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

[User]
CMV: Military shouldnt be able to recruit in highschool.

You shouldnt be able to walk into a classroom, look into the eyes of someone who is not an adult, promise them a future, and turn them into a stone cold killer.

They are not understanding of the gravity of the role they are taking on and how it will impact their life. If an adult entices a child to do something that will change their life forever in any normal circumstances, its considered a crime. They are literally grooming children with their promises of a better life, with prestige and honor. They dont ever do commercials of the homeless man who flinches every time he hears thunder. Or of the guy with a prosthetic arm because his was blown off after he watched his best friend die. Change my view.

[Assistant]
For the US: The military path after highschool is a valid option so you can argue that recruiting in highschool can be done correctly. After all the age group after highschool is a semi ideal time to join the military.

The problem is as you stated, they go after low income students, use free college as a bait, and the military has poor mental health practices. Also veterans are treated poorly. Instead of stopping highschool recruitment, the actual problems of the military and why people join it (for college/to get out of poverty) must be addressed.

The military can teach useful stuff to a highschool graduate and patriotism is a good thing (blind nationalism is bad).


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

[User]
Why are some published work not followed up by more publications by authors?

Hello. I will try to clarify my question, as I could not find a way to describe it properly within a title's length.

I am starting a PhD in the fall and am currently doing a literature review of my topic, looking for where to start with my own research. I came across a handful of journal articles which presented interesting work, with lots of potential for future work, however they were not followed by any subsequent publications (that I could find by tracking papers citing the aforementioned work).

So I was wondering, since there could be many reason for a researcher to stop working on a project, how does one know if the idea was a dead end or if the project was aborted for a different reason?

I hope my question is clear and relevant, I am still discovering how academic research works and am not aware of how everything works in this world.

[Assistant] One of the main reasons is that much research is done (meaning: the legwork part of the research) by graduate students and postdocs with temporary positions. When they move on to a new position or leave academia, they tend to work on different things.


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

[User] Why do some medicine need to be taken on a full stomach/with food where as for others it doesn't make a difference??

[Assistant] There's generally two reasons why a drug might be recommended to be taken with food. One is just that taking with food can help lessen nausea, which is a side effect of many drugs. The other is that some drugs/formulations are dissolved or absorbed more readily during active digestion. Digestion delays stomach emptying, which can give a drug preparation more time to be fully dissolved before being passed to the intestines. Digestion also stimulates the release of stomach acids, bile, and enzymes, any of which may help with dissolving certain drug formulations. Note that many drugs are specifically recommended to be taken on an empty stomach as well because any of these effects could be negative as well as positive, depending on the exact chemical nature of the drug. In a lot of cases there's actually competing effects, so the best practices have to be established by extensive study and may ultimately recommend, for example, taking a drug with a low-fat meal, etc.


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

[User]
[Mass effect] How did Joker get into the military?

I imagine anyone with glass bones would get crushed under military training. Like no military that I know of would accept someone with a medical illness that could seriously compromise them.

[Assistant]
Joker tested remarkable well for the academy. They gave him a chance to compete for his pilot training based off his aptitude alone. He likes to play up his disability as being more severe than it actually is as well. Despite his inability to compete basic physical fitness courses he still tested the highest in academy history as a pilot. It being a job with no real need for physical aptitude he was assigned to intra-system cargo transport in the sol system as alliance command felt his disability would be a detriment but he was proven to be an apt pilot. After he stole the Normandy from it's shipyard and completed an obstacle course without aid of additional crew and outrunning all pursuing alliance vessels he was chosen to be the ships pilot by the special turian liasion overseeing it's construction. Without captain Anderson or commander Shepard and turian command backing him up he was again demoted to cargo hauling by alliance naval command.

Hes both the best pilot the alliance has ever had and the luckiest. If not for a handful of chance opportunities he'd have been mustered out long ago or sidelined for extensive gene therapy and backwater postings.


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

[User]
Why is it recommended to avoid lying down after taking iron supplements?

The instructions recommend staying upright for 30 minutes afterwards, why is that? I wonder why don't I see this with things like antihistamines or painkillers. It is a 200mg iron fumarate supplement, if that helps.

[Assistant]
Some medicines - such as iron supplements - can cause ulceration of the oesophagus if they do not pass cleanly into the stomach.

Lying down after taking an iron supplement can increase the chance of this occurring so it is advised against for a period of time.


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

[User]
[Saw] How would Jigsaw respond to a repeat victim who never made any attempt to change his or her ways?

John Kramer version of Jigsaw. Let's say this person keeps escaping Jigsaw's traps in the way that Jigsaw intends, but never tries to refrain from whatever flaw that he was trying to cure. Would Jigsaw eventually just straight-up murder this hypothetical person, with no chance of escape?

[Assistant]
This sort of happens doesn't it? John tests a guy by putting him in a chair that he has to push his face through a wall of knives to get out. The guy gets out, is pretty miffed about the whole experience and tries to kill John. John sidesteps and the guy falls into John's conveniently placed razor wire bin.

Here, the victim doesn't learn the "lesson" but John doesn't outright kill him, he allows the victim to kill himself. John doesn't think to himself "aw nuts, this might not be an effective teaching tool", he just tries again. If John sees appreciating life as a lesson one can learn, it stands to reason there are some people who can learn faster than others. Just because someone didn't learn the first or second time, that doesn't mean they won't learn the third time. And if they die? Well they should have tried to learn faster.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do evangelical Christians strongly support the nation of Israel?

Edit: don't get confused - I meant evangelical Christians, not left/right wing. Purely a religious question, not US politics.

Edit 2: all these upvotes. None of that karma.

Edit 3: to all that lump me in the non-Christian group, I'm a Christian educated a Christian university now in a doctoral level health professional career.

I really appreciate the great theological responses, despite a five year old not understanding many of these words. ;)

[Assistant]
They believe the coming home of the world's jews to Israel is a sign of the end times.

Evangelicals tend to believe in the rapture and all that stuff, and the soon to come apocalypse. Israel plays a part in that. When the time comes, all the jews in Israel will be converted to Christianity.


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

[User]
ELI5: If everything is programmed with a programming language how first language born?

It's like a paradox for me!

[Assistant] Let's say your mom wants to make a cake. She can get all the individual ingredients or get a pre-made mix. Programming languages are like the pre-made mix. They were created using lower-level languages, all the way down to binary itself. You could write your program with binary, but it would take a long time and be much more difficult for you to remember. The pre-made cake mix already has the ingredients needed to make a cake. You just add water (or maybe an egg). Programming in a high-level language, although sometimes difficult to grasp at first, is much easier that memorizing sequences of 0's and 1's.


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

[User] ELI5 The Communist Manifesto and why it was so influential.

[Assistant]
First, the Communist Manifesto was short.  Which means more people will read it and it can be used as a primer.

In terms of the message it makes excellent critiques of capitalism.  If you read it today, which i did last week, you'll be amazed at how much of what he said applies to us now.  The main problem is that Marx doesn't give very clear answers for addressing the faults.  His basic plan was that industrialized nations should move to socialism, and then after a period of adjustment move into communism.  I'll explain later why no communist country actually followed his plan.

One of Marx and Engels arguments was that prior to industrialization, we produced not much more than we used.  Obviously there was trade but for the most part the lack of machinery kept production levels low.  Then machines come along and our ability to produce greatly increased.  Adam Smith, the author of *Wealth of Nations* showed how division of labour increased production for manufacturers.  Now instead of one person making a product, you might have 10 who accomplish different portions of the task.  This made production go way up.

What Marx criticized was the effect of having such a surplus.  When you overproduce the price of the good decreases because the supply is so high.  This required two things, one to reduce the cost of manufacturing to keep up with competition who, through free market competition, lower prices.  The second was that you had to find new markets.  Given the world at the time of Smith who published in 1776, there were a lot of non-industrialized nations that you could introduce to your goods.  So the more markets that opened up the more needed to be produced.  Marx believed that workers standard of living decreased as people were moved into the cities to meet the demand for work.  This resulted, he believed, in the workers and consumers becoming less self sufficient.  Cheap goods require cheap labor. Instead of owning your own land or home, you lived in worker cities or rented in town.

On this note Marx was not a big fan of private land ownership (understatement, his summation of Communism was "The abolition of private property").  He argued that the land would be consolidated amongst the bourgeois and ultimately they would own the land/homes.  We can see this today.  Most people's homes are owned by the bank, not by the family.  If land was more communal you wouldn't having everyone paying rent to the same set of people who own the local land.

Back to industrialization, this is the period of time where we find child labor, a lack of labor laws, unions, or anyone fighting for the workers themselves.  Marx divided the population into two classes.  The first was the bourgeois (boor-zhwa) who had the capital (the money, the assets, the means *to* produce).  These were the people who owned the companies or managed them.  They did not produce directly, but the received the most profit from the production.  The name basically means "in the walled city".  The second class was the proletariat.  These are the workers in the factories and on the farms.  Their standard of living is so low that they can only afford to survive.  The name means "those who produce offspring".  They had enough to survive and reproduce.

Now the proletariat the ones who are actually doing the work and producing the goods, yet they are treated the worst and receive little of the profits.  Marx argued for a society in which the workers ruled.  He argued for labor unions to protect themselves from increasingly poor conditions.  Before unions, if a something happened to a worker, there was no one to represent them.  People didn't want to lose their jobs defending them and there wasn't much point to it.  But if the workers band together and say, "Hey we aren't going to work unless you improve these conditions" well then the managers and owners would have to listen.  They can't do the work on their own, they require a large number of the proletariat.

The goal was for the workers to take advantage of their power, which was in production.  If they had to stop work completely, or strike, it cost the owners more in lost production than it cost the workers in lost wages.  Not that it was easy to go without work or that these people had savings but it was a way to be heard.

All of this Marx said, was the result of industrialization.  He stated that we stopped producing to meet needs, and started producing to make profits for a small portion of the population.  He argued that the class struggle between the bourgeois and proletariat would continue to grow until a revolution occurs which will establish a state run by the workers.  As an example, we can see today that about 3% of the population owns ~40% of the wealth (in America).

Basically Marx said when you overproduce (in the search for profits under capitalism) supply is increased, demand is decreased, and the price decreases.  This is not good news for the worker as this cycle feeds back on itself, and ultimately the workers pay the price.

To be continued in a sec.


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

[User]
ELIF: Programming

I just don't understand it but want to learn ;_;. I feel I need to know what it is before I can learn it. Also, how does one language differ from another? How do computers recognize these different languages?

Also #2, please suggest a good starting language. Thank you!

[Assistant]
In addition to what others have said, it's sort of like a set of pre-defined instructions for the computer, with a lot of simple small steps bundled together so that when you say "x + y = z" the computer knows what you mean, because someone already defined "+" and "=".

Let's say you want to teach someone to walk, but they know absolutely nothing about anything, except just enough English to understand you. Before you can tell them to take a step, you have to explain what's inolved in that. So you say "lift up your left foot. Bring your left foot forward a bit. Now bring your left foot back down." You don't want to explain that each time, so after you explain it you tell them "What you just did is called taking a step."

After you explain how to take left and right steps, you might have them take many steps at once, and then say "What you just did is called walking forward." After that  you can use that as a basis for explaining running, jogging, walking backwards or sideways.

Programming languages are kind of like that. Someone has already "taught" the computer how to do the basic things like walking forward, so you as a programmer have the ability to skip straight to more advanced things, by building upon the existing instructions in the language.


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

[User]
CMV: No new anti-terrorism legislation is needed to respond to the January 6th events. The police and surveillance state is already expensive & well fundedenough

This was a failure of leadership and personnel, not the result of systemic limitations that prevented those agencies from guarding the Capitol. The agencies had all the tools and resources they needed to stop it, no new legislation is needed.

Past anti terror legislation in the united states and abroad has resulted in an erosion to our rights to privacy, free association, free expression, due process, a fair and speedy trial, freedom from racial & religious discrimination, etc. New anti-terrorism legislation will likely continue this trend.

[Assistant]
>This was a failure of leadership and personnel, not the result of systematic limitations that prevented those agencies from guarding the Capitol.

It strikes me as poor risk-management to me then. If a pilot on a plane makes a mistake that leads to a disaster you dont say well the plane is safe enough it was just the pilot that messed up, you add checklists and control measures to make sure a single point of failure cannot take out a whole operation. Wouldnt legislative measures to require better risk-management after a thorough incident investigation be beneficial?


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

[User]
[Alien invasion scenarios] do the rules of war apply?

 when aliens invade earth, do the rules of war apply? Can we torture captured alien prisoners? use chemical/ biological weapons? slaughter alien civilians? Create alien genocide? Depleted U slugs? White phosphorous? Desecrate their remains? Anything goes?

[Assistant]
The only rules that apply to us are our rules. If we choose to outlaw torturing prisoners, that's our call.

We may have no choice if we want to win. Even in a scenario like Footfall or Worldwar where the enemy is *barely* strong enough, we're going to be up against some tough obstacles. Maybe only our poison gas is capable of killing them. Maybe only destroying their corpses can stop an infestation. Interstellar travel involves WMD-like power levels just by its very nature, so they've already escalated to the absolute maximum threat level just by coming here.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why did the US colonies form separately instead of just one big colony?

Most other countries like China or Russia formed as a big single entity so why did the US form multiple colonies which led to multiple states?

[Assistant]
In places like China or Russia, you had one power trying to subjugate the others and establish a form of central authority. The strongest kingdoms conquered their neighbors and established a unified state. (In China, it fell apart several times and was then re-unified.) The history of the colonies in America is different.

In North America, different groups came to the country for different reasons. One difference was national--the governments of Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands wanted their *own* colonies that would benefit themselves. But especially among British settlers, each colony was also driven by different ideas. Some went to North America to develop prosperous plantations. Some went there to establish a new kind of society. Some wanted to escape war and persecution in Europe. The British crown granted each colony the right to have a limited kind of self-rule. Over time some colonies got merged, and the British conquered a lot of the foreign colonies.

Before the American Revolution, the colonies were still separate, even though they were all British. They built increasingly close relations with each other, for example they organized a joint defense during the French and Indian War. They saw they had a common interest. When they became upset with Britain, they decided to fight for independence together--different states, but all Americans, organized through the Continental Congress. Even after the Revolution it would take many years for people to see themselves as truly united. They developed a constitution that gave some power to a central government, but left most of the power with the states. The Civil War showed that the states were willing to use force to keep the other members a part of the Union. Especially in the 20th century, federal power increased a lot. But even today, people disagree about how much power should lie with the federal government versus the states individually.


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

[User]
[Doctor Who] How exactly does the Time War work?

In New Who it there is a pretty large amount of references to both 'before' and 'after' the Time War. And I don't quite understand that as a concept. Now, even with the time war being Time locked, that still doesn't make sense as to how it isn't happening in Classic Who. As far as I understand it, it's a war all across time, so how can it ever begin or end? Besides the time after it was Time locked, shouldn't it have always been taking place?

[Assistant] You're thinking of time as a straight line that can only be moved across left and right. In Doctor Who it's also possible to move up and down on to new time lines. Up until the 4th Doctors time the universe is on one time line, then after Genisis of the Daleks we move up to a new time line until we get to the Time War which is a chaotic mess. Imagine these straight vertical horizontal lines drawn on a piece of paper then scrumple it up into a ball and then try to follow the lines. The time war doesn't make sense and that's sort of the point and why it had to be stopped.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do we get milk/baby teeth then lose them?

It seems a bit redundant to grow a set of teeth then lose them just to grow another set back? Are milk teeth different in terms of composition to your permanent teeth?

[Assistant] This is part of the growth process.  Teeth are not like other bones.  The bone in your arm can just grow as you grow, but teeth do not grow, so when you need bigger teeth to fit into your bigger mouth, the solution is to grow entirely new teeth.


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

[User]
First summer on TT job. How should I structure my time?

Just finished my first year as a TT professor. I know what I'm supposed to do this summer: write, write, write. I realize this sounds incredibly naive but how should I structure my time? It's honestly a bit daunting because I have no obligations this summer. Does anyone have a summer system that works? This will sound pathetic but it's scary having all this free time suddenly. Help!

[Assistant]
Wake up: coffee and write.

Lunch prep, then write.

Dinner and reading articles.

Write until unconsciousness.

Repeat until submission. Wait 6 months for depressing R&R, feel like shit, overcome with anxiety and self-doubt. Resubmit and ponder reappointment.

Repeat until death or retirement.

Have a great summer!!


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

[User] [Star Wars (Rebels)] How would the Galactic Civil War been had Thrawns TIE Defender project was successful and mass produced?

[Assistant]
First, Thrawn would have to convince Palpatine to invest in TIE Defenders instead of Super Star Destroyers (the Death Star was too far along to be halted). That's actually the easier part.

Second, the Imperial Navy would have to completely revamp its piloting program to accommodate for how advanced and expensive Defenders were. Even if they went into full mass production they'd have a shortage of qualified pilots.

What's most likely is a compromise that puts two or three Defender squadrons on a Star Destroyer as specialists while they keep the rest of the conventional fighters for mass swarm attacks. The Defender would essentially replace the Interceptor but be much more powerful.

With this plan in place and Thrawn around to develop strategies, plus a new emphasis on pilot training and retraining, the Imperial Navy would become dangerously competent.


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

[User]
[Inception]Why did Cobb have to convince Mol to commit suicide (and vice versa)? Why not simply "drop" her from the level above?

Edit: not sure people are getting me. Cobb convinced Mal to commit suicide in limbo, by putting both their heads on the railway line. It's not explicitly stated, but maybe leaving limbo is different from leaving any other level, and he couldn't have dropped her. He might have wanted to make sure she left at exactly the same time as him, because by the time he woke up and dropped her, she could have been down there for years.

Ok, so what about when Mal jumps from the hotel window, and tries to convince Cobb to follow her by framing him. Its not limbo, they both know that, because they just left limbo. Therefore, it is just another level of dreaming, and we know that dropping is the best way to bring anyone out of a dream level.

So, all she has to do is jump, and the drop Cobb when she wakes up. So why the elaborate scheme to frame Cobb to convince him to jump?

[Assistant]
they were in limbo. The biggest danger of limbo, if you haven't been there before, is that you quickly begin to lose track of reality, and you can only get out when you accept the fact that it's not real. The ultimate form of faith in that idea is letting yourself die, hoping that you will wake up.

I believe it was also implied that they went straight to limbo, and didn't go through multiple dream levels to get there.


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

[User]
[40k] What do the Traitors actually, well, do, day to day?

A common question I see with 40k is what does the average Imperial do day-to-day, and there are plenty of good answers for it.

But what do the chaos-sworn Traitors do? I mean, I can imagine that the Traitor Astartes lives are just sort of a perversion of the normal Astartes life - train, meditate on The Emperor... err, Chaos!, maintain their gear, and generally just revel in being badasses, etc. And I can suppose that the Dark Mechanicus is busy making engines of Chaos and such. But what about the legions of Traitor guard? I don't suppose legions of them are just sitting around in their Chaos Bases with their Chaotic thumbs up their Chaotic butts, right? Are they... living some sort of life? Where do they get food, and who prepares it? Do they play their evil card games and evil sports in their downtime? How much humanity is left to them, and how do they express it?

[Assistant]
They're trying to eke out an existence, Astartes and humans alike. There are planets in the Eye where farming is possible, and those are among the most prized assets the Legions have and therefore viciously fought over. All out wars were fought over access to clean water, that inflicted casualties comparable to those taken in the Siege of Terra. Warriors that served together in the same outfit since the Heresy War murder each other to get spare parts or working armor components when their warband falls onto hard times.

The baseline humans have it even worse. There is a hierarchy: Those with actual skills like troop commanders, higher level ship crew, armorers and the like get halfway decent supplies and protection both from the other human dregs as well as the more deranged Astartes who prey on the humans for fun or sports. The frontline troops of the Lost and the Damned get grueling training day in and day out, during transport they are often herded into mass holds and sedated with gasses until their time has come and they're revved up with Frenzon and Slaught and sent to take a bullet that otherwise would have hit someone more valuable.

All others are left to their own devices, if they don't find/steal/grow food (most likely stuff like fungi and Corpse Starch) and water on their own they die. No one knows or cares how many of the Voidborn dwell in the bowels of the ships. When the Astartes have some capacities to create reinforcements their children might be taken in for induction when no other source for recruits is available.


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

[User]
ELI5:how do artists decide which order to place their tracks on an album?

It matters less these days, as no one uses CDs anymore. It mattered even more before CDs, as there were cassette tapes.

[Assistant] an album is a piece of art to the artist. the tracks are all individual "illustrations" but when viewed all together, paint a more gestalt picture of what the artist is trying to convey. on some albums, the track listing is there to create a certain flow, feeling or ambiance throughout for the listener.. maybe some tracks segue into one another to create this effect. in some cases, the track order might not matter it all.


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

[User] [Back To The Future] Is the whole point of the first movie pointless since when Lorraine fell in love with Marty, he gets erased from existence which means that Lorraine would not fall in love with him since he doesn't exist and she would go back to George which eventually fixed itself in the end?

[Assistant]
Worse. It would trap them in a timeloop forever.

Marty doesn't exist because of his own actions in the past? He doesn't take those actions, so he exists, so he goes back in time and performs said actions, causing himself not to exist, so he doesn't go back in time, so he *does* exist, so he goes back in time...

The universe then has *no* future from the point Marty went back in time, because neither timeline can reach beyond that point - either Marty exists, goes back in time, and changes the timeline, or we're in the changed timeline where Marty doesn't exist, which means he doesn't go back in time to create the timeline which means we're in the original timeline.

No future. No progress. No possibility of the people stuck in this loop even noticing it's happening.

The most unremarkable destruction of the universe that could be devised.


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

[User]
Why is modern anti-cheat software in video games so ineffective?

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this. It seems like every major video game (TF2, CSGO,DBD, R6) today has a cheating problem. Why is it so hard to make effective anti cheat software? Do cheats "evolve" to quickly? Do the developers just not care to spend huge amounts of money creating anti cheat software that cheaters will find a way to bypass anyways?

[Assistant]
Your computer works for you. If you want to read the memory of programs running on your own computer, nothing can stop you. Reverse-engineering enough of a game to understand where it keeps things in memory, and writing a program to read the game's memory and interpret those values for you, is _complicated_, but always feasible.

Anti-cheat software might try to detect programs that are reading the game's memory, but again, the computer ultimately works for the user, not the game developer. The user could develop cheat software that identifies when the _anti-cheat_ software is running, reads the memory of _that_, and changes the variable representing "have we found any cheat software running" to `false`.

This creates a cat-and-mouse game, between people on the game development side making their game software more obfuscated, or writing more sophisticated anti-cheat software, and people on the cheating side building increasingly sophisticated cheat software that interprets those obfuscated games or outsmarts the anti-cheat software.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is "Municipal Waste" and why is it specifically labeled as such? Is it treated differently than other waste?

I see loads on some trucks labeled Municipal Waste.

[Assistant] MSW is municipal solid waste and refers to everyday household garbage.  C&D waste is construction & demolitions debris. Sometimes they are separated at smaller landfills as the C&D waste has less stringent regulations for disposal.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does the American college education system seem to be at odds with the students?

All major colleges being certified to the same standard, do not accept each other's classes. Some classes that do transfer only transfer to "minor" programs and must be take again. My current community college even offers some completely unaccredited degrees, yet its the "highest rated" and, undoubtedly, the biggest in the state. It seems as though it's all a major money mad dash with no concern for the people they are providing a service for.  Why is it this way? What caused this change?

[Assistant]
>It seems as though it's all a major money mad dash with no concern for the people they are providing a service for. Why is it this way? What caused this change?

In a word, capitalism. A college is a business, and the primary goal of the business is to make money. Your education comes second to profit.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do our brains have trouble visualizing more than 3 dimensions?

[Assistant]
Because the concept is completely foreign. You don't experience it,which gives you very little to base it off of. You work with 1,2,3D objects every day,and your brain is optimized for it,for survival.

Analogies about going from say 2D to 3D only help so much.it's much easier to grasp since we're alreasy 3D-trying to learn it as a thing that lives in 2D would be just as hard

Being able to see something similar to what you're trying to learn,and adapting it is a very central point in learning

edit:

Since i've had a few questions, i was assuming the OP strictly meant *spatial* dimensions (based on context), and kept it simple.


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

[User]
[titan a.e.] why don't they just find a pre-existing planet?

So Earth got blown up and humanity is homeless. Do they really have to drift in space? Are all the planets taken?

[Assistant]
Couple of reasons.

1- After the Earth blew up there wasn't any central human government left. The surviving humans didn't have the leadership or resources to band together and find a new planet.

2- The Drej declared war on all humanity. Their intentions were to wipe out all of humanity and destroying the Earth was just the first major step. Over the last 15 years they had been going around destroying the few remaining human drifter colonies.


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

[User]
[MARVEL 616] Odin went to Jord/Gaea and said. "I seek an heir whose powers surpass Asgard." So why has Thor never really surpassed Asgard?

The only time I can think of when he well and truly surpassed Asgard is when he became Rune King Thor, but then had Odin sacrificed both his eyes wouldn't he have been granted the same knowledge?

I know OKT is supposed to be greater than Odin and while OKT has fought some pretty powerful beings that Odin has faced and arguably done better than his father- Odin never struck me as someone who does things by half measures and OKT (in my personal view) hasn't surpassed his father.

I also am aware Thor retains more of his godly strength on Earth than, IIRC, all the other Gods due to being Gaea's son and seeing that a great deal of events occur on earth this is certainly beneficial but it hardly surpasses Asgard.

What are your thoughts?

[Assistant] What are your criteria for "surpassing asgard"? Thor easily most powerful asgardian to ever live, and he's one who broke the cycle of Ragnarok, as well restoring Asgard after asgardians went on that reincarnation binge. Is that not enough? Most of Odin's heavyweight comes from Odinforce, while Thor can easily split earth and punch planets without any such hax.


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

[User]
ELI5 what is a 401(k)

I just read a post here in Reddit about 401k, but I'm not getting the concept.
Can someone please explain what it is and why would a company be willing to match? What does the company you work in win by matching it?

Edit: Thank you for all the answers! the were mostly very clear and now I understad why companies and people do it.
Edit 2: Im glad to know I wasnt the only one who doesnt got it!

[Assistant]
Back in the day, companies would give employees a pension, where after retirement the company would keep paying a portion of their salary. The problem was that the company had to invest and earn money to pay those obligations, and sometimes they couldn't.

The 401(k) gives companies the ability to put money toward employees' retirement, but put the responsibility for investing on the employees. If they don't enroll, or don't contribute to get the maximum match, it's not the company's problem. The match serves as a benefit to attract better quality employees.


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

[User]
Immunologists: If you have an autoimmune disorder, are you more resistent against normal infections?

So my (admittedly trivial) understand of autoimmune disorders is that your immune system, for one reason or another, becomes over-active and starts attacking your own body's cells, having mistaken them for a foreign body.

This got me thinking about a couple major questions:

1. If you were to occupy your immune system with pathogens of another kind, would that relieve the symptoms of the disorder?
2. Would you be more resistent to "standard" pathogens?

tl;dr If you have lupus: does that make you wolverine?

[Assistant]
1) There have been cases in history where certain disease states prevent acquisition of other disease states, but typically it is when one infection causes antibodies and an immune response that fight off another similar infection by accident.  Your immune system can fight off more than one pathogen, even if it thinks your own body is a pathogen.  Thank god! because at any point you are fighting off a ton of tiny little pathogens trying to make you sick.

2) Not unless the pathogen happened to be identical to whatever it was in your body that is being attacked by your own immune system.  So basically no.

3) Lupus is a term referring to many different possible mutations that end up with your body attacking itself in many different ways and in various organ systems.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are mineral ores found in the form of veins?

Like, besides where did each mineral even come from, what causes it to be a certain length embedded in rock?

[Assistant]
As tectonic processes move the crust around, smooshing it together, bending it, stretching it etc, it also has lots of fluid moving through it. Some are hot, some are cold, some are water based, some are magmatic. They can have wildly different chemistry. As they interact with different rocks at different pressure and temperatures those fluid can dissolve some things. And like putting milk in chocolate cereal - some stuff dissolves into the fluid and others don't.

So while a rock might only contain, say, 0.003% gold, hot fluids with the right temperature, pH and other conditions might be able to dissolve the gold and not much else. That will remove the gold from the rock and put it in the fluid.

As the fluid moves through cracks and other fluid pathways it can cool down or change its solvent properties, and particular minerals will get dumped out of it in highly concentrated volumes.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Are Aurors really the top of the career ladder?

In the books, Aurors are portrayed as the cream of the crop of wizards in terms of skill and status in society. But what about the magical equivalent of investment bankers, wall street executives, software engineers, and analysts?

[Assistant]
Aurors are the best when it comes to fighting dark wizards and other threats, but there are lots of other wizarding professions that involve just as much skill.

That said, the Goblins pretty much have a stranglehold on the financial sector, but they're also ideal for the position in a way humans generally aren't, so this is not much of a problem.


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

[User]
(DC/Marvel) How would the Super Soldier Serum affect someone like Batman?

Would it just let him keep his peak physique without the need to train? Would it actually make him stronger? Bigger? It made Steve Rogers grow a couple of inches. Would Bruce go from 6'2 to 6'5?

[Assistant]
Bruce Wayne is already an exceedingly excellent example of a human being. The SSS would make him a perfect one.

Yes it would make him much stronger. As to height? Effective human height with all the benefits of size and none of the downfalls of excessive height seems to be in the 6 foot to 6 1/2 foot range, so maybe Bruce gains an inch or three, but not much, and maybe none at all, being that his body is insanely efficient at the current height.

His musculature is perfectly tuned for his physiology, so likely the size of his muscles wouldn't grow, only the efficiency and power.

An SSS enhanced Bruce Wayne probably wouldn't actually look much different, he'd just pack a lot more power and ability into that same chiseled frame. Match that with his near human maximum combination of education and skill, and he'd be much more formidable than he already is.

He'd also be a different hero. Batman owns the night because the night gives him the edge over his opponents. Batman plans so well because he lacks the ability to go toe to toe with some of his opponents. He's so skilled to make up for his human limitations. He's so educated because he needs to know his opposition to plan against them.

If he could throw the perfect punch instead of having the perfect plan, do you think he'd spend so much of his life being good at planning, or punching?

Batman is who he is mostly because of what he isn't. If you give him too much power, he doesn't need to be what he is any more.


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

[User]
[Game of Thrones TV Show] What happened to the 100k strong freefolk/wildling army?

I was watching the old episodes to catch up for SSN7 and wondered what happened to Mance Ryder's wildling army. IIRC, it is mentioned that there are 100k people in his army before their first attack on the wall. Stannis attacks them with his 20k army and wins because of surprise. Was Stannis able to capture 100k wildlings? or did they scatter during that battle?

After hardhome, when Jon marches to winterfell they say they only have 3000 men. Does that mean that they lost 97k people to the White walkers during hardhome?

[Assistant]
100k people, not soldiers. A large chunk are women, children, old folk, a few cripples, etc.

They would have lost a disproportionate amount of men when Stannis attacked, more to the battle of Winterfell. The remainder are likely holding the wall.


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

[User] ELI5: if Coke is more popular, why do some restaurants only serve Pepsi?

[Assistant]
Pepsi offered their product at a better price so they signed a contract.

And if somebody asks for coke, they'll just say: oh we don't have, what about Pepsi? and nobody says NOOOOOOOOOOOO THERE'S SUCH A BIG DIFFERENCE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!


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

[User] [Mass Effect + Other(s)] How would other science fiction universes fair against the Reapers?

[Assistant]
Doc Brown, eager to see the far future, travels to 2185, only to find Earth under attack by the reapers. He tricks a group of Batarian terrorists into giving him a case of element zero before returning to 1985.

Once he's back, he retrofits the Delorean with a hyperdrive, and recruits Marty, telling him that something's gotta be done about his great-great-great-great-great-great-grand kids! They go back to the distant future, only to find Ziff Tannen planning to sell out the survivors of Hill Valley to the reapers.

After they defeat him, they develop a desperate plan to stop the reapers. Doc sneaks onto the Crucible, pretending to be a scientist performing experiments to study the solar wind. In reality, he retrofits the Crucible to be a gigantic speaker.

As the reapers close in, Marty hooks his guitar to the Crucible, plays Johnny B. Goode at a volume sufficient to rock several galaxies, and defeats the Reapers with the power of rock and roll.


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

[User]
What causes the stinging sensation when you get soap in the eyes?

I'm curious about the mechanism - how do detergent molecules (or other components of soap) trigger a pain response? And in the case of baby shampoo and similar substances, how do they avoid triggering this response?

[Assistant] Eyes are naturally very sensitive and rely on a layer of lubrication to protect them aka tears. Leave your eyes open long enough and air itself will become exceptionally painful. Anyway Soap disrupts this layer and it mostly like hurts terribly because soap is fairly basic having a pH if 8 to 10 depending on the brand. That and any additives put in the soap as well could also play a role.


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

[User]
[Mass Effect] What would happen to a species which had just barely avoided being harvested by the Reapers?

For example, a species that is just breaking the atom as the Reapers finish their harvest. After a few centuries, when they find the Mass Relays and the Citadel, wouldn't they have 50000 years to develop their civilization before the Reapers return?

That might make them too powerful to harvest.

 Even the advanced races like the Asari were only space civilizations for a few thousand years old before the last harvest.

[Assistant]
If they got too advanced too soon, the Reapers would likely turn around and head back for a smaller "reaping". The 50,000 year thing is more of a guideline of how long it usually takes for galactic civilization to pop up and get to the desired level.

It's one of the reasons they always leave a Reaper behind as a scout; to report back when it's time to begin the harvest, even if more/less than the usual time has passed.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is nausea a side effect for nearly every medication?

It seems like every time I look a medication up or get a pamphlet from a pharmacist, nausea/vomiting is almost always listed under side effects. Even my medications to help with my nausea list it as a side effect! What gives?

[Assistant]
One reason is because when drug companies do drug trials they list all the *problems* that were reported during the trial, even if there is no clear link between the problem and the drug. For example, in the drug trial:
If they give a group of people who are feeling nauseous a drug to stop the feeling and after an hour some still feel nauseous, there's no way knowing if this is because of the drug or the existing ailment. So, they have to record it as a possible side effect.

Edit: trial not trail .-.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does Emergen-C make carbonated drinks lose their fizz?

I like to mix Emergen-C with Sprite or Sierra Mist. When I pour the packet in a glass with a carbonated drink it I have to do it slowly or the foam will keep building and spill over the glass. After it's done, my soda is flat. What is in Emergen-C that makes it react so strongly to carbonation?

[Assistant]
I think it has to do with nucleation sites. The tablet gives bubbles a good place to form. The bubbles form easily because the liquid is super saturated with CO2, and so they "want"  to leave solution.

The same reason diet coke and mentos fountains work. The bubbles are just waiting for an easy way to release their energy.


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

[User] ELI5: how does grass(and plants in general) come back year after year after dying? And also, where does grass seed come from?

[Assistant]
I live in the grass seed capitol of the world!  (Oregon) and there are hundreds of thousands of acres devoted to growing grass.  Its harvested for seed and hay.

But the grass doesnt die it just goes dormant.


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

[User] [ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles] Reptiles can't digest milk. They are all lactose intolerant, they don't produce the enzyme lactase. Does this mean that within 12 hours of eating pizza the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles experience massive intestinal distress?

[Assistant] No, they are mutants, which means that they can do all kinds of things that turtles and humans cannot.  Remember that the mutagenic ooze makes them an amalgamation of themselves and the most recent species that they were in contact with.  According to the cartoons, the turtles were previously pets.  The mutagenic ooze would have given them the lactase enzyme, as well as the ability to talk, run around, climb walls, train with weapons, become ninjas, make friends, learn to repair modern technology, drive vans, and so on.


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

[User] How much electrical conductance (if any) is lost, when a metal is oxidized?

[Assistant]
That depends on the degree of oxidation, the oxidation product and the original material.  Most  common pure metal oxides are, comparatively speaking, very poor conductors (many are actually excellent insulators)

A thin surface layer of oxide such as you will find on aluminum or stainless steel has little effect on the overall conductivity of the material as a whole.  A thicker oxide layer will affect the ability to form a good connection with another material.   This latter bit is why aluminum wiring is rarely used anymore.   When mated with a dissimilar material like copper without protection, the resulting bond will oxidize, conductivity will drop, the junction heats up and if it heat as up enough, your house burns down.


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

[User]
[Sherlock Holmes] Why isn't MI6 all over the Holmes brothers?

Doesn't anyone find weird that one of the Holmes brothers is a genius independent detective and the other is a high ranking official in the british government?

What if these two are up to something? They have the perfect setup to cover all kinds of operations such as international spionage.

If i were MI6, i wouldn't let Sherlock grab a sandwich without agents following him. Much less get involved in solving criminal cases where he doesn't answer to anybody but himself.

And it would be a good idea to keep tabs on Mycroft as well, he could compromise national security in his meetings with Sherlock.

[Assistant]
Who's to say Mycroft isn't the head of MI6? His job is completely undefined, we just know he's essential to the government of the U.K.

Head of MI6 fills that requirement, he clearly works in a shadowy spy like way, has a lot of connections, an extensive network of people working for him.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do some pains "hurt more in the morning" than they do when they occur?

[Assistant]
So these sorts of pains come from an inflammation reaction.

If you are working out, then small tears occur. These tears do not bother you at the moment because the nerves don't detect them very well and they don't cause anything to drastically change.

After some time however, the broken cells that are torn leak stuff out that attracts your immune system which normally fights of bacteria and other germs.

The immune system cleans up the torn tissue and this clean up is what causes the soreness the next day.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do electric stoves that heat a coil for a burner not electrify any metal utensil that touches it?

To my knowledge, electric non-conduction oven tops use electricity to heat up metal coils. What is it about them that makes them not conduct electricity into things, is it the specific metals used?

[Assistant]
Because the heating element itself it not exposed.

The coils is covered with a ceramic or fiberglass covering that separates the heating element from the outside. With enough resistance to stop electricity, but it still gets hot.

Now if you damaged a heating coil and exposed the heating element itself, that could definitely short.


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

[User]
How do air conditioners and other "cooling machines" do their job?

I understand the mechanics of how they work, but I don't understand the physics. I know that they do not cool the air as much as they absorb heat from the air.

The real question is, how is the air changed after it has passed over the refrigerated coils? I know that gases under pressure get hotter because the molecules are banging against each other and causing friction. Does the inverse happen when they decompressing? When hot air passes over the coils, does it become less dense?

[Assistant] The act of a liquid vaporizing absorbs *a lot* of heat. What an air conditioner does is take a coolant (that is normally a vapor at room temperature and pressure) and compress it, making it hot.  The hot vapor is then cooled in a condenser outside your home.  As the high-pressure vapor is cooled to ambient temperature it becomes a liquid.  This liquid is pumped back inside, and the pressure is reduced in an evaporator.  The low pressure causes the coolant to become a vapor again.  As the coolant vaporizes, it absorbs heat from the air in your room, making it cold.


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

[User] Is Cherenkov Radiation harmful?

[Assistant]
While Cherenkov radiation cannot enter the xray and gamma ray portion of the spectrum, most of it IS ultraviolet and, therefore, it can be harmful to someone who has taken no precautions to shield themselves.

As an aside, that Cherenkov radiation is the sonic boom particles with respect to light is pretty amazing if you think about it.


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

[User] [The Expanse] If Earthers and Martians went to war (prior to the start of the series) what would be the most likely outcome?

[Assistant]
Mars has better ships, armor, and weapon tech. Their soldiers are also better trained, and tough as nails.
Earth has waaay more ships, and more soldiers.

In a straight fight, Mars would lose eventually due to not having the resources to maintain a long term war. It would be a pyrrhic victory for earth, and they would be in a very bad position at the end.

The belters would take advantage of this, although without Marco inaros to unify them, they would become even more splintered and factions would pop up trying to carve out a patch for themselves.

The protomolecule likely gets activated, but the ring gate doesn't get opened.


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

[User] [STARWARS ] ELI5: why is force sensitivity needed to weild a light sabre?

[Assistant]
It's not *necessary*.

But, okay. Here's the thing. The lightsaber blade has no mass. There's no weight or heft to it, just the hilt, and the hilt gets mighty gyroscopic. Unlike swinging a stick around, you can't tell where the blade might end up.

Force users use the Force (of course) to tell where the blade is at all times and avoid hitting themselves, their friends, or their surroundings even while performing acrobatics or swatting blaster bolts away.

Non-Force users can do the same, but only after much practice. Otherwise they risk going a little too far with a swing and severing a limb.


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

[User]
How old is the water we drink?

We are taught that matter is never created nor destroyed, but rather it just changes forms.   For example: plants grow and animals eat them.  The animals eventually die, decompose, and become part of the soil on which new plants grow again.

What about water?  What is the average age of our tap water (from the time that the matter which makes up the water was something else)?   Does the matter which is our tap water generally just exist (and has existed) as water?  Or do parts of other matter get converted to water as part of some life's cycle?

[Assistant] Water can be destroyed.  In photosynthesis the oxygen is split off and released.  In the upper atmosphere it is dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen and much of the hydrogen escapes into space.  What is mostly constant is the hydrogen, much of which dates from the time of the big bang, and the oxygen, which was formed within stars at the same time as most of the elements n Earth.


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

[User]
[DC] How does Batman justify the idea of Robin?

It's pretty simple to explain child endangerment is bad, and Batman can make no guarantee that he can keep his wards safe, so how does he justify still doing it? Particularly after Jason's death, why does he still think Robin as a concept is still a good idea? Even if they have the "potential to go astray" given their troubled histories, wouldn't it make more sense to keep them by his side as Bruce than Batman?

[Assistant] Basically, the Robins would have become vigilantes regardless, and without the Bat's training, gotten themselves killed. The Bat saw potential in them, and the ability to protect them from themselves.


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

[User] ELI5: How are magnets produced/extracted?

[Assistant] There is type of iron ore called magnetite, also known as lodestone, is a natural permanent magnet. Magnets can also be made using other large magnets. You take a piece of material and place it next to a large magnet and after some time that piece of material becomes a magnet.


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

[User]
Which species has the most extreme genetic difference between male and female?

Some animals (like cats), you can hardly tell the difference between a male and female, but then there are species like the angler fish, in which the male and female look like entirely separate species.  How extreme can it get?

[Assistant]
That's two separate questions:

- Which species has the most extreme *genetic* difference between male and female?

- Which species has the most extreme *physical* or *apparent* difference between male and female?

AFAIK most species that have an extreme physical or apparent difference between male and female would only have a very small genetic difference between male and female.  (E.g.  XY  chromosome vs XX chromosome)


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

[User] Is there activity in the auditory cortex when people "talk" in their minds?

[Assistant] Yes, but in the secondary auditory cortex, not the primary. One of the thoughts on how the auditory hallucinations of how schizophrenia may work is that these pathways don't develop correctly so differentiating between self-thought and outside stimuli becomes difficult.


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

[User]
CMV: Mass effect 3 is the best game in the series despite the ending (which gets too much hate).

Let me start this up with me saying that I love the whole trilogy, and overall enjoy every game in it. I just believe ME3 is the best one (most say its ME2) and that the ending's badness is over exaggerated.

I don't think anyone will deny that ME3 is best graphically and gameplay wise.

Mass effect 1 had a lot of variety of weapons and armor (and boosts to them), but it was pretty clunky and glitchy.

Mass effect 2 improved the animations, the cover, the AI, etc. However it was pretty bare bones overall (especially in customization).

Mass effect 3 brought us more customization, variety, and dept in gameplay than ME2 while still having the smoothest shooting and combat.

Lets look at the story now.

ME1 had a tight plot with a good villan, but the characters weren't much to ride home about (and this is someone who likes Ashley more than most). Ash and Kaidan were okay, Tali was just a codex, and Garrus was just a typical renegade cop. Wrex and Liara I liked. The plot was tight though, and Saren was a very good villain.

ME2 did add a whole new bunch of awesome characters and substantially improved characters from ME1. But the main plot was weak, even by the standards of a middle entry. I know the story naturally lends itself to being more character focused (it being about building a team and all), but the reason for building the team never really engaged me. A good reason for this was probably a lack of a villain. TIM wasn't a villain until ME3, all he did was a few underhanded things (which ultimately helped you anyways). He was an interesting character, but they didn't use him as the antagonist. Instead we just got Harbinger to pop up and spew some cornball one-liners. You only fight the collectors 3 times, and even the twist where they ended up being protheans just didn't affect me. I felt more interested in the collectors when I got to hear about them from the Alliance perspective in ME3 (James and Cortez) than in ME2.

ME3 manages to strike a happy medium. You get to finally face the fucking reapers head-on (even do a Mexican stand-off with one) and TIM was a complex indoctrinated villain like Saren (though I will grant that the game focuses on Cerberus a little *too* much). You were motivated to go through the main story, earth and all life in the galaxy was on the line here and you felt it now more than ever.

You get less companions than in ME2, but everyone gets at least a cameo. I cared more about Miranda's family arch in ME3 than in ME2, Thane got to go out with a bang, Legion's story ends powerfully (regardless of the ending you chose). There is just tons of cool moments with characters, moments that outdo their loyalty missions. If you have the Citadel DLC then its no contest.

Nothing before in the series is as touching as Mordin sacrificing himself to correct his mistakes by curing the genophage. Nothing is as crushing as killing Mordin, then later killing Wrex (one of the best scenes in the series). Seeing Tali kill herself is rough, killing Legion almost made me cry  ("Does this unit have a soul?"), and seeing the Quarian and Geth make peace is very fulfilling.

This brings me to another thing, ME3 is the only one where pure renegade is close to reasonable. Pure renegade has always resulted in a very inconsistent character compared to pure paragon, but ME3 is the only game where there is good reason to do so. In ME1, being pure renegade is excruciating ("Are you contagious?"). In ME2, its not always reasonable, but they made it fun at least ("You talk too much"). With ME3, there is actually some pressure to be pragmatic. You may betray your friends Mordin and Wrex, but is it not worth the value of the salarian fleet?

It has the best character moments, arguably the best main plot (ME3 was more engaging then ME1, but the missions didn't flow as naturally from one to the other). The main problem everyone and their grandma has with the game, the ending. I only think the ending is half bad.

The idea of control vs destroy has been what the series has been buildings towards, it makes sense thematically (synthesis is kinda the odd duck I'll grant you that). The philosophy of Anderson vs TIM (the "mentor figure" in each previous game) fighting at the end of the reapers.

The problems come with presentation. They should have shown you how the choice you made affected the galaxy instead of assblasting the galaxy with colors and leaving it up to your imagination. They should have shown how ALL your choices affected the galaxy, kinda like how Fallout reflects on you, your choices, the characters you interact with, and the result of it all..

Many will criticize how you choose what you say less frequently, I just think they went quality over quantity. They only gave you an option to speak when your decision would significantly change how the conversation would go. This is compensated by the increase in interrupts, companions interacting more, and making conversations more dynamic

In ME1 and ME2, conversations with companions would almost always take place with them each sitting/standing in the same position (especially ME1). In ME3 you get to have a contest with garrus, "dance" with Vega, etc. Also in the first two games you would scarcely see two characters interact, now you can see them talk often (and occasionally give support to change the course of their conversation).

[Assistant]
>The idea of control vs destroy has been what the series has been buildings towards, it makes sense thematically (synthesis is kinda the odd duck I'll grant you that).

I completely disagree. Control isn't even brought up until the end of 3, and by then it's already been undermined by characters like EDI and Legion, both of which you free from human control at some point in the game. EDI never betrays you, and as you said both the geth and quarians can be saved.

The conflict of controlling vs destroying AI was never a conflict in the series, the conflict was always whether AI are inherently a threat or organics. That's what makes the geth/quarian conflict so interesting. Even on Rannoch in ME3 you're learning the origins of the conflict, how it wasn't the geth's fault, how they kept the planet safe, how they let the quarians live, how they didn't fight the galaxy.

The AI that attack the player never seem to do it because they are malicious; the geth were attacked by the quarians in the Morning War, were later indoctrinated by the Reapers with Saren, and then were attacked by the quarians again in ME3. The smuggling AI on the Citadel knew it would be preemptively destroyed once C-SEC discovered it. When EDI becomes self-aware, she is under attack by the Alliance.

Over the course of the series, it becomes obvious that you are supposed to be questioning the assumption that AI are inherently dangerous, and assumption that is necessary for Control vs Destroy to make sense.


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

[User]
[LOTR] What makes Numenor such a strong nation?

I've read from almost all sources stating that Numenor was the strongest nation in the LOTR universe, able to stomp the dark lords forces on many accounts, only losing due to the corruption of Sauron. So what makes them so strong? Was it their strength in numbers? Technology? Were they superhumans?

[Assistant] Yes, they were basically super humans. They were taller, stronger, nobler, longer-lived. They were as close to elves as men could get. They really don't delve into their level of technology, but they were pretty able seafarers.


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

[User] [LOTR] Do orcs have below average intelligence?

[Assistant]
Just like any other people of Middle Earth there are very smart orcs and there are very dumb orcs.

The humans, elves, dwarves and hobbits we encounter in the books are literally the high society of their people, with the exception of Sam.

Frodo is essentially a millionaire trust fund kid, as was Bilbo.

Pippin is hobbit royalty.

Merry is also hobbit royalty, but part of a break away territory from the shire mainland.

Aragorn is the heir to several ancient human and elven royal bloodlines, he was educated and raised in an Elven lord and is the legal ruler of the vast majority of Middle Earth.

Legolas is the prince of the Mirkwood elven woodland kingdom.

Gimli is dwarven royalty as well, descended from Durin the Deathless.

Boromir is the heir to a lesser but no less impressive noble house of Gondor.

But the only Orcs we encounter are cannon fodder.

If you want an example of a smart orc then the best example would be the Great Goblin.

On the whole, orcs are not stupid.  They are described as industrious, clever but cruel.  They are excellent engineers, but tend to put this ingenuity toward weapons of war and torture.

This attitude has a lot to do with upbringing.  Orcs are born and bred as slaves, they have no choice.  They are social outcasts in Middle Earth, the free peoples simply won't ever accept a peaceful orc.  So, it's either fall in line or be hunted down by both sides, one side as a good for nothing orc, the other as a traitor.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Do non-verbal spells still require some sort of hand or wand movement?

Like if I somehow tied up Voldemort and gagged him would I still be susceptible to spells from him?

[Assistant]
It depends on the skill and magical merit.

Expert tier wizards can both *wandlessly* and *non-verbally* cast spells, but it takes a lot of mental willpower and multitask abilities, which is why non-verbal magic is not taught until 6th year in Hogwarts.

For instance, during the duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort, he casted a Fiendfyre and manipulated it into a giant serpent. He did it non-verbally and wandlessly. And Fiendfyre is one of the most difficult, elaborate and delicate curses that exist, hell, Hermione was afraid to cast the curse (even though it's one of the few spells which can destroy a Horcrux). That alone demonstrates the apex of Voldemort's powers.

Yes, it's possible to not make any hand movements or use a wand at all. African wizarding school also teaches wandless magic use more prominently than Hogwarts, as a wand was an European invention.


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

[User] ELI5: How do forensic pathologists know which wound was the one that killed the person? How do they know that certain wounds were done posthumously?

[Assistant]
They can tell which wound killed someone because it's going to be the one that damaged the most vital organs. So if you got shot three times and one was in the leg, one in the liver, and one in the heart, then they could all have been fatal, but the one in the heart will be the one killed you.

They can tell if the wound was post-mortem because it won't bleed or bruise.


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

[User]
CMV: Tattoo artists should be more transparent about prices and less offended when you ask about them

I love my tattoos and want a ton more but there seems to be this thing with artists where if you ask about price, they're offended, or won't reply to you. Like they don't want you to ask about price beforehand. I'm sorry, but I save up for this artwork and I don't wanna go in thinking I have enough and it ends up being way more. I've been told by multiple people it's part of the etiquette of tattoos that you don't ask about price, and I've seen artists in YouTube videos talk about how it's such a big no. I think it's stupid. I am paying you for a service and I want to know how much I'm gonna be paying before you give me the service.

[Assistant] I have several friends who are tattoo artists they will give you a rough idea of what it will cost if you ask but unless it's pretty simple and straightforward they don't always know especially if they are charging you by the hour.


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

[User] [The Shining] Why does the hotel only seem to fuck with the caretakers while closed for off season and not the guests or anyone else while open. Also surely they weren't the only two caretakers. What of the others?

[Assistant] Guests during the regular season aren't trapped there, don't stay there for months, and have lots of other people around to notice and help if somebody starts to lose it. Only the extended isolation of the winter caretakers allows enough time and space to effectively work the psychological manipulation. And not everyone is equally susceptible, which is why it doesn't happen every year.


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

[User]
Can someone please explain the theory of multiple dimensions?

Recently in my Astronomy class my professor talked about having more than 3 dimensions. I personally find this inconceivable, so could someone be kind enough to explain having more than three dimensions. My professor talked about there being 9, although there could maybe be a seemingly infinite number?

[Assistant]
It's been well known since Einstein published his papers on special relativity in 1905 that there are at least 4 dimensions, with time being the fourth (in addition to the standard 3 spatial dimensions).  All this means is that time needs to be treated on equal footing with the spatial components rather than as it's own thing, and that, in the laws of physics, time needs to be inseparable from the spatial dimensions.  The big repercussion of this of this is that you can move, rotate, and boost objects between the spatial dimensions and time as naturally as you can move, rotate, and boost things in the 3 familiar dimensions.

Theories such as string theory and M-theory contain more than 4 dimensions (9 and 10, respectively) in an attempt to make the mathematics work probably.  The simple picture is this -

When trying to do calculations in quantum field theory (which explains electromagnetism, the strong nuclear and weak nuclear forces), you often times end up with infinities in your answer.  These are non-physical, so physicists have to use a mathematical trick called *renormalization*, which turns the infinities in sensible answers. This generally works fine.  However, when trying to incorporate general relativity into quantum field theories to create a quantum theory of gravity, physicists have to do these same calculations on a curved manifold - and it turns out that it's impossible to renormalize to get rid of infinities in the standard 4-dimensions.  However, it turns out it *may* be possible to do this if treated as a 9- or 10-dimensional space, and then using a process called "compactification" to reduce back to the 4-dimensions we're used to.


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

[User]
[Clive Barker's Books Of Blood - In The Hills, The Cities] How did the world react to the destruction of Podujevo and presumable destruction of Popolac?

For anyone who has not read the story, here's Wikipedia's quick summary:

*In an isolated rural area of Yugoslavia, two entire cities, Popolac and Podujevo, create massive communal creatures by binding together the bodies of their citizens. Almost 40,000 people walk as the body of a single giant as tall as a skyscraper. This ritual occurs every ten years, but this time things go wrong and the Podujevo giant collapses, horribly killing tens of thousands of citizens. In shock, the entire population of Popolac goes mad and becomes the giant they are strapped into. Popolac wanders the hills aimlessly. By nightfall, many of the people who make up the giant die from exhaustion, but the giant continues walking.*

*Mick and Judd, two gay men vacationing in the area, come upon the smashed bodies of the Podujevans in a ravine awash with blood. A local man tries to steal their car to catch up with Popolac and reason with it before it collapses and destroys the people who compose it. The man explains the truth of the situation to Mick and Judd, but they do not believe his story. They seek shelter at a remote farm, where Popolac blunders into the farmhouse, accidentally killing Judd. Mick and the elderly couple who own the farmhouse are driven mad with fear. Mick wants to join Popolac. He climbs up the tower of ropes and bodies, and is carried away as it walks into the hills.*

The events of the story wouldn't be secret for long. Popolac probably stumbled upon civilization eventually before it collapsed and the few citizens from both cities that were unable to join the giants presumably explained the situation to people who might investigate.

How did the world media react to such a bizarre story?

[Assistant]
Yet another tragic incident in a region already torn apart by war and violence; this time, the mass graves weren't even dug, the bodies merely left out in the open.

Survivors, reeling from shock, tell mad stories of giants roaming the countryside.


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

[User]
[DC] Can Superman have a skinny guy physique or is it impossible for him to NOT have Arnold Schwarzenegger-like chest and arms?

and besides the Flashpoint story where they keep supes locked up away from the sun, is there any depiction of Superman with a lithe skinny body?  (superboy etc dont count)

[Assistant]
I am not aware of any other depictions of a skinny Superman (though it is quite possible that they exist).

But the Flashpoint story does show how it would be possible.  Superman doesn't get his physique from exercise.    Just the logistics of trying to find weights to workout makes it nearly impossible.  He would have to push planets around to get any actual gains.

Instead his build comes from what is essentially super nutrition he receives from the Sun.  So, as long as he was raised under a yellow Sun, he is going to be built like a fridge.  (Though this does raise the question of why Supergirl is so lithe, but that is a question for another day).


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is trans-fat bad for our body, but not saturated fats?

I had been reading the book, "The Great Cholesterol Myth" and came across this. But I can't find any scientific reason online why this is so. Thanks.

[Assistant] Trans fats have two double bonds in their carbon chain. essentially, this means that they are more rigid. In your blood, a build up of trans fats would be similar to tossing a bunch of ladders into a pile randomly: they can't maneuver past one another and will form a large buildup. This blocks the passage of blood, which can be dangerous. Saturated fats don't have these rigid double bonds and by contrast would be similar to throwing a bunch of rope into a pile.


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

[User]
[MCU] Okay, I finally saw Shang-Chi. What was the dragon he rode out of the sea? I am totally in the dark with this guy.

A quick bit of info might be nice.

[Assistant]
That dragon is the Great Protector that they were talking about earlier in the film, though she doesn't have any other name that we're privy to at this time.

There are some rough equivalents in the comics, though you may as well look into the Chinese Dragons, also known as Lung Dragons, for more information.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is chocolate poisonous for so many animals, especially mammals but humans can eat it fine?

[Assistant] Humans are able to metabolize theobromine present in chocolate at a much faster rate, usually 2 to 3 hours to half the amount in the body, compared to other animals such as dogs who take 17.5 hours to achieve the same result. Because of this, the toxic theobromine in their body builds up and remains long enough that it starts affecting them. In large amounts, it can affect humans the same way, though of course they would have to eat a much larger amount, somewhere around 6 kg of unsweetened dark chocolate, in one sitting.


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

[User]
How accurate is this statement from Paul Krugman: "economists in general do not believe that free trade creates more jobs worldwide..."

"...Unless there is some reason to think that free trade will increase total world spendingwhich is not a necessary outcomeoverall world demand will not change." (end quote)

[Assistant] It's completely consistent with the macro-economics taught at universities and most mainstream models. In the long run, aggregate demand is approximately equal to the value that produces full employment. In the long run, a booming export industry will crowd out other industries drawing workers and resources away from other uses. In the long run, the rate of unemployment is equal to the "natural rate of unemployment" which is not a function of aggregate demand.


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

[User]
I believe that drag performers are participating in the equivalent of blackface/minstrel shows for transgender individuals. CMV.

A few years ago I went to a drag show at a local gay bar, and an MtF friend of mine got in a huff about it.  She explained that, due to the exaggeration of masculinity/femininity that the shows portray, as well as lampooning the idea of cross-dressing/gender bending, it was damaging and offensive to trans individuals.  She drew the comparison to blackface and how parallel exaggerations were used to demean people of African heritage at the turn of the 19th century. I countered with the notion that (predominantly) gay male performers were marginalized as well, to which she pointed out that a non-white person in blackface would be equally offensive.  I also tried to use the argument that they were also part of the transgender spectrum, and she pointed out that a lot, if not most of the performers were not experiencing any sort of gender dysphoria, but were merely doing it for the "fun".  I went to the show that night anyway and saw a drag performer doing a caricature of a geisha girl as well as others also exploiting cultural stereotypes.  It was then that I fully understood my friend's point.  I've been opposed to the shows ever since.  No one I know, including the performers themselves have ever been able to give me a good reason why the shows aren't offensive and why a progressive LGBT community wouldn't oppose their existence.  I think Reddit can.  CMV.

[Assistant]
The two things are not at all comparable.

The blackface shows were done by whites (who were, of course, the main agents of discrimination).  The content was extremely demeaning to blacks, with stereotypically stupid and subservient characters.  The purpose was to *pretend to be black*.

Drag shows are very different.  The performers are gay, and the shows started when anti-gay discrimination was far more severe than it is today.  There was a subversiveness to the shows- gay men who were being harassed for being effeminate instead embracing it, with a "you want effeminate?  I'll show you effeminate!" attitude.

The underlying idea behind the shows isn't one of derision, but of lampooning the idea of gender, that we need to be one thing or the other, that it's "dirty" to step outside your "official" gender role, something that is positive to the transgender community.

TL;DR:
In one case, you have people pretending to be black to mock them.  In the other, actors screw around with gender roles, because we should relax about them.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Would Darth Vader get upset if someone insulted Padme?

So, Im a Stormtrooper. I am currently stationed on a ship headed for some Rebel something-or-other.

There was a heated discussion today, and an admiral ended up shouting, Padme Amidala was a stupid, weak woman who deserved to die! Im glad that the worthless little piece of trash is gone! I only wish that I could have strangled her myself!

Well, as he said that, Darth Vader was walking by, and he clearly heard what the admiral said.

Im the only one who noticed.

Whats going to happen now?

[Assistant] Senator Padme Amidala was a brave and courageous woman who valiantly championed the Republic against those alien Separatist traitors, and she was a close personal friend of Emperor Palpatine. No doubt Vader would respect and admire such a woman and reprimand that foul-mouthed admiral.


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

[User]
Would a frozen (or extremely chilled) battery still manage to hold a potential and work?

In space applications or polar expeditions, what kind of low-temperature-related dangers are there for batteries? What kinds of batteries are affected by low temperature? Which ones aren't?

[Assistant]
Depends a bit on how cold and what kind of battery. But in general they will work worse the colder they get, and at some point stop working for all practical intents. A functional battery requires that the ions that are working as charge-carriers in the electrolyte are able to move through it, which isn't the case once it becomes frozen solid. So any battery that has a liquid electrolyte (which pretty much equates to "every battery") will cease to function once it gets cold enough, although the temperature at which that happens depends on the type of electrolyte and so on, and so the type of battery. Batteries have to be kept in a fairly narrow temperature range to work properly. (Say, -10 to +30 C)

So the answer here is usually to just heat the battery. This isn't quite as big a deal in space as people usually think. Because, although space is damn cold, it's also a near-vacuum, so things are very thermally insulated and don't lose heat nearly as rapidly as our everyday experiences lead us to believe. (radiation only, no convection and conduction) Given the excess heat generated by on-board electronics, overheating can be as much a concern with satellites as getting too cold.


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

[User]
[star wars] why are the Yuuzhan Vong invisible to the force.

I have been in a number of discussions about star wars, usually in conjunction with other settings in which the Yuuzhan Vong are mentioned and i have gotten several different reasons for their force resistance. the wookieepedia article claims it is because of their violent behavior and destruction of other races.

[Assistant]
The YV originally came about on Yuuzhan'tar, a living planet. It was slightly different from most planets in that it was sentient, thought it was pretty (Because it had a shiny asteroid belt around it) and could do something unpleasant to you if you tossed that can out the window while doing 90 down the highway. The YV were connected to it, always.

So the YV were hanging around and having a good time, being YV, and everything was great. Then the droids attacked and everything went to hell. After being beaten back on all fronts for a long time, the Planet finally decided "Hey, you know what? Here. Just take this and go away. Please stop them from strip mining me, too, kthx." and taught them how to make bioweapons - the first step along the path to changing from these ur-Vong to the modern day Vong.

But the war dragged on even with that, the species changed, the culture changed. They became violent and warlike and generally unpleasant, slowly transfiguring into the Battle-Mormans we know today. But they won, and drove off the droids. And were then at a loss of things to do. So they proceeded to spread the good word by destroying any mechanical technology they could find in their Galaxy. The rest of their slaves (and future slaves) sort of didn't like this idea of being slaves who could never possibly rebel and elected to fight back.

This resulted in a war that destroyed their homeworld of Yuuzhan'tar. One they won, but at a terrible cost. The symbiosis with their homeworld was broken, a connection they'd evolved to have. Every member of the Yuuzhan Vong was blinded to the Force by the pain this caused at every level of their being (And is sort of responsible for their fetish for it, since, you know, they want that symbiosis back at their most primal levels. They just don't know it).

And that created the modern Yuuzhan Vong. Battle hardened, blind to the Force, pained at every level of their existence and bent on spreading their biotechnological ways as a homage to their dead Home and to prevent their own near genocide from ever re-occurring.. Two of the YV are known to have been Force-Sensitives: Somehow they looked past the torn connection and reached out into the web of life.


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

[User] ELI5: How do our eyes "lock on" to objects, keeping them in constant focus despite movement, to the point where un-focusing takes conscious effort?

[Assistant]
Our evolutionary needs required us to be able to narrowly focus on specific objects at specific distances, be it a branch we're jumping to grab, a predator hiding in the bushes, or a prey animal we're hunting. We developed the ability to control our eyes independent of our head (birds, for example, lack this and move their heads to see, not their eyes). Our forward facing eyes increase the overlap of vision from each eye and are adapted to increase depth perception, to better understand distance and relative motion of the things we're focusing on.

We have the ability to change the shape of the lens in our eyes which adjusts the beam of light we're "seeing", allowing us to track the image and keep in focus.

In short, our ancestors who lacked this focusing abilities missed the branch they were swinging for, didn't see the tiger in the grass, and didn't kill the food they needed to survive.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do people and animals (maybe all mammals) crook their head to the side when they think about or are confused about something?

[Assistant]
Humans don't do it.

But some animals do, such as dogs, cats, birds. They tilt their head when they hear a sound that grabs their attention. That's because, unlike humans, these animals don't have the complex wrinkled outer ear that would allow them to determine not only the horizonal position of the sound source, but also vertical.

They get around this disadvantage by tilting their head and placing one ear above the other.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How does the Empire's leadership go about countering the hit-and-run attacks of the Alliance? It seems like the conceit of instant lightspeed jumps would make a smart guerrilla force pretty much un-catchable and unbeatable.

Like, is there any way to block them from jumping away, or infer their location after they've already retreated?

[Assistant]
Well it sort of indicative that there's no more Empire...

Generally however, since it's indeed nigh-impossible to anticipate and repel hit-and-run tactics, Imperial Navi does it's best to *make* them predictable, throwing in misinformation and ambushes on hyperspace lanes, as well as tracking rebel exit vectors and pursuing them to calculate the location of their bases. It's not perfect solution, but *sometimes* it works.


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

[User]
How can one actually "waste" water?

We're told not to waste water, but I never understood the logic of it. Doesn't the water just go someplace else?  It's not destroyed. Do we run out of water?

Sorry if this question seems ignorant, but I'm genuinely wondering.

[Assistant]
We won't ever run out of water.  We may run out of *clean* water.

Dumping water down the drain mixes it with waste water, which is not potable.  There's more water in the ocean than we could ever use, except that we can't use it for much without a large amount of effort.  Anything else that fouls water such that it's no longer clean and potable prevents someone else from using it.  There's a limited supply of fresh water in nature and furthermore this supply is spotty, so there are always shortages somewhere in the world.


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

[User]
CMV: Sanitation workers save more lives than doctors

Ok, big caveat right off the bat: I am aware a lot of sanitation advances were discovered/pioneered/promoted by Doctors.

However, clean water, proper sewage, garbage removal, pest control, janitors, etc. - They save many more lives by prevention than doctors and nurse ever can by intervention.

A single loss of clean water, sewage, garbage removal, etc would harm more people than a hospital closure.

Historical figures show improvements in sanitation infrastructure correlate with major changes in life expectancy, death rate, etc.

Those professions are rarely thought of as healthcare which is a shame because of how much bigger their impact on health is.

[Assistant] To me this really seems like apples and oranges, because prevention of illness and intervention when people are sick or injured are such different actions. Also, it seems strange to make this about individual sanitation workers or doctors, when each represents a much larger social structure, public sanitation and the medical system. Few people would want to see the loss of either.


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

[User]
[DC/Marvel] If Lex Luthor were born in the Marvel universe, what hero would he become fixated on like he is with Superman?

Who in 616 would represent "something no man can be, the end of our potential, the end of our achievements, the end of our dreams" in his eyes had he been born in New York?

[Assistant]
Lex's hatred of Superman is personal and targeted. He goes on about how Superman holds back humanity's potential, and on some level he believes that's why he hates Superman, but when pushed it always breaks down to Lex hating Superman because Superman is better than him and stops him from doing whatever selfish and illegal things he was planning on doing.

It's not that Superman holds humanity back, it's that Superman has specifically held back Lex. Lex is an incredibly intelligent and resourceful, and often rich, narcissist with a superiority complex. In his mind he is the best human, and if not for Superman he believes he'd probably be ruling the planet, which he sees as his right which Superman stole from him.

So in the Marvel universe Lex will turn his ire on whoever it is that he believes is stopping him from achieving his 'true greatness'. It will probably be someone connected to him, either through a personal relationship or proximity, and probably someone who has thwarted one of his plans or he feels has betrayed him.

Honestly, for Lex, Superman could be anyone, and it could've been anyone in the DC Universe as well. Superman is just a convenient excuse to explain Lex's failures without admitting to his own shortcomings, and a way to justify his own personal prejudices as being more than simple ignorant bigotry.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k] So how does one actually go about contacting the Inquisition?

I'm a low level worker in my hive city and I walked into the bathroom 15 minutes ago and saw one of my coworkers shoot lightning out of his fingers while praising Slaanesh. Pretty sure he's a heretic. Thing is the manager won't let me leave my work station and he thinks I'm making it up to get out of work. Who can I go to to get the proper response for this heresy?

[Assistant]
Tell your boss, if he doesn't report it talk to the Adeptus Arbites / space police. If they don't report it talk to a guardsmen / pdf solider. If you wanted to be absolutely sure contact a space marine or inquisitor yourself, though methods of contacting them can be limited. Its your duty though.

There is a good chance that inquisitors are at least aware of this problem. Especially in a hive city and certainly one that is a manufacturing center which is important to the imperium.

Good news is your co worker is going to be killed and probably your boss too! Unfortunately, you're probably dead yourself. Interacting with chaos even in the slightest sense can carry a death sentence. Sure, you're probably safe, but can we really be sure....