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

[User]
ELI5: Benefits and disadvantages of a country having it's own currency.

Specially in a time where the dollar is so strong, I don't understand the repercussions of some stuff, and why countries like Argentina don't just convert to dollars.

[Assistant]
Think of it like owning a house vs renting. If you own a house, then sure the problems are your own, but you can control renovations, remodelling, you can tweak things as you feel you need it.

Renting means ultimately you are at the whims of the landlord (lets pretend you had no tenant rights, as would be the case in the currency thing). They dont have to repair anything, they can turn off your heat/water if they feel like it. Theyll set the temperature to whatever feels best to them, regardless of what you need.

Maintaining and controlling their own currency is pretty important to a governments ability to control their own economy. Some places like the EU have actively decided to shift that responsibility to a central organization, and hold outs like the UK have refused to give up that sovereignty.

It is also worth noting that per unit there are stronger currencies than the US dollar.


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

[User]
I'm 35, a married father, and wanting to go back to college to study Psychology. Where do I start?

Quick background: I spent my early college years in Bible College and ended up with a degree that has never worked a day in its life. It's not even an accredited degree. I've made my livelihood following my experience in sign graphics and now work from home as a project manager.
Here I am 15 years later (non-religious by the way) and stuck in a job I hate. I've always been very interested in psychology and other sciences but I'm mainly self-educated on the subjects. After some incredible paradigm-shifting sessions with a family therapist, I've been inspired to go back to college for a real education in hopes of working in some sort of psychology field. I'm interested these days in counseling and family therapy.

So what do you think? Where do I start? What route of study should I consider to increase my chances of success? Is it a long shot for me at this stage in life?

EDIT: Wow. Your responses are invaluable. It sounds like the consensus is that for what I have in mind I would need at least a master's degree. Even then, the popularity of the Psychology degree makes the chances for me to do exactly what I want pretty slim. I think my best first step of action will be to meet with a career counselor.

Again, thanks for the practical advice. That's exactly what I needed.

[Assistant]
Keep in mind that if you want to become a counselor or family therapist it requires at least a master's degree. You might look into a bachelor's in social work where you would have some more options with that degree while you work on a master's degree if you choose to do that.
You may want to interview some people who work in the fields you are interested in in order to find out the positives and negatives. Becoming a therapist and studying psychology are attractive paths, but the reality is often quite different from what you might expect. Licensing laws, unpaid internships, insurance paneling - it's a complex field.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it that during the day, deer and similar animals in the same family avoid roads but at night they gather on the roadside by the dozens? Why dont they just stay where they are during the day?

I searched and found a couple posts about why animals only cross the road when you are driving by, but all the answers were they are always crossing, this is just the only time you see it. However, this doesnt explain the obvious difference in the number of animals that gather by the roadside at night as compared to the day even when the roads are just as populated.

[Assistant] They aren't on the move during the day generally. Deer for example are crepuscular. Meaning they typically (always exceptions) bed down during the day and middle of the night. They are up and moving at sun up and sun down.  Thus why you see them crossing the roads so much at those times.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do panda bears have fangs like carnivores when all they eat is bamboo?

I was wondering if their carnivor-like teeth wouldnt wear because of eating all that bamboo.
Wouldnt it be easier for them to have the same teeth as for example rodents?

[Assistant]
They used to be carnivores. Depending on your definition, they still are. They're in the order *Carnivora* and the family *Ursidae*. Their closest living relatives are black bears and brown bears. Pandas are the only species in their subfamily, having split off from the subfamily *Ursinae* (which includes black, brown, and polar bears) a long time ago. Nonetheless, they are true bears.

They just haven't had enough time or evolutionary pressure to lose their canine teeth.

Eating bamboo was likely the result of loss of prey species millions of years ago and an empty niche for a large animal eating plentiful bamboo. So, they moved to the mountains and filled that niche. Pandas also lack other traits common with herbivores like multiple stomachs and a long intestinal tract to break down plant matter. That's ok because the inside of bamboo is *relatively* easy to digest (still harder than meat), and they just eat a **ton** of bamboo to make up for their inefficiency at extracting what little nutritional value exists in bamboo.


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

[User] [Highlander] Among the rules are Immortals cannot fight on holy ground. But ocassionally Immortals include priests like Darius and Jakob Kell. Priests have the ability to consecrate and deconsecrate holy ground, like churches and graveyards. Could an Immortal priest do this to expose an Immortal?

[Assistant]
There was a fan made RPG of Highlander based on the Vampire RPG which had an interesting theory.  If an immortal kills another on holy ground the released energy gets absorbed by the consecrated ground instead of the victorious immortal.  Since there is nothing to gain, holy ground became a safe zone and eventually a mutual agreement to not fight there.

So it would have to be real holy ground, not just restricted to one religion.  A church, temple, ancestral burial mound, etc., not just land blessed by an immortal priest simply for convenience.


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

[User]
[A Christmas Carol] What was Fred's occupation?

What did Fred actually do? I mean from the movies they always showed him well off. But then a few times in various iterations of the film I would hear Scrooge say he was broke and married broke. I always thought that he was a businessman like Scrooge.

[Assistant] He was a middle class clerk. It wasn't that he was poor, rather he was living paycheck to paycheck. Scrooge was disappointed in him because he wasn't saving and investing his money, he was using it on things like a wife and a christmas party with his friends.


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

[User] [DC] What are the limits to Zatanna's powers? Seems like she can do ANYTHING so long as she says it backwards.

[Assistant]
She has the same limits to her powers as any other sorcerer or wizard. Speaking backwards is how she focuses her magic, and she is a very powerful sorceress. She's not omnipotent, but because she knows her limits rarely cast spells that aren't likely to work.

She can't go "Live lla yortsed!" Or "Htaed lla dne!" She doesn't have that sort of raw power. Anything more powerful than fighting a supervillain for her tends to require more formal rituals that involve other wizards or spell casters.


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

[User]
ELI5: How Mercator Projections are better for navigation than other projections (like equal area projections)?

I've read that although the Mercator Projection distorts the relative size of continents, it is still used for navigation.

What would the same plotted course look like on the Peter's Projection versus the Mercator Projection?

[Assistant]
The Mercator projection preserves angles in a way that navigation paths are shown as straight lines.

That makes it very practical for navigation: measure the angle on the map, take course on that direction, and you will arrive to your destination.

Preserving angles also makes the Mercator projection to preserve local aspect ratios. That means that although landmasses appear deformed if they are too far apart (Greenland is actually as "tall" as Australia, not as big as Africa), they tend to appear with more or less the correct shape themselves. This is the reason why Google maps uses the Mercator projection.


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

[User] The difference between DDR2 and DDR3 RAM.

[Assistant]
Like you're five?  One is faster than the other.

A little more detail:

Imagine a road that millions of cars want to travel on.  If the road has more lanes, and the cars can go faster on the road, more cars will get to where they want to go faster.

The number of lanes is the "width" of the RAM (number of pins connecting the RAM to the motherboard), and the speed of the cars is the frequency (MHz, GHz).  DDR3 is a faster specification with more bandwidth than DDR2.


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

[User] According to latest news, Moderna's vaccine creates more antibodies than Pfizer's, but they show similar efficiency/efficiency. Why?

[Assistant]
Antibodies are proteins that specifically bind to certain antigens (parts of viruses or bacteria) and help identify those invaders as harmful, signaling the body, through the use of white blood cells, to destroy that invader. Think of them kind of like puzzle pieces looking for the right match. They're just floating around in the blood and tissues looking for their counterpart. There's going to be a threshold below which you won't be as efficient at catching invaders, but above that threshold adding more won't make a difference.

Think about it like having security people guarding a base. If you have one security person every 500 ft, a thief could probably slip between them unnoticed, but if you have a security person every 5 ft it's unlikely anyone will slip by without the alarm being sounded. But going from a security person every 5 ft to a security person every 2 ft probably isn't going to make much of a difference, a thief is going to be spotted just as effectively.


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

[User]
ELI5: If listening to music at high volumes is bad for your ears, why are headphone / PC amplifiers such a big deal?

It doesn't make sense to me because both my PC and my phone... and basically all of my devices... are insanely loud on their own. I see amps that go in-line for sale all over the place online though. Does it improve quality or something?

[Assistant]
Headphone amplifiers are not merely just for increasing the volume. There are different specification for each headphones namely impedance (ohms) this value means it is harder to drive (or just harder to power).

If you put a 600 ohm headphone on a soundcard/headphone amplifier that could only power a 300 ohm headphone, the volume that will come out of the headphone can be adequate but the volume knob will be up almost tonits maximum. Thus somewhat distorting the sound to increase volume.

 The sweet spot for volume to get the full quality of recording is at 50%.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter]Are there dementors outside of Azkaban?

Just watching the Order of the Phoenix, during Harry's trial Umbridge claims that dementors are under the control of the Ministry. Are there international dementors in the wild? Do they sometimes cross the border to the UK and get shipped to Azkaban? Are they in Azkaban against their will?

[Assistant]
>Just watching the Order of the Phoenix, during Harry's trial Umbridge claims that dementors are under the control of the Ministry. Are there international dementors in the wild? Do they sometimes cross the border to the UK and get shipped to Azkaban? Are they in Azkaban against their will?

They are under the control of the Ministry to some extent. It's more of a contract so to speak, in that the Dementors native to the island of Azkaban are willing to guard magical prisoners for the Ministry in exchange for feasting on their happiness and souls. It's why they then rebelled to join Voldemort later on, as Voldy offered them many more (and happier) victims to feed on.

To this extent, they're only really found on their native island of Azkaban and in Ministry locations (like in the Ministry of Magic as guards). Some may have migrated to other locations around the world for unrestricted access to prey, but more likely they'll remain near Ministry facilities. Well, up until the death of Voldemort. By this point the Ministry has regained control of the magical world, and has disbanded the Dementor alliance due to their ties to the Death Eaters. Now Aurors patrol Azkaban, and the Dementors were exiled elsewhere.

It's suggested that the Dementors came into existence when the original master of Azkaban Ekrizdis created it and lured Muggles there for torturing. Either he created the Dementors to aid in his dark and chilling exploits, or they flocked to the location to revel in sucking the remaining happiness from the Muggles. The Ministry later came over and considered destroying the place due to its foul nature, but withheld this decision due to suspected reprisals from Dementors. They then stuck their prisoners there and used the native Dementors for guards in exchange for allowing them to feast on inmates.


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

[User]
[Flash] Does the "earth 1" Google equivalent know who the flash is?

I mean, it seems like a phone moving around at up to mock 2 on ground level would raise some alarms.

[Assistant]
This seems unlikely. For one thing, GPS, as a technology, stops functioning at Mach 1.56. It would probably read an error message for most of the time that he's moving.

It is also unlikely that they gather the data in perfect real-time, which means it probably looks like he's just skipping around everywhere, which would be interpreted as a glitch. It's also not like they pay attention personally - the data is for their algorithms. By the time it gets to a human employee, if it does at all, it's being viewed on the macro scale of "people in this neighborhood eat a lot of Chipotle", not as a map.

Added to that, there's the distinct possibility that Barry uses STAR Labs technology for all this. Cisco can technobabble up any sort of "jammer" or "blocker", or just put Barry on an entirely different, personal network.

So, TL;DR, nobody at Google would be able to tell what exactly they're seeing, and probably just think Barry has a shitty broken phone, if they had any personal opinion about him at all, which they don't. And he's probably not even using their networks anyway.


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

[User]
[Sky High] Gwen's Minions

It is revealed at the end of Sky High that Gwen is an older woman. Is it ever specified if her minions (Penny, Lash, and Speed) are her same age or are they Will's age?

[Assistant]
I believe they were teenagers because
Penny's age reversing ray was in the custody of the main character's parents for the past 16 - 18 years. She was the only person that got used on before they confiscated it.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Was Spiderman ever mistaken for a mutant?

Has Spiderman ever been accused of being a mutant for having powers? I know he was hated for being a nuisance and a vigilante by the law. but I'm not quite sure about him being thought of as a mutant.

[Assistant] Happens all the time in the ultimates. Although since in that universe mutants are just another failed attempt to replicate the super soldier program, and spidey got his powers from a drug which ozcorp was developing to replace the super soldier serum, he technically is one.


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

[User] If skin is constantly shedding and being regrown, why does moisturizing and avoiding direct sunlight when youre young help with your skin long term?

[Assistant] Actually, the only thing that makes a tangible difference in how your skin ages is sun protection. Moisturising is mostly cosmetic (unless you have specific issues like scarring or eczema). Radiation from the sun damages the DNA in skin cells (tanning is actually a sign your skin has already taken damage), which influences skin elasticity and its ability to repair itself over time. This can cause skin cancer if you're unlucky - or particularly uncareful. Long story short, wear sunscreen.


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

[User]
In game theory is there a name for external events that that cause people to cooperate/defect without credible threats?

Sorry for the weird wording. I'm thinking a long the lines of many player iterated prisoner's dilemma or tragedy of the commons type problems.

Eg. There's a bank run. People can either withdraw their money or not. Everybody is defecting, but would prefer that nobody defected. The government declares that they will make sure everybody gets their money from the bank. People think that other people will quit defecting because of this, so they quit defecting. It doesn't actually matter if the government does anything other than make the statement.

Is there a name for events that cause people to quit/start defecting?

[Assistant] Perhaps you're thinking of a sunspot equilibrium? That's when they'd some information that's immaterial, in the sense that it doesn't affect payoffs, but it does affect people's actions just because people believe that it does.


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

[User]
Why are moths attracted to light?

What evolutionary reasons are there be for moths to be attracted to light?

[Assistant]
They're not attracted to light.

They use the moon/sun as a navigational aid. When you're flying in a straight line, the position of the moon changes little. When flying by a light bulb, they are simply trying to change course to keep it the same place relative to themselves, which results in running into the light source.


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

[User]
Assuming the universe is not a perfect vacuum, is it ever possible that a moving object will slow down to rest without encountering another object?

From what I understand, the universe is not a perfect vacuum, and there are random bits of atoms floating around space. Overtime, would enough of these random atoms be able to slow down a moving object?

Edit: I think I made a mistake, I meant that "outer space" is not a perfect vacuum.

[Assistant]
Here's an order of magnitude estimate:

The average density of the universe is approximately one proton per cubic meter.  So, a 1 meter sphere will hit a proton every meter it travels.  In 10 billion years, at nearly the speed of light, it will encounter about 10^(26) protons (about 160 grams of protons).  If this object has any appreciable mass (e.g., a 1000 kg rock) it will not slow down much due to collisions.

Beware:  This estimate depends on the size of the projectile.  Small objects are affected more.

A much larger effect is the red-shift (due to the Hubble expansion) that this object will endure.  Its speed with respect to the local matter will approach zero.  Yes, everything (not only photons) is subject to the red-shift, which is a geometrical effect.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why do cruiser and capital ships never focus fire?

I don't have a source, ,but the impression I got from reading various EU novels is that capital ships tend to just shoot whatever. Why don't all the capital ships in one fleet focus fire on one capital of the enemy, kill it quickly, then move on? I'm assuming the rest of your fleet (cruisers and fighters) can take care of the enemy's screen.

[Assistant]
They have different "calibers" of weapons, for different purposes. The small turbolaser batteries you always see shooting at fighters are deliberately designed to track and shoot fighters, they aren't strong enough to punch through the shields of a capital ship. They have weapons specifically made for that purpose, in particular Ion weapons, which are designed to go through capital ship shields and disable different functions and systems.

Also, if they were to use their anti-fighter screen to fight against larger vessels they would be unprotected against enemy dive bombers. Proton Torpedos and the like can do a lot of damage, and can be delivered en masse by an unopposed fighter squadron.


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

[User]
I understand why different atoms have different absorption spectrum, but why does a given atom have several "peaks" in its spectrum?

I would assume it's because each electron will give off a different amount of energy.

But hydrogen only has one electron, and it has 5 peaks (at least in the visible spectrum, don't know if it has some elsewhere) so I suppose that's busted.

Anyone care to explain?

[Assistant]
An atom is a bound quantum system with a discrete energy spectrum. This means that independently of how many electrons are involved, the whole thing can only take on a discrete set of energy levels. (And still be called an atom).

An atom emits a photon or absorbs one by transitioning from one energy level to another. Since the energy of the photon must be the difference of these energies, the possible photon energies also form another discrete spectrum.

Here's a specific example for the hydrogen atom in the simplest possible treatment: the energy levels are of the form:

E = constant * 1/n^2

Where n = 1, 2, ... is an integer. Therefore the photons emitted or absorbed must have energies given by all the possible differences

E_ = const * (1/n_1^2 - 1/n_2^(2))

With n_1 and n_2 taking all possible positive integer values.

So in the photon emission spectrum we will find a forest of peaks corresponding to these discrete photon energy levels (each corresponding to a transition between two atomic energy levels) and generally a handful will fall in the visible portion.

A couple of corrections to this: first of all when atoms are in molecules, they don't retain their own electronic structure, part of the electrons will be shared between atoms in molecular orbitals. So you should talk about a molecule's energy levels and emission spectra, and all we said should really be said about molecules, not atoms. The spectrum of molecular hydrogen is not the same as that for atomic hydrogen.

Typically, an atom will have a valence shell of electrons shared in molecular orbitals, while the inner shells will be mostly "his" and will display typical (generally high-energy) transitions of that specific element.

Point number two is these peaks are not perfectly narrow. There is some "spread" to the photon energy. There's two reasons: one is quantum uncertainty. This makes the peak get a Lorentzian shape. Second reason is the Doppler effect due to thermal motion of the molecule with respect to you, the gentleman with the detector. This makes the peak get a gaussian shape.


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

[User]
This is a silly question, I know, but... what causes animals to realize that an animal of another species is only a baby and in need of help?

Most recently I began wondering it after seeing a video here on reddit where a crow was apparently caring for (feeding, protecting, etc.) an abandoned kitten.  I wondered how did the crow know that A) that the cat is a baby, not just a small cat, B) that the cat was not a danger to it, and C) that the cat was unable to care for itself and needed help?  I see how a crow would recognize an abandoned baby of its own species, but the cat is so different from it, I was pretty surprised.  It happens a lot - cat adopts squirrel, tortoise adopts hippo, dog adopts deer, etc.

Maybe I'm just not giving animals enough credit and it's merely a case of observation.  They realize it just as we recognize babies of other species.  But I wondered if there was something specific that triggers the "I must care for this baby" thing.  Is it just a matter of mother-instinct not making distinctions between species?  Are there any cases of male animals doing this?

[Assistant]
First there's the question of how animals detect  and measure "cuteness". As Fuco1337 said, it's mostly big head and sad eyes and many other clues.

Then there's a more interesting question: why some animals recognize "cute"?

Not all animals react to cuteness. Fish, Amphibians and most reptiles will  when confronted with a cute thing, ignore it or eat it. This is mostly common with mammals (althought there's a video on youtube of a chicken nurturing a cat).

Mammals are different from other animals in that they generally care a lot more for their young  it's an evolutionary strategy, you either do like the fish and crap as many little fishes you can, or you have only a few per litter but invest a lot of time making sure they reach adulthood.

This reflects in many aspects of mammalian life: longer gestation, often a very dependent baby, breastfeeding  and detection of "cuteness". This is of course not a universal characteristic, but a evolved one. For example suppose this scenario: babies have big heads, so mammal mothers will learn to take more care of their young relatively to the size of their heads, therefore caring less when they become adults. Babies, with bigger heads have more chance of having more attention so big-head-baby genes will spread and more babies will be born with bigger head. So whatever characteristic used to define "babiness" tends to be exageratted overtime, because it's good for both the mother and the son. There, that's how cuteness evolves.

Now, why would an animal take care of another one that's not it's child? It's a question many have asked and googling for altruistic gene will get you a good lecture, but in a nutshell it's like this: if you have a gene that makes you take care of cute, specially if it that cute something reminds you of you, then it's probable that those genes will spread. Similarly the "guilt" gene could be something that errs on the side of caution  it's better to take care of a baby that is probably unrelated to you than to risk letting one die.

I would imagine that taking care of other animals is mostly a bug in the system. If most mammals err on the side of caution, then it's probable that their instinct will be to take care of anything that seems anything like a cute baby. Note that the stories you hear are more often than not a mammal adopting another mammal, and that humans will prefer an animal that seems to mimic human expressions.

Then of course this bug can be exploited by other animals. Cats and dogs started their relationship with humans as a cooperative one  humans give dog protection and dogs help with the hunting etc. But over the last centuries both animals have evolved into look more and more baby-like, even if that means the total loss of the hability to find food by themselves.

So, you probably have read somewhere about a fungus that evolved to control a cockroach brain. Cute puppies have evolved into controlling a bug in our human brains.


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

[User]
ELI5: How exactly do two gasses (Hydrogen and Oxygen) make a liquid when they are together?

Just that really, I dont understand how two gasses can combine together and suddenly their a liquid...which can then be frozen into a solid. So is ice really just frozen gas?

And if I had a vacuum chamber and started filling it with 2 parts Hydrogen and 1 part Oxygen, would water just suddenly appear?

Like I understand it forms a molecule and all because the oxygen has two open slots in its outer layer which the two hydrogen atoms conveniently fill. But arent those still two gases, just together? All in all, liquids confuse me.

[Assistant]
A molecule is not required to share any characteristics whatsoever with the atoms it's made up from. That's why we can take sodium, which is a soft metal that spontaneously burns when dropped in water, and chlorine, a toxic green gas, combine them together, and get a delicious white crystalline solid (aka common salt).

As for the combination of the gasses, no, oxygen and hydrogen won't spontaneously condense into water if you mix them together. You need something to spark the reaction--literally, in this case; a spark or flame will heat the gas mixture enough to start the reaction going, and since the reaction is exothermic (produces heat) then it will keep going once started until all reactants are consumed. The practical upshot of this is, if you have hydrogen and oxygen mixed together in their ideal 2:1 ratio and you apply a spark, the whole lot will blow up in your face producing hot water (e.g. steam) as the product.


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

[User]
[LotR]Would Melkor and Sauron be forgiven/redeemed after the end of the world, as their actions are fated to be?

If I understand the world of LotR correctly, their actions were mostly fated to be, and they really had little choice. If thats true, when the end of the world happens, and after the final battle occurs, would they be forgiven by Eru, or are they damned for eternity?
And as a side question, what happened to the souls of the Ring Wraiths when the Ring was destroyed? Would they follow their master into exile, or would they have gone on to the unknown fate that all humans get after dying? Im curious, because they were misled and then enslaved by their rings.

[Assistant]
They weren't "fated" to do anything. When Iluvatar and the Ainur sang creation into existence was a pivotal moment in their lives. This was when Morgoth and his allies sealed their own tombs by trying to sing their own song and change the original. They chose to do this, and this sealed their fate.

Your fate is never set in stone. You can do things that make it pretty much impossible to change the course you set, like what Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman did.


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

[User] How much turbulence would it take to down plane?

[Assistant]
Aerospace engineer here.  Turbulence isn't much of a threat to an airplane.

Airplanes are designed to withstand gust loads, which assume worst-case scenarios.  Furthermore, pilots are trained not to fight turbulence.  For example, if a strong updraft hits a plane, pilots are supposed to "ride it out" rather than fight to maintain a steady altitude.  (This obviously doesn't hold true at low altitudes, where a crash might happen.)

Also, pilots avoid flying into the most turbulent places, thunderstorms (generally, although there are some instances where they need to fly through them).

So to answer your question, if a plane were flying low near a massive storm, a microburst/downdraft could potentially slam the plane to the ground, but in a more typical scenario, aircraft are designed to withstand loads produced by turbulence and gusts, so the odds of catastrophic failure, like ripping the wings off, is close to zero.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Mr. Bean has accidentally found his way onto the Death Star. How long does it take for chaos to ensue?

Or would he simply die long before?

[Assistant]
Shows up on Death Star with new enlistees. **Laugh Track**

In locker room accidentally gets locked out. **Laugh Track**

Scrambles his way naked to another room with higher ranking officers. **Laugh Track**

Locks one of them in the Sauna room, in a panic takes their uniform to blend. **Laugh Track**

In a mix up he is ordered by commander Tarkin to head a squad doing ship repairs, pretends to know what he's doing.**Laugh Track**

Gets into petty yet one-sided rivalry with a subordinate over doing a better job shining something. **Laugh Track**

Causes series of minor injuries among the repair crew through incompetence. **Laugh Track**

At lunch doesn't like any of the food in the cafeteria. **Laugh Track**

Tries to find a way to hide the food subtly. **Laugh Track**

Dumps the food into a droid. **Laugh Track**

Droid malfunctions and starts freaking out. **Laugh Track**

Panics, makes his way out finds himself in the exhaust shaft section.**Laugh Track**

Sees a shiny, possibly tool needed for his first mission as an officer earlier.**Laugh Track**

Slightly out of reach, devises ingenious way to get to it.**Laugh Track**

Clumsily drops the whole apparatus down the exhaust port.**Laugh Track**

Officer gets out of the room, informs others, Bean is found out. **Laugh Track**

Kicked off Death Star unceremoniously and sent planet-side. Dusts himself upon landing looking offended. **Laugh Track**

Meanwhile apparatus snags on something, repair crew is unavailable to notice the malfunction because of previous Bean related injuries. **Laugh Track**

Causes implausible series of events that lead to Death Star blowing up. **Laugh Track**

Cut to Bean staring up at pretty fireworks pleased with the good work he's done. **Laugh Track**


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

[User] [Stargate]Why didn't the first expedition to Abydos bring back a Staff Weapon?

[Assistant]
When O'Neill, Kawalsky and Ferretti returned after the original mission they left Daniel chose to stay behind and reported him as having died during the mission. They presumably also played down the presence of residual advanced technology to ensure Daniel and the Abydonian people would be left alone. At that time the Stargate project incorrectly believed the gate only operated between Earth and Abydos so with no apparent opportunity for further exploration and the high cost of "keeping the lights on" they decided to mothball the project.

Of course when Apophis unexpectedly showed up through the Earth gate and showed there was a much bigger universe out there - well, that's when things started to get *much* more interesting...


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

[User]
How do ants survive in the microwave?

I had a heap of ants in the microwave, I tried to nuke them on high for a few minutes.
But nothing happened to them,  no change. They just kept moving around as per normal.

[Assistant]
Ants are not too small to be heated. They are small enough to dodge the hotspots though.

Microwaves work best if the target is something conductive, pointy and a half-multiple of the wavelength in size (e.g. the tines on the fork you stupidly stuck in there) but the goal of a household oven is to gently heat things, not convert them to glowing balls of plasma.

Water molecules have a resonant frequency. Household microwaves hit that frequency and force water molecules to rapidly flip back and forth, which heats anything that has any moisture in it including ants without inducing dangerous electrical currents. This applies to one water molecule or a trillion water molecules or however many there are in a baked potato.

The difference between an ant and a popcorn kernel is that the ant is mobile and not completely stupid. Microwaves bouncing around in the oven create patterns of constructive and destructive interference. An ant is small enough to fit in a spot of destructive interference and will stand there all day, cursing the God that created such a bizarre hell for it.


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

[User]
Can you apply the principles behind dendrochronology to estimate the age of a carrot?

Crazy post, I'll admit. My carrot has rings when I cut a cross section. Can I determine its age? I suppose it's age in growing days?

[Assistant] It doesn't work the same way. The reason trees have rings is that every growth season, the cambium of the stem/trunk will grow in a spurt and this will lead to a different colour, hence the rings. Carrot roots however 1) are grown over a single year in a continuous fashion 2) the rings in a carrot correspond to different tissue layers altogether, the cortex and the pith being the widest ones (there are a bunch of other ones, Google "dicot root layers"


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

[User]
ELI5: Why have governments, particularly in Western Europe such as in the UK, stopped using the term ISIL (until recently the UK Govs preferred term) and suddenly switched to using Daesh?

I think that by changing terms for seemingly inexplicable reason could help create a confused message.

I've not seen any explanation of this change and wondered if anyone knew why.

[Assistant]
"Islamic State", or other terms including that, is what they want to be called. It implies they are both Islamic and a state.

The UK government does not acknowledge them as a state. And they also want to push the idea that they are not really Islamic, to stop people jumping to the conclusion that all Muslims are like them.

Daesh was created as a derogatory term for them which doesn't acknowledge them as a state or Islamic (at least not in English).


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

[User]
cmv: The notion that modern comedy has been ruined by political correctness is ridiculous

It has become somewhat of an axiom, a truism even, in the minds of many individuals, that comedy (whether in the form of stand-up, movies, parodies etc) today is much less funnier that it was decades ago, and that the reason for this is that comedians cannot joke about touchy, edgy topics anymore without being "cancelled" (fired, their reputation destroyed, you name it) by the media and by certain loud-mouthed individuals (generally scoffingly referred to as SJWs who can't take a joke anymore). This change is considered very negative by these people, and it is blamed on the PC (political correctness) culture that they claim appeared recently (this decade), and which they believe gives certain groups immunity from being made fun of. Instead, they claim, comedy is now used as a near-political tool to attack them.

Of course, almost all of these people share similar views with regards to the effect PC has had on female empowerment in movies, transgender issues etc, but, while these topics are slightly related to what I am talking about, this post is NOT about any of them. It is only about comedy.

In my view, which I would like to have challenged, these criticisms of modern comedy are, en masse, built out of personal biases that prevent these people from understanding the basic nature of comedy. Thus, these individuals fail to understand the simplest notions about comedy and comedians, thus indicating to me that what they mean by "comedy" has almost no relation to the real-life meaning of the word.

Let me begin explaining. I'll try to make every point as complete as possible. This post could be much, much, shorter, but I want to make clear how I got from the beginning to the end in a logical, complete manner, so that I don't get replies which question the basic definition of comedy, for example.

Just like with any word, there are multiple widely-recognised definitions of "comedy", but all of them have small differences between them. Thus, it is reasonable to look at the Wikipedia definition of the word, since Wikipedia behaves, by its nature, as an aggregator: "In a modern sense,comedy(from the Greek:kmida) is a genre of fiction that refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorousor amusing by inducing laughter."

Now that we've established a working definition of the word, let's analyze what it actually means. The work is "generally intended [...] to induce laughter". This tells us two things, which are also quite obvious from a common-sense perspective: one, the main goal of comedy is to induce laughter from the audience; and two, comedy is not SOLELY about getting cheap laughs, just like how not every piece of art is just cheap entertainment: there might be, and there always has been (see later), another side to humour (generally social critique).

Let's take these two points separately.

1) So, comedy is intended to make the audience laugh, what's so special about that? Well, it tells us that the ones who judge whether the comedy is well-made and funny are not the comedians themselves, the ones who write the skits or one-liners or whatever, but rather the audience itself, the "consumers", so to say. In general, there is a reasonable discussion to be had about whether art "belongs" to the artist or to the observer (figuratively speaking, this is not an IP argument). I have no interest of entering in this discussion. Suffice it to say that in the specific case of comedy, there's no discussion to be had: clearly, the audience determines what the quality of a specific example of comedy is.

But what does the "quality" of comedy even mean? Clearly, every person has a different sense of humour. Certain people love slapstick, while others can't stand anything but deadpan. With such a degree of subjectivity, can one really distinguish between good comedy and bad comedy, and, if not, what is even the point of this post beyond slapping some meaningless cool-sounding words together? Well, clearly, just like how we can say The Empire Strikes Back is a good movie, while The Room is not, we can claim that certain examples of comedy are good, while others are bad. Yeah, maybe most, if not all, types of comedy are acceptable, but not all applications of these types are good. Just like how not every sculpture or painting is good, even if painting is clearly a celebrated art.

So, we've concluded the audience does assign a mostly objective labelling of a specific example of comedy. What else is important about this labelling? Well, clearly, social attitudes change over time. This undisputable fact is shown everywhere; it was only 100 years ago that the concept of women's suffrage was opposed and laughed at by a big portion of the population. And it shows up clearly in discussions about comedy: what was cool 50 years ago might not be cool today, what was funny 50 years ago might not be funny today. And nownonly to social attitudes change over time, but they also differ from culture to culture. And I don't mean just nationalities, but also inside a specific countries. White culture is very different from black culture in the US, for example, as shown by the differing responses to calls made to restructure police departments.

2) So, comedy can be about more than just humour. As implied in the definition, the roots of comedy are in Ancient Greece. Thus, even though it has been in existence for thousands of years, it has maintained its secondary role throughout, that of social critique. Through comedy, just like through any form of art, the creators communicate a message. In the case of comedy, in most cases the message is: "we make fun of this behaviour in order to teach you not to partake in it". Sure, throughout time there has been a clear division of comedy into "punching up" (making fun of those who attained a higher social status) and "punching down" (making fun of those with a lower social status), but in both cases comedians criticized people and behaviours of people that were specific to the targeted class.

How does this relate to politics? Clearly, the critics of modern comedy must be onto something when they claim so much more of comedy is only about politics now? Well, it's true that politics used to be almost taboo in the past, something professional comedians took care not to spend too much time dissecting, while today Late Night Shows, SNL and the like spend a lot more time on it. But the conclusion these critics get from it is nonsensical. It's not a conspiracy by a group of SJWs witn political intentions, it's just the natural continuation of the social critique.  As I mentioned at point number 1), social attitudes and beliefs change over time. Today, people have begun to realize that an undesirable, corrupt, unfair etc political system might be at the heart of the social problems that we face. As an example, instead of mocking the middle-class mom for not being home with her daughter, people mock the government and the ruling class for not offering paid maternity leave so that she can stay home and not worry about paying the bills.

So, getting back to the main point. The critics of modern comedy show no understanding of the 2 main ideas behind comedy: the fact that the audience determines what's good, and comedy's important role in society. Thus, being angry about the fact that somewhat sexist, racist etc comedy that was appreciated decades ago is not appreciated today is ridiculous.

On one hand, it's like telling the rest of audience: "This is funny! Laugh, damn you!", which is almost insulting, since the audience knows better than you what they consider funny. In their craze to blame a conspiracy for the change in comedy, critics became blind to the fact that THE AUDIENCE ITSELF doesn't find things funny anymore. The average person, not the conspiracy orchestrator.

On the other hand, those who complain about the over-politicization of comedy fail to grasp that this is nothing more than the natural evolution of the social critique aspect of comedy, once regular people understood who is really to blame for their struggles.

So how can so many people be so dead wrong? Well, judging by the way in which they present their arguments (conspiracy theories, victimhood mentality etc), it's most likely due to personal biases (perhaps even slight homophobia and racism) arising from a subconscious desire to return society to the time when joking about the "blacks, gays and women" was socially acceptable. Thus, they are incapable of understanding how society got away from these potentially toxic behaviours on its own, with no need for a conspiracy by individuals pushing their own political agenda.

[Assistant]
To the contrary, the *audience* almost invariably finds what the comedian is saying to be funny, even if the jokes are about very politically incorrect topics, because the audience generally understands they're at a comedy show and not a TED talk.

What these comedians are referring to are primarily twitter mobs and select journalists who try to stir up moral outrage over jokes the next day when its revealed one of these comedians had the audacity to have some group the mob likes as the butt of one of their jokes.


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

[User]
ELI5 Wine pairings. How do chefs and restaurants know how to pair wines with certain foods?

And, more importantly, how can I learn to appreciate good wine/food combinations? What do professionals look for?

[Assistant]
A lot of really good restaurants have a sommelier, which is a fancy name for an adult who knows everything about wines.  To do this they have to go to school, earn good grades and pass aallllll their tests regarding wine. They taste thousands of wine through a special routine, trying to find out what they taste like.

Wines get their flavors from the grapes they are made of, the length they sit in the bottle and where they are grown. Wine professionals have to find out what they taste like. With all this tasting, they then can suggest to their customers in the restaurant which wines they think the adults should enjoy. Some taste sweet and are good for dessert, some are bitter and gross which adults like with steak and some are light like water and are good with fish!

I went to school for culinary arts and had a few wine tastings and pairings with cheese! Not a professional wine person, but those who do know what they are talking about!


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

[User]
What's the difference between a priori / a posteriori ?

For my philosophy final tomorrow, a lot of it is based off of Kant and Hume. I just need some clarification on the difference between analytic a priori, synthetic a priori, and synthetic a posteriori? I'm also curious as to why Hume and Kant both determined that analytic a posteriori is impossible. Thank you in advance!

[Assistant]
A priori: knowable before experience (prior = before)

A posteriori: knowable after experience (posterior as in behind... which is sort of like after)

Analytic: found to be true by analysing the meaning of the concepts involved

Synthetic: found to be true by comparing the statement to the contents of the world
***
Analytic and a priori is an easy match; "all bachelors are unmarried" is true by the meaning of "bachelor" without any need to go and examine any particular bachelors

Likewise, synthetic and a posteriori go well together; "that cat over there is black" is, if true, something you confirm by experiencing the cat to check that it is indeed black

Synthetic a priori is more difficult - it would need to be something that is true because of how it relates to the world, but doesn't require you to go and actually experience the world to check. Kant spent quite a while arguing that this was a thing that exists, and cited the example of certain mathematical truths, where the conclusion isn't evidently contained in the premises and tells us something useful about the world, but you can nonetheless prove it true without worldly experience.

Although, an expanded definition of analytic might throw the net around those propositions too, saying that if a mathematical proposition is provable from some set of axioms, then it is in fact contained within the definition of those axioms, just non-obviously.

Analytic a posteriori seems like a flat contradiction - if it's a posteriori then it requires experience of the world, but that directly implies that it's synthetic.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Did the Emperor sense a disturbance in the Force as if a million Stormtroopers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced?

When the Death Star blew up.

Did Yoda?

[Assistant]
There were only 25,984 Stormtroopers. There were nearly two million crew total, which makes that a bit more feasible, but despite what Obi-Wan said, Alderaan had a population of around two *billion*. He's not exactly an expert in counting the population of a planet by the effect on the force when it explodes. It would be possible to feel the deaths when the Death Star was destroyed, but it would be much more difficult.

Also, they'd both feel it when either is destroyed. Did you think Jedi only feel it when good people die and Sith only feel it when bad people die or something?


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

[User] ELI5: What is the difference between "good" erasers and "bad" erasers (one's that smudge the lead and don't entirely erase), and what causes it?

[Assistant]
When the rubber dries out, it no longer rubs off from abrasion on paper, and is too hard to adhere well to pencil graphite.  So it's like smudging the graphite with a finger instead of a spunge.

This happens due to the passage of time and dry or hot environmental conditions.


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

[User]
CMV: People shouldnt be called out for refusing to vote or not choosing a party

Ive never understood this one. Especially this year, everybody goes on social media and says everybody better go out there and vote or its your DUTY to vote, not a privilege. Now, I personally dont follow politics. I dont see a difference whenever a new party comes in, nor do I particularly care. My choice to not vote shouldnt be frowned upon and called out by people saying I just had to choose. If I were to go to a poll and choose and random candidate, then why does my vote matter at all? If Im just choosing to choose without picking somebody I like, then Im better off not voting and essentially remaining neutral.

Can somebody convince me to go out and vote?

[Assistant]
They aren't suggesting it's your civic duty to go to a booth and get those bubbles filled in.

They're suggesting it's your civic duty to educate yourself about politics just a little bit, because no democracy can remain healthy if its citizens refuse to pay attention.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does my internet connection start working again if I unplug it and then plug it back in?

This even works for just my computer's wireless connection. If I disconnect it from the router and then reconnect it some how works again. I just don't get it.

[Assistant]
Many things could be wrong when internet doesnt work, therefore there are several reasons this can fix it.

One cause: To be a member of a network, your computer and your cable modem needs an address, called an IP address. When joining a network, the computer should automatically receive one from your modem, and the modem should receive one from your internet provider.. But sometimes it does not, or the one it has expires, and for wharever reason, it doesnt ask for a new one. Turning the connection off and on again (or unplugging and replugging) causes your computer to contact the network and ask for a new address.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why isn't time constant?

Why is it that when you move faster through space, you move slower through time?

[Assistant]
Imagine that you are in a spaceship that has the capability of reaching speeds near the speed of light. Inside this spaceship, there is a beam of light that is bouncing between a mirror on the floor and a mirror on the ceiling such that the light beam is in a infinite loop of bouncing between the two mirrors. To an observer inside the ship, the light is (obviously) observed to be bouncing back and forth between the mirrors at the speed of light (C).

Now, if you recall, according to relativity, there is no relative speed of light. That is, the speed of light (C) is always the same no matter the reference point.

Imagine now that we have an observer outside the ship who is stationary relative to the ship which is also moving at the speed of light (or nearly). According to conventional relativity, the observer would observe the light beam moving at C up and down as well as ~C in the forward direction with the ship.

Now we have two observed speeds of light:

Inside the ship: |Cj|
Outside the ship: Ci+|Cj|

Since the speed as observed by the outside observer has both i and j components (up and down), the magnitude of velocity can be calculated via the Pythagorean theorem:

C=sqrt(Ci^2 +Cj^2)

This result would be greater than C, which is impossible, so in order for a constant C to satisfied as well as the conservation of energy, time must change instead.

Therefore, time would move more slowly inside the ship compared to outside the ship.

Hope that helps :)


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

[User]
[Chowder] Does Dwight Schultz run a very profitable car wash or does Chowder have cheap animation?

Iconic scene, Mung Daal spends all of the catering company's money,  running out of money for the animation of the show. Thus Dwight Schultz, Tara Strong, Nicky Jones, and John DiMaggio have a car wash to raise money for the animation. They get enough money and manage to get the animation funding back.

So what's the deal? They were only out there for about a day washing cars. Does Chowder just not cost much to animate?

[Assistant]
They just needed enough money to get the animation back *for as long as it took to get the catering business back to normal*, re: the actual plot of that episode (which escapes me atm)

Once things were back to normal, theyd of course be pulling in plenty of money, *as usual/normal*Mung Daal is an excellent chef, his wife does all the reception work (for free), Chowder works as his apprentice (for free), and Schnitzel is paid a pittance because hes so strong it takes minimal effort to clean things. So they wouldnt need to go wash cars once the business was fixed.

I imagine the way they got so many cars to pay is by playing to their audience; depending on who drove up, Mung (Schultz) would talk fast to *thee llladiesss*, Schnitzel (DiMaggio) would show off his strength and speed (maybe because Mung would order him to), Truffles (Strong) would utilize her sex appeal (and if that didnt work, would browbeat them into paying), and Chowder (Jones) would make the sign, and would ask for the money with his natural youthful cuteness.


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

[User]
ELI5: why are we producing 900k barrels of oil per day above demand, if the markets are already low?

I feel like this just makes it worse, because the supply is way too high and the value goes down. I know I'm oversimplifying, but I don't understand why production isn't slowing down to allow the price to catch up.

[Assistant]
You want to build a lemonade stand. It will cost $50 for the table, glasses, pitcher, lemons, and sugar. Your dad offers to loan you the money, but you have to pay him back $5 every day (or whatever you make if it's less than $5) or you'll be grounded.

On day 1, you sell $10 worth of lemonade at $1 per glass. You pay back the $5, then you buy a new toy with the other $5.

On day 2, the kid across the street sees how much money you're making, and he wants a new toy, too, so he opens his own lemonade stand. Today, you only sell $5 worth of lemonade. You pay back your dad, but you worked all day for nothing. Oh, well. Tomorrow will be better.

On Day 3, two other kids open up lemonade stands. If you keep selling lemonade for the same price, there's no way that you'll make enough to pay back Dad. So, you cut the price of your lemonade in half. You finally make $5, but now, all of the other kids are kind of annoyed with you.

On day 4, all of the other kids have to pay back their loans, too, so everybody starts charging less. By the end of the day, everyone on the block is selling lemonade for a penny per glass. Everybody's selling a lot of glasses, but it's so cheap that nobody's making money, or even covering their loans, but making a quarter is better than making nothing at all.

What everyone's hoping for at this point is that a few kids will give up and stop selling lemonade. If you can get back to one or two stands, you can make some money. Unfortunately, everyone has debts, and nobody wants to be grounded, so they all stick around day after day.


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

[User] [Economics] What are the differences between Keynesianism, Neo-Keynesianism, and Post-Keynesianism?

[Assistant]
"Keynesianism" at large is just a moniker for a general line of research that takes on just about any number of definitions people want at the time. Neo-Keynesianism typically defines the post-war era economics present in schools like MIT and Harvard. The IS-L-M model by Hicks, and others who tried to mathematically formalize a lot of Keynes' writing from *The General Theory...*. Today, this has become 'New Keynesians' which describes the mix between fresh water schools of 70's and 80's with this line of research, effectively stating that in the short run there are economic frictions, but in the long run markets are efficient.

Post-Keynesians are (generally) a heterodox school of thought that believes that the entire line of modern research has entirely missed what Keynes was saying. They generally even reject a lot of the underlying microeconomic theory for it's assumptions of equilibrium.


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

[User]
[ATLA] Did they used to have non-hybrid animal species, or are the compound species names just an artifact of translation into English from whatever language they speak in that world?

If the species weren't always hybrids, how did the widespread hybridization come to be?

[Assistant]
The earliest account we have comes from Legend of Korra. Since your title specified ATLA I'll avoid spoilers, but the gist is that the hybrid animals have been around for a long time. (10,000 years at the very least) There's a fan theory that incorporates this to suggest that the spirits had some hand in creating the hybrids we see, but there's no solid evidence.

This means that your second suggestion is probably the case. Given the Gaang's reaction to the concept of a "bear" we can also safely guess that most people don't really think of the animals as hybrids.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are Middle East countries apparently going broke today over the current price of oil when it was selling in this same range as recently as 2004 (when adjusted for inflation)?

Various websites are reporting the Saudis and other Middle East countries are going to go broke in 5 years if oil remains at its current price level.  Oil was selling for the same price in 2004 and those countries were apparently operating fine then.  What's changed in 10 years?

UPDATE: I had no idea this would make it to the front page (page 2 now).  Thanks for all the great responses, there have been several that really make sense.  Basically, though, they're just living outside their means for the time being which may or may not have long term negative consequences depending on future prices and competition.

[Assistant] They adjusted their budget to match their income. The Saudis are determined to maintain market share. They are selling the same volume of oil accepting a lower price. So their spending budget is now greater than their income. They have plenty of reserves and they are adjusting their budget slowly.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does your skin 'dent in' when wearing e.g. a too tight wrist band or bra strap or rubber band?

What happens to the cells? What process allows them to bound back in place and is there any damages? Why does it get reddish?

[Assistant] There is water in three places in your body: in your blood, in your cells, and between your cells. There is an equilibrium between these three, and one of the large determinants of where that equilibrium sits is physical ("hydrostatic") pressure. When you compress the tissue for a while, you increase the pressure and force some of the cellular and tissue fluids into the blood to be carried off, leaving a dent. When you take the pressure away, the fluid comes back to restore the normal balance.


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

[User]
ELI5:Could we really build Star Wars sized space ships?

Say, something that was several kilometers long and could house tens of thousands of people. Is this feasible with existing materials science?

EDIT:

Let me clarify: I'm assuming cost isn't a factor, nor is getting the material into orbit, etc. Let's just build the damn thing up there.

[Assistant]
Simply designing and building the structure would probably be the easy part. Objects in space don't need to worry about gravity nearly as much as objects on the ground. It's sort of like a whale... a whale is fine in the buoyancy of the ocean, but stick one on dry land and they'll crush themselves under their own weight. If it will always stay in space, it shouldn't be too bad of a feat.

The bigger problems would be things like simulating gravity, propulsion and the real big one... getting that much material to space in the first place.


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

[User]
I believe that the Citizens United US Supreme Court decision was the right one. CMV.

The marriage of money and politics is an ugly one. In fact, I believe it is a primary root of our problems in the United States.

*But limiting an individual's right to free speech - saying that I cannot spend my own money on television political advertisements - is the wrong way to solve this problem, because it violates Constitutional rights.*

**The crux of my view is that television advertisements qualify as free speech.**  If I, a private citizen, want to use one medium of communication (television) to speak about issues important to me, I ought to have the right to do that, just as I have the right to use other media to communicate to individuals.  The difference between me discussing on reddit about politics, and me purchasing a television advertisement to discuss politics, is only in degree.  I need money for a computer and internet subscription to talk on reddit, I need money for design and advertisement space on television.  Again, the difference is only in degree.

Truly free speech has negative effects - manipulating voters to acquire votes is one of them.  But just as restricting gun rights is the wrong way to eliminate gun violence, restricting the right to speak freely on political issues is the wrong way to eliminate the influence of money in politics.  The ends don't justify the means.

Change my view.

-------------

* edit: I must make an important qualifier: An individual may have a right to do something, but that does not mean a corporation does.  Still, I don't see why corporations should not be allowed to advertise in favor of a political candidate that would benefit their business.

-------------

* edit 2: No one has explicitly said this without going over a logical edge, but I want to state that **I can see things from the other side**.  *I don't think my view has changed yet*, but there is some rationale in an argument like this:

>We have had the ability to regulate what a corporation advertises for many years now.  For example, cigarette companies are not allowed to advertise on television.  This same legal authority could be applied to political advertisements by corporations.

Now, I still hold the view that cigarette companies should be able to advertise cigarettes, coal mining companies should be able to advertise against the candidate who says he's going to close coal mining facilities, and McDonalds should be able to advertise for escort service with Ronald McDonald (if that's what you're into).  I think that even if it's a negative overall outcome (more people smoking cigarettes), we are better of if companies are allowed to market a bad product because it falls more in line with free market ideology, which I support.  The freedom to make bad choices is better than being forced to make good ones, IMO.  **I can, now, at least see the other side of the debate, though.  I can see how precedent would allow for a different decision in Citizens United.**

Again, I don't hold that view, but I can see why it is legitimate.

Thanks for the healthy debate, I will continue to read responses as they come in.

[Assistant]
The issue in *Citizens United* was not whether the government could prohibit you, a natural person, from buying political ads. It was, very loosely, whether the government could restrict corporations and other artificial entities from buying political ads.

Do you think corporations need the same free speech rights as natural persons?


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

[User] Why is it taking so long to fix the issues with Flint Michigan's drinking water?

[Assistant]
The root of the issue comes down to the age of the pipes and the change in pH of the water after a change in water sources.

Flint has a very old water system, much of which was made out of lead pipes. In the right conditions, this isn't as bad as it sounds, as the pipes rapidly develop an inert later of corrosion that basically passivates the interior walls of the pipes. This keeps the water from absorbing the lead, and thus polluting the water supply.

What happened in Flint is that as part of a money saving efforts put in by a state appointed commissioner (ie someone who wasn't elected), the source of water into the system was changed. The new water supply had a lower pH and different mineral content than the old supply.

Normally not that big of a deal, but in this case it had the effect of dissolving the passivation layer on the pipes, preventing it from forming again, and leeching lead into the water supply.

At this point, the only viable solution is to replace the entire system, but that is obscenely expensive. Given the current political environment, it's unlikely to get resolved.


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

[User] ELI5:How come my body can heat up so much when I'm anxious but it fells like it barely does anything when I'm cold.

[Assistant]
When you enter a cold environment your body starts preparing for  extended exposure and begins conserving body heat through various means such as blood vessel constriction in the extremities.

Being anxious (and not out in the cold), is a stress reaction that does almost the opposite - gets the body and muscles ready for a fight-or-flight scenario, which among other things *increases* blood flow.

Thus one results in you feeling cold (even though your body is *preserving* heat), and the other gets your muscles prepped *at the expense* of producing and losing extra heat.


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

[User]
[Thor] [Spoiler] What happened to Valykrie after the events in Ragnarok?

Did she die at the start of Infinity War or did she escape?

If so, how?

[Assistant] Word of God has confirmed that Valkyrie survived the attack by Thanos and the Black Order, presumably escaping via escape pod or ship with as many other Asgardians as she could keep safe.  No word on Korg though, sadly, so we'll have to wait to find out what happened to him.


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

[User]
CMV: Social housing and welfare recipients should not live in prime locations in major cities

Example in point is London, which is amongst the most expensive cities in the world. Owning a property is out reach for most people with the average price for a house being over 13 times relative to average earnings. This is a result of the skyrocketing property prices which many global cities has experienced over the past 15 - 20 years. As a result, many people are priced out of renting, let alone buying, and must compromise by living in flat shares on the outskirts of the city with long commutes to their place of work  from which they pay substantial taxes. This is unless you are on benefits, since there is a signifiant portion of social housing located in central and prime locations across London. Such would be the cost of living in these places, due to their locations, that most people are sensible enough to not even dream about living there; however the system rewards a select number of people, who has effectively hit the state-handout jackpot  at a great cost to actual taxpayers who pay for their privilege through taxation. In comparison, the majority of the recipients, who have lucked out, are not in any form of employment (source available). They also create crime hotspots in their free accommodation, so that it is common sense for any outsider to avoid these places, unless you wish to take your heightened chances on getting mugged or stabbed.
It would be cheaper for the taxpayer, whilst also reducing the resentment felt towards these people, if they ceased all social-housing in prime London. The money raised from selling the valuable land could be put to use in  creating new accommodation in less desirable areas, while also funding increased services such as police and healthcare  which have been largely cut back in recent years.

One of the common argument is that because these people were born in the area, they have the inalienable right to continue to live there  despite the cost to the taxpayer. People in employment do such hold such entitlement, and regularly move around for work and for affordable housing options, so why shouldnt benefit recipients? Another argument, which perhaps I am more sympathetic to, is that this helps to integrate people from poor backgrounds, reduce class divide and to avoid ghettoisation. Again, this comes at a great cost to the very people who never have the prospect of ever living in such prime locations, whilst also failing in the hopes at preventing class divide and ghettoisation, with the only effect being that nearby neighbourhoods suffer a high rate of crime.

I am unsure how the system works in the other countries, however speaking from a UK perspective it is a ridiculous and unjust state of affairs (for disclosure, I do live in a cramped flat-share on the outskirts). I am hoping that I can have my view changed; or at least pacified, so that I do not hold such resentment to the situation.

[Assistant]
All locations within a city are prime locations. That is the nature of being in a city. What you are stating is that poor people should not live in the city. That government owned housing within a city should not be utilized to assist the poor, and the people who own property within a city but temporarily need assistance should have that property stripped from them.

You have to remember that most people who are on welfare are on it temporarily. It is due to job loss, injury, or some other temporary hardship.


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

[User]
CMV: It is unacceptable for children to be playing games on a mobile device at the dinner table or at a restaurant.

I want to preface this by saying I am not that old (17) myself and I dont have children. When I was young I was never allowed to play games on my DS or on another mobile device at the table. I I was allowed to game at pretty much every other moment than the diner table. Actually, most my friends werent allowed either so I think its mostly a problem for the younger gen Z (maybe the ones born in the 2010s or slightly before? I have no idea).

Ive been noticing for about 5-7 years now that whenever I go to a restaurant, I always see children playing games on a mobile device. Its mostly while theyre waiting for the food, but also when theyre finished eating or even DURING the meal.

I know that different families have different values but most people seem to agree that an adult shouldnt be on their phone when theyre in the company of others, and children need to be taught this. I know that children need to be entertained and that waiting for food at a restaurant can be long, but there are other ways to entertain a child than giving them an iPad or your own mobile phone. (This is slightly unrelated  and subjective but I always cringe at parents who allow their children to play on their cellphone because theyre throwing a tantrum if the parent doesnt give them their phone. Children also need to learn that a phone is a personal item and their parents dont have to lend it to them.)

Ive also seen multiple similar examples at family dinners with the younger children who should be playing together or talking together and not being isolated on their iPads.

In my opinion you need to teach your children that when you go visit family that you dont see very often, they have to be in the present, especially when there are their children their age about.

Also I get that perhaps there are situations where youd rather your children stay quiet and focused on something. For example if you need to have a serious conversation with another adult and your children are demanding your attention constantly, then I would get it. But thats not the same as just allowing your child to be in their own bubble playing a game while theyre in the company of others. Youre doing a disservice to your child be teaching them that thats okay.

However, since this seems to be so common, maybe theres a facet of this that Im missing? Clearly if so many parents are allowing this there has to be a reason.

CMV :)

[Assistant] Honestly, if its not loud, distractive or noisy/disruptive. why the fuck does it matter what a child that isnt yours does at another table? If its loud, then yeah, NOT ACCEPTABLE but if they arent bothering anybody, then no harm done. Also if it is YOUR child and you dont like it, punish THEM for it because you can. Unlike that random ass child youve never seen and never will again playing games two tables over that you cant hear. focus on yourself.


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

[User] ELI5: How is the Nissan GT-R sold at a fraction of the price of other super/hyper cars yet be able to keep up with or even outpace some of them?

[Assistant] A lot has to do with luxury. The GT-R is as fast as a Ferrari, but the interior is a lot closer to an Altima. Also, the ride quality is really rough. With the GT-R, all your money goes to one thing - your ability to go around a race track quickly. If you want a stylish and refined luxury experience plus the speed, you have to pay more for that.


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

[User] [40k]Why is it that the Tau have such a small war presence that they atr basically immune to chaos, yet, advanced technology and AIs which are inanimate objects, are not? Follow-up question, why is human technology susceptible to chaps corruption when Tau technology apparently is not?

[Assistant]
A mind is a mind, even if in-cased in a inanimate object.

Abominable Intelligence developed by Humans is similar to human minds themselves. They have has much mental capacity as any normal human and thus a presence in the warp. A soul.

Tau are unique, much like certain humans their minds are different in a way that mean they don't produce much of a presence in the warp at all. So they don't attract the attention of demons, there isn't much there for a demon to eat. They don't have much of a soul.

The Tau likely build their own computers like their own minds, their computers which are much weaker then older Human AI don't produce much of a presence in the warp.

The Machine Spirit is merely the computer systems used in Human technology. Abominable Intelligence that is.... tamed or broken. Tech priests try to maintain these spirits in the machines, the ghosts in the shell by a religion of maintenance. Sometimes when this tech is lost, demons can possess the minds inside the machines, even to the point of ejecting the previous occupant.

Tau tech isn't advanced in that way, their computers are essentially brain dead. A demon cannot posses a..... lesser lifeform like a Tau computer. At least not as easily as a Human AI.

If a demon is possessing something, barring things like swords (Because of warp fuckery) it's likely that it still possesses a broken AI or the capacity to hold one. Technology from the dark age of technology likely all ran on AI. Modern Humans use most of their tech, derived from tech, based on tech that their don't understand.

They build things based on instructions they can barely follow and in many cases leave to the machine spirits to process anyway. Human technology is more powerful then most know, and even the Tech Priests of Mars can only scratch the surface of what they are actually making their stuff out of, and how best to take advantage of it.

And when the machine spirit is unleashed, most Human technology proves to be the best in the universe, in existence. A demon would love to unleash the true potential of a Land Raider, or Titan.

A Tau mech however is far more mundane and basic when compared to the relics used by Humanity. It's full capacity and ability is exactly what the mech does at all times. The Tau aren't holding back because they don't understand like Humans do. Humans don't actually know how to use their tech. Human tech is better.... if not just a random collection of stuff that constitutes a functional weapon.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is riding a bike uphill harder than walking

Riding a bike generally uses less energy than walking, because there is more efficient energy transfer. Why is this no longer true when you're riding uphill?

[Assistant]
Because bikes can roll backwards. Your feet cant glide backwards (unless your on ice).

When you walk uphill, the friction between your feet and the ground is enough to keep you from sliding backwards and losing progress.

But a bike, a bike can roll backwards. Yknow how easy it is to bike downhill? And how much speed you can build up due to gravity pulling you down? Well when biking uphill, you have to fight against that, and if at any point you stop the bike is going to start rolling backwards.

When youre walking, if you stop you can just stand there and rest, biking you have to keep yourself from losing progress.


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

[User]
What does it actually mean if a quantity is an exact differential?

I came across this sentence:
 "since heat is not an exact differential it is not a property of the system. It is a path function."

So how can those things be inferred just by knowing that heat is not an exact differential?

[Assistant]
The precise mathematical definition of an exact differential form is a differential form that can be written as an exterior derivative of another differential form.

In thermoynamics, the one-form dU (the differential internal energy) is an exterior derivative (d) of a zero-form (a function) U.

In other words, there is some function U that depends on the state of your thermodynamic system. Then taking the exterior derivative of that function gives you an exact one-form. A consequence of being an exact form is that the integral of the form is path-indepdent. So if you integrate dU over some path in the thermodynamic state-space, the result depends only on the initial and final states, and not on the path between them.

Now for an example of an inexact form: heat. Heat is fundamentally a **change** in energy during some process. It's denoted by ~~d~~Q, where the strikethrough denotes that it's an *inexact* one-form. There is no "heat function" Q (zero-form) whose exterior derivative is ~~d~~Q. You can't point at a thermodynamic system in some state and ask "How much heat does the system have?", that question is nonsense. So the differential heat cannot be written as an exterior derivative of a zero-form, so it's an inexact one-form. A consequence is that the integral of this one-form is path-dependent. During your thermodynamic process, if you move between the same initial and final points, but over different paths, the total amount of heat absorbed or released by your system will be different. It depends on the path you take.


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

[User] What exactly is happening when I convert a  file from .wav to mp3(or any other type of file converting really)?

[Assistant]
.mp3 and .wav are both file formats.  They are separate, incompatible formats, each with header data describing the particulars of the rest of the data.  In .wav's case, it can contain a variety of audio formats, but is most typically used with some sort of uncompressed digital audio.  In the case of MP3, it contains compressed digital audio.

The compression for MP3 is a lossy form of compression.  When you compress audio into the format for an MP3 file, you lose precision, that cannot be recovered when the file is decompressed.  This is why it is referred to as lossy compression.

Firstly, the digital audio is divided up into semi-overlapping frames, each frame very short in duration.  For each frame, an algorithm called a "modified discrete cosine transform" translates digital audio samples from time-based samples (amplitude vs time) into frequency-based coefficients, where instead of each sample representing a specific point in time, each one represents a certain frequency at a certain phase.

Up to this point, no space has been saved.  The space saving comes from the quantization step.  Quantization is where you reduce the precision of numerical values by a certain amount.  Think of it as dividing your real values by a certain number, and discarding the remainder.  The remaining number is smaller, and due to discarding the remainder, has less precision.  It can later be restored to a value approximating the former value, but the exact precision has been lost.  Since the remaining number is smaller, it also requires less bits to represent its value, hence the compression.  A variable length encoding of some sort is then run over the coefficients, where the fewer bits of precision a value has, the less space it takes up.

The encoding of an MP3 follows this basic principle, but it is a lot more complicated, because the encoder has several choices to make.  The encoder needs to vary the quantizer (ie, the amount by which precision is reduced) in order to result in the best compression, but also to have the minimum impact on sound quality.  Therefore, frequencies which are less likely to be noticed will have a higher quantizer.  It can make dynamic decisions, where a loud noise in one frequency may, in the listener's mind, mask detail in nearby frequencies almost completely, allowing the encoder to spend very few bits on those masked frequencies.  This is called psychoacoustics.

The MP3 format defines how the data is stored and how it is decompressed, but it is up to the various codecs to decide how best to compress, so not all codecs will be equal to others.  They will all be bound by the specification of the file they are allowed to produce, but the better ones have years of psychoacoustic modelling behind them, improving them.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does stubbing your toe hurt so much?

[Assistant] We have a lot more nerve endings that feel pain in our feet (and hands and mouth and genitals) than in other parts of the body.  for a large part of human existence, our feet would engage with our environment a lot and so it needed to be able to take in more information than, say, our shoulders do. More nerve receptors mean we can tell different terrain. We can distinguish between plants and pebbles and snakes and if something is slimy or slippery or hot or cold.  But it also means a stronger pain response. Yeow!


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

[User]
ELI5: How does instinct work?

How can animals just know stuff without having to learn it, just because their ancestors all did it?

[Assistant]
It has to do with how the neurons are arranged and connected.  Our brains are essentially extremely complicated computers.  When presented with a certain input, a certain output is going to happen.  Some of these arrangements and connections are plastic, meaning that they can be changed.  This is what allows us to learn.  However, a lot of others are fixed and prespecified.  instincts are part of these, once your neurons are presented with a certain input pattern a fixed action will occur.

At the most basic level, this is due to genes.  animals whose genes forced neurons to form certain connections survived and passed these genes on to their children.


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

[User]
How are COVID virus mutations named (letters and numbers) and what is the difference between a "mutation" and a "variant" (Greek letters)?

There are 'mutations' of the COVID 'delta variant'.  P681R increases the viral load. Mutation D614G is thought to make the SARS-CoV-2 virus' spike protein more dense, and could help the virus more easily invade cells and evade the body's defenses. Mutation L452R may perform a similar function by thwarting antibodies.  At what point does the 'delta variant' become the 'epsilon variant'?  Is it the collective number of mutations that define a variant?

[Assistant]
Mutations are the alterations in the genetic material that change viruses. A mutation is a specific change in a specific piece of the RNA resulting in a change in how the virus works.

A variant is the name we give to a virus strain with certain mutations. Not every mutation has to have a different name; some mutations might do nothing or make the virus weaker (so it disappears quickly). We call a virus a variant if it changes enough to make it more dangerous or infect a significant proportion of people. There probably have been thousands or millions or billions of mutations that dont matter. Only certain combinations of mutations get a name because they really do matter.

Edit: corrected a factual error.


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

[User]
CMV: In America at least, most popular discussions on politics are extremely biased and entrenched in party ideologies, and instead of trying to find utilitarian solutions or the truth, scorched earth policies rule; the most popular views we see seek party affirmation and not information.

I should begin by saying I feel disheartened and disenfranchised.

While I lean left, I also come from a family of staunch conservatives. I have been raised by people who are right, but the morals they taught me lean me left. But if you look online or at Reddit, everyone who votes differently than me is an insane person who is a moron and also hates [insert group].

Im tired of the notion that only a scared or angry voting base go out to vote reliably.

I just want to be in a society that realizes 80% of us would probably get along great, but there are many people who find value, riches, power, or purpose in keeping us hating each other and divided, and I think theres nothing we can do to fix that. For better or worse, fear and division sell and drive likes. Popularity is more important today than reason. Moderation and an effort at unity does not, at least not to the same urgency that division does. And social media exacerbates this.

Edit attempting at clarity: At the end of the day, I believe the politicians who gain the limelight these days are not those who seek logic, reasonableness or context, but rather those who drive as deep of a wedge with the other side as possible. I think the circles and groups surrounding politics on social media exacerbate this, and I think the primary system we have in the USA puts the nail in the coffin here - popular party candidates are no longer chosen based on what a majority of voters may prefer, but rather based on what the most vocal and extreme (and therefore reliably voting and donating) would prefer. CMV.

[Assistant] The main issue with your view is its extremely hard to get 80% of Americans to agree on anything. 80%+ of us are united by class, yes, but politics is more about just uniting people. You also have to govern. And getting 80% of Americans to agree on HOW to solve the issues we face today is where your view begins to raise questions.


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

[User] Why is violence such an accepted part of TV and movies, but not sex?

[Assistant]
Because the US stems from extremely Puritan roots. The first colonists were puritans, and many of their ideas and taboos are still in effect. 'Blue Laws' (the ones that say things like you can't buy booze on Sundays) are still in effect in many states, and descend directly from Puritan laws. Puritans were absolutely terrified by sexuality because of their Christian roots, but had no problem with violence.

Any culture with strong roots in the Christian Bible would tend in the same direction. The Bible has all kinds of rules about sex, mostly aimed at subjugation - direct and indirect - of women, but it one of the bloodiest and most violent documents ever constructed.


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

[User]
[WH 40k] Can Orks be corrupted by Chaos?

Now, to my understanding the Orks are super psykic inherently, with the glorious WAAAGH! being a species-wide psykic mind field. Is this field connected or related to the Warp in any way? Could Chaos find its way into the mind of an Ork? Khorne especially seems like he'd love them since their end-game is basically a galaxy-wide genocide of everything that's not an Ork.

[Assistant]
They have been before. Truth be told, there wasn't much difference. Orks already have Nurgle-levels of bad hygiene, Khorne-levels of bloodlust, and Slaanesh-levels of hedonistic lifestyle. As for Tzeneetch...I mean, when's the last time you saw an Ork "plan" anything farther than about 3 minutes in advance?

The big issue is that Orks don't respect or follow anything that isn't an Ork. It's not a concious descision, it's just how they are. So even the most heavily warp-touched Ork won't even reconize the fact and won't go around making cults or sacrifices or anything.


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

[User]
Why aren't linked lists and other data structures built-in to Javascript?

I've googled as much as I can to find the answer, but every result I come across is just "*Datastructures Basics! How to make a singly linked list!*", but my question is more about the *why*. If linked lists, stacks, queues, trees, binary trees, etc. are used so often and are even an expected skill to demonstrate in tech interviews, why aren't they a standardized data structure in languages like Javascript?

From what I've read, *some* of these structures are available in other languages (JavaScript is the only language I'm very comfortable with, so please correct me if I'm wrong). Is it merely a preference thing from the core devs? Does it include an unnecessary overhead? Are these data structures just not used enough to matter?

Thanks!

[Assistant]
Theres a lot to unpack in the question so lets start at the beginning:

Why doesnt JavaScript have a bunch of data structures built in?

I think there are two factors here: first, JavaScript wasnt originally built with its current uses in mind. The goal was to give people a way to add some interactivity to otherwise static documents. JavaScript was around for a long time before websites started to move away from being documents with some interactive elements and toward being full fledged applications. Even when that transition was first happening, there was an attitude that the browser should implement all of the interesting things, and JavaScript existed merely to automate using functionality the browser supported. Internally the browsers use plenty of sophisticated data structures, but for a long time nobody really thought about JavaScript as a language for building sophisticated software.

Eventually people did start to see JavaScript as a language for writing real programs, but by that point the momentum was behind using packages and frameworks. JavaScript itself never got much of a rich general purpose standard library because other projects stepped in by the time anyone realized it could have used one. Now days its just cultural- if you need a data structure just add a dependency to your project, for better or worse thats the JavaScript way.

So that explains JS, but why dont other languages implement these data structures? Often they do, to some degree or another.

JavaScript is at one extreme as a language with basically nothing built in, but all languages need to decide what to include and what not to include by default. Theres no right answer only trade offs, but the major focus is trying to write things that are generally useful to a lot of users. Its not a good use of time and resources to invest in building fancy data structures that nobody will use.

That brings us to your last question - does nobody use these?

Fancy data structures are used less often than you might think. Most of the time you can get by with lists, arrays, and dictionaries. When you do need a fancy data structure, its often because you have a very specific use case in mind, and in those cases your often better implementing it yourself so that you can tune it to your specific needs. Even if the language provided a general purpose library, it wouldnt be tuned for your exact needs so youd still write your own.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do some computer programs need to be "installed" whereas others will run from an .exe file?

Basically what the title says, sometimes I can run programs as a standalone .exe file, but sometimes the program needs to be installed instead. What is the difference between the two?

[Assistant]
Some programs are like an individual hot wheels car that you get when you behave on a shopping trip. You can play with it just all on its own. These programs are usually smaller, and don't need to rely on much else or make any special changes to your computer.

Others are like hot wheels cars that come one of those boxed sets you get for your birthday. They come with tracks that have to be put together; you have to ask your dad for batteries, or you have to grab a chair and clamp the track to it; you have to put some ice water in the little container so the cars can change colors. These programs try to do a lot more, or work together with other bits of code, but they require more setup as a result.


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

[User]
ELI5: Did our ancestors (Refering back to stone age) already have the same kinds of emotions we do or did emotions grow along with our general evolution?

For example, let's say a warrior lost his wife to some predator, did he mourn for her like we do nowadays, or was he simply not able to have that emotion yet?

[Assistant] They had emotions, or things that we could easily think of as emotions - many animals do, and primates certainly do.  It is almost impossible to understand to what degree emotions relate to _language_.  It is believed that stone age people had language, but it's not clear if it was sophisticated enough to convey the complexity of emotions we convey now.  However, it's not clear that we'd have this complexity without language either.  Is our language and intellect complex?  Or our emotions?