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

[User] eli5 - Why does Earth have a weak magnetic field and why is it weakening?

[Assistant]
For Earth it's thought to be due to the molten outer core which is liquid metal.  The flow of this liquid metal generates an electric current and since the Earth rotates this generates an magnetic field (rotating electric fields create a magnetic field and vice versa).

As to why it's weakening........ that we don't really understand.  It's thought that it's possibly due to inner workings of the liquid outer core that we don't really understand.  However, after it weakens it'll flip polarity and then strengthen again.

However, over time the outer core is solidifying and this will eventually most likely stop this but this will take a long time, like billions of years.


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

[User]
ELI5: what's in your bladder when it's empty of urine? Is it every empty?

So I was taking a pee today and thought about this. It can't just be a void, and  don't think it should be air?

[Assistant] 1st of all, your bladder never completely empties of urine, there is always some left. But assuming you could empty it completely, the space inside would be the same as many "virtual" spaces in your body (such as the pleural, or pericardial  spaces). It would be the same as a flattened balloon with all the air squeezed out. The inside surfaces would all be compressed and touching each other with no space (except for a little moisture) between them.


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

[User] [King Kong] Were Kong's chains manufactured wrong, or was he just stronger than you would expect an ape his size to be?

[Assistant]
From Charles Denham, shortly before the escape:

"Dont be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen. It is perfectly safe. These chains are made of chrome steel!"

Chrome Steel, known as stainless steel today, has a lower carbon content than conventional steel, and is used for more decorative metal-work, or metal-work where there is a need to protect against rust.

It is *not* an appropriate material to bind a 40-ton Gorilla.


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

[User]
[Space Oddity] What exactly happened to Major Tom?

We know that Major Tom was an astronaut and on his mission, Ground Control lost contact with him as he drifted away. However at some point later, a biographer mentions that he did return home, yet his original biographer then describes him as a junkie, in an attempt to discredit him.

What happened on that mission? What is NASA covering up? What is the truth about Major Tom?

[Assistant]
Major Tom died, but is continued to be worshiped.

From wikipedia:

In the music video of Bowie's 2015 song "Blackstar" (on the album of the same name, released in 2016 two days prior to the artist's death), a dead astronaut is depicted. His skull is retrieved by an alien female who takes it back to what could be considered a cult which subsequently worships the relic. This astronaut was speculated to be a depiction of Major Tom's final fate.[5][6][7] Video director Johan Renck said on a BBC documentary "to me, it was 100% Major Tom"


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

[User]
ELI5 Why is beef the only staple meat with true intramuscular fat marbling?

Pork has a fat cap, poultry has subcutaneous fat, and seafood fat is oil that is dispersed through the meat. Why is beef the only one that we see the fat inside the muscle?

[Assistant]
It isn't, you're just not looking at the right cuts of meat. Certain parts of a pig have marbling, certain parts of a cow don't, certain parts of fish do, etc, etc.  It just depends on the quality of your meat and which parts of the animal you're looking at.

A quick Google search of "marbled pork" or "marbled fish" or whatever will show you what they look like.


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

[User] CMV: Sending a nude photo over digital means - be it SMS, Snapchat, etc. - has clear and inherent risks and the consequences of sending said material - up to and including those photos being intercepted and made public - are the sole responsibility of the person who created and sent the photo.

[Assistant]
> failing to protect one's self and one's data is one's own responsibility.

That is basically the definition of victim blaming.

To use a rape analogy, "It isn't victim blaming to say that we live in a dangerous society and the rape victim should have taken responsibility for her safety and defended herself from the rapist.  Walking outside is inherently dangerous, and she knew it was risky."

You can argue that we *should* be blaming the victims, but lets not pretend that isn't what you are doing.


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

[User]
[MCU] Why couldn't Daredevil hear, or sense, the ninjas?

I'm rewatching Daredevil with Carlie Cox. In season 2, Matt is initially unable to hear the ninjas when they attack him. He explains that it's because they lower their body temperature and slow their heart rate. Eventually, Stick tells him he can't rely on heartbeat, and instead focus on their exhales. That advice helps him to track them, and he can now fight them.

Three things I don't understand. First, they were obviously exhaling the whole time, and Matt was trying hard to hear or sense them, so why didn't he hear their exhales already?

Second, I know they slowed their heart rates, but surely their hearts were still beating. So why couldn't he hear that at all?

And third, let's just say he didn't think to hear their breathing and couldn't hear heartbeats for whatever reason. Shouldn't he still be able to sense moving objects? I mean, he can sense inanimate objects all day. He can do parkour over rooftops. He can catch things being thrown at him. So why can he not sense these ninjas at all?

[Assistant] Ninja magic that Daredevil doesn't understand, and thus he thinks it must just be lowered heart rates, and is trying to justify it to himself because he doesn't want to believe in magical ninja assassins.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does all dog food taste horrible?

I consider myself a connoisseur but no matter what dog food I try it just tastes awful. I mean it says "real chicken and beef in gravy" but tastes like a turd and mud mix. Why is it not so simple?

[Assistant]
Dogs love the taste of fat, and dry dog food is usually sprayed with a 'flavor enhancing' coating of fat that dogs apparently enjoy. To people, the only flavor it enhances is that of rancid fat.

Also, check the ingredients. Meats not suitable for human consumption are used as pet food ingredients, and that 'cellulose fiber'? It's sawdust.


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

[User]
[General Lovecraftian Horrors] Hypothetically, what would happen if humanity grew powerful enough to destroy eldritch horrors?

A HFY ('Humanity, F*ck Yeah') trope that I've seen occasionally is humanity eventually becoming so technologically advanced that they are able to kill eldritch beings, as well as face them without going mad.

If humankind ever actually grew capable of permanently eradicating cosmic horrors from every plane of existence, what would be the ramifications of this?

This could only be a good thing, right?

[Assistant] I feel like this is the main thrust of Robert Anton Wilson's writings.  Lovecraft tried to put a damper on enlightenment's optimism, saying that there are things in this universe we can not comprehend-  and RAW said hey, if it exists, we'll eventually be able to describe it, then comprehend it, then kick it's ass.  We will be the cosmic horrors our prophets warned us about.


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

[User] ELI5: If canine olfactory sensitivity is thousands of times that of a human, what prevents them from being overwhelmed by unpleasant odors?

[Assistant]
Because they don't smell things 1000x stronger, they would notice a smell much earlier.

You are slightly confusing sensitivity and amplification. Think of it like a lower threshold to smell something, not a stronger smell only.


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

[User]
[MCU] what would Happen If Thanos Encountered a Balanced Civilization?

Say pre-gauntlet Thanos in his quest to one by one eliminate half the life on a given planet for his balance/resources reasons, encounters a planet who's Civilization is in harmony with its planet.

They are carbon neutral, have extensive recycling programs, amazing pollution controls, a mature and functioning ecosystem preservation plan, have their own population controls in place so as to not overpopulate.

Would he just nod and move on or would he still purge half the population just to be sure?

[Assistant]
Well, he killed half the Asgardians despite probably 99% of their population being already wiped out by Hela, and being confined to a refugee ship in the middle of space which is necessarily a self-contained, self-sustaining environment.

So yeah, he's pretty mindlessly committed to this purging 50% thing, regardless of whether it actually makes sense in the context of his philosophy.


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

[User]
[Princess Bride] When Wesley rescues Buttercup, hes a total dick to her. Is he just messing with her, or does he legitimately think she wants to marry Humperdink?

I did not read the book, so perhaps it is clearer there, but I honestly cant tell in the movie. I always sort of thought he was just messing with her, but watching it recently, she is pretty upset the entire time. If he was truly not mad at her, it would have made a lot more sense to tell her who he was as soon as possible, because there would be less chance of her purposely slowing him down, trying to kill him, or leaving a trail for Humperdink to follow. Especially since she believes him to be the Dread Pirate Roberts, the one who she thinks killed her beloved. Its really just cruel.

But in rewatching it recently, it seems to me now that he only decides to tell her who he is (by shouting AS YOU WISH once he makes her so mad that she tries to kill him. So was he legitimately testing her the whole time, and only believes her once she tries to kill him, or was he just playing with her the whole time, and then decided he went too far and the game was over once she pushed him?

[Assistant]
He's testing her. He doesn't want to believe that she passed him up for Humperdinck but if she had he wouldn't have revealed himself to her.

The book, which is a fair bit more cynical than the movie, suggests that he was at least entertaining the possibility of killing her if she had spurned him for Humperdinck.


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

[User] Why don't animals get sick when they eat raw meat?

[Assistant] It has to do with bacteria and enzymes. It has been a long time since most humans ate raw meat, and so the bacteria in our digestive tract that help digest it are no longer present, also the bacteria and enzymes used to defend against the pathogens in raw meat are not present, so we are more likely to get sick from them.


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

[User] ELI5: How did the different American accents develop from the original British settlers? Did someone just invent a new trend?

[Assistant]
The settlers from England spoke in an accent about as different from the modern American accents as it is different from the modern English accents.

Populations just have a constant drift in how they speak. New words added, old ones pruned and subtle changes in pronunciation add up.


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

[User]
Could there be rogue planets out there that lost their star?

Not sure if this is more astronomy or planetary, but say you have a large solar system out there and its star runs out of fuel and self destructs.  Could one of the far outer planets survive that and just be chilling out by themselves in space.

If that could happen, could a nearby system ever pick up that planet?

[Assistant]
It's not a question of if, it's a question of how many. It's also not a matter of a star "self-destructing" and leaving a planet to roam around the stars, such events would dramatically alter or destroy planets. What's vastly more likely is a process where orbital dynamics and resonances between planets, especially the more massive ones, to be ejected. That's how the Oort cloud was created in our Solar System, cometary bodies were sent out to distances of thousands of AU or ejected entirely from our system during its early history. Similar mechanics can also eject larger planets, potentially even as large as Jupiter.

Almost certainly there are millions if not billions of such planets in our galaxy.


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

[User] [LOTR] What are the Uruk-Hai pits made of and how were they formed in Isengard? Also, how do Orcs reproduce?

[Assistant]
That is just stuff made up in the movies. In the actual story (that is the book) uruk-hai are just a breed of orcs. Also, goblins and orcs are one and the same thing.

Orcs reproduce sexually, like humans and elves and dwarves do.


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

[User]
Any recommended books for developmental economics?

I am currently working as an undergrad in a group doing research on poverty.  I am really interested in learning about both developing countries and how that might apply to the inner cities in America.  I'm not an econ major but have taken a few classes on economics, and I really do believe that I need to gain a better understanding of economics in order to understand the issue of poverty.  Any suggestions?

[Assistant]
There has been a surge in good popular books on development economics. All of these are worth reading:

1. de Soto, "The Mystery of Capital."
2.  Easterly, "The Elusive Quest for Growth."
3.  Easterly, "The White Man's Burden."
4.  Sachs, "The End of Poverty."
5.  Collier, "The Bottom Billion."
6.  Collier, "Wars, Guns and Votes."
7.  Sen, "Development as Freedom."
8. Acemoglu and Robinson, "Why Nations Fail."
9. Yunus, "Banker to the Poor."
10. Yunus, "Creating a World Without Poverty."

For a textbook perspective, Weil's undergraduate book "Economic Growth" is good.

These all focus on developing countries.


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

[User]
Took a few years off to travel and take a break, how would you portray that on your resume(US)?

I've been coding professionally for \~25 years and was stack before. A bunch has changed in my short break, but I did keep somewhat up to date. Personal projects where I did poc's with ang/react/vue, along with .net core. Debating how to describe it all.

Dealt with many new hires/resumes over the years, but never from 1 that took a real break. Most Americans fme, basically look down on it.

Would you like to see a job post for those missed years? What I did coding wise personally...

Or would you prefer to see a description of what I learned from my travels? Not necessarily code.

Don't get me wrong, I can get someone to vouch for me and completely ignore the break; I'm not a dishonest person tho. That may be my best option for getting an American based job tho.

[Assistant] Use a referral to get a foot in the interview process and be honest. Youll probably have to settle for a job. Then switch in a year since its far easier to get hired if youre already employed. Beat of luck.


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

[User]
ELI5: What are the heights of mountains measured against on planets without seas?

Like Everest is the highest on Earth at nearly 9km above sea level, but Olympus Mons, on Mars is the highest mountain in our solar system at 25km, but above what?

[Assistant] The Datum. Simply put, imagine running a bulldozer over the surface, smoothing down everything that sticks up, and using that stuff to fill in all the troughs and holes. The resulting surface is the reference.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the engineering and science involved in making the weather forecasts accurately ?

[Assistant]
Modern forecasts are generated using computer simulations. Several times a day supercomputers operated by a variety of countries will ingest data about current conditions around the world. The data comes from satellites, radars, weather balloons, ground monitoring stations, and various other sources. The supercomputers will then run models to simulate what is likely to happen several days into the future.

Different models are going to produce different results, so the job of the meteorologist is to use their training and local knowledge to consolidate the different model outputs into a single cohesive forecast. For example, a meteorologist might know that a particular model tends to overestimate rainfall in a certain area or perform worse in certain conditions, and correct the forecast accordingly.

The science and engineering that goes into improving forecasts tend to fall into one of several categories. You can try to improve the programming behind the models, which are based on our understanding of how weather systems work. You can build faster supercomputers so that you can run the models at higher resolution. And finally, you can improve the quality and quantity of data going into the models, by launching better satellites and installing more ground equipment. There are lots of people who work on all three areas.


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

[User]
[Justice League TV] What was the end result of Amazo's robot?

He came back to earth, studied with Doctor Fate and then just randomly removed himself a few galaxies to not fuel a reborn Solomon Grundy. Did he continue an introspective existence? Did he find meaning? Why didn't he return and dues ex machina all future problems?

[Assistant]
>Why didn't he return and dues ex machina all future problems?

For the same reason he studies with Dr. Fate: that wouldn't give him a true, complete purpose. He probably does return to Dr. Fate's tower after Grundy is dealt with, but it isn't in his business to meddle in the affairs of the universe: he is there to watch. *You* have the capability to make life perfect for the tiny ant colony under your house--why aren't you devoted to helping them solve every problem?

Think about it like Darkseid and Luthor at the end of the series, once they have the Anti-life equation: They don't care about the physical world anymore because they are so far beyond it. The android is nearly at the same point.


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

[User] [Star Trek] Has Section 31 ever instigated (or attempted to instigate) a Federation regime change? How involved are they in politics?

[Assistant]
Regime change *in* the federation?  Not likely.  Maybe an assassination of a high ranking politician here or there, but never a regime change.

Section 31 *believes* in Federation principles, that all should be equal in society, that democracy should reign, and the will of the people should triumph.  They just acknowledge that reality doesn't always work that way.  And when it doesn't, section 31 is there to put everything back in its proper place.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is college so expensive, and where exactly does that money go?

BEFORE YOU SAY REPOST: I searched for this, and read a few threads, but I'm really confused how a college can charge thousands of dollars, and have professors who make $60,000+ a year, and there is enough kids in that class to pay for more than just one professor's income for the WHOLE YEAR. And after they put people in debt, where does the money go? What does a college do with all the extra money? Now I know there's general campus upkeep, and that takes a chunk out of the money. The way people put it college takes so much money from all the students, and I just don't understand where all that money goes, or why taking that much money is really necessary.

EDIT: Read all your replies, thanks for helping me understand. Quick side note though, is really no one trying to figure out a better way to pay for college? So many people get in crushing debt because of it, there has to be a better way.

[Assistant]
There are two things going on in your question.

1.  Why does college cost a lot (for whom?  Compared to what?)
2.  What do colleges to with their revenues?

The second question is the easiest to answer, if only because university budgets are generally public record:

1.  Salaries and Benefits for Faculty, Staff and Administration
2.  Facilities/Maintenance Upkeep
6.  Tuition assistance (revenues used to support low-income students and merit based scholarships)
3.  Subsidies for Athletic Departments (there are, IIRC, only 4-6 schools in the entire country that have athletic departments that turn a net profit - all the others require that money raised by the university be paid into the athletic department for it to run)
4.  Information Technology (Universities demand a lot of computer resources and associated technologies, eg wireless networks, servers, internet connections, wired networks)
4.  Campus Health and Safety (police, fire, environmental controls)
4.  Student Services (Health care on campus, etc)
4.  Utilities (campuses use a lot of electricity, water, sewer, etc)
5.  Marketing (to promote attendance and the university and raise the profile of its graduates)
6.  Legal Services (all universities have lawyers on staff who make healthy salaries)
7.  Debt Service (Universities borrow a lot of money to build buildings, and then have to pay interest on the debt)
8.  Other "business type" expenses (travel for senior administrators, office supplies, etc)

When you say "so expensive" that comparison has to be informed by something.  What are you comparing the cost of college to?

It's unquestionable that the overall cost, inflation adjusted, for college has grown substantially.  Most of these increases can be attributed to the advances of technology and science.  Fifty years ago, the expensive tools used to educate and do research didn't exist - so it wasn't a question of them getting to be more expensive, it was a question of them being available or not.  If supercomputers had existed 50 years ago, you can bet every university would have one in some form - meaning their costs would have been higher.

What has changed a lot is that the number of people going to college is much, much, *much* larger than it was.  And the amount of public subsidy given for each student is much, much lower.

So when you say, "the cost of college has gone up" - you have to consider two factors.  The *overall* cost of operating a college has gone up, but the same college today has 40,000 students - where 30 years ago it had 5,000.

The *cost* of educating those students actually hasn't changed dramatically on a *per student basis* - we are just educating more people than we used to.  What has changed is that governments used to subsidize upwards of 90% of the cost of education.  Today it's less than 30%.  That difference shows up in tuition - making the cost *to the student* much, much higher.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do McDonald's fries start to taste gross after a small period of time?

[Assistant] They are soaked in oil and covered in salt. Over time they cool and the salt pulls any remaining moisture out of them. The fries themselves are very thin, so this happens quickly. The end result being the potato portion of the fry is literally a shell of its former self, the oil and salt survive just fine. So you're left with something that's more a vehicle for getting cold oil and salt into your mouth, instead of steamy potato goodness.


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

[User] ELI5: When a Lizard's tail gets cut off, Why does it keep moving?

[Assistant]
It distracts the predator and gives the lizard time to escape (relatively) unharmed.

Presumably lizards with this trait survive in greater proportions to those that don't, to the point that entire species can do it.


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

[User] Chemically speaking, why can't an element like Silicon be used as a replacement for Carbon?

[Assistant]
When it comes to understanding how molecules bond together, one must look at the outer electron shell.

In this case, Carbon has its 4 electrons in the 2nd energy level, while Silicon has its 4 electrons in the 3rd energy level.  This means that the bonds that silicon forms are going to be quite weaker than the ones carbon can form.  In fact, a Si-Si bond is nearly 1/2 the strength of a C-C bond.  This makes it far easier for long chains of carbon atoms to string together, while in nature, it is exceedingly rare to find a string of more than 3 Si atoms chained together.

Also, Silicon dioxide (the corollary to carbon dioxide) bonds strongly to oxygen and is difficult to split, meaning it could not play a role in the photosynthesis we know today, and it is not gaseous except in high (2000 C) temperatures.  It forms quartz and is not water-soluble the way CO2 is.


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

[User] how do all you can eat buffets make money?

[Assistant]
They generally use cheap ingredients, save costs by having reduced service staff, and save more costs by having reduced cooking staff by cooking in bulk instead of to order.

The general rule of thumb for restaurants is that food costs make up 1/3 of a dish's purchase price. The rest of the cost covers staff, rent, utilities, etc. So there's plenty of room to save money by lowering those other costs, even if the "all you can eat aspect" raises your food costs beyond a normal restaurant.


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

[User]
CMV: It is understandable, normal, and biologically reasonable for a straight cisgender person to feel uncomfortable continuing or pursuing a relationship with an individual if they learned this individual is trans and is biologically the same sex as they are. It doesnt make them homophobic.

I believe that human beings, while they are able to think in a more abstract, out of the box way, still retain an underlying biological pressure to reproduce, and the root instinctual desire for the act of sex, and the enjoyment that comes from it, is evolutions way of rewarding us for procreation; passing on our genes and producing more life.

Human beings are a sexually dimorphic species, male and female, and science withholding, the act of copulation between two members of the opposite sex is the only way procreation can happen. While many of us engage in intercourse for pleasure and pleasure alone, without actively wishing to create new life, we are seeking out the very reward that evolution has presented us for doing just that; creating life.

For those of us who are straight and cisgender, when we find out that our love or infatuation interest is in fact biologically the same sex as ourselves, our brain biologically becomes disinterested for this reason. Most of us are hardwired to desire these acts with the opposite sex for all the reasons mentioned above. There is a chemical reaction that occurs, and it is brought on by millions of years of evolution.

This doesnt mean that the individual wants to feel this way, nor that they have an inherent disgust or distaste for transgender people. It simply means they cant fight their natural instincts.

There are, of course, always anomalies, and theres nothing wrong with that. Transgender people and homosexual people are anomalies in and of themselves. They are people and they deserve rights and happiness same as anyone else. But to tell someone that their own natural instincts make them wrong or homophobic is also denying them their rights to true happiness and wrong in its own right.

CMV.

[Assistant]
It's strange that men, who likely don't interact with many trans people,  constantly feel the need to assert that they won't date them.

It's born out of the tired trope that straight men will be "tricked" into sex or a relationship. As if trans women are constantly forcing men into relationships under the threat of labeling them transphobic. This fear itself is irrational and transphobic and manifests itself in posts like these.

Why would trans people want to date or have sex with someone who isn't open to their existence? Trans people are consistently murdered and beaten just for existing, much less forcing themselves on others.

You can date whomever you want to date, but this need to consistently assert yourself speaks to other deeper unresolved issues.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are there so many species of most living beings but only species of humans?

[Assistant]
This is less a question about biology and more about human categorisation. We see quite a lot of distinction between ourselves and our nearest relatives (apes), in no small part because we're extremely familiar with ourselves and the differences between us and apes are a pretty big deal as far as our priorities are concerned. When we compare, say, a red fox and a grey fox (which are from entirely separate genera - *Vulpes* and *Urocyon*), the differences don't seem all that significant to us. They have a similar shape and similar enough behaviour as far as we care, so we dump them in the box labelled 'fox'. Most of the time we don't really care which kind of fox a fox is. Most of the time we care quite a bit whether something is a human or an ape!

(In fact, many of those categories are specific to a particular language, and things one language considers 'the same animal' may be quite separate to speakers of another language. Japanese, for example, has no one word for 'otter' - it has *kawauso* for river otters and *rakko* for sea otters.)

It *is*, however, reasonable to ask why there's only one extant species in the genus *Homo* (which humans are in), when other genera have many more species. This is in large part because humans have outcompeted or otherwise outlasted our nearest relatives, and other species that are conceptually closer to us than living apes are all gone now. It's also in part because genera are *also* human categorisation tools, and as much as they're intended to be independent of human bias, we don't always know what should be in the same genus and what should be in separate genera. It's not infrequent for genera to be split (or merged!) after taking another look at them. Really, the criteria aren't all that straightforward, and it's not uncommon to come across situations where there's no clear line at all between one species and another or one genus and another. What counts as 'one kind of living thing' versus 'another kind of living thing' ultimately is a purely external categorisation decided on by humans, even if the differences those categories are based on are real differences.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does applying more heat help with inflammation? (Eg heat packs, hot water bottles)

[Assistant]
Inflammation is characterised by 5 signs - redness, swelling, pain, high local temperature and dysfunction. Big part responsible for these is the "pooling" of blood at the inflamatory site. Because of the high pressure of the blood inside capillaries it is forced outside their walls and into the surrounding tissue.
 Now, for the first 24 hours it is wrong apllying heat, you should instead apply cold compresses, because heat expands the capillaries and makes it easier for thinga to get out. If 24 hours have passed, and enough outside liquid is pooled, it exercises pressure on the blood vessels and shrinks them, that's when heat can help get them expanded, so they can start collecting that external liquid.


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

[User] Why do some people see this dress as Black and Blue, while other people see it as Gold and white?

[Assistant]
This is the only question about the dress that will be on askscience today! All other dress questions will be removed!

Please do not make top-level posts in this thread unless you have relevant expertise.

Do not speculate, or post about what colour you see it as.

If the thread becomes out of control we will have to start being jerks.


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

[User] ELI5:Why pain feels higher when it's cold out?

[Assistant]
When a part of your body is cold, the blood vessels will automatically constrict to limit heat loss from the flow of blood to that area. This constriction also constricts the pain receptors, making them more sensitive.

In addition, the cold will make the area slightly harder and more brittle compared to normal. Striking something hard has a higher chance of breaking or transferring the energy inside than if it was absorbed by something more flexible/softer.


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

[User] ELI5: How exactly is the high ground a strategic advantage?

[Assistant]
Imagine two groups are fighting, one on top of a cliff and the other at the bottom.

If those at the bottom want to throw something at their enemy it is very hard to get it up there, but those at the top can basically just drop things.

If those at the top want to avoid being seen or hit by projectiles they just need to step back. Those at the bottom are always exposed unless they brought a roof with them.

If those at the bottom want to attack they need to climb uphill, while those at the top go down. You tell me which is easier.

Those at the bottom might be looking into the sun while those at the top will rarely have that problem.

Those at the top can see greater distances, gathering information more effectively, and can also signal more easily and over greater distances.


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

[User] CMV: Knowledge is valuable in so far as it is useful. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is pointless.

[Assistant]
It's difficult, if not impossible, to say what knowledge will or won't be useful before it's acquired. Einstein's theory of general relativity seems, at its surface, like a curious explanation of how the universe works that operates at such a massive scale that it's irrelevant to day-to-day life.

But modern GPS systems need to compensate for the behavior predicted by general relativity, and in fact, doing that compensation is one of the main things that causes GPS to function the way it does.

The end point of knowledge may be its practical application to the benefit of mankind. But it's impossible to predict what route to take to reach that endpoint. The accumulation of knowledge is like filling out the areas of a mapyou might even discover new destinations in the process, or shortcuts to get from one point to another, relationships you never realized existed.


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

[User] [marvel] do pieces of wolverine rot when cut off or do his regenerative powers keep it fresh forever?

[Assistant]
Given as the cut-off pieces don't regrow into fresh copies of Wolverine, while Wolverine does regrow the lost pieces of himself, it's clear that his regenerative powers are less able to (or less willing to) function when separated from his core self.

So unless they're carefully preserved they'll eventually rot away, but the remnants of his healing factor may slow the process. Exact details of when they'll lose their connection to his healing factor vary by continuity/time period/random other factors, but it'll happen eventually.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does a zip file work?

Is it possible to see a demonstration performed to a text file instead of a folder?

[Assistant]
Imagine you're explaining your block collection to adults. When describing the color of your blocks, would you say: "red, red, red, blue, blue, green"? Or would it be quicker to say "3 red, 2 blue, 1 green"?.

It's the same concept. Instead of containing the data itself, a compressed file like a zip contains a description of the data. Instead of saying "1111", it could just say " 4 1's".


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

[User] [Netflix Castlevania] Why did Dracula let his underlings badmouth him right in front of him?

[Assistant]
He seems to be a broken "man," due to his wife dying, everyone sees it. He was once an extremely powerful lord of darkness, and he still is physically. His mind and spirit are hindered by his grief, and to be fair it's been less than two years since his wife was burned alive.

Vampires while inhuman, are still very human in regard to emotion, goals, and drives. Dracula has been severely changed by this experience, some of that has allowed others in his court to cross lines they otherwise wouldn't have. He knows Camilla is plotting right under his nose, he doesn't even lift a finger to stop it, or even address it.

He tells a story at one point that he slaughters an entire town because a group of people insult him, it showed to me what a drastic change has occurred between the current Dracula and the Dracula of the past. That being said everyone still fears him enough to avoid a direct conflict with just him. It's like a tamed lion, it doesn't seem as ferocious and might seem almost benign, but only a fool would enrage it and then put their head in its jaws. Dracula Vlad Tepes is still the most powerful vampire in existence despite being in a more fragile state.


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

[User]
[Detroit: Become Human] Unemployment seems low

Unemployment in Detroit: Become Human in the United States is set at 35-38%. While this is truly massive it still seems low to me. Reading through the various articles in the game Androids have taken over various markets including

-Professional Athletics where they're slowly taking over teams
- Menial labor. From housekeeping to lawn maintenance to dock work. It just makes economic sense to use laborers who don't talk back or tire.
-Every kind of municipal maintenance. Electricians, plumbers, and construction workers
-Automated Cars - That means no truckers, no cabs, no pizza delivery drivers
-Retail- Cyberlife Androids literally sell themselves
-The Oldest Profession- 58% of men prefer androids.
- Security Work - Besides a few human leaders the vast majority of security work appears to be done by patrolling drones and foot patrol androids
- Accounting- No human would be trusted when you have a literal calculator that is forbidden to skim balancing your books
- Military - Most boots on the ground have been replaced with combat androids leaving only the top brass as humans. Even these humans are advised by algorithms devised by androids.

That's all I can think of for now, but it seems conflict with the idea that the majority of Americans can still find work. Am I missing something?

[Assistant] To still have a somewhat functioning society where even Todd has money for droids there must be some kind of universal basic income.  With that in mind a lot of the employed people are probably employed part time and society has changed how it defines unemployed to count someone that only works 10 hours a week as they now have enough for a decent living.  Also clearly accountants still exist Todd's wife left him for one.  All the book keeping is probably done by droids but there is a lot more to accounting then that.


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

[User]
[SUPERMAN] Why doesn't superman use his supermen robots in the fortress of solitude for help or assistance...

...during a major crisis if the justice league is swamped? heck why not use them when facing a super powered villain like darkseid invasions or doomsday? and why doesn't he build a lower class version of brainiac to use like how oracle is to batman or skeet is to booster gold? it just irks me that he doesn't use his alien tech for much more useful things than just for creating a spacesuit so he can handle kryptonite...

[Assistant]
He has.

When he was taking on the group called The Elite, he pretended to lose his mind and stop caring about collateral damage, "killing" hundreds of innocents. Afterwards its discovered his robots were saving everyone from being hurt.


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

[User]
[The Matrix] When Morpheus and Neo were in the white room, what was the floor made of?

This always bothered me in all sci-fi/fantasy media. When a person is in a default, undeveloped room in a simulation, it's usually a white oblivion. Why isn't there ever any interest in touching the floor to see what it feels like? The same goes for the Animus in Assassin's Creed: what is the floor made of?

Basically, the floor needs to be there for people stand on. But what is the default material in simulations when no material is specified?

[Assistant]
Do you know how in video games there are Invisible Walls, barriers that just stop you from wandering away from the map because anything past the play area because it's just plain unfinished? There'should nothing to tell you it'seems there?

The floor of the white room is similar, something that is programmed with basic collision detection designed to prevent the player character, or in this case Neo and Morpheus, from simply falling through the floor. It basically *is* a floor, just one that doesn't have graphical textures to convey that something is there.

And that's the point. It's basically Morpheus trying to show Neo how much of the world he knew was merely a simulation and wasn't reality.

So, to answer your question in the simplest manner possible, whatever the default setting for 'floor' is, so more than likely it'seems just a flat surface.


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

[User] [Star Trek] If you turned off the safety-protocol, could you create a bomb that would destroy the holo-deck in which the bomb is housed?

[Assistant] Yep. The holodeck doesn't just use holograms and force fields - they've got replicators built in there, too. This is why you can eat food in a holodeck simulation. But it also means that if you turned the safeties off, there's no reason you couldn't replicate a bomb, too.


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

[User]
[Supernatural/General] Is it ethical to kill unique monsters/pagan gods?

Zombie can be created, fine. Werewolves are fairly common, okay. But what if the monster is one of a kind? Shouldn't some measures be taken to preserve it? If the last lion on Earth kill a person we wouldn't kill the lion would we? Obviously this does not pertain to do or die situations. However, if you go hunting for these things you can hardly call it self defense.

[Assistant]
>If the last lion on Earth kill a person we wouldn't kill the lion would we?

If the lion actively went around slaughtering people? Absolutely we would. And we would feel no guilt about it.

Are you telling me you'd feel even the slightest amount of guilt over killing an animal that was actively going around killing your family and friends, even if that animal was the last of its kind?


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

[User] ELI5: How do we know the idea that particles don't exist in one definitive spot until we measure them, isn't just our lack of knowledge due to not measuring them yet?

[Assistant]
I recommend looking up the double slit experiment. It's usually most newcomer's first exposure to just how weird quantum physics can be. The full implications of the results of this experiment are beyond the scope of ELI5, but the general principle and observation are.

Basic facts in classical physics: if you shoot balls randomly at a board with a single slit big enough for balls to pass through, and measure where they land on another backboard (imagine paintballs leaving a splat). You will see a single bar matching the slit in the first board. Sure, some may hit the corner and fly off at an angle meaning you will get specklings elsewhere, but there will be a big, clear bar. Also, if you increase the number of slits to 2, you will get 2 bars on the backboard. For waves, pretend you lower the boards into water so the slit is half submerged. Then drop a pebble in the water, watch the waves hit the board. The wave on the other side of the board looks like you dropped the pebble right at the slit, moving radially outward. To measure it is a bit trickier, but imagine the backboard is color changing when it gets wet. The higher the wave laps against it, the higher the second color will show. You would expect to see the tallest spot in the middle and it tapers off on either side since the wave had to travel further due to hypotenuse stuff). If you increase the slits to 2, you end up with two different waves as if you'd dropped two pebbles at the slits. These waves collide. If a peak happens to line up with a peak, they add to each other, making the splash on the backboard higher. If a peak and a trough line up, they cancel out and there is no change in the height of the color on the backboard. This ends up with some wavy patterns showing up called "interference patterns" as the two waves interfere with each other.

Ok, now for quantum stuff. Instead of paintballs, let's fire electrons at the slits. (And the slits are a lot smaller now). We think of electrons as little particles. Little spheres that we can shoot like paintballs out of an electron gun. And if we fire them at one slit, we see what we would expect from particles like paintballs out the other side: a single bar. However, if we shoot them through 2 slits, we don't see 2 bars like we did for paintballs, we see an interference pattern like we did with waves.

"Well" think the physicists, "maybe we sent them through too quickly and they bumped into each other causing the patterns." So they send them through one electron at a time. Still, they see wave-like patterns. Almost like the electron splits in two, goes through both slits, then interferes with itself. "No way!" Shout the physicists, "Let's put a special detector next to one of the slits to see which one the electron went through, surely, it can't be both." But when they measure which slit it went through, the interference pattern goes away and out come the two bars like the paintballs.

You see, when we say an electron is both a particle and a wave, one simplified interpretation is that it's a particle, but we don't know where it is exactly. We can only predict a wave of probabilities where it could be, sort of like the individual molecules of water in the wave of classical mechanics... Sort of. Except it's all of the molecules at once in all possible positions. See, when we set the electrons through one slit, any marks on the backboard has to come through that one slit. If you were to freeze the image with an electron on the other side of the slit and measure the probability wave (well, that's impossible, but...) you would see a 100% chance that it came through the one slit (because all the ones that didn't have already beed cut out) and it would look like a superposition of every possible trajectory a particle could have taken.

If you did the same freeze frame with the double slit, you would see that there's a 50% chance it came from either slit. It would start out as a superposition of every possible trajectory of a particle through both slits, but when those probability waves meet each other, the trajectories can interfere and collide with each other. So the electron is in a superposition of having gone through both slits at the same time and interfering with itself. Until we measure it, and the superposition collapses.


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

[User]
ELI5: why does putting a credit card in a plastic bag make it more likely to swipe without an error?

Working in retail it's just one of the things you learn. If a credit/debit card will not swipe, put I in a plastic bag and try swiping again. Works 90% of the time but I have no idea why.

[Assistant]
This type of card uses a magnetic stripe to indicate the card information. On the card, you have magnetic particle that vary in strength along the length of the card. Say for example, that at a particular spot on the stripe, you can have either some magnetic particles (1) or none at all (0). By reading the stripe sequentially, you get a binary number that represents the information of the card.

Now most of the time when a card doesn't work very well it's because, after a lot of use, the magnetic field will start to "bleed" to their neighboring sections. 0s will start to look like 1s because they "absorbed" some of their magnetism.

From our study of magnetism, we know that a magnetic field's power decreases exponentially with the distance. We also know that we want 0s to look more like 0s (less magnetism), so what we need to do is move the card a bit further away from the sensor. Putting the card in a bag or inside a folder paper sheet is most of the time enough to get that effect.


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

[User]
[General] do beings like Superman with the ability to fly in space need to consider orbital mechanics?

Ive noticed that individuals like Superman, Capitan Marvel, Omni Man, etc seem to fly through space with little to no consideration of orbital mechanics. Is this simply because its too complicated a subject for writers to include when considering super powered space flight, or is there some concept in astrophysics that allows them to maneuver freely without considering orbital mechanics?

[Assistant]
When you drive a car, you pretty quickly learn to adjust how much to turn the wheel to account for how fast you are going.

Its actually fairly complicated if you think about it - at five miles an hour you turn the steering wheel a lot to move over five feet, but at sixty miles an hour you just turn slightly to accomplish the same thing.

But your brain does that work for you, subconsciously.

The same mechanism applies to space flight - yes, NASA needs to perform calculations ahead of time to estimate trajectories, delta V, and do on - but a human (well, anyone with a highly evolved brain in their head) can see where they are headed and adjust their speed and angle to get where they want to go.


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

[User]
If we "lit a match" on a planetary body in space composed primarily of methane in its atmosphere, would it become a fireball and burn the methane up?

I am just curious if everything would go boom, or if it would essentially become a massive fireball visible from earth?...

Or Oxygen and Methane (as someone mentioned in a previous post)...

Thanks!

[Assistant]
If it's only methane, it is not going to burn - there is nothing that can react. Burning means combining it with oxygen, releasing heat in the process (which in turns induces the reaction in the adjacent molecules, etc.)

Your best bet would be an atmosphere of oxygen:methane in a molar ratio 2:1 (that is, 2 molecules of oxygen for each molecule of methane). This could burn indeed, releasing massive amounts of water and carbon dioxyde.

EDIT: messed up stoichiometry, duh.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do humans need to be taught about sex while other animals just know what to do?

So a rabbit reaches sexual maturity, he knows exactly what to do. However, if a human reached sexual maturity and has never been exposed to anything of a sexual nature, he would have no idea what to do with another human being. To be clear, the question is not why humans aren't naturally good at sex, but why humans wouldn't know the basic mechanics without "taught" about them first.

[Assistant]
Humans don't *need* to be taught about sex. In fact, sex education is hardly *at all* about the mechanics of sex. It's about safe sex, and other bodily functions that are peripheral to the actual act.

Some of it is stuff that people *would* figure out on their own, but why not take a short cut and learn about it *before* it's an issue?


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

[User]
[The Culture] Why is Contact allowed to intervene in more primitive civilisations?

In the State of the Art, Earth is visited by a Culture vessel in the 1970s, and the possibility of contact is on the table, but our planet is ultimately left alone as a control group. In Surface Detail, it is clearly stated that the Culture is a Level 8 civilisation (one of the Involved), and contracting/giving tech to civilisations more than one level below your own is seen as damaging. But given that the Earth is identified as a Level 3 civ and the Culture a Level 8, why is Contacting Earth considered an option at all? Wouldnt it have to be a Level 4 society that does all the communicating?

[Assistant]
The Culture routinely make contact with lower level civilizations.  See *Inversions* for an example of how they make contact with a level 1 or 2 civilization.

In general, they do the following:

- Pretend to be native members of the contacted civilization (Inversions, Use of Weapons)

- Acknowledge they're aliens, but pretend to be less advanced than they really are (Player of Games, Matter)

- Openly be from the culture, but refuse to trade technology (Surface detail)

The Culture does have guidelines, but it doesn't really commit to hard and fast rules about contacting other civilizations.  Every civilization's circumstances are different, so the Culture tailors their interactions according to those circumstances.


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

[User]
[Game of Thrones] The Night King never obtains a dragon. What's his backup plan for getting past the wall?

In this scenario, Daenerys never goes past the wall and Viserion never gets speared and reanimated. Either the ranging to capture a wight goes as planned or the idea is never considered. With that in mind, did the Night King have a second more time consuming plan or did everything hinge on having a dragon to breach the wall?

[Assistant]
The undead Benjen Stark refuses to approach the wall too closely, remarking that it's more than ice - it has spells etched into its foundations.  These are likely the same spells that were originally used to protect the Three-Eyed Raven's cave, which caused wights to de-animate and fall apart when they attempted to cross its threshold.

That ward was broken when Bran Stark - already behind it - was marked by the Night's King while using the greensight, allowing both Others and their wights to enter it.  Bran may well have broken the ward on the wall, too, when he crossed back towards Winterfell.  If that was the case, his forces could have simply climbed over it.  If living Free Folk can manage it, a tireless undead army should be able to as well.

If that *wasn't* the case, he'd need to either find and mark Bran (or another greenseer) again, or wait for an opportunity to present itself.  This is likely what he's been doing in the time since the Long Night - an ageless being can afford to be very patient.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is the 50mm camera lens considered closest to human vision when the average human eye image focal length is actually much smaller at 22mm?

[Assistant]
Because when you look at a photo you dont hold it directly up to your eye, and it doesnt fill your field of view.

Think of a long lens image as just being a wide angle image cropped in and blown up. So a 50mm image (on a full size sensor) looks good when it fills the same amount of your vision as the same part of a wide angle image that would fill your vision.


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

[User] ELI5: What laws (international presumably) if any has Russia broken in invading Crimea?

[Assistant]
It is against the rules of the United Nations for any member country to invade the territory of another unless the Security Council has explicitly permitted such an action. That's one of the reasons that the 2002 allied invasion of Iraq was controversial -- depending on which legal interpretation you preferred it was by no means certain that the Security Council had permitted an invasion.

In the case of Russia and Ukraine it's far more clear-cut -- the Security Council has not agreed to any action by Russia in that respect.

The big problem with enforcing international law is that there is no recognised global police force. Even if a country has obviously broken the rules, unless other countries are prepared to take action (economic, political, or military) there are few if any repercussions.


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

[User] [General] How big would a midget werewolf be?

[Assistant]
There are lots of kinds of lycanthropy, some of them come from supernatural causes. others more biological.

So instead of trying to nail down which you're talking about, I'll keep it real general.

Magical or supernatural lycanthropes will transform into a form that fulfills the curse or magic. If it is to be trapped as a wolf, then the little person will likely transform into a wolf of normal size regardless. If it is to transform into a 9 foot tall murdering force of nature, that's what will occur.

Those types of lycanthropy don't seem to care about mass, a full-sized man becomes a wolf of smaller mass without regard to any other factor, and/or the same man can become a hulking mass of claws and flesh without being worried about where the extra mass came from.

Biological lycanthropes have to somewhat obey the general laws of physics regarding size, so instead of a man transforming into a man-sized wolf hybrid, a little person would transform into a smaller version of the same creature.

The breed when fully transformed into a wolf is always the same, some version of Canis lupus or Canis dirus, but the man-wolf hybrid's appearance and traits are completely variable from individual to individual.

I don't suppose that would change much if the subject were a little person.


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

[User] [Marvel] If it was somehow possible to permanently satisfy the hunger of Galactus and end his constant need to find new planets to consume, how would he then spend his time?

[Assistant]
He is a scientist and explorer, or at least he was before he became galactus. So he would be free to travel the world and learn. Perhaps he would become like the Watchers and take an oath of noninterference, or maybe like the Beyonder and influence the world as to help it.

Though, depending on how his hunger was satisfied he might still eat planets. His original purpose was to collect enough energy to form a new universe when this one dies. Even if he doesn't need to eat planets, he might choose to do so for the greater good.


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

[User] ELI5: there must be heaps of overweight people who are type 2 diabetic and dont know it (or havent been bothered to be tested). So, does type 2 kill people or what does it really do to people, day to day?

[Assistant]
Youve hit on a major problem with getting people to change their lifestyle after a diabetes diagnosis. The short answer to your question is yes, diabetes does kill people, but slowly. You are not going to die from having high blood sugar today, in fact you may not even feel sick at all. But when you have all that sugar in your blood for a long time, it starts messing with things. A simple rule is that anything that is not where it is supposed to be is going to cause damage. Sugar in your blood vessels is going to damage them. Damaged blood vessels get sort of sticky, and pick up bits of fats floating by. Eventually this can cause a heart attack or a stroke. Sugar in your eyes damages the tissue there. This can cause vision problems or even blindness. Sugar in your kidneys causes damage, and this will lead to renal failure.

Now imagine telling some one who is socioeconomically disadvantaged and worried about getting evicted that they have to spend more money on healthier food today, even though they feel perfectly fine, because 10 years from now they might get sick.


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

[User]
What actually is happening when programs load?

When a program loads, what changes to allow the user to use it? Also, how can some programs detect and display how loaded they are, when it isn't fully loaded?

[Assistant]
Programs need to allocate resources, like RAM or network access, and have their files read. After the initial load of the executable into RAM, the program will start to load thing it must have to run. The most time consuming programs have lots of big resources like pictures, videos, and audio. Some programs get some of those things from a network which can be slower than from a hard drive. Then, when they reach a state of ready-enough, they start displaying things and loading user data. This goes on until the program is ready for the user interaction, which might cause more or different resources to load.

Programs that know and show how much stuff is coming are grabbing display cycles before all of the resources are loaded. They know what is needed, so they can give you that progress or countdown.


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

[User]
cmv: I (a white person) dont feel any guilt about occupying Native American land.

My school seems to spend a lot of time telling us students that we are on the blank tribes ancestral land. They have many round table discussions and posters around campus promoting the importance of the indigenous peoples, having signed with Blank tribes language, and I just dont understand.

Now, does the history of the United Statess treatment of indigenous peoples suck? Yes, of course. But I dont see it as being any different than any other war or settlement dispute. I dont see any more significant reason to need to learn about these people or any need to acknowledge where my school is located especially.

Historically when people move into an area, they kick out the old inhabitants. This is unfortunate, but its just the way things work/ed.

Even indigenous peoples themselves conquered and were conquered. They had wars, culture, and expansion, and yet the university seems only to care when the American settlers did it for the final time.

Im looking forward to the discussion and want to approach it with an open mind.

[Assistant]
Lots of those groups did sign treaties with America. Treaties that were made in good faith. Treaties that we completely failed to honor.

War is one thing, but telling a group of people that they will be fine if the do X, Y and Z, having that group then do those things and still booting them off their land and killing them is shitty.


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

[User]
[Marvel] What is the earliest known mutant.

I know public knowledge of mutants is relatively recent, but what is the earliest known example of a mutant? Or, what theories are there of ancient mutants?

[Assistant]
The oldest known is Apocalypse.  Born as "En Sabah Nur" in ancient Egypt he has gained power through his mutant ability and through alien technology.

However, now that the Celestials have him and have made their judgment, it is impossible to know if he is still alive.  Only he might know of an older mutant's existence.


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

[User] ELI5: How do we know that 194 decibels is the loudest sound possible?

[Assistant] As we all know, sound is a series of pressure wave travelling in air: sound waves are caused by oscillations of pressure in the air. The loudness of a sound possible on earth is limited by the size of this oscillation of air pressure. This presents a natural limit to how loud a (sustained) sound can get - the pressure of the air cannot drop below a vacuum. So the loudest (sustained) sound possible is therefore a pressure wave oscillating between vacuum and +2 atmospheres. And this is equal to 194 decibels. No sound on earth (at sea level) can exceed 194 decibels because of this.


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

[User]
[Naruto] So what exactly is the relation berween Ninja Villages and Nations?

They are basically autonomous city states right? Then what about the capital?

[Assistant]
Theoretically, the Ninja Villages are subordinate to the country and the daimy in charge being the main military force for their respective lands. It's supposed to be a mutual relationship with the country provide money, trade, goods to the village in return for supplying labor and military power.

In practice, this tends to vary with the strength of the village vs the personal strength of the Kage vs the the personal strength of the daimyo. It can be an often antagonistic relationship where various parties are jockeying for power, money and control with the prize being the ability to make decisions in international relations. Which can be expected when you port your military power (the basis from which power in general flows) to a semi-autonomous city-state.

We see this in Konoha where during the appointment of a Kage when Tsunade was absent, the daimyo was basically a puppet to the Konoha council and Danzo but during the Shippuden movies, he was much more powerful and commanding likely due to Tsunade being newer to the job. we also see this in Suna where the Wind Daimy reduced funding for his village leading to an unprecedented crisis.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did the world clean up in the aftermath of World War II?

In the utter chaos and destruction that was World War II, how did the world and it's governments clean up and return to normal? (Or some *form* of normal.)

[Assistant]
Three main points

1. Economic recovery. The US economy actually benefited from the war, because higher levels of investment in manufacturing increased output and productivity. Europe, however, was destroyed. The Marshall Plan of 1948 gave huge loans to western European countries (those behind the Iron Curtain were effectively forbidden from taking the loans by the USSR), which helped them to rebuild and get back on the path to economic prosperity. The UK only finished paying it's loans back to the US in the early 2000s.

2. Demobilisation. Countless soldiers had to be discharged. This was often a messy business, because jobs and homes simply weren't there waiting. The GI Bill was meant to solve some of these problems.

3. Political readjustments. Germany was occupied by France, the UK and the US for several years, until the three zones were combined into West Germany. De-Nazification had to occur, whereby anyone running for government positions had their background checked to make sure they hadn't been complicit with the Nazi regime.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Say enough Credits were offered, would Boba Fett have taken a job to rescue Leia?

Hypothetically speaking, the Rebellion pools together enough Credits to beat out whatever offer the Empire is willing to pay Fett for his services, and they ask him to rescue Leia from the Death Star. Does Fett accept the job? Could he pull it off? Or does he have some slight bias that would prevent him from accepting a job for the Rebellion?

[Assistant]
No, he would have turned it down, for multiple reasons.

In one of the Expanded Universe anthologies (can't remember which one right now), there's a story set in Jabba's Palace the night before Luke and company are due to be thrown into the Sarlacc pit.

In that story, Boba Fett is relaxing in his room, about to go to bed, when some of Jabba's guards knock on his door. He opens it, they shove Leia inside, and tell him that Jabba's given her to him as a "gift" for the night as a special reward for services rendered. Naturally, Leia's scared that Boba will rape her, but he makes it very clear that he finds rape appalling, and even goes so far as to voluntarily sleep on the floor in full armor so that she can have his bed for the night and feel safe in it.

This piques Leia's interest, because she had previously only thought of him as a crude, sadistic thug with no moral compass. They have a conversation and she asks him why he takes contracts from Jabba and the Empire, but refuses to work for the Rebellion in any capacity.

He answers first that the Empire is the big game in town, and if he takes even one contract from the Rebellion, he'd be forever barred from future Imperial contracts and could even potentially get a price put on his own head. Moreover, he strongly disagrees with the Rebellion's ideology because he genuinely believes that authoritarianism is the ideal form of galactic government, in contrast to the "anarchy" that he believes the Rebellion represents.

He also has a grudge against Han Solo on a personal level, because Han used to smuggle drugs for Jabba and Fett is fundamentally opposed to recreational drug use of any kind. Leia calls him out for being a hypocrite because he takes Jabba's drug money as payment for his jobs, but Fett insists that there's a clear moral difference.

Finally, Leia tells him that if he ever decides to change sides, the Rebellion will forgive him for what he's done in the past and accept him into their ranks without prejudice. He politely thanks her for having a civil and interesting conversation with him, but tells her that there's very little chance of that.

So, if the Rebellion were to contact him and ask him to rescue Leia from the Death Star, he would decline, no matter how much money they offered him. His principles are rather close-minded and not entirely logically consistent, but they exist and they are ironclad.


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

[User]
[Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter] How did the vampires function in daylight?

Henry Sturgess, Lincoln's instructor, mentions that he will show Lincoln how Vampires operate in sunlight but we never hear about it again.

[Assistant] New vampires' skin is burnt when they go out into sunlight, but older vampires adapt so it's not a problem to them. They *do* have a sensitivity to light, so they wear sunglasses throughout the day which can serve as a tell to identify them.


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

[User] ELI5: On a site like Pornhub, what happens if you watch a video that contains underaged content without your knowledge?

[Assistant]
No - you the viewer are not liable for someone (the content poster) lying to someone else (PornHub) and them lying to you.  Now if you click a video that says "17 year old slut takes one in the ass"... you would be liable because you are knowingly consuming child pornography.

But if someone claiming to be 18 is featured in a video and is only 17 that is PornHub's problem... not yours.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What does a Blaster bolt do to the human body?

Does it affect it like a bullet?We don't see any kind of an entry wounds. What happens when it makes contact with the human body?

Don't say "you die" I want to know do particles go in and scramble your organs? what does it do.

[Assistant] On organic flesh it'll create a massive scorch around the impact point. It carries some kinetic energy but less than a bullets. Depending on the caliber and intensity of the shot it'll result in second degree burns and a minor electric shock on the lower end and third degree burns and a fatal shock on higher settings. The magnetic containment of the bolts gases creates the small shock with the gasses having been turned into a plasma like state by the blaster. As the plasma is released it'll burn and melt through flesh until it dissipates. Lower settings means less gas is used and dissipates quicker.


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

[User]
How do we know that elite families in the gulf countries haven't just created tons of money out of thin air?

The finances of the elites in the oil rich gulf countries and saudi arabia have always been as opaque as they can be. It is assumed that the wealth they have on their bank accounts might be numbered in the many trillions of dollars, and that this money comes from oil revenue.

But, given that there is no separation of powers in those countries and in no way the central banks are independent, i can't seem to argue against the position that they could, if they wish to, just print unlimited money (in their national currency) into their excel balance sheets like if it was some kind of age of empires cheat code.

Normally this doesn't happen in normal countries as central banks do NOT give money away to the government or society, and plus, if there is a surplus of money inflation appears. But the money supply is affect by money velocity. If the saudi and other emir families just store this money secretly without using it, there is no way for the market to know, and depreciate the arab rials on the forex exchange rate with the dollar.

Am i missing something here?

[Assistant]
What's meant to be the point of printing large sums of money without using it in any way?

If they are exchanging this currency for US$, then the currency traders will notice the excess supply of arab rials and adjust the exchange rate accordingly.


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

[User]
Why would a large enough asteroid explode when it hits Earth?

I can't comprehend why a hot rock hitting into essentially another rock would cause Hiroshima or larger style explosions.

[Assistant]
Perhaps you are only considering chemical (nuclear or otherwise) releases of energy here. That is how the vast majority of human created explosions are made.

However any explosion is simply the release of a lot of energy of ANY type in a small amount of time. In this case the huge kinetic energy of the rock is been released in the small amount of time when it hits the planet.

I believe some more modern weapons are kinetic. They contain no explosive payload. Just enough mass and velocity to destroy the target.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is that tinkling, metallic sound cars make when you turn the engine off?

Is the car settling like a house?

[Assistant]
I know exactly what sound you mean!

The sound is coming from the catalytic converter. When the engine is running, the catalytic converter is *really* hot (that is the point of it, it helps breaking down unburnt fuel and other "bad" waste products from the engine). The catalytic converter consists of a whole bunch of extremely thin tubes, and when the tubes start to cool down, they also start to contract. The tinkling sound is coming from when the tubes contract enough to overcome friction and so they move just a little bit and emit a "twink". Many tubes combined, and you get the twinkling sound.


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

[User] Would a human being find swimming in liquid water easier or more difficult on a high gravity planet?

[Assistant]
Buoyancy doesn't depend on the strength of gravity, beyond requiring that there *is* gravity. If you would float in water on Earth, you'd float just the same on Jupiter. (Let's say its a swimming pool inside an airship to get round the issue of Jupiter having no solid surface).

But it will require more effort to change the depth you float at in the higher gravity. Swimming underwater is faster than swimming on the surface - FINA actually restricts the distance a swimmer may be submerged for during a race because of this. Assuming you are positively buoyant then on Jupiter you would find it harder to submerge and would "pop up" faster.

It will also require more effort to lift your own arms above the water and press them below the water.

So higher gravity, slower and more tiring swimming. But you will be able to swim, you're not going to sink like a stone.


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

[User] What is Higgs Boson "God" Particle in Layman's terms, or at least what did it provide to science?

[Assistant]
The Standard Model, containing only the particles and interactions discovered before 2012 (electron, muon, tau leptons and neutrinos; up/down, charm/strange, top/bottom quarks; gluons; W/Z bosons; photon), is not a mathematically consistent theory if any of the particles have mass. (Experimentally, all of the particles do except the gluons and photon.) If you add in mass by hand, the theory breaks down at energies of about 1 TeV, just around the corner from our pre-LHC colliders. So, either something incredibly dramatic happens at 1 TeV (e.g. the Standard Model becomes something *completely different* around there), or else something new in the theory is required.

The simplest new thing that can explain particle masses *without* breaking down the theory is the *Higgs mechanism*, in which a new field (Higgs field) generates the masses of particles by interacting with them. (Instead of adding masses 'by hand' to the theory, they are generated spontaneously with the help of the Higgs field.) The Higgs field itself has mass but, because of the type of field it is (scalar, unlike any of the other fields/particles in the Standard Model) this *doesn't* cause the theory to break down. The Higgs boson is just a 'side effect' of the Higgs mechanism; it's the ripples in the Higgs field that correspond to particles. The details of the field and mass generation are quite mathematical, unfortunately.

Discovering the Higgs boson, simply put, completed the Standard Model. (The Higgs was already part of the Standard Model since it was written down in the 1970s, because it was already necessary for consistency then.) It was the most expected thing that could have happened, confirming decades of (very justified) assumptions about its existence.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do territories, specifically Puerto Rico, work in the U.S.?

For example, how are federal funds allocated? How are they represented in government, if at all? What benefits are there for the citizens of PR to remaining a territory versus becoming a state?

[Assistant] They have a non voting representative in the House of Representatives. They have no representation in the US Senate or electoral college. They do not pay Federal Income tax, although they do have Social Security and Medicare taxes pulled from their paychecks, and are eligible to receive benefits from those programs. Federal Funds are allocated as part of the regular budget process. They have the right to live and work in the United States, and can travel abroad with a US Passport.


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

[User] ELIF: why do we laugh? And does it serve a purpose?

[Assistant]
Someone looks like they just got badly hurt! Oh wait, theyre actually ok.

Someone just broke a social taboo! Oh, but nobody is seriously upset about it.

Something just surprised me! Oh, but its nothing dangerous.

Laughter is the all clear signal to everyone around that releases tension when you discover that a situation that was surprising or potentially threatening in some way is not actually a serious problem. Like a lot of other behaviors, it has also been co-opted as a method of social bonding.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is the word 'potato' associated with mental retardation?

[Assistant]
It's from a movie called "The Ringers" where some people pretend to be mentally challenged in order to compete in the special Olympics. In order to convince people he is mentally challenged, one of these "ringers" says: "I can count to potato!"

There is also the meme of saying that a picture of video of low quality was taken/recorded by a potato and you'll often see references to "potato quality."

Both of these have led to an association of "potato" with low quality or poor intelligence.


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

[User] [Marvel] What is stopping Multiple Man taking over the world with millions of copies of himself?

[Assistant]
Each multiple represents a different aspect of his personality. Some may be more shy, pacifistic, or introverted, while others may be more devious, shady, or untrustworthy. And the more multiples he creates, the more they deviate from him.

Point is he has no control over his multiples aside from being able to reabsorb them when he wants. If he created millions of copies of himself they would all want different things and many would just ignore him and walk away. The X-Factor investigations run covers this really well.


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

[User]
[Discworld] Why don't the Anhk-Morpork trolls turn to stone during daylight hours?

It's established by Rincewind's encounters with them, that trolls turn to stone in the sun, and - like the werewolf in full moon thing - it doesn't appear to be a voluntary response, but physiological. Hence how he escapes from being turned into paste by Old Grandad.

So why is it that the likes of Detritus can run around bemoaning "I'm gunna get fick!" in the bright sunshine of the Klatchian desert?

[Assistant]
The trolls *are* stone already. Or rather metamorphorical rock if you want to be specific.

People thought that they turned to stone in the sun, but as they are nocturnal, they merely turn dormant or stupid from the heat of the day. Conversely, they turn into geniuses in cold areas.

Detritus might be better adapted to being up and about during the day so he could withstand the desert.


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

[User] Why does vision improve when one is squinting?

[Assistant]
This is actually more of an optics question than a biology question. When light passes through a small hole, it becomes focused because the hole is limiting the paths that the light can take. The smaller the hole, the more focused it becomes, but the dimmer it becomes (because it's letting less light through).

When you squint, the light becomes focused by traveling through the small gap in your eyelids, and the effects of your eyes' lenses decrease.

For more information, you can look up pinhole cameras, or camera obscura. It's pretty interesting stuff.


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

[User]
[Fight Club] When Tyler is present, who is in control of the body?

First, I know I'm breaking the first two rules for posting this.

Kind of a simple question, when Tyler Durden is around who is actually "in control" of the Narrator's body? Does it change depending on context? When the Narrator is having a conversation with Tyler do they switch control depending on who's talking or is it more like just one is a voice in the other's head?

[Assistant]
Whenever there is an action taken that is observable by others *and* has physical effects, it's the person doing that action that is in charge.

For example:
Jumping on Lou, Tyler.
Destroying something beautiful, Narrator.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Would a planet-wide shield such as the one in Rogue One defend against the Death Star?

Let's say for whatever reason, they aim the Death Star at a shielded planet such as the one with archives. How many shots could it take? Would the shot be deflected or absorbed?

[Assistant]
Alderaan had a planetary shield.  It lasted for less than a tenth of a second against the onslaught of the hypermatter beam of the Death Star's superlaser.

You can actually see this if you frame by frame the attack (at least in the special editions).  The beam splashes against the shield before overwhelming it completely.

So to answer your question:  Planetary shielding would be useless.


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

[User] ELI5: How can we take a picture of the milky way if we're located in the milky way?

[Assistant] Same way you can take a picture of your house while standing inside your house.  Of course, what you can photograph of your house while you are inside your house is rather limited.  In the same way, what you can photograph of the Milky Way while inside the Milky Way is also limited, but at least the "walls" are largely transparent, so you can see much more than one room.  Continue the analogy with a transparent city: you can see the bathroom, you can see the garage, you can see the kitchen (but your view is obscured by the fireplace and the furnace and the water heater), you can also see into and *through* the neighbors' houses (but not through their fireplaces, furnaces and water heaters), you can see way up and down and *through* the block (except through fireplaces, furnaces and water heaters), you can see all over and *through* the city (except for fireplaces, furnaces, water heaters, sewers, water and power systems).  Much is obscured, but much more is transparent.  And different parts of the city are transparent to different kinds of light, so what you can't see because of all the water heaters in visible light you might see in, say, ultraviolet light.  Plot the positions of all these details carefully, and you could still come up with a pretty good map of your city.  Likewise, we can come up with a pretty good map of the Milky Way.


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

[User]
If given adequate blood/nutrition/space, would a cancer continue growing indefinitely?

I understand that cancer cells are immortal (i.e. do not undergo apoptosis). So if a cancer was grown in vitro, would the cancer just...keep growing?

[Assistant] They can do, yes - the best example of this is the HeLa cell line, which was cervical cancer cells taken from a woman called Henrietta Lacks way back in 1951 (there's a fascinating backstory about these if you're interested to look them up). Anyway, that cell line has been proliferating since then, and has been used in huge numbers of medical breakthroughs in the last 60 years, including the polio vaccine, AIDS research and cloning experiments.


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

[User]
Does the Fed really pump up stocks?

Ive been seeing a lot of accusations that actions like today and Futures last night were examples of feds pumping stocks overnight. Do they actually do that?

[Assistant]
Sorta-kinda. What the Fed does is called open-market operations. They buy and sell bonds in the open market. When they buy up bonds it pushes their yields down (these are inversely related), and so it makes stocks more attractive relative to bonds. Which generally pushes money from bonds into stocks the next day.

Sometimes, they buy up a lot of bonds of long maturity. This depresses long-term interest rates, forcing long-term investors into "risk assets" like stocks, which can be especially helpful to the stock market.


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

[User]
[Elder Scrolls] Why do Argonians have boobs?

How would you explain that taxonomically / evolutionarily? For a series with wonderful lore a reptilian race with mammaries seems to be a strange oversight.

[Assistant]
Argonians didn't evolve.

Nothing in Tamriel did. Tamriel is not a naturalistic world, it's the creation of Lorkhan. The Argonians themselves aren't even reptiles, strictly speaking. They're not even technically animals. They're a creation/offshoot of the Hist, which are more like trees than anything.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does sleeping for a long time make you feel tired and groggy?

[Assistant] Your body has a natural cycle referred to as circadian rhythm. If you do anything to throw it off, you can feel out of it. This includes sleeping longer than normal, and stuff like traveling time zones. When your body isn't a synched up to the activities you want to be doing, you won't feel at peak performance.


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

[User]
Have octopuses always had 8 tentacles or gradually increase that number through the course of evolution?

Also, do we know that 8 tentacles is the sweet spot, or could a hypothetical 9-armed cephalopod (novopus?) have a significant advantage in survival and produce many 9-armed offspring?

[Assistant]
Ancestral cephalopods generally had more than 8 appendages. Squids have 10, as do cuttlefish. Nautilus have dozens.

There's probably a trade-off in how many arms you have and how good they individually each are at doing things.  They require dedicated brain space to control all the muscles and suckers and sensory nerves. Natural selection doesn't care about that directly, only about which octopus survives and reproduces best.  So there's probably a variety of selection pressures happening.  Ability to lose a limb and still function.  Ability to catch prey.  Ability to camouflage well.  Ability to impress a mate.

There's also a strong evolutionary pressure against badly breaking their current ability to survive and reproduce.  Maybe, in theory, a two-armed octopus would be much better at all those things \*after a couple centuries of evolution\* learning how to use its fancier tentacles with more dedicated brain space for them.  However, in the short run, a new mutant with only two tentacles probably won't survive to reproduce. It will probably have a hard time catching food, or mating. As such, the traditional 8 armed octopus probably represents a local optimum.  You might be able to make something that works better than their current body plan, but you'd have to badly break things in the short run to get to the new optimum.  Remember, they live in a fiercely competitive environment where everything is trying to eat them or avoid being eaten by them.  They are REALLY good at thriving in their current environment, but even things that slightly compromise that are a serious problem.

Think of it like when you're a giant business that has hundreds of dedicated applications that all run on Windows 95.  Windows 95 sucks ass, it's inefficient.  However, in order to switch to something more modern you would need to essentially break everything and start over. For a business that sucks, but it just costs money and time. For an animal you die and don't reproduce and so you don't really get the chance to test whether the switch is better. In this scenario it would be a business locked in fierce competition with a rival. They can't afford to switch from windows 95 because they will lose all their customers to their rival in the month where all their computers are shut down.


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

[User] If a bilingual person were to experience full-on retrograde amnesia, would they retain the ability to speak both of their languages?

[Assistant]
This really depends on what causes the amnesia, and from how long ago they learned their language.

However, if they were bilingual since early childhood, they will most likely retain language, even with full blown hippocampal lesions. This is because faculties like language aren't "recalled" the same way you recall a previous birthday, but are instead something deeper, and dependent on more widespread cortex.


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

[User] ELI5: Why exactly is it wrong to remove a USB stick without first clicking "safely remove/eject"?

[Assistant]
You know when you're going on vacation, and you're packing, but you still need to use some of the stuff you need to pack, so instead of putting it all into your suitcase, you set some of it next to your suitcase, or leave it out on the counter, so you don't forget it, but you can still use it without having to completely unpack it from your luggage?

That's sort of how a USB drive works. Sometimes you tell the computer to "pack" data onto the drive, and rather than put it all on there right away, it might end up caching some of it to be written later.

When you just rip out the drive, you risk pulling it before all of your data is "packed" onto the drive.

When you click "safely remove" it runs around the house and packs up all the stuff it left out, and gets it all into the luggage for you before you disconnect it.


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

[User]
ELI5: How are ticket scalpers able to buy thousands of tickets before i can even purchase one?

I tried to buy tickets to an event recently and all the tickets sold out in less then a minute. How is this possible?

[Assistant]
There's a lot of articles on the web about this.

The answer? Bots.

Coders are programming things to buy tickets as soon as they become available. This really is a microcosm of a "call to arms" we see in insurance ads, etc because one person started doing it and created an unfair advantage.

This has escalated so much that any competitive online space (reservations for top restaurants) have bots created by coders trolling to pick up any time slot / offering and multiple ones at that; they can just later cancel orders or reservations they dont want or give it to friends.


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

[User] ELI5: Why were the mongols so successful?

[Assistant]
Because they have excellent military tactics.

The Mongols had vast vanguard units, so they could go ahead of the main troops and spy on what lies ahead. these fast, mobile units were also extremely deceiving to enemies who were often lured by their low numbers and pursued to hunt them, only to be surrounded and trapped by the major troops ahead. the Mongols had excellent logistics to allow communication, supplies, and movement across extremely long distances. they used frozen rivers as the communication lines and were able to travel 50 miles in one day.

During a battle, they usually elected elevated hills to be the main communication points and used flags as the way to communicate with the troops. the troops were grouped into 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000, where each unit had a competent leader. the invasions were carried by armies approaching the enemy from numerous sides. the conquest of Hungary was done with multiple points to overwhelm the enemy. they pushed along the Danube from Moldavia, across the Carpathian Mountains from Poland, and Czech lowlands to be met in the center of Hungary. the sheer size of the army was enough to destroy any opponent.

the Mongolian expansion was based on the blitzkrieg tactic, and was not intended to acquire territory the way it was done by European, Roman, Greece, Persian, or Arabian empires. these empires wanted to create material wealth from taxes imposed on the population, which meant very little to Mongols. the acquisition of the territory meant thorough destruction of land, destroying any possible landmarks, killing entire populations, and even damaging the habitable environment. the environmental damage in Central Asia is still visible to this day. another effective Mongol tactic was to kill all the ruling elite, as was done in Baghdad.

TLDR; They mastered the real time strategy game in terms of scouting, resource management, unit micro and communication better than everyone else at the time.


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

[User] Suppose I am using a laptop 24/7. Is it more power efficient to leave the laptop plugged in to power all the time, or to let it charge fully, drain the battery, recharge it and then repeat?

[Assistant]
Every time you charge the battery you lose power, as compared to just powering the laptop off mains power.  You lose energy rectifying the power into a usable DC voltage.  (Of course you lose that power no matter what because you do that when your laptop's plugged in.)

BUT BUT BUT You also lose energy going into the battery, (you can tell, 'cuz the battery gets warm).  And you also lose energy going *out* of the battery, (you can tell, 'cuz the battery gets warm, again).  Staying plugged in and not using your battery is vastly more efficient.


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

[User]
CMV: Religion shouldn't be taught in schools

I need to clarify the title slightly in that, I don't think single religions should be taught in school. I am happy with a periodic class that teaches the history, general beliefs and practises of ALL major religions but, I don't think schools should be "christian/catholic, etc" and just teach their religion.

Outside of giving a broad overview of all religions, there is no place for indoctrination of a religion in school. Students should be allowed an education free from indoctrination. Therefore christian/etc schools should not be a thing.

[Assistant] So you would like to make Catholic schools illegal? In the US public schools already cant teach religion. So you are really only talking about private schools. That would be a massive attack on peoples rights. While we do require children to learn a set of specific things, you want to take it a step further and outlaw parents teaching their children religion as they see fit and outlawing churches from proseltyzing as they see fit? Can you elaborate on what you view as indoctrination and why it is bad enough to warrant suppressing peoples rights?