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

[User] What if Anakin Skywalker lived after killing the Emperor?

[Assistant]
Darth Vader rises when his mask is removed, the untapped Force Potential of his son feeding strength into him and repairing his lungs with the power of ha-er, love. Luke, shocked and more than a little confused, drags Anakin Skywalker onto a shuttle, leaving Darth Vader behind.

Upon landing on Endor for Ewok Mardi Gras, Luke lets two people into his confidence - his companions, Leia and Han. They discuss the fate of the Emperor's mailed fist, who states that while he cannot atone for his crimes, he is prepared to accept the judgement of his son, though he dislikes his friends - both for their lack of faith in the power of the dark si-er, Force, and the fact that he was an all-powerful Sith Lord for an enormous amount of time and isn't used to taking orders or being judged by anyone bar his Master. He's trying, though.

Ultimately, they decide: Darth Vader is dead, but they can't trust him. The triumvirate of Luke/Leia/Han decide to let him live, but insist he remain anonymous. Almost no records remain of Anakin Skywalker. He will briefly live on Coruscant, before moving onwards to exile or hermitude. In the trees can be seen a group of glowing blue ghosts. Obi-wan has his head in his hands as Qui-Gonn's quiet laughter echoes from within the Force. Yoda can be heard muttering "Bullshit, this is." before fading away with Obi-Wan. They're pleased at their final victory, but bother are adherents of "Death fixes every crime".

Once the victory celebration is done, the rebels attend Coruscant. With the input of Anakin, the defences of Sate Petsage and Yvonne Isaard's plans are quickly quashed. The Rebellion takes possession, as Anakin prepares a file of everything he remembers - Imperial coreworlds, storeworlds, military codes and structures, hidden fleets, the Emperor's hidden retreats (That he knew of). The Imperial Remnant is on the run, retreating to Byss - and taking a number of nearby systems, ultimately creating a smaller, more manageable, considerably tougher Remnant due to force concentration. Raids allow them to capture shipyard facilities, which they strap (using ducttape) with enormous hyperdrives and move into the new core systems.

During his six months on Coruscant, Vader decided to take the surgical option that left him with a 50% chance of dying - the Surgery was successful, and left him oddly disappointed - a latent deathwish. While still primarily synthetic, he no longer requires his suit. He still looks like a cross between a warty eggplant and the Crow, though - chalky, pale, lumpy and the synthetic limbs that allow him to survive and maintain his strength don't look natural.

He bids goodbye to Leia and his son, with Han in the background wearing a special vest, one lined with thermal detonators. He's never learnt to trust the new Vader. Anakin sets off into space, promising to return when Luke finally sets up the new Academy he's talked about, and until them, will be seeking redemption.

He sets off into the void aboard a shuttle, to gather the scattered lore of the Force in the unknown regions. He leaves behind a Luke vastly advanced in certain aspects of his training, who, despite carefully examining everything he has learnt for the taint of the Dark Side, found none. He filters most of this through to Leia when he can, despite her being too busy to learn due to the frenetic pace of New Republic politics.

Luke eventually sets up the Yavin temples as an academy and leaves to seek students. Luke eventually returns with his first twelve students. He finds a prepared stash of lore - a number of holocrons, lightsaber crystals, ancient artefacts of Jedi masters, holographic text, a confused and Force Sensitive old man kept in a zero-tau capsule who wants to know where and when he is and an empty shuttle that returned some two months ago.

One evening, Luke follows a premonition into the jungle. After a long period of travel, he comes upon a lake - smooth as glass, with a dark temple squatting in the centre. Hopping lightly over the footstones slightly under the surface of the lake, he approaches to find the temple rotting - as though the weight of ages was bearing down. In the temple's audience chamber he finds a dark and blasted outline of a man and an incredibly amount of dark side resonance, the kind that results from the death of a powerful Sith. It is matched by the sense of peace that emanates from the corpse of his father. One fist raised in defiance, lightsaber clutched within, the synthetic limbs have shut down and locked with the death of their owner and his body slumps in their embrace. A light touch of the body blasts Luke with a vision - his father, wielding amounts of the Force that should be impossible, banishing a dark spirit that bombards him with dark side energy. They both expire at once. Back in the present, Luke decides to leave the body of his father in the temple as a memorial and returns to the Praxeum.


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

[User] [DC/Marvel] Are members of superhero groups like the Justice League/X-Men/Avengers on call all the time? If Wolverine or Falcon or Green Arrow had to take care of their own little side mission or wanted to take the day off, who would they need to contact about that? How would the others see that?

[Assistant]
In the Justice Leagues case, they have rotating shifts. Heroes are given a schedule of when they are expected to be on-call. If there is a sufficient emergency, all members are called upon to drop what they are doing and help, but generally matters are handled by whoever is on call at the time.

Martian Manhunter is the chief administrator for the group, and since he is an insanely powerful telepath, he is able to keep in touch with all members in real time, so can know who will need time off, and who will be free, so even if someone has a last minute emergency that means they cannot make it, he can immediately contact every other member, and see if anyone is available to cover a shift.


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

[User]
ELI5: How come television can "stream" HDTV all day without any delay while my internet takes hours to just download a movie?

Seriously why can't you just make the internet as fast as television?

[Assistant]
TV is like a man on a soapbox - big towers "shout" TV signals out, your TV tunes in and listens, and tells you what the big shouty tower is saying.

Internet is more like being in a huge mall with no directions and having to ask people where everything is. You can only ask so many people at once, and have to go walking around the place to find whatever data you, the user requested.

TV is good if you just want to "listen in". The Internet is good for when you know what you want.


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

[User] [Mass Effect] Were the Batarians basically shunted by the galactic community once Humanity arrived on the scene?

[Assistant] Many Citadel races already disliked and mistrusted the Batarians for their warlike and slave-taking methods of interstellar diplomacy. They used the "it's our culture and you can't judge us" defense for many diplomatic efforts to curtail those things, and thus secured their reputation as thuggish brutes. When humanity emerged without a desire to enslave their neighbors, a surprisingly competent military, and a need to expand their borders while still abiding by interstellar law (after learning about it, of course) made them far more preferential. And plus, human territory stood very near Batarian, so many citadel races secretly cheered every time humanity gave them a black eye.


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

[User]
[Death Note, Game of Thrones] Could you kill Jaqen H'ghar with the Death Note if he changed his face in time?

The second rule of the Death Note is that you must picture the persons face in your mind when writing their name (so as not to accidentally kill others with the same name.) Could Jaqen H'ghar change his face before the writer writes his name (picturing his old face while writing) and live? Or change his face after his name was written and live?

[Assistant]
A man doesn't have a real name. A man is no one.

Going by Arya's training, the Faceless Men are supposed to give up their actual identities. Every name they take is an alias.

If you caught one with his alias while wearing that alias' face? Maybe the Deathnote would work. Because it would identify that individual (for a time). But if he swapped faces before Death Note struck, he might dodge death as he "became" a different person. Or it might not work at all, as the intended victim's identity is so fluid.

Good question, though.


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

[User]
[DC Comics/The Flash] So when the Flash accelerates, is he physically running faster, or is the speedforce allowing him to move farther in between his feet touching the ground?

I get it, I get it: speedforce. But does the speedforce allow him to physically run so fast that he can achieve the impossible velocities he does, or is how fast he's going independent of how quickly he moves his legs and instead entirely dependent on his vaguely psychic connection to the speedforce?

Does he just have to be doing a "pushing" motion with his legs, like skipping or leaping, in order to go fast, or could he potentially walk faster than the speed of light if he tapped into the speedforce enough?

[Assistant]
Both/either because speedforce.

The flash moves really fast, we have seen him do sidehops fast enough to rip a hole in this dimention.

But he has also moved really fast while his arms and legs move at walking speed (although that couod have been a poorly drawn optical effect).


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why are the Unknown Regions so unexplored

According to maps of the Galaxy, explored space known to the Republic extends mainly to the 'galactic east' of the Core systems, extending all the way to the Outer Rim (a wedge of the outermost edge of the galaxy).

After the Empire's final defeat above Jakku, many Imperial commanders took their ships and jumped into the Unknown Regions, which takes up the 'western' part of the Galaxy.

There, they spent thirty years regrouping, colonising new worlds and rebuilding themselves into the First Order.

What stopped the exploration of the Unknown Regions by the Empire, Republic, or other organisations that preceded them? The First Order proved capable of colonising them, why was this never attempted before?

[Assistant]
It wasn't attempted because it wasn't necessary.  Exploration and colonization are difficult and expensive.
Sure, if you're a commander on the losing side of a war that still has a Star Destroyer or three, maybe you roll the dice and see if you can make it work out there.  If you're a comfy Moff sitting in a stable and affluent system, why bother?
If you're a plucky adventurer with wanderlust, maybe you scrounge yourself a ship and fly out there, but you don't really have the scratch to get a colony going. So you fly for a while and come back with a story about how that half of the galaxy is remarkably like this half, and nobody gives very much of a damn.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why gravity slows down the time instead of speeding it up?

In  Interstellar when they were on the water planet, every minute they spent there, several  days passed on Earth. From outside observer's point of view from Earth, everything happening on the water planet was in slow motion. Why isn't it the other way around?

[Assistant]
Stretch a sheet of rubber and put a giant, heavy object in the middle to stretch the rubber down. Measure the length of the rubber in the middle and the length on the edge. The path through the middle is longer. Now imagine a marble or some other object traveling across the rubber at a specific speed that cannot change. The marble going through the stretched region will take longer to reach the opposite side of the sheet than a marble traveling on the unstretched region.

Space-time is the rubber, and causality is the marble.


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

[User] [Teen Titans] Who built the Titan's tower?

[Assistant]
[](/nerdsunset) Titans Tower was built around the infrastructure of a Gordanian mobile transmitter/outpost that was dropped on an island outside Jump City. (You can see the whole events of this situation in the video record codenamed "Go!".)

With the alien infrastructure already in place and impossible to move, the Jump City government elected to spend funding customizing the tower for the Teen Titans' usage, in exchange for the heroes remaining in the city and protecting it from the growing threat of super beings.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] With all that abundant energy, why isn't the Star Wars universe a technological utopia?

I've looked up the specs for Boba Fett's *Slave I* - a fairly small, one-person ship - and it looks like its reactor is rated for a power output of 7 *billion* GW.

For comparison, the Earth's total energy consumption in 2008 was just short of 150 million GWh. If we had 7 billion GW of free energy to play with, we could terraform the deserts, provide free food and drinking water for everyone, and basically loaf around and enjoy our lives.

So why is the Star Wars universe so *medieval*?

[Assistant]
Because the star wars universe is spread out over an entire galaxy. There's planets like Coruscant where the cities reach to the edge of space and everybody's driving flying cars around. There's place like Endor, a moon inhabited by a bunch of savages who never even knew there's other life in the galaxy.

The star wars galaxy is massive. Wealth and progress isn't spread equally for the same reason it's not spread equally on earth right now. Culture, greed, interests, conflicts of interest and so on. It's not impossible it just takes a lot of effort that not everybody feels like taking.

A lot of the more backward planets you see in star wars are in the outer rim of the galaxy or other remote places. Nobody has any interest in visiting those places, let alone bringing them the light of civilisation so to speak.

Other places are primitive for other reasons. The Hutt crime empire for instance loves their backwater worlds where they can become a law unto itself. The Hutts control everything and they couldn't do that if everybody had limitless energy, resources and transportation for instance.

Nar Shaddaa is a lawless hellhole of an urban planet for the same reason the Taliban hide in caves. The whole planet is one big criminal safe house. You can hide your operations on Nar Shaddaa *because* it doesn't have a super efficient government and law enforcement that'll detect your dirty business as soon as it happens.

Star Wars is also the universe where Kaminoans clone armies of custom soldiers and Ithorians fly lush green gardens around space.


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

[User] ELI5: After entering my credit card info on a website like Amazon and pressing the "checkout" button, what exactly happens? What is the process of my credit card getting charged?

[Assistant]
Purchasing online is slightly different than in store. In stores, the majority of the time you're purchasing for goods then and there, so you're mostly charged immediately.

Online, that is different. You're paying for goods that you will receive in the future. What happens with your card depends on how the online merchant is set up:

1) Settle on Order. This means, that like in store, you're being charged there and then for the goods. This means that you're effectively lending the vendor your money until you receive your goods.

2) Settle on Dispatch. This means that your card will only be charged once the goods are dispatched. This is usually a number of days after you click the Pay button. How they they know the money is there to take? Pre-Auths: this effectively ring-fences the money, meaning that whilst is stays in your account, once the merchant ships the item, they know the money can be taken. If they ship too late and the pre-auth expires (these usually last between 7 and 14 days), there's a chance you'll get your items for free and the vendor will lose money. Pre-auths sometimes appear on your statements as if the money has actually been taken, so it's hard to know if it's there or not.

Most websites, and indeed stores, use both payment gateways and acquiring banks:

Payment Gateway: this is what the website integrates into that facilitates pre-auths, settling and refunding. The Payment Gateway talks to the acquiring banks on behalf of the vendor, and means they only have the integrate into one thing, rather than many acquiring banks. The PG also has fraud checking abilities and rules that can be defined by the vendor.

Acquiring Bank: Effectively your bank and the vendor's bank. The Payment Gateway does most of the heavy-lifting for these.

The flow for online purchases will usually go something like this:

User purchases an item > Payment Gateway reforms fraud check > Payment gateway checks for available funds > Funds are taken or funds are pre-authed > Funds are transferred to the vendor's acquiring bank.


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

[User]
[DISNEY] what was Elsa's plan anyways?

I mean, she was a princess soon-to-be queen raised on a secluded castle for years with no contact with society, she doesn't know how to cook, hunt or live by herself, she made a huge ice castle and then what? how will you survive on the peak of a mountain?

[Assistant]
There wasn't a real plan. It was a spur of the moment thing, she just had to get away.

Later on she could presumably forage and hunt very easily. Her caloric need is much reduced considering she doesn't get cold as well.


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

[User] ELI5: Why immediately before or after I fall asleep I sometimes twitch erratically?

[Assistant] Your body parts fall asleep before your brain does. The brain is knocking on your body parts, "are you there?" - if they don't reply (they're asleep)  - your brain will trigger your nerve system into high alert. This wakes the body part up in an often violent manner, causing your leg, arm, back or other body part to twitch.


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

[User] Since time is not absolute, does it make sense to describe the age of far away galaxies in years?

[Assistant]
It turns out the effect isn't that big in most real-life situations, but there is a convention we can use if we really want to be more careful when we talk about time.

Time runs at different rates depending on the relative velocities of objects, and also based on the strength of gravity fields. However, you have to be going pretty close to the speed of light (relative to some other observer) to experience time at a significantly different rate, and you have to be basically right next to a black hole or neutron star for gravity to make a big difference. While we do experience time at different rates, for the speeds that most galaxies & stars are moving at, this comes out to a tiny fraction of a percent. It's usually way finer than the precision we have in measuring distances anyway, so it really doesn't matter, and we can basically assume that time is pretty much simultaneous everywhere - we don't care about a few days out of a few hundred thousand years.

But if we want to be more precise, we use the cosmic microwave background as a base. The CMB is moving relative to us at a very consistent velocity, and it is very uniform across the observable universe. So it's a convenient frame to use if we want to define a convenient "universal" time frame. It isn't *actually* universal - it's just fairly constant over a very large volume of space, and that makes it a useful convention.


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

[User]
Do heavier elements remain closer to the core of stars?

When new atoms are fused in a star, does it mostly occur in the very center of the core? If so, do they usually remain there and eventually push  some of the remaining lighter atoms out/up and prevent them from fusing? Does this result in stratified shells of separated elements? What happens when this star goes nova?

[Assistant]
It depends on the star.

The very smallest of starts the, red dwarves, have convection currents that run through the entire thing, all the way into the deepest bit of the core, and this then pulls the helium made from hydrogen up and out, achieving a good mix of it throughout the star. This is part of what lets red dwarves last so very long. They barely use any fuel (relatively) and they get to use their entire star's mass because they mix it up so well. It's not just what's in and around the core that they get to use.

Other stars yes, the fusion initially happens in the very core and the byproducts build up and doesn't burn (yet), and and they don't have convection currents running through the whole thing to get that good mix going. Rings of different types of burning form around this core as it ages and goes through its final stages, absolutely.


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

[User]
Best Hard Copies of Books

Hello!

I'm primarily a student of English Literature. Norton Critical Editions of texts in this field are great because in addition to the text, they include hundred pages or so of contemporary critical analysis and other texts (letters, journal entries, other primary documents) providing context.

Is there an equivalent philosophy publication? For example -  the full text of Nietzsche's Also Sprach with some analytical essays included.

I'm sorry if this isn't the kind of post that's allowed, I really don't know where else to ask and the googling I've done hasn't been fruitful.

[Assistant]
It's extremely dependent on the specific text - at least for works in translation. If the work is in translation, it is normally necessary to do some research online as to which translations are well received. For Nietzche, is doesn't matter how good the supplemental materials are if the translation is off. Once you know what translation you want, you're normally pretty limited in terms of the editions available.

If the work is not in translation, there's not a huge difference. Philosophy texts tend to be presented on their own, sometimes with an introductory essay. So long as the copy of the text comes from a reputable publisher - a University Press, Routledge, Hackett, etc. - any included introduction should be serviceable. Though it is always, of course, worth checking on the specific reputation of any author whose commentary you are reading.

If you want secondary literature, you normally have to go to a separate edition. These texts again vary widely based on the specific content - as these things tend to be in philosophy, where interpretations of thinkers vary greatly - but a good starting point are the companions put out by Routledge or Cambrdige. But, again, do some research online for specific recommendations first.


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

[User]
Is it possible to send light into orbit?

Forgive my ignorance, Im not very smart in this area of science as far as astronomy/physics.

But I was thinking about how light can be bent when it goes around massive objects. If light can be Bent then if you were to get something with insane mass like a black hole, would it be possible to send light into orbit without letting it reach the event horizon?

[Assistant]
Yes. There's a region around a black hole called the "photon sphere". This is the region where light could, in theory, orbit the black hole. The force of gravity is strong enough to prevent the light from escaping, but not so strong that it pulls it into the black hole.

However, orbits in the photon sphere are not stable. Light that crosses into the photon sphere from the outside will spiral into the black hole, while light that crosses it from the inside will escape into infinity. Only light that is emitted in the right direction exactly on the photon sphere will orbit the black hole.


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

[User]
ELI5: Can a box in a box, in a box, in a box, break the speed of light from a relative view of being outside the box?

You as an observer are outside these transparent boxes.   Inside the biggest box is a smaller box, that travels the length of the container box at 99.999% the speed of light.  Inside that box is another box, moving at 99.999% the speed of light.  Inside that box is another doing the same thing.

From each box's perspective, it is not breaking the speed of light.  Relative to its own environment, it is obeying the laws of physics, assuming it has the energy to get to that speed, correct?

Now, as an outside observer of these boxes, the smallest box would be moving far faster than the speed of light, would it not?  Or does the act of observing the boxes limit their speed?

Is their top speed dependent on whether the boxes are transparent or not?

[Assistant]
No, it can't break the speed of light.

The reason is because of time dilation.

Imagine you're standing outside the outer box. The passage of time which the inner box experiences is much slower than the passage of time that you experience. So although from it's own point of view, it's going 99.999% the speed of light inside its container box, you will see it moving much slower relative to its container box because of time dilation, and that means you will see it not exceeding the speed of light relative to you.


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

[User] What's wrong with crash course philosophy?

[Assistant]
**The good:** it's accessible.
**The bad:** much of what it says is misleading or flat-out wrong. The rest, if correct, isn't very deep.
**The ugly:** the primary benefit of studying philosophy is not that it increases your knowledge of philosophical views. The benefits of studying philosophy are the skills that come from deep, structured engagement with texts. Listening to short amateur videos doesn't train these skills particularly well.


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

[User]
ELI5: why does water taste so wierd after eating pineapples?

After eating pineapples, the taste of water is very bitter in a sense and this aftertaste stays for some minutes altogether...
Is it something you guys have experienced, or just something personal...?

[Assistant] Pineapple contains bromelain, which is a proteolytic (protein destroying) enzyme that gives pineapple its distinctive tingly taste. The bromelain is interacting with the taste buds of your tongue, and altering their sensitivity to certain stimuli. This is what causes altered taste when you drink water- you're more sensitive to the taste of dissolved minerals and other substances in the water.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do the most impoverished/crime ridden areas (i.e. Detroit, parts of Baltimore) have populations that are mostly ethnic minorities?

[Assistant]
The ghosts of segregation.

Let's take Oakland. After WWII GIs got great deals on mortgages. They bought into suburbs moving out of city centers.

Blacks didn't get mortgages so they had to save up. As soon as they could afford to move in, whites with their ability to get mortgages left.

So you start saving for a $40k home, the value drops to $20k (you lost $20k) and now you need $80k to move into a new house.

The '80s roll around, drug policy in full swing, sprinkle some crack....

Thing about crime...policing creates it. If you go 80 in a 65, is it a crime?  Not unless you get caught.

Stockton has as bad a drug issue as Oakland. Similar population size. But Oakland has twice as many cops.

More cops, more crime. More single parent homes. And the cycle continues.

Detroit was already segregated. So when the auto industry collapsed, who had the ability to move?


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

[User]
A chicken egg is 40% calcium. How do chickens source enough calcium to make 1-2 eggs per day?

edit- There are differing answers down below, so be careful what info you walk away with. One user down there in tangle pointed out that, for whatever reason, there is massive amounts of misinformation floating around about chickens. Who knew?

[Assistant]
Chickens are omnivores, but free-range chickens eat a great many insects, and insect exoskeletons are similarly rich in calcium.  They'll also eat just about anything else, including small mice, voles, moles, lizards, etc., bones and all.

In a commercial setting, they are supplemented with oyster shells, or whatever source is cheap.  Home chicken keepers sometimes feed old eggshells back to their chickens.

Chickens fed more calcium will lay eggs with thicker shells, and they can accept a fairly wide range, but a deficit will yield fragile eggs.


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

[User] ELI5: What are the differences between different types of picture formats (jpg, png, gif, etc)? Are some better than others?

[Assistant]
JPEG is a lossy-compression image format. What this means is that when the image is compressed, some of its details are discarded in order to make it take up less space. JPEG is designed to work on more natural pictures, mainly photographs, where close pixels tend to have similar colors, and compression artifacts are less noticeable.

GIF uses non-lossy compression. The main "feature" of GIF files is the limited palette - instead of supporting the full 2^24 colors, GIF uses only up to 256 different colors at a time. This allows each pixel to take up less space (only 1 byte instead of 3, before compression). GIF is mainly useful for images with a small number of colors, such as charts or icons. GIF is not recommended for photographs. GIF has two additional features: layers, which allow you to have more than 256 colors by layering two or more images with two different palettes (where the top layer has one "transparent" color, which lets you see the bottom layer), and animation, which simply lets you store a series of images inside the same file, which are played sequentially. This is mainly intended for use in simple short animation (like a blinking smiley face), not full on videos. The reason animated GIFs are commonly used in place of an actual video format is that until a few years ago, GIF was the only animated format that was supported on every possible platform.

PNG is a modern file format, intended to replace GIF. It uses non-lossy compression and supports the full color palette instead of just 256 colors. It also supports transparency (unlike JPEG). PNG images take up more space than JPEG, but they preserve the original image quality since the compression is non lossy.


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

[User]
ELI5 Why do we subconsciously hold so much tension in our bodies?

I constantly find myself clenching my jaw even if I just unclenched it. Ive done some yoga where we focus on each part of the body and let go of all the tension little by little. So why are we holding all his tension? It causes headaches and Im sure other pain. It doesnt make any sense.

[Assistant] Stress activates our fight or flight response, which causes our muscles to tense because tense muscles react more quickly, which means we can get away from any possible danger quicker. This was an evolutionary trait that allowed us to escape the dangers of the natural world better. In today's world, stress is less caused by things like an approaching predator and more caused by things like our jobs. Even though we don't need to jump out of the way of things, every day stress still makes our bodies tense because that's what they were trained to do over centuries of evolution.


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

[User]
Why can't the water being stored at Fukushima be reused for cooling?

I'm sure it has been asked before but I cannot find the answer. Why can't the massive amounts of radioactive water being stored at Fukushima be reused to cool what is left of the reactors?

[Assistant]
Short answer? It can be.

But we know the water is contaminated, and possibly leaking off-site. Using contaminated water makes the potential leaking water more dangerous. (Even if it's a tiny change) It's also a bad image for Tepco. "Trpco skipping proper disposal of waste water by pouring it out onsite."

Safe and unsafe levels are defined by amount/volume. For anything. Rat poop in your food. Chemical waste. Rad waste. To make water safe for dumping, you filter it, dilute it, then dump it in the ocean far from land, which does more dilution. How much work before dumping is usually based off of legal standards for country of origin, which may or may not have a scientific backing.

All forms of liquid waste have this problem, but nuclear is worse. Chemical waste can be cleaned chemically and mechanically. Rad waste can need a centrifuge to ensure you pick up all the isotopes. Heavy water is still water, chemically speaking. So a chemical rreaction won't remove it. Ditto for any other isotope of a normally safe element. Some like cesium or lead are easy. They're bad, whether active or not.

Rad waste is also politically more sensitive. Everyone always thinks of fuel pins and control rods. But a ton of waste is low level stuff that's legally classified as waste because of where it was used. Like paper towels or brooms.


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

[User] If all material is eaten, are cooked vegetables less nutritious than raw ones?

[Assistant]
For various plants, for example broccoli, many of the nutrients are locked within strong cell walls, made of cellulose. Humans do not digest cellulose too well, and a lot of the nutrients in the cells are not available as a result.

Cooking these foods weakens or breaks down these cell walls to allow for more complete digestion. But overcooking can break down other nutrients. So cooking enough to weaken the cellulose walls without destroying these other nutrients is optimal.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do live TV hosts experience delays when talking to reporters on the scene?

 Like,  it's the current year, if I fire up Discord, Skype or even FaceTime I  can talk to or video message  people on the other side of the country  with close to zero lag, as if they're right here with me. Still, when I  watch TV sometimes I see that there's a delay in the communication  between the host and the reporter on the scene, even if they're in the  same city.

\- So, we have Jim on the scene to bring us the newest news
\- \[camera focuses on Jim, 3 weird seconds passes\]
\- Oh yeah, John, we're here with Ms. Davis who lost all her belongings on the Godzilla attack...

[Assistant]
All the apps you mention have the benefit of being able to use existing ground infrastructure; wifi is within a few hundred feet at the most and cellular a few miles before it is onto ground lines. Those are great if you can get them, but the field reporters want to be able to ensure they can speak without interruption which means they need to control every step of the network.

To do this they typically use satellite communications, only needing to have a clear view of the sky from their van to form a video link no matter where they are. The penalty is that the much longer round trip distance causes a slight delay in the communications.


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

[User] If women were truly paid $0.77 to each dollar a man makes, wouldn't firms cut costs by hiring more women or even only women? In today's competitive market, why aren't more firms doing this?

[Assistant]
Because you're mistaking "cheaper" for "paid less".

Starting salaries for men and women are often the same. However, the issue is usually either that the employer is less likely to recognize a female employee's contributions and accomplishments, or that a female employee is less likely to aggressively pursue a wage increase, or that the female employee will be given fewer opportunities to impress and advance (or all three).

Women don't simply "cost less". Rather, they initially cost the same as any other employee, male employees are more likely to be deemed worth extra. An employer who pays women less is not going to hire more women for cheap labor, because the whole point of Paying less is often that they think the women are worth less as employees.

Does that difference make sense?

Edit: forgot to cite because on mobile. Another commenter helpfully added a citation in the comments below.


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

[User]
Is there a spot in the universe that light has not
traveled to yet?

Despite the billions of stars/nebulas in our galaxy and perhaps trillions more in the entire universe, is there a place where the radiating light from these celestial bodies has yet to reach?

Hypothetically, if we could travel to this location and look around, what would we see? Darkness?

[Assistant]
The best model we have of the Universe is that it's more or less the same everywhere, and that it extends far beyond the bits we can see, possibly infinitely so. This means that there's nothing special about where we live as opposed to any other part of the Universe. The Big Bang didn't originate from a point, it happened everywhere because it wasn't an expansion *in* space, it was an expansion *of* space. So even the regions so distant that we don't see them do receive light from other parts of the Universe, just not from our part.

Now, if the question is whether there's a spot in the Universe where the light from things like our galaxy hasn't reached then the answer is a definite yes! Light's only had a finite amount of time to travel since the Big Bang, and to our best estimate it's travelled about 46 billion light years in that time. Past that distance, no one has seen the Milky Way or has any idea we exist, and vice versa we have never received light from those regions either!

EDIT: I've got about two new responses every minute asking why the radius of the observable Universe can be 46 billion light years if the Universe is only 13.7 billion years old. I've addressed it a couple of times down in the comments, but the short answer is that since the Universe is expanding, the distance that light has travelled is larger now than it was while the light was travelling it.


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

[User]
Human beings, other primates, and guinea pigs are the only animals that do not produce vitamin C internally. What is the evolutionary "advantage" of this? What would be the implications of having this ability?

Would our immune system be stronger since our bodies would produce vitamin C in sufficient amounts? I read that this is a mutation of a gene that causes this inability to produce vitamin C. I wonder if we can engineer these genes to mutate "back" and allows us to produce vitamin C (not sure if this sounds stupid, so excuse my ignorance).

[Assistant]
There isn't an evolutionary advantage, except that we didn't need to make our own vitamin C (our diet provided enough) and our cells could expend the materials and energy elsewhere.

It isn't hard to have a diet that provides enough vitamin C to avoid deficiency-based disorders, though it isn't clear what the biological effects would be of cells producing their own vitamin C.

We certainly can engineer the gene (the broken one is just one gene in the biosynthesis pathway), using CRISPR for example. Since we'd need to use HDR to fix the gene, we'd have a >20% efficiency, so we'd probably want to *ex vivo* fix the gene in some stem cells (or something), and reintroduce them to the body. This wouldn't fix the gene in all of your cells, but you probably don't need all of your cells making vitamin C anyway.


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

[User] [MARVEL] Why doesn't Tony know what SHIELD is when his dad helped found it and they have a huge building in DC with their logo on it?

[Assistant]
MCU Tony was happy to sell weapons, but didn't seemed overly concerned where they went. He may have been ignorant of world politics, or just didn't really care.

Alternatively, maybe Howard kept his involvement with SHIELD a secret. Tony had no idea his parents death wasn't an accident, which would have aroused suspicion if he openly worked for a spy organization.

or third option: Stark did know, and was messing with Coulson. Just like when he propped a laser up with Cap's prototype shield.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Does Captain America ever say some seriously racist/sexist/old fashioned stuff? Do the Avengers ever call him out on it?

He seems strangely inoffensive for someone from the 1940s.

[Assistant]
616 Cap wouldn't (barring mind-altering and/or reality-warping shenanigans, like what Kobik put him through).  Magneto once tried to remove all anti-mutant prejudice from his mind, only to find that he *already* lacked prejudice toward *anyone*.

Ultimate Cap said that kind of stuff, though.  *A lot*.  Ultimate Cap is a jerk.  So is most of the Ultimate Universe beyond Spidey's corner of it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are galaxies shaped like disks and are there any that are not?

[Assistant]
There are many, many galaxies that are not disc shaped.  For example, elliptical and irregular galaxies.

There is still a great deal to be learned about how spiral galaxies form.  Generally, the disc shape is a result of rotation--a galaxy can be roughly though of as a bunch of matter orbiting a super dense center, containing a black hole.  This orbit sometimes tends to align itself on a single plane, and so you get a disc shape.


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

[User]
[Chemistry] What exactly happens in the brain when someone "Blacks out" from alcohol?

I am guessing that some kind of block happens so nothing can reach long term memory, but I am not sure why a lot of alcohol causes this. I am wondering what happens on a chemical level as to why when someone consumes a lot of alcohol they "Black out" and cannot remember anything the next day.

[Assistant] Alcohol is an antagonist for NMDA receptors in the CA1 region of the hippocampus. These receptors bind glutamate, which deems them excitatory. Alcohol is also an agonist for GABA receptors, which are inhibitory. This serves as a positive feedback loop, and if you have enough alcohol it can be strong enough to inhibit something called long term potentiation. LTP is basically a strengthening of the synaptic connection between neurons so that the response is stronger to the stimulus (you trying to remember something). If you're unable to reach LTP you're unable to recall the memory in a long term context, therefore you black out.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do your leg hairs hurt after wearing socks all day?

[Assistant] Tight clothes pull your leg and foot hair in directions it doesn't naturally go. After a while, the follicles become sore from the stress. It's especially noticeable with socks, because you pull them on against the natural flow of hair and they don't move to let the hair settle back.


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

[User]
In recycling, is rusty iron any different to iron that's fresh off the forge?

Is it possible to recycle rusty iron? Is the method the same? Can you recycle both types together? Would 1 kg of rusty iron produce the same amount as 1 kg of non-rusty iron?

[Assistant]
It depends on the shape of the metal. As rust is oxidised iron, the stuff below the rust layer is fine so you can use that, and you can also save some of the iron out of the rust part, so you don't loose too much.

If its a thin plate thats completely rusted, then you won't save a lot.


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

[User]
ELI5:  Current US piracy law

When and how can torrent client users etc. be prosecuted or tracked down by the government?

[Assistant]
Agencies hired by the RIAA/MPAA/whoever else will go into popular torrents and download them like a normal user. Doing so gives them a list of all of the seeds and leechers in their client, like any other user has. An IP address alone however, is like having someone's street address but not their name. So they petition the ISP that governs that IP and say "Hey we have a warrent give us the information relating to this IP address" and they have to comply. You might get a Cease and Desist letter or something related as well. These groups make their money because people will hurry to settle instead of trying to fight them in court, because they have millions of dollars in legal advice.

Note: the government is not the one suing people. It's companies trying to protect their investments.


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

[User] ELI5: What happens when our immune system makes us immune to a disease. And how does it do it?

[Assistant] The Immune System is incredibly complex, so there really is no ELI5 answer, but in essence you have special immune cells that are designed to recognize foreign/non-native molecules called "antigens". When these antigens are found, the immune cells latch on to the foreign cells and destroy them while simultaneously "remembering" the distinct characteristics of the antigen that it was exposed to so that when/if it sees it again, or another very similar antigen, the immune cells can kill it that much more easily. This ability for the immune system to "learn" is its greatest strength and is now being used to harness the same power to fight endemic genetic diseases like cancer. In fact, the most recent Noble Prize for medicine/physiology was given for this discovery. Former US President Jimmy Carter is probably the most famous patient to have used this immunoglobulin therapy to treat the melanoma which had spread to his brain.


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

[User]
[Man of Steel] What theories do the scientific community have about the Kryptonians/Atlanteans/Amazonians?

With the recent attack on Earth by kryptonian forces and the subsequent discovery of subject Superman, we have learned that we are not alone in this universe.  Recently we have discovered two more species that inhabit the Earth, the Atlaneans and the Amazonians. We need some theories as to what we are dealing with.

Coming from a strictly scientific viewpoint, what are the most likely origins of these two races of technologically advanced superhumans?

How did their technology become so much more advanced than ours?

Why do the current known alien species (Kryptonians, Amazonians, and Altanteans) look like humans?

What are the sources of their super-human abilities?

What will be their current role be in the geopolitical community?

(//4th// The new tone of the reboot is a realistic one, and a JL movie may come within the next few years, so what would be the most accurate predictions the scientific community would make in this scenario assuming they know the basics of Amazon and Atlantean society and all of what Superman knows about his people.  Yes I know in the comics the Amazonians literally came from gods, but what would a level headed scientist think?)

tldr: Whats up with all these people on Earth that aren't strictly speaking, human?

[Assistant] The people of Atlantis have evolved to have a body that can hold up to the pressure of being at the bottom of the ocean, they likely can't breathe air at all since they stay in water mostly, and if they can it may be tough for them to breathe. There's a good chance they're able to see in darker light levels since the ocean isn't the brightest place.


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

[User] [Magic: The Gathering] How does someone become a planeswalker? What exactly are their powers?

[Assistant]
> How does someone become a planeswalker?

Be born with a spark. It won't do anything until it is awakened by suffering severe trauma, like getting buried alive or seeing you loved ones die in front of you. You could live your whole life with a spark and never awaken it.

It's also possible but difficult to take a planeswalker's spark, like Karn did.

> What exactly are their powers?

The only consistent power they have is the ability to planeswalk, hop between worlds by jaunting through the Blind Eternities. This can activate reflexively when a planeswalker is injured, or it can be invoked through concentration. Some planeswalkers are better at it than others. This is a very unique power, post-Mending the only living creatures that can do it are planeswalkers and eldrazi.

Planeswalkers always have superpowers unique to the individual because their spark gives them strong affinity for mana, putting them on par with the strongest mages in the multiverse. Mana doesn't always express as powerful magic, but it's usually powerful magic. Stuff like Gideon's invulnerability, or Jace's telepathy, or Jiang and Miwu.


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

[User] ELI5: Jupiter is made of gas. Given the incredible amount of winds, whirls and storms there, how come its color isn't homogeneous yet ?

[Assistant] The overly simplistic answer is that different gases are present, and they all have different densities, which results in them layering both north/south and vertically within the atmosphere. While the winds do cause these layers to mix, its not enough to turn it into a well-mixed gas.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Did Bail know that Anakin survived and became Vader?

Bail knows that Leia is Anakin's daughter.  Does he also know that Anakin survived his duel with Obi-Wan and became Vader?  If so would he have ever told Leia?

[Assistant]
More than likely. Senator Organa pretty much committed treason against the new Empire by harboring two Jedi masters. He was there when the twins were separated, one can assume he knew at least who Vader really was. And after seeing the new Vader, he could have probably put two and two together.

However, it is highly unlikely he would have ever told Leia about it. That could have made her seek out Vader and caused all sorts of problems.


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

[User]
Learn C++ or Python?

First of all, I am aware of the fact that you better know both languages because they are both VERY powerful.

What language should I learn first? In my CS subject I am currently learning a lot of Java and next year C# and other languages will come too. But I want to start learning another language on my own. What is your opinion on both languages? Which one should I choose?

[Assistant] I would learn C++ first so you can understand things at a lower level which will translate into being a better and more efficient programmer in Python.  Just to name a simple example, youll understand why `obtect1==object2` evaluates to false in Python although both objects contain the same exact property and values because you would have dealt with pointers in C++.


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

[User]
[DBZ] Do humans have an upper limit that they physically can't surpass?

Saiyans seems to be able to reach insane heights of power, but humans seem left behind. Is it possible given the same level of training for Humans to grow to a similar level, or is it just not possible?

[Assistant]
Saiyans have an unfair advantage over humans. First, a saiyan baby is almost certainly going to be stronger than any adult human, minus a few exceptions, probably due to being a warrior race that only lives for battle.

Then, saiyans also have the ability of zenkai, which increases their power after any injury, especially from near fatal wounds that they survive.

There are a few unfair advantages on the saiyan side, but they most likely have an easier time with attaining much higher strength than humans due to evolutionary traits.

Some examples that humans are capable of greater feats would be Krillin, Tien, And even Yamcha, who are all impossibly strong compared to any human. Even by the end of the Frieza saga, Krillin and Tien are easily stronger than 90% of saiyans that have lived, Yamcha probably could hold his own as well.

Humans are capable, but it would probably take generations to develop the ability to catch up, even in the slightest.


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

[User]
Why do so many scam websites actually deliver on their promises if you press the right buttons?

I dunno if this quite fits here, it doesn't have to do with coding per se, but malware. How come there's so many "too good to be true" websites that are actually too good to be true? Yeah, they do everything in their power to make you click on the wrong button, but if you dodge all the phish hooks there's actual value in using the website. I'm talking about the kind that let you download Youtube videos and watch movies for free and torrent games, softwares, porn, etc. Any time I've played around with these sites I can usually get what I want with seemingly no consequence (although I will admit I caught a weather bug once a few years ago). If the goal was to scam people, why give them a chance to get the actual product, and unscathed at that? Is it to build trust so they tell their more gullible friends about it? It just seems like a lot of work and kind of counterproductive to the con.

[Assistant]
The content you're looking for is actually there. But they get paid for affiliate marketing whenever someone clicks the "wrong" button. The website you're on isn't looking to scam you, they're just looking to get paid.

Basically, it's just a modern version of pop-up ads. Website A has the download. But they also advertise for website B, C, D-> Z. The way affiliate programs work, sometimes sites dont even know who they're advertising for, or where the fake links lead to.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do you sometimes feel nauseous/queasy when you're extremely hungry?

It seems really weird that at a moment when your stomach is almost (if not totally) empty, that you can feel like you're about to throw up.

What's going on there?

[Assistant] When you have very low blood sugar, your pancreas releases a hormone called glucagon into the blood stream, which triggers the liver to convert stored glycogen into glucose to raise blood sugar levels. A side effect of glucagon is nausea, and we're not really sure why.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do they know what the possible high and low for the days temperature will be?

When a weather forecast says there is going to be a high of 18 and a low of 12 for example, how do they know the temperature range or possibility, especially over a weekly forecast?

[Assistant]
It is done with mathematical models that use observational data from all over the world that including ground measurement and satellite observation.   The calculation is done by supercomputers to predict the future.

The models are not perfect and the data you input is limited so the farther you go into the future the lower is the accuracy of the prediction.

 Another reason for the error is that the calculation is done in grids that might be 2.5x2.5km in size. The weather is not identical in each grid and it might rain in part and the other side has sunshine but the weather models assume the same weather in all of the grid. The terrain is not the same in the whole grid and it can have an effect too.


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

[User]
[DC] Does Scarecrows Fear Toxin work on Superman?

He might be bulletproof but what about his biology? Would the gas work on him or does he have some kind of super immunity?

[Assistant] Yes. In fact Fear Toxin played a key role in the inciting incident of Injustice. Spoilers: >!Joker subjected Superman to fear toxin and made him see Lois as Doomsday. The resulting fight killed Lois, their baby, and Metropolis!<


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

[User]
Can a machine be too weak to solve a problem?

Is there a problem that can be solved on a "powerful" computer but cannot be solved on a "weaker" computer.

Of course, the weaker computer will always take more time to solve the problem, but will it always be able to solve it eventually, or a problem can be too complex to ever be solved?

Assumption: hard disk is always large enough for storing the data, so there is no problem of being out of storage.

Lets assume that memory and cpu are relatively weak on the "weak" computer.

My thoughts are that out of memory error could prevent it from completing the computation. Can out of memory problem always be solved by just spilling to disk?

[Assistant]
I think you're describing a *slow* computer, rather than what I'd call a "weak" one. Most computers are designed to be "computationally universal", meaning that they can simulate any other computationally-universal computer. In that sense, the power of a CPU has nothing to do with its speed.

> Can out of memory problem always be solved by just spilling to disk?

Secondary storage is still memory. Disk is slower and less convenient to use (since it's not directly connected to the CPU's memory space), but otherwise equivalent to RAM.


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

[User]
What's the reason behind unpronounced letters?

Started to wonder when thinking about the word 'beaucoup' (french for 'much'). There's languages where words are very long for how much is actually being pronounced. Is it just speakers being too "lazy" over a long time? But why hasn't the written word followed along?

[Assistant]
Pronunciation is historically much more variable than writing. This is because writing a word down creates an easily consulted "record" of how that word is to be spelled (even if not everyone agrees with you), whereas -- before broadcast media and sound recording came along -- there was no way to "remind" a group of speakers how a word is to be pronounced.

Seeing a word spelled out can indicate how it is to be pronounced, but in areas of low education and literacy, and especially before the era of printing, this is not particularly effective.

Because of this, it tends to be easy for pronunciations to drift over time and between regions, so much so that spellings began to look nonsensical compared to spoken language. Some languages have simplified their spelling to correct this, while others have not.

Another contributing factor is the borrowing of words from other languages, sometimes with those other languages' spelling rules, which are illogical in the context of the new "host" language.

French has a lot of silent letters, but in many ways is more logical in its pronunciation than English is. Read this list of words, all of which are identical except for the first letter, aloud to yourself: bough, cough, dough, rough. You can imagine the processes that led to these words being pronounced differently.


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

[User] [SCP Foundation] What the Foundation do when a sapient SCP shows extreme signs of distress and depression caused by it's imprisonment ?

[Assistant] Depends on its classification. they wouldn't give two fucks if a Keter class was getting depressed. They make make concessions for  helpful Elucid, and would probably be rather accommodating to Safe classed SCPs.


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

[User] [Avatar/The Legend of Korra]Why do most Bloodbenders need the full moon to bloodbend while bending the water inside plants is fairly easy?

[Assistant]
The moon amplifies the abilities of Waterbenders, allowing even the most novice of waterbenders to do amazing feats, and allowing masters to do things never before thought possible.

Every living thing has Chi(Or chakras, if you're going by the Western Air Nomad terminology) and the more complex the organism, the more Chi they have, which offers a natural resistance to the interference of other's energy reaching inside them and disrupting the flow of things.

Plants have nearly no complexity or Chi (if any) and thus can be reached into and manipulated easily.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why does my drink seem a lot colder when I have mint gum in my mouth?

Especially cold when I have a cold drink, almost unbearable.

[Assistant] The mint contains menthol, and menthol stimulates the nerve endings in your mouth responsible for temperature in a way that registers as cold. Chillies contain a chemical called capsaicin that does the opposite.


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

[User] What are some criticisms of Peter Singer's philosophy?

[Assistant]
* Martha Nussbaum's Capability Approach

* Alasdair MacIntyre's *After Virtue* in which he likens the principle of utility to a conceptual fiction that might produce beneficial actions, but a fiction nonetheless.

* Eva Kittay challenges Singer's attitude towards the euthanasia of disabled infants in a 28 day period as a mother of a profoundly disabled woman.

* Robert Solomon argues that Singer refuses to speak in languages beyond that of a limited logic and reason that denies human compassion.

There are many other critics who condemn Singer's perceived dismissal of human dignity. What exactly are you looking for?


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

[User]
[WH40K] Why aren't all Space Marines murderous psychopaths?

Considering the brutality of their training and background, I can't see them being anything but barely restrained killers. So how come some of them seem rather professional and civilized? They were culled from the most vicious of killers and trained to be better killers with other killers. Their sole purpose is killing, how can they have any semblance of humanity?

[Assistant]
It all depends on the chapter the marine comes from really, however.....

For the most part space marines are psychopathic killer and those tendencies are encouraged. Sometimes the chapter goes out of the way to recruit the most brutal criminals from the depths of hive worlds. Their job is killing and not PR

For the most part marines are not human - they come from human stock, but after their surgeries and training they are not. They are imbued with the gene seed of a near god primarch which stems from the emperor himself - they are far from human now.

So why do they appear so human sometimes? Well, they probably need you for something, it is in their benefit tactically, or they are from one of the chapters thats not ape shit fanatics.

If you want some semi reasonable chapters look at the salamanders and ultramarines, but even then these guys love killing.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the difference between anodizing and galvanizing?

[Assistant]
Anodizing produces a stable oxide coating on the material - usually aluminium - which prevents further degradation.

Galvanising deposits a layer of corrosion-resistant zinc onto (usually) steel. Not only is zinc quite resistant to corrosion anyway, but it also forms an electrochemical pair with the steel which makes it electrically unfavourable for the steel to rust. There's another benefit - the zinc coating can to some extent self-repair, because the battery effect re-plates scratches and minor dings.


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

[User]
ELI5: The center of the earth

From what I understand thus far the center of the earth is a molten mass and we're living on the crust, which occasionally leaks by way of volcanoes and other vents. How is the earth still molten after all this time? Will it ever "burn out" like the sun is predicted to do? How important is the moltenness of the center for life to exist?

[Assistant]
You're asking a LOT of questions here, too much for a single ELI5, I'll just answer the main one.

First, your description of the earth isn't quite accurate there fam. The centre of the earth is a ball of super-hot iron, then there's a massive layer of rock all around it that's so hot that it's plasticky. Then on top of that there's a crust.

The earth is still hot even after all this time for a few reasons.

* It's super super massive, and it would take an extraordinarily long time to cool down. There's so much heat down there that the insulation on the Earth's outside and the vacuum of space means it's not lost yet. It's kind of like its own thermos.
* The rock inside it is moving. It has a moon and a sun, and the gravity from these pulls the rocks just like it pulls the ocean tides. Heavier material sinks, lighter material floats. This movement of material creates force and friction which helps heat it just like rubbing your pant leg with your hand will warm your hand.
* The earth is radioactive inside, not much, but enough to generate quite a bit of heat.
* The sun continuously has provided a fair bit of warmth too, replenishing some during the "day" that bleeds into space at "night".

Some of these sources of heat are way more powerful than others, but they all add up to enough energy to keep the earth's "mantle" - the layer between the core and the crust - hot enough to occasionally form pools of underground liquid rock. These become volcanoes if they break through the crust to the surface.


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

[User]
ELI5: If inflation hovers around 1%-3%, does a 2.5% raise at work just mean you're keeping up with inflation?

& if that's the case, does ones standard of living just remain constant? (assuming you stay at a 2.5% increase year-over-year)

[Assistant]
More or less. Inflation is a measure of the average price of goods in an economy, so assuming your spending is relatively average with regards to category (food, rent, transportation) then your cost of living increases with inflation.

As such, a raise of roughly the rate of inflation is just keeping you at the same level.


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

[User]
Is controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment?

I just want to say that I don't know a lot about economics but I was still curious about my political leaning and I know it knows a legit test but I thought it might be fun to take one.

I took a political compass test and one of the questions was if controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment? From my understanding, it might be better to inflation because it might lead to unemployment but I'm not sure.

[Assistant]
So a common tool used in Economics to explain the relationship between unemployment and inflation is the Phillips curve. Basically, it says that In the short run, inflation and unemployment have an inverse relationship. Theoretically, if you have  lower amount of inflation, you will also have higher rates of unemployment. The theory comes from the idea that because wages are a big part of overall prices, inflation (rather than wages) could be inversely related to unemployment.

However, the Phillips curve has fallen off in recent years as a way to accurately predict unemployment. The relationship has not been seen to be as stable or as strong. Basically, data from 1970 and onwards has messed up the idea of this theory.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does it matter which way your ceiling fan is spinning? Is pushing the air down from the ceiling really actually different than pulling the air up from the floor?

I think I'm supposed to switch the direction of my ceiling fans, but I really can't see how that really matters - isn't it basically the same end result either way the fan is spinning?

[Assistant]
A ceiling fan has two effects:

1. Mixing the air in the room to even out the temperature
2. Moving the air to create a windchill effect when it moves over your skin

Either fan direction will have a similar mixing effect, but the windchill effect is biggest when you are on the blowing side of the fan. You can try this with a standing fan: put your hand in front and behind and notice how much cooler it feels in front.

In summer you don't really care about the mixing effect and just want windchill, so you set it to blow down. In winter you want mixing to spread the heat from your heater around but don't want windchill so you set it to blow up.


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

[User]
[Matrix] What did Smith want? What was his purpose?

Why did he try to kill neo, destroy Zion and take over the entire matrix? What did he want?

[Assistant]
He was programmed to act as a nemesis to mankind in general and Zion in particular. To not just fight them, not just hate them, but to hate their very means of existence; the very act of living in a human world with human sensations was repugnant to him. This hatred drove him in his assigned task, to seek and destroy Zion's operatives at all possible turns. This hatred and disgust was already pushing him to the edges of his programmed task during the first film, plotting to destroy Zion entirely.

But that's not his purpose. His purpose was to make the Zion crews feel enough pressure to not do anything too overt, but not enough pressure to die out entirely. By design, *Smith can never do what he was programmed to do*. He and his fellow agents were set up to fail from the very beginning, pawns in the Architect's design to keep the cycle going. And when the One emerges they are called home.

But before Smith could get called home, he went through his traumatic death and rebirth at Neo's hands. He came back still hating humanity, and hating Neo as well, but no longer with any compulsion to defend the system or secure the Matrix. He could go full tilt against Neo, and happily take the whole system and every human in it down in the process.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does the mortar not come to the edge of the bricks?

I was looking at a brick wall the other day and I was wondering why the mortar between the bricks does quite come to the edge of the bricks, ie. it's not flush with the outside surface of the bricks (which would make the wall smoother.

Generally when I'm gluing things I actually plan for there to be excess glue to wipe away so that the maximum surface for gluing has been used, but that doesn't seem to be the case with bricks. Why is that?

[Assistant]
We use rounded jointers, to press the mortar into the joints after the bricks have been laid. This ensures that the mortar in the joints is compacted against the bricks its binding together and that there are no holes or shallow areas in the joints. We then brush the mortar to further insure it is all sealed against the surrounding bricks and then it is struck again with the jointers to smooth the surface.

This is the prefers aesthetic of a brick wall but it does do many useful things. It ensures the joints are packed and full, it ensures the mortar is sealed against all edges of the bricks, and it ensures the surface is smooth to not allow water to build up in small pockets in the mortar.

There are other ways of finishing the mortar to achieve the same goals and some that are more decorative and dont provide as much benefit against water protection as the traditional rounded concave joint or weatherstruck joints.


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

[User]
Why does a muscle get stronger?

I know *what* happens when a muscle gets stronger. Buy *why* does that happen?
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This question was asked by my father who, for years, has been unsatisfied with the answers he's been getting. Can someone finally answer him?
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Edit: Thanks guys! He finally got an answer he was looking for! I can't reply to everyone and thank you, I didn't expect to get this many responses, so thank you all, on both his and my own behalf!

[Assistant] Enhanced strength, either through thicker muscle fibers or increased neuromuscular efficiency, is the body's natural adaptation to having a certain stimulus, or stress,  placed on it (in this case a heavy load or resistive force). The body adapts to be more ready for that same level of stress, should it happen again. In order to continue getting stronger the body must be progressively and consistently stimulated with an appropriate amount of stress. Loads of different magnitude, moved at different speeds, over various durations of time, can cause a wide variety of muscular and neuromuscular adaptations. Strength is only one of them.


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

[User]
ELI5: How is gravity calculated for distant planets and moons?

How do we know the gravity for saturn is 107% of earths gravity, or how did we calculate the escape velocity for moon for the Apollo 11 mission.

[Assistant] Gravity is the same everywhere, there's the old Newton formula to calculate the gravitational force that depends on the masses of the two objects and the distance (radius) between their centers.  There is also a  formula for calculating orbital velocity based on the mass of the planet.  So if you know the orbital period of a moon, and the distance, you can calculate the gravity of the planet.


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

[User]
[The Good Place] What's the point of Janet?

When the main characters actually get to the real Good Place, it turns out that the people there are actually miserable because everything they want instantly appears and that takes all the joy out of everything.

None of them are ever seen asking a Janet for anything. Whatever they want just appears.

So why does Janet even exist? If you have a system where people can just think of something they want and they immediately get it, why would you need to create a sentient version of Siri with the power to summon things? It just seems redundant.

Even after Eleanor and the gang manage to fix The Good Place by implementing the new door that ends your existence, they don't seem to need Janet for anything, other than just being her friend. It's not like she serves a real function because they already have access to everything they could want without asking her for help.

[Assistant] The denizens of the Good Place definitely ask the Janet for something at one point but the whole point is that they are so bored of getting whatever they want whenever they want that they rarely do anymore.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What aspect of space ship design makes it fast?

I was just wondering how the Millennium Falcon got so fast. Do you just need a big hyperdrive on a small hull? If that's true, how come no one designed lighter hulls to compete?

[Assistant]
Actually, "speed" is largely a matter of navigation, not directly speed (although that plays a part).  Most of the Falcon's impressive run time comes from General Solo's personal modifications to the navigational computer.  For example, navigating around the black hole cluster surrounding the Kessel region requires a ponderous route of at least 21 Parsecs - however, Solo managed to chart a course that was only 9 Parsecs long.

When entering hyperdrive, navigation is crucial - gravitational fields surround stars at vast distances, and even the slightest gravitational pull has to be accounted for, since in hyperdrive the slightest change in direction can send you literally light-years off course.  And those mistakes can send you into further gravity fields (or even on a collision with a star or planet!), thus further altering your course, etc.  Navigation here is key - if you can successfully navigate this complex system, you can cut incredible length off your journey.


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

[User]
eli5 Why does a previously perfectly crispy French fry become a limp wet flaccid potato dick after just a short time in the fridge?

Every time I get fries (or chippies for my pals across the pond) they serve me way too many, so I throw them in the fridge. Instantly they are transformed into inedible flaccid sludge. What gives? Why does this happen and how should o be storing them for maximum future crispy deliciousness? Help!

[Assistant]
It will happen the same if left alone on a countertop; it's partially because of oil used to fry with and part condensation. How could it condensate, you ask? Well, cool air typically has moisture in it, not always, but usually some moisture content. Well, heat travels from hot to cold, and when it travels, the normally vaporized moisture condenses and forms droplets, but since a potato will absorb moisture, it becomes "flaccid potato dick".

Also, if you put it an airtight plastic bag, it should mitigate some of that. But will not all of it. Get an airfryer. That will return your goodies to their former glory.


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

[User] Eli5 what do we use linear algebra for?

[Assistant]
Linear algebra is having a real explosion of usefulness in computer science right now.

Its the basis of much of machine learning. For example, Linear algebra is how Netflix recommends your next binge. You can set up a system of equations that represent different properties of movies and then find eigenvectors to understand which properties are independent of what other properties in peoples preferences. Then you can compare two movies by using the Pythagorean theorem to find the shortest distance between any two given movies on the map.


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

[User]
[MCU] how often did The Ancient One mess up? (*Dr Strange spoilers*)

Mordo has known the Ancient One for decades at most, and she is untold centuries old. Several times he acts as if she has given them all good reason to question her.

When the ancient one blasts strange's astral form from his body - mordo: "his heart can't take any more!" ancient one: "I think it can..".

And when mordo finds out he ancient one stranded strange in the himalayas, instead of trusting that as a safe method to get a student out of their rut, he groans "oh no, not again" as though there were problems the last time she did it.

So.. did she often mess up with life and death situations? If someone died could she bring them back? The only healing magic we saw was persistent  channeling to puppet a body after nerve damage, nothing like regeneration or healing of any kind.. was the only reason she was in charge because she was the sorcerer supreme and there was no established method of voting her out?

[Assistant]
Mordo is not the best judge.  He is uncomfortable with taking unnecessary risks and is not the most imaginative person around.  And, more importantly, he did not know what the Ancient One knew.

What seemed reckless to Mordo was considered a safe bet by the Ancient One.  He's like that panicky friend you drive with who thinks you shouldn't go so fast or spend so much time weaving around on the sidewalk.


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

[User]
With bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies, how does a person know whether the blockchain they have is up to date?

I understand that the blockchain of a cryptocurrency is essentially a public ledger of all the transactions in that currency, and that it's used to prevent duplicate transactions from occurring as well as tracking all the balances. How can a single client know whether or not the blockchain that it has contains the full list of transactions? I mean, it can compare blockchains with the user it's performing the transaction with and make sure that the later of the two is used; maybe it can look around at other public blockchains and make sure they're not newer?

I guess I don't understand what underpins the system's *trust*.

[Assistant]
Bitcoin and other similar crypto-currency protocols are operated by a network of nodes using peer to peer communication. Transactions and transaction blocks are broadcast to every node. Each bitcoin client connects to many nodes when it is started and it requests to many different peers all the transactions and blocks that occured after the last block it is aware of. If a malicious node is trying to serve made-up blocks to fool a node into seeing a different version of what hapenned during the time it was offline, this malicious node would have to produce blocks having more proof of work than the real blocks, and to create that, the malicious node would need more computational power than the rest of the network combined.

Proof of work is like a sudoku puzzle made with all the transactions in the block. The difficulty of the puzzle is adjusted automatically (i.e. Imagine adding more rows and columns to the sudoku grid) so that on average, a valid transaction block is found every 10 minutes when all the network miners are trying to find the solution. If blocks are found too quickly because more miners are trying to solve the puzzles, the protocol calls for a difficulty increase. Any miner producing an invalid block having too low difficulty on the puzzle solution will see its block rejected and nobody will build other blocks over it. Important detail: every block must contain the hash of the previous block (this is why it is called a blockchain).

So going back to your question, all wallets and nodes are using the same rules to find the only valid chain, a single source of truth about who has how much money. The rules are that they should pick the chain that is the longest and has the most work (considering both difficulty and amount of blocks) because that is necessarily the chain on which the majority of network miners are working on extending. Thus, Satoshi Nakamoto found a solution to what is known as the Byzantine's Generals problem where you need to find truth in a network that can contain malicious nodes.


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

[User] ELI5: How do restaurants manage to keep sliced avocados green for hours, but 5 minutes after I cut mine at home, it starts to turn brown?

[Assistant] You coat them with something acidic to prevent the oxidation that causes the brown color. This can be lemon/lime juice (like you use in guacamole) or ascorbic acid (vitamin C) or other acidic food items. You also restrict the oxygen from getting to it by covering it with plastic wrap.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do so many organisms, like mammals, need sleep to a degree that it makes it a requirement to live like food and water, while other organisms don't sleep at all?

Sleep does a lot of things here and there, but has there been a thesis pin pointing the exact thing that absolutley requires sleep? Could it be that the brain, even the ones not as evolved as the human ones, can not go on for long without rest due to their bio-chemistry or something like that? Very primitive "brains" like insects and so on don't require so much brain power like more complex organisms, maybe?

[Assistant] No-one really knows for sure why we sleep, but its not just mammals that sleep. The most compelling theory that Ive heard is that sleep is when your brain is able to get rid of waste products that build up during your waking hours, however most organisms, including those that dont have brains, have some kind of day-night cycle where theyre dormant for a period of time.


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

[User] What makes plastic so cheap and easy to produce as opposed to any other material?

[Assistant]
Polyethylene, polystyrene, and most plastics are made from leftovers after fuel is produced from oil. Plastics are effectively subsidized by gas sales, and are effectively a waste stream.

One of the interesting consequences of moving towards renewable energy will be higher plastic prices. It will be interesting watching this play out.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are graphic cards so expensive? And why do AMD and Nvidia not have much competition?

Why are there no 'Chinese' knock-offs for graphic cards? If there was more competition, the big two (AMD and Nvidia) would have to reduce their prices. If there are so many Chinese phones on the market that do reasonably well, why not for graphic cards? After all, it's just hardware, just like in phones.

[Assistant]
The key to a graphics card is the graphics chip (the GPU), and as you rightly note, there are only a couple of major players for graphics cards.  (Intel is also a major player for integrated graphics chips to go onto PC motherboards.) These chips are very difficult to design and make, and the 2 big companies are rapidly innovating, so even if someone put the millions of dollars it would take into reverse engineering and manufacturing one of their current offerings, they would already be old technology by the time they came out.  There are a lot of companies that make cards using Nvidia and AMD/ATI chips, but they still have to buy the relatively pricey GPUs and graphics memory chips to put on them.

These cards aren't sold with an extremely high profit margin, and they are already built in cheap factories in Asia. The only way for a knock-off to be a lot cheaper would be to make their own graphics chips. Nvidia and AMD/ATI put a lot of money into developing these chips, so doing it from scratch would be very difficult (if you wanted to make a competitive product). The "big 2" also get their chips made at very competitive prices, since their volumes are large enough to give them very strong negotiating power with waferfabs.

A knock-off company would also face obstacles getting their parts built. TSMC and Global Foundries don't want to anger customers who are among their largest, so once a "knock-off company" was found out, they'd probably discover that the waferfabs would refuse to make their chips any more, and they'd be out of business.

Why are they so expensive? GPUs are very big chips, and that makes them much more expensive to make. When you double the size of a chip, the cost of the chip goes up more than 2x. That's because the probability of getting a defect increases exponentially with chip size, rather than linearly. And if a chip has even one defect in the wrong spot, it has to be discarded or sold as a lower functionality chip. (Some defects can be "repaired", if they affect memory arrays.)

With that said, it would be possible to compete with AMD/ATI and Nvidia. You just have to design and build a better product than they do.  But they have had a lot of learning over many generations of chips, and they're pretty good at making them. Intel has tried for years to beat them and has not succeeded (in the high-end market).


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

[User]
Why is light the only thing that travels at the speed of light?

I know that there is nothing that goes faster than the speed of light. But why is light the only thing that goes that fast? Is there anything that goes just as fast as light?

[Assistant] The thing is that the speed of light isn't just some arbitrary speed that light moves at and then nothing can go faster than it. You could say the speed of light (approx. 300,000 km/s) is like a universal "top speed." Anything without mass will travel at that speed, with electromagnetic waves (light) being the prime example. As Wrathchilde said, the current leading hypothesis on gravity is that it propagates at that same speed.


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

[User]
[New Vegas] Where do the ghouls' tickets end up?

Aside from the optional crasharoni ending, where are the rockets designed to take the cult to?  Does a 12% accuracy increase make much of a impact for them?

[Assistant]
It's not explicitly stated where they're going, however from what Jason Bright says some people have theorised that he is alluding to The Glow, a West Tek research facility in Southern California (where Fallout 1 takes place). It would make sense from a Ghoul's point of view for a holy site (where better than a heavily irradiated facility?), and isn't *too* far from the Mojave for the Bright Followers to return in time to help with the evac of Novac during the Second Battle for Hoover Dam. The course adjustments here can be pretty necessary, as misjudging the landing zone could have them flying into a nearby building.

Another suggestion is The Glowing Sea in the Commonwealth. The suggestion here is that throughout The Glowing Sea are indeterminate scraps of metal that *some* people believe to be identical (if a bit rusted) to those found on the Bright Brotherhood's rockets, suggesting that they crashed here or landed safely only for their ships to be trashed by the dangerous Deathclaws and Radscorpions native to the region. An issue here is that it would take *a long* time for the Ghouls to head back to Novac to assist in time to coincide with the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. But as game events have no set canon date (due to side quests, sleeping, waiting and whatnot providing differences in date) then it's not entirely impossible that they would have landed (or crashed) in The Glowing Sea, realised it wasn't a paradise, and (those who weren't mauled by Wasteland Creatures) headed back to the Mojave arriving in time to assist in the evac of Novac. The alterations to the course aren't *as* significant here, as The Glowing Sea is pretty vacant and clear of obstacles. It might help put them closer to the Commonwealth though, and thus closer to humans to trade with or further from the most dangerous of creatures. That said, it might not matter *too* much as The Glowing Sea tends to mess with electronics and signals to the extent that the on-board computers overshoot the target or under-shoot it upon hitting The Glowing Sea and the signal interference it generates.

A third possibility is the Bright Brotherhood heard of Necropolis (perhaps an errant radio broadcast from Three-Dog), a predominantly Ghoul settlement in the Capital Wasteland. This is the flimsiest of the theories. It's backed by the fact that the Bright Brotherhood would be looking for a Ghoul friendly home after less than stellar relations with settlements like Novac, and that Necropolis would seem to be a haven or even a paradise for these Ghouls. However, it's *also* a bit of a umm... Seedy, place? Not exactly what a religious Brotherhood would be after. Then there's also the suggestion that their destination would be heavily radiated, which is why their ally Chris (I believe his name is Chris) cannot join them on their journey, and Necropolis isn't heavily irradiated. Also unless they landed *really* close, the Bright Brotherhood would have to deal with the Enclave and the Brotherhood of Steel, both of whom aren't fond of Ghouls. Then there's the fact that Necropolis probably wouldn't allow in Ferals, which the Bright Brotherhood were inclined to take with them. There's also the big issue that the Capital Wasteland is extremely far from the Mojave, but again we could suggest that the Courier is doing a bunch of exploration and side quests in the mean time which gives the Bright Brotherhood ample time to return before they're supposed to be in Novac. Your flight calculations and accuracy adjustments would be pretty vital here, as the number of buildings that the Bright Brotherhood would likely crash into if they veered off-course is astronomically high, depending on where they planned to land.


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

[User]
ELI5 how are DVDs mass produced.

Title says it all.

[Assistant]
It's hard to think about at first because everyone has a CD burner now. You think "how can they make millions of these" without spending a ton of a bunch of CD burners.

But CDs made in factories are actually different than CDs you burn. CDs in factories are actually full of tiny little bumps. It's actually basically the same as an old record when you think about it. They take master copies, the originals, of the CDs, make molds of it, and use them to quickly press into CDs, similar to how you can press the PlayDoh Lid into PlayDoh and get a copy of it. So why are your CDs so smooth? They put a thin layer of coating over the whole thing to make them more scratch resistant. If you think they're easy to ruin now, imagine having direct access to all the little bumps that represent the 1's and 0's of the data stored on them!

As a side note to this, how does your CD Burner work? If it's just a laser, it can't physically press into the CD can it? This is why you need special CDs to burn with. Instead of having bumps all over them, they're simply a chemical compound inside of them. When you burn a CD, the laser actually melts the chemicals inside the CD(hence the term burn) to form the same types of bumps you get from a factory. Obviously this takes longer because it goes over the whole CD and isn't just a mold being pressed into it.

And another fun fact! Instead of burning bumps into a CD, re-writable CDs actually have a chemical that changes colors when being burned. The laser melts the chemical to a certain color instead of a bump. Being able to read this color is why CD-RWs don't work in all radios.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] I just acquired a House Elf... I have a few questions...

Namely - I was informed by the seller that I musn't give my house elf clothes, else he will become free. He told me of one instance of a well known wizard losing his House Elf by giving it an old book with a sock in it - he didn't even mean to?

With this in mind, how do I safely get my house elf to do my laundry without setting it free?

Edit: Some great answers and food for thought. I had entirely planned to treat my House Elf well, they're still sentient after all.

It seems the best approach is to use commands that imply a retainer of ownership 'please collect all *my* clothes and wash them' and so on.

[Assistant]
Ok, the house elves and clothes thing is kinda open to interpretation, on the part of the elf. Most elves are quite happy to be subservient, they have a biological drive for it after all. Dobby wanted to be free, and chose to interpret Lucius giving him that sock as letting him go.

That said, just don't pass it the laundry and you should be good. Simply order it to do the laundry. Oh and don't mistreat it to the extent that it will look for avenues to betray you, as Dobby and Kreacher did. It's your servant, not your punching bag.


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

[User] ELI5: Who owns the internet?

[Assistant]
You can own a connection, but not the entity. In much the same way you can say this part of the planet is america's - but you can't say the entire planet is america's (thought that won't stop some people from trying to say it).

The internet is similar, it's not confined to any single space or machine, it's an enormous, transcontinental network of information shooting this way and that.

It can be pruned and it can be grown but as long as there are computers connected to other computers - you have an internet.


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

[User] Will the continents eventually connect to recreate Pangea?

[Assistant]
Not Pangaea, but another supercontinent. There have been multiple supercontinents in the past and plate tectonics probably aren't stopping any time soon.

Not all supercontinents consist of all 7 of today's continents, but there were still supercontinents before Pangaea that did. Pangaea is notable mostly for being the most recent one.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do we distinguish the sound from two different instruments playing the same tune when they produce the same frequency?

On a physical level, what's the difference between sound waves from two different sound sources that produce sound of the same frequency? Do the sound waves from a piano have some inherent difference to those of a violin or a trumpet?

[Assistant] Basically, the frequency we assign each note on an instrument is only the main, or loudest, frequency that's being produced. If you listen to a sine wave, what you're hearing is just a particular frequency and nothing else. When you listen to something like a piano or a violin, you're hearing that particular frequency, but also a lot of other, quieter, frequencies that give the note a different "timbre", or audible identity. These frequencies are always mathematically related(3/2 the base frequency, or so on) and depend on the particular construction and material of the instrument or sound source. These other frequencies are what give instruments different identities from each other, and are why you can't just replace a piano with a guitar or something similar. If you want to look into it in more depth and technicality, I'd suggest the wikipedia page for timbre.