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

[User]
Maryland and free college tuition

I've heard that economists mostly frown on free college tuition because it:

1. Mostly benefits the affluent - people that are wealthy enough to afford it anyway.
2. Doesn't provide much benefit to low income students, because the students that might benefit from tuition free college often aren't prepared to complete a four year degree anyway.
3. Does not address the problem at its root, which is earlier in the educational pipeline. The money would be better spent enhancing grade school middle school or high school to prevent issue #2 from ever happening.

So lately I've been thinking about Maryland. Ben Jealous, a gubernatorial candidate for Maryland, wants to install free college there for state residents (2 year schools are already tuition free). And Maryland has is one of the highest rated public school systems in the US. IIRC they held the #1 spot for several years until recently when they dropped to #6.

So I'm thinking that its possible that Maryland is kind of an optimal place for enacting this type of legislation. Incomes in Maryland are generally higher than other areas, so the policy might not only favor the affluent. Maryland prepares its students better than nearly anywhere else in the country, so more of them are likely to be capable of completing degrees and actually take advantage of the free tuition.

So, in this type of scenario, what do the experts here think of a free tuition program?

[Assistant]
> Incomes in Maryland are generally higher than other areas, so the policy might not only favor the affluent.

This seems rather backwards to me.  If you are concerned that students that would otherwise do well in college are not going for financial reasons you'd want to target areas that have a higher proportion of lower income students.


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

[User]
How much air speed does a modern fighter jet lose by firing a salvo of bullets at an enemy plane?

Those are usually of big caliber and have a considerate mass. Since F=ma that has to be a considerable amount of stopping power.

[Assistant] You need to conserve momentum. Assuming an M61 Vulcan cannon firing 100g rounds at 1000 m/s and a burst of 1 second (~100 rounds), a half loaded F-22 Raptor (~25000kg) would lose 0.4 m/s. Even with some fudge factors for the accelerated air, you wouldn't lose more than 1 m/s.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Can the Parents of Force Sensitive Children refuse to give they kids to the Jedi?

Can they get arrested for not giving up there children?

Is there any law in the republic that says they have to?

[Assistant]
Yes, they can refuse.  The Jedi are not slavers.
That said, the life of a Jedi is such that few parents would deny their children the opportunity.  A child taken in by the Jedi will never go hungry or unsheltered, and will always be able to look after themselves and others.  That's a damn sight better than many folks get.
For others to whom the above comes easy, there is the respect, prestige, and the chance to play a part on the galactic stage that is a powerful draw.
So yes, they can refuse, but fewer than you'd think actually do.


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

[User]
[The Witcher 3] In the Witcher world, dangerous monsters are practically a part of life, so why don't more people carry silver weapons?

I would always hear people comment on Geralt's silver sword like its an oddity and yet, live literally a couple of meters from a necker nest. Shouldn't more people be more aware of Silver weapons?

[Assistant]
The monster density is a gameplay mechanic. In the novels monsters are on the verge of extinction and a common theme is how broke Geralt is because there aren't as many jobs available (not to mention ungrateful townsfolk trying to stiff him).

In addition Witchers themselves are a dying breed and have faded almost to legend in some parts of the world, a common peasant might not be aware of any of the specifics of the Witcher's trade.

Lastly, a silver coated blade is incredibly expensive and useless for fighting a mundane target. Another common theme of the novels (and the game itself) is that humans are a far bigger threat to one another than the monsters were.


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

[User]
How does money have value?

I am trying to understand how cryptocurrencies have value. I always thought money had value because you can translate it back to gold or silver, and this made cryptocurrencies look like an absolute joke thing. In university i took a basic economic class and there i found out that we dropped the gold standard a long time ago. I was taught that the money we use today has value because people trust it has value and trust that people will accept it as a currency, and the demand for it determines its worth. Is this true? Could someone just clarify it a little bit, maybe with an example? I don't think i understand it well enough. And if i am off my rails, please correct me.

[Assistant]
Yes, for "normal" fiat money this is definitely true.

Basically, $10 have the value of $10 because you can buy $10 worth of goods with them. $10 worth of bananas, or screws, or Pokmon cards, or weed, or whatever. You could buy the same stuff for the same $10 tomorrow and you could have done the same yesterday.

People have faith in the USD being stable and reliable and that faith is verified every day because every day people go out and spend USD and get the value they expect.

While the USD isn't technically backed by anything, you could look at it in the sense of being "backed" by the entire US economy because all the USD out there can buy all the goods and services offered in the US.

Cryptocurrencies behave differently. Their value doesn't come from your ability to freely and reliably exchange them for goods and services.

There are basically two angles you can take.

First, you could say that *today*, no you can't purchase a lot with them, but you will be able to in the future, once they take hold in the economy and become widely used an accepted. They still have value because of their ability to purchase goods and services, it's just that the point where they have that ability lies in the future.

Or you could say, well it's a bubble. It has value because people think it does and think it will gain value over time. Of course if it never actually has any "real" value, the bubble will eventually collapse and cryptocurrencies will return to their "real" value, which is nothing.

The truth lies probably somewhere in between those two extremes. Really, we don't know yet. At least some cryptocurrencies certainly *could* become useful currencies in the future, we don't know yet.


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

[User] [The Witcher]How would the existence of Witchers, magic and all those other creatures affect human development? How would 2016 look like in the Witcher universe?

[Assistant]
The existence of Witchers wouldn't matter that much. Magic and its users would matter a lot.

And not just by flinging fireballs or teleporting stuff. Mages know concepts that we didn't discover until 1800s-1900s. Genetic manipulation, DNA and mutation. In W2 you can see Triss speculate about a mutation leading to cancer in a monster you're hunting.


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

[User]
What happens when you boil an acidic solution?

I was making tomato paste the other day and I noticed that the recipe didn't suggest I add lemon juice or citric acid.  This got me thinking.  When you boil down a liquid that is slightly acidic (boil off the water in the case of tomato paste), how is the PH affected?  Does it become more acidic?  Less?  Stay the same?

[Assistant]
That depends on the relative vapor pressure of the acid in question, compared to water.

If it has a higher "relative volatility" than water, the acid will evaporate and boil much faster than the water will, thus reducing the concentration of the acid. However the acid fumes can be captured and condensed using a distilling apparatus designed to handle acids, thus producing a more concentrated acid.

If the acid has a lower vapor pressure than water, the water will tend to evaporate and boil much faster than the acid, thus concentrating it. this can be done with sulfuric acid. Though for technical reasons it's difficult to concentrate H2SO4 over 90% this way.


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

[User] ELI5: why some import cars, such as the Nissan R34 Skyline is illegal to own or so hard to get in America?

[Assistant]
The US has many many regulations on cars, stuff like emissions controls and safety. Some of this can be extremely expensive to engineer and build, and on low-production models it's not practical. The bigger problem is the testing requirements: manufacturers are required to crash test cars and it's an extremely expensive process. And if they change something, like the transmission, they may have to re-do all the crash testing.

Imported cars are required to meet many of these requirements, even if you are just trying to get one car through customs.


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

[User]
Do we have any idea what came before our solar system?

My understanding is that around 4.5 billion years ago our star formed out of a cloud of gas and dust, and that our planet formed out of what was left. But what was that gas and dust? Where did it come from? I am assuming that it did not come directly from the Big Bang, because there was too much complex stuff in there. So did we form from the remenents of a supernova or a single dead old star? Did we form out of many old stars or did many new stars form out of a single old star? If the old stars had run out of fuel and finally died, where did the new fuel come from to ignite new stars?

[Assistant]
There's actually quite a complex "life-cycle" of gas in and around a galaxy. Our Milky Way is inside a huge ball of thin hot gas, which we call a "halo" - hot is like millions of degrees. Within the disc of the Milky Way, most of the volume is filled with a denser (but still thin) warm ionised gas, about 10,000 K in temperature. The mix of gas within the Milky Way is called the "interstellar medium".

Through random turbulent motions, sometimes bits of this warm gas pile up and get denser. In space, denser gas is more effective at cooling, because there are more interactions between particles, and more chances to lose energy through radiation. So the denser gas cools, which reduces its pressure, which causes it to cool some more.

What you get here is a *molecular cloud*. Here, the gas is cool enough that it's not an ionised plasma anymore - it's actually made of proper H2 hydrogen molecules. These things are quite big - like thousands to millions of times the mass of our Sun. As they are formed from turbulent motions in the "interstellar medium", these molecular clouds are very turbulent, and have very irregular shapes.

From here, the gas can collapse further. Globules will form within the molecular cloud, that will collapse into star systems. This takes some of the gas out of the galaxy's reservoir of available gas, and locks it into stars. *However*, not all the gas is used up, and some of it gets returned.

The first big thing is "feedback". As the stars form, they irradiate the molecular cloud, heating it up and dispersing it into the interstellar medium. Winds from massive stars will also smash into the cloud, destroying it further. And, finally, the most massive stars will go supernova quite quickly (within a few million years), blowing away a large amount of gas to the interstellar medium.

These are called "feedback" because they slow down star formation. You don't use up all the gas, because new stars heat up and blow away the gas and stop it from collapsing. It's a "negative feedback" effect - forming new stars makes it harder to form more stars. Star formation ends up being somewhat self-regulating - it steadily chugs along, without using up all the gas in the galaxy. Just counting baryonic mass (i.e. ignoring dark matter), the Milky Way is currently about 10% gas, 90% stars. It used to have a higher fraction of gas in the past, but much of that gas has turned into stars now.

The second big thing is that some of the gas gets returned from stars back to the interstellar medium. Massive stars will have winds, or even go supernova. This is particularly important for "enriching" the interstellar medium. Heavy elements are built up by nuclear fusion in stars, and stellar winds and supernovae will carry this heavy-element-enriched gas into the interstellar medium, where it can contribute to new stars. As the gas is turbulent, you will mix elements from lots of supernovae along with unpolluted "primordial" gas, so a new star doesn't come from any one supernova.

These processes also return a bit of gas to the interstellar medium, but most of the gas ends up locked into long-lived stars. The majority of stars are red giant stars with life-times much much longer than the current age of the universe. Really, the dominant reason why there's still gas around is *feedback* - gas returned from stars only contributes a little bit.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Do Sith follow the rule of two expecting to be killed by their apprentice, or is every sith so overconfident that they think it'll never happen to them.

[Assistant]
Didnt Darth Sidious stopped sleeping because he killed his master in his sleep.

Its a combination of arrogance and due diligence. If a person is a master then they should know that defeat can happen so they go to great lengths to make sure it wont happen easily.

Darth Sidious used the dark powers of the Force to stay awake because he felt his only chance of defeat was if he was sleeping. He went to great lengths to keep his presence masked from the Jedi.

Sith lord and apprentices would have a natural sense of confidence. As long as they are constantly focused, they shouldn't be overwhelmed to the point that they are surprised by an attack or fall in battle.


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

[User]
ELI5: How exactly does sound travel through walls?

Or any other solid, for that matter?

[Assistant] Sound is merely pressure waves of molecules bumping into other molecules, transferring energy. When the wave hits a solid object, some of the energy is transferred to the wall, allowing the sound to propagate through it. Then the molecules making up the wall push on the air molecules of the other side, allowing you to hear through the wall. Some energy is lost or reflected in the transitions, thus why the sound is muffled. And some frequencies transition better than others.


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

[User]
What are the challenges in developing a rapid screening test to determine whether an infection is bacterial vs viral?

It seems like one of the main problem is that there are tons of bacteria and viruses always present that aren't causing an infection. Could we use the quantity of a given bacteria in the location of an infection (e.g. sputum for a throat infection) since there would presumably be more of the infectious bacteria there? Are there any technologies or analytical techniques on the horizon which might help?

[Assistant]
It's actually not that big of a problem. Viral and bacterial infections are not that similar in many aspects so you often know just by the symptoms.

For the ones where you don't know there are several things you can do :

Measure CRP levels : In respiratory infections it's sometimes hard to differentiate between viral and bacterial. Bacterial infections typically have CRP levels >100 while viral are lower. If CRP is <50 you pretty much know it's viral if it's >100 it's bacterial.

Do PCR or antibody search tests : In other infections there are not many viruses that come into question so you just test directly for them. Like if you have Pneumonia and a viral one is a possibility it's probably going to be Influenza, Parainfluenza or Adenoviruses (rarely Herpes).

Also if you find a bacterial or viral colonisation and the patients shows symptoms that fit, it's nearly always going to be an infection by said agent., even if it's possible to be colonized without being sick.


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

[User] does studying philosophy make someone a better person?

[Assistant]
Does learning how to use a screwdriver make someone a better person?

Perhaps it would help them express their goodness if they, say, use it to charitably repair their neighbor's toaster for them. But they could just as easily stab them in the neck with it.

Colonialism, Stalinism, national socialism, totalitarianism, racism, sexism, violent religious fundamentalism - all of these have their own philosophical underpinnings, and were/are used to inflict great harm to others.

Philosophy is a tool. Studying it will make you more adept at using it - but *how* you use it is far more important.


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

[User]
ELI5: If I'm transferring data from one folder to another in the same SSD, how come the data transfer speed is still so much lower than advertised or tested?

As an example, my Adata XPG S8200 Pro can reach read and write speeds of up to 3500/3000 mb/s and even in testing (using CrystalDiskMark) the supposed speeds are around that range. But when I actually transfer files, even within the SSD, the actual speeds is so much slower?

[Assistant]
First of all, are you *moving* the data or *copying* the data?

**Moving** the data on the same drive does not actually *move* the information on the physical drive. The OS merely changes the pointer to that data to make it appear in a different location within your filesystem.

In other words, the data will still be stored at index XYZ on the drive, but it's folder (the pointer) is now "D:/Folder 2" instead of "D:/Folder 1"

**Copying** data is a much more intensive process. When you do this between 2 different drives, each drive only needs to perform a single operation (i.e. a read operation on the origin drive, and a write operation on the destination drive.) This means that each drive can devote all its available resources to that single operation.

However, when you copy data on *the same drive*, that drive now needs to perform *two* operations - reading *and* writing. On a single SSD, the data must be read, written to a buffer, erased and rewritten in steps, all using the same controller and resources on that SSD. This can be *much* slower than if copying between two different drives.


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

[User]
ELI5 How is basic universal income different than unconditional welfare?

At the end of the day, wouldn't basic income still just be the government giving away free money?

[Assistant]
They are similar concepts designed to solve similar problems, but there are subtle differences.

Basically, welfare only goes to the needy. You generally have to apply for it. Basic universal income goes to everybody, rich and poor, whether or not you've applied for it.

This impacts ideal tax policy at the lower income levels while creating certain buts of bureaucracy and eliminating others. It also means the amount given to citizens goes up, so a corresponding tax has to be raised or deficits have to be incurred. Since taxation is almost always expressed as percentages and the basic income is expressed as a defined amount, this would mean that tax burden is shifted up from the lower middle-class to the upper-middle class, flattening their post-tax earnings somewhat.

The big theoretical benefit, however, is that it would eliminate some of the worst aspects welfare. Welfare incentivizes people to work under the table (pay no taxes and usually work bad jobs), disincentives them to find a permanent job or part-time job (they can lose welfare benefits and have to work a lot more to earn only a little more), and makes them feel like terrible people when they have to wait in line and beg a bureaucrat for money to survive. A basic income has none of these problems, but it comes at a higher cost to the budget.


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

[User]
Why can't LEDs produce radio waves or x-rays?

Is it that we just haven't been able to produce an LED with the right bandgap? Are we just not interested in the production of non visible LEDs (with the exception of UV and some IR) or is there a more fundamental reason? And as a follow up question: If we could create a radio wave LED, could we transmit radio wave signals with it?

[Assistant]
You already know how bandgaps work.  We'd absolutely *love* to directly image high and low wavelengths, but it's probably not possible.

For high energy waves above UV, you're talking about ionizing radiation.  If the photon being released has enough energy to ionize an atom, it very likely is ionizing the atoms in the emission source as well.  That will rapidly destroy any semiconductor junction.  You'd need a material that's far more stable than anything else.  You sould use lots of insulators to emit high energy photons except for the fact that when you give an electron that much energy it would rather just rearrange chemical bonds/cause a fire.

For low frequency photons you're talking about a small band gap.  Visible light is on the order of an electron volt.  Lead sulfide is an example of a very low-gap semiconductor used for IR LEDs- about .37 eV.  A 100 MHz photon from an FM radio station has ~.4 millionths of an eV.  It's not really practical to make a band gap smaller than IR.


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

[User]
Does high-end hardware cost significantly more to make?

I work with HPCs which use CPUs with core counts significantly higher than consumer hardware. One of these systems uses AMD Zen2 7742s with 64 cores per CPU, which apparently has a recommended price of over $10k. On a per-core basis, this is substantially more than consumer CPUs, even high-end consumer CPUs.

My question is, to what extent does this increased price reflect the manufacturing/R&D costs associated with fitting so many cores (and associated caches etc.) on one chip, versus just being markup for the high performance computing market?

[Assistant]
Of course, some factories use expensive processes, some use cheap processes, and thus their CPUs will be more expensive or cheaper to make in general. But not within the same Factory (Fab line). It costs exactly the same to make the different CPU models there. The issue is yield. Just like diamond mining. An exensive diamond costs the same to mine as a cheap diamond.

Let me give an example. One 12 inch wafer makes 500 chips. 500 random flaws will be on the wafer, distributed at random. They slice the wafer up into 500 CPUs. So, some chips have 3 flaws, some chips have 0. The ones with 3 flaws across 3 cores will have those cores disabled in firmware and be sold as 2-5 core CPUs for $100. The ones with 1 flaw will be sold as 7 core CPUs for $500 each. The ones with 0 flaws will be sold as 8 core CPUs for $1000 each. They will then be tested for clocking. The ones that perform perfectly at 3.5 GHz get sold for $2000. The ones that only perform perfectly up to 2 GHz get sold as a discount line like Celeron.

So, it costs the exact same to \~make\~ the CPU, but they can only charge what people are willing to pay for each ones flawlessness.


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

[User] What is happening on a circuitry level when I turn the brightness up or down on my phone?

[Assistant]
For LCD screens the LED backlight is set to a lower PWM duty cycle.  Instead of being on 100% of the time, it'll flash on and off, spending some time off (more time off = darker).

LEDs are funny; you can technically control their brightness by controlling the voltage/current, but tiny changes in electricity can lead to large, very obvious changes in brightness.  On top of that individual LEDs will have different response curves and will look very different brightnesses at a give voltage/current.  The fundamental problem is that LEDs really only want to be on or off.  If you put them all to on, the differences in brightness are much harder to see.  If you toggle them on and off fast enough, the flicker is totally undetectable.  They turn on/off thousands of times per second.  This method is totally digital so it also requires no external circuitry, like a digital->analog converter would.  It lets you control brightness incredibly well.

OLED screens and simliar just change their own PWM.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does the IRS name their forms?

1040, 990-N, 1099-K, W-2... Try as I might, I can't find any information about how the IRS names their forms. What is their naming convention? Do the form names base themselves on citation numbers in tax code, or what?

[Assistant] Probably sequential, it's just that the public never sees the in-between numbers, and/or they've been canceled. Some of the older forms (W-...) might be from a different scheme. The suffixes are variations of a common basic form for the same/similar purpose.


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

[User] [Fallout]What did Vault-Tec do to convince people to both carry out and enforce plans that only came into effect after NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION?

[Assistant] I think in most of the vaults the overseers were going with the idea that vault-tec would survive the apocalypse and eventually come collect them. And that they would reward their hard work with cushy positions in the new world that VT would build to replace the destroyed old one.


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

[User]
[Batman] How did Bruce Wayne approach all of these different people to teach & train him?

So Bruce Wayne travelled the world during his youth, learning from the best martial artists, detectives, criminologists, scientists, gymnasts and so on.

How exactly did he approach these people? Did he pay them?

Was Bruce up front with them about what he was planning to do? If not, what did he tell them he was planning to do with this knowledge?

Did any of his mentors become suspicious or weirded out by Bruce?

Did anyone refuse to train him?

[Assistant]
His experiences varied by person to person. Some people were mercenary types of folks who took money, but most were just taken with his sincere interest in their craft and drive to master it.

For example, in The Man who Falls, Bruce hiked a remote mountain range to train with a martial arts master/hermit named Kirigi. Upon arriving at Kirigi's lair though, he found it empty, so he meditated inside for three weeks straight without food or water, until Kirigi revealed himself, and made Bruce do chores for several months until finally training him.

He generally didn't let anyone know he was Bruce Wayne though and assumed false identities. Although some figured it out at one point or another, namely expert detective Harvey Harris, who realized that "John Smith" was Bruce Wayne pretty early, but let it slide.

Bruce didn't even know he would become Batman eventually at that point in his life, so he couldn't entirely articulate to them how he was planning to draw everything he learned together quite yet, even if he wanted to.

There was an old story called The Many Deaths of Batman where one of Bruce's mentors realized he actually trained Batman many years later, and went crazy cause he thought that Batman's enemies were going to find out and come after him.

On the flipside, there was another story where Riddler kidnapped a world famous escape artist and forced him to recreate his ultimate escape challenge for Batman, but it turns out that Batman knew the special techniques needed to get out of the trap because Bruce was the only person on Earth the escape artist passed his secrets onto years before. This also let Bruce know that his old mentor was in Riddler's grasp, and let the escape artist realize that he trained Batman many years after the fact.

There were a couple teachers he had falling outs with, notably Ducard and David Cain, because he couldn't abide by their casual reliance on lethal force, and cut training with them earlier than expected.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Where did King Bor, Odin's father, get his power?

Was it the Borforce?

[Assistant] At the time, yes, it would have been the Borforce. And before that, it would have been the Buriforce, for Buri was the first of the Asgardians! Buri's power was inherited by Bor, then through Bor, Odin. Technically, the Odinforce should have been the Thorforce when Thor possessed it, by Odin's admission, but Thor refused to change its name.


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

[User] Is it genetically possible for a mutation to occur that would give us superhuman properties? (i.e. something like Spider-man or the X-Men)

[Assistant]
Well, consider that it was a series of mutations that advanced humans above the fray of primates amongst which we evolved. Compared to modern chimpanzees our powers of speech and problem solving could be considered a super power.

So the possibility of future mutations endowing future humans with new capabilities is greater than 0, but the likelihood of a *single* mutation giving us awesome  x-men claws or web-spinning organs is probably close to 0.


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

[User]
[Mister Rogerss Neighborhood] Where is Mister Roger Coming From and Where Does He Leave to?

During the intro, Mister Rogers enters the building with a suit that he takes off. He later puts it back on as he leaves.

Where is he coming from and where is he leaving to? I always assumed he was coming home from work and later leaving home to go back to work, but that is a long break his job is giving him.

His real jobs before the show was being a Presbyterian Minister and as a producer, but I am not sure those are the jobs he is returning to and from. Especially since being a Presbyterian minister would probably be Sunday work and would not require a suit on the other days, unless he is attending a wedding, funeral, or dedication ceremony everyday.

So what is he returning home to and where is he leaving off to?

[Assistant]
While being a minister has short scheduled hours they're both longer than you think (many churches offer daily services even though attendance is low on weekdays) have required support work (there's a building to maintain, and every service is slightly different and must be planned for), and just plain being available if anybody wants to talk.

Coupled with the fact that he's probably scheduling his own hours, it makes sense for him to be giving himself a long break in which he goes home between tasks, unwinds for a bit, then heads back to work.


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

[User] [Judge dredd] why does mega city one enforce drug laws when they don't have enough judge's to enforce violent crime?

[Assistant] Every breach of the law is a punishable offence. A Judge may pass by a crime in extreme circumstances (say, ignoring a sugar dealer to stop a terrorist), but the fact is that a small-time criminal will turn to larger crimes if not harshly corrected.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Why did Petunia actually keep Harry? She felt no love towards him or her dead sister.

Also, what could have Dumbledore done if she absolutely refused to keep Harry?

[Assistant]
If Petunia felt no love towards Harry or Lily, then she would never have let him live in her house.

But she did, so, she did.

I don't know if she ever loved Harry. But Petunia's love for her sister was strong enough that she endured 17 years of a constant reminder of what the Wizarding world had done to her.

Edit: To answer your follow up question, Dumbledore straight up told her about the protective magic that a familial household would provide Harry.


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

[User]
[FOX X-Men] Why do child Jean Grey's parents die in a car crash in the revised timeline, but not in the original timeline?

Presumably some butterfly effect difference from Wolverine and the White House incident. But how?

[Assistant]
you already answered your own question: It was part of the "butterfly effect" (which isn't the proper term to use here, as it is supposed to refer to small changes made by observers, as opposed to deliberately changing events).

It could just be that the world was suddenly a LOT more stressful because of the public's awareness of mutants, which would rub off on Jean's psyche, activating her powers, but one can't be sure.


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

[User]
What are all the known COVID strains and examples of mutations? Is there a list or study?

Im trying to figure out how many separate COVID-19 strains there currently are, or at least how many we know of. Can anyone help?

[Assistant] There have been many mutations since the start of all this. See ( Korber et al ., Cell 182 812-827 Aug 20, 2020) Every mutation that we are made aware of, we only notice because it spreads more, due to higher viral fitness. The other poster is dead wrong, there are many strains with differing abundances geographically.


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

[User] What are some works discussing the aesthetics of "ugliness as beauty" - the macabre, "goth" aesthetics, extreme metal, etc?

[Assistant] Umberto Eco's *On Ugliness*, though a historical overview rather than a work of rigorous aesthetic theory, mentions that in the contemporary world, the distinction between beauty and ugliness is much less stable and obvious than in the past, citing the fascination with zombies, horror, and the aesthetics of goth and punk. It has lots of citations that might interest you.


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

[User]
New Postdoc supervisor says I can do whatever I want and I'm lost

Hello, I know this sounds strange, in theory, anyone would like to be in this position but I just finished my PhD, applied for this role based on the description given thinking it would be similar to my PhD, having a good idea where it's going and what the deliverables are then zig zagging my way to them while learning new things.

But this is my first week and they just gave me an office and left, I was confused and didn't know what to do for a few days then finally spoke to the supervisor and he just said I can do whatever I want and that he is very busy most of the time, this is in France by the way, the description mentioned working on a project to validate an exisisting design and create an optimized chip for it,  but the supervisor said that task is trivial and better stuited for an engineer and that I can use the time for something more interesting.

So I found my self wondering where did the funding come from and what was it for exactly? how are they going to keep track of my work or progress for the duration of the contract, I find my self worried I'd be lost and not do much, I tend to lean towards slacking these days because of how burnt out I felt from the PhD, there is also the worry that by the end I wouldn't have much to show for whatever next position I go for.

Any insights from people who are experienced or just have advice in general?

[Assistant] A good starting point would probably to be to get up to speed on the work your PI and the group/lab has been doing so far, so that you can start to think of where you might fit in. It would at least give you a sense of direction if he won't.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do tin cans have those extra creases/lines? Why aren't they smooth like an aluminum beverage container?

[Assistant]
Any time you see a corrugation, it's usually entirely for one reason - if it was a flat sheet, it would bend.  By corrugating it, you are preventing that bend from occurring, as it's difficult to bend a corrugation.

Don't forget that drinks cans are pressurised, so can't bend.  Tins aren't, they are just sealed.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't I see millions of stars from the airplane window?

There isn't a ton of light pollution up at 30,000 feet. Why can I only see a couple stars when I'm flying?
Edit: On a night flight, I mean.

[Assistant] The internal sources of light inside the cabin are interfering and also perhaps your perspective, as you are panning mostly horizontally out the window and not vertically. It would probably work better if it was pitch black in the cabin, and the top of the aircraft was translucent.


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

[User] [Dark Souls] Why are all the people i fight so fucking big?

[Assistant]
Watson: its a question of power. Gwyn, his children, and their knights are all gods possessed of the power of the Lord Souls. You, on the other hand, are just an undead. A human descended from the Furtive Pygmy, whose power lies in the dark souls ability to grow and spread and propagate. While the Lord Souls are grand and powerful and their bearers equally so, your strength lies only in your ability to persevere.

Doyle(ish): A similar principle is found in art and culture throughout human history: more important characters are depicted as larger. The largeness of the world and those who seemed to truly rule it makes you feel that much more insignificant.


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

[User] How can amino acid supplements claim to have 7g protein and yet 0 calories?

[Assistant]
By lying in a legally-permissable way.  Like how Tic Tacs can say they're sugar-free despite being 94% sugar because a single serving of one tic-tac contains less than 0.5g of sugar and the law in the US lets you round that down and report it as 0g of sugar per serving, thus sugar-free.

>Each Tic Tac weighs just under 0.5 g. Since US federal regulations state that if a single serving contains less than 0.5 g of sugars it is allowable to express the amount of sugar in a serving as zero,[6] and since a single serving of Tic Tacs is a single Tic Tac, Tic Tacs are labeled in the US as containing zero sugar.

Alternatively, just by lying and hoping nobody cares enough to bring legal action.


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

[User] [Power Rangers] I'm the leader of the Machine Empire, I have one of the LARGEST empires in all of the universe... SO WHY CAN'T WE BEAT 5 TEENAGERS IN STUPID COSTUMES!

[Assistant] Well, because... you're not that bright. Like you said, you have a huge army. Powerful monsters who sometimes give the Rangers a big amount of trouble *individually*. So why are you sending them one by one? Don't feel too bad, Lord Zedd, Rita Repulsa and others before and after you have made the same mistake.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is my temper so much shorter when I am driving? ie: Road rage.

[Assistant] It's the same reason everyone on the Internet is a dick to each other. It's harder to emphasize with the driver from another car because you're not actually interacting with them. At best you can kind of see them, but often times your just directing your anger towards a car, so the part of your brain that would usually tell you to be nice to people isn't working.


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

[User]
Why does ocean-life have issues with microplastic particles, but not sand particles?

If microplastic and sand particles are roughly the same size, why isn't there more issues with sand in sea creatures as there is with microplastic?

[Assistant]
The wee bugs have had millions of years of evolution dealing with sand... they figured it out.

The wee bugs have had less than 100 years to deal with plastic  - and the chemicals in plastic mimic several organic chemicals,  so the wee DNA of the wee bugs doesn't know how to respond.


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

[User]
CMV: People and society, in general, would be better off without organized religion.

Most religious people make the argument that religion is good for the family and the country. They generally believe, as a society and people, we are much better off having religion than don't. Some countries have taken it very far, like Iran, which has made a religious leader the most powerful man in the country. Other countries, like the US have a large population that wishes Christianity would come into government and schools and take control.  I don't agree with that sentiment. I think we would be better off without religion. I have many reasons for this belief, but here are a few.

 1. Charity Work: The public work that churches do can be done by things like non profits. So, we can make up for their loss pretty easily, and increase employment. The non profit sector would also discriminate less about who they help. The church can be very discriminatory about the aid that they provide. For example, you probably will never find a  large church presence in the gay community, the Muslim communities, or atheistic communities.

2. Sexual Abuse: Each major religion in this country seems to have huge ongoing sex scandals, which is detrimental to the communities and individuals of that community. If a company like HP or Toyota had the same scandals going, there would be different and much more severe consequences. They might even be dismantled. The Mormon church, for example, as we speak is being sued for actively not reporting instances of child sexual abuse. We already know the Catholic church is guilty of that. Would people allow any other institution to get away with such rampant sexual abuse amongst its employees?

3.  Taxes and Real Estate: Religion doesn't pay its fair share of taxes. Most churches don't pay taxes, but we hear constantly that the church disrupts unsupported political processes through financial means. The catholic church alone has spent millions trying to ban abortions and other causes it sees fit, while paying not a dime in taxes. They have used their money to try to make progress legislatively against the LGBT community as well. The actual churches are a waste as well. These facilities that they don't pay tax for are wasted constantly. Churches stand mostly unused, unless its Sunday, which is a waste a resources. Church buildings could be easily used for things like job programs, supporting the homeless and addicted, et cetera.

4. Good vs Evil: The binary nature of religion, and forcibly categorizing everything as good and evil, has diminished public discourse. You hear it all the time from conservatives. They would rather vote for anyone than a "demoncrat." Why? Because they are evil. Why are they evil? Because they don't agree with their religious values. What does the church say about people who don't agree? That they are evil. Not having that shade of grey has created a political party that sees the counter as only evil, even though democrats are known for being more socially giving and empathetic than conservatives.  It has lessened any likely hood of compromise and negotiation, because when you view the other side as inherently evil, why would anyone negotiate?

5. Critical Thinking: Religion doesn't encourage critical thinking skills, which has diminished our value of education and knowledge. Whenever an individual challenges anything in the bible or the idea of god, hardcore believers make disingenuous  arguments to counter any logic or fact that is being presented. Not looking at that information as a possibility shows that the church encourages a lack of critical thinking. It has also shown up by all of the misinformation that religious followers tend to believe. I understand that everyone is susceptible to misinformation, but as fox news has proved, the lack of critical thinking has made the church masses susceptible to a lot of mistruths. The biggest example being the 2020 election. Any normal critical thinker would look at all the various court cases and who is behind this movement to conclude that its a lie. Also, religion asks people to take a leap of faith to believe something without any evidence. There are so many parts of religion that asks you to believe fantastical and unprovable things, without any criticism. If someone is taught their whole life to approach important things without question, why would they have strong critical thinking skills?

6. Death: Finally, The church overall has been responsible for a huge amount of killing that we still find ourselves dealing with today. From terrorism, to school shootings, and random acts of violence can be traced to what religious makes people believe. We all know that plenty of wars have started because of religion. There are wars going on currently that are only about religion. It is just another thing we don't have in common, and its important for people to find common ground. It is easy to see a religious sentiment of "since they don't agree with our faith, they are evil, and war is justified."

7. Religion is divisive.  MLK said this:  "We must face the sad fact that at eleven oclock on Sunday morning when we stand to sing In Christ there is no East or West, we stand in the most segregated hour of America."  I believe that whole heartedly. Each sect of religion looks at the other and wonders why they believe and follow the things they do, but never realize that they are guilty of the same sins. In general, liberal America makes fun of Mormons and Scientologists for their beliefs, but is it really any different than Christianity? Religion is just another thing that separates people, but because of its fundamental nature, it can destroy relationships.

These are a few of the reasons why I think we would be better off without the church, but these are the big ones for me. I don't like feeling so negative about the church and its people, so please, CMV.

[Assistant] Exceedingly few of the actual problems you seek to solve would be solved by removing religion, honestly. Everyone who is bigoted "because of religion" would find other excuses for their bigotry, people who use their position in the church to sexually abuse people would find other organizations to do so, and wars about religion are also usually about other things.


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

[User] ELI5: Are electric eels actually electric? How can an eel generate electricity and why isn't it a hazard to itself?

[Assistant]
Yes they produce electricity. They have several specialized organs that make up most of its body allowing it to generate both low and high voltages.

It produces it the same way every other living thing produces electricity, the difference is size. Your cells are powered by tiny little AAA batteries, an electric eel has them all hooked up to be like a transformer.

It's not a hazard to itself because it is generating the electricity and it is dispersing through the water. Electricity is going out, not in.


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

[User]
If I have two blankets of different materials, does the total insulation change depending on how I layer them?

for instance, I have a cotton sheet and a polyester blanket.

Would having one on top trap heat more effectively than the other way around?

[Assistant]
Thermal mass can have an impact if there are changes in temperature involved. Having the denser layer on the inside keeps the temperature more constant.

NZ's building code, for example, requires that new buildings built with concrete blocks have them within the insulation layer, not outside.

Other effects that could have an impact are wind and water. Many types of insulation get significantly less effective if full of water, and also perform better without airflow, e.g. glass-wool batts.


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

[User]
[Marvel Comics/X-Men] Why does Apocalypse still claim to be the "first one" or the oldest living mutant when he and everyone else knows about Selene and some other mutants like her that are several millennia older than he is ? Like Selene Gallio is from the age of Conan the Barbarian.

Especially since  their were mutants long before or  even around the same time as  Selene as shown in Avengers 10000 BC. Apocalypse is not even as old as a few of the  other externals  so he has no claims to his title.

[Assistant] Selene isn't that famous or popular, and so she doesn't get respect for that. Apocalypse regularly causes worldwide apocalypses so everyone knows him. When he says he's the first mutant, everyone listens. When she says she's the first mutant, people say "Who is this chick?"


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

[User] ELI5: Why are people in favor of putting a camera on every cop, but opposed to cctv cameras on every street corner?

[Assistant] Because the purpose of cameras on cops is for the people to monitor their government, and the purpose of a CCTV camera on a corner is for the government to monitor their people.  Many people want government transparency but personal privacy.


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

[User]
[Ghostbusters] What would have been the ideal choice for the form of Gozer.

In the film they seem annoyed at Ray for his selection but ultimately it seemed pretty ideal to me.  Slow, soft, easy to hit.

Seriously, what better choice could they really have made?

[Assistant] They actually make the case in the really, really good IDW comics that Ray did the absolute right thing. The ghost of John Belushi tells him that had he not picked such a largely harmless form, they probably would've all died and Gozer would've won.


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

[User]
I am an atheist who believes that people who are religious breed more hate and violence than their non-religious counterparts. CMV.

Most days when I turn on the news I see reports of religiously fueled violence, not just in other countries but in America as well. I feel that the tolerance for people to get along in this world (when you think in terms of religion) is very low. There are many cases of violence in history that can be directly traced to religious roots and I feel that as we advance our own history this mentality is not changing.
This is not an argument saying that people who are religious are violent. Nor is it an argument saying that religion is the cause of hate and violence. I want to question why it is that religious tensions lead to these kinds of actions of hate and violence.

[Assistant]
You are confusing cause and effect. A large portion of the population is suceptable ideologies of closed, unnuanced thinking where good and evil--right and wrong--are clearly defined and thus finding one's purpose is clear. Religious systems, admittedly, are systems which are usually well suited to this sort of ideology, but the religious content is separable from the ideological content. Modern Chinese nationalism is an ideology which sanctions the sometimes violent subjugation millions of people who belong to state identified ethnicities in need of reform, but without a religious context.

One problem which might be causing your view is that religion has and still does play an indelible role in personal and societal identification which makes it easy to see things in religious terms. Also, in much of the west, atheists tend to be 'free-thinkers' who don't seek out large social institutions to give their lives meaning, resulting in a skewed demographic.

Ultimately, there are many frames which can fulfil the requirement of people, but religious views were nearly completely dominant until very recently in history and thus they are overwhelmingly represented when looking at the conflicts caused by the underlying phenomena.


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

[User]
ELI5: Spontaneous Combustion

How? Why do people spontaneously combustion?

[Assistant]
Nobody really knows for sure, due to its weird nature. However, it is accepted that two things are needed: fuel and ignition.

Fuel is either methane produced from digested foods (farts) being excreted from the skin or oily body fat. An ignition is usually either static electricity or a cigarette.

Do not worry though, spontaneous human combustion is very rare and it usually occurs 'naturally' in humans that are obese or have severely imbalanced bodily fluids. It is also very unclear if it actually exists due to rarity.

EDIT: another theory for fuel is buildup of flammable substances (like alcohol) in the blood.


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

[User]
ELI5: What colours are beyond infrared and ultraviolet?

What colours could potentially exist when you keep going further along the colour spectrum? I imagine there could possibly be an infinite amount of colours, like there could be an infinite amount of radio frequencies.

[Assistant]
Colour only makes sense as a quality which our brains interpret.  One cannot *imagine* a new colour, although some people and animals might be able to perceive more colours owing to things such as having more colour light receptors or other physical adaptions.

In terms of the electromagnetic spectrum, the limits are essentially infinite.  You could make arguments for the longest wavelength radio wave having a wavelength on the order of the Observable Universe and highest energy gamma ray having a wavelength just small enough such that the energy concentration does not spontaneously form a black hole.


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

[User]
[Pokemon] How are there Mega Stones for Mewtwo?

Mewtwo is an artificial Pokemon, crafted by humans from the discovered DNA of Mew. So how is it that there are *two* stones which cause it to mega evolve?

The only resolution I see here is that the stones are also artificial, but that - as far as I know - has no support in canon.

Can you rectify this?

[Assistant] The G6 remakes of the G3 games indicate that Mega Stones are still occasionally formed, seemingly at random, from meteorites. How they attune themselves to specific Pokemon has never been clear, beyond some insinuated divine influence (Xerneas and Yveltal basically representing Life and Death...)... So they could have appeared after Mewtwo was created.


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

[User] [Sponsored Content] - Would increased Bacon consumption lower emissions from pig farms?

[Assistant]
By eating more bacon, we are killing more pigs and hence reducing their numbers. A lower number of pigs means lower emissions.

Similarly, by growing more vegetables for consumption, we are not killing pigs and are actually making more food for them to reproduce.

Therefore, it would be very environmentally irresponsible of us not to eat as much bacon as possible.


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

[User]
If all electrons are identical, then how can they have different energy levels?

I've heard that the farther an electron is from the nucleus, the more energetic it is. But how can this be if all electrons are identical?

[Assistant]
All electrons are fundamentally identical, but you can still have a system of multiple electrons occupying different states (energy, spin projection, position, etc.).

You just have to make the total state vector totally antisymmetric under exchange of any two electrons.

So if you have an electron with energy E*_1_* and another with E*_2_*, then you have to acknowledge the fact that no experimental measurement you can possibly do can tell you whether its electron 1 with E*_1_* and electron 2 with E*_2_*, or vice versa. So your state vector would have to account for both possibilities, and be antisymmetric with respect to exchange, per the definition of a fermion. It would be:

(|E*_1_*>|E*_2_*> - |E*_2_*>|E*_1_*>)/sqrt(2).


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

[User] ELI5: How do Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) work?

[Assistant] Basically, there is a backlight behind everything. Infront of the backlight are 3 layers of 'pixels', red, green and blue. Each pixel in each layer allows light (from the backlight) through when a electrical current is passed through (or in some cases, not passed through). These colours 'mix' and through the help of a polarising filter you get what you see on your monitor.


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

[User] ELI5: How do gas pumps know when your tank is full?

[Assistant] The gas nozzle contains a tube where the gasoline flows.  There is a second tube within that tube.  This second tube connects to a space filled with air.  As air flows normally through this tube, the air space stays inflated.  When the gas tank gets full, the air tube starts to fill with the gasoline.  This changes the air pressure, causing the air to move out of air sack and push out the gas in the tube.  This action deflates the air sack, which triggers the shut-off mechanism.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Was Tarkin deliberately weakening the Empire with the Tarkin doctrine?

Deliberately causing unrest though fear and terror that will drive the large portion of the galaxy towards rebellion and supporting the development and construction of weapons of mass destruction that will have hardly any usefulness, but will eat up ridiculously large amounts of resources seems like a very foolish thing to do. Unless of course Your aim is to destroy an Empire.

[Assistant] Tarkin thought that the empire could rule more easily and with less objection if civilians feared them. Of course we know that this fear and terror regime would push more system to fight back, but he thought that it would control them. So no he wasn't deliberately weakening the Empire, but his actions did help lead to its fall.


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

[User]
[Batman] What would each of Batman's rogues gallery be like as friends?

Not trying to kill you, but as actual, legitimate friends. I feel that Penguin and Mr.Freeze would be best, Joker would be the worst.

[Assistant]
It's hard to grasp a lot of them being legitimate friends with you. Like it's too much in Joker's nature for him being incapable of being an actual friend. He'd only play the part (poorly) until he was bored.

Penguin is someone you could be friends with and live the high life, for a while. Until he gets it in his head you're just mooching off him or you're going to betray him. Then he'll kill you.

Freeze is cold (no pun intended, he claims to be emotionally cold) and would spend all of his time focusing on his wife. Not a good friend. Hes a nice guy, once rehabilitated, though.

Catwoman would probably be your best friend, since she's the least crazy.

Croc would probably be a fine friend. Clayface, might be fine, after he's accepted his current state. Riddler would be a condescending jerk. Two Face would be a massive grump, on his best days. Ivy seems like she'd be legitimately cool. Scarecrow would either make you a partner in scaring others or you're just another victim. Hatter can't handle friends he's not mind controlling. Bane would be... acceptable? Firefly usually seems like a creep. Ra's behaves civil most of the time, so you can guess what his friendship would be like.


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

[User]
[WH40k] Is "Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows" literal?

If I cut my hand and it bleeds a lot does that please Khorne?

Does menstruation please Khorne or is that more Nurgle's or even Slaanesh's domain?

[Assistant]
No, it's not literal in that sense.  It's literal in the sense of "Khorne doesn't care about the fight, just that there is one."

If two Imperials get into a knife fight, Khorne's down to clown.  If a Heretic cuts himself making the steak dinner for the night, he doesn't even see it.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Why don't people just spam stupefy and bombarda when duelling?

I was rereading Harry Potter and it seems like there's quite a variety of spells being cast in battle. For example, the leg-locker curse and the jelly-brain jinx.

I know Avada cannot be successfully cast unless the person is intending to kill. That being said, why don't DA and the Death Easters just spam stupefy (to capture) and bombarda (to ham)? Why is there such a large variety of seemingly less effective spells?

[Assistant]
Something to consider is that versions of protego are able to stop stupefy and bombarda.

If you look at more complex duels like Voldemort and dumbledore in the ministry, its harder to protect yourself from things that are out of the ordinary like being engulfed by a sphere of water.

The more atypical a spell the less likely it is to be easy to thwart.


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

[User]
Can someone explain Port Forwarding?

I've done some googling and port forwarding sounds a lot like stuff computers and routers already do, no? Mail, file transfer, and htt protocols  access specific ports to do their jobs. I'm just confused on why you need to mess with this in your router/modem settings.

[Assistant]
Devices on a home network are not given public IP addresses. Instead, the modem has a public IP and the router handles all communication between internal devices (ie your phone or laptop) and the external internet. That means if you have, say, a webserver running on a local network (like on a laptop on your home network), you cannot connect to that server without also being on the home network. But the modem DOES have a public IP (which is how it interacts with the internet). So, if you wanted to access that webserver from outside the network, you can tell your router to forward all traffic on a specific port (s) to a specific internal IP (like the webserver). That way, you can send a request to the MODEM public IP on the given port, and the router will then forward that traffic to the webserver.

tldr: port forwarding is a way to get access to a device on a private network from outside of the network.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do some people feel the cold a lot more than others?

[Assistant] Most of it has to do with the ratio of body mass (which generates heat) to skin surface area (which sheds extra heat). Someone who weighs 100 kilos will generate about twice as much heat as someone who weighs 50 kilos but they won't have twice as much skin exposed. So, they will tend to be hotter because their ratio is higher.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do download speeds start slow and reach full speed later on instead of your full download speed right away?

[Assistant]
The internet protocols, particularly the transmissions control protocol, AKA TCP, are designed to probe and understand the link as they go.

So it starts by sending one packet, and if that package gets through it sends two, and if those packets gets through it sends three, this is called the window size. It's the amount of data that's allowed to be in flight but not yet verified.

If it sent it as fast as it could all at once, but it turned out the link could not handle that speed, it would have to send it again, and again.

And to allow for momentary outages if something doesn't arrive as expected, the width falls back in half.

So if your in-flight window is eight packets wide, and one of them doesn't get through, the link will fall back to four packets. And if the four packets get through then it'll increase to five, then six and so on. If it falls back to four and the one of those four doesn't get through it will fall back to two.

The entire purpose of this is to allow the internet to continue to function somewhat fairly as it encounters damage and other problems.

So just like an accelerating car, the protocols are designed to accelerate the flow to get as close to optimally full pipelines as possible without actually causing turbulent failures due to over stressing the various links.

Basically as the stream proves itself the stream utilization increases. If the stream fails it fails quickly.

If it sent all the data all at once at full speed, and the first packet failed then you would have to send all the data you'd sent again, and that would cut your bandwidth in half effectively.

So it's better to sensitively find the boundaries of available flow rather than just keeping on trying to drive a Mack truck through a bicycle lane.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why do ships engaging in space combat align side by side?

Would it not be more advantageous to align your broadside (where the heavier guns are located) towards the back, underneath, or front of an enemy vessel instead of subjecting yourself to broadside to broadside combat? The methods of attack we often see deployed involve, for the most part, battles that take place on the same 2D plane, as if the ships were floating in water. I find this unimaginative from a military command standpoint. We should expect all sorts of angles of attack in a 3D space battle, yet rarely see it pan out this way with the exception of smaller starfighters.

[Assistant] You also have to remember the computer is editing the few thousand miles between you and your allies. You arent actually that close, the crewman running the logistics and firing paths see a much different map of the battlefield. For the rest of the crew its important to see the battle as a whole and not spread out over massive distances.


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

[User]
ELI5 why does higher pressure air move to lower pressure areas?

So first off, I'm a mechanical engineer and understand as a common sense POV that compressed air, when introduced to a larger volume will decompress as the gas fills the larger container...but why? Fundamentally...why does the gas decompress to fill the larger volume?

My fiance asked me "why does the higher pressure go to the lower pressure" when I was explaining the concept of lift due to the shape of an airfoil, and I couldn't give her an answer besides "because it does"

There has to be a more detailed explanation out there right? I can't believe I went through all those years of school and can't give a better explanation and it's driving me insane.

[Assistant]
It helps to remember that "pressure" is really just the result of air molecules bouncing off things. Higher pressure = more molecules = more bouncing.

Imagine a box with a partition in the middle, high pressure on one side and low pressure on the other. Lots of molecules are bounding off one side, fewer on the other side, and the partition feels a net force away from the high pressure side.

Now we magically remove the partition...there are air molecules heading from the low pressure to the high pressure side, and from the high pressure to the low pressure side. \*But there are more going in one direction than the other". This causes the boundary between the high and low pressure areas to move towards the low pressure side as more molecules head that way than the other. This continues until everything evens out and you have equal numbers of molecules going in all directions again.


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

[User]
Do insects experience pain in the same way we do?

For instance, would a bee have a similar experience to a human if their leg was torn off?

[Assistant]
One problem with the question is that pain research often tosses "perception of potentially harmful stimuli" in the same pot as "suffering".

Many very simple organisms have ways to perceive and react to things that might hurt them. A bee doesn't like to be squeezed and will sting in defense if it gets too bad. A simple coral will notice touch and withdraw from it. Even plants react to damage.

What they don't have is the higher capacity to think and worry about those experiences. It happens, seems to be uncomfortable, the animal tries to get out of the situation, but they don't seem to develop a lasting "fear" or often even just a strategy to avoid the same situation from happening again.

A big part of what turns pain into suffering is the brain's ability to simulate the future. We can expect that something will hurt, we can fear it, we can imagine how bad things could get. We worry. Simple animals don't.

Context matters a lot to humans. The pain after a good workout can feel good, while the same amount of pain after an accident can have us suffering. It's very difficult to test for such processes in animals. You can check their bodies for special pain transmitting nerves, or chemical changes to damage, but that doesn't say anything about their ability to interpret the sensation beyond reflexes to move away.


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

[User] ELI5: What makes a beer belly how it is, round and hard? What makes it different from a normal stomach or a soft(fat) stomach?

[Assistant]
If you stab your belly with a knife, first you will cut the skin, then subcutaneous fat, then your abdominal muscles, then visceral fat, then your organs.

That means if you press your belly and feel softness, you are pressing against your subcutaneous fat. Cutaneous means skin, and subcutaneous means below the skin. If you press against your belly and feel something hard, you are pushing against your muscles.

If you have a big belly, but it's hard that means that you have a lot of visceral fat. Visceral means deep. It feels hard because you are pressing the muscle, but there's a lot of fat behind the muscle which causes your gut to bulge.

This visceral fat is very dangerous. It's right next to your organs, so it can "spill into them". You can get non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, for example. Visceral fat is the thing most associated with heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, etc. In fact, measuring your waist size is probably even better than measuring your weight or BMI.

Drinking alcohol causes beer bellies. Taking in a lot of calories causes beer bellies. And most importantly, genetics causes beer bellies. Asian people tend to store their weight in their belly, which means they can get heart attacks at far lower BMIs than other races.

Fortunately, even though visceral fat is the most dangerous kind of fat, it's the easiest to lose. Cardio like running, swimming, cycling can melt away visceral fat. It's the first kind of fat to go.

As a last thing, sometimes people say that if you have a lot of visceral fat, you are apple shaped. Your gut is big and your arms and legs are small. If you have a lot of subcutaneous fat (especially in your thighs) you are pear shaped.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is glass called a liquid?

I know about surface tension and viscosity are things, but how and what kinds of glass are liquids?

[Assistant] It's wrong, a common fallacy. People noticed that old windows were thicker at the bottom, and wavy, and assumed they were slowly flowing downward. This is incorrect; builders of old windows just made them this way.


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

[User]
Regarding interstellar colonization: Is it possible to find a nebula with an earth-like atmosphere?

I was thinking about this the other day and wondered that if we can find planets with our technology why haven't we tried finding a nebula like our atmosphere?

[Assistant]
Firstly, nebulae are really, really low density - more than 10^(14) times less dense than our atmosphere. That is considered an excellent laboratory vacuum here on Earth! As you can imagine, you wouldn't do very well when put into a lab vacuum chamber...

The Earth's atmosphere has also been heavily affected due to it being a rocky planet - we've collected lots of heavier elements (notably Nitrogen and Oxygen), but are relatively devoid of Hydrogen and Helium, because they just float off into space. This means that we've sifted out the heavier elements over a long period of time - this doesn't occur in a gas cloud, meaning that they are still mainly composed of Hydrogen and Helium.


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

[User]
[Fallout] How do the Brotherhood/Minutemen feel about slavery?

Like, I'm role-playing as the Minutemen General in Fo4 and using them as auxiliaries for the Brotherhood. In my headcanon, the Minutemen probably take prisoners rather than killing every raider they find.

So, that means, you have prisoners, and a lot of building to do, right?

So... I mean, I can imagine some kind of judicial system sentencing them to "hard labor," a common sentence in 1700's America (specifically, Ben Franklin used it to punish people who'd tried to escape to live with Native Americans).

What would the Brotherhood feel about that?

[Assistant]
The minuteman are 100% against slavery, but wouldnt consider prison labor as slavery.

Prison are costly and take manpower to run, with an all volunteer militia the minutemen would probably have detainment cells but wouldnt keep prisoners long term.

Floggings, banishment and death are probably the minutemens most common form of punishment, they just dont have the resources to run prison labor.


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

[User]
How small of a hole can light shine through?

Can it shine through a hole that is one atom wide?

[Assistant]
Generally speaking, you would want a hole to be at least the size of the wavelength of light (about 500nm for visible light) in order to transmit light.  It is possible to transmit light through smaller holes, but usually extraordinary measures need to be taken to do this.

In your day to day life, your microwave has a metal screen that blocks the microwave light from exiting the oven.  You can see how big the gaps are, but the microwave light can't get through.


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

[User]
I believe that Daylight Savings Time (DST) is convenient and necessary. CMV

The point of daylight savings is to make our numeric time cycle fit with the Sun's time cycle. In other words, standardize the time of day in which the sun is shining. This way, people and businesses can keep their operating hours steady without working in the dark, and less electricity is used.

Most arguments I've heard against it pertain to the inconvenience of changing clocks and accounting for gained/lost hour, but with most clocks being digital and synced up to DST nowadays, that's becoming less and less of a problem. And besides, one day of inconvenience in exchange for a whole season of "correct" daylight seems like a pretty good deal to me.

[Assistant]
Well in today's working conditions, actual daylight is relatively unimportant. Most working people do not actually require daylight to do their work.

What is growing in importance though, is cross border communication. Companies with offices and businesses in different parts of the world all need to coordinate. That's why many places uses gmt as some sort of "standard" time. Daylight savings time introduces an additional layer of confusion to global coordination.

Additionally, not all countries practice dst, which makes it even harder to coordinate because the concept may be foreign to some.

The usage of time zones has already diluted the importance of the position of the sun as indicator of time. I.e. In most parts of the world, the sun is not precisely overhead at its highest point at 12noon. Why introduce this additional correctional factor to undermine an already working system.

At the end of the day, light dependent industries can simply move their working hours an hour back or ahead at their ~~desecration~~discretion which allows them to maximize their light working hours, which will not affect coordination with the rest of the world.

edit: discretion. Industries don't get destroyed by light.


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

[User] [Marvel] How complicated is it to operate Tony's suit? Could any of the other Avengers (or anyone else for that matter) wear it without much training?

[Assistant] When Jim Rhodes first wore the Iron Man armor back in 1983ish, he just put it on.  It worked fine for a few months, but then he started to get headaches because the helmet was geared for Tony's brainwaves.


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

[User]
[Star Wars]Why energy weapons don't behave like lasers should?

Why blasters in star wars don't shoot continuous beams, like lasers in real world.

[Assistant]
I think officially the Expanded Universe stuff claims that the use of the words "lasers" and "turbolasers" is a misnomomer that just got popular in-universe and that in fact, like blaster sidearms, they're not lasers at all.

What, exactly, blasters are is one of those hard things to pin down.  Some Expanded Universe stuff describes them as particle beams, other stuff describes them as plasma guns.  The latter seems marginally more believable, particle beams should move near light speed while a plasma projectors wouldn't have to.


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

[User]
ELI5 What exactly is Technicolor? How did it work, and why did the industry stop using it?

I was watching the 1977 horror film Suspiria, which was filmed in technicolor.  It is an incredibly beautiful film, in no small part due to the vivid and intense color. I'm curious as to how technicolor and regular film differ - what makes technicolor so vibrant?

[Assistant]
Technicolor is a photographic process used to make copies of a photographic film, usually in the movie industry to make prints of an original film for use by cinemas. It can also refer to the brand of movie cameras that used a three strips of black-and-white film with filters to produce color images, rather than the three-color film strips introduced in the mid-1930s.

Technicolor uses a dye transfer process that, although producing more vivid colors, was slower and more expensive than it's competitor processes developed by Eastman Kodak (which used . As movie theaters became more prevalent, more prints of movies were needed, and the speed/cost negatives became large enough obstacles to force the switch. Switching also allowed studios to purchase their cameras, instead of renting them from Technicolor as they were forced to do.

Interestingly, Suspiria was the last film ever to be printed in a Technicolor lab.


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

[User]
Do orbital physics mean that dog fights in space are impossible?

I was wondering if orbital physics would prevent Star Wars-esq dog fights in space.

Would the fighters or whatever not have to travel along orbital paths, meaning that the idea of manoeuvring in three dimensions becomes totally different from what we see in movies/games/books?

[Assistant] AFAIK it's possible, given that you have *incredibly* powerful RCS and extremely good engines mounted basically everywhere. Oh, and you find some way around the fact that with that kind of cargo and engine power, you probably have fuel for a minute or two of flight. Basically, it's insanely hard, not quite impossible.


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

[User]
Why can I listen to a certain radio station only when outside temperature is really low (-20 C/ -4 F)?

It's the heart of winter here in Finland, temperatures around -20 C and stuff. I noticed that a certain radio station, which can not usually be heard where I live, has suddenly become available.

So my question is: Do radio waves 'go further' in subzero temperatures and why does this happen? My friends speculated that the phenomenon has something to do with air humidity ('dry air') and thus electrical conductivity of air.

[Assistant] The ionosphere has a different composition at night then during the day due to the sun's rays not hitting it at night. Finland is very far North, and being the winter time the ionosphere is hit by very limited sun rays. The Ionosphere reflects certain radio waves, thus allowing you to hear stations from much farther away in the night time; which happens to be pretty much all the time if you live in Finland in the winter.


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

[User] If we had a Duodecimal (12-base) number system, would the prime numbers be in the same place?

[Assistant] The primality of a number is a property of the number and not of its representation in any given number system; if you list the numbers in order starting with 1, then the second, third, fifth, seventh, eleventh, and so on numbers listed will be prime, regardless of what symbols you use to identify those numbers.


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

[User] Would LIGO results improve if there were a third branch perpendicular to the existing two?

[Assistant] Yes, you would have increased sensitivity to some waves that do not propagate in the correct orientation to the current setup. However as it would have to be built directly into the ground, or into the sky, that seems unlikely.


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

[User]
ELI5 what is student debt and why is it such a big thing in the US

I'm a french redditor and everybody mentions this thing called student debt in some subreddits. I tried googling it, I got no clear explanation.

[Assistant]
In the past, if you went to college in the US, you were pretty much promised an above-average job with a decent salary. There was also a strong stigma against manual labor jobs (mainly because they become far worse as your body ages) and a lot of praise for office jobs for how much money you could make in some fields.

In the 90's, the generation that grew up on these ideals had kids and wanted them all to go to college. All of them. So suddenly massive amounts of kids were being pushed into college.

The colleges reacted by raising their prices. Sometimes this was justified: they had many more students so they needed more dorms, more food, more teachers. But ultimately, college prices went out of control.

The parents still wanted to send their kids to college (thinking it was how they'd get a good job still) and decided to take out loans to pay for their school.

BUT these loans were taken out on behalf of the kids so the loans were in their kid's names (in most cases anyway).

All at once, a lot of kids with college degrees flooded the job market. Employers now had millions of applicants with college degrees. In the past, they'd have many applicants but one or two would be college educated. Now...everyone had one.

This meant that the college degrees lost a lot of value. Since everyone had one, it stopped being special. There *are* plenty of degrees that are still useful and that you needed in your field (medical, legal, financial, computer science), but a lot of kids (myself included) were told that they'd be fine no matter what degree they got. And many were misguided by the college system (who wanted money more than for their student's to be well-prepared for the ever-changing job market).

And of course, it's super easy to argue that a teenager, with no real world experience, shouldn't be making a decision that will cost them tens of thousands of dollars, that will also greatly impact the course their career.

So now...we've got a lot of kids with degrees that may or may not be useful. They can't get a job in the field they studied for. Well, they can still get low paying jobs in another field just to make ends met. No big deal right?

WRONG! Remember those loans? That doesn't go anywhere. These young adults suddenly have a lot of debt to pay off.

If their degree/career didn't pan out, debt.

If they have a great job and make decent money, debt.

If they have a medical degree and become a doctor and start their own private practice and make great money, debt (the average US doctor pays their loans off after 10 years).

We now have a huge generation of young people saddled with massive debt with no way to get rid of it and few ways to improve their circumstances. There's no real way they can afford bigger investments like a house/condo since they're constantly paying towards debt. A missed payment does horrible things to your credit score, a lack of disposable income screws up your livelihood and social/romantic life, and without skills to get a job that can pay the debt off the debt just gets worse. Best case scenario is that the debt takes years and years to pay off with no missed payments and it's still a massive source of stress in a person's life.


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

[User]
CMV: We shouldn't worry that much about North Korea attacking us

After reading an article about how North Korea may have a working ICBM by next year, I'm not still convinced anyone has the balls to pull the trigger. I'm basing this solely off of the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction. Surely they must know anything they hit us with the US can hit them harder? Honestly that's my entire argument. Maybe weak, but seriously, this would be a lose lose situation for everyone involved. No one had the balls during the Cold War and I don't think Kim Jong Un has the balls now.

[Assistant]
North Korea directly attacking the United States is extremely unlikely, however that's not the issue.

The issue is North Korea attacking *South Korea* and using their nuclear weapons(MAD) to ensure that the United States and her allies aren't able to effectively respond, without the threat of nuclear war.


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

[User]
How thick does a piece of glass have to be before light cannot travel through it?

I was looking at a window today, and realised that the window must block some light, so I was wondering how thick a piece of glass would have to be before no light would make it from one end to the other.

[Assistant] The best (clearest) glass is the high-quality fused silica inside the optical fibers used for telecommunications.  These are amazingly clear -- they attenuate light (at 1.5 micron wavelength -- a wavelength the human eye can't see) at a rate of 0.2 dB/km.  At that rate, considering a reasonably bright light (1 mW) and the fact that we can usually see light about a factor of a million weaker (about 1 nW), light can travel 300 km (190 mi) before you wouldn't be able to see it any more.  At the red end of the visible spectrum where the attenuation is around 5 dB/km, if you pointed a red laser pointer in one end of the fiber, you'd still be able to see it after about 12 km (7.5 mi)!


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

[User] Can you teach a nave and inexperienced person to be more skeptical and discerning about information presented to them? How?

[Assistant] If theyre inclined to learn theyre only going to ever learn how to be discerning by having the rug pulled out from underneath them. Then you show them how they could have reasoned the rug away themselves.


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

[User] [Spider-Man PS4] If Spider-Man's webs dissolve in a few hours, how did his backpacks stay stuck to things for so long?

[Assistant] He mentions in a couple of the side missions that he's got different web formulas for different purposes - the stuff he uses for zipping is different than the stuff he uses for swinging, for example. It's not out of the question that he developed a variety that would last years instead of just hours.


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

[User]
[Super heroes] How different are laws in these stories? In these stories a super hero can assault, detain, and send the accused to jail even. In the real world it's considered quite illegal... So, what are the legal differences in well... any of these stories?

From Marvel, to DC, to Icon to movies or videogames? How do you think these stories deal with the legal impact of vigilantism being not only common but popular?

[Assistant] I think in some stories vigilantes have agreements with local governments/police precincts, like theyve been deputized. The Avengers and The Justice League (Modern mainstream comics and animated movies) are private organisations with government liaisons that coordinate their efforts with the government, so at least on that level there a cooperational precedent.


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

[User]
I believe that just like we have licenses for driving there should be a license for having a child. CMV

Let's face it. Humanity is broadening the gap between them and the rest of the animal kingdom. We are on the top of the food chain and there are over 7 billion of us: reproduction is not about survival anymore. There are way too many of us for children to just be spouting out of their moms vaginas every 5 seconds.

If we require licenses for things such as driving a vehicle or being a practicing doctor, why don't we require it for raising a human being?

I don't believe reproduction/conception is a miracle. If anything, it's the phenomenon furthest away from a miracle: it happens every day in every part of the world, and can be done by every single living thing - AND we know how it all works.
Birth is no miracle. Birth is the most common behavior amongst all living things.

We live in a world where we put laws and regulations on every day life. So if a life of a human being is SO important, why are we just making them by the bucketful?

Many are unwanted. Many cannot be raised in the social-economic status they were born in. Many are mistreated, permanently scarred mentally and physically, or even die because certain people are just not fit to be good parents in the modern day world.
So why are we letting new life be born into a world that will not be adequate for them?

If the government is going to put a restriction on what plants I can or cannot set on fire, or where and where not it's appropriate for me to open a beer, OR WHETHER IT'S LEGAL OR NOT TO WALK AS MOTHER NATURE PUT ME IN THIS PLANET AND BE NAKED, I think they have all the right to put a regulation on whether or not I'm fit to have a child that will grow with adequate resources and shelter, good education, morals, love, etc.

If licenses were required, all children would be born in what would be an almost perfect scenario for them to grow healthy and have a successful future. Not only this, but licensing birth would also hav ea huge impact on third world countries. World poverty could become manageable. Diseases could be controlled. There would be no adoption centers. Every child would have a wonderful upbringing - which in turn means wonderful lives as adults.

In all honesty, I think if we ever want to make any solid advances as an "intelligent species", one of the first things we gotta change is  that just because you can make a baby doesn't mean you're fit to be a parent.

EDIT: Consequences would be to terminate the life of the baby either during pregnancy (if detected during) or right at birth. Maybe the age cap would be 1 or 2 years old in the case of a hiding mother. This procedure could be law in hospitals.
Poor countries where birth often occurs at home and not in hospitals: Well, that would be hard to work around with. But it can be done.
Just look at the one-child policy in China.

EDIT 2:  YES IT WILL BE UNCONSTITUTIONAL. YES IT WILL MOSTLY HAPPEN UNDER TOTALITARIAN GOVERNMENTS. I SEE NO PROBLEM IN THIS SINCE IT'S LOOKING OUT FOR NEW LIFE.

EDIT 3: I really enjoy all the arguments that go for freedom of one's body or those that go against more government regulation. But I truly believe these are all in favor of the parents, not the child. I'm trying to picture a world in which every child grows in above average conditions (mentally and physically... not necessarily economically), but all I get back is people fighting for whatever mothers want. I don't think we should be focusing on what is better for the parents, but what is better for the new life.

EDIT 4: I am learning a lot from you guys, but I've yet to be even slightly convinced otherwise. Thank you to those who quote sources and refute with hard-on facts. I didn't create this thread to be an asshole whose mind cannot be changed. I like to learn.

EDIT 5: now opinions are starting to get like "you're sick and killing babies is WRAWNG." yes well would you tell me why you hold this view? it would be easier to reply to you and have a debate that way.

EDIT6: I try not to call this eugenics since I'm not choosing on basis of genetics. But rather mental health and availability to provide resources.

also i'm a girl.

[Assistant]
Your philosophy literally boils down to "kill the poor."

The thing about eugenics is that not only has it been proven to be ineffective, it also relies on somebody setting the standards. And, of course, the person proposing it always presupposes that they would pass whatever bar is set.


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

[User]
ELI5: What happens when you feel a muscle twitch, but it doesn't appear to twitch outwardly, or when you touch that area of the body?

Surely everyone's had that weird phenomenon, you feel like a tiny thread of muscle in your eyebrow is just twitching. You feel like if you looked in a mirror right now, your eyebrows would be twerking around like in that Cadbury ad - but you go and look and nothing, your skin is completely flat, nothing twitches, but you can feel it. You touch it, and the skin and muscle underneath it doesn't move, your finger feels nothing, but you FEEL it.

It's like my brain is playing a trick on me, and I want to know why. Is it just one random neuron that's dying, or having a neuronal seizure or something? Is it psychosomatic?

EDIT: Should probably clarify that this happens extremely rarely, and I'm not concerned about it in any way at all, it happens to people I know sometimes as well, it's just a weird thing the body does sometimes, it's never caused anyone any concern.

[Assistant]
You're probably feeling a muscle fasciculation. Which is just a few fibers in the muscle twitching. It's so small you won't see on a big scale, but you will be able to feel it.

Most of the time it's normal. If you've sustained a nerve injury due to trauma, the muscle can twitch as well, and you'll need to do special tests to detect those twitches.


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

[User]
If corporate profits are at a all time high. Than why is the stock market plunging?

Isnt the stock market mostly an indicator of how well corporations are doing? If they are doing well than why is the stock market falling at unprecedented rates?

[Assistant]
Markets are forward looking. Investors and speculators see that things will be worse in the future. That affects corporate profits now.

Remember that companies borrow a lot. They also often borrow at variable interest rates. As a result, their borrowing cost will rise significantly. Bank borrow and lend. In the US however, they usually lend at fixed interest rates for home loans. So, the mortgage payments banks are getting are falling in value due to inflation, but banks can't compensate by increasing interest rates.

Then there's leverage. Many investors use leverage to obtain higher returns. Those loans are also variable rate. They have become sharply more expensive because of the Fed interest rate rises.

Lastly, there's bonds which are an alternative to shares. The rate rises have made bonds much more attractive. 15 year US government bonds yield nearly 4%. Compare that to the shares of a company that gives no growth, those may also yield 4%. So, why buy a share - which comes with risk - when you can buy the bond?


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

[User]
How in the heck do I find a good postdoc?!

I am a PhD candidate in Pharmacology and Toxicology, specializing in environmental toxicology (specifically xenobiotic metabolism, disposition, and toxicokinetics). Ultimately, I would love to stay in academia, but if I needed to I want to be marketable as a research toxicologist as well. Is there some magic way to find people who take postdocs in my discipline? Or, is there something better than finding faculty who do research I am interested in and emailing them? Any info is greatly appreciated.

[Assistant]
you can search job postings on message boards, companies and govt. agencies.

most academic post docs are obtained by cold-emailing your CV, research summary etc., networking through your PI, at your current institution or meeting professors at conferences.

make a list of papers youve liked and research areas and who does that work, talk with your current boss and email them. email about 3-4 each round. theyll say no really fast if they dont have space, money or interest. then keep going til someone responds!
you can look at their websites and see how many people they have and you can also search grant databases to see if they have active grants.