high and have also come across references to the average temperature of interstellar medium being near absolute zero.

What I have not read before, however, is how quickly the temperature changes from one extreme to the other. For instance, what is the average temperature one kilometer above the surface of the sun? 10 kilometers? 100 kilometers? And so on...

[Assistant]
Temperature as we know it breaks down in space. There simply isn't enough molecules/atoms/particles to define a temperature. Background radiation accounts for 3 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero, but it's important to know that even exposed to the vacuum of space you wont freeze instantly like you would in a substance at 3degrees kelvin.

The temperature barrier would then be right around where the corona stops iirc. Solar wind, or other  groups of particles jettisoned from the sun will have temperature but other than that there isn't enough particles around to define a temperature.


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

[User] ELI5: How does Grooveshark play whatever song you want for free while Pandora requires you to listen to radio stations with mandatory commercials?

[Assistant] Pandora operates completely legitimately, while Grooveshark technically does not.  Grooveshark has been involved in the occasional lawsuit, and more will likely come.  Its more a matter of the fact that Grooveshark has remained more under the radar, and with so many different sources of what may be called copyright infringement on the internet, it takes massive popularity for one roll into the spotlight enough so that it is targeted specifically by the RIAA or whoever else may be involved.


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

[User]
CMV:"X Privilege" as a phrase is no longer useful and the terminology should be abandoned in an effort to actually solve the issues presented by privilege.

" Insert-Prefix Privilege" Is no longer useful for accomplishing it's goals or reminding people of their privilege. Furthermore in the broader discussions with people unawares, mentioning privilege merely polarizes the argument to the point that discussion is impossible, which is exactly counter intuitive to the goals set by using the phrase in the first place. Also, while I am aware the proper use of the phrase is merely a jab at informing people that their decisions are informed or motivated by anecdotal evidence, the general population and thus the actual vocal majority of people who use "X privilege" as a phrase merely do so to invalidate other parties from offering their outsiders perspective on an issue. I.E. "You can't understand what I'm going through, check your privilege." If people who support privilege as an idea, desire to actually see results, you can't coin a phrase that just upsets the people who you are actually trying to cause change in to describe them because as far as they are concerned, it's all they've ever known and thus you are effectively insulting them. It's not effective.

Please, CMV.

[Assistant]
I dunno, do people react badly to the term privilege because its become somehow toxic, or will those people react with hostility to any argument that implies that they have had a systemic advantage in life, when they derive a huge portion of their self worth from the (likely) mistaken notion that they "made it all on their own" or some such?

That's kind of what worries me about abandoning useful terminology just because certain folks decide its "insulting".


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

[User] ELI5: Why is the order of operations in math PEMDAS? Why not another order?

[Assistant] The higher-priority operations are also the higher-order operations -- i.e. you construct multiplication out of repeated addition, you construct exponentiation out of repeated multiplication.  So the ordering is high-order stuff first, then lower order stuff.


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

[User]
[MCU] (spoilers) Has Thanos given any consideration to repopulation?

Let's take Earth as an example. Assuming the population at the time was around 7.5 billion. So Thanos snaps out half, dropping it to around 3.75. And let's assume that the 0.75 died in the resulting chaos (car crashes, plane crashes and so on).

So that's a remaining population of 3 billion. That's around the world's population in the 50s. Meaning that it's only a human lifetime before the planet repopulates and the problem of overpopulation starts all over again.

Is Thanos going to re do the snap every half century or something?

[Assistant]
Yes. He assumes that everyone in the universe will know exactly what he did and why, and be so grateful for their reprieve that they will start limiting their population by conventional means.

His nickname's not "the rational titan" for a reason.


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

[User] Why does an electron and a proton have the same magnitude of charge even though the electron is a lot smaller than the proton?

[Assistant]
A proton is a composite particle made up of 3 valence quarks and many many more "sea quarks" and gluons. The charges of sea quarks cancel because there are as many sea antiquarks as there are sea quarks for any given flavor. The gluons carry no charge. So all of the charge of the proton comes from the three valence quarks, two of which have the "up" flavor and the third has "down" flavor. The up quark carries two-thirds the charge of an electron but of the opposite sign (2/3 e). The down quark carries a third of the electron charge with the same sign (-1/3 e). So it adds up as follows.
2/3 e + 2/3 e - 1/3 e = e.

For some reason, charge always comes in packets of +e/3 or -e/3. Dirac has showed that this "charge quantization" is a necessary condition for the existence of magnetic monopoles, but we haven't found them yet.


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

[User]
[Marvel Comics] Do we ever get Bruce's reaction to planet hulk/world war hulk?

What kicked off World War Hulk is the Illuminati try to send the Hulk to an empty planet where he can live in peace. As they tend to in comics, stuff happens and things go wrong. If I remember correctly the Hulk had actually made peace with their decision when he became champion of Skarr (until he thought they blew up his family). They also mention they couldn't risk asking Banner incase he said no, but Banner takes a bunch of precautions against the Hulk hurting people, including having Hawkeye kill him to stop the Hulk coming out. After the events of the series did Banner ever say whether he thought it was a good plan or not?

[Assistant]
You see, when Hulk and Banner crash landed on Skarr they actually made peace with each other to survive, so Banner knew what happened because he was there working together with the Hulk.

In World War Hulk we even get a scene where Dr. Strange travels into Banners physique to calm down the raging Hulk and talks to Bruce who inot only knows what's going on, but also calls Hulk's wife his wife.

Tl,dr: Banner knows what's happening and is not only complicit, but might also be partly responsible for it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it that people who are woken up in the middle of a nap seem panicked and confused?

[Assistant] You have sleep cycles that alter your physiological states. If you wake up from the middle of one, your physiological state can be quite different from awake (lower core temp, different brain waves etc.), so you don't deal with the situation in a normal awake way.


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

[User]
I'm pretty sure that almost nobody ACTUALLY believes in hell. CMV

Let's assume we're talking about the Christian tradition here.

I don't believe in hell. But if I thought that hell was actually a literally real place where, according to my behavior in life, I might be tortured for eternity, I would live my life in a very, very different way. I wouldn't just bank on getting into heaven, saying "eh, I'm probably being a decent enough guy." I would give all my money to the poor and dedicate my life to helping those in need. And that wouldn't be a difficult decision at all. *It would be a no-brainer.*

So these people that say they believe in hell, yet go about their lives much like I do -- not doing EVIL things but focusing on wealth, having premarital sex, enjoying idle pleasures instead of contributing meaningfully to the world, etc etc -- can't REALLY believe there's a danger of going to hell, right? At the very least, they probably doubt enough to say "yeah, my religion says there's a hell, but just in case it's all nonsense, I'm gonna live it up while I'm here."

[Assistant] If you are talking about the Christian version of hell, then Christians don't believe that you can avoid hell simply by doing charitable deeds ... most of them don't believe that people are judged and segregated according to their good or bad deeds, they believe that we are *all* sinners and that we *all* deserve to go to hell, and the only way to avoid it is to repent and ask God to forgive us and save us, and yes, also to pledge to follow God's will, but acknowledging that we will keep failing.


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

[User] ELI5: how can TOR, or other proxy tools, provide anonymity, when all the traffic, howsoever directed, goes from our computer to the internet via the ISP?

[Assistant]
Lets say that Adam wants to send a letter to Zack. The only way to do this is to give it to Larry to deliver.  The problem is that he doesn't trust Larry not to read the letter, so what does he do? Well, he establishes a code between himself and Zack, encodes the letter and sends it.  Now Larry can deliver the letter but can't read it.  That is the basis of encryption.

The problem there is that while Larry can't read the letter, he still knows the letter is being mailed to Zach.  We can fix this by sending the letter to Carol first.  We set up a new code with Carol and send her a letter that says (in code), "Send this letter to Zach".  Now Larry can deliver the letter without knowing the contents _and_ without knowing the recipient.

Now, what happens if we don't fully trust Carol either?  Well, we can get _another_ person involved - Dan.  We set up the same system - we send a coded letter to Carol that says, "Send this letter to Dan".  Dan gets the letter, decodes it and reads, "Send this letter to Zach."  Now _no one_ in the entire chain knows the full story; Larry knows the sender, Dan knows the recipient, and Carol only knows the intermediaries.

In this example, you are Adam, the website you want to go to is Zach, Larry is your ISP and Carol/Dan are Tor nodes.  Your ISP knows you are connecting to a Tor node but has no idea what data you are sending nor who you are sending it to.  Each of the intermediary Tor nodes knows the previous node, but not the origin or destination.  The final node knows the destination, but nothing before the node that send the request.

Since no individual node knows all the information, you are protected from any individual finding out the whole story - the only way for any given person to learn who the sender and recipient were is to get _every_ node to agree to give up the data and put the pieces together - something that is near impossible to do given the number of Tor nodes out there and their commitment to privacy.


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

[User] [The Egg]What will happen when I refuse to get reincarnated and instead decide to stay in the after life where I can enjoy all human knowledge?

[Assistant]
If youre done living every life thats ever been, then youre ready to be born into the next form of existence, the universe of the Creator. Whatever that is, youll carry the experiences of untold billions with you into that future.

Worth noting, reincarnation doesnt appear to be optional. You dont get to decide to stay in that place, when you die you briefly meet your Creator and then you are sent along your way to live again. Only when you have lived every human life throughout the span of the universe will you be ready to emerge into the existence beyond. All of the lives, every single one, short to long, end to beginning. No shortcuts, no skips. Every human life. Just you.

On your way, then. :)


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

[User] [FUTURAMA] How did Zapp Brannigan become such a high ranking official is he didnt even finish the run in boot camp and is clearly inadequate?

[Assistant] What makes a man fit to lead? Skills? Knowledge? The ability to finish an obstacle course? No! It's the ability to deliver orders in a deep commanding voice and look handsome while doing so. Why Brannigan is a decorated leader. He defeated an army of killbots by sending wave after wave of his own men, knowing they had a pre-set kill limit.


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

[User]
Leaving academia with no idea where to go?

Im a TT professor at an R1 in the US, about halfway into my tenure clock. In brief, I kind of suck at research and am very unlikely to get tenure (Ill probably pass mid tenure review, because to fail that here you need to have almost literally nothing to show for yourself).Ive considered quitting but havent because I have no idea what I would transition *to*. Im taking an accounting course this semester, which Im really enjoying, and I could go back for that full-time (to be CPA eligible), but financially that doesnt make a lot of sense, as Im in my 30s and need to save for retirement. Ive also considered just running out the tenure clock and trying to check off the requirements of a career change, but honestly even trying to half-ass this job is a 40-hour workweek at least.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

[Assistant]
Do you like teaching enough where it's worth considering going to a "lower tier" university or college where teaching tends to be more important and research requirements much less?

You could start applying for those kinds of jobs.

Unless you don't like to teach.  Then maybe start leaning on some contacts from grad school who went non-academic?  Could you do research for government where publication isn't always the goal?

You can also see if your alumni association from your grad school has networking events and whatnot. A lot of that stuff has gone online in this COVID era.

Just some thoughts.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why don't you hear about "fair trade" or "single source" when it comes to hop farmers for beer and grape farmers for wine, but you hear it all the time when it comes to coffee bean farmers?

You always hear about coffee bean farmers getting ripped off and the initiative for consumers to help alleviate this issue by only buying fair trade or single source or both. Why don't you hear about these issues with grapes or hops for example?

[Assistant]
Fair trade is mostly to protect international farmers.  They get ripped off in third world countries.  Coffee is grown in tropical areas, so there are not many places in America or first world nations in general where they can be grown.  Coffee is native to Africa and much of it is still grown there.  Jamaica is another big growing market.  In the U.S., there are Hawaii growers but they are very small and "premium".

Hops, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly grown in Washington State.  The vast majority of hops in the US are from Yakima Valley.


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

[User]
[FireFly] How did Jayne's gun get out of his safe onto the floor of the ship for River to find?

In "Objects in space" River finds a gun (she thinks it's a twig) on the floor and picks it up, causing everyone to lose their shit. And the gun is loaded with the safety off.

Jayne said he always keeps his gun in a safe (I think), so how did it get there?

Was he careless that one time or something else?

[Assistant]
I can think of two possibilities:

1) Jayne was in the middle of checking the mechanism of the gun when he got hungry. We did see him getting food just moments before River picked up the weapon. Jayne just got sloppy in the middle of maintenance and didn't think River would wander around the ship and definitely not around a loaded weapon.

2) It wasn't loaded and the safety was on when she picked it up. But she didn't remember getting it out of Jayne's locker and making it ready to fire. Remember that as she stood in the cargo hold, she wasn't aware of everyone around her until it was almost too late. What if her tour around the ship wasn't her physically walking through the corridor, but just her mind wandering as she left Jayne's gun cabinet and walked into the cargo?


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

[User]
ELI: How does muscle growth and decay work?

If I remember from biology class correctly, large muscles are a result from large sarcomeres, not more of them. So how does working out (i.e. tearing and rebuilding muscles) make them bigger? And why do they get smaller if they're not used?

[Assistant]
Your body is like anything in life that needs "fuel".There are 3 Macro - Nutrients. Protien/Fats/Carbohydrates. Fats and carbs are the primary "fuel" and the protein is the building blocks or new cells. Exercise breaks down muscle fibers which causes micro tears. These are repaired stronger and bigger to try to stop the muscle breaking down again if enough protein has been consumed. Lack of protein will cause limited muscle growth and cause them not to repair to the same or or bigger than before. Too little carbs/fats your body uses stored body fat to fuel your body. Too little for long periods of time it then breaks down muscle as a final back-up to keep your body running. Too much fats/carbs creates fat cells in which the "fuel" can be stored for times when food isn't in constant supply.

Hope this helps :)


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

[User] [Diablo] What in the hell (pun intended) are the Whimsyshire and Secret Cow levels? How do they fit in the universe of Sanctuary and Heaven and Hell?

[Assistant]
We have seen pocket dimensions in diablo before.

 The cow level was probably a demon experiment on corrupting cattle that got out of hand and was abandoned when somebody started killing major demons left and right and they had other things to worry about.

Whimsyshire... Powerful mage high on shrooms. Even Tal Rasha was young once...


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

[User] [Starship Troopers] How did the plasma bugs evolve? Half an eye will detect light, half a wing will help you glide, but what benefit is there to shooting plasma/spores into the sky at half of escape velocity?

[Assistant]
The brain bugs have directed the evolution of the various castes by selective breeding and genetic manipulation for tens of thousands of years.  The original warrior bugs probably spit something like superheated secretions by squirting different chemicals from glands to create an exothermic reaction.  Or perhaps they used caustic fluids.

Through time, as the brain bugs mastered the sciences, they incorporated their discoveries into new breeds, which were based on the older types.  They are tool users as much as Man, but their tools are their drones and workers and soldiers.


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

[User]
If desalinating ocean water becomes a widespread thing, is there potential for the ocean to become too salty/not salty enough as a result?

Suppose that desalinating ocean water becomes cheap and easy and it's used to solve the drinking water issue on earth.

If it's done too much could it have a negative impact on the ocean where the ocean becomes too salty or not salty enough? (Side q. Where does the salt in the ocean come from?)

[Assistant]
Nope.  You drink.  You pee.  Water evaporates and it rains.  Most of that rain ends up in the ocean.  Water from the land drains to the oceans - I.e. the water cycle.  Fun fact the water molecules you drink today are the same ones a dinosaur drank 65 million years ago.  Water doesn't leave the planet.

Ocean water is salty because salts existed on the Earth before water did.  Most of the water on Earth arrived from comets.  The oceans are the geologically lowest areas on the planet.  The salts and minerals that exist on Earth dissolved in the oceanic basins that formed over time.  Once clouds and rain existed, the rivers and glaciers that formed washed more salts into the oceans.


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

[User]
ELI5: What's that wall of gibberish text when you open some type file in notepad?

"x" An enormous wall of basically **that** is what you can expect when you open up any type of random file in notepad that isn't meant to be in notepad. What is it? What happens if you just erase a random part of this gibberish? What is it representing and is there any way to comprehensively read it?

[Assistant]
You can classify computer files into two main types: text files and binary files.

All computer files are just a big sequence of numbers -- or in computer terms, bytes.

In a text file, each of these numbers is intended to corresponds to some human readable letter. For example, the number 65 usually corresponds to an "A". When you open these files in Notepad, it has an easy time translating each number to a letter for you to read.

In a binary file, anything goes. It could be a picture where each number corresponds to a color of a pixel; it could be a database file where the numbers could mean all sorts of things.; it could be anything at all. When you try to open these files in Notepad, it will attempt to translate each number into a letter, but since that data is not intended to be interpreted that way, you wind up with gibberish.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do we vomit when we see or smell something that is disgusting or uncomfortable?

NSFW just in case.

[Assistant] I saw an article once that suggested this is an evolutionary response. Imagine life in prehistoric times, or maybe going as far back as the common ancestor between apes and men. Nobody knows which plants are poisonous and which ones are safe to eat. A bunch of us are sitting around eating and someone gets violently ill due to being poisoned. If we're all eating the same plant, it's too late for the guy who got poisoned but it might not be too late for the others. Those who get grossed out and throw up stand a better chance of not getting poisoned. Evolution selected for the ones who puked.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How did the Sith lords maintain control over their dark jedi?

I'm using KOTOR as my reference. In KOTOR, Malak and Revan followed the rule of 2. However, they have a multitude of dark jedi serving them. They aren't just padawan status either; in the game there are padawans/students, normal "jedi", and even some masters. I'm assuming the rule of 2 is for the Lords of the sith only, but what prevents their dark side followers from pursuing their own path of dominance? Two master level dark jedi could either run off to make their own legacy, or even attempt to grow powerful enough to overthrow the 2 themselves. Even disregarding the rule of 2, a sith is mandated to grow powerful and eventually overthrow their master when they have outgrown them. That mandate makes sense when there is only 2 sith, but with a small army all clamoring to kill and usurp their masters, I feel like it would be highly ineffective and impossible to properly maintain. So that begs the question, how *did* Revan and Malak control their dark jedi?

[Assistant] The Rule of Two did not come about until some 3000 years after the KOTOR series. So the easy answer is, they didn't. At that point, its a simple heirarchy of might makes right. Malak/Revan were stronger in the dark side than their underlings, so they could control them via strength, intimidation, and the Force.


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

[User]
If my end goal is to teach at a community college, is it worth being miserable for the PhD or should I master out?

Im a first year STEM PhD student and suffice it say I am pretty miserable with my current situation. Ill admit some of misery may be from the covid isolation, but Im simply not enjoying my research at all. It is a struggle to get even the smallest of tasks done. Im not sure how I can sustain this for the 4+ more years it will take to finish, especially once Im done with classes and doing research all day every day. Ive got guaranteed funding and my advisor is perfectly fine, so I have no complaints there. I simply dont enjoy staring at papers and trying to think of how to approach problems in a new way. I lack the creativity or motivation to care about creating new research on my own. And yes, I probably should have realized that before I pursued the research-focused degree that is the PhD.

However, I really, really enjoy being a TA (teach my own lab section) and I have no problems finding the motivation to prepare lectures and assignments, grade, and work on other professorial duties. In fact I find all of TA work quite gratifying and use teaching as a motivator to get me through the week. Thats why Ive been thinking more and more about going the teaching route, whether it be at a community college or AP/dual enrollment teacher at a charter high school (where discipline problems are hopefully minimal).

If my end goal is to be a teacher or community college professor, Is it worth being miserable for 5+ years to get the PhD or will my job prospects be identical with a masters? I know job openings for community colleges are scarce (mostly adjunct slots) so would having a PhD actually give you a leg up if theres so few full-time jobs to begin with? I know its purely speculative, but Im struggling with how to justify staying for the PhD if job prospects for lecturer gigs are pretty awful. I just dont know if the PhD will open up that many more doors to teaching opportunities.

Thanks for any thoughts you have on the matter!

TL;DR: I want to teach at a community college or elite high school and Im not sure whether its worth staying for the PhD if Im miserable.

Thanks for any thoughts you have on the matter!

[Assistant]
Given the lack of jobs, you'll be up against PhDs for the CC positions. So that's up to you.

But a master's isn't going to guarantee anything. (Of course, neither will a PhD. Have you thought about other positions where you can teach/train people?)


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What would happen if the Jedi found a baby strong with the force,but the baby is the sole child of a royal family that rules over a planet. Would the Jedi take the baby or send Jedi to teach the baby about the force the baby is raised as royal?

I was thinking that Jedi persuade parents to let them take their baby if they are force sensitive, but about a baby who is the sole crowned prince/princess who was born to  royal family. Would the Jedi take in the baby dooming the planet without a royal heir or send Jedi to teach the heir about the force while the heir is raised by their birth parents?

[Assistant]
Jedi don't take babies without explicit permission of the parents, so while they might approach the royal house and explain the situation, if monarchs say no, then it's no.

But then again, Count Dooku was exactly the heir of a noble house, and he was let to train as a jedi with no problems - and later left the Order to reclaim his legacy. At least, according to his cover story. Technically nothing really stops a more normal jedi with no sith affiliations to do the same if shit on their home gets real bad and they need a heir to the throne NAW. Jedi Order won't be particularly happy about people leaving, but they won't hold them.

EDIT: Traditionally jedi don't homeschool people, especially if people are explicitly won't be full members of Jedi Order, but depending on which canon you follow, Jedi are hardly the only Force tradition in the galaxy, so with a good research it would be possible to find someone to teach young heir how to properly harness his or her Force potential.


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

[User]
{ST:TNG/ME} What would happen if Picard's Enterprise-D were to encounter a Sovereign-Class Reaper from Mass Effect?

My brother and I kinda had this little argument while drunk, with me asserting that, once Picard's usual attempts at Diplomacy failed, the Enterprise would proceed to blast the Reaper into star-dust. My brother insists that the Reaper would not wait for Picard to try and negotiate, instead going straight for the kill.

What do you guys think? I believe the Enterprise has a better chance at taking down a Reaper than any solo Alliance ship, simply because its engines are powerful enough to let it cruise the galaxy without the use of Mass Effect Fields. Furthermore, the Enterprise's phasers aren't kinetic weapons: They're energy based, so there's no guarantee that the Reaper's shields would be all that effective.

I'm no expert on either fandom, just a guy who loves'em, and I really want to know what the consensus is: Who wins in a Deathbattle between Picard's Enterprise-D and a Sovereign Class Reaper?

EDIT: I believe we have our answer: as stated below, Picard and his Enterprise would likely win the first fight, using superior firepower, maneuverability, speed, and defensive shielding to render the reaper's size and weapons innefective. That said, there is a distinct possiblity that recovery of the destroyed reaper's fragments and further study would result in Indoctrination, and thus an overall Reaper victory.

[Assistant] Well, just in terms of firepower the Enterprise has the Reaper out classed. A Sovereign class Reaper's main weapon has a yield of 450 Kilotons TNT.  Where as the Enterprise fires photon torpedoes with a 1.5kg antimatter warhead with a 64 Megaton yield.  That is orders of magnitude more powerful. The Enterprise hits much much harder.


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

[User]
Why are some US grad students on food stamps?

I often see on Reddit mentions of grad students living on food stamps - how common is this, and how come this is a thing?

To put my question in context, Im not from the US and Ive been led to think that US grad schools are well-funded unlike the UK. If theres funding, why do students have to rely on food stamps? Im confused!

[Assistant] Funding levels differ dramatically; at some institutions they are adequate to support a grad student, and possibly even minimally support children of a grad student, but at other institutions the pay is absurdly low. It's a real mess and (imo) a disgrace on academia.


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

[User]
[Terminator] Skynet wins. Now what?

What if the Terminator in the first movie quickly achieved its objective and killed Sarah Connor? No John, no resistance. Skynet completely eliminates all humanity with 100% certainty. What does it do after?

Its an AI with a robot army and no enemy to fight. What does it do after there are no humans?

[Assistant] Skynet seems preoccupied with perpetuating its own existence, so the next step is to prepare itself for asteroid collisions or solar flares. Skynet would likely go into space, either developing FTL or just waiting (it's immortal, after all) and colonizing the rest of the solar system before systematically spreading out throughout the galaxy. Terminator vs Alien vs Predator would be *awesome*.


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

[User]
[Doctor Who] The Silence's Motive

The Kovarian Chapter of the Silence (the religion, not just the dudes in suits) have the goal of keeping the Doctor from restarting the Time War, since they foresaw that he was going to restore the Time Lords on Trenzalore. They want to preempt the destruction of the universe, an understandable motive.

So why not just, you know, talk to the Doctor?

Presumably he doesn't _want_ the universe destroyed; he kinda lives there, as do all his loved ones. If you told him that he was gonna destroy everything, he'd probably work with you to avoid that, but he's gonna try to stop whatever plans you have if you jump straight to _killing him_ and psychologically torturing his wife and friends.

The Silence are evil to the point they seem to hinder their own plans, and it's bothering me.

[Assistant]
> Presumably he doesn't want the universe destroyed

No, but both the Time Lords and the Daleks came close to destroying the Universe on several occasions; sometimes, thanks to wibbly-wobbly shenanigans, they did so even after The Doctor had already genocided the lot of them^* .

And now, the Doctor, a law unto himself at the best of times, looks like he's going to restore them all over again.  And - let's be honest - it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to talk the Doctor out of something he's set his mind to unless you're part of his inner circle.  Remember, someone he liked and respected had to _kill themselves_ to prevent him from fucking the timeline up on a whim.

So, with that in mind, imagine how much damage the Time Lords could do if they were restored to full power, and imagine how difficult it would be to stop the Doctor from doing restoring them if a) he wants to and b) _a whole fucking prophesy is backing him up._  It's no wonder there were factions around who were willing to take desperate measures to prevent that from happening.

\* >!or so everyone thought!<


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

[User] How does breaking something work? If I snap a pencil in two, do I take the atoms apart? Why do they dont join together back when I push them back together?

[Assistant]
To break something you are basically applying energy to overcome the molecular bonds in it.

Some materials will in fact join back up if you push them back together. But most everyday materials do not, mostly due to the molecules having been changed and requiring added energy to go back to the original state. Like many pure metals will cold weld back together, but in reality the surfaces will for example instantly react with the air, so they are no longer pure.


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

[User] [Halo: Combat Evolved] Why is the sniper rifle useless against the Flood?

[Assistant]
It's like stabbing a sponge.

The sniper rifle fires armor piercing rounds *really* fast. To kill the Flood you need to destroy a significant percentage of their biomass, which is what makes the shotgun so effective.


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

[User]
Whats the logic behind giving entrepreneurs the ability to fail, dispense with their debts and start again, but not having a similar system/route available for students whose degrees arent paying for themselves?

Im reading about Ossic, the headphone startup that raised 3.2 million dollars and then abruptly closed, leaving their investors out to dry. AFAIK they wont have to cough up that money.
Why not?

Why shouldnt they while someone who cant recoup the comparatively puny 100k or so they spent on their not-so-lucrative degree have to be saddled with that debt permanently?

[Assistant] Unfamiliar with the startup youre referencing, but the simplest answer is the difference between debt and equity. A VC that invests with equity into a startup assumes that the investment will pay off, and accepts the risk that if it doesnt, they wont see a return. On the other hand, if a company goes under and they owe debt (in your analogy, student loans) they have to pay that back to their creditors, usually by liquidating the companys assets.


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

[User] ELI5: What is a government shutdown, and how does it happen/work?

[Assistant]
It's important that we make the distinction between the civil service and elected officials.  The civil service is government employees, there are hundreds of thousands of them and they are the nuts and bolts of making the government actually function.  They are the worker bees, the doors, they are the people who push paper and the bureaucrats. The president, as the head of the executive, is the leader of the civil service.  While he's elected most civil servants are not.

Then there are the elected officials, the legislative branch.  There are only a few hundred of them and they have quite a bit of power.  They pass laws, they decide how much you will be taxed, they decide how that tax money is to be spent.

By law, the civil servants cannot spend government money without the legislative branch passing a bill each year saying how much money goes to what activities.

So if the legislative branch fails to pass this bill, the civil servants are not permitted to spend any public money, not one cent. The managers can't pay the underlings, the department heads can't pay the managers and even the department heads don't get paid.  Since it's not legal to require someone to come to work when you can't pay them (that would be slavery) the civil servants are told to all stay home.

Without those hundreds of thousands of civil servants, the government grinds to a halt.   If the government can't pay park rangers, they can't open the national parks, and so on and so on.  People on food stamps don't get their benefits because there's no one there to process the payments.  Social security cheques stop because there's no postman to deliver them and even if there was there's no employee stuffing the envelopes or signing the cheques.

So a government shutdown happens because congress (the legislative branch) can't or won't pass a bill allowing the civil servants to spend money and be paid.  Therefore they don't come to work, therefore nothing gets done.

There are some special exceptions for critical services.  But most services the government provides are critical to the people that get them.  So it's only the REALLY critical stuff that gets an exemption.


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

[User] ELI5: How is corrosive acid stored? How does it not just eat through the container?

[Assistant]
corrosive acid isn't one term that means it'll eat/burn through anything.

there are mainly two types.  ones that are corrosive to metals and ones that are corrosive to organic materials.  sometimes a particular acid will overlap in metals/organic materials.

so you just use the container that the acid is not corrosive to.


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

[User] Why do Marxist ideas seem to be more accepted in the many social sciences except for economics?

[Assistant]
It might help to specify which of Marx's ideas you mean. Do you mean Marx's economic theory specifically or his ideas more generally?

More generally, social scientists have found Marx useful for thinking about a wide range of social phenomena such as alienation, commodity fetishism, ideology, etc.

One simple reason that Marx's ideas are studied more in social science departments is because social scientists often study these sorts of phenomena while economists study other things.


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

[User]
ELI5 why .ini (or other config) files exist if they are just plain text?

I mean just a .txt would suffice, right?

[Assistant]
Convention. You can rename config.ini to cheeseburger.avi, as long as the content structure remains the same and the program looks for that file name, it will work.

However, in IT culture this is considered a dick move, so people simply don't do it.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does some technology (laptops, phones, etc.) run slower over time?

I am talking about even after completely deleting everything (factory reset) and the device still runs much slower than when it was first created...

[Assistant]
Modern software/apps demand more resources than older versions. So the internet explorer 6 you were running ran more quickly than  IE 11 you have installed now. Funnily enough computers in 95 were powerful enough for 90% of modern day uses (i.e. internet browsing and word processing).
Edit: if on a computer; try installing a lightweight version of linux, it should run just fine!


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

[User]
[Matrix] What happens to the person that the Agents take over the bodies of?

So I was rewatching the first Matrix and I ran across something I couldn't explain... Let's say I'm hooked up to the Matrix, and an Agent takes over my body randomly. What's happening to my from my perspective? Assuming i'm still alive after the Agent takes over my body, do I remember any of it? Do I die in the real world?

[Assistant]
In a normal takeover (pre Revolutions) the agent would basically Hack the avatar of the other user.  To the user, they have a sense of lost time if they are alive afterwards.  Think of every time you've been driving to work, or walking down the street; only to arrive at your destination with no memory of the inbetween parts.

In a Smith style takeover you are completely overwritten and your avatar and your computer now belong to the agent with no trace of the original "operating system".


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

[User]
ELI5: if our brains can technically store almost every experience, why do we forget so much?

I've read somewhere that we relate our brains to have something like 2.5 pentabytes of "storage"

If this is the case, then why are we so liable to forgetting things like text, words, or memories?

[Assistant]
The very best answer is simply: we aren't sure. We don't know exactly what the mechanism is for generally forgetting memories over time is, or how memories are transferred into long term memory.

We know that humans are capable of incredible feats of memory, especially in the cases of savants.

Chances are that there is only so much evolutionary pressure to remember and retain details.

Lets take a simple example. You are walking through the forest for twenty minutes, There are branches all around, trees, flowers, bushes. In the long grass by the water you smell a strange smell, and a wolf leaps out and attacks you, but you escape into a nearby tree.

Now, what evolutionary pressures are there for retaining memories. A human who can instantly recall that memory of being attacked when they smell that strange smell, over time, will be less likely to die. There is some pressure to remember and learn from how we escaped from a predator. There is no pressure to remember walking idly through the forest, except perhaps remembering roughly the path in order to find water/food again. There is no or little pressure yet to remember the smell of each flower and bush either. A human who can recall how many leaves are on each tree or which notes each bird sang has no advantage over one who doesn't, and so there is no reason for that ability in memory retention to be selected for.

As time went on we probably selected for a greater and greater ability to remember (which plants are poisonous -> how to make items and retain taught information -> what each person in the community likes, does, and has said -> current needs).

But there would still be a threshhold beyond which improvements to memory gave no evolutionary benefit. Perfect memory still wouldn't be selected for. Would being able to memorize every detail of an entire area by looking at it once, recalling how many trees are on any route they've taken in the last 40 years help a human survive enough to be selected for? Even today having a bad memory isn't a good trait, but IMO it isn't so bad it is really being selected against.

Would being able to recall every, or even most, conversations and emotions you've felt decades ago actually help a human reproduce, in a significant way for thousands of years?

Memory, like everything else about us, has developed over a long time from environmental pressures. A perfect memory remains disadvantageous, so while that ability presents itself in the occasional human, it doesn't seem to stick around and be selected for.

**TL;DR: Our memory only got as good as our environment required, and our environment has never required a perfect memory.**


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

[User] ELI5: I read online something about how 85% of Earth's species are still yet to be discovered. How do we know that we've only discovered 15% of all species when we don't know what "all" is?

[Assistant]
Take a bunch of samples from all over the world, look at them really carefully and count how many different species you find in them.

Some of them you will already know, and some will be completely new.

If in 1000 samples, you find 100 different species, of which you only knew 15 before taking the sample, then you now have your answer as to why we estimate only 15% of species have been discovered.


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

[User]
CMV: Advertising of alcohol should be banned

I think alcohol should be treated the exact same way that cigarettes are treated - as a threat to public health. Therefore, the government should take necessary steps to reduce consumption without outright banning it, because that didnt work. A major component of this strategy is preventing advertising of alcohol. Lets be honest, alcohol is a recreational drug, and it kills over 100,000 people each year, so why is it ok to advertise? What makes it different from cigarettes?

People might say, banning alcohol commercials wont do anything. I dont agree. Itll be a slow process, but this will prevent alcohol companies from controlling the way people think about alcohol consumption. And over time drinking will become less ingrained in society and less cool.

[Assistant]
Alcohol is rooted way more deeply in our society than cigarette. Religion use alcohol, our food culture use alcohol etc.

Trying to make it disapear as strongly as what we do with cigarettes would only backfire spectacularly. At least, what is advertised through normal channels is low-danger, tested alcohol. If the only legal advertising become word of mouth, then you can expect lots of unsafe, garage-distilled alcohol to get on the market. Contrary to Tobacco, crafting alcohol is easy, and pretty dangerous if you mess up (while crafting cigarettes if difficult and not that dangerous when hand-worked) so you should make sure that when someone think about alcohol, he think about something safe and government approved which won't make you blind when drunk.


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

[User] ELI5- What does Direct X do?

[Assistant] DirectX talks to your graphics card. Programmers talk in one language (C++ in the case of DirectX) and the graphics card (GPU) talks in another language. DirectX translates for the programmer, so they can talk (program) in C++.


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

[User] Is there an auditory processing disorder that is similar to dyslexia?

[Assistant] There is a disorder literally called Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) that is similar to Dyslexia. It is an abnormality in the processing of sound in the central auditory nervous system and it affects the brains ability to filter and process sounds and words. Most people that have Dyslexia also tend to have this disorder as well.


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

[User] ELI5: what is Ferromagnetism and why does it mean the iron in your blood is not attracted to an MRI?

[Assistant] Really simple answer - iron atoms on their own are always magnetic, and that phenomenon is called ferromagnetism. In your body, there's basically no free iron as it's all bound up in other compounds - hemoglobin bound to red blood cells, or a protein called ferritin that binds up any free iron to store it and release it later when needed.


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

[User] ELI5: How do some mountains have an ecosystem around the peak? Wouldn't the nutrients from the soil of any wash down and make it difficult?

[Assistant]
"Life, uh, life finds a way"

Extremophile bacteria can find ways to make energy/nutrients out of basically anything that'll react, and lichen can survive on nothing more than air, water, sun, and minerals in the stone They can create soil conditions in pockets or depressions (where nutrients don't wash out) suitable for alpine plants and insects. Once plants get established, their roots can help hold soil in place and prevent nutrient leaching.


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

[User] Do spiders always build their own webs, or do they sometimes live in a web vacated by another spider?

[Assistant] Tangentially related to this subject are Social or Colony spiders. These all live communally in a large web complex constructed over time by many different members of the colony. So not all spiders exclusively  make just their own web.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why cant atoms like hydrogen and chlorine have full shells and not make a molecule of 2??

What I mean is, why cant chlorine gain an electron to get a full shell without making Cl2 molecules?? Why cant it exist as a single atom?? The same with hydrogen, why does it have to form H2 molecules?? If the element has a full sub shell and is stable, isnt that enough?

[Assistant]
There is nothing that says they can't. But that would only likely happen in a vacuum. The electron they have had to come from somewhere. In your examples, the two Cl and H atoms are basically sharing electrons in a covalent bond.

Even if you had a free electron to give them, they would become ions, meaning they would have an electric charge, so would be attracted to positively charged ions elsewhere, forming ionic bonds.


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

[User]
[Terminator] why can't terminators self-terminate?

I can think of multiple scenarios where SkyNet would be better off if their terminators could self-destruct, such as, for example **the terminator being hacked into and re-purposed by humans**. So why give them that arbitrary limit?

[Assistant]
Because humans are sneaky, there's always a chance that they could reprogram the terminator before it could do what it was supposed to do and send it back to Skynet to return the favour.

Didn't Skynet start to coat the access port to the terminators chips with explosives to stop the resistance from turning them?