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

[User]
Does anyone know why the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't report wages over $100/hour?

It just has a # symbol in the downloadable data or a footnote on the occupation's page on the website indicating that the wage is over $100/hour or the annual salary is over $208k/year.

[Assistant] For publicly available datasets, the answer will almost always be that there are few enough people in the category to make them individually identifiable from the data that is publicly available. E.g. if you combined that wage data with other data available from BLS you would have a high probability of being able to figure out exactly who was surveyed.


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

[User] eli5: Waves come in at New York, and waves come in at Europe. What happens in the middle?

[Assistant]
Waves are not current.  Waves are really just pulses of energy and can pass through each other.  They are mostly generated by wind.  They can reflect and refract like light.

In the middle of the ocean, most of the waves travel in the direction of the wind.  When the wind changes direction, the already generated waves will keep traveling in the same direction (and will eventually dissipate) and it will start generating waves in a different direction.  As a result, the open ocean has sets of waves traveling in several directions.  Form the perspective of a small boat, there will be a main swell and then "under" it, you can usually notice secondary swells traveling in different directions.

Waves go slower in shallower water.  Like light entering a lens, this causes the waves to turn towards shore.  As a result, any waves traveling at an angle towards the beach will get steered straight towards it.


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

[User]
[DC/LoTR] Could Dr. Manhattan, at the height of his aloofness, resist The Ring?

The Doc's own powers don't give The Ring much bargaining leverage, and his disillusion with humanity makes it seem like he couldn't be appealed to with delusions of grandeur.

[Assistant]
He returned from Mars because he cared. Adrian pointed out that Jon had regained interest in human affairs, and he didn't disagree.

Tolkien was exactly on point when he said Frodo was the best possible candidate for resisting the ring. Assuming Sauron's magic is strong enough to affect him, Jon would be straight up spellbound.


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

[User]
[Superheroes] So, I'm a giant destructive monster. What now?

Good news! I won the genetic lottery and I just developed superpowers!

Bad News! I'm 50 ft tall, covered in missile-proof chitin and have a mass of biological armaments, and everyone is running away screaming for superheroes. I'm trying not to hurt anyone, but I'm 50ft tall and I'm pretty sure super strong, so if things continue I'm absolutely going to hurt lots of people. Don't think I can turn back.

Help? How do i get people to see that me, the monster wrecking the city, is in fact a peaceful soul trapped in the body of a monster wrecking the city? Can I get a message across to the superheroes that I'm not here to wreck things? Is there a place I can go where I won't accidentally murder entire towns through clumsiness?

What do I do, guys? This is realyl becoming a problem.

[Assistant]
There was a science fiction story about a human who crash landed onto an alien world and was thrown from his space craft. His injuries 99% paralyzed him from the neck down, and was going to die.

Then he heard a voice. It spoke to him, and eventually he realized he was speaking telepathically with a tiny creature near him the size of one of his eyelashes.

He was just a space man, a pilot. Not a scientist, so he only knew so much and could only instruct the little creatures so much. They brought him food and water, and did everything they could to keep him alive.

He even lived for a few decades after that, and he taught them what he could, elevating them from stone age to bronze and beyond. Their lives were much shorter than a human's, and it was generations after generations of these little eyelash creatures that cared for him before he died.

He made sure they knew he wasn't a god, just a different form of life, with just a much longer life span than theirs.

His last thought was of a tombstone for his grave, and despite it being an incredibly expensive thing, the eyelash creatures made him one after he passed.

You're like that human, and now humans are like those little eyelash creatures, to you.

You can't be killed. Your very movements could kill.

So: take a walk to an un-populated area, brush a flat area clean, write your name in the ground, and lie down next to it.

Humans are clever. They'll find a way to communicate.


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

[User]
Is it possible that all elements are radioactive at some point -- even if it took the age of the universe for just one atom to decay?

How do we know that all elements aren't radioactive?  It seems rather arbitrary that some elements are radioactive while others are not.  Wouldn't proton decay be a form of radioactivity?  What makes one element radioactive while another element or different isotope is not?

[Assistant]
The possibility of proton decay is one of the biggest questions in science. They have been able to put lower limits of 10^34 years as the half life of the proton.  Is the proton stable or does it have a really long half life?  We don't know yet.  Of course that also makes us wonder if the proton in other elements will decay after a ridiculously long time, making them radioactive as well.

Just for comparison, the longest measured half life is for Tellurium-128 which has a half life of 7.7 x 10^24 years, and the age of the universe is 13.8 x 10^9 years.

As for why are certain isotopes radioactive while others are stable?  Are the sum of the decay products less massive than the original nucleus?  If yes, then it will decay. You can think of putting balls (nuclei) around a hilly area.  If they are at a high potential (top of the hill) they will decay (roll down) to a more stable position at lower potential energy (the valley).


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

[User]
How did older spacecraft take and develop photographs and then beam them back to Earth?

For example, how did Voyager 1 take such awesome pictures of Saturn? I'm assuming the photographs were taken on film. Are there photochemicals onboard the spacecraft to develop AND a scanner to turn them into digital info for transmission?

Were the cameras actually just really early digital models?

[Assistant]
Early spy satellites would take shots on film and then send the film back to earth in a pod and it would then be developed.

The cameras on the Voyager craft were similar to TV cameras of the day and were in a way between modern digital cameras and film based cameras. The data they recorded was sent in a digital 8bit format but the way the cameras operated was analogue.


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

[User]
Is it possible to synthesize an atom above atomic number 118, where the current periodic table "ends"?

This would require another orbital, correct?

Also, should element 118 be considered a Noble gas?

[Assistant]
Yes- possible, but very difficult. Right now we don't have the techniques to make them. We would expect no. 118 to behave as a noble gas, since it would have analogous electronic structure to the other noble gases (full valence).

As a side note, physicists have theorized that there is an "Island of stability", or group of elements with much higher atomic numbers that have longer half lives than the largest atoms we have currently synthesized. These elements would have particular numbers of protons and neutrons that provide special energetic stability.

Great question!


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

[User] Why is your mouth much more sensitive to cold water after brushing your teeth or chewing mint gum?

[Assistant] the culprit is a protein called "TRPM8". It's ion channel is the main molecular transducer of cold sensations in your mouth. It can however also be activated by the presence of menthol which is found in mints and tooth paste for that "cool & fresh" feeling. So if you drink cold water after chewing mint gum you'll get the double sensation as the protein is activated by temperature and the menthol molecules.


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

[User] [Star Trek] Why don't ships from Star Trek use fighters in they're space/fleet battles?

[Assistant]
You've hit upon the legendary "fighters vs missiles" debate in science fiction.

The short version is that fighters often don't make practical sense in most science fiction settings.  If you want a small craft loaded with weapons, you don't want to put all the equipment necessary to keep a human alive on it, you just want weapons, targeting computers, and engines.  Beyond that, a human doesnt really add anything to the fighter craft, since the computers are going to be making all of the decisions anyways.  As a result, in any situation where the Federation might launch a fighter craft, they just fire a photon torpedo instead.

That said, the federation *does* have smaller vessels with life support and weapons, but they're for transportation (shuttles) or longer term missions (the Defiant).


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

[User] ELI5: Why did Wall Street crash in 1929 and why did it affect the whole world?

[Assistant]
To give insight on how "buying on margin" worked:

Let's say you wanted to buy $10,000 worth of stock. In the 1920s you could do this with a $1,000 down payment and signing a note for the remaining $9,000 with your brokerage or a bank.

The 1920s were an exceptional boom time in the US. Electricity was going in everywhere, lavish excess, home building, agricultural innovations, cars, new technology everywhere. In fact not until the 1990s did America see that kind of economic growth again.

Anyway the markets are going up so now your $10,000 investment is at $12,000. A 20% gain is not unheard of, but buying on margin (remember only $1,000 of your money is in the game) makes this a 200% gain. You pay back your note and get $3,000 back on your $1,000 investment. 200%+ returns means EVERYONE is getting in the game, because why the hell not!?

This is all fine and dandy but what goes up must come down and when it did all that fake money in the markets imploded.


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

[User]
Is it far that my PI expects the some students to work over the weekend/holidays when the some students basically get the same days off?

About half of the research group are composed of religious shabbat-observing Jews. PI pesters the non-religious students and the foreign students to work over the weekends and is also somehow ok with the religious students to remain quiet over the same time period.

Is this acceptable behavior?

[Assistant] Stop worrying about other people. Really no one should be forced to work over the weekends, but he certainly can't force observant religious students to work on Shabbat. No one should have to violate their religious beliefs in order to do their PhD.


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

[User]
[Fallout] Where are the cats?

Fallout is famous for its post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland, however one of my favorite species is just gone, poof.

[Assistant]
You know how cats will sometimes sprint madly into another room, stop and stare at a blank spot in space?

The FEV finally accelerated their latent psychic talents to the point where they could predict the wormholes with enough lead time that they all caught their rides off world. Every last feline has left the planet.


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

[User] ELI5:What exactly is shadow banking?

[Assistant]
Shadow banking is the collective term for organizations that offer bank like services, but aren't regulated as banks.

Because banks take deposits from the public, they allow multiple people to have a claim on the same money.  This is a very important role banks play in the modern economy, and because of this role, the government has a huge number of regulations that are special for banks.  However, complying with these regulations is expensive.  Traditionally, the margin that deposits provided meant that banks had a pricing advantage against other competitors (these advantages became the source of the term banker's hours).

However, as the costs of compliance rose and liquidity in a few markets improved, the cost advantage of accepting deposits stopped being large enough to keep all competitors out.

Eventually, non-bank firms began to offer bank like products (not deposits which would entail taking on regulation costs) but loans and guarantees.  These firms are not regulated by banks but can offer loans as though they were banks.

An example of a shadow bank that anyone can participate in are lendingclub and prosper, which have grown dramatically during the bank crisis when credit became hard to get for many.

Most shadow banks are firms like insurance companies or hedge funds that thanks to credit default swaps (a way to trade just the credit risk of a loan without the rest of the loan) and futures and swaps (ways to trade the interest rate risk of a loan) to become very important providers of credit to the economy (either through banks or by themselves).

TL;DR.  Non-bank firms that provide loans (or products that allow others to provide cheap loans).  Because they aren't banks, they have much less regulation than a bank would.


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

[User]
[Castlevania Netflix] How many people did Dracula kill with his genocide?

Is there ever a specific number or estimate mentioned? What percentage of Wallachia is likely to have survived?

[Assistant]
A specific number was never given, but likely it wasn't a lot.

Dracula's genocide didn't really last that long, many places were still untouched and it sounded like few even took it seriously.

Likely it was a couple of towns and cities.


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

[User]
If microprocessor manufactures are able to get more transistors on a processor why do they make them smaller?

I understand that power and efficiency are factors they have to consider but if you're looking for all out performance why not make the processor bigger so that you can fit more transistors/cores/memory etc on it to make it faster?

[Assistant]
three things: propagation time, power consumption and (to some extent) price.

The first is that the electrical signal only goes so fast, slightly less than that of the speed of light. This seems fast until you realize that in one clock cycle at 3GHz light only travels 10 centimeters. Chips are usually less than this but once they get larger it can be a significant problem.

Secondly, the capacitance and hence power consumption of a transistor gate decreases with size. lower power consumption is a bonus by itself but it also directly relates to speed because it means you can run it faster before it starts dissipating too much heat for you to remove practically.

Also, although the smaller sizes are expensive to develop, ultimately you can produce more chips on one wafer than you could before, bringing down the price in the long run (this is more relevant on less extreme cases, such as embedded microprocessors)

Also, just adding more cores/transistors/memory doesn't immediatly make the computer faster for most workloads, especially games, since the software cannot effectively make use of increased parallism. Most of the increased transistor count on modern chips goes towards better branch prediction, more instructions, and better caching instead of increasing clock speed, for which you in fact want *less* transistors.


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

[User] [WH40K] One day, without warning, all humanity vanishes from the galaxy along with Chaos. What happens next?

[Assistant] Orks start dying from boredom. Tau can expand, but will eventually get crunched by all the major powers. The Eldar keep going about their business. Ultimately, the galaxy becomes the stage for the epic Tyranid-Necron war.


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

[User]
Is the microbiome of one ear significantly different from the other?

Sometimes I'm guilty of using q-tips. Is there every a chance of cross contamination between ears?

[Assistant]
Medical literature cites a case of a person who only got repeated ear infections in one ear. The infections stopped after the patient took ear wax from their other ear and put it in the ear prone to infection.

There is also such thing as ear wax transplants for people who are prone to ear infections. They take wax from healthy people and transplant it into ears of people prone to infection.

However all these cases seem to indicate that cross contamination of ear biome can be beneficial not harmful. Of course these are all cases of taking "good" earwax and placing it in a biome that is causing problems.

So the question is: do either of your ears have problems? Make sure to always use the cue tip in your good ear first? :)


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

[User]
[Starcraft] In the Brood Wars intro, does the UED drop a detachment of marines just to watch them get eaten by zerglings?

Were they UED soldiers?

Was there mission just so that the officers could be like "wow damn they're getting brutally killed down there, time to leave"?

[Assistant] It was a Dominion colony and therefore Dominion soldiers. As Gerard explains they were there to so Stukov could see how the Zerg operate in action so that he would have real, first-hand experience with the Zerg since they were planning on using them as a weapon against the rogue human colonies.


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

[User]
[X-Men] Can Magneto bend adamantium?

In the first X-Men movie, when Wolverine finds Rogue on the train after she runs away, Magneto comes along to capture her. Magneto uses his powers to restrain Woverine, and appears to actually bend his claws somewhat. Is Magneto powerful enough to actually bend adamantium?

[Assistant]
In the comics, he once removed the adamantium from Wolverine's bones, causing his powers to go into hyper mode and thus transforming him into a beast-like creature for a while.

In the second movie, he says: "Stryker is the only other person besides me who can manipulate adamatium."


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

[User]
How does one distance themself from others worldviews and create their own?

I am a young (20) man, still in the process of developing my fundamental views on basically everything. I cant escape the feeling that things I believe in are not really my ideas, but copies of things Ive read and heard throughout my life. In the spirit of Emerson, I try to analyse and question things I believe and take for granted, but am I not being impressioned by Emerson in that process? When I read works by great minds I cant help but feel their authority and therefore believe them more than doubt them. For example: I read Fromm at the age of 16 and until this day I feel his views on Love become my own, even though Ive found out many other perspectives since then, maybe even more sensible, but its expinentially harder to make soemthing out of them since Fromm is so engraved in me.

I recently picked up Beckers Denial of Death and I am trying hard to distance myself from those worldviews. Its all just theories in the end, what if I am not lead by fear of death but I will start to believe it because of Becker? I think my final question is: how do I read something neutrally, process it objectively, without it influencing me too much? Is it even possible?

[Assistant]
>I am a young (20) man

There's your problem right there. Just read more and grow older, independence doesn't come from avoiding writings for fear of falling under an author's spell, but from reading widely and deeply enough so that the relative pull of one author on you won't be too large. Besides, there's nothing wrong with becoming a disciple for a while.


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

[User]
What happens to the global economy if i burn 1 billion $?

Serious question.

 I study chemistry and I am also decent at physics. So there is this universal low, principle of conservation of energy where if for example i burn something, the energy is released but never lost.

About my question now, if I burn that billion, that means I never actually got to spend it, so it didn't transform into ten houses or something. So is there a gap in global economy?

[Assistant] Current m0 (physical money) dollar supply is 6328 billion, which means you're removing 0.0158% of physical money denominated in dollars. Would argue that this would do nothing because most money isn't cash and its such a small amount. Furthermore a larger amount of dollars get made every year. Now lets just say you remove a significant amount of dollars. Then what would happen? Well you would lose that money. The reserve bank would see that there is a lack of liquidity and do the proper monetary policy to fill the liquidity gap.


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

[User]
[Troll Hunter] How are trolls able to smell the blood of Christians?

Or perhaps the question should be, what makes a Christian's blood have a unique smell that is difficult to mask with troll stench?

It appears that people who are not Christian are generally safer around trolls than those who are. Everyone else in the documentary, the atheists and the Muslim girl, seemed to escape any preferential treatment by the trolls. It seems that there is something about Christians specifically.

[Assistant]
I dunno. Magic, probably. But there's a rational explanation for the sunlight thing so maybe it has something to do with brain chemistry and hormones. Would be nice if we could pay some scientists to figure it out, right?

Could be an evolved trait in response to troll-slaying knights from centuries ago. Or, much scarier, they tell each other stories about it. Perhaps they remember the scent, and are still angry about all the men in bright armor with sharp swords. That would mean that if a troll hunter kills one and lets his friends get away, they might share the tale and figure out how to recognize that same scent of loneliness and depression that comes from an underpaid, overworked civil servant. What if a couple hundred years from now they'd be able to smell the blood of postmen?


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

[User] What was the earliest known relationship between early humans and wolves/dogs, and what did they both stand to gain from the relationship?

[Assistant]
Im not gonna do the fact-finding for you, but it was at least 10,000 years ago.

The branching of wolves and dogs started with some wolves that werent as scared of humans as the other ones were.

The brave ones lived closer to humans. They ate human garbage (bones and food scraps). They began to associate humans with easy food.

Humans who werent scared of the wolves tolerated them hanging around because they didnt bother them. They cleaned up their messes, and kept other, meaner predators away.

Over time these benefits became more and more pronounced and humans actively fed wolves in order to keep them around as protectors. Then companions. And hunting partners. And utility animals.

The friendlier and more cooperative wolves got more special treatment, and over generations they were bred into primitive dogs. Once the dog-human Bond was well established, selective breeding to achieve certain results began, and the oldest breeds were born.


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

[User] ELI5: I read about a "Zip Bomb" today that is a zipped file that is only 42kb when compressed, but unzipped is 45.5 Petabytes. My question is how can so much information be compressed into such a small file size?

[Assistant]
Imagine a file that's literally just 45.5 PB worth of 1s. Like in binary just 1111111111... etc

It's really easy to compress that, yeah? You just say "45.5 PB worth of 1s" and you've got the exact same data in a compressed form.

You want your zip bomb to look legitimate, though, so you alternate more than that so that the compressed form is, say, 42KB.

Any useful data couldn't be so compressed.


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

[User] [Star Wars] What is one thing that should exist in the Star Wars universe, but doesn't?

[Assistant]
Maybe kinetic bombardment?

Taking from the scene in The Force Awakens where Chewie, Finn and Hann use Hyperspace until the last possible moment to get on Starkiller Base...

I don't see why it isn't possible for one faction to loosely outfit an Asteroid with basic ship consoles and a hyperdrive, give it coordinates and program it to stop at a specific point and then blast directly into a planet at super-speeds.

Then again, with how smart and independent some droids seem to be in the Star Wars Universe, whatever AI runs the programing for the Planet Cracker Asteroid would probably refuse, or turn on it's handlers.


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

[User]
[Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3] What happens to the Rings between stages?

Do they only exist for a finite amount of time? Do the animals he rescues take them? Do they get absorbed by Sonic? Where do they all go?

[Assistant] Specifically speaking to the games and not the movies - we know rings are used as a form of currency.  The best guess is that after freeing a bucket of animals, who have been trapped for who knows how long,  Sonic being the good guy as he is gives the animals his left over rings so they can get back on their feet.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is the budget for a cartoonish CGI movie (toy story 3) higher than a realistic CGI movie (Pacific Rim)?

I just gave those as example but overall the costs are pretty equal and Pacific Rim looks very realistic and it was 190 million and toy story 3 was 200 million. I also looked up other realistic ones like Transformers Age of extiction (210million) and avatar (234 million). The last two are more expensive but still in the same ballpark. So why aren't they massively more expensive, they look like they took more time to make?

Captain America Winter Soldier (170 million).

EDIT- Thanks for all the explanations I've marked it as explained.

[Assistant]
Think about it like this - in a movie like Pacific Rim if you need a car in a landscape shot you pick a place to shoot, gather your actors and crew, rent a car, and shoot it.

In an animated movie you have to build the land, the road, the sky, the clouds, your characters, literally everything - then hire your actors to voice the part, pay technicians to make the characters be able to move, pay animators to make them move, this goes on and on...

TL;DR: You literally have to build and move everything.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Where did the name "Millenium Falcon" come from? Are there Earth like animals on this galaxy far far away?

[Assistant]
In works that are still canon, we've seen;

* Ducks on Naboo.

* * Statues of Horses on Naboo (ty, yurkland)

* Rats in Jabbas Dungeon on Tatooine.

* Multiple species of snakes all over the swamps of Dagobah.

We've heard reference to other animals in canon works, like when 3P0 yells out, 'Die, Jedi Dogs' during the battle on Geonosis.

In direct-to-video works of questionable accuracy, the Ewoks were seen to have horses, hamsters, honeybees, chickens, ferrets, fleas, ponies, barn owls, ravens, wild wolves, and really low production values.

In various novelizations, colloquial mentions have been recorded of mineshaft canaries, domesticated cats, hermit crabs, pandas, rabbits (for pulling out of hats as part of live entertainment acts), sharks, pigs, and whooping cranes, but most-if-not-all of those should likely be regarded more as metaphorical translations of colloquial phrases than as actual exact species matches.


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

[User]
ELI5: The Khmer Rouge.

I don't really understand what happened, can anyone break it down for me?

[Assistant]
I fielded an answer to a "Why was the Khmer Rouge so bad/What was the Cambodian genocide?" question a few weeks ago. It follows:

> Wow, where to begin. The Khmer Rouge was a communist revolutionary government in Cambodia in the mid/late 70's. It was founded by a group of largely western-educated Cambodians who entirely rejected concepts of the free market and individual liberties. Instead, they attempted to construct an entirely self-sustaining nation through a rigid regime of top-down social engineering. This included the abolishment of banking, finance, currency, and some religions. People living in urban areas were (often forcibly) moved to the rural areas of the country to work in agriculture (again, often against their will). It was a bold and frankly inhuman stab at what could conceivably be called a "classless" society.

> The genocide came in a number of forms, which included but were not limited to:

> * **Famine.** The urban workers relocated to the fields knew nothing about agriculture, so land was not nearly cultivated to its full potential, resulting in mass famine almost immediately after the regime took control.

> * **Disease.** The Khmer Rouge believed that the country should be autonomous in all respects, including medicine. If the country did not have the resources to produce a certain drug, that drug was entirely unavailable (at least to the non-ruling class). As a result, thousands died to common and preventable diseases.

> * **Execution and reeducation.** Violations of the regime's anti-capitalist tenets were generally punishable by death. If you hoarded food, you could be executed. If you harvested wild crops, you could be executed. If you traded for a profit, you could be executed. Naturally, if you ever spoke out (publicly or privately) against the regime or its principles, you could be executed. Needless to say, corporal punishment was doled out without judicial process. Additionally, torture and execution were doled out on those suspected of being an enemy of the regime. This included anyone with material ties to the former government, many people with college-level educations, individuals of other ethnic backgrounds (including Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai), virtually any practicing religious person, anyone unable to grow their assigned crops (at quotas well in excess of those achievable before the regime took power), almost anyone who spoke English or French, and even people who simply wore glasses.

> In short, it was an attempt to reboot civilization (sans capitalism) and establish a society without wealth or class. As explained above, the Khmer Rouge did not tolerate non-believers well.

As with many genocides, it didn't start that way. But things got out of hand quickly.

**tl;dr:** Western educated dictator class sought to completely rewrite civilization and invent a classless society. Mass famine and genocide ensued.


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

[User] [Black Adam] Why doesn't Superman or Justice Society save Khandaq before Black Adam awakens?

[Assistant]
Because to the rest of the world, Intergang was the legitimate authority of Khandaq. You know how people say history is written by the victors? Well, Intergang was winning, by a lot. They have the Eternium to fight off outsiders, and the money to bribe the ones they can't fight. The JSA doesn't maintain their legitimacy by overthrowing governments, and Superman isn't in the business of deposing anyone.

They might have gotten involved if someone had explained to them what was going on; but the situation clearly wasn't high on Amanda Waller's priority list until Black Adam starting throwing tanks and helicopters around.


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

[User]
Iridium and similarly hard metals are difficult to machine due to extreme work hardening. Is "grinding" based machining also affected?

I understand how drilling and traditional milling would be made essentially impossible due to rapid work hardening, but couldn't a "grinding" approach be used to get around this?

Is there something I am not understanding about work hardening? Does work hardening affect materials at such a "small-scale" as sanding away tiny pieces of the material?

[Assistant]
Iridium can be machined, it's just a lot harder to do than other materials and there are much eaisier ways to form it. If you want to cut it with an endmill you are going to want a properly coated tool that has a hard coating capable of handling high temperatures - depending on your setup you might be able to do it with PCD or AlTiN tool. Most machinists would get pretty pissy if you tried to get them to run the job though, the tools just won't last that long and it will take a lot of babying, you might have to swap tools regularly before failure in the middle of a job, use very low speed/feeds, etc.

You can grind it, that's not a problem. Best way to cut it is probably EDM. Milling is only the "worst" option, not impossible. BTW grinding is not an ideal solution because the grinding tool will wear over time and it is hard to hold tolerances. Grinding can be done very precisely but will often use in-situ measuring machines to machine-measure the surface, which is costly but for example one of the best ways to form a complex lens.


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

[User] [Marvel] If Daredevil never went blind, how much of an impact would it have on the rest of the Marvel universe(s)?

[Assistant]
If he had super senses, and was never blind? He may become something like Wolverine or Batman, but without being trained by Stick, so he'd just be learning on the go how to use his powers, and he wouldn't be the profecient martial artist he is. He'd probably die his first night out, or just go a different route to crime fighting.

If he just never became a hero, or got any powers? That power gap would almost certainly be filled. He moved in, because *someone* needed to. If he didn't Elecktra might, maybe some new Hero would pop up, the possibilities are endless.


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

[User] ELI5: how did scientists discover different hormones in our body given that hormones are just tiny particles and how did they study it to know their purpose?

[Assistant]
Hormones are secreted from different parts of the body, if those parts are damaged or removed the hormones they produce are no longer made. One of the earliest observations of this was in the 1840s when scientists noticed animals lacking testes had different sex characteristics than other males, and ultimately discovered testosterone.

Other hormones where discovered in similar ways. Scientists noticed that removing the pancreas from a dog will give it type 1 diabetes, they then realized that grinding it up dog pancreas, purifying it and injecting it into people with diabetes relieved their symptoms (and was a big deal as diabetes used to be an agonizing way to die, the only treatment was starvation).

Adrenaline/epinephrine was isolated from the adrenal gland (they sit above your kidneys) and was incredibly useful for its ability to constrict blood vessels, particularly to stop bleeding during precise/fine surgical procedures.


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

[User]
What would be the economic viability of an independent Quebec?

Hello,

I was genuinely curious how economically viable an independent Quebec would be.

There are some who say that independence would be an economic disaster (naturally those who are against it) and those that say it would be business as usual (those are who for it).

Has the evidence shown anything for either side?

[Assistant]
I think brexit is a decent analogy for business as usual case on a smaller scale. Quebec (assuming it didnt shrink substantially) would be similar in size (gdp wise) to Israel, Denmark, Ireland and South Africa so comparing it to Canada as a whole would probably be unwise. Those 4 are developed (not using OACD measures, colloquially developed) yet flawed in some ways economies that rely heavily on some sort of national strength but cant do everything so cooperating with other nations is important. Oil would be a major missing piece IMO.

Like brexit, it would be a disaster for some industries and a boon to others. Establishing a currency would be painful and reliance and cooperation with the BOC would likely be important.

Brexit is a good analogy as we see that the union provided a value greater than the sum of its parts.


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

[User]
cmv: Pro-life is a violation of human rights and the decision by courts/government on the baby's life is a overstepping of authority unless the baby can be considered as public property.

Hello, I know this post is going to be bombarded with religious people but the decision of abortion/ no Abortion solely lies with the mother as she is the one carrying it and is in her natural right to the decision regarding her baby. This can be compared to as the right to oxygen, food and water as these are the natural needs of a human being.
Secondly, the government/courts must have the authority over the baby to make any decision regarding it but since the baby acts as a private property, technically the government/courts cannot interfere in the matters related to private property as that would be a violation of their jurisdiction.

[Assistant] Humans cannot be owned as property by anyone, including their mothers...in the US theres ample precedence for that. That being said, theres also precedence for a government body stripping parental rights in instances where say, a parent is abusive. There are plenty of good pro-choice arguments out there, but the mom has full domain over the child is just simply not one of them.


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

[User]
What reason do I put to recommend a reviewer for a journal paper?

I'm going to submit my first journal paper this week, and have got to recommend some reviewers. However, what reason do I put for recommending them? I can't leave it blank, so what are they looking for? I want to put something like "expert in the field" or "knowledgable on topic area", but this seems so vague it's almost pointless. Anyone ever had to do this?

[Assistant]
>I want to put something like "expert in the field" or "knowledgable on topic area", but this seems so vague it's almost pointless.

That's more-or-less what they're looking for, so it's not really pointless.


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

[User]
What limitations are currently stopping us from collecting and using lightning bolts?

Is it the inability to quickly route and store the varied amount of voltage and or amperage?

[Assistant] Engineering difficulties aside, from a practical standpoint, a lightning bolt has energy in the range of a few megajoules to possibly a gigajoule. Even if this could be collected and used, it's about the same amount of energy that a large power plant delivers in one second, so even if it were possible, harvesting lightning wouldn't contribute very much energy to the electrical grid in the long run.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k] What do the Custodes think of the Imperial Cult and Emperor worship in general?

With the Emperors explicit order to not be worshipped why did the Custodes even allow the fomation of the Imperial Cult and the Ecclesiarchy? And with some many things in the Imperium revolving around the worship of the Emperor from the billions of pilgrims to Terra and to the Age of Apostasy, wouldn't the Custodes stand against them? For as the Emperors companions one would think that they would honor him in that way too.

[Assistant] The Custodes don't involve themselves with anything outside of the Imperial palace. After the Emperor was struck down the Custodes went into a period of mourning that still lasts to this day; never leaving the palace at all. They personally may not worship the Emperor but their only concern is the protection of the Emperor, not enforcing any sort of decrees or law.


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

[User]
[Discworld]About the Luggage.

I know it's made from sentient/sapient pearwood, but why does it have teeth and a tongue? Also, where do it's legs come from? And why does it have a gender? One would imagine it was just a lump of wood magically brought to some odd kind of a life... It has made children with a female Luggage, so it clearly has a gender and some kind of reproductive organs (i don't want to know)

I haven't seen these questions answered in the books (granted, i haven't read quite all of them, i haven't read Raising Steam, some of the Tiffany books, and i haven't had a chance to read the supplementary science of Discworld books), so if they are, i'm sorry.

[Assistant]
*Cracks her knuckles*

Right, I've been reading these books obsessively for the last 10 years. Here's where it pays off.

*Ahem*.

The Luggage is the magical result of a large wooden chest made out of sapient pearwood. This is the most intelligent, malevolent tree on the Disc, and will only grow in areas of dangerously high raw magic such as the sites of magical battles during the time of the Dark Emperor (who was a sourcerer and therefore a source of raw magic).

The Luggage is, as a result, a multidimensional middle-finger to the entirety of logic and reason. It's produced from a substance that's so far down the end of the probability curve it's approaching normality from the other side, and as a practical upshot of this it's also massively influenced by belief. For example, Rincewind is always faintly suspicious that it can stare you down when it doesn't have eyes. However, the fact that he believes it can means that it will, in the future, continue to be able to do so.

People believe that something so ridiculously and almost cartoonishly malevolent as the Luggage needs to have big, tombstone teeth and a mahogany tongue, and therefore it will do.

Plus, as Ponder Stibbons likes to explain to Archchancellor Ridcully when he doesn't really want to have to explain how reading invisible writings works or similar... "it's all done by magic Archchancellor".


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

[User]
Eli5: why new recruits going into the US military are required to have their wisdom teeth removed?

I can't find a good answer online.. You guys have any insight?

[Assistant] The won't force you to get them out prior to basic, unless they're in such terrible shape they need to out due to medical necessity. I'd recommend doing it prior to going in if they're likely to need to come out anyway. Far better than to recover at home in familiar surroundings than to be recovering on an unfamiliar base with doctors that aren't likely to go stronger than Motrin for pain.


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

[User]
[Arrival] How did humanity used the alien language to advance the human civilization after the events of arrival?

Costello said they would need humanity's help after 3000 years, so if humanity is going to help them, humanity must have been technologically very advanced civilization after 3000 years (even better than that of aliens).Now the technology the aliens already had was incomprehensible to humans. So why none of the visions of Dr. Louise showed noticable advancement in technology?

[Assistant] Why should the aliens need humanity's technology to help them? Maybe it's our philosophical viewpoints. Maybe we breed faster than them, and they need soldiers. Maybe in 3,000 years we develop an inoculation against the baby shark meme that has infested their society from their first contact.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is the difference between BMP, JPG, PNG, and TGA photo formats.

I was looking through my FRAPS settings and I was curious as to the difference between the formats and which one would be the best to use.

[Assistant]
Note: this is a simplified explanation. This is because this thread is in ELI5.

BMP stores your image as data in a grid. It essentially stores information as X1, Y1: blue. X2, Y1: blue. X3, Y1, red. It (normally) has no compression at all and takes up a huge amount of space on disk.

TGA works similarly to BMP, but also supports more features. Most important is the ability to store "transparency" - that is, how "much" of a color shows as opaque vs how much it lets whatever is "behind" it bleed through. This format takes even more space than BMP in normal situations, but can support compression (it usually doesn't).

PNG is similar to BMP and TGA in that it is "lossless". If you save your image as a PNG, it will look EXACTLY the same in the future. No data will be lost. Like TGA, it also supports transparency. The key difference is that it's a more modern format and is always compressed. This means it will take SUBSTANTIALLY less space than BMP or TGA under default settings.

JPG is the "lossy" image storage format. Saving an image as a JPG will always lose data - even if you already have a JPG, and change only a small item - after re-saving it, you will lose more data. It works by telling the computer "I want an image that looks like this". The computer then decides what the best approximation of that image would be to the human eye, and how best to save that without taking up too much space. It then saves the approximation to disk. This means the image will ALWAYS lose data.

To summarize:

* BMP has its uses. But typically most people do not want to use this format unless you need it specifically for a programming reason.

* TGA used to be the "de-facto" lossless format years ago. It currently takes much more space than PNG and isn't worth your time unless you need it specifically for a programming reason.

* PNG is the best format to use if you MUST have "lossless" image saving. Since it's compressed differently from JPG, it can actually beat JPG in size AND quality when the image contains large blocks of exact solid colors. It also is the only good choice among these 4 for transparent images used on web pages.

* JPG is the best format to use for photos if size is a concern. It offers the best balance of speed, usability, and quality for images which come from a photographic source and have many real-life incongruities which are otherwise indistinguishable to the naked eye.


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

[User]
CMV: The movie Primer was unnecessarily confusing and should be remade

I really enjoyed the movie "Primer", although like most people I didn't understand what just happened the first time I watched it. The things that were great

* The plot.
* The acting\- so natural and not overdramatic
* The time machine, and its effects, which were really cool and well thought out

So, now that I've gone through and figured out what the plot even is, I've come to the conclusion that

1. its not actually that hard to understand what happened once i looked at the timeline charts online
2. The problem is in the movies execution, the plot is not inherently too confusing for mainstream
3. that this movie is a \*great\* candidate for a remake which more clearly explained things while keeping the plot exactly the same

Consider the movie "Memento" (which, obviously, is not a fair comparison because memento is a big budget hollywood movie and Primer is an indie on like a 10k budget, but go with it). The premise of memento could easily be incomprehensible, but instead it was easy for mainstream audiences to get. Memento deliberately invoked confusion in the audience to help us empathize with the main character, but took great pains to avoid confusion otherwise\- for example, using b&w vs color to separate the two converging timelines, showing us the beginning/end of each scene twice so we would make the connection, etc.

Primer is confusing unintentionally, and in the wrong ways. If the plot is complex the editing should be crystal clear, and it isnt. I often found myself unsure if Abe or Aaron was talking\- in other scenes (such as when Mr Granger shows up) the fast paced cuts made me have to rewind and rewatch what should have been a very simple scene (Abe and Aaron are planning to create a paradox, instead Granger arrives from the future to stop them and then collapses)

The final third, full of twists and reveals one after another, is inherently hard to follow and requires the audience to pay attention. This is a time when the action should have been slowed down, and the twists over\-explained. Instead the action sped up and half the plot points were implied in passing. This film is only 80 minutes long\- it needed another half hour of runtime. For some reason the beginning when they were building the machine is very deliberately paced but the final act is so breakneck its literally incomprehensible to most first\-time viewers? Weird pacing choice

Therefore, I think Primer is perfect for a remake, either by a different director or by the same director with more experience and a bigger budget.

[Assistant] I would say it is editted in a confusing matter deliberately to illustrate how confusing daily time travel will eventually get. It's an obvious choice by the creator because you can mention the difference in pacing yourself in your initial statement. The whole point of the movie is time travel in practice is never going to be as cut and dry and easy to understand as Hollywood films make it out to be- and your suggestion is for them to make the film just like other Hollywood movies- thereby totally neutering its message.


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

[User]
ELI5: We cant drink spoiled milk but we can consume butter milk, yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese etc?

Why can we not drink raw milk or expired milk but we can consume various forms of milk mixed with bacteria/cultures?

[Assistant] The primary difference is the bacteria present when the milk is spoiling. Some are toxic and cause the milk to go bad. Some are not toxic and produce the yogurts and cheeses you know and love. When they make cheese for example everything is carefully sterilized first so the only bacteria present are the cheese cultures that are added. In your fridge there are all types of bacteria and the bad ones cause your milk to become unfit for consumption.


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

[User]
CMV: Eileen Gu is a competitive sports traitor in terms of nationalism.

Important edit up front:

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the point I am making. To make thise completely simple.

Within a "nationalistic perspective and framework", if she is competing for China to benefit China and "grow the sport there" while growing up in, training, and planning to live in the USA then she is betraying the USA to benefit China.

 As opposed to someone who moves to another country to benefit themselves but tries to grow the sport in their own country by sponsoring athletes there or doing training seminars etc.

Imagine a reverse scenario that could be possible.

A Chinese table tennis player grows up in China, trains in China and plans to live in China...but competes for the USA...and tries to grow the sport in the USA as opposed to in China

Edit: After reading a comment that says that she was sponsored financially by Chinese backing since she was 9 years old. Then depending on how much the backing she got was intended for Chinese national interests, and how much of her knowledge and training came from America then Eileen Gu is essentially a mole within a "nationalistic framework" of thought.

[Assistant]
In order to be a "traitor," you have to assume she owes some measure of loyalty to the US. In particular, she needs to have some special duty to "grow the sport" in the US that she is breaching by doing it in China instead.

Can you explain what that duty is and where it comes from?


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

[User]
[40K/DC] Superman lands on Holy Terra

So, instead of landing in smallville, Kansas. SSuperman's craft lands on Holy Terra in the Dark age of technology, how does this affect events leading up to the 41st millennium?

[Assistant] In all likelihood, he'd have been taken in by the Emperor and used as part of the geneseed for the Primarchs assuming he found out about him. Otherwise, you just have normal Superman in Grimdarksville.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the true difference between Crackers/hackers and Script Kiddies?

[Assistant]
Hackers, in the classical sense, are a lot like a good baker. They can work from scratch without directions, know what they're doing and why, and can adapt to different things if they don't get the result they expected.

Script kiddies are like someone following a cookie recipe off a bag of chocolate chips. They have to follow the directions exactly and won't know how to fix it if things don't come out right.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we produce tears when we are sad?

[Assistant]
Emotional tears are different from reflexive tears (tears that come from smokey rooms, cutting onions, etc.). When you cry because emotions, it releases a hormone that causes you to feel less stressed after you have cried. This is also why we cry when we are in pain or extremely frustrated.

There are also some evolutionary psychologists who think that emotional tears gave our predecessors a leg up, as it served as a cue when somebody was emotionally distraught. This would help the tribe quickly identify somebody who was in need and help them out however they needed.


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

[User] [Truman Show]Since the show ended we, the Studio have been using the dome, the largest structure in the world for tour groups. We are going to lock a big tour group inside while tricking them into thinking a nuclear war happened and the air outside is deadly. What should we name this new show?

[Assistant] I don't think the name is what you should be worried about. Unlike Truman, these people will have families. They'll fight back a lot more than people who are worried about a guy they saw on TV being treated badly.


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

[User]
CMV: If being vegan were so great and natural, vegan food wouldnt include mock meat, milk, cheeses and the like.

I understand that being vegan for religious or health reasons is absolutely a thing. However, a common track for vegans is about environmentalism and how humans were made to be vegan/vegetarian. If that were true, why are we so preoccupied with creating vegan versions of products that non-vegans eat? Its not to be inclusive, since most non-vegans wouldnt enjoy e.g. a vegan cheese. Doesnt eating vegan versions of non-vegan foods just perpetuate the idea that veganism is less natural than the alternative, harder to maintain and on the fringes of society?

[Assistant] The thing that mock animals products are designed to address is the cultural and mental element of meat eating. It's kind of like quitting smoking - you can just go cold turkey (in the vast majority of cases this never works) or you can incrementally achieve your goal by switching from cigarettes to vapes to nicotine patches and then finally quitting.


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

[User]
[General]When it comes down to the core 'Science' in Science Fiction, which universe has the greatest integrity in its fictional physics and application?

I don't want to exclude iterations of 'magic' from this, but it seems when it comes to most instances that have it magic is simply an unexplained, or vaguely explained, thing that isn't questioned. This could also be applied in same aspect to far off science fiction wherein everything works because its just 'technology.'

[Assistant] A lot of Michael Crichton's books have at least some foundation in real world theories and possibilities. Some of the books are simply conversations about the implications of a new technology that just happen to be set in a thrilling narrative.


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

[User]
[DC] Has Child Services ever investigated Bruce Wayne?

I imagine Bruce's sons fighting criminals every night would leave them with bruises, black eyes, bloody noses, and so on. These would probably be seen by their classmates and/or teachers at whatever schools they attend, and people would naturally assume that Bruce might be abusive to them. So with all that, wouldn't the authorities and Child Services start to get suspicious and want to give Bruce and his home a closer look?

[Assistant]
He's really, really rich and connected (specifically providing a large chunk of the polices funding and equipment) in a city that is really, really corrupt.

No, the authorities have no interest in giving Bruce and his home a closer look.


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

[User]
Why do biofilms form? What is the mechanism bacterium use to communicate with each other in such a situation?

I thought prokaryotes were just a nucleoid and some ribosomes contained in a cell wall. When they form a biofilm, what the heck is going on?

After taking courses in biology, I came across this strange phenomenon. I've got a rudimentary understanding of cell biology, but I'm still confused as to how such simple structures as prokaryotes can perform hive mind actions like forming a biofilm.

[Assistant]
Quorum sensing would be the correct term here.  A bacterium can detect the presence of other nearby bacteria because they secrete a ligand. This chemical signal is receive by the sorounding bacteria, and depending on the concentration of this signal, different actions are taking.

This type of activity is also exhibited when bacteria form single layer formations. Let me know if you need a more detailed explanation of how bacteria communicate chemically.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Would Palpatine have punished Krennic or Tarkin in any way for the Death Star if they survived, since they were both somewhat responsible for it's destruction ?

[Assistant]
Krennic absolutely. He willfully aided and abetted the spies who ran off with the plans of the Death Star and designed the thing to be vulnerable in the first place. His death would have likely not been quick and would probably have been shown to the next engineering team as encouragement.

Tarkin probably would have walked away alive, albeit likely sidelined or retired. Ultimately Tarkin was following the doctrine he designed for the Emperor and so skillfully instituted across the galaxy when the Death Star exploded. He had successfully tracked down the main rebel headquarters and was about to crush it with unspeakable force, demonstrating the overwhelming power of the Empire and securing its security for years to come. Then some teenager managed to blow up his battle station due to the aforementioned espionage. Nobody was expecting that.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do search engines tell you how long the search took?

[Assistant] Honestly, they're kind of bragging to show you how good/fast/awesome they are. There is no other reason; it might be interesting to a very small segment of the population, but it's more about people going "Wow, 20 billion results in 0.02 seconds!"


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

[User] ELI5: Where do illegal drug chemists get the skills to make hard drugs such as meth or krokodil?

[Assistant]
It doesn't really take skill; all you need is a "recipe" and the necessary equipment.

Discovering new compounds to get people high is where it takes skill. That's more the purview of designer drug manufacturers than meth cookers.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the difference between Visa, Mastercard and a credit card and how do the way of payments differ?

[Assistant] Visa and Mastercard are both companies that facilitate electronic payments between consumers using a card, merchants, and banks.  Mastercard issues credit cards (a card that works like a small loan, that you normally pay off by the end of the month or accrue interest) and also debit cards (a card that works more like cash, in that it immediately takes the money out of your bank account).  VISA technically does not issue cards, but rather licenses their name to financial institutions like your bank or credit union, and facilitates the transaction.


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

[User] [Avatar: The Last Airbender] How does combustion-bending work?

[Assistant]
All bending works by the focusing of chi, which is aided by physical motion. The very best benders don't rely on these movements to the same extent as younger benders. For example, Bumi managed to break himself free from a cage in the air with motions of his face.

Combustion bending is merely the intense focusing of chi out through the forehead and at a target, where it causes an unfocused concussive blast of firebending, which is really a primitive form of energy bending (not as Aang does it, but as actually directing energy as explained by physics).

In the case of Sparky Sparky Boom Man, the blow to his head may have actually concussed him - he could no longer focus on his target visually and presumably couldn't focus his chi, causing the blast to go off much closer than intended as his chi was unleashed.


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

[User]
Why are bugs attracted to the light?

Never really thought about it honestly, and this summer i've been sitting outside and the spot lights are on and all the bugs keep dive bombing it.

[Assistant] Moths navigate and orient themselves by using the sun as a guide. For example, Mr. Sample Moth likes it on his left, means he's going the direction he wants to. Porch lights, street lights, etc, confuse them. They will fly in circles around it because they think they're flying straight. In their heads, the light is on the correct side, so they must be heading the right direction.


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

[User] Evolution: If modern humans have been around for ~200,000 years, why have no other post-human species branched off of us yet? Is there a projected timeline for that to happen? Will we even recognize if it's happening?

[Assistant] Speciation generally happens much slower than that.  Further, you probably wouldn't even recognize the branch until well after the fact.  It's possible that if technology hadn't advanced then some of the distant clusters of humans would become isolated enough to eventually branch off, but at this point there is constantly gene flow amongst nearly all human populations.  For speciation to occur you need some mechanism (physical separation being a good one) that prevents genes from flowing from one group of species to another.  This separation allows for the slow build up of mutations that allow them to start to move off in different directions.  Even with limited interbreeding of the two groups you keep sharing all the mutations from each side with the other, preventing a branch from occurring.  So if, for example, one of the groups of island people were never "refound" by the rest of the human population for many tens or hundreds of thousand years, they could have become a separate species.


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

[User] [Ghostbusters] Do Egon Spengler and Ray Stantz deserve (a lot) more recognition for the invention of proton packs? Wouldnt the military have interest in them? The Nobel committee? They seem pretty impressive.

[Assistant]
Among folks "in the know" Stantz and Spengler get their due credit, though a lot of lay folks give Venkman too much of a share due to how he's positioned himself as the leader/face-man of the crew, and the "legit" science community does it's best to ignore them, since they don't want to legitimize "fringe" science.

If the military had a ghost problem they'd be keen on the proton packs, but in terms of a weapons system it leaves a lot to be desired. It's heavy, short ranged, erratic in it's firing path, and could turn into a nuke if you cross the streams; a machine gun or missile launcher is cheaper, lighter, more accurate, infinitely safer to operate, and don't take a dude with multiple doctorates and a fungus collection to perform basic maintenance.

As far as the Nobel, they'd have to publish their findings, and Venkman would fight them kicking and screaming the whole way. He doesn't want academic accolades, he wants money, and publishing means that people might knock off the designs and steal their market share.


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

[User] [Star Trek] Are no ballistic weapons used by federation ships? The Borg can hardly adapt thicker or tougher armour on the spot I presume, why not just bring a damn railgun to kill a cube?

[Assistant]
Ballistic weapons just flat out won't work.  The Borg wouldn't even need to adapt.  Any ship's navigational deflector is already doing the job of keeping small, fast, physical objects from impacting the ship.

We're not even talking actual defensive measures, just normal navigation systems on even the most lightly defended scouts or science vessels has this problem solved.  The Borg wouldn't even divert resources to think about the situation.


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

[User] ELI5:What are Hedge Funds and what do they do?

[Assistant] It's an investment scheme. Basically a group of people all put their money into one big pot, and the hedge fund manager(s) invests that money in various things with the intent of making more money. Each person who put money into the hedge fund gets a share of the profits that is in proportion to how much they put in. They also proportionally share the risk. It is similar to a mutual fund but hedge funds generally make more high risk investments and are only open to higher level "accredited" investors.


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

[User]
[DCU] Does being half-Atlantean affect Aquaman's powers? What would be different if he were completely Atlantean?

Is his hydrokinesis weaker? How about his ability to communicate with marine life?

I know for a fact that Arthur can stay on land for far longer than 'full-blooded' Atlanteans, but how else does his hybrid physiology separate him for his fellow Atlanteans? Overall, is Arthur weaker than if he were completely Atlantean? Or is he like Blade - stronger, without any of the weaknesses (or less affected by Atlantean weaknesses/vulnerabilties)?

[Assistant] Usually he doesn't have hydrokinesis - most atlanteans don't. In the movie it seemed to be the function of his trident, which is a magical artifact of bygone age, and in comics he had it when he had a water arm, which also was magical.


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

[User]
CMV: languages that use a Latin-script alphabet should move towards eliminating accent marks.

My reasoning: I have some level of proficiency in five languages, using three alphabets between them. I have recently gotten more into language learning and am studying four more, all of which use Latin script (the alphabet used by Romance, Germanic, and Celtic languages among others). In doing so and using my phone for learning programs, I have realized just what a pain accent marks are - slowing everything down and not adding much to comprehension. Words are faster to type without accent marks, and text looks neater. To a fluent speaker, their exclusion should present no impediment to comprehension.

The concerns: I am aware that there may be a few Latin script languages (Vietnamese comes to mind) that are so reliant on accent marks that losing them would seriously impede communication. These may be excluded. Further, I am aware that demo in accent marks makes pronunciation more ambiguous and may make the language more difficult for children or new learners.  I have a proposed solution: Hebrew normally excludes vowels (a more important textual feature than accent marks) from professional/adult writing, including them only for children or new learners. There might therefore be, say, learners' French which includes ,,,,, etc and professional French which excludes them.

[Assistant]
I would counter that accent marks actually provide for less ambiguity, more possible phonemes, stress marking and ease in differentiation of homophones, while at the same time aiding the reader in inferring the correct pronunciation or meaning.

Accent marks have a wide variety of uses that are ultimately beneficial. In many languages with more-or-less regular rules on stress placement, such as Spanish, accent marks can differentiate words, such as "esta" (this) vs "est" (he is); the former has stress placed on the first syllable, whereas the latter has it on the second. In Spanish, stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable when the word ends in a vowel, n or s, and on the last syllable otherwise. "Est" violates this and needs to be marked accordingly. Similarly, accents also allow for differentiation of interrogative and relative pronouns, cf. "quin?" (who?) vs "quien" (who). In other instances, they simply aid comprehension in terms homophones, such as "si" (if) and "s" (yes). Even more, an accent mark can hold stress on a specific syllable for inflection purposes: the addition of "me" to "mira" in order to form a command would push stress one syllable over, but by writing "mrame," we're able to preserve the proper stress without ambiguity.

In other languages, accent marks change the pronunciation of a vowel without resorting to using additional letters that complicate things. In French, the circumflex opens the vowel so that "hpital" differentiates from "bonne." The "" signifies /o/, where as "o" in this case is "//" in IPA terms.

We can also look at accent marks as providing an avenue for more vowel pronunciations without the need to either guess or come up with convoluted spellings to achieve them. English has roughly 12 vowels depending on the dialect spoken with an additional eight diphthongs, but there are only five vowels and no accentuation possibilities. In comparison, Portuguese has around 16 vowels, but is much easier to deduce due to five of them being marked nasals with a tilde and the use of the acute accent and circumflex for specific sounds. Even more, Portuguese has a huge volume of diphthongs and triphthongs, but comprehension is easier since accented vowels provide clues on how to differentiate them.


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

[User] ELI5: Do mens and womens hygiene products (shave gel, lotion, face wash) actually do different things for men or women, or is it a marketing thing?

[Assistant]
Most of the ingredients are the same, though some manufacturers claim that their gendered products are tailored more towards the different areas that each gender tends to shave more.

The main difference in ingredients is the scent.  Fragrances and oils can be incredibly expensive, which could go towards explaining some of the difference in price.  We know women place more emphasis on the fragrance of a product than men (some men being happy to purchase without smelling the product at all).

At least when it comes to bathroom products, men and women discriminate on price differently.  Men are more likely to take a cheaper product and see that product as equivalent.  Women, on the other hand, are more likely to see a more expensive product as superior.  Thus reducing price could be a good strategy for men's products but could actually lose you sales on women's.


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

[User]
[Back to the Future] Why does Earth Angel get a positive reaction?

During the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, Marty subs on guitar since Marvin sliced his hand open earlier getting Marty out of the trunk. Marty starts off decently, but as soon he starts to be erased from existence he starts messing up and then stops playing altogether for the majority of the song. The band notices, Marvin gives him a look and the piano player even asks if he's alright.

Of course once George kisses Lorraine and secures Marty's existence, Marty gets back up and closes out the last few bars of the song. But regardless - the performance was missing the guitar almost entirely! Yet the crowd and the band all show their approval to Marty, thinking it's such a good performance that Marty should join them for an encore!

Did anyone actually listen to how Marty just butchered the song??

The only explanation I can think of for why the band thinks it's a good performance is cause they are all stoned out their minds on the reefer.

As for the crowd... Maybe they all somehow magically hear Alan Silvestri's orchestra accompaniment (which is clearly score, not source). This is backed up in Part II when we revisit the dance and the newer Marty witnesses George and Lorraine kiss - we again hear the Alan Silvestri orchestra even though they are nowhere to be found.

Maybe everyone was on the reefer that night...

[Assistant]
The band was just keeping up appearances for the sake of the show.

As for the crowd, years of experience as a performer tell me that crowds don't notice shit. This is especially true if they're a lot more worried about dancing or smooching than listening to the band. They might have a vague notion that something sounds off, but that's it.

If you think you've caught every mistake at every concert you've attended, I've got a bridge to sell you.


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

[User]
need help with work bully

there is a staff member at my work (responsible for organizing orientation, budgets sheets, etc) who is making my life miserable. im a new tenure track hire and this staff member constantly makes demands of me which are not my responsibility. he orders me around and talks to me like im his secretary. i have pushed back politely and firmly, and he has raised his voice, lied/exaggerated things to manipulate me into doing his bidding, cornered me, blocked exits, and accused me of not pulling my weight. i finally went to the chair and told him about all the demands that this admin has been making and the chair said that i'm doing everything i'm supposed to be doing at work (the bully told me i wasn't doing enough), and that he would talk to the staff person about it. but i'm not sure if the chair gets the whole gist of the issue. chair travels a lot and is not always around when these things are happening. the staff member is on his BEST behavior when chair is around and kisses his butt.

i've already had many nights of insomnia and anxiety and ive been avoiding this person as much as possible. but i know that this situation is not tenable. it is distracting me from my research and my work is suffering. i've considered the following options: 1) telling this bully more directly about his effect on me, 2) talking to my faculty mentor, 3) talking to the ombudsman

my fears are that no one will believe me or that they will think that this is no big deal. if i talk to him directly, i'm worried that he will yell at me again or accuse me of even more things or use my concerns as a weapon against me. what do you think is the best approach?

[Assistant]
Complain to HR if your chair won't act. Yelling is almost always the sort of thing where they will intervene, at least at a reasonable institution. Especially when it is a staff member yelling at a TT line hire.

Refer them to the chair every time they make requests/demands of you. Say no firmly and more often.


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

[User]
This might sound like a stupid question, but was the sky pitch black eons ago?

Im new to this sub and I was curious, since I had nothing to answer this question with other than my own headcanon. So this might actually have a short answer than expected. So light takes a super long time to travel right? Since what were seeing up there (outside of the solar system) are dead or dying stars and the info hasnt reached our eyes yet. So was there a time when no light from outside the solar system had reached the earth, making the sky pitch black at night save for the sun?

[Assistant]
Within the galaxy, the light travel times are actually quite short. The whole Milky Way is only about 100,000 light years across, and we're about 30,000 light years to the centre. But most of the stars you can see in the night sky are less than 1,000 light years away, and many are less than 100 light years away. It takes us about 200 million years to orbit the galaxy. The shortest lived massive stars live for millions of years, medium ones live for billions of years, and long-lived low-mass stars live for trillions of years. A molecular cloud will form collapse into stars, and then be blown away by those stars, over a period of 10s of millions of years or so.

Stars form and move so slowly compared to the light delay time that we're pretty much seeing every star in the night sky as it is now, except for small variations. Except for a few extreme objects, almost every star you see at night is still alive, and unchanged from what you see.

The Sun was also not the first star in the galaxy. There were a couple of generations of stars first. So once the Earth formed, the light from other stars was already all around, and the first night of the primordial Earth would have been a starry night (if the atmosphere was clear).


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

[User] ELI5: How well-supported is the big bang theory? Are we fairly certain it's true?

[Assistant] Yes, and overwhelmingly so. However, you have to be careful about what you mean when you say "Big Bang Theory", for it is *not* a theory about how the universe was *created*, but rather how it has *evolved*. Despite what anyone will tell you, we physicists currently have no idea how the universe was created.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why isn't there a good defense for companies against DDOS attacks?

As someone who plays Blizzard games, I found myself locked out tonight as a result of DDoS attacks. This was most likely because Blizzard issued a ban wave against cheaters and hackers.
But this seems like a recurrent problem for various companies.
If it's so common, what is it about a DDoS attack that makes it so hard to defend against?
Also, keep in mind, I'm not a hacker nerd, I really do need you to explain it like I'm 5, but someone who grew up in the 70s who is 5, not someone who is 5 in 2016.
Thanks!

[Assistant]
DDoS means Distributed Denial of Service attack. Now you obviously experienced the part where service was denied. The key here is that it was distributed.

What that means was rather than one guys with his one machine trying to keep their service too busy, the attackers used a great number of compromised system that all worked together to keep the service too busy. Because they are using so many separate machines to attack, there's no commonality they can use to filter them out early, because each of those machines start by connecting and pretending to be potential real customers. But processing them all through this process just overwhelms the system before they can identify the bad guys from the good guys.

As a metaphor, imagine there is an old school pizza store taking calls for delivery. A speaker at a local conference tells his audience who are staying at hotels all over the city to call this one store and go through the process of ordering a pizza, only to wait right until they are going to take a credit card number and then say, "oh never mind" and hang up. Suddenly the pizza shop is incredibly busy trying to take orders and all their resources, including phone lines and people taking orders are super busy. But for the most part it is fake orders. Legitimate customers might occasionally get through, but mostly they get a busy signal because all their lines are busy. Even most people trying to place fake orders usually get a busy signal.

It's kind of like that, only with internet servers being the pizza shop and potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of fake callers.


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

[User] ELI5: How come the ocean isnt making the ocean floor compact? Like, the pressure at the ocean floor is absurd, the weight of the ~4km of water is a lot and yet we see the sand loose.

[Assistant]
The pressure exerted on the sand at the bottom is experienced in all direction. They are separated because they have different densities.

Imagine you have a plate on the floor of a pool. Apart from just it's inertia and the viscosity of the water you could easily pick it up.

Large pressure differences on either side of the object are what causes noticeable forces.

Now imagine the same circumstance except this time there is a drain at the bottom leading to open air and the plate is covering it. The force from the weight of the water is much greater than the force from the weight of the air so it's pressed into the floor and difficult to move.


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

[User] eli5 how Google claims not to 'sell' your data, so what does Google do to give data to others, and what data is being shown to them?

[Assistant]
Google does not directly give your data to anyone. They don't want to- access to your data is the secret sauce that makes Google ads more valuable than ads from other places.

Instead, companies can come to them with an advertisement targeted towards men in their 30s in the American Southeast that like baking, and they can make sure to show that advertisement to that group of people. Since they're only showing the ads to the people most likely to respond to them, they get more responses and so Google gets more money from the advertiser, while being able to sell ad spots for other demographics to other companies.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is a population decline in a country considered a bad thing?

[Assistant]
The problem, especially with extreme population decline, is that eventually you have too many retired/elderly folks and too few workers to support them.  Either directly supporting elderly parents, or paying into social security.

A slight decline may be fine, but many social systems are set up on the premise of constant population growth.  The same thing can happen even without a population decline if you have a very large generation (such as the baby boomers) who will all retire as a group.


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

[User] [Question] Why did the Fed get rid of conventional monetary policy in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis?

[Assistant] The zero lower bound was a major factor. They couldn't set interest rates below zero, this constraint meant other avenues of monetary policy had to be consider. This being QE, paying interest on excess reserves, etc. It was because they got to a point where conventional policy could no longer be done.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] What are some legitimate reasons to turn off the safety protocols on the Holodeck?

I mean, it seems like every couple of months something goes wrong on a Federation starship and somebody has to struggle to survive in an environment that is both lethally hostile and wholly illusory. A whole lot of trouble could be avoided, and lives saved, if you just made it completely impossible to disable the safety protocols. I'm not entirely au fait with the programming protocols, but it should be possible to basically hardwire it into the system so that turning off the safeties also turns off the entire damn Holodeck.

Obviously there's a reason they don't do this, but what is it? Why do they want it to be possible for a Holodeck to murder random crewmembers in the event of a power surge or somebody getting drunk and thinking it'd be cool?

[Assistant]
The Federation is a very Liberal society; they prioritise personal freedom in many instances. If someone (Miles O'Brien for example) wants to go kayaking on a dangerous river then he's not really going to get the full effect when he knows that there's no danger. He doesn't really get to experience the satisfaction of overcoming the challenge and bettering his skill, so he disables the safeties and occasionally gets injured, as is his right as a Federation citizen. The Federation has educated him to the level where he's not at risk; he knows full well what will happen when he disables the safeties, and that's his choice, but as far as the Federation is concerned that must be his choice either way.

I wouldn't be suprised if that was a privilige he held as an adult/Starfleet personell/qualified engineer. Children may not be able to disable the safeties.

tl;dr: the Federation doesn't make idiots. If you wanna risk your life that's on you.


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

[User] ELI5: How does super glue work and how is it different from a regular glue stick?

[Assistant]
Most regular types of glue just harden as water or solvent in them evaporates. If you want to glue something really well, you have to stick it really tight together with a clamp and let it cure for a bit.

Superglue however doesn't need to dry out. Instead, it "polymerizes" - that means the individual liquid molecules start attaching to each other until they become a solid. This reaction is triggered by moisture in the air, and happens so quickly that you don't need to hold it clamped for hours.


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

[User]
ELI5: Is there a maximum hot?

I know the maximum cold is literally no heat energy, absolute zero, but is there a highest possible temperature in the way that speed has the upper limit--as far as we know--of light?

[Assistant]
Theoretically no.

However, technically you could only attain a temperature as high as the energy of the universe would allow.  Something like the exact moment of the Big Bang would be the hottest temperature that could ever be achieved in the universe.  This is called the Planck temperature which is the highest theoretical temperature you can achieve before the temperature starts to cause conventional physics to begin to break down.  But this doesn't occur until 1.416785(71)10^32 kelvin so we have a ways before we get to that temperature.


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

[User] ELI5: Has there always been the same amount of water on earth?

[Assistant]
No. It is theorized some/most water was brought to Earth by cometary bombardment. Also, some (miniscule) amount of hydrogen is constantly lost from the atmosphere to space. However, it is relatively insignificant to the total amount.

Water is also sequestered in rocks and ice in varying amounts throughout geologic history.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do we have wisdom teeth?

It seems like all wisdom teeth are good for is being removed. Why does everyone have them?

[Assistant] Our jaws have actually gotten smaller as we have evolved, along with the fact that we no longer have use for them as we can keep our teeth healthier and learned how to cook. As the wisdom teeth come in, they get impacted now because most people do not have the room in their mouth for them to properly grow in, which is why it is common practice to remove them now before they completely grow. Some people don't even have wisdom teeth because we have no use for them. It's actually a good argument in evolution's favor.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does basically everyone in a hospital get an IV regardless of their situation?

Is there anything to it other than keeping patients hydrated and getting medicine into their system when necessary?

[Assistant] A lot of the time it's just to have an established line, so that if things go south, you don't have to waste the time to start one. With some people it's not easy to get a line in, especially once their BP starts to crash, and they need medicine right now.


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

[User]
Eli5 Why do steep rear windshields need a wiper and normal sloped windshields dont?

For example on a minivan there's a rear wiper and a front wiper, but not on say a Toyota corolla. Why is that?

[Assistant]
It's not because of the angle of the rear window, it's because of how much dirt sprays up from the back of the vehicle.
On most cars, the trunk is between the rear window and the back of the car, and the window stays relatively clean and dry from road spray from the back of the car.
On minivans, hatchbacks, station wagons, etc... The rear windows get very wet and dirty simply from driving on a wet road, so you need a way to clean the rear window for visibility.

Though the angle of the rear window might affect how well rain washes the rear window, generally car rear windows stay cleaner.

Also, pickup trucks have a steep (vertical) rear window, but no wiper, because the truck bed is in between the rear window and the back of the vehicle.


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

[User] ELI5: What happens in the stomach of a lactose intolerant person after eating dairy ?

[Assistant]
Nothing special happens in the stomach. It's the intestines where it gets real.

When someone is lactose-intolerant, their guts lack the enzyme *lactase* (either partly or totally) that usually breaks it down into simpler sugars.

Do you know what doesn't lack the ability to break down lactose into simpler sugars? The bacteria that live in your guts. They can very happily break down the lact**o**se, and *their* byproducts (hydrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, etc) are what we note as the symptoms of lactose-intolerance. The presence of these byproducts, as well as the lact**o**se itself, also causes more water to flow into the intestine, causing diarrhea.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Do superheroes also get discounts and free meals at restaurants on Veterans day?

Someone like Captain America and Punisher would be obvious because they've served in the military. But could someone like Spider-Man swing by an IHOP for some free pancakes?

[Assistant] Im sure Captain America does, but if the Frank Castle flashes his I.D. assuming he would and has one someone might call the cops or the mob. As far as the rest of heroes goes its probably more like a police/firefighter discount assuming the hero isn't wanted by the law and popular enough to be recognized.


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

[User] ELI5: How do the big YouTube channels (pewdiepie, Yogscast, etc) avoid getting three strikes from frivolous/bogus copyright claims?

[Assistant]
They aggressively pursue their rights.  Every-time they get a strike they reach out to YouTube and let them know what happened.

Given their size and value to YouTube they likely get handled very quickly.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Why don't the Inquisitors use tracking fobs to find the Jedi, like the Mandalorian uses to find bounty targets?

[Assistant]
I don't think we have enough info on how the Tracking Fobs work right now or the limitations of them.

We know the Tracking Fobs are tuned in to a target's chain code somehow. Maybe Jedi just didn't let themselves get signed up for the chain code? Maybe the Jedi used forged chain codes. (That has been done) We can just guess right now.

Not having a chain code would disallow a Jedi from using commercial travel from planet to planet, but it seems like Jedi-in-hiding are using backdoor methods of getting around.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't spiders climb up the side of the bath tub?

To confirm, I didn't kill the spider, I put it outside. They're great for getting rid of pesky bugs, plus... Live and let live right?

[Assistant] They climb using the hairs and little microscopic hooks.  Think of it like rock climbing. If there weren't any type of way to hold on to something with your hands and feet you wouldn't be able to climb a nearly vertical wall.  Same is true for the spider.  The tub is a smooth and relatively vertical surface for them to climb.


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

[User]
[The Dark Knight] How did Batman and Rachel survive the drop off the skyscraper?

During the penthouse/party/whatever you want to call it scene, Joker drops Rachel off the building, and Bruce jumps off after her. I've watched this scene multiple times, and there is no use of the cape to slow down the fall like in TDKR. How did they survive?

[Assistant] Watch the surveillance footage right before the crash onto the car, and listen carefully to the sound. The cape is clearly fluttering with the same strong resistance that it displayed when Batman flies to Lau's tower to arrest him. Batman's cape doesn't have to be at full wingspan in order to slow a fall.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do women look different than men?

I understand the need for wider hips / breasts, but what's the point of creating two distinct creatures (one with a normally larger and muscular frame) and another with a smaller and more 'aesthetic' face and body?

Wouldn't the human race be simplified by just having a single organism that can reproduce with itself?

[Assistant]
Men and women look different (sexual dimorphism) because of the presence or lack of the Y chromosome and different gonads which in turn leads to different hormones. Natural selection has selected certain features in males and females which made them reproductive successful. Males for example are larger and stronger because they often had to physically compete for females.

>Wouldn't the human race be simplified by just having a single organism that can reproduce with itself?

Not quite sure what you mean by simplified. Generally speaking sexual reproduction gives an evolutionary advantage because it allows for genetic diversity.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are the helmet-straps that the British military use in formal dress placed under the lip instead of under the chin?

[Assistant] The dress bearskin hats have a chain strap so when not firmly affixed will hang naturally around the lip area, however the chain will allow the chain to go under the chin when needed to keep the hat firmly on.


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

[User]
[MCU] During the events of Spiderman Far From Home, what do the general public know/ not know about the snap?

To what extent their knowledge of the blip are? Do they know about the infinity stones? Thanos and how he looked like? Different alien races?

[Assistant]
Maybe not the full exact details, but they seem to know pretty much everything. In particular, the help group from Endgame references Thanos by name in their posters and the in-flight TV in Far From Home has a documentary called "The Snap" with a picture of the complete Infinity Gauntlet as its poster.

For the record, the Blip and the Snap are semi-synonymous, but the latter refers to the specific event caused by Thanos while the former refers to the five-year period after the Snap and in particular, the five-year displacement experienced by the people who were snapped.